Gretta Vosper: A Preacher of God Turns Into an Atheist, Wants to Remain a Pastor in the United Church of Canada

Pastor Gretta Vosper in front of her "The Legacy Wall" a few years ago

 Photo courtesy: Gretta Vosper website

Pastor Gretta Vosper in front of her church at West Hill of  Scarborough in Toronto

Photo courtesy: Canadian Press

What? A preacher of God who is a religious pastor is an atheist -- a non-believer of God and the Bible?

Yes. According to a Canadian Press report, Gretta Vosper, 57, is a female minister of the United Church of Canada at West Hill area of Scarborough, Toronto, and she has turned into an atheist and vows to fight the Church review whether she is fit to remain as a minister. 

Ordained in 1993, she became engaged in this particular church in 1997. Later she became an atheist -- a non-believer of God and the Bible.

Pastor Vosper says that the idea of an interventionist, supernatural being, on which so much church doctrine is based, belongs to an outdated world view. According to her, how you live is more important tha what you believe in.

"I don't believe in ... the god, called God. Using the word gets in the way of sharing what I want to share," she says.

"Is the Bible really the word of God? Was Jesus a person?" she asks. Then she replies, "It's mythology. We build a faith tradition upon it, which shifted to find belief more important than how we lived."

The United Church authority is actively reviewing her case, but she is determined to remain as its pastor as before.

For more on the topic, please read the following:

• Unprecedented United Church probe could lead to removal of non-believing Toronto minister
• Atheist Minister Continues Fight to Remain Ordained in United Church of Canada
• Atheist minister praises the glory of good at Scarborough church
• Colby Cosh: The heretical minister to help her flock evolve out of the need for church
• How do you solve a problem like Gretta Vosper, atheist clergywoman?
• Gretta Vosper: minister, author, atheist (Pastor Vosper's website)
• United Church of Canada

Vociferous Atheist Christopher Hitchens Dies of Cancer

Christopher Hitchens

Photo courtesy: CNN

Christopher Hitchens, a U.K.-born zealous preacher of atheism, journalist, author, and polemicist, died of cancer on December 15 in a hospital in Texas, U.S.A. He was aged 62.

He was quite vocal in both writing and lecturing about issues and matters that he strongly believed in. He was proficient in the use of English language.

Baptized as an Anglican, Christopher Hitchens later changed religions several times before he became a socialist and then an atheist. Along with Professor Richard Dawkins and some other atheists, he took upon himself the duty of preaching atheism through writing, speeches and debates. 

He emphasized upon the use of logic and reasoning in place of blind faith in religion. He called upon all not to believe in God because, according to him, what religions teach about God are fictions or made-up stories. Religious leaders used religions to control minds and hearts of people.

He gained world-wide publicity when he called Mother Teresa of Calcutta a “Hell’s Angel” through a book. He was equally scathing in his remarks on some politicians.

Some of his books on the subject of religion and atheism are: The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever; Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens; The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice; god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; and Is Christianity Good for the World?

In the past, our blog Bangladesh Canada and Beyond gave coverage on Christopher Hitchens in the following write-ups: 

• Merry Christmas, or Happy Holiday? 

• Atheists Eager to Get Pope Arrested for ‘Crimes Against Humanity.’

Atheists Eager to Get Pope Arrested for 'Crimes Against Humanity'

Pope Benedict XVI

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens -- two former Anglicans but later avowed atheists -- have been campaigning for getting Pope Benedict VI arrested during his September 16-19 official visit to Britain for "crimes against humanity." To them, the Pope's (then Cardinal Ratzinger) alleged cover-up of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church during his tenure as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is equal to "crimes against humanity."

These two atheists through Barrister Geoffrey Robertson, a highly visible lawyer, academic, author and broadcaster, and Mark Stephens, a media lawyer and human right activist, are trying to explore the possibility of bringing charges against the Pope and getting him arrested. Their argument is that the Pope does not have the diplomatic immunity as the head of a state because Vatican is not considered as a full state in the UN and it is not a full member of the UN with voting rights. The Vatican has only an observer state status in the UN.

Richard Dawkins suspects that child sex abuse had been deliberately kept secret by the Church. Christopher Hitchens says: "This man [the Pope] is not above or outside the law. The institutionalised concealment of child abuse is a crime under any law."

Vatican officials have denied any cover-up of the sex abuse cases and emphasized that Pope Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, pressed for harsher measures against child abusing priests and made it easier for the Church to defrock them. He also made it more difficult for practising homosexuals to enter the priesthood.

According to the BBC News, Dr. William Oddie, former editor of the weekly The Catholic Herald in London, said the arrest campaign against the Pope demonstrated how "wonderfully lunatic" both Christopher Hitchens and Professor Dawkins were. "What's lawful is what is lawfully agreed by lawful authorities, in this case Italian law -- the government of Italy -- and secondly, international law, determined by the United Nations. Both legal authorities accept the Vatican is a legal state. Christopher Hitchens is entitled to say it shouldn't be one, but he can't say it isn't one -- it's like people in a lunatic society saying they are Napoleon."

Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, when asked about the arrest threat to the Pope, said: "This is a bizarre idea to say the least. It looks like the intent is to make a public opinion splash. I think they should look for something more serious and concrete before we can respond to it."

Who are these two atheists?

Richard Dawkins (1941- ), British ethologist (a branch of zoology that studies animal behaviour in their natural habitats), evolutionary biologist and science author, taught at the Oxford University and was a fellow of New College, Oxford. He is also a secular humanist, skeptic and scientific rationalist. Renouncing Anglicanism, he became an avowed atheist. Among his books are The Selfish Gene (1976), The Blind Watchmaker (1986) and The God Delusion (2006).

Christopher Hitchens (1949- ), British journalist, author, and polemist who studied at the Oxford University. Originally an Anglican, later he embraced atheism. He likes to call himself "anti-deist" or anti-God. He now resides in the USA. Among his books are The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995) and god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007). In the first book mentioned here, he attacked Mother Teresa as being a hypocrite for accepting large donations from tyrannical dictators and fraudsters.

Both of these two persons are prosetilyzing atheists -- they preach and disseminate their idea of atheism (disbelief or denial of God) through writing and speeches. Christopher Hitchens is quite active in the USA. He writes articles like " Why I Hate Christmas."