Week in Review (2025 Week Two)
An Atheist Minister, A Negative Psychoanalyst, Nondual Living and 5 Books You Must Read About Nothing
Rather than using actual dates for my 2025 weekly “Week in Review”, I decided to do Week One, Week Two, Week Three, etc. This is Week Two. 50 weeks to go in 2025!
This week I discovered . She is the author of With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe. Gretta Vosper is an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada who is a self-professed atheist.
Gretta Vosper is from Ontario. As a child, she attended the local United Church but claims that she never strongly believed in the existence of God. In 1997, Vosper became the minister of West Hill United Church in Toronto. Over the next few years, she became increasingly aware that her views on God were changing, and she was becoming uncomfortable using traditional United Church liturgy.
In 2001, she told her congregation that she was a non-theist – although she believed in God as a concept, she no longer believed in God as a supernatural being who intervened in the affairs of humanity. Although she expected to be fired, the United Church instead settled with her. In 2013, Vosper’s beliefs moved from non-theism to atheism.
In a 2016 interview Vosper said that, in her estimation, “… it would be at least upwards of 50% of the clergy in the United Church who don't believe in a theistic, supernatural, God.” In 2018 at a church hearing, Vosper and the United Church reached a settlement that allowed her to continue the work in her ministry, effectively ending the matter.
I want to offer some thoughts on a few quotes from her book, With or Without God.
#1
“It is time for humanists and atheists, skeptics and agnostics to see they share a common future with the many who are still comforted by their religious beliefs.”
For some time I have been writing about the value of atheists and religion folk finding common ground. Actually, more than just “common ground” but a shared outlook on life that promotes actively cultivating meaningful and consequential relationships with one another. For this to happen, it’s going to require something from atheists and the religious, both of whom bear responsibility for the disconnect and division.
In my view, the divide between the non-religious and religious is based on a false premise, and is unnecessary. Atheists and the religious insisting upon being enemies is so 1979. We now live in the age of metamodernity, which means the mainstreaming of the idea that we don’t have to oblige the antiquated binary of thesis vs antithesis, but we can move to “synthesis” - a position not built on negation but one that integrates and transcends the thesis and the antithesis. One of the most explicit examples of this is “Christian Atheism”, a current movement in racial theology, which I have written quite a bit about lately.
A few articles I have published to traverse the atheism/religion divide, and encourage more dialogue and understanding include:
#2
“The church the future needs is one of people gathering to share and recommit themselves to loving relationships with themselves, their families, the wider community, and the planet. Such a church need not fear the discoveries of science, history, archaeology, psychology, or literature; it will only be enhanced by such discoveries. Such a church need not avoid the implications of critical thinking for its message; it will only become more effective. Such a church need not cling to and justify a particular source for its authority; it will draw on the wisdom of the ages and challenge divisive and destructive barriers.”
No further commentary is needed on the above statement. Let’s say you came to me and said: “Hey Jim, would you be in favor of a religious community that: promotes loving relationships; prioritizes critical thinking; applies an interdisciplinary approach to seeking truth; open to all wisdom regardless of the source, and actively seeks to transcend divisive and destructive human behavior?” If that question was posed to me, my answer would be, “Dah! Of course. Yes!” Right?
Staunch atheist Bertrand Russell, perhaps in a conciliatory moment, attempted to conceive of religion as a positive force in the world when he wrote:
“If a religious view of life and the world is ever to reconquer the thoughts and feelings of free-minded men and women, much that we are accustomed to associate with religion will have to be discarded. The first and greatest change that is required is to establish a morality of initiative, not a morality of submission, a morality of hope rather than fear, of things to be done rather than of things to be left undone. It is not the whole duty of man to slip through the world so as to escape the wrath of God. The world is our world, and it rests with us to make it a heaven or a hell. The power is ours, and the kingdom and the glory would be ours also if we had courage and insight to create them. The religious life that we must seek will not be one of occasional solemnity and superstitious prohibitions, it will not be sad or ascetic, it will concern itself little with rules of conduct. It will be inspired by a vision of what human life may be, and will be happy with the joy of creation, living in a large free world of initiative and hope. It will love mankind, not for what they are to the outward eye, but for what imagination shows that they have it in them to become. It will not readily condemn, but it will give praise to positive achievement rather than negative sinlessness, to the joy of life, the quick affection, the creative insight, by which the world may grow young and beautiful and filled with vigor.”
If I were to use this quote to create The Bertrand Russell Guide to Fixing Religion, the key points would be.
Scrutinize, deconstruct and apply reason and rigorous critical thinking to everything we learned from religion, and proceed accordingly.
Find our motivation to do the right thing, not from religious fear and submission, but from our innate and indestructible human bond.
Transcend the doomsday doctrines, otherworldly narratives, antiquated superstitions, and checklist pietism of religion, with inspired vision and courageous commitment to love and liberation.
In other words, Bertrand Russell would be in favor of a religion that is based upon critical thinking, human solidarity, and embodied love.
#3
The last statement by Greta Vosper in her book is:
“The future of any discipline does not survive wrapped in the trappings of the past; it can come about only when the carapace is cracked and something new, related to but distinct from what went before, is freed and allowed to thrive.”
Can we clone, Gretta? I wish there was more of this kind of openminded thinking in religious circles. So I’ll end this section where it began - metamodernsm and metamodern spirituality and an outlook that is not built on negation but synthesis - cracked but made new, related but distinct, and free to thrive.
This Week in Writing
Unless you live on a remote island with no internet, you've heard of the controversy over the new Bonhoeffer film. I was going to leave well enough alone but then I read something about Bonhoeffers “religionless Christianity” and one thing lead to the next.
