A quarter of a century before our United Church of Canada considered booting cleric/author Gretta Vosper, Anthony Freeman became, according to Britain’s Independent, “the first parish priest this century to be sacked for his theological views.” The paper pictured Freeman as “a small, bespeckled figure” who ministered to a congregation in “a blink-and-miss village” in rural Sussex.
The “vicar [was] sacked from the Church of England for ’not believing in God’,” Philosophy Now explained. It happened because he wrote our Featured Book: God in Us: A Case for Christian Humanism. “The book is about Freeman trying to communicate his joy at the discovery that God is a uniquely human God.” Straightaway dubbed “the atheist priest,” he “presents arguments in such a disarmingly clear manner that his sacking can only make us believe the church had burnt another saint.”
Sixty-five of his fellow clerics protested the decision, saying, “It reverses a long Church of England tradition that tolerates and values a wide range of views.” But the bishop who sent him packing judged his views “too far out,” the Independent reported. “There had to be limits if the Church of England was to stand for anything.” Read it, and judge for yourself.
God in Us: A Case for Christian Humanism
By Anthony Freeman
SCM Press, 1993; 2nd edition, Imprint Academic, 2001
