Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks...
This could have been, but was not, the motto of the Politics and Green Issues strand! There may have been a touch of confounding, but a hectic timetable left little room for either frustration or knavish tricks.
Trudi Newton ran two workshops on the uses and abuses of power. Anthea Boulton facilitated two discussion groups on green issues entitled ‘Eco-humanism: towards a global vision’. Don Pincham ran two groups on ‘Religion in Schools: teaching faith as a human creation’. And Peter Lumsden and Kathy Kelly (from Chicago) led two groups looking at ‘Radical Theology and Radical Politics: what's Left for SoF?’ All this was packed into the smallest of the three strands.
The word ‘politics’ has such negative associations for many that even our emphasis on green issues and social concern in its widest sense wasn’t enough to tempt some from the more familiar paths trodden by the Theology and Rituals strands. But 65 of us began the process of looking at the implications of our SoF position for our community life.
As a broad framework for our discussions I prepared a series of Questions, suggesting that groups address those which seemed appropriate to their theme. In reporting back to the plenary session of Conference on the final morning I offered some tentative and provisional Answers, making it clear that they represented my personal reflections on the robust discussions which had taken place within the strand. Some of the Questions and Answers ran as follows:
Are we agreed that our ‘humanist’ view of religious faith has political implications?
A: Not really! As a Network we are agreed on nothing other than our stated object to explore and promote religious faith as a human creation. Some of us feel squeamish about the word ‘politics’. Some fear a hidden agenda here. Some are quite emotional about it. On the other hand, there is a substantial number who say that religion and politics are inseparable: that feeding the hungry, empowering the powerless, loving our neighbours and our enemies, and halting the raping of Planet Earth are both religious and political imperatives. But we are not all agreed — which is why we must go on exploring together.
To what extent should the Network seek eventually to adopt an official view?
A: Probably not at all. We are not yet a movement, though we are perhaps on the verge of becoming one. As a network of individuals we can share our concerns with each other and, where we find common cause, we can decide, if we so wish, to act together. But not in the name of the Network, or in such a manner as would seem to commit the whole Network.
Do we see power as corrupting and divisive, or to be pursued as the means of putting our principles and policies into effect?
A: Of course the pursuit of power can be corrupting and divisive, but to opt out of the power struggle is to make a political choice: a political choice for impotence. We cannot feed the hungry and empower the powerless until we have acquired the power to do so. The pursuit of power to change the world for the better is wholly honourable, and not to be sneered at.
Religion — at its — best offered visions of a better world, a ‘kingdom of heaven on earth’, a ‘new Jerusalem’. Is there still a place for such visions? On what are they based, if no longer on the belief that ‘God is working his purpose out’? Is Progress an illusion? Has Utopianism (Christian, Marxist or other) failed? Must it inevitably fail?
A: Without vision the people perish. We still need our Utopian vision of the kingdom of heaven on earth, a new Jerusalem. The old, old stories still offer us such visions.
That is what the stories are for. We understand that the stories always were just that, stories, and the visions always were just that, visions. We understand, too, that if these visions are to be realised, we human beings are the ones who will make it happen. ‘No saviour from on high delivers’, in the words of the Internationale! No God, realist or non-realist, just us. And there’s no guarantee we’ll succeed. Indeed, our human fallibility guarantees that we'll never succeed completely. Progress is an illusion if we choose to make it so, a reality if we so decide and act accordingly. But to stop dreaming the dream, to discard the vision, that is to abandon hope, and to abandon hope is to abandon a religious dimension.
Are we human-centred or eco-centred? Is Don Cupitt's proposed ‘eco-humanism’ a contradiction in terms or an idea whose time has come?
