Numbers with noughts on the end seem to entice us to look backwards, whether it’s the year 2000, a 10th anniversary... or just the 40th number of Sea of Faith magazine.
So we’ve been blowing the dust off some of our earliest issues to remind ourselves what we were saying and doing in the days of our youth. Here we publish excerpts from the first ten numbers (Spring 1990 to Summer 1992), which were edited by Clive Richards). In successive issues through this year we shall look back at numbers 11 to 39.
In due course we hope to publish an anthology of some of the articles in full, as a permanent record of ten years of SoF exploration.
From No. 1 (Spring 1990) “How it all Began” by Ronald Pearse My own part in the SoF story began in November 1983 when I had business with Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and met its dean. Previously I had only glanced at one of his books but the encounter with this kind and pastorally-minded priest encouraged me to spend a book token, early in 1984, on his Taking Leave of God. 1 was thrilled to find that the spirituality and theological position of this book articulated something I had been slowly moving towards over many years...
Unknown to me, in the summer of 1984, another priest in the Leicester area was writing to him on similar lines. Don put us in touch and we met for talks at my rectory at Thurcaston. That autumn, The Sea of Faith appeared as a book and TV series... [By April 1985 what was to become the Sea of Faith Network had five members. By 1987 this had doubled!] At Cambridge [in December 1987] Don had shown me a wooden box containing letters received in response to his books and TV series. He offered to compile a first mailing list from them. Soon 143 names and addresses arrived. It happened that at the time of our first mailing the Post Office was using a controversial postmark paid for by an evangelical businessman, and so it was that our envelopes were heavily overprinted with the uninterpreted slogan “Jesus lives!” By now our leisurely pub- or vicarage-lunch discussions were over and our informal group had hard-working evening meetings planning the [first] conference...
Dennis Nineham was persuaded to be a main speaker... Eventually “SoF 1” happened in July 1988. “Some marks of a Radical Christian” by C B Spurgin A radical Christian, being an intelligent, modern, thinking person, finds no need for any supernatural notions, actions or events...; accepts no explanation for the coming into being of the universe... other than those rational explanations offered in terms of scientific laws and processes...; does not entertain any notion ofa soul or spirit or other non-physical entity... and denies the possibility of any form of survival after the death of the body...; does not suppose that there is a God or any Supreme Being...; recognises that all religion is Man-made RETROSPECTIVE From No. 2 (Summer 1990) “What Happened Next?” by Stephen Mitchell A policy and task-setting meeting was held in October 1989 and sixteen people... began to tackle the question “What next2”.
It was here that the idea of SoF as some kind of “movement” was displaced by what was felt to be a more appropriate characterization as “a network for exploring and promoting religious faith as a human creation”. “Radical a hoi by Mark Stubbs My chief concern [is] that our fledgling movement might get off to a bad start if it attempts to formulate any kind of creed and so end up with a kind of neodogmatism - to be a radical Christian you must believe this and this but you cannot possibly believe that... What bothers me about Spurgin’s list is that it does read, despite his disavowal, like a creed... It may well be that God is a human construct and does not exist in a realist way as either a personal being or as the ground of being. Certainly Don Cupitt has argued his case very persuasively, but I for one wish to remain an agnostic on this point... Let’s keep radical Christianity free, lightweight and ever moving forward. At all costs we must avoid the mistake of defining our beliefs. It would be perverse indeed if radical Christians were to allow insufficient space for doubt and uncertainty.
From No. 3 (Autumn 1990) “Meanwhile...” by Clive Richards Things are stirring on the shore of the Sea of Faith... Analysis of the reaction sheets from SoF II [the second conference, in 1989] revealed that over 90 members expressed a wish to receive “a magazine/leaflet intended to give a forum for radical ideas”...
A network was all very well, I thought, but it was like a grid with the power turned off. People wouldn't feel linked to it (especially those who for whatever reason couldn’t or didn’t want to attend conferences) unless they received something from it.
I also felt very strongly that SoF’s “agenda” was getting perilously academic and removed from concerns such as integrity of church membership, relations with traditional believers and a continuing sense of spirituality... I wanted to “turn on the current” and, having volunteered, was elected as Editor...
This is not going to be an academic journal of radical theology but an opportunity for network members to raise and discuss the many and varied questions posed by a radical understanding of faith. Whilst not shirking the need for “intellectual” content, particularly in illuminating some of the more complex corners of radical thinking, I hope that we can balance this with the “human face” of Sea of Faith through some less academic exploration of issues like worship, spirituality, education, etc...
What are the areas we could get into?... I’ve been flicking through a document entitled Some Agendas of this Conference from SoF 1. It collates comments and questions from those attending that event, many of which remain pertinent and unaddressed today.
