DENMARK: God and the Pastor's disbelief

Denmark is Lutheran and the clergy are civil servants, but the Danes generally are not very religious. Ross Rogers, Jr. calls attention to an article in the New York Times (7/8/03) about a Lutheran pastor whose disbelief has angered some people but not his parishioners. Here is an excerpt:"TARBAEK, Denmark - Thorkild Grosboll, a popular Lutheran pastor in this village by the sea, drags on his pipe and clarifies once and for all: "I do not believe in a physical God, in the afterlife, in the resurrection, in the Virgin Mary. And I believe that Jesus was a nice guy, who figured out what man wanted," Mr. Grosboll said. "He embodied what he believed was needed to upgrade the human being." Mr. Grosboll, 55, was suspended by his church , after he made similar godless remarks to a newspaper. His remarks and suspension have set off a tsunami of theological discourse in workplaces, university halls and cafes across Denmark, where religion seldom penetrates the collective consciousness".

RH: I repeat that religious is of supreme importance because it raises the issue of what life in all about and how therefore we must behave. It presents almost insoluble problems, and I doubt that Pastor Brosboll has thought profoundly on the subject, but he has at least awoken the apathetic, and hopefully started serious discussions on religion. Creeds are constantly in need of analysis. and updating. George M.Marsden has written Jonathan Edwards. A Life (Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 615) about the great Calvinist evangelist. author of A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737). Jonathan Edwards sounds to us like a mad statistician. He calculated the number of days to the Second Coming, the number of the Elect, the number of those who were abandoning the Roman Catholic Church, the Anti-Christ. All these things need to be shaken up so that religion may be viewed as central to our lives, not a quaint relic of a bygone era.

Ronald Hilton - 7/8/03