BEING BORN AGAIN STEPHEN MITCHELL was guest speaker at the Quaker Universalist conference in October. He was asked to speak to the theme “Striving to live our spiritual values”. But do we really need values? he asked. This is an edited version of his controversial talk.
Let’s take a fresh look at the idea of being Born Again t a time when many of us have As up trying to believe literal- y the truths of our faith, have largely ditched talk of the supernatural and find that the liturgies and rituals embodying those beliefs are no longer fruitful and inspiring, it may seem that all we have left to us are our spiritual values.
Some of us, at one time, may have seen our faith as giving us an understanding of how things really are — a truth about God, life, the world and ourselves. But as, for a variety of reasons, we felt the supernatural superstructure of our faith being undermined, we found ourselves wondering what we were left with.
Maybe some of us, in that situation, gave up on religion altogether and decided to live without the practice of faith and the support of a religious community. But those who have given up on religion altogether still find that they want to achieve things in the world and for themselves. How are they to do this and where will they find their inspiration? What will justify their vision and their actions? Of course, we might think, their values.
Whereas at one time it was their God, or their God’s prophets, who gave them direction, now it is their values.
For those who have given up on the supernatural superstructure of their faith but who still find themselves drawn to the practice of faith, what are they doing? How can they justify this kind of unbelieving belief? What is it “For those who have given up on the supernatural superstructure of their faith but who still find themselves drawn to the practice of faith, what are they doing? How can they justify this kind of unbelieving belief?” they discover in their faith? Of course, we may say, their values. Whereas at one time they discovered truths about themselves, the world and God in their faith, now they don’t look for such truths in their faith but they do look for values to shape their lives and their actions.
For those who find the supernatural truths of faith unbelievable, is talk about values all that is left to them? Is there nothing else left to those of us who would say that religious faith is a human creation?
I don’t think so. And if there is a move towards talking about spiritual values, and a trend to substitute valuetalk for God-talk, I don’t think it’s a very helpful move. I don’t think it’s helpful in living a spiritual life or in making moral decisions.
As a religious person, who takes part in the activities and rituals of a religious community, I don’t think I’m striving to live my spiritual values or the values of my faith. I don’t think it’s what religious faith has ever been about.
In a thought-provoking paper given to those attending this conference, Richard Eddleston gives us another reason for wanting to talk about values rather than about God. It enables people of different faith communities to talk to each other and do things together. They may not be able to agree about supernatural truths but they can agree about values. Near the beginning he says “When we tried to define the core of our beliefs in a way that was acceptable to all, we failed”.
Now this doesn’t surprise me, not because I think finding an acceptable way to define those core beliefs is difficult, but because I don’t think a religious faith has a common core of beliefs. People who belong to a religious community do share common stories and a common history. But in Christianity, for example, if we look through its history for a common set of beliefs or values, we struggle to find one. What we find are people using the bible to inspire and uphold quite opposite points of view; using the bible, for example, to uphold apartheid and undo apartheid, to uphold slavery and undo slavery, to campaign for women priests and to resist them.
Even if we say that all Christians find inspiration in Jesus, the bible, the history of the church and the Christian communities, they don’t all derive the same inspiration in the same way. They certainly don’t all find the same values to live by.
And so, as Richard Eddleston says, “Belief leads to disunity”. Belief does lead to disunity where it is thought that “My belief is that we don’t actually need values“ A still from Bernardo Belfort’s recent dramatic production of Popo/ Vuh dramatising a “gods’ eye view of creation” religious faith is about holding to a certain set of core doctrines. But we are not obliged to see faith in that way.
Believers are groups of people joined loosely by particular stories and traditions, a history and a community. A faith is like any other cultural tradition, richly varied and constantly changing.
I'd want believers to rejoice in their diversity and to see a diversity rather than a disunity.
And to believe in such a faith is to live in it, to immerse oneself in it and to find inspiration in it. Christians are initiated into their faith by baptism. They plunge into the water, or are plunged into the water. That’s what it is to believe — to dive in, to live in, to become involved in a whole set of rituals and stories and peoples.
But why does the believer do this?
When I trained to become a priest, I went to an evangelical theological college. There are some phrases used by evangelicals I still quite like: for example “being born again”, “re-created”, “re-newed”, “being made new’, “resurrected”. It seems to me that for religious believers this is the primary reason for getting involved in their faith - to be recreated, to be made new, to be born again.
Striving to live our spiritual values doesn’t seem radical enough to describe the newness described in many religious writings.
