SoF Magazine No. 24, January 1996 NOTES OF AN HISTORIAN on reading the first three articles in the ‘Streams which Feed the Sea of Faith’ series’ by Olive Brose A? excellent idea and surely appropriate for such a magazine. The three, together with Anthony Freeman’s book God in Us as the Anglican stream, may prove helpful in discerning an appropriate path for the Sea of Faith Network to follow in the future.
Both Quaker and Humanist state clearly and persuasively the positive beliefs contributed by their respective traditions. But these beliefs are presented in terms of what their adherents were and are against: ecclesiastical institutions, powerwielding authorities of church and/or state. These were and are seen as obstacles to the Friends’ ‘inward light’, or as preventing Humanists from developing a non-religious spirituality.
The Society of Friends has the narrowest historical focus, shaped by its origin in the explosive politico-religious civil wars of 17th century England. Mr Boulton’s use of the 20th century word ‘totalitarian’ for Stuart absolutism reveals a 20th century mind-set. So does the comparison of the fall of the Stuart monarchy with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Be that as it may, the focus is on how the forces of religious and political freedom fought and still fight the good fight against the power of Church and State. His concluding sentence triumphantly proclaims: ‘There are no Popes, no Bishops of Chichester, and therefore no Anthony Freemans in the Religious Society of Friends.’ Where, in this historical perspective, is an awareness that a larger entity ever existed, namely, a Christian Society called Christendom, or that this entity was finally and completely fragmented at the Reformation? Initially, power shifted from Pope to King or Prince in the early modern nationstates. None of them conceived of pluralism in religion, for the simple reason that the concept of a Christian Society retained a certain validity, which of course suited rulers: unity of faith within the borders of each state — cujus regius ejus religio — (a sentiment ultimately inverted in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688).
In Tudor England the mechanism of the Elizabethan Settlement provided for outward unity of observance and inner freedom of interpretation, nicely summed up by Elizabeth’s well-known words about not wishing to make windows into men’s souls. But as the absolute authority of the Bible was also replacing the Pope, such unity in diversity proved impossible. Wave after wave of sectarian dogmatic or ecclesial claims flourished, and the individualism of ‘the Bible according to Everyman’ aided the Parliamentary struggle for power under the banner of political and religious freedom.
Humanism, Margaret Chisman tells us, ‘is itself quite a large river’, discernible in Greek and Roman philosophy, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the 17th and 18th century: scientific and political revolutions. Its current visibility, however, is the result of the “steady decline of organised religion and the general secularisation of society’. Ethical principles, secularist free-thought, rationalism and social issues characterise the four main humanist organisations. Not surprisingly, Ms Chisman feels the need of a non-religious spirituality as an essential component of human nature.
Finally, the Roman perspective. Here, Amold’s Sea is awash with The Sea — the See (!) of Rome, ancient, medieval and modern, but a/so including many ‘streams . . . running half-hidden in valleys’.
Popes and official pronouncements remain (the Rock around which the streams flow?), but so do the streams and Mr Challenor’s ‘Catholics for a Changing Church’.
By concentrating on one principal stream, the Negative Way, Mr Challenor has contributed a ' David Boulton for the Quakers (SoF 20, January 1995), John Challenor for the Roman Catholics (SoF 21, April 1995) and Margaret Chisman for the Humanist (SoF 22, July 1995) SoF Magazine No. 24, January 1996 much needed insight into the age-old human quest for meaning. From ancient times this search has acknowledged the sphere of mystery and the unknown in speaking of God, providing ‘an inescapable element of agnosticism’. For Denys the Areopagite, God was not an object but a mystery; for Abbot Symon, God was known ‘not as an objective fact but as a_ subjective personal enlightenment’.
It is also good to be reminded that the liberal humanism of the Renaissance was welcomed within the pre-Reformation church. Here, I think, mention might have been made of Erasmus, John Colet and Thomas More. Reactionary currents of course set in after the Reformation — lasting until Vatican II, itself a re-emergence of yet another stream: the Conciliar tradition. Despite John Paull], a Hans King can lecture on ‘Rediscovering God’ through embracing anew the mystical way with its affinities; via Thomas Merton, to Buddhism.
This brief romp over 2,000 years is revealing in several ways. On the institutional level a John Paul II is offset by a John XXIII, and for Anglicans a Bishop of Chichester by a John Habgood, the recently retired Archbishop of York. My husband and I happened to be in York over Easter and heard him deliver a fine, open-ended Easter message. And in that day’s Observer, a survey of the current religious scene quoted him as saying: “You can think of faith as a package or you can think of it as a faithful exploration within a tradition . . . We could haul up the drawbridge and say, this is our citadel of faith; or we can see ourselves as pilgrims, knowing the broad direction in which we want to go.”!
This approach seems to me a fair description of Anthony Freeman’s own position in God in Us, which provides sensitive, thoughtful guidelines for such an exploration. Why not today make use of our entire cultural and religious tradition in a profoundly new way? Quaker inwardness and Humanist rationality have always been a part, but not the whole, of humanity’s search for meaning.
Equally important has been a striving for beauty in all its forms — in buildings, in music, in poetry — as expressions of our highest aspirations. The problem has always been parts separating themselves from the whole. Dogmas are not solely " ‘Looking for Paradise in a Parking Lot’, by Melanie Philllips. /But note that in a letter to the Guardian, /] August 1994, Dr Habgood supported the Bishop of Chichester’s dismissal of Anthony Freeman. — Ed.] the product of institutions, but of an all-too-human desire for certainty, whether religious, scientific or humanistic. It would be a pity if a movement such as the Sea of Faith were to view itself as somehow separate, with its own form of dogmatic antidogmatism.
Picture instead Matthew Arnold’s ebb tide on its return — the same old sea given new meaning and life, those roaring pebbles further polished and reshaped by their journeys back and forth. In her Humanist article, Ms Chisman spoke of sensing today a ‘dawning awareness of something waiting to be born’. I would like to suggest that this something may be the currently emerging new world/cosmic-view which perceives the universe as organically one and all life as interdependent and interrelated. ——— ——= You can think of faith as a package or you can think of it as a faithful exploration within a tradition . . .
This understanding of the cosmos requires of us a revolutionary shift in our concept of the human species. Both Western culture and the Christian tradition still cling to the belief that our species is apart and superior to all other forms of life. The stupendous increase in human power and control since the 17th century has been bound up with a_ mechanistic theory of nature which has influenced our habits of thought and shaped our lives. Today scientists themselves are in the process of discarding this mechanistic view. Nature is once again animate, alive, evolving. In this process, many of those half-hidden streams of our 2,000 year tradition may again surface — for example the exuberance of Romanesque religious sculpture certainly envisioned the natural world as very alive indeed, and the ascetic, monastic search was for simplicity and a frugal way of life.
Rupert Sheldrake has pointed out the profound implications of this idea of living nature: a new kind of science, a new understanding of religion, and most importantly a new relationship between humanity and the rest of the living world.” Perhaps another series of articles for the Sea of Faith magazine might explore these themes in greater depth, with a focus on how we need to change our own lives if we are to live responsibly on this planet. ? The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God, by Rupert Sheldrake (New York: Bantam Books, 1991).