Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader subscribes to a number of podcasts. One of them is of the PBS show “Speaking of Faith.” It is an hour-long weekly show where the hostess, Krista Tippet, has a themed discussion on a single subject under the broad heading of “spirituality.” Many weeks the discussion isn’t your Maximum Leader’s cup of tea so to speak. He wanted to describe the shows he doesn’t care for as banal. But that is an inaccurate description, as the shows are always pretty thoughtful. He supposes that he objects (intellectually) with the subject matter - or approach of the participants in the discussion. That doesn’t make the show banal - it just makes your Maximum Leader a bit dismissive. No matter how dismissive he might be, he always listens to the whole show.

Anyhow… The show that just aired was a repeat. A repeat of a show done three years ago. The subject of discussion was “creeds.” The interviewee was Jaroslav Pelikan. Dr Pelikan died last week (aged 82). Dr Pelikan was a professor of history at Yale for 40 odd years and was a world-renown scholar of religious creeds.

Unfortunately, your Maximum Leader’s reading in theology is not broad enough to have included anything by Dr. Pelikan. He suspects that the Big Hominid, or other blog “authorities” in theological matters have read some of Dr. Pelikan’s works and could discourse on them with more expertise and insight.

Your Maximum Leader was intrigued by the program, and has listened to it twice since is broadcast on Thursday. Indeed, his thoughtful reflection on the program - coupled with lots of other stuff to do - precluded him from blogging yesterday.

Dr. Pelikan’s interview is a good one. Your Maximum Leader will encourage you to listen if you are so inclined.

For those of you who are religious, and there are a fair number of you among the readership of Naked Villainy; have you stopped to consider your religion’s creed? Your Maximum Leader has. He was raised a Roman Catholic. He was brought up in the church, fell away from the church, returned with a certain amount of vigour, but has fallen away again. The second falling away was prompted by a serious reflection on the Nicene Creed, the nature of Jesus, and a reasoned attempt to understand his truly held religious beliefs.

Your Maximum Leader, while not a theologian, is probably better versed in matters of Judeo-Christian doctrine than your average person. He admits his knowledge of Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism are pretty solid. Most mainline Protestant denominations are variations on a theme and he is pretty comfortable there as well. He knows a fair amount about Judaism and Islam as well. He’s got the great desert monotheistic religions covered. One could say his understanding of the children of Abraham is good.

He is also a fair historian. He studied it in school. He has a passion for it. So he reads a lot. He is also critical and discerning in what he reads.

So, one day at Mass your Maximum Leader really starting thinking about what he was saying while he was reciting the Nicene Creed. He kept on thinking about it after Mass. Even through the week until the next Sunday. It was on his mind. After a while, your Maximum Leader pulled out the Catechism of the Catholic Church and started reading.

For those of you unfamiliar with the format of the Catechism, it goes line by line through the Nicene Creed and explains what each line means. In case you aren’t familiar with the Nicene Creed here it is:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father [and the Son].
With the Father and the Son
he is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

If you are an Orthodox Christian you don’t say the bracketed phrase in the final stanza reading [and the Son]. Pretty much every major Christian religion uses the Nicene Creed to describe their basic religious beliefs.

Of course, the other great monotheistic religions have creeds. If you are a Jew you have a creed too, the Shema. The Shema goes: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” If you are a Muslim you have a creed too. “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.”

There are, as you may know, and certainly as Dr. Pelikan wrote about in his book, many Christian creeds. One that seemed to figure prominently in the discussion on Speaking of Faith was the Massai Creed. Until this program he’d never heard of it. The Massai Creed does a superlative job of “Africanizing Chrstianity” as Dr. Pelikan put it. Indeed your Maximum Leader liked this creed so much he will reproduce it in full here.

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in the darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the Bible, that he would save the world and all nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from that grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love, and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

Beautiful isn’t it? Your Maximum Leader thinks so. He does particularly care for the description of Jesus’ life, teaching, and death. It is wonderfully illustrative in a way that the Nicene Creed is not.

So your Maximum Leader thought about the Creed of his church. He thought about what he felt he knew from sources sacred and historical. He did a lot of soul searching. He also discovered that there was a significant portion of the creed in which he didn’t believe.

Perhaps a word or two on belief here might be a propos. There are a number of different types of “belief.” There is belief derived from observable or testable facts - empirical belief so to speak. There is also belief derived from faith. This is a irrational commitment to something one feels to be true.

As you can tell from where this appears to be going, there is a certain measure of skepticism that your Maximum Leader has towards many things religious. Perhaps one could say that he took to heart David Hume’s exhortation that if there is a easy to understand explanation for something that is attributed to a “miracle” then probably the other explanation should hold.

So your Maximum Leader contemplated the Nicene Creed. He went back and forth over what he believed. He’s tried to work out his own creed. Indeed he’s still working on it. One result of this contemplation has been that he doesn’t self-identify as a Catholic any more. Indeed, there can be some argument as to whether he is technically a Christian or not. (A discussion he believe’s we’ve once engaged in here.)

To have a creed means that you are making to make a conclusive statement about something in which you believe. There is a negative aspect to creeds too. If you conclusively believe in something you conclusively deny other somethings. It can be a tricky business.

Do you have a creed? Have you ever thought about it? Do you think you should?

Carry on.