POSTSCRIPT Clive Richards So this is it - my last SOFMAG as Editor - and the eleventh edition, including this year's sample number, since the beginning of 1990. When I embarked upon the magazine project at the end of 1989 I had no idea where it was going or whether it would last. Rather like SOF itself ! But thanks to the efforts of over fifty contributors this curious little publication has continued to appear every quarter to baffle, stimulate or annoy its diverse readership. Those of you who have been along from the outset will have observed me going through a process of 'refinement' on the design front. Looking back at the first issue I'm torn between thinking that it looks rather quaint and being a little embarrassed it ever went out looking as it did ; a case of 'growing up in public'.
SOF Magazine 10, Summer 1992 Many of our newer readers will have at least a flavour of what appeared in earlier issues from the compilation edition we have been using as a 'promotional tool' this year. Network membership had slumped to around 130 when I sent out the last magazine in April but some general advertising, as well as conference advertising and feedback from The Heart °title Matter has boosted the Mailing List to over 300 with applications still coming in ; SOF V is set to be our biggest conference yet with around 175 bookings.
Since the Network has added over one hundred and fifty new members in the last few months, there must be now be quite a reservoir of potential new writers to assure SOFMAG's future with David Boulton in charge. I hope newcomers will have the confidence to submit material, particularly after some of them have attended SOF V which promises to be as energizing and exciting an event as its four predecessors. But do get stuck in and get writing if you have something to say. After all, four of the contributors to this issue have become associated with SOF only in the last three months.
I am relinquishing the editorship now for a variety of reasons, not least of which is potential upheaval on the home front which seemed very likely back in the autumn when I decided to go. In the past I have produced the magazine whilst shuttling between Loughborough and Bristol during a protracted house move - a situation I have no wish to repeat. My computer is portable but only in a getting-theorig final-boxes-down-from-the-loft-and-wrapping-themin-blankets kind of way !
Although the prospects of an imminent move linked to my partner's job have receded somewhat I still think this is a good time to step down. The Network is growing just now and I think that the way things seem to be going perhaps someone a bit more attuned to a Christian perspective is required. For some time now, as a secular non-churchgoer, I have been feeling rather out of step with the direction of SOF's interests - particularly as reflected in contributions to the magazine. Although SOF does not portray itself as an exclusively Christian affair on its subscription form anyone reading the magazine this year could only conclude that SOFs concerns were very definitely Christian and, furthermore, institutional, and this fairly reflects the material submitted lately. Given the Network's origins and Western cultural history in general, a solid Christian-oriented content is entirely appropriate but a I'm wary of a growing exclusivity of focus.
I have valued greatly the opportunity, through SOF, of meeting Christians who while remaining in their churches have been interested in looking outward from them to consider faith and belief in a broader context, even where this has meant contemplating a sorry future for those churches in some cases. I was perhaps naive to hope that SOF could be a forum, a test bed even, for what might indeed constitute a vision/version of 'religion' within the wider context of postmodernism with its collapsed absolutes, plural truths and eclecticism. Particular concern about church membership and the elasticity of Christian identity strikes me, as it is bound to from my 'unchurched' standpoint, as peripheral to trying to discern anything sacred worth affirming amongst the rubble of the castles of faith of previous eras.
SOF has been, and maybe still is, a watershed phenomenon open to various possibilities of engagement with the creation of meaning and value, including a post- or extra-ecclesiastical perspective. I think it germane to include the latter since the church is not going to change significantly because that is not what the minority of people in society who are involved with the church themselves want - who is going to settle for the insecurity of a mobile home when there's a well equipped castle on offer ? But even amongst the radical minority within this minority the tendency to fortification manifests itself in the working out of a systematic Radical Christianity, demanding a wing of the castle for itself, or in a wilder, more utopian mood capturing the whole citadel.
I admit that in the past I have written about, tried to imagine some vision of, 'Radical Christianity', partly in an effort to stir debate in the early issues of the magazine and partly as an exercise to explain to myself what it might entail. For those who find meaningful direction and expression for their lives in the sub-culture of organised Christianity, and want to stay there, there may be other reasons that centre around maintaining a sense of twk3ng/ng. I am reminded that Stephen Mitchell once observed very candidly: "Most of the theological contortions have been performed because I felt I had to justify my place in the church. I have tried to produce a Radical Christianity because I felt that I had to be able to describe myself as a Christian." SOFMAG #4, Winter 1990-91 On reflection, I have become convinced that whilst it is quite possible for there to be theologically radical Christians, able to negotiate a place and function symbiotically within the host body of the traditional Church, I find a Radical Christian* shorn of all the attractive and comforting supernatural stuff and with a sign up outside saying 'INTERPRET, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE' rather unlikely. An infant unlikely to thrive. But hey, what ob /know ?
My point at the end of all this, as I shift from being editor to being a reader, is a plea for SOF to keep its scope wide and remember there are resources outside of Christianity upon which to draw and reflect.
It doesn't all have to be re-interpretation !
Over to you, David ....
CLIVE RICHARDS works at home in Bristol. He has been closely involved with SOF since joining the original Organising Committee after SOF I. A Steering Committee member since its inception, he has edited and produced SOFMAG since October, 1989, but is stepping down after this issue. 24 SOF Magazine 10, Summer 1992