Modern Churches

As in my previous two posts, I want to continue to outline, in broad, general strokes, how understanding stages10 of faith and church can help us understand one another and act in more loving ways in the midst of all of our differences.

An Integral view of Modern Church

The pastor was at the door greeting people as they left the church service. One woman said, as she left, “Pastor, you really made me think today. Don’t ever do that again!”

That’s a fine summary of the clash between the traditional stage and the modern stage, which began 500 years ago, in the West, during the periods known as the Renaissance and the Reformation, and flowered two hundred years ago in the Enlightenment. It developed as traditional answers stopped making sense and dogmatic systems and unthinking religion were called into account. Individuals began to question and examine all of their existing beliefs. It was a time of conflict, disappointment and anger as some found that their beliefs did not stand up under scrutiny. This is the world of the inquiring self. This stage is individualistic, rational, and achievement-oriented.

For individuals in industrialized countries, the rational worldview begins to emerge in late high school. These teen-agers begin to realize they have a right to have their own opinions regardless of what the Bible, religion, or their group says.



The unhealthy aspects of the modern station in life are materialism, greed, reduction of values and meaning in life, and discounting the inner subjective realm of the spiritual path by believing that the only way to know anything is exploration using the tools of the physical sciences. This ignores the realm of the mystical which is explored only by the inner tools of prayer, meditation, and contemplation.

The incredibly valuable elements include the rise of democracy, banishing slavery, scientific breakthroughs, dramatically increasing life span, emerging middle classes around the world, market capitalism, liberal self-interest, healthy competition, and opening up new avenues of spiritual exploration. As spirituality was separated from its magical and literal elements, deeper stage and state explorations of the mystical realms of spirit could eventually open up in postmodernism and more fully in integralism and beyond. An estimated 20% of the world population is at the modern station of life. Thank God for the modern stage!

The modern church in our country today is represented by mainstream Protestant liberalism. These churches are usually found within mainline denominations such as Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, and the United Church of Christ. Other churches in those dominations may be at a more traditional level. The Unitarian Universalist Church is solidly in the modern stage. However, they no longer identify themselves as a Christian church but as a “liberal religious tradition.”

Retired Episcopal Bishop John Spong represents classic modern level Christian thinking as he has hastened the journey from traditional to modern for multitudes of Christians. He lists twelve topics he calls the Christians of the world to debate. 11 Let’s look at each of these from an integral perspective, while remembering that others may have integral viewpoints that differ from mine. Spong presents a mainly negative view which is consistent with his primary aim of dislodging the deeply embedded traditional/mythic/prerational viewpoint of traditional Christianity. I want to include as much as possible of his thinking and then transcend it by seeing how a Wilberian integral framework might provide a wider, deeper, and more positive place from which a follower of Jesus might operate. Spong’s twelve statements are in italics.

1. “Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.”

I, too, find that supernatural theism which posits a big Divine Super Being out there is no longer helpful. A much more elegant understanding of God in this standpoint is panentheism. This is something of what the Apostle Paul was referring to in writing of the One “in whom we live, and move, and have our being.” 12

The panentheistic God is in everything and everything is in God. God is neither separate from creation nor limited to creation.

The integral viewpoint gives us a revolutionary new way to speak of God in the “Big Three,” the three basic perspectives from which everything can be viewed. (see my earlier posts on The Three Faces of God) As applied to the Divine, this translates into:

the 3rd- person objective “IT” face which I call the Infinite Face of God,

“IT” face which I call the Infinite Face of God, the 2nd-prson intersubjective “WE” face which I call the Intimate Face of God, and

“WE” face which I call the Intimate Face of God, and the 1st-person subjective “I” face which I call the Inner Face of God, our own identification with God as our True Self.

Panentheism is how I understand this 3rd-person Infinite Face of God, an impersonal “IT” which is found in the natural world all around us, in us, us in IT, and beyond as the Ground of All Being.

2. “Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.”

Yes, that is true if we move from supernatural theism to panentheism, for then there is no incarnation of a theistic deity. But there still remains something quite momentous as integral’s Big Three comes to our aid again. Mystics of all religions down through the centuries have experienced a Great Other, which is then interpreted through whatever lens they are looking. This is the impersonal “IT,” the Infinite Face of God coming close to us in a most personal way to form a “WE,” as we relate to the Intimate Face of God in deepest communion. Jesus is, for Christians, one of the manifestations of this Intimate Face of God.

3. “The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.”

The much debated creation story in Genesis is one of many ancient attempts to explain the mess we appear to be in. However, rather than a story about a “Fall,” I see it as a evolutionary story of an “Emergence.” Humans, made in God’s image, but not awakened to it, must emerge to know the world of good and evil and thus become, as both the serpent predicts and God affirms, truly awake to their divine identity.13 And God says, “See they have become one of us.”14

4. “The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.”