Here’s ten for starters:
How can we guard against our radical ideas becoming elitist and inwardlooking?... How does radicalism affect our attitudes to sexuality? How to incorporate “radical theology” within the secondary school curriculum of R.E.? How can our radical beliefs aid people in their quest for spiritual growth [and] where do we discover the “sacred”? Is it Christianity or do we require a new name? What distinguishes a radical Christian from a humanist? What is the feminist contribution?... How susceptible are other faiths to radical reunderstanding? Is the “greening” of radicalism the answer to finding a practical spiritual discipline?
Does the phenomenon of SoF signify anything; is it more of an end than a beginning, or just a means of adapting to a post-Christian posture? “Religious experience”’: an interview with Don Cupitt A: There isn’t one person there any more. When we read the Gospels today, we find four very different Jesuses. But I especially like the parables, the reversalsayings, the Jesus of Luke, the Jesus of Rembrandt, the Jesus of Stanley Spencer, and the Jesus who just symbolises the needy fellow-human and the persecuted Jew.
Q: What effect does a church service have on you?
A: In the [Emmanuel] College Chapel we maintain the daily round of services.
They help me to stay with the Church and keep in touch with the Christian tradition. I like the Communion Service, which I see as symbolising God’s continual dying into humanity. So at the beginning of the service, when I am celebrating, I bow to the alter: and at the end I bow to the people. God has been dispersed into the people of God. Tom Altizer has recently written that “the Christian God is unique among deities in the history of religions because it is most fully itself in its own death”. I like that: our God, the Christian God, is defined by the way he dies into his people, a selfgiving which the Eucharist enacts. God is most himself in his own loss. You see, Christianity is not just a religion, one more of the religions. It is also the end of religion, the transcendence of religion.
Christianity is also a critique of religion, and a liberation from religion.” From No. 4 (Spring 1991) “SOF(T) Theology” by John Mann A recent editorial in Marxism ‘Today said that anything of worth in Marx had already been absorbed into our intellectual culture, so consequently there was no need for Marx-ism. The same is true of Christianity. We don’t need to turn to a theology book to consider the meaning of Christ or the value of sacrifice or the purpose of non-violence because our culture is already concerned with exactly those things and doing so (with film, video, novel, music, painting) in ways more vivid and alive than hard theologians trying to re-code old dogmas into new. “Cupitt and Art” by John Florance Don Cupitt’s most recent thought, as represented by Radicals and the Future of the Church and Creation out of Nothing, has seen the emergence of an art-model of religion... I would like to suggest some resonances between Cupitt’s thought and the work of two great artists: one a protoromantic poet (William Blake), the other a youthful composer in his eighties (Michael Tippett)...
Blake writes in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “All deities reside in the human breast”. Already we can see a link with the present Dean of Emmanuel...
Tippett, like Cupitt, works with the sources to hand, using his human resources to galvanize them into a multifaceted vision. Like Cupitt, he has a sharp sense of plurality and history, seeing man as wholly (and only too) human and rejecting ideas of claims acting upon us from outside time and history; there is no transcendent realm. And he inspiringly draws comfort, again like Cupitt, from man’s seemingly unquenchable desire to tell stories, create myth and make art out of the human imagination. As Tippett puts it: “T have been writing music for forty years.
During those years there have been huge and world-shattering events in which I have been inevitably caught up. Whether society has felt music valuable or needful, I have gone on writing because I must. And I know that my true function within a society which embraces all of us is to continue an age-old tradition, fundamental to our civilization, which goes back into pre-history and will go forward into RETROSPECTIVE the unknown future. “This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form whether visual, intellectual or musical. For it ts only through images that the inner world communicates at all. Images of the past, shapes of the future. Images of vigour for a decadent period, images of calm for one too violent.
Images of reconciliation for worlds torn by division. And in an age of mediocrity and shattered dreams, images of abounding, generous, exuberant beauty.” ...1 sometimes wish that Cupitt reflected in his own work more explicitly the profound emotional experience offered by the artists and thinkers who so clearly explore the same territory as he does, rather than continuing to work within the stringent framework of “ideas”.
From No. 5 (Summer 1991) “Head versus Heart” by Angela Barkshire When I left the RC Church a good friend of mine (a traditional realist) said, “If you go to those Don Cupitt conferences it will be all head and no heart. You've lost your faith, so I’m putting you on my prayer list”. Catholics in my area were instructed not to watch the Sea of Faith series on TV because it was “dangerous”...
However, this isn’t just an outside view. Some conference members have expressed concern (and sometimes irritation) with the bias towards the intellectual... May I suggest that the mature person has head and heart in balance and that the people I’ve listened to at conferences seem to have that balance. If Radicals were really just cold intellectuals I’d give them a wide berth!
