And it’s also one that plenty of those who find us beyond the pale have also asked – and come to the conclusion that because there is no point, there’s also neither reason nor excuse for any of us to spoil their party (and should stay well away – together with our unsavoury and unsettling ideas).
After all, how could a non-realist take anything to do with church at all seriously? Wouldn’t it be sheer hypocrisy to say things during a service that we don’t mean?
Wouldn’t it show we were even more fraudulent and unprincipled than people already suspected? It probably would – were it true. But it’s not – so it isn’t. And that’s because things are a whole lot more complicated and nuanced than they’re often taken to be. Not least in terms of the messily heterogeneous nature of SOF itself.
It would be a serious mistake to underestimate the sheer diversity of views within SOF, and it would be even worse to see some of those views as ‘better’ or ‘purer’ than others. Those familiar with the Monty Python ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch, will remember the way a pecking order of poverty developed – with those whose childhood was most deprived achieving the greatest level of kudos (albeit at the cost of ever greater absurdity). Within SOF there has sometimes seemed a similar putative hierarchy – with those apparently unable to believe anything at all ranking higher than those still hanging on to the last vestiges of the old stuff.
There is surely something equally absurd about the high esteem with which atheists (often of the outspoken variety) are held within some SOF circles – with more than a hint of ‘they’ve got it right, they’ve arrived (because they’ve managed to ditch all that ridiculous religious rubbish) – and maybe the rest of you may catch up later’. Any group is in danger of this sort of thing – but it’s something that sits uneasily with the spirit of ongoing openness that (at least on good days) we claim to profess.
I’ve got a bit of a vested interest in all this, because unlike some SOF members, I make no claims about the nature or existence of God. For practical purposes I’m a non-realist – but not in any ontological or epistemological sense. In other words, I’ve got no particular metaphysical position – or indeed any anti-metaphysical position either! In ontological terms I’m pretty agnostic – and that’s because I can see no way of resolving the matter that does justice to the profundity of the issues concerned.
There is more than a suspicion that at least some (in both the realist and non-realist camps) adopt the definite stances they do – as a way of bringing closure. So that they don’t have to keep on revisiting the arguments. So that they know where they stand. It’s not an option available to me – so I simply bypass it altogether.
But it’s not a problem, because my primary concern is not with coming to a conclusion about ‘how things are’ in the (religious) universe – but with being able to take part in worship. Before I came across SOF, the whole world of liturgy was closed off. Having once been a choirboy, and experienced something of what religious services could offer – that all became off-limits once I started to think and to question. Given that I was unable to swallow what it seemed I had to be able to swallow, I was unable to take part in services, or benefit from the spiritual and cultural riches that religion offered. But when eventually (through SOF) that ceased to be a difficulty, everything changed. Not in the sense that I now knew what was what (or indeed, what wasn’t Why Bother Going to Church if you Don’t Believe Anything?
Tony Windross explains why he sƟll goes to church.
Fish and loaves. Catacomb of St Callixtus, 3rd century what!) – but that I was able to be part of the worshipping community. Able, not only to turn up on Sundays, but also to take seriously the bible stories and the praying and the whole religious package. It made a huge difference to my life – and I eventually ended up being ordained.
So although I’ve got no sense of any kind of ontological grounding – my bedrock (and we surely all need something?) is experiential rather than philosophical: the sort of stuff that goes on in churches (excluding any with choruses and arm waving) rather than the sort of stuff that goes on in seminar rooms. For me, liturgy matters – which is why I couldn’t do without it. And it’s only a puzzle that a non-realist could take it seriously, if liturgy needs to be understood literally. Churches are religious theatres, places where the great dramas of human life are enacted. They shouldn’t be treated like lecture theatres, where only much more circumscribed and clearly-defined understandings of truth are permitted.
We are meaningseeking creatures, and that involves being meaningmaking creatures.
We need ritual, we need cultural events that help us focus, that give us a structure. They’re all in a sense arbitrary – in that they could have been designed differently. But it would be absurd to try and re-invent them on every occasion.
And just as when we go to the theatre we suspend our critical faculties, and give ourselves over to the artifice of the whole thing – when we enter a church we need to give ourselves over to the atmosphere, and enter into the spirit of the performance. Liturgy (like sex) can never satisfactorily be a spectator sport; if you’re not part of it, if you’re not immersed in it, you miss anything of any value that it might have to offer.
Ritual is something that humans do – and religious rituals are what people involved in religion do. When a new vicar is licensed, s/he has to swear to use only the forms of service that are authorised. And that’s because it’s the vicar’s job to conduct religious worship, not according to his/her own whims or fancies, but according to the accepted forms of the Church. The idea behind this is that someone going to a church in another area is going to find forms of service with which they are familiar. Because it’s the forms of service (originally solely through the Book of Common Prayer) that constitute the unifying factor of the Church of England. Not the beliefs of the congregants (or the vicar) – but the joint rituals that they engage in.
