Orthodox-ing
What do you think of when you hear the word “orthodox”? Does it conjure an image of beards and icons and swirling incense? Does it suggest a rigid, dogmatic, kind of arbitrary set of rules? I think, rather than that, we consider the roots of the word. “Ortho” means something like “upright, straight, proper”, and “doxa” means “glory”, not belief. Perhaps we would be better off thinking of orthodoxy not as a noun, but as a verb - orthodox-ing - and think of it as the ongoing attempt to use scripture, tradition, reason, and our experience, to speak of God in ways which glorify God.
In this session, we draw on Lesslie Newbigin, an important figure in the ecumenical movement, the formation of the Uniting Church in Australia, and in the formation of Northcote Uniting Church (especially in his book The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, which I strongly commend to you), in thinking about how being a Christian is like being a scientist, in that we rely on a community oriented towards a truth which is always more than we can articulate, who hold one another to account for that truth.
And it also explains why Tuesdays tend to feature a discussion-based model, rather than a sermon (though we do have them sometimes as well.)