Gretta Vosper is one of the leading lights of progressive Christianity — a worldwide movement that seeks to update Christian beliefs and practice so that they are in line with the modern world — in North America. She is a minister in the United Church of Canada, and founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity based in Toronto.
She was keynote speaker at the recent Common Dreams conference for religious progressives held over four days at St Kilda Town Hall in Melbourne. In this interview recorded for Eureka Street, she defines what she means by religious progressive, why progressive thinking struggles to make a mark in Christian Churches, and the need for continual reform in all religions. (Continues below)
Vosper was ordained in 1992, and since 1997 has been minister of the United Church congregation in West Hill, Toronto. The United Church is the largest Protestant denomination in Canada, with three million members, and 3500 congregations spread throughout the country.
Like the Uniting Church in Australia (inaugurated in June 1977), it formed from an amalgamation of the Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational Churches. But in Canada it happened much earlier, in 1925, making it the first such union worldwide that sought to overcome the denominational divisions in Christianity.
Vosper has a Master of Divinity from Queen's Theological College in Kingston, Ontario. She often travels around Canada on speaking engagements, regularly appears on TV and radio, and is a prolific contributor to Canadian print media.
She founded the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity in 2004 which 'provides a network, resources and support for those exploring at and beyond the boundaries of Christian thought'.
She says the centre caters to two groups: progressive clergy, and the 'growing pockets of believers who are well aware of the gap between scholarship and preaching'; those folk in the pews who 'hunger for more ... and yearn for connection with like-minded people and for the assurance that their thinking is not so off-the-wall after all'.
Vosper argues there is 'a lag of about 60 years between the scholarship that ministers study at school, and the words they speak from the pulpit. For many, this creates a split identity — a sense that they lead a secret spiritual life that they have to suppress throughout their active ministry.' Her Centre for Progressive Christianity offers an outlet for that suppressed spiritual life.
In 2008 she published her acclaimed book,