TO BUILD A MOVEMENT?
Adam Thomson In the beginning, Don Cupitt said it was time for SoF to 'deliver'. 'Deliver what?' asked Clive Richards, pleading for more incubation time to prevent a 'premature delivery'. Now SoF newcomer Adam Thomson, who runs Techniques of Participation workshops in Brussels, offers a little midwifery as he sees a pregnant network approaching its confinement.
My first SoF experience was this year's Leicester Conference, in the wholesome surroundings of the university. I had picked up the scent of the Sea of Faith when I read a profile of Don Cupitt in the Financial Times some time ago. And then, when I saw a strategically-placed advertisement for the 1993 Conference in the international edition of The Guardian, I knew I had to go. I did not regret my decision.
The Conference was indeed an event of energy and excitement. Here were people on a journey, who were prepared to look at a future without some of the props of the past. This was the place, I decided, where the faithful gathered and fashioned the contemporary religious perceptions that could guide a world looking for ways of making sense of the times in which we live. It did not take me long to decide that SoF was a very significant phenomenon that needed to be taken seriously. With this in mind, I began to compile the following: * After reading past Conference reports and other literature, the strongest impression I was left with was that SoF had been chewing over the same cud for a number of years. * There was a high proportion of silver-tails, people of my age, white, articulate middle-class, at the Conference.
I remember seeing only one or two non-WASP types, and not even one black face. * I was struck by the insistence that SoF was not a movement or organisation, when it patently is more substantial than a twinkle in someone's eye. * From my perspective, there was an underlying parochialism, of worrying more about the condition of the Anglican church in the UK, than anything else. * I was able to divine that over the years a consensus had been forming - largely based on Don Cupitt's writings - as to what was not. The question which kept intruding for me was the so what? What's the other side of the coin?
What is?
In the wake of the Conference I decided to write a commentary on Clive Richards' piece in the July 1993 magazine as a way for me to clarify my own thinking and reaction to SoF. 'It's a typical meeting in my Bristol flat...' I was glad to pick up this article since it would signal to me, a newcomer, the style and content of SoF local group meetings. Richards describes how his guests could bathe with abandon in an abundance of ideas, theories and postulations; this is probably the best therapy for those who are easing their limbs after the cramped conditions of authoritarian dogma; I could see how it was part of the process of liberation.
But Richards has his frustrations. He says, 'There is certainly no lack of articulateness in SoF but there is seemingly widespread diffidence when it comes to any response or comment, in print, and I felt hugely for writers who'd obviously worked damned hard on their pieces only to have them fall into an apparently indifferent void. I know that some of them left the Network as a result...' Well, from what I have seen I am not too surprised. It is difficult to respond to all this creative output in a way that one can grasp as having any connection with the realities of everyday life.
Richards' impatience appears elsewhere: '...let's go round it, let's look ahead, even if it is slightly round the bend! We need a torrent of ideas, a kaleidoscope of ideas - we need to brainstorm and...' Again, the torrent of ideas is there; the feeling of impotence is caused by the same condition - the absence of method or structure to channel all our creativity into something more substantial than a fond memory in somebody's mind.
In his discouragement Clive Richards strikes a somewhat cynical if not despairing tone: 'I doubt if we either know or can agree upon what to deliver, let alone how!' He recommends getting 'stuck into developing the substance of a form that might not only be capable of inspiring 'them out there' but might also be able to convince us why we should consider transforming SoF into a movement with that end in mind'. Well, I have to say that now is the time to look at the evidence around us.
SoF is already a movement, like it or not. The task now is to give it structure and form - by no means impossible.
The methods to do this are available; all that's needed is the decision to use them.
Each group being 'very informal in its procedures' is the nub of the problem. There's no point in castigating participants in SoF small groups for a dearth of 'innovatory thinking that energises ourselves...'. During those meetings probably nobody has been in a position to guide people's thinking so that their insights didn't dissipate in the night air.
Richards again: 'Were I newly associated with SoF I should be rather dismayed to find the only debate apparently being solicited... to be one concerning SoF itself rather than examination of the hint of radical ideas and visions that stimulated my original interest'. As 'newly-associated', I beg to differ there. SoF is exactly at the place it needs to be. SoF has had a surfeit of 'radical ideas and visions', leading - nowhere. It is indeed time for the form of SoF to be examined. It is now time to deliver on the radical ideas and visions. Visions that remain visions are of no use to anybody.
Recent events - particularly the Anthony Freeman saga - are showing that SoF is being asked to put up or shut up.
That means that the transition is upon us. We have to figure out towards what SoF needs to move. Let's be clear. SoF has the power to do many things in the medium and long term. The future is utterly open. The question now is less What do we do? and much more How do we decide what to do?
I have an answer for each of these questions. And it doesn't take much delving in the magazine to realise that there are a number of SoF people who also have ideas on what could be done - Sea of Faith 'Postbag' correspondents Peter Beynon, Elizabeth Reid and Kenneth Allchin come to mind. And here's my mixture of ideas. It's just a start, off the top of my head:
What if, in addition to its current role (which I shorthand as 'being a resource for those seeking religious alternatives'), SoF was to (i) offer structured study of key writings; (ii) self-consciously develop strong local networks; (iii) do long-term planning; (iv) have a methods training section in the magazine (presentation skills, motivating people, building an effective team, the use of the myth, etc.); (v) develop a quarterly conference structure by regions (one could envisage say six regions:
London and Home Counties, South and West, Midlands, North, Wales, Scotland, each of which would have a number of local groups. There could be regional conferences say in December, March and September, with the annual Conference in July).
The second question, and by far the most important, is how we decide what to do. The ideas which I have just floated I would gladly abandon if that was the will of the group, as revealed by a structured process of consensusbuilding. With all these ideas and images of the future floating around, we must use methods which allow all the input to be savoured and synergised, and practical models built, with everybody experiencing their own significant participation in the process. I'd be glad to share the methods I know. I think it would make a difference.
Adam Thomson would welcome correspondence and calls. His address is Rue A. Lynen 8, 1030 Bruxelles, Belgium, tel 219 0087, fax 219 0406.