WORKSHOPS AND TALKSHOPS The big Conference round-up Twentythree workshops, short talks and discussion groups in three days already packed with plenary sessions makes for a fairly lively Conference, with hard choices to be made, and well-hidden venues to be sought out. After summarising the two plenary sessions led by Karen Armstrong and Hugh Dawes, we publish below edited versions of the reports received by workshop/talkshop leaders or their designated reporters.
God's Own Story Karen Armstrong opened the Conference with A History of God, developing the arguments deployed in her recent book of the same name (and summarised in our April 1993 issue). Five years ago, having abandoned her vocation as a Roman Catholic nun, she thought she was through with God. But researching and writing her history of the god of the three monotheistic religions, from Abraham's tribal deity through the more compassionate and broad-minded god of the prophets to the Father-god of Jesus and Islam, restored and renewed her faith in the idea of God as a symbol of transcendence. All cultures have created such symbols, and our own culture is free to choose and shape the symbols which work best for us.
God as symbol and metaphor was no new idea. It was rooted in the writings of many of the mystics of all three traditions: a sense that God was too big to 'exist' or be anything: he was 'No-thing'. Martin Buber had said that, inadequate and appalling as the word 'God' was, he found he could not do without it. The anonymous author of the fourteenth-century Cloud of Unknowing taught that religious ideas themselves must be cast under 'a thick cloud of forgetting'. 'I am no mystic', Karen Armstrong wrote three years ago, 'but I am trying to attain a similar positive agnosticism. Only thus, I believe, will we guide our divided world safely into the twenty-first century and learn to appreciate the faith hidden in the beliefs of others'.
Against Privatisation Hugh Dawes, vicar of St James, Cambridge, and author of a radical book, Freeing the Faith, which troubled his bishop, spoke on 'The Church as Public Space'. He deplored the tendency towards increasing privatisation in so many aspects of modern life. We needed public places as well as private if we were going to preserve community. Those who inhabit only private worlds shut themselves off from dialogue. To meet only with the like-minded is to privatise religion.
Theologically radical and non-realist, Hugh Dawes spoke as a self-confessed 'conservative' in his loyalty to the Anglo-Catholic tradition and the establishment of the Church of England. The established church in each community had provided the open, public space where all could meet, till the disastrous quarrels of Tractarians and Evangelicals in the nineteenth century had shattered its unity. In a fractured, privatised world, the local church could again be the open space in which all shades of opinion may contend.
Animated discussion followed. In an irretrievably pluralistic world, was a single open space any longer possible, or even desirable? And if it was, was the church best-qualified to provide it? Did not the local newspaper or radio station provide today's open space, where viewpoints were exchanged and tested? Or the local council? Maybe so, responded Hugh Dawes; but the church had a responsibility to help provide, if not to be, a public space where strangers meet and interact.
Evangelically Challenged Anthony Freeman reports: John Prentice led a discussion group on 'Pastoral Care for the Evangelically Challenged', introducing it by describing his own situation.
He attends an evangelical church where his family feel at home but he does not. He is made uncomfortable by the fundamentalist bias of the preaching. (He accepts that there are ways in which good preaching ought to make us feel uncomfortable, but this is not one of them). Although allowed to lead a homegroup he is excluded from leaders' meetings because his approach is not 'sound'. He finds himself less and less able to accept this state of affairs.
Do others have similar experiences?
John's description rang many bells. The conflicting needs of family members and the desire to remain in the church for fellowship are common experiences. We tend to have a strong loyalty to our own local church. Problems arise when an evangelical minister comes to a previously middle-of-the-road church. House groups of different emphasis can be valuable within a congregation, Ecu- menical groups can provide a variety of approach.
Isolation can also be overcome by membership of networks such as SCM Trust and SoF.
The Church of England has a role as an 'open' church for christenings, weddings and funerals. Rigorist approaches endanger this. We do not want liberal/radical ghettos but it would help to know which churches/ ministers in a locality are open to new thinking.
Evaders, Deceivers, Cynics...
