By Alex Wright. Darton, Longman and Todd (London 2016), 192 pages. £12.99.
This is an uncomfortable (and sometimes painful) book to read. Far from being a dispassionate analysis of the nature of Doubt – it’s a heartfelt unpacking of what life can do to us. In 2000, after a twelve year apprenticeship in theological publishing, Alex Wright followed in the footsteps of such luminaries as David Edwards and John Bowden when he was appointed Director of SCM Press, which made him Britain’s leading publisher of liberal theology. There’s a certain irony in the fact that this was precisely the time that Don Cupitt moved from SCM to Polebridge Press, as ‘the once radical printing press that had welcomed his writings since 1971 changes editorship and becomes less reformist’ (Odyssey on the Sea of Faith,’ Leaves, p105). Truly, everything is relative!
But Wright had the professed ambition of making the world of theology a whole lot more exciting, open and accessible (albeit within limits!) Two years later his first book (Why Bother with Theology?) was published – and the future looked bright. Within three months he had been shown the door by SCM – a rejection compounded by the hostile reception of his book. He was unemployed for a year, and badly scarred by the experience of hostility and exclusion. His voice was apparently (and astonishingly, from a SOF perspective!) deemed too uncomfortably challenging – as he acknowledged in his second book (Meanings of Life) which came out in 2005. By the time this appeared he was Executive Editor for Religion and Classical Studies at I B Taurus, a post he has occupied ever since.
But although those years were clearly tumultuous and painful, the ones that followed were even more so. During the eleven years between Meanings of Life and Exploring Doubt Wright (as he rebuilt his publishing career and re-established his credentials) was married and divorced – and horribly scarred again. And it’s this experience of depression and personal loss that forms the backdrop to his reflection (in Exploring Doubt) on the nature of faith, doubt – and transience.
By SOF standards, he’s pretty conservative (and there’s something of an irony in the way that having earlier wrinkled up his nose at Cupittian anti-realism, he’s happy to call in evidence in his second book, the sympathetic review of his first one by David Boulton in SOF 53!) But his commitment to openness and honesty in theological enquiry, whatever the cost – is one that those sympathetic to the SOF ‘approach’ (if there is such an animal) are likely to find congenial.
Wright uses the empty landscapes of North Norfolk as a vehicle to explore loss of all kinds. He resists anything approaching easy, comforting answers. And his reflections on the pain of abandonment, and the continuation of longing for what has been lost, are unutterably raw. Surprisingly, despite considerable emphasis on the way that God’s presence (however understood) may be most profoundly experienced in terms of God’s absence, Wright makes no mention at any point of R S Thomas.
Nevertheless, for him the impossibility of making sense of what ‘the divine’ may actually amount to means that it can be explored at least as productively in art, music and literature as in scripture. He quotes with approval Bertrand Russell’s observation that ‘the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts’. And argues for the ‘value of mystery’ and the ‘rich and enigmatic metaphors of darkness and ambiguity’.
The book concludes with an insistence on the need for us to celebrate life ‘even if it means acknowledging the full loss of that which we love and have loved beyond measure’. There is no respite here from the devastation that the break-up of his marriage wrought. And it must have required enormous courage to share such personal grief in the way that he has. Whilst reading the book, I occasionally felt uneasy at having a ringside seat for the disintegration of a relationship. But the result is a painful authenticity – resonant indeed of the absent R S Thomas. The interweaving of landscape, theology, autobiography and history makes for a rich tapestry – and it will be an unusual reader who finishes the book unmoved.
Tony Windross is Rector of the Week St Mary Circle of Churches in Cornwall, and Rural Dean of Stratton. His book The Thoughtful Guide to Faith was published by O Books in 2003.