From No. 6 (Winter 1991) “Let’s not be Total (Christian) Women” by Aileen La Tourette [Unlike Daphne Hampson] I do not find the myth of Jesus offputtingly male, and I never have done. I find it exciting and identifiable with. I too am torn on the cross of opposites which I must struggle to reconcile. I too am involved in blood and death and sacrifice as well as life, and never more so than in the throes of pregnancy, labour, childbirth and nurturance. These are not sweetsmelling pastimes, any of them. They are violent, often, and stirring and dramatic.
There is conflict here, and darkness.
One of the things I find interesting in the Mass is its structured, deliberate giving. It is decisive. it isa drama of bloodless and measured giving. There are very careful boundaries and formalities and conventions. The one who performs the ritual is in charge. S/he (I wish) gives out the bread, the wine.
One receives a little round disk, and one takes a sip. It is apportioned, measured.
The loaves and fishes were multiplied, but they were still loaves and fishes, shaped, limited. It is all defined and contained. This is a vital part of the lesson, for me. Enough is enough. And then, Go, the Mass is ended. Now you can do something else. Now mother is free to go and do her own thing, too.
Sometimes I think that’s why they don’t want women priests. Not so much that she can’t offer the sacrifice, more that she must never be allowed to stop. “Taking soundings”’: a survey summarised by Adrian Worsfold Half the number on the mailing list responded to the survey (111). 32% were female and 68% male. Neavly half were 51-65 and a further 17% were over 66. 17% fell in the 16-35 bracket whilst 36-50 accounted for a fifth... Nearly 70% are regular churchgoers; only 14% do not go at all. The highest proportion of nonchurchgoers were young. Half of all respondents were Anglicans, the next group were of no denomination and then Quakers and various Unitarian descriptions preceded all other affiliations...
There was a small backlash against feminism. Other dislikes include worship and ritual, liturgy, trying to relate to dogma, destructive criticism of orthodoxy and differences with traditional Christians, moans about the churches and the C of E, ecumenism, comparative religion, griping about the term “radicalism”, and green issues...
Although most respondents were happy with the magazine’s current title, other suggestions included Radical Religion, Re-Routing, The Radicals, Roots, Network, Godforsaken, Radical Christian, Before Death, Rediscovery, Liberation, Fifth Column, Aquarius, The Wilderness, The Grating Roar, Radical Response, Undercurrents, Thinking Radicals, Reality, Kupit...
From No. 7 (Autumn 1991) “Children in the Way” by Penny Mawdsley Many radical churchgoers, I guess, have managed to steer clear of a Sunday School teaching commitment. I am not so lucky. In a weak moment I accepted the challenge to join our Sunday School ye) i: ae Must we accept that young children are only capable of an uncritical faith?
The American child psychologist Jerome RETROSPECTIVE Bruner believed that “any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development... it is a matter of finding a courteous translation”...
If we as Radical members of the Faith Community maintain that there are absorbing theological matters which are potentially worthwhile, useful and interesting to young people before we have lost the same to the claims of the secular and materialist world outside, perhaps we should consider finding a “courteous translation” for our concerns and presenting them to children in such an attractive and challenging way that we gain (and hopefully retain) their interest in and contact with the Church from an intellectual standpoint.
For many children probably even the most attractively packaged critical religious knowledge programme would be too cerebral and we would lose such children’s allegiance. However, the repeated churning out of “safe” Bible stories and the singing of banal choruses, albeit with catchy tunes, do not appear to retain children’s interest for long either.
Are we to sit back and wait for our expupils to be taken up during their vulnerable teens and early adulthood by the thrusting and confident fundamentalist charismatic evangelical arm of the Church, and thereafter be discouraged from applying critical thought to the religious dimension of their lives? 8 (Winter 1991) “Coming Out” by Norah Gutteridge I am no academic, just an ordinary person. I am widowed, my eldest son is a scientist and a Nonstipendiary Minister, my second son died of cancer recently, he was a teacher, my youngest son is a chef and is Homosexual and my daughter runs her own cafe and is Lesbian. Just an ordinary family, the same as many others who have children who are different...
On discovering my son’s, and later on my daughter’s, sexual orientation... I was to go through every kind of desolation rising eventually to anger, chiefly at the attitudes of society, but most of all of the Church... I had to stifle my own guilt because of the Church’s teaching which said that my son and daughter were sinful and finally heal myself by becoming a counsellor to other parents...
After twelve years... I decided to “come out” to my friends... When I experienced the release of my burden I was then able to become myself again, a woman with nothing to hide and who could stand up and be counted...
Radicalism is similar, the process was almost the same in my case... I wonder how many others are wanting to change their own way of thinking, and also how many will dare “come out”, stand up and be counted - and become liberated. “Learning to Swim in the Sea of Faith’’ by Rosemarie Wedell It is meaning we are after, not “Truth”.
