Adrian Worsfold Religious beliefs and practices do change over time. To demonstrate this, I thought I would reproduce statements I read out in the inaccurately-named Introduction to Unitarianism course held over three weeks in August 1992 at Upper Chapel, Norfolk Street, Sheffield and then add my later thoughts at February 1993. The topic sections were chosen from a list provided within the course which gave a basis for each participant to discuss their own theology.
Creation / evolution / nature / the world
August 1992: We have a range of stories and myths about creation. One modem story is the selfish gene, and that fits into the overall Darwinian story of evolution based on the survival of the fittest. This story seems to work, but applied to humanity it is in conflict with collective human consciousness. Therefore, altruism is explained by reference to being selfish towards the species. We do not know, and in any case it would only be a further story, if genes are selfish. Anyway, genes are adaptable and changeable, though not necessarily quickly enough, or in the right direction, for certain environmental challenges, but they carry no moral content themselves unless, of course, an interventionist or responsible God or hidden intelligence actually exists.
Human evolution is a cultural story, of the development its rticito look ait 4 Press embt;.4,45 tvMe totirnt'e • of language, the storage of culture and advancement therefore of the species in its self-perception, its ability to understand the meaning of its journeying.
February 1993: I have not changed my mind about this but recently I have been involved in figure/life photography, drawing and painting work and would also want to express an on-going view of human creativity in uniting mind, body and empathetic creativity of meaning. What I have always liked about Christianity is its body and earthly materialism (body, blood, bread, wine, the earth as it is and its redemption) and rejected its history of denial at the same time. Eastern thought on the body is also useful. There is also the fantasy element in all this (incidentally only caricatured in the rubbish of so-called glamour photography), both sexual and indeed the whole narrative of defining humanity.
God...
August 1992: God is a name for concepts regarded in different ways and manners according to different times and cultures. In so-called primitive cultures it had no essence except within magic, nature and the rituals of passing through. Then came more reflective polytheism, demoted in time as idolatries, and replaced/added to by either a single God or the purity of no-God with a regular and reliable path to nirvana. In the near Eastern and Western religions God became a guarantee of truth, a divine source. The world fitted into a language-made box either in the Word (Christ) or books like the Torah and especially the Koran. Today many argue that modernism, being a godless self-sufficient scientific knowledge of words that explain the world, cuts the cord of having the guarantee of truth in the heavens above. So, as one paradigm of thinking replaces another we become aware that all knowledge is a means of description and that description only depends upon the job it does for our ends, not on what might be out there beyond our tongues.
In other words, first there were the grunts of magic, the words of the gods, the word of God, and now we live within a number of dictionaries with words defined only be looking up other words.
August 1993: I think the same but this account is too distant. There may be words alone, but the notion of God can mean their emotional use in a desire for empathetic understanding of people's real concerns and groans in life. I reflect here on my own fears for the future and sense of inner chaos (economic and personal) and that at times it is good to use in a relaxed manner religious words and actions, music and silences, just to see if there is a way of coming to terms with one's own tragedy.
Jesus...
August 1992: There is no way of knowing the historical Jesus beyond his immersion in his historical setting and what he possibly made of it. The texts reflect the myth-making world of oppression and imminent supernatural events. He was possibly mid-way between the political zealots and the individualist hermit-like characters like the Baptist).
We do not know if Jesus regarded himself as central to the salvation story or, if so, how; either him returning or some other agent. Not that it much matters, in that all we can deal with now is the inherited texts. He probably had no focus on personal resurrection, though he might have been a renewed agent of deliverance; resurrection was a language belief of the Pharisees and adapted for the early experiences of the various Christian communities that grew after his death. We do not know what sparked their growth, possibly post-death visions and experiences of bereavement that some people have today were combined with expectations of a new dawn at that time.
Whatever, resurrection changed. From the saving of everyone, where he was the first of the resurrected, it came to mean the resurrection of the one with heaven above, hell below and the Kingdonm of God to come, a contradiction of Greek and Jewish thought-forms.
Jesus has no ethical or doctrinal originality, but stands for a form of charismatic authority that can then lead to sub-charismatic forms, tradition and bureaucracy. He is not unique or definitive, though one may use voluntarily some of the sayings and see him as prophetic and undermining and therefore challenging authority in his day.
It is silly to say that Jesus was just a human being. That's like saying Daffy was a duck. What is important is that he is a mysterious and rather strange being, as strange as the Baptist and many other itinerant preachers and healers, someone whose thought processes we cannot fully understand.
February 1993: Unitarians will stress Jesus is human, hence my reference to Daffy, but of course some Anglicans need reminding of his complete humanity (even according to received doctrine!). A long time ago I was a sort of Jesu-centric atheist (which made my adaptation to liberal God-stressing Unitarianism difficult) but that was slowly lost as Jesus had no uniqueness. Later I adopted a very Jewish Jesus, a failed, unknowable man.
Now Jesus has waned again except as a way of defining a God-ideal that then can be a reflection on my own chaos, as above, in that his tragedy is a reflective tool on mine. I think this is more doctrinal in a funny kind of way.
Worship...
August 1992: I can worship in Trinitarian, Unitarian, Pagan, Buddhist and Humanist forms. It is a text-rich world and I could not be stuck with one only, although I also like the familiarity of a written liturgy like an Anglican evensong.
Worship is also compromise, where one has to fit somewhere somehow, so compromise is made with dogma or simplicity. That, however, can only go so far.
Shared social language usually signals compliance with expectations of conformity: therefore in Anglican circles I limit myself to evensongs as the language of the eucharist is appallingly exclusive, but even then I lower my book and stay silent at the creed, refuse to say "Thanks be to God" after a Bible reading and omit other parts; also a number of Unitarians expect you to agree with the existence of some deistic optimistic God and, if such explicitness is demanded I must dissent. For me, the worship of God is simply what it means to think again.
February 1993: I no longer care what people think of my social signals, but if asked I have now committed myself to say what I really do believe. In the past, with Anglicans I have said things like "I don't think Jesus is God 100%". That annoyed me for a long time after. I should have said that the question as put in the old sense no longer concerns me and that religious texts of all kinds work at a purely secondary but reflective level.
So I did discuss my self-exclusion from communion and began again, and I did find this meaningful and I no longer worry about the creed as all other texts within the prayer books use the same kind of language. I like to say "We believe" (even with 1662), omit "born of the Virgin Mary" and say "made human", but this supposes I believe the rest as given, and I don't.
Unitarian theism still bugs me but the odd thing is that as I have come to use more Anglican forms I am more relaxed about less engaging Unitarian forms. I have a more Quaker-like silent response to the semi-nineteenthcentury theism of Unitarians.
As an afterthought, is it not truly Christian that theology today is as distorted, broken and shattered as was 'the "Son of God" of its devotions?
Adrian Worsfold is secretary of the SoF Steering Committee.