Towards an Adult Church
I'm fairly new to this. Although I read Don Cupitt's books, from Taking Leave of God on, as soon as they were published, I only heard of the Sea of Faith Network in Summer '91. From that year's Conference two impressions stand out: the possibilities opened up by Don's "dogma and therapy" lecture, and what seemed to be the sub-text of the whole event - the "staying in or getting out" debate. Is it right to be part of a Church whose public beliefs we do not share? How will it ever be transformed if we leave?
Starting from these impressions and from my work as a counsellor and educator, I began to explore ideas which I think provide a useful framework for looking at these questions.
A few years ago I discovered Transactional Analysis. Originated by Eric Berne in the early '60s and described in his book Games People Play, TA has continued to develop as a theory of human development and communication.
The central idea of TA is that each of us has three identifiable parts (called egostates) in which we think, feel and act differently depending on the situation. Known as Parent, Adult and Child, these are functional - they are about the way we relate to others. We all begin as children: in Child egostate we can be creative and joyous and also sad, anxious, angry; or we may adapt our behaviour to the demands of people around us, reliving the feelings we had when we were little.
In Parent we may be caring, dominating, encouraging, unbending, depending on what we have learnt from authority figures around us - family, school, society - and we will feed back the cultural and social norms we have taken on. In Adult we begin to think and act in our own way, in the here and now, and update our Parent learning and Child responses to take into account current data and previous experience.
TA is literally about analysing transactions between egostates - inside our own heads or whenever two people communicate with each other.
That's a summary of TA's basic concept. Here's its philosophy: I'm OK (with me) and You're OK (with me) too.
You've heard it before. It's the title of a popular book by Thomas Harris and sounds too slick to be true. But you've also heard it somewhere else before: "Love one another as you love yourself".
Basic trust, acceptance and forgiveness of each other, reconciliation, starting again, bringing hope, are the ground of Christianity. This is what attracted me to TA: a positive philosophy and a language that anyone can learn and use. And again, it's functional.
Like religion, it is about how we relate to each other.
In God of Surprises Gerard Hughes suggests a similar model for the Church. Its three parts must be in balance for it to function healthily and effectively - just like a person.
Like religion, transactional analysis is about how we relate to each other
The "Institution" is a body of received values, tradition and teaching which defines belief and is passed on from generation to generation, hopefully updated on occasion. This (Parent) part makes the rules, sets limits and can provide a caring and nurturing structure. For many people this is simply what the Church "is". The "questioning" (Adult) part in Hughes' analysis is the responsive, contextual, here-and-now, problem-solving aspect which, in a healthy organisation, mediates the Institution to the rest of the world.
It applies the received values but also re-examines and adjusts them. It assesses and reinterprets (Parent) teaching, enabling the whole organism to "move on".
The "mystical", feeling part (Child) may be closest to spirituality. Its creativity and warmth bring life and renewal to the Institution.
One part will be emphasised in some situations, another in others. For example, a highly "traditional" Church may be mostly Parent; a "charismatic", "free" Church mainly Child; a "radical", "liberal" Church mainly Adult; although each will lose out if it fails to appreciate the importance of all three egostates.
So what has this to do with dogma and therapy, staying in or getting out?
Well, we all - individuals and churches - have a choice of ways to transact with one another; ways which promote "OKness" or limit it, encourage autonomy or foster dependence.
Let's look at this dependence. TA adopts the term symbiosis for the mutually dependent relationship between mother and child. Mother is the care-taker (Parent) and thinker (Adult), baby has only Child available - together they have a complete set of egostates. This is essential at first because we are too small to do anything for ourselves. As we get older we begin to break out of the symbiosis by challenging mother, and the wise parent recognises this and encourages us to become more independent.
But the process is rarely completed painlessly and as grown-ups we may still crave some symbiotic relationships - we may want to look after others, or to be looked after, tell others what to do, or be led.
We struggle to be free but are still tempted by the safety of remaining little and having others make decisions for us. Being adult and responsible is just too frightening; we unconsciously discount our own ability to think, decide our own values, or recognise our own needs and emotions.
Bringing these two models together shows how people can become enmeshed in symbiotic relationships with the Church as an organisation. Both feel safe, Parent keeps control and avoids change and Child gets taken care of. And sometimes it's necessary and desirable - we all need to know that someone is "there for us" until it feels safe to step out into the world on our own.
But sometimes the risk of "stepping out" is just too great, so we stop thinking, go along with what Parent says, ignore our own needs, shelter behind the values of the organisation, and collaborate in maintaining the status quo. In doing so the symbiosis becomes unhealthy, or even strangely reversed as we begin to "look after" the scared Child of our leaders and ministers.
So what's the alternative? Maybe in the Sea of Faith Network we have the possibility of exploring what a genuinely "therapeutic" community might actually look like. How can we value our caring Parent and our creative Child whilst being forward-looking, flexible, challenging Adults?
If some symbiosis is necessary and people only grow up when it is safe to do so, what are we doing to encourage autonomy whilst still accepting our need for interdependence?
Trudi Newton is a freelance educator and counsellor in Ipswich, Suffolk. Games People Play is published by Penguin, I'm OK, You're OK by Pan, and God of Surprises by Darton, Longman, Todd.