From Lloyd Geering's "The Human Quest for Meaning", SoF Conference 1992 New Reformation That Heart of the Matter programme has now been left behind in media controversies over Sea of Faith. The Guardian stirred up a new row when it offered Don Cupitt its "Faith to Faith" column on August 22. Cupitt noted that SoF had virtually doubled its membership in the last three months (370 to date, and rising), suggesting that the whole miscellany of "radical Christians, post-Christians, religious humanists and seekers...may be seen as harbingers of the long-awaited New Reformation".
This provoked the usual accusations of arrogance from fundamentalists who know they know the Truth, and smell the Devil and all his works in SoF's openmindedness. But it also attracted the critical attention of Don's old fundamentalist-humanist antagonist Nicolas Walter, who took exception to the claim that the Church had "never formally defined the dogma of the Resurrection of Christ, so there isn't actually an `orthodox' view of what took place".
But what about the C of E's 39 Articles? asked Walter.
Surely thay are formal, official, dogmatic statements to which members of the Church are supposed to subscribe?
Enter Ronald Pearse to point out in a letter on August 29 that the 39 Articles now have the legal status within the Church of an "historic formulary" - one of many - which simply "bear witness" to the faith. Dogma you are supposed to swallow if you want to stay in the club; an "historic formulary" is just that -a quaint, fossilised remnant of "the radical theology of the 16th century", to be taken or left as your tastes and common sense dictate.
Flavour of the month Jesus was pretty much the flavour of the month in September, what with the spate of new books about him, and TV shows to match. I confess I came to A N Wilson's biography Jesus to scoff, but remained, if not exactly to pray, certainly to respect and admire.
The previews led one to suppose that this veteran young fogey of the '70s actually believed that a historical Jesus was fully recoverable from first century documents which he supposed to be "histories" as we now understand the term. In fact Mr Wilson has an acute understanding of the nature of the texts and readily acknowledges that the only Jesus we possess is the Jesus of the literature. But he argues that the historian's discipline applied to the texts can yield a more fully developed understanding. I thought he proved his point - which is not to say I fell in with all his imaginative speculations.
Commission on mission The Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland is organising a "Consultation on Contemporary Cultures and the Gospel" on November 19 as part of the Churches' Commission on Mission - and they've invited SoF to participate. Should we do so? The question provoked long debate in your steering committee.
Did we in any sense at all share the Churches' concepts of "the Gospel" and "mission"? Could any one person "represent" a Network embracing almost every conceivable variety of religious/humanist outlook?
On the other hand, doesn't SoF have something distinctive to say on contemporary cultures - even if it isn't what many in the mainstream churches want to hear?
And isn't that why the organisers invited us? Don't we proclaim our intention of promoting as well as exploring religious faith as a human creation?
It was decided to accept the invitation. I'll report what contribution we are able to make, if any, in the next issue. `The cosmos of hope' David Blackburn, who provides our front cover illustration, may be new to many readers. He was a student-contemporary of David Hockney, praised by Kenneth Clark in 1978 as one of Britain's great artists, "absolutely independent from all the tricks, mannerisms and fashions of the art of our time". The fact that he lives and works in Huddersfield and shows not the slightest interest in the London arts circuit has hampered recognition, though he is exhibited and collected world-wide.
Critic Peter Fuller places him in the visionary TurnerPalmer-Nash tradition. "What binds everything in Blackburn together is his longing to pass through the appearances of things and to offer the viewer an imaginative vision of that harmonious and transcendent reality which lies behind them. In the end, we may want to admit that the idyllic world which Blackburn reveals is only an illusion. Even so, these pictures belong to what Herbert Marcuse once called 'the cosmos of hope'. For the kind of illusion they encourage us to enter into is that upon which spiritual life, perhaps civilization itself, depends." SE4farer New Reformation That Heart of the Matter programme has now been left behind in media controversies over Sea of Faith. The Guardian stirred up a new row when it offered Don Cupitt its "Faith to Faith" column on August 22. Cupitt noted that SoF had virtually doubled its membership in the last three months (370 to date, and rising), suggesting that the whole miscellany of "radical Christians, post-Christians, religious humanists and seekers...may be seen as harbingers of the long-awaited New Reformation".