Adrian Worsfold writes: Led by Stephen Mitchell, this was a workshop with a clerical bias, though appropriate to all churchgoers. For strategies it used Don Cupitt's Radicals and the Future of the Church for three categories and a Sea of Faith magazine viewpoint by Stephen Warnes for the fourth. These were: Evader - a woolly preacher who does not follow through what he thinks, or an historian who tells what scripture or tradition says; Deceiver - who, while apparently accepting doctrines, does so to argue people out of traditional belief; Dissenter - who thinks survival depends on an open radical position; and Cynic -who keeps the personal view private and speaks the tradition.
In small groups, individuals said which they preferred and the groups reported back. Many argued for a combination due to perceived pastoral needs, It all depended on who was listening to whom. The Cynic was defended by saying the truth issue was not what mattered but equanimity, contentment, the congregation and the appreciation of a good performance. Someone said such was available at fascist rallies. Most believed that the truth issue or 'content' was important. Many felt that the categories themselves were negative.
Enlarged groups then had to create a Mission Statement for their radical churches. Most were quite conservative, but with a stress on plurality within the inherited Christian tradition. Some decided that a church was involved with 'being' rather than a mission: worship/ meditation, liberation, pastoral care, fulfilment within and concern for the community outside. It would seem that the radical church might only be a shade different from others, which was cause for some reflection after the workshop.
Melt a Metaphor 'Elastic Images'? was the title of a creative poetry workshop led by Anne Ashworth, who invited participants to 'Stretch a simile, melt a metaphor, turn plodding prose into vivid verse - and bring a pen and a flexible mind!' Josephine Teagle reports: Words and images are the raw material of poetry. A poem is often the result of friction between two images, words or ideas. Anne Ashworth led us through a process of interaction, focusing and exploration of an image, seeing it in our mind's eye, letting our unconscious work on expanding it to create fresh metaphors.
As a group, we were each asked to contribute two lines in iambic pentameter (I for one needed to be reminded what this is) on the subject of trees. Anne put these together, with a bit of judicious editing, to make a group poem - fun to do and flatteringly successful!
While Anne was preoccupied with this, the rest of us selected a picture or two, jotted down keywords inspired by the image, and then had a go at a poem. Our guidelines were first to describe what we saw in the picture and then to view it as a metaphor. For me, the shared results, the creative expression of personal insights, were profoundly moving.
Selling SoF John Challenor led a workshop on 'Selling SoF: What's it all About, Then?'. He reports: In both sessions, the group wisely decided they wanted a discussion group, not a workshop. Before devising local ads for SoF, and such tasks, they felt they wanted to be at an earlier stage and sort out for themselves what SoF is all about.
I glimpsed some promising paths forward. One was to describe SoF by showing how it differs from humanism and atheism, as well as from the realist supernaturalism of the Old Believers. Another, for churchgoers, was to see SoF's stance as looking beneath the surface of the words and literal meanings of current church language, and as responding at a deeper level, with the whole psyche, as an artist might - and not necessarily with hostility.
Eve meets the Pope Eve, Pope Pius IV, Galileo, Sir Robert Boyle and Postmodern Pat dropped in on Conference, courtesy of the North-West SoF group, to star in an entertainment devised by Michael Luntley for a booklet accompanying the London Weekend Television series The Real Thing, made for Channel Four, and re-enacted by an unreal crew of Thespians directed by Penny Mawdsley.
The impious Pius, he who had published the Vatican's first Index of forbidden books in 1559, was roundly hissed on and off the stage, while Eve, caught in flagrante delicto with a ripe apple, won rather more sympathy. Galileo, naturally enough, went round in circles, but the heroine of the hour was Postmodern Pat, a plain-spoken Cupitt without the long words. Should run and run -and that's only the audience.
Bypassing Postmodernism David Paterson's workshop was called 'Thou Art That:
Concepts of Atman and Brahman in the Upanishads'. He reports: The declared aim of the workshop was 'to open up possibilities of religion as a human creation which may bypass the Real-versus-Nonreal antithesis of Western postmodernism'.
For most of the three-hour workshop, groups of two or three read extracts from the Upanishads which had been selected with this aim in mind. All the participants agreed that there was no possibility of writing up the experiences that this engendered, since they were so varied. Several workshop participants expressed their intention of following up their introduction to the Upanishads with more study of Hindu philosophy.
