GOODIES AND BADDIES Adam Thomson We in the West have a habit of dichotomizing the world - black and white, left wing and right wing, them and us. And we in SoF are no exception. We have split the world into two categories - them as are "bad" (realists), and them as are "good" (non- or anti-realists). The last Sea of Faith magazine's editorial ("Life after Leicester") illustrates this point: "a superstitious, supernatural world-view..." (bad), and "it's good to be free of all that..." (good).
I have questions about this approach, especially as a basis for exploring religious faith. Faith, as part of the human condition, is a rich and many-faceted affair. There are certainly more than two points of view. With this in mind, I have to ask, do we need to rate "a superstitious, supernatural world-view" as something nasty that the cat brought in, and to view it with the same distaste that Dr Ian Paisley probably regards Popery? Do we need to dismiss out of hand - in the manner of the protagonists of Northern Ireland, or the Middle East, or elsewhere - the Propositions of the "other side"? Do we need to view those whom we consider (condemn?) as realists, as the enemy? Let's not indulge in theological sectarianism - it will eventually destroy any credibility SoF may have.
Whether we like it or not, supernaturalism is a world-view of a good many people. Even with what we consider our theologically "superior" position, we need to treat people who hold this world-view with collegiality, sensitivity, understanding and compassion. In the Freeman saga, for instance, should we be casting the Bishop of Oxford - and perhaps others - in the role of baddies? There are many who have been immersed in supernatural mythology all their lives, and who try to adhere to and act out the ethic of Christian service to their fellow human beings. The world could ill afford to do without these people. We do not need to knock the props out from under, without having something to put in their place. Besides, it's unstrategic unnecessarily to create hostility.
In our debates we need to remind ourselves that we are not pondering a mundane question like what time the post should arrive each morning - we are dealing with something which affects human lives at a profound level, and which influences the way we live and move and have our being. Airily to dismiss that which has sustained a lot of people (including bishops, and, I dare say, a number of us) for many years, is asking for trouble. Reality is reality. A non-real god is reality for some, a real god is "...a direct, brutal confrontation between realism and non-realism does not, in and of itself, release the human spirit, or propel people into the future..." reality for others. We meddle with "reality" at our peril - and certainly very carefully.
The important issue - which I believe originally brought together the Sea of Faith Network - is not, I suggest, realism as such, but its perversion, namely supernaturalism: the condition where we assume that there is some outside power rationally capable of influencing our lives.
It was in 1971 that I personally had to deal with this issue. At that time I was a mainstream occasional churchgoer. I decided to attend a weekend course subtitled "The Twentieth Century Theological Revolution". That course changed my life, and I changed my career as a result. One of the memorable moments in the course was when the leader, after we had had a morning of intense study and deep group discussion, asked of the group, "So who decides God's will?" and we were able to declare "We do". After some struggle we had been able to see that we as human beings effectively decided the course of human history. At no time during the course had we been exposed to anything other than the writings of four key respected theologians - Bultmann, Tillich, Bonhoeffer and H Richard Niebuhr - and relating them to our own experience of life. And at no time did the course leader assert that God was one thing or the other, and we were not asked to do so either. All the conclusions we came to during the course were our own.
The principle behind the methodology used during the course has guided my work ever since: that it is possible to facilitate people to make their own authentic discoveries about life.
It is from this standpoint that I have to say that a direct and apparently brutal confrontation on realism/non-realism does not, in and of itself, release the human spirit, and doesn't propel people into the future. I think there is a way for SoF to facilitate people to discover for themselves - or to experience that they are discovering for themselves - the inappropriateness (or otherwise) of the supernatural approach to contemporary religious faith. The supernaturalist mindset - perceived restrictions to one's thinking, organisation and action because of an external rational supernatural power operating within a hierarchical framework - does need to be confronted, but it needs to be done with compassion, strategically and with skill. The key is presenting things in such a way that people can make up their own minds.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Ouch! Did I really write such an unsubtle, unstrategic, uncompassionate, confrontational piece? What I did write (in what should have been a signed article, but my name dropped off the end) was this: "We may not always know where we are going, but we know sure enough what we have left behind: a superstitious, supernatural world-view fashioned in antiquity, moulded to the needs of Dark Age societies, embellished in medieval times, and now dead but refusing to lie down. It's good to be free of all that, good to shake it off, and good to join with others in constructing a framework of meaning which meets our postmodern condition, drawing on the rich and potent symbols and metaphors of religious language where it helps, and creating new ones where it doesn't." A touch smug, perhaps, but nothing there, and nothing intended, about "baddies" or "the enemy" or "the other side". No "condemnation", no Paisleyite hymn of hate. Certainly no assertion of the "superiority" of our theology, but a plainly (if inexpertly) expressed recognition that there is a difference between the conservative view of religious faith as God-revealed and the radical view of religious faith as a human creation, and that what SoF is all about is the exploration, promotion and celebration of the latter.