So if we try to get those involved in a religious faith together and ask them to agree a core set of values and then say “Let’s strive to realize these spiritual values”, many of those religious believers will look puzzled. “That isn’t what we are about”, they'll say. “And it isn’t the way we go about creating a new world and renewing ourselves”.
What religious believers are looking for, ’'d suggest, are new stories to be involved with and new ways of involving themselves in the old stories; new rituals and new ways of performing old rituals; new communities and new ways of being in old communities; new spiritual environments in which they will be recreated, renewed and born again.
So, we may say, let the religious believer do all this. But in the end there are real problems to be dealt with, decisions to be made, a world to be made safe. Indulging ourselves in an artistic kind of self-centred religious practice isn’t going to get anything done. Such a faith looks positively decadent, a luxury of the well-off and well-fed. What is needed is moral action. For that we need to get on with each other and find some common values.
I’m doubtful. And I’m doubtful because of what is involved in taking any serious moral decision. Take a list of values that people might agree to.
All people are created equal and are of equal worth. All creatures have intrinsic worth. Now think about some of the difficult questions people have to ask themselves.
Should I have an abortion? How should I respond to my father, who is terminally ill, and who has asked me to help him commit suicide? Should my wife and I separate? As an aid worker amongst refugees, with very few resources for the thousands of people in this camp, how am I to decide who should get those resources and who will not get them and therefore die?
Should I leave my family or the care of a relative to pursue a talent that I think I have?
One of the problems with the statement of values mentioned above is that they aren’t prescriptive enough to be of any use. It’s like the problem of God’s will. If God’s will is so detailed and prescriptive that it tells us when to stand up and sit down, then it doesn’t give us any freedom. It becomes so prescrip- BEING BORN AGAIN “Love your neighbour. Yes but who is my neighbour? Remember the story of the Good Samaritan. Go and do likewise. Yes but what is it for me to act like the Good Samaritan?” tive that it’s farcical and also robs us of the need to make any moral decisions.
If on the other hand, God’s will is too vague and woolly, it is unhelpful and so unprescriptive that we can’t be blamed for not keeping it.
Love your neighbour. Yes but who is my neighbour? Remember the story of the Good Samaritan. Go and do likewise. Yes but what is it for me to act like the Good Samaritan?
Reading the story may trigger a thought as to someone I should help.
It may enlarge my imagination. But it won’t give me a principle. We can’t derive principles from the story — if we could we wouldn’t need the story.
We could make do with the principles and forget the story. The whole point is we have to go back again and again and again and read the story and let it renew our thinking and liberate our moral imagination.
It’s the same with values. They aren’t prescriptive enough to be of any use in situations which are truly difficult. Go on all you like about the equality of people — but how does that help in the refugee camp, or in the boardroom where pay differentials are being negotiated?
Values won’t deliver what we want them to deliver. And, furthermore, values conflict. When should a child be taken into care? When should a person not be allowed to say what they want to say? What information should be freely available?
Explore these questions and soon were up against conflicting values.
And then which value will we use to resolve the conflict of values.
My belief is that we don’t actually need values.
What we need in our moral lives are lots and lots of stories - stories to go back to again and again to inspire us and enlarge our imaginations. We need lots and lots of information about the world and people’s situations in the world. We need lots and lots of forums where people can talk and talk and say what they want to do and what they would like to see happen.
We need lots and lots of tasks and projects to get involved in. We need people to encourage and affirm us. What we need is not a list of values to live by but people to live with and people to live for.
We need these things because morality is a passionate affair.
Whether we're selling our soul to the devil or giving our life to God, morality is all consuming. It’s passionate in the sense of involving the soul, the whole being. It’s also passionate because it involves suffering. Where people are faced with genuine moral decisions they are torn apart, they feel guilty, angry and lost. Sometimes they lose their sense of reason and their life.
And we need these things because morality is blindingly obvious. It’s blindingly obvious in the sense that there is so much to be done that the problem is not what to do but how to do it. It’s blindingly obvious in the sense that it isn’t at all obvious what we should do or how we snould live.
What the Good Samaritan should do is blindingly obvious. What we should do to be Good Samaritans is not at all obvious. There are 25 million people homeless in Bangladesh. It’s blindingly obvious what we should do. But what should we do?
God’s will, principles, values and ethical theories are of very little help.
What is impressive about the Good Samaritan is that he responded in the way that he did. The priest and the Levite didn’t. How are we to become the sort of people who respond in that sort of way? How are we to become changed people, new people, born again people?
What we need today is not a discussion about common values, but about common faith. A discussion about the history and the practices that have changed lives, shaken and renewed them and which may still have that power today.
Stephen Mitchell is an Anglican priest and Chair of the SoF Steering Commitee.