Perhaps these reactions were, in a hidden way, addressing the aim of the workshop. But we certainly didn't get far at addressing it directly. Some did not see any dilemma in the term 'non-realism'. Others had never been interested in the Real v Non-real debate anyway.
Some found in the Upanishads interesting turns of metaphor, and profound insights, but nothing very different from Western thought. Others saw profound differences - in the concepts of time, creation, the unity of all things, and (most significantly) of 'Being-in-itself' rather than the Western notion of 'existence', with its implication of 'standing out', 'over against' other existence or non-existence.
I think, then, that for most of us it was a fascinating three hours in which a wide variety of seeds were sown.
Perhaps we shall see next year what is likely to grow from these seeds.
Spiritual Ladders Valerie Clark reports: In this workshop, 'Climbing Spiritual Ladders the Inter-Faith Way', led by Pat Kern, interesting comparisons were made between the Christian Beatitudes and spiritual paths or ladders in other faiths.
First, the eight characteristics of the Beatitudes were explored as providing 'steps to God': having poverty of spirit and being dependent on God alone, mourning for self and others (leading to compassion for all humans), being meek (tamed and controlled rather than weak), hungering and thirsting after righteousness, showing mercy, having purity of heart. (and no mixed motives), making peace and accepting persecution.
Next, four similar 'ways' (paths or ladders) from other faiths were compared: the ten sefirot (tree of life) of the Jewish Kabbalah (God's will, wisdom, understanding, loving-kindness, power, beauty, victory, splendour, light and sovereignty); the seven steps of Islamic Sufism (repentance, abstinence, renunciation, poverty, patience, trust in God and satisfaction); the Buddhist noble eightfold path (having right understanding, attitude, speech, action, livelihood, effort, recollection and meditation); and the seven stages and colours of the native American Indian (faith as red, love as yellow, intuition as blue, living as green, creativity as pink, purity as white and peace as purple).
In the discussion, there was both acknowledgement of the similarities in each of the five 'ways' and unease with such approaches. The parallels of Buddhism and Christianity were recognised: right speech = meekness, right actions = mercifulness, and right meditation (which may lead to persecution because of the benefits derived from it) = persecution. However, such apparently prescriptive 'ways to God', which seem to suggest that the way to God is linear, logical and cognitive, were also criticised.
This workshop drew together a lot of information through the medium of study of a familiar passage.
Patriarchy by Default Tim Miles reports: Maxine Green led a workshop entitled 'Is SoF a Movement?' If we do not examine how SoF is developing, she said, it will default to certain patterns of organisation - patriarchal control, privileged access to knowledge, excessive bureaucracy - that we have encountered elsewhere. If we are aware of these processes then we can, if we so wish, take steps to develop alternative ones.
Participants divided into three groups which studied respectively ideology, foundations and practice.
Ideology: A statement of mission did not seem feasible.
The SoF should perhaps be a forum for academic discussion with special reference to religious language.
Foundations: The group discussed the history of other social movements where there was a passionate commitment to ideals. These movements had their prophets (cf Don Cupitt?) and their martyrs (cf Anthony Freeman?) who challenged the institutionalised forms existing at the time.
Practice: There is more ritual in SoF than some of us supposed. People regularly say, for instance, 'This is my third conference', and conferences conform to a pattern, eg visiting speakers, workshops...
Morality and Law John Edmondson led a discussion group exploring the implications of radical theology for legal thinking, and reports: It was considered historically that the Law had some kind of pre-existent reality, and even in the modern secular world where it is largely recognised as man-made, it is still treated as if its decisions are pre-emptive and people can be condemned for their failure to live up to its expectations, even when the Law has only recently been evolved to take into account a new set of circumstances.
But the Law does not help people to anticipate these new expectations, to live up to them or solve attendant problems. In fact it can be confusing and destructive and fail us at the last because it does not create any of those values on which it ultimately depends for its existence, and in fact often militates against them.
Several examples were considered. One was the introduction of the concept of duty of care even in areas of voluntary goodwill. For example, if one attempts to rescue someone from drowning one could be held liable at law if one fails through what the Law considers negligence. But the man who 'passed by on the other side' would incur no such liability. Thus the Law encourages people to neglect their neighbour in times of difficulty rather than offer help. Similar conflicts were thrown up in the consideration of a mercy-killing and a case involving rape with partial consent.
