No church discipline for Dutch atheist pastor
Klaas Hendrikse, pastor in the Protestant Church of the Netherlands, wrote a book entitled Believing in a God who does not exist: manifesto of an atheist pastor. Two church regional authorities have decided that disciplining an atheist pastor would entail “protracted discussion” and other unpleasantnesses they’d rather avoid.
Ecumenical News International has the story.
The church authorities said disciplinary proceedings against Hendrikse, who is a pastor of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, would be likely to lead to, “a protracted discussion about the meanings of words that in the end will produce little clarity”. The letter also noted that people have debated the issue of “God’s existence” throughout time.
The church, however, has never had such a “debate” for good reason. The Bible does not even raise the issue of God’s existence: It is assumed throughout.
The book sounds like post-modern drivel.
“The non-existence of God is for me not an obstacle but a precondition to believing in God. I am an atheist believer,” Hendrikse writes in the book. “God is for me not a being but a word for what can happen between people. Someone says to you, for example, ‘I will not abandon you’, and then makes those words come true. It would be perfectly alright to call that [relationship] God.”
What do the folks in Pastor Hendrikse’s church worship? Each other’s commitments?