At the 2018 SOF Annual Conference Jane Howarth led a forum asking some Questions on the Beach. Here is her introduction.
I still remember clearly the seismic effects when, in my late teens, I decided that there was no God. There was no SOF and John Robinson had not yet published Taking Leave of God. It was a wilderness experience and lonely. Fortunately, when years later I met my husband Miles he turned out to be a Unitarian and that gave me a community where I can be myself in company.
Any shift from a traditional view of religious teaching to that of SOF has consequences. Whatever the reason for the shift it is unlikely to solve all the riddles. It may raise questions to which the traditional teaching provided answers, answers which no longer work. Some people can square that circle, but for those of us who can't there can be uncertainty, even disorientation. The Forum was designed to encourage anyone trying to develop their own faith with integrity. It was for those who wanted to look at some of the questions that are left on the beach when the realist religious tide ebbs away.
In his book Religion for Atheists Alain de Botton examines 'aspects of religious life which contain concepts that could fruitfully be applied to the problems of secular society.' He wants to rescue what is 'beautiful, touching and wise from all that no longer seems true' (p.19).
US President Thomas Jefferson wrote the so-called Jefferson Bible, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (completed in 1820, published posthumously). He cut and pasted Jesus' teachings into a book, leaving behind all 'the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests.'
Lloyd Geering is quoted in the June 2018 edition of Sofia as saying, 'I was grateful to the church and to Christianity because it provided a framework to orient myself and a framework for living.' But the article by Anthony Freeman makes it clear that this was a framework without God, or literal resurrection, life after death, or immortal soul.
In his book Culture (2016) Terry Eagleton, Distinguished Professor of English Literature, University of Lancaster, explores whether, at a time when God's apparent disappearance threatens to become a source of social instability, culture might step into God's shoes. Eagleton suggests that if religion's hold over humanity has begun to loosen, then the values it holds dear must migrate elsewhere. However culture has so far failed to take over religion's mantle. 'It involved too tiny a fraction of society… it was too riven by conflict to provide a source of unity, uplift and consolation' (p.141). Eagleton warns: 'Left to its own devices, nature [human nature] will not redeem us. It harbours destructive forces as well as regenerative ones, and one of the problems of culture is how to defuse the former without diminishing the latter.'
Four perspectives suggesting, firstly, that something looking like religion is needed both for ourselves as individuals and for society. None of these four quotations supports traditional, realist religion. They are not suggesting a new religion, but a new approach to religion. De Botton suggests that secular culture should somehow emulate religion. We should erect beautiful secular buildings to rival the beauty of cathedrals. However, there are already some wonderfully beautiful feats of secular architecture that have become places of pilgrimage. Some are galleries or museums. The inspirational genius behind the architecture, art and artefacts, and the accounts of humanity's doings are there, just as they are in religious buildings, and this time they belong to all humanity, not just those of a particular belief system.
To what extent does our reaction to beauty or story rely on context? Does the fact that a building has religious significance add to its impact? Why should it? Is the contrast between religious and secular buildings in fact, between those buildings that speak to visitors of the familiar stories of humankind's relationship with God and those where visitors have no common starting point? A group of secular buildings that did that for me were those remaining at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Other people have spoken of the effect on them of the Royal Albert Hall.
Other secular buildings, however beautiful, may not engage us emotionally. Any messages they hold about human endeavour are unrelated to a wider narrative that addresses two of the human needs that de Botton identifies: the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones and to our decay and demise (p.12). Alain de Botton, though at times unrealistic about the actual goings-on in Church communities, stresses, I think quite rightly, the need that humans have for communities and rituals, within which to develop their values and which encourage behaviour that is consonant with those values. Is this need driving what is happening spontaneously in crowd-funding and in the mass laying of flowers for strangers killed in the street? What about the Sunday Assembly? Where is SOF in all this?
We know that the influence of a group is powerful, for good or bad. In SOF we have a group with values that are not entirely conscious or expressed. They cluster round the importance of recognising human responsibility for religion, and the need to explore the realities of life in ways that develop our rational and emotional insights. We have not, as a movement, tried to develop new ways of expressing truths about life and our experiences in poetic and uplifting or supportive ways. Neither have we taken any responsibility that I know of for supporting our members beyond the written word and the scattered local groups. Questions on the Beach was my attempt to help people whose changed beliefs meant that traditional answers failed.
In his Solarity Religion and Philosophy Club material for schools, Dave Francis provides starting points, tools for thinking and structures within which to develop pointers to behaviour. If it is all right to do this for children in after-school clubs, why is there so little enthusiasm for seeking new ways of theological and spiritual expression and living that could help the wider community where increasing numbers of people identify as having no religion? In the early years an influential body of SOF members feared that we could become a new religion, damaging Christianity. They thought that if we wanted a religious community we could tune out the realist theology. In today's world, however, I think we should either build on our insights, or go out of business.
Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah in his 2016 Reith Lectures suggested that a static understanding of religion or culture is a form of confinement. He also suggested that culture is not a box to check, it is a process you join, a life lived with others. Part of that process is to care about culture's values, as those values have no reality unless you sign up to them. Our world is in dire need of non-sectarian candles, and we need to develop language and practice that allows us to join with others whose approach we share, in order to offer what we have more effectively.
Can we improve the communication between ourselves and both the liberal religious and secular world? Both religion and philosophy attempt to express abstract ideas and have developed their own specialist language. How can we communicate effectively about religious, philosophical, moral and ethical issues when these linguistic starting points are so different? SOF's belief that religion is created by humankind opens the door to closer understanding with humanist and philosophical groups. Together we could work towards genuinely expressive language and towards a framework for living together, supported by shared insights. We could join others seeking to answer the needs for uplift and support that de Botton identifies. We could do more to separate the wisdom in our respective religions from what is no longer believable, providing cultural continuity.
Jane Howarth is the Convenor of the Wessex SOF Group.