Often, as in the rape case (where the woman had consented to initial intimacies but tried to call a halt before intercourse took place) a therapeutic counselling approach might be preferable to the punitive approach of the Law. In discussion there was a general recognition of the importance of value creation in therapy, since the world is void of value until we create it, and in this sense a radical reinterpretation of Christianity offered real hope.
SOF as a Holiday Home John Linford led discussion groups on the question 'Can SoF be a permanent home?'. He reports: Membership was diverse: clergy and regular churchgoers, people who did not attend church, humanists and at least one atheist - and a preponderance of men.
No consensus was reached about the legitimacy of 'metaphorical' understanding of such things as 'resurrection', 'eternal life' and the Eucharist. And although some people were happy with the idea of a non-realist God, others preferred to drop the word God altogether.
Depending on how it was defined, some wished to retain religion, others were happy to do without it.
There were equally diverse opinions on whether SoF could do anything to change the churches from within. It was hoped that many more SoF sympathisers within the churches would have the courage to 'come out' and be more open and positive in their views.
One participant who is a teacher raised the problem of teaching children. At an early stage in their development children need facts and certainty and clear guidance, but as they develop they need to be encouraged to think and explore for themselves and to make their own judgements. Perhaps a future workshop could be entitled 'What shall we tell the children?' The view was expressed that SoF could not be a permanent home since it was itself constantly changing and on the move. Perhaps it was more of a holiday home, where people could go for relaxation and refreshment.
But most saw it as a framework for open discussion and exchange of ideas for those asking similar questions.
Childhood Bereavement Valerie Clark led a workshop aiming to 'explore the links (if any) between bereavement - especially in childhood - and the spiritual journeys we have made and the values we have come to hold'. She began by summarising recent research showing how children react in different ways to the cultural stories which often accompany bereavement, both in the accounts they give at the time and in their retrospective evaluations.
After participants had set down some of their own experiences in response to questionnaires, there was discussion. Children may often be told that a beloved grandma had gone home to her Friend the Lord Jesus and that one day we would all meet again in Heaven.
Apparent acceptance of this story was generally followed by a recognition of its inadequacy, not only by children in non-church-going families but also among traditional churchgoers. Research was cited indicating that children as young as three years old can distinguish between fantasy and reality. Children also learn as much from other children as they do from their parents, and therefore are open to different myths and stories explaining bereavement. Valerie Clark is continuing her researches.
Too Many Laughs John Cragg reports: The workshop on 'The Art of Being Literally Outrageous' was led by David Newton, a parish priest with a degree in physics and therefore one of that rare elite, a cleric with a scientific training.
We heard two stories about Heaven's gate. One suggested that there were many used car salesmen there but very few popes. The other indicated that it is possible to gain admittance by smiling up at a grown-up while still an infant in your pram, and not know about it till arriving years later.
Explaining techniques of Transactional Analysis, David said he often went into child mode when celebrating the Eucharist. Rosemary, a lay reader, said that she now always avoids naming God when conducting services.
Several participants had similar problems with the Creed.
I said that I drew comfort from my Buddhist experience of finding Heart sutra fairly impenetrable, especially chanted in ancient Chinese.
For the last twenty minutes we divided into two groups.
Our group was reprimanded by the other for loud laughter. It was a good morning.
Music and Movement Bob Smith held a workshop on the Tai Ji Dance of Life, inviting participants to open their minds, open their hearts, relax and smile, take off their shoes, loosen their clothing - and dance. He showed a video of the Tai Ji teacher Chungliang Al Huang's work, then invited participants to join these movements with sequences of Mozart and Bach.
Jonathan Barker also led a workshop on 'Spiritual Aerobics', involving relaxation exercises, mystical prayer and stillness. This time participants kept their shoes on.
More workshops and talkshops (reports not received) were led by Keith Bamford, Michael Smart, Rosemarie Wedell and Hazel Guest. Kulananda led a Buddhist meditation. Next year perhaps there should be a workshop on 'The Art of Choosing Which Workshop To Go To'.