Contents
Articles
- Religious Naturalism, Michael Barrett
- Religious Myths, Science and Society, Marià Corbí
- Worshipping Naturally, Anthony Freeman
- Why Bother Going to Church if you Don’t Believe Anything?, Tony Windross
- Primary Conversations, Penny Mawdsley
- Mayday Note: April is the Cruellest Month
Reviews
- The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps, David Lee
- The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, David Hatton
- The Testament of Mary, Patti Whaley
- The Land of Gold, Kathryn Southworth
Poetry
- The Flower, George Herbert
- The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, Wilfred Owen
Regulars and Occasionals
- SOF Sift: Patti Whaley, Patti Whaley
- As I Please: World War 1 graves, John Pearson
Editorial
Sofia is for diggers and seekers in its own naƟve radical tradiƟon and everywhere. ‘Worship is a natural human activity. Its origins lie in the human response to nature,’ Anthony Freeman begins his article on page 12. It is ‘all perfectly natural.’ That is where we get this Sofia’s title. Freeman goes on to suggest that some questioning human mind might have speculated: ‘What if events in our “natural” world are controlled by unseen gods and spirits in this other “supernatural” world?’ So, he says, a development from a natural to a supernatural focus for worship and other religious activity is quite understandable and rational. But it does not have to be permanent.
Fewer people now, at least in Europe, believe in a supernatural realm but Freeman, for one, ‘can affirm personally that it is possible to worship consistently and meaningfully… without believing that there is an unseen God “out there” consciously responding to my words and actions.’ This Sofia starts with an article by Michael Barrett on ‘Religious Naturalism’. He discusses what is meant by the term and gives a brief survey of its philosophical history and main proponents since the 19th century, focusing on ‘the epic of evolution’ and the theory of ‘emergence’. Love, for example, can be regarded as an ‘emergent property’.
Inanimate things, the very stars, are attracted, they gravitate towards one another, animals too are mutually attracted and this ‘emerges’ in humans as conscious love. Augustine said it: ‘My love is my weight.’ Then in an article on ‘Religious Myths, Science and Society’, Marià Corbí, director of the Barcelona -based Centre for the Study of Wisdom Traditions (which has affinities with SOF) argues that relatively static pre-industrial societies were ‘programmed’ by religious myths, which had to be taken literally in order to provide a supernatural guarantee for the society’s power structure. On the other hand, ‘religion’s links with power go against the very heart of the teaching of religious masters’.
When, as in present day European societies, the myths are no longer taken literally by many people, they cease to be able to programme the societies.
But neither can science or technology, since ‘no scientific system, however sophisticated, can relieve us from having to deal with our human condition.’ Although religious myths, symbols and stories can no longer have a programming function, it matters that they continue to function purely symbolically in speaking of things ‘about which the sciences have nothing to say’.
In his article Tony Windross, like Anthony Freeman a practising priest in the Church of England, asks ‘Why Bother Going to Church if you Don’t Believe Anything?’ He answers that he himself was re-enabled (by SOF) to take part in the liturgy he loves when he understood the supernatural stories did not have to be taken literally.
Penny Mawdsley reports on her visits to primary schools, giving a ‘concentrated philosophical workshop’ on humanism to nine and ten year olds – ‘and boy, do they concentrate, bless them!’ In his article ‘Worshipping Naturally’ Freeman describes how the liturgy follows the Earth’s annual cycle, linking the winter, spring and early summer festivals of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost to events in the Christ epic: birth – coming –, death and resurrection, the outpouring of the Spirit. This Sofia includes the first three verses from George Herbert’s great poem ‘The Flower’, in which he thanks God for enabling him to recover his oomph and devotion, which has returned like flowers in May, after a period of sad deadness:
Who would have thought my shrivelled heart could have recovered greenness? It was gone quite underground, as flowers depart… He is grateful to his ‘Lord of power’. This poem still speaks to all of us who have experienced a similar bleakness; even without a supernatural person to thank, when we emerge from such darkness we can still feel immensely thankful. In one sense very little has changed. That is the point.
It is perfectly natural. * After a long and noble innings at her ‘As I Please’ column, which has given much pleasure and food for thought, Cicely Herbert has retired. She is succeeded in this issue with an ‘As I Please’ from John Pearson, writing about his visit to the war graves on the battlefields of the Somme.
Lastly, a reminder that this year’s SOF Annual Conference on Making Connections is from 18th– 20th July (further details on page 8). editorial Perfectly Natural What does ‘religious naturalism’ mean?
Mary Lloyd wrote from the midst of 90 mph winds and rain, concerned for the vulnerable poor in our 21st century society in her home city of Southampton. Her descriptions of individual cases need to find their way to the desks of policy makers and ministers who implement these rigid and punitive regimes. Here in the north, we have survived the winter and as amazing crocuses give way to daffodils, it seems we are moving into spring. Beauty, blossom and birdsong can mask the suffering around us.
But across the UK (or at least England and Wales) we encounter an economic regime which has led to more than 800,000 people using food banks, and almost a million people losing benefits, whilst we also heard that the recent budget was ‘a budget for makers, doers and savers’. The rhetoric of ‘us and them’ – ‘strivers and skivers’ – is divisive – particularly here in a city (Newcastle) in which a third of residents expect to find themselves worse off during the coming year, where low pay and limited hours are closely linked to poverty and where it is reported that more than a fifth of residents cannot afford to feed themselves properly.
Whilst we are also seeing the fragile beginning of a renewal in exports and in manufacturing, and for small businesses, there are far too many people in the public sector losing their jobs, and too many people working part time, for minimum wages, or on zero hours contracts.
Dominic Kirkham tackled xenophobia, in a fascinating piece which drew on history and anthropology to examine how we as human beings have dealt with ‘alien others’ and strangers, often through conflict and aggression. The news brings a relentless diet of violence and oppression and their consequences – children continue suffering and families are still fleeing from a torn and broken Syria now more than three years since it was a peaceful place with a rich cultural heritage; confrontation, stand -off and retaliation continue to unfold between Russia and Ukraine and with each move, each piece of political or military posturing, we see a tentative countermove from world leaders, looking every bit as human and uncertain as we might if we were in their place.
Over the forty days of Lent preceding Easter, many Christians take time to be quiet, to reflect on what we are called to do in response to all the dangers and divisions which surround us in our world. In the early centuries of the church it was seen as desert time.
Time apart for preparation. But in moving though Holy Week we come to Easter, and a resurrection which is about being alive together – being and becoming the community of the Kingdom. We are called back into the midst of things – into the city, with all its jostling and division and uncertainty.
Back into the real world, in which people are crucified by poverty and alienation, power struggles and ethnic pride. We are called to emerge from the desert and to look for creative ways for nations, and cities, communities and individuals to live and work together, to nurture and encourage each other – ways of dialogue and engagement, empathy and openness.
Ways in which we can recognise and respond to the diverse humanity around us – those who are vulnerable and those with power.
The institutional churches – bishops and archbishops – cited by Mary Lloyd – are a part of this – voicing the concerns which many of us hold. But we are also called – and this I think was the aspect which your contributors could more clearly have drawn out – we are called, each of us as individuals, to find ways in which the shadows and darkness in our world, which sometimes overwhelm and terrify us, can be acted on and transformed into lively resurrection hope.
— Pauline Pearson, Newcastle-upon-Tyne