Yes, the virgin birth is best understood metaphorically. One way to emphasize Jesus’ divine identity was to frame his birth as others framed the birth of their divine emperors in the mythology of virgin birth. Unfortunately, this also emphasized his utter uniqueness and excludes us from sharing in his divine nature.15

5. “The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.”

Yes, these stories portray spiritual, not historical, lessons the writers wanted to convey. I hedge somewhat here, in that we have yet to explore all there is to know about the relationship between the physical and nonphysical worlds and how they affect one another.

6. “The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.”

While agreeing with this, I would say it more inclusively. At the warrior stage of development the interpretation of Jesus death as the final sacrifice for the sins of the world was one meaningful and appropriate way to understand it in the 1st century world of Judaism where the Temple sacrifices were a vital part of religious life. For many at the traditional stage, Jesus dying for our sins on the cross is comforting, liberating, and healing. It is only at the modern stage where that interpretation begins to look “barbarian,” carrying the less than Christ-like baggage of a wrathful God who demands a sacrifice. Jesus modeled and taught that God is only love, and not a mixture of love and vengefulness. The insistence on reason at the modern level of development reveals that God can’t be both loving and vengeful. A postmodern understanding would see the cross as an incredible model for speaking up for the oppressed of the world, no matter what the cost. An integral perspective might add that the cross symbolizes the drama of our own inner death to our egoic false self so that we may uncover the Eternal Divine Self that is our deepest identity.

7. “Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.”

Beautifully said. I understand the resurrection to be real but neither literal nor metaphorical. Modern historical analysis is quite certain that the early Christians believed Jesus rose from the dead. What that analysis cannot determine is how that belief might be true or not true. It seems to me that a video camera would not have recorded anything out of the ordinary. However, I think that the disciples did actually see and experience something in a non-physical (subtle) realm which they interpreted to be Jesus – just as I and many today and down through the ages have experienced.

8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.”

Yes, and, therefore, conveys a meaning of transition to a “higher” non-physical realm.

9. “There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.”

Yes, there are no details in the Bible of a moral code for every culture at every stage of development. However, there is the overarching Gospel theme of love, God’s and ours, in Jesus’ life and teaching which we manifest in deeper ways appropriate for each time and culture the more we evolve in our own spiritual path.

10. “Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.”

My simple response would be “yes” because I am a panentheist, not a theist. However, I might then appear to be settling for the modern stage’s deep uncomfortableness with the Intimate Face of God. To the modern mind, prayer is often reduced to thinking nice thoughts. As we contemplate the “IT” of the Infinite Face of God, personal conversations do not seem appropriate except as expressions of wonder and amazement. But with the “WE” of the Intimate Face of God, I and Thou conversations are a profound part of that intimacy.

The modern stage is usually in big-time reaction to the mystical, ancient, and evangelical idea of a personal relationship with God/Goddess. That’s unfortunate for two reasons. First, Jesus modeled that kind of personal intimacy with the awesome God of Abraham and Jacob, calling that God by the same name he called his father Joseph, which was “abba” or papa.16 Secondly, leaving out the dynamic of 2nd-person intersubjective relationship reduces integral’s Big Three to a Big Two. This represses our ability to know God/Goddess, leaving only objective and subjective dimensions. This is an impoverished way to understand and experience God, whatever one’s spiritual tradition.

In 2nd person we relate to the Face of God as the Great Other, Him or Her with whom we talk and connect..17 This is the One whom we worship and adore—ego-humbling Divinity to whom we surrender. This Beautiful Other elicits emotions of gratitude, blessedness, love, surrender, and devotion. Whatever your spiritual path, do not hesitate to give yourself to whatever manifestation of the Divine One who comes close enough to you to embrace you, kiss you, and wrap you up with compassion.

As Christians, we can lay aside the excess theological baggage that Jesus is uniquely the world’s only savior, and freely relate to him as one expression of the Intimate Face of God. We are liberated to let Jesus be our Leader, Guide, and Healer – our dearest Beloved.

Without a place to personally surrender our ego to our Divine Friend who is much farther along in the path of spiritual evolution, our ego can hide out. Ego easily hides out in the 3rd person of the Infinite Face of God, for the Ground of Being appears to make no demands. Ego’s favorite place to arrogantly conceal itself is in the cover of 1st-person subjective or Inner Face of God which is our True Self. Ego loves to be seen as the authentic, real Self, stealing our true identity. The ego-driven think they are God. The Jesus-infused know they are God!

11. “The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.”

Yes, indeed.

12. “All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.”

Amen to that, brother Spong!