A common culture is the result of people doing things together – supporting a football team, going to the pub, singing in a choir, attending a political meeting, visiting the theatre – and so on. It’s the doing that matters. All sorts of things will be going through the heads of the participants – but that doesn’t matter in the slightest. The only important thing is that they come together – and find some sort of common cause with others. We’re not solitary creatures, and isolation is usually unwelcome. But we need reasons to come together that aren’t unduly contrived. And this is why the liturgy of the Church is such a gift – as we don’t need to do anything other than simply join in.
Having a nonrealist view of God (or at least tending more towards that position than any other) ought not to affect in the slightest the sincerity with which we can take part in (or lead) religious services. Throughout much (maybe most? maybe even all?) of life we’re playing roles. And so when we enter religious theatres we get into role. We mean the words we say as much as anyone else. Not literally, of course – but seriously, profoundly and sincerely. The words act as mantras to still the mind, to take us out of our normal life, to enable us to pray.
Many people find it helpful if the service is taking place inside a beautiful building (such as an ancient cathedral), with fine music, stained glass, maybe incense. All things calculated to heighten our sense of both emotion and occasion. Those for whom words are the things (because they think the truth of religion can be captured and contained in propositions) tend to be less bothered about the nature of their surroundings. The more literalist someone is in their religious understanding, the plainer their worship space tends to be. It’s a combination of aesthetic Agape Feast. Catacomb of Sts Marcellinus and Peter. 4th century. sensibility and theology – with those (to put it provocatively) whose horizons are limited in one often being limited in both.
Beautiful religious spaces have an atmosphere all their own, and it’s surely this, together with the associated sense of occasion, that has led some of religion’s sharpest critics to devise rituals for coming together to reflect on what it is to be human – whilst omitting any reference to the divine. I have a certain amount of sympathy for them – and it is something I might have found helpful in my years away from the Church. But the reason I felt religiously disenfranchised then was because I was unaware of the possibility of any kind of understanding that was not literal. If I had been, worship would have no longer been out of the question – and such alternative arrangements would have seemed unnecessary.
Taking part in worship on a regular basis means engaging with the rhythms of the Church, entering the drama of its stories, and using them to shape our lives.
It means becoming familiar with the broad sweep of biblical history, it means observing the different festivals. Other people find different ways to mark the passage of time (such as the various events of the sporting calendar), with some more existentially rewarding than others. But I find something uniquely satisfying about the sweep of the liturgical year, with its emotional highs and lows – which is hardly surprising given the way it’s been honed over millennia. And unlike many radicals, I have neither need nor desire to get involved in experimental liturgies. I’m perfectly content with the normal fare – and find many of the DIY ones trite and banal.
From conversations over the years it’s clear that the words of the creeds and hymns are major stumbling blocks for many SOF types. But (to repeat) they are not so for me. They can either be consciously reinterpreted, so that they are understood in a symbolic/metaphorical way – or they can be treated as word-music, maybe a bit like a religious mantra, with their significance being found, not in anything literal, but in their cadence and the occasion on which they’re being uttered. Maybe this shows a high degree of unprincipled flexibility? But whatever the reason, it is simply not an issue for me!
The great Anglican controversialist Harry Williams famously said that ‘one of the important functions of religion is to give people something to do with their lunacy’ – but it’s also what many do with their awe and wonder. It’s difficult to see how someone without such things could make any sense of religion. But those who do have, at least from time to time, an awareness of the sheer immensity of everything, and who, instead of pushing it to one side, treat it with the seriousness it deserves – need somewhere to take it, somewhere to help them deal with it, somewhere to allow them to reflect on it, on a regular basis. And this is what, at its best, worship is capable of doing. And it’s why it’s essential for there to continue to be places where the thoughtful and sensitive and reflective can go, which do not insult either their intelligence or their aesthetic sensibilities.
But the irony is that many (maybe most?) of those involved in religion (including those who lead it) give absolutely no hint that they feel any of that! For them (it seems) religion does not involve exploring and going ever deeper – but floating serenely on the surface: in control, and full of confidence as to what life is all about (and therefore empowered to produce neatly-packaged and cleverly-marketed courses that are the apparent answer to pretty well everything). No existential yearnings, no agonised ponderings – but a happy sense of self-assurance. It’s something Kierkegaard identified, when he spoke of how the bourgeois Christian ‘recites the Creed as objectified dogma and then waddles comfortably home to his dinner – and nothing in him has changed at all, except that his conviction that he is a fine fellow has become a little stronger than ever’ (Don Cupitt, Sea of Faith, p153).
Instead of trying to quell the feelings of being out of one’s depth, the liturgy (at its best) is capable of treating them with the seriousness they deserve – helping to ‘keep the rumour of God alive’. Enoch Powell entitled one of his books No Easy Answers, but the philosopher Rush Rhees outdid him by entitling one of his Without Answers. How seriously do we take Mystery? How deeply do we desire (or is it need?) closure? How thin a diet of ontological gruel can we manage on? Whatever our responses to these questions, the liturgy of the Church offers the space to do whatever kind of existential wrestling we go in for. None of it requires belief – but a leap of faith big enough to allow our imagination to run riot. And a determination (at all costs) – never, ever to be dogmatic or smug about anything. Especially religion.
Tony Windross is Vicar of St Leonard’s Church, Hythe, Kent.