DUBLIN, Ireland - A Protestant clergyman who stirred impassioned debate in Ireland by arguing that Jesus Christ was not the son of God, resigned from his church position Tuesday shortly before his superiors planned to try him for heresy.
The Rev. Andrew Furlong, 54, had previously resisted calls to quit. On Friday authorities in the Church of Ireland, part of the Anglican Communion, had planned to press ahead with their efforts to expel him as dean of Clonmacnoise in a public trial for heresy, the first case of its kind in more than a century.
Bishop Richard Clarke accepted Furlong's resignation and said he had immediately withdrawn his petition to the church's court, ending the heresy proceedings.
Clarke five years ago hired the Dublin native to oversee Clonmacnoise, based in comfortable County Meath northwest of the capital.
Under terms of his resignation, Furlong could continue to be a Church of Ireland priest but would have no active parish. He planned to devote himself to his writings on a personal Web site.
Furlong split his congregation when, on his deanery Web site last December, he announced that he believed Jesus was misguided on important matters and was not divine.
The dean offered his radical views as part of a series of papers in which he argued that all major religions rooted in the prescientific world needed to revise their beliefs.
While a few clerics defended his right to express dissenting opinions, many more accused him of having lied to get his job. Furlong conceded he had doubted Jesus' divinity for three decades but kept his views secret in order to secure his Church of Ireland position.
"I acknowledge that through cowardice, and a realization that if I was up front about my beliefs I would not get an appointment anywhere, that I was not forthcoming. I was deceptive," he said in a December interview.
But Furlong said he was determined now to be true to his beliefs. He insisted Jesus and his disciples were driven by key beliefs that ultimately did not come to pass.
"In fact, no new kingdom ever arrived nor did Jesus return as judge and savior, and the world has continued on its way," he said.
"... (Jesus) was a remarkable member of the ancient community of Israel. Without him Christianity wouldn't have come into being but he was not more than human," Furlong said.
In his article titled "A faith fundamentally flawed?" Furlong wrote: "With the deepest respect for others and their beliefs, to my mind ... Jesus was neither a mediator nor a savior, neither superhuman nor divine; we need to leave him to his place in history and move on."
Furlong holds degrees in philosophy from Trinity College Dublin and theology from Cambridge University. He worked as a parish priest in Belfast and Dublin, then as a missionary in Zimbabwe.