I published an article titled, Were Jesus and Bonhoeffer Pacifists? Unpacking the Complex Legacy of a German Christian Martyr.
In the article I discuss:
Were Jesus and Bonhoeffer truly pacifists?
Unpacking the controversy of the new Bonhoeffer film
How MAGA hijacked Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Bonhoeffer was a Christian… or was he?
Why you need “black theology” to make Jesus work
The necessity to see the world from below
Non-religious lessons from the life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
How to practice non-violent resistance
The second article I published this week was Part Five of my series on the psychology of religion. It’s titled: When Being Negative is Good (Exploring the work of a living woman heretic). The article covers the work of Ukrainian-born philosopher and psychoanalyst, . Among other things, she is a pioneering figure in the field of “negative psychoanalysis”.
In the article I discuss several themes, including:
Who is Julie Reshe and why you might not have heard of her
Exposing the myth that “happiness is normal” and “negative feelings” need cured
How clever theology tries to whitewash the realties and givens of human existence
Why consciously trying to be negative could be the best thing you ever did
Re-thinking “nihilism” as necessary and liberating
Stop asking “What would Jesus do?” and start asking “What did Jesus feel?”
The problem of Joel Osteen and the solution of Kurt Cobain
How to become a negative practitioner for your mental health
I think one way Julie’s work is misunderstood is seeing her as merely a provocateur with a shock-and-awe fetishizing of “negativity”. In my view, “negative psychoanalysis” is partly a response to conventional therapeutic and self-help culture that treats every human feeling or experience that doesn’t fit into the positivity box, as a condition or disorder that needs cured.
What Subscribers are Saying
Thank you, LaVonne, for your words of encouragement. A couple things that caught my attention by your words include your mention of fear - in your case, “afraid of thinking a different way.” In some religious circles, conformity is treated as the hallmark of devotion, and questioning is the greatest sin. The other that struck me was that there-has-to-be-more feeling in your gut. Living in alignment with my innermost self is healthy and liberating. One's deep inner feelings, stirrings, promptings, and intuitions are more reliable pathways to what is real, than what we have been socialized into through external conditioning.
This Week in Pictures
Washington Post cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, resigns over paper’s refusal to publish satirical cartoon of Bezos and Trump.
I laughed when I saw this Peanuts cartoon. With this in mind, here are five books worth reading about nothing:
Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Experience of Nothingness by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Notes on Nothing: The Joy of Being Nobody by Anonymous
God is Nothingness: Awakening to Absolute Non-being by Andre Doshim Halaw
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
Notre Dame took advantage of a crucial Penn State turnover with under a minute left and made the game-winning field goal with seven seconds remaining to pull out a 27-24 win in the Orange Bowl and earn a spot in the College Football Playoff championship game.
A signal light goes green on the Pacific Coast Highway as a wildfire burns in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of west Los Angeles.
My New Subscriptions on Substack
What follows are a few Substack newsletters that I’ve recently subscribed to that you might find interesting:
I discovered
and appreciate the ways he is making a go of Orthodox Christianity in an irreligious age.- is someone I recently started following on Substack, and value the work he invests in covering topics such as theoretical physics, consciousness, AI, and God.
- posts weekday pointers on living a nondual outlook on life, especially since nonduality usually languishes in a quagmire of abstractions
I’ve enjoyed reading
Substack newsletter, which explores Jungian psychology in some deeply meaningful and practical ways.- offers some great pieces that prompt deep reflection on how to be more profoundly human in an increasingly inhuman age.
- just recently started his Substack and we connected with each other in a chat. Ben was once a Christian and writes about his post-religion journey with depth and critical thinking.
I discovered
and you might find his newsletter encouraging and useful if you want to devote effort to being a Substack newsletter creator and writer.
Publishing one’s thoughts to the world through Substack can be invigorating, rewarding, cathartic and transformative. It can also at times be challenging, demanding, frustrating, and disappointing. It’s hard not to notice your number of subscribers when you open your dashboard, and feel either encouraged or discouraged by what you find. All that to say, whenever you find a person on Substack who resonates with you, especially those who may not have some massive following, become a subscriber, recommend them, send them an encouraging message… and keep good going.
Existential Health
Existential Psychotherapy is a style of therapy that places emphasis on the human condition as a whole. Otto Rank was among the first existential therapists to actively pursue the discipline, and by the middle of the 20th century, psychologists Paul Tillich and Rollo May brought existential therapy into the mainstream through their writings and teachings, as did Irvin Yalom after them. The popular approach began to influence other theories, including logotherapy, whicg which developed by Viktor Frankl.
Michael Schreiner writes a lot about existential health in conjunction with Evolution Counseling. Here are several articles worth exploring:
Sitting with Existential Anxiety
Existential Crisis is a Good Thing
In Summary
Gretta Vosper is an atheist minister with the United Church of Canada and her non-religious thoughts about religion make a lot of sense.
Julie Reshe doesn’t fetishize negativity, she makes space for it beyond the cure-it therapeutic and self-help cultures.
“Nothing” is a topic that might be difficult to understand but it’s worth giving a try.
Nonduality is an interesting philosophical concept, but it could be liberating and transformative if you lived it.
Thank you for following and subscribing to my Substack publication. If you find what I write meaningful, please consider becoming a paid describer, which includes of perks, goodies and exclusive content. Your encouragement and support makes this publication possible.
“In the beginning there was nothing. God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better. ”
- Ellen DeGeneres
Thanks for the shoutout, Jim. Glad to hear you are enjoying The Artemisian!
Thank you for including me in this, very much unexpected! ☺️