A: We are not sure! Some of us are still scratching our heads over old terms like ‘non-realism’, so ‘ecohumanism’ is a new buzz-word to unscramble. But to some of us it offers a useful way of bridging the gap between a fundamentalist kind of humanism which sees human happiness as the most important goal and an ecological idealism which seeks to emphasise the integrity and inter-connectedness of the natural world of which humanity is a part. In one sense we cannot help be humancentred. We are human animals, not any other kind of animal. We see and experience the world through human eyes and human senses. We have a uniquely human kind of consciousness, and we think, speak and write about our world of experience in human language. In this sense we are at the centre, whether we like it or not, and we cannot leap from the centre of our perceived universe to the circumferance, or to some viewpoint beyond and outside — except in our creative imagination. We can imagine, and therefore construct, a world centred on the whole long magnificent evolutionary process, the ‘River out of Eden’, and thereby reconcile our human-centredness to a radical eco-logy — literally, talk of our earthly homeland. So to insist on our specialness alone, without that leap of the imagination, is to be narrowly human-centred. To mistake the imagination for reality is to be eco-centred. But to recognise that the human-centred can be transformed by imagination into a global vision is eco-humanism. It used to be called ‘reverence for life’. It is surely an idea whose time has come.
Who are our allies in seeking what Cupitt (in his Conference address) calls ‘a large-scale vision, a global religious ecohumanism '?
A: All who will work with us, godly and godless. This doesn’t mean that as a Network we affiliate to Friends of the Earth or spend our members’ subs on Save the Whales. But it does mean Network discussion, research and investigation, and Network support and encouragement for those who feel impelled to green activism.
Should our school children be ‘taught religion’, or taught about religion?
A: About religions, which means being introduced to the variety of faith traditions without indoctrination in any one of them, even the one which has most influenced our broader culture. Let’s be clear that to get that will require political action. Religious education is just about as political as you can get.
Should we press for all religions to be taught as human creations?
A: We should consider how best we can work with other like-minded organisations in seeking a change in emphasis whereby religious faith traditions come to be seen in their historical and cultural contexts. This is something we may choose to do collectively, as a Network, as a direct consequence of our constitutional aim to ‘promote religious faith as a human creation’. Or, more cautiously, we may choose to do it as individual teachers or parents.
What contribution can the Network make to the historic task of religious and social radicalism: comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, putting down the mighty from their seats and exalting the meek and the weak?
SoF Magazine No. 23, October 1995 A: Whatever contribution it chooses, and however it chooses. But its members cannot sidestep this imperative if they are to profess a radical religious humanist faith.
As Lenin famously put it, ‘What is to be done?’ Now that we have begun an exploration of the political, social and ecological implications of our radical brand of humanism, what should we do next to ensure that the subject stays on our Network agenda?
A: We have made a start. While we have found as much to disagree as to agree about, we have recognised that culturally and historically evolved faith traditions, which are the only faith traditions the human race has ever had, are about community or they are about nothing of value.
Some still reach for the protective holy water when they hear the word ‘politics’, but few would banish community from our agenda. So we must think more, discuss more, imagine more, write more, study more, learn more. If we are to develop a growing series of Network publications exploring and promoting what is distinctive in our approach and our viewpoint, let us be sure we include community concerns — social justice, protection of the planet — among the subjects we tackle. Let's consider appointing working parties to research areas we are ignorant about, and so generate further discussion and debate. Not with a view to a Network political manifesto, but as part of the process of networking with each other.
Whatever we do, don’t let’s do nothing. And don’t let’s allow those who do prefer to do nothing to inflict their political celibacy on the rest of us. ** *& Finally, when strand leaders were asked for their final reflections as the Conference drew to a close, I offered these four points: 1. Perhaps we should talk less of religion and more of the spirit. Not some disembodied ‘Holy Spirit’, but the human spirit and its fruits: mercy, pity, peace, love, laughter, beauty, joy and community. 2. Let’s hold on, at all costs, to our open framework, where anything can be said without fear of ridicule or rebuke, where our ideas and intuitions can take their place among others’, where our confusions and doubts as well as our insights and enthusiasms can be shared among friends. 3. Let’s go on trying to marry head and heart. Let’s think rationally and imagine creatively. 4. Let’s talk ‘we’ as well as ‘I’, ‘us’ as well as ‘me’. Let's develop our ideas about individual and community action.
Let's become doers as well as talkers. = * * A warm Thankyou to all who helped make the strand a stimulating exercise — and that means all who joined.
There were times when we generated so much laughter that it seemed that Bishop Spong, not content with smuggling a real God onto the Leicester campus, had also let loose a touch of Toronto Blessing. We enjoyed ourselves — and considering the daunting problems we discussed, that was quite an achievement.