On Easter weekend of all weekends.  It used to be that a college edumacation actually included the study of religion, so that even if you didn’t neessarily float that way, you had some grasp of what it means for those who do.

Evidently, comparative religion is no longer a required course in the alma maters of the staff at The Globe and Mail.

That triumphal barnburner of an Easter hymn, Jesus Christ Has Risen Today - Hallelujah, this morning will rock the walls of Toronto’s West Hill United Church as it will in most Christian churches across the country.

But at West Hill on the faith’s holiest day, it will be done with a huge difference. The words “Jesus Christ” will be excised from what the congregation sings and replaced with “Glorious hope.”

The fact that this is a United Church will explain a lot about the move being reported on.

Ms. Vosper [the pastor of the church in question] has written a book, published this week - With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe - in which she argues that the Christian church, in the form in which it exists today, has outlived its viability and either it sheds its no-longer credible myths, doctrines and dogmas, or it’s toast.

Then what in the world is she doing pastoring a church?  This is like putting China on the UN Human Rights Council.  Wait a minute…

She is considered one of the bright, if unconventional, minds within the United Church, Canada’s largest Protestant Christian denomination.

By what count?  Total Sunday attendees?  Perhaps with the largest rate of religious apathy and church building closure from lack of interest?  The latter two would be accurate.  The former is certainly not the case anymore.  This move of hers would be the largest reason why.

She holds a master of divinity degree from Queen’s University and was ordained in 1992.

Doesn’t say much for Queens’ standards.  Or the United Church.  “What?  You don’t believe in Christ?  Great!  You’re just the kind of leader to lead this denomination into its rightful place as a footnote in religious history!”

Other Christian clergy and theologians have talked about the need to dramatically reform the doctrines of a faith that, with the exception of its vibrancy in the United States, has lost huge numbers of adherents throughout the Western world it once dominated as Christendom.

Notice how carefully this is phrased.  It talks about the Western world.  That much is true.  It has lost huge numbers of adherents.  But the adherents are being shed out of denominations that are doing just what is recommended above: compromising the message of Jesus.  Look at the statistics for churches in Canada: the churches that are experiencing the most growth are the ones who are compromising the least.  The United Church of Canada is shedding adherents faster than any other denomination, and this kind of move isn’t slowing the pace - it’s accelerating it.

On the other hand, in all parts of the rest of the world, Christianity is exploding like it has never before.  There are nearly 2 billion Christians now worldwide.  The underground churches of China are swelling like crazy - insiders suggest that the official government numbers are less than a tenth of the actual numbers of believers - perhaps as many as 130 million.  These places are not “reimagining the Gospel”, leaving out Christ.

In Canada, where 75 per cent of the population self-identifies as Christian, only about 16 per cent attend weekly services.

Pull the evangelical protestant denominations out of the mix, where the percentages are much higher because they actually talk about Jesus, and you’d see even smaller numbers.

But one of her colleagues who knows her well, Rev. Rob Oliphant, the progressive pastor of Toronto’s Eglinton St. George’s United Church, said, “While I’m somewhat sympathetic to the aims of it all - getting rid of the nonsense and keeping the core faith - I think that there is something lacking in it all. Gone is metaphor, poetry, symbol, image, beauty, paradox.”

But she isn’t getting rid of the nonsense.  She is getting rid of the core faith.  She is getting rid of perhaps the most central message of the Bible, of Jesus:

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. - John 14:6

You take out the Jesus, you have a social service club.  No point in calling it a church anymore.  Which is why hardly anyone comes out to the “biggest protestant denomination in Canada” anymore.

For more information on what real churches are doing to address this issue without “throwing the baby (Jesus) out with the bathwater”, google something like “missional”.

In some ways, this article had a good point.  A lot of churches got away from what Jesus wants us to do - to live our faith in him - to live by his example, to serve our community, to love the loveless and the downtrodden.  And that is the key.  We serve because of Jesus, not in spite of him.  Take Jesus out of the mix, and you have a chain of United Ways, with steeples.