Jane 98 The Street, Little Waltham, Chelmsford, Essex CM3 3NT POSTSCRIPTS Postscripts by Seafarer ‘Who will rid me...?” Clearly we are on the slide. A couple of years ago the Sunday Times revealed to an astonished world that no fewer than one hundred C of E priests didn’t believe in God and were members of a mysterious, subversive movement called Sea of Faith. Now, revisiting the story, the ST rather more modestly announces that “more than 70 serving Anglican priests are members of an organisation that does not believe in the literal truth of the Bible or in the existence of God”...
The story is accompanied by a photo [see pg.10] of a rather devious-looking Stephen Mitchell in full clerical regalia, his right hand on an enormous Bible.
No doubt he is swearing on the Good Book that he doesn’t believe in its literal truth or that it is anything other than Man’s Word.
Breathlessly, the story reveals that Sea of Faith “does not believe in the authenticity of the Christmas story, as related in the New Testament, or the resurrection”. Then, in a piece of theological gobbledygook, it adds that the Network “believes that God is a mystical and personal experience which has no physical incarnation”.
News to me.
But it does get better: “Most members of Sea of Faith do not believe in an objective God out there in the traditional sense. They see religion, like art and science, as part of a human creation.
But paradoxically they are committed to religious ideas, rituals, and the Christian way of life”.
Anthony Freeman is quoted as saying: “The Christmas story is a good example of the way a story develops and has the power to influence without necessarily having a historical or literal basis... God does not exist as an independent agent. God is a figure created as a human ideal”.
Sea of Faith is attacked by Reform, an evangelical pressure group, as “completely contrary to all the Church of England stands for”. Traditionalists are reported as taking a hard line and urging Lambeth Palace “to outlaw what they regard as heretical belief’. But “a spokesman for Archbishop George Carey declined to discuss his opinion of the organisation”.
So once again we are depicted as a group of oddballs within the Established Church (when the truth is that we are a group of oddballs rolling through all mainstream churches and none).
Dianamania Months after her tragic death, commerce and academia are competing to get the most out of what they both call a “spiritual phenomenon”. Worldwide sales of Diana memorabilia were estimated to have topped the £100 million mark by the end of November. But no less extraordinary (or nauseous) are the frantic efforts of conference organisers to win spiritual credit with a dose of the semi-divine princess. Thus a sociology and social psychology conference at the University of Sussex includes a video of the funeral and sessions on “Diana and the media” and “Aspects of the death of a Princess”.
The University of Massachusetts, not to be outdone, is topping and tailing its video extracts with sessions on “Princess Di and the Cult of Womanhood”, “Diana in Relation to Anorexia as a Language Disorder and Deviant Communication Strategy”, “Diana as Political Icon”, and “Remembering Empire, Dismembering Diana”.
All of which is nothing compared to the University of Berlin’s efforts. Their special events include “Diana, a Latterday Virgin Mary” and “Diana, Priestess of the Cult of Victimhood”. Oh yes, and video extracts from the funeral...
Does all this indicate a new thirst for spirituality? It depends how degraded is our understanding of spirituality.
Which makes the theme of our 1998 Conference pretty topical. It is What on earth is Spirituality?, and suggesting answers will be Don Cupitt, Robert Ashby of the British Humanist Association, and Catholic writer-priest Diarmuid O’Murchu. I dare say the spirit of Diana will also put in an appearance.
An Islamic Sea of Faith?
Peter Lumsden has sent me a most interesting text: a translation of a lecture by Iranian dissident Abdul Karim Saroush, which Peter describes as “the nearest approach I have found to an Islamic non-realism”, Don Cupitt, to whom he also sent a copy, commented on it in a Guardian “Faith to Faith” column on November 22, where he interpreted Saroush’s Reformational teachings as “not so much Luther as Sea of Faith”.
The emergence of such ideas in Islam could have exciting consequences. Saroush argues for “the humanisation of religion”, recognising that religion, like philosophy and politics, is a human construct. “Rationality, prejudice, egoism, truth-seeking, obliviousness, greed, fallibility, partiality, complacency, acquisitiveness and the like all have their due share in the science of religion and all influence it in one way or another. True, the revelation is divine, but what about the interpretation of revelation? The interpretation no doubt may be conjectural, fallible, changeable, partial, fallacious, onesided, misguided, prejudiced, culturebound, incomplete, but this is what the revelator himself has ordained it to be.
We are fallible human beings and that is our lot from Truth”.
What is most interesting is the fact that, although the writings of Saroush are suppressed in Iran, Peter was able to find the text on the Internet. That suggests that Saroush has friends who are willing to run the considerable risk of disseminating his ideas in samizdat form: an underground Sea of Faith in the heart of Islam. I hope we find ways of making and keeping contact.
Sit. Vac.
As Network members will have been informed, the Steering Committee is planning to appoint a full- or part-time Development Worker to help the hardpressed voluntary committee develop and carry out an imaginative strategy for promoting the objects of Sea of Faith, as approved in principle at the 1997 AGM. Details of this demanding post are available from Stephen Mitchell, Chair of the Steering Committee, 27 Cotes Road, Barrowupon-Soar, Leics LEl2 8JP, and applications must be in by the end of February for consideration on March 7.
The Steering Committee is looking to raise an initial £25,000 to support the Development Worker and her/his activities The fund has already received a generous start-up donation but Network members and supporters are invited to demonstrate their commitment by making their own contribution. The SC is looking to find 5 generous donors of £1000 each, 8 of £500, 20 of £200, 50 of £100 and 100 of £20.
Smaller or intermediate donations will also be most gratefully received.
Promises and enquiries should be made to Stephen, and cheques made payable to Sea of Faith Development Fund. The Committee hopes to establish a charitable trust to further this work.
We have probably reached the limits of our effectiveness as a purely voluntary body. This is a leap of faith (sorry, Bernard [letter, pg. 21]). Do we have enough of it?
Wilde about Utopia I have just seen Wilde, a moving, marvellous film. But it missed my favourite Oscar quote: “A. map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing”. ‘Santa’, Central Park, New York. Photo: Raymond Depardon I’m not quite sure what he meant in saying humanity is always landing there, but I share his dread of a world which has expunged Utopia from its maps. But how, when God is dead, Marx is dead and we're not feeling too well ourselves, do we hold on to the passion to mend the world and create a New Earth in the image of a New Heaven? How, when we are told we are seeing the end of history and the end of ideology, do we hold in our hearts a vision of the Republic of Heaven? How on earth?
This is not a rhetorical question.
Replies (brief) invited.