Truth, like “God”, is a word that has lost its former meaning. Both had meaning in the past, great and “ultimate” meaning for me, once, also. Today each of us must choose their own metaphor, concept, symbol, and create their own story, learning to share them with others in “frank and honourable exchange”. This is the way forward into discovering, in the words of fellow-story-teller Salman Rushdie in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a “thousand, thousand, thousand and one different currents/stories, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity... and because the stories held there, in the ocean of the streams of stories, are in fluid form, they retain the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, and so become yet other stories”.
From No. 9 (Spring1992) “Sing a New Song: an . introduction to Radical Christianity” by Anthony Freeman SoF IV underlined the need for a basic introduction to radical/nonrealist Christianity. This article is a tentative step towards meeting that need. The author hopes to develop these thoughts into a small book...
Christianity was born when certain Jews took the foundation stones of their religion (racial purity, circumcision, food laws and the sabbath) and did two amazing things. First, they overturned them. St Mark tells us that Jesus did it with the Jewish laws about food and the sabbath (Mark 2:27, 7:19). St Paul did it with Jewish exclusiveness and circumcision (Galatians 3:28, 5:1).
Secondly, they did not make this a reason to forsake their religion: they did it in the name of true religion. They claimed that by overturning the foundations they were not destroying but in fact saving their inheritance...
Radical Christians are doing the equivalent today... They are taking the foundation stones of their religion - belief in an objective supernatural God - and doing the same two amazing things.
Firstly, they overturn it. They say that it RETROSPECTIVE is unhelpful and/or meaningless.
Secondly, they do this in the name of true religion. Only by overturning this foundation do they feel they can save their inheritance and make possible a Christianity for the future.
People will say they are mad. Just as Jesus’ family and friends said he was mad. Just as St Paul called himself a fool many times. It is the price to pay for doing something new. But the world today needs the new radical gospel just as the Roman world needed Jesus’ and Paul’s gospel. Today’s task is to do for Christianity what Jesus and Paul did for Judaism: remake it to fit the needs of a new age... This is the new song. “Dear God” by Clare Short Dear God, As you know (or would know if you existed), I do not think that you exist.
But I have a strong concept of you, and even a continuing relationship with you.
In that sense, you do exist...
I have left you but I do still admire and like you. I am very grateful for my upbringing. It led me into my life search for what is good and right. I do hope that you do not think that this is arrogant, but it led me beyond you...
What I think you are is the quest for the goodness that is in us. What | think the devil is, is an encapsulation of the badness that is in us. What I think immortality is, is a dream for oppressed people that one day life will be fair. But it is also the fact that each of us leaves scratches and reverberations behind us that go on for ever, and a way of saying that we remember and care for ever for those we have loved who are dead...
I know that the way the world is does not square with your existence. But am grateful for the concept of you because it helps to civilise us all. [Reprinted from the New Statesman] As we wete saying...
IN THE NEXT ISSUE: Excerpts from numbers 11-20, including David Lodge (“How Far Can You Go?”), Iris Murdoch on Cupitt, SoF’s “Mission to the Churches”, Cupitt on the seige of Srebrenica and on Serrano’s “Piss Christ”, the Freeman saga, Calman’s cartoons, Dennis Potter and “Lipstick on your dog-collar”, and SoF in New Zealand and Norway.
From No. 10 (Summer 1992) “T was a “TV row vicar’!” confesses Stephen Mitchell [At Easter 1992 the BBC broadcast a “Heart of the Matter” programme featuring Stephen Mitchell and other SoF “godless vicars”, as the tabloids dubbed them].
Even before the programme was broadcast it was making headlines. John Gummer [Agriculture Minister] was accusing the BBC of propagating heresy... On the Saturday before transmission, Sea of Faith had hit the front page of The Times. Already it was being misrepresented as a 200-strong body of clergy: “Churchgoers who brave hard-backed wooden pews to renew their faith in salvation this Easter might be in for a spiritual shock when they return home and switch on their television sets.
Clergy who do not believe in the bodily resurrection, the divinity of Christ or the transcendence of God ‘come out’ in a documentary due to be broadcast tomorrow night...” I was slightly comforted by A N Wilson in the Sunday Telegraph who “found the clergymen on this programme vaguely dotty” but “liked the parson who said he recited the Creed in the same way that he would recite an epic poem”...
Thank goodness for Private Eye. They had a go at Joan Bakewell’s interviewing style. “Bakewell: You believe in the Resurrection, don’t you? Priest: Er, I suppose I do really. Bakewell: Many of your parishioners might find that offensive...” Of the 70 letters I received, 50 were supportive: “I have been in the wilderness, and your views were like a breath of fresh air”. And “Don’t let the b...s [bishops?] grind you down!” A dozen were critical or angry: “Let me tell you, the second you die you will believe in the resurrection and life after death!”.
The excerpt “Dear God” by Clare Short is credited in the source as reprinted from the New Statesman.