POSTSCRIPTS by Seafarer POSTSCRIPTS | Hod: talking balls Taking leave of Hod o was he fired for his religious views, Se: for claiming that the disabled, unlike him, don't have "a half-decent brain", or for losing too many football matches, even with the help of his clairvoyant barmaid?
Glenn's hoddledegook reminds us that all religious faith is indeed wholly human - and therefore subject to the fallibilities and irrationalities which are part and parcel of all human activity.
Just because all religion is humanmade, we don't have to fall into the trap of supposing that there is nothing to choose between one religious view and another.
Political faith is a human creation, but that doesn't stop us from making value-choices: democracy good, dictatorship bad. In a process of continual discussion and negotiation, drawing on experience, reason and imagination, we have to sift the best from the good and the bad from the worse. And that surely goes for religion as well as politics.
Hoddle had the right to express his views - and his employers had the right to judge the expression of his views so offensive and damaging that they didn't want him representing them any longer. Would we tolerate a Health Minister, say, who expressed the sincerely held religious view that girls should have their clitoris cut out to safeguard their purity? Or an Education -Minister whose sincerely religious idea of promoting discipline in schools was to follow biblical injunctions on the use of the "rod of correction"? @ Radio times ands up who heard it! A play on BBC Radio 4 about Sea of Faith! Called Where Three Roads Meet, it was by veteran radio playwright Don Taylor, and it was broadcast on New Year’s Day (so that’s why you missed it). A vicar wakes up one morning to find he doesn’t believe... any of it. Not just the virgin birth, the resurrection, water into wine, but God himself... the lot. The only thing he hasn’t lost is his pastoral vocation. So he decides to stay put. But he hasn’t reckoned with a trinity of temptors: his wife, his bishop, and the bishop’s personal assistant.
Keep quiet, says wife. What about the children? Who else is going to give you a job when they fire you? Tell it like it isn’t.
It’s the only prudent way.
Keep quiet, says the bishop. We all have doubts... nothing to be ashamed of.
Youre not the first... Have you contacted Sea of Faith? There’s at least seventy of them like you... Write something metaphorical for their magazine (I made that bit up)... But don’t “come out” in your own pulpit.
Keep quiet, says the bishop’s assistant - if you know what’s good for you. The Church is in enough trouble as it is. Peter (the bishop) respects you, but he won’t save you if you insist on making a martyr of yourself. There’s a time to speak, and a time to keep your big mouth shut... if you get my drift...
You’ve guessed the twist. The bishop, it turns out, shares our vicar’s views, but it’s more than his job’s worth to offer support.
The wife, who has loyally backed her husband’s ministry for years, reveals that she never really believed any of it. She played the vicar’s wife out of love for him, not for God. As for the bishop’s assistant, whose god is raw ambition, he doesn’t know whom he despises most: those who do believe, or those who know it’s all nonsense but haven’t got the worldly wisdom to keep mum. Keep an ear open for the repeat@ Glimpses of heaven ere’s a good discussion point for SoFties: What offers a glimpse of heaven, yet reveals us at our most human? Bryan Appleyard’s answer in the Sunday Times: a masterpiece.
Appleyard writes: “Artistic masterpieces, along with the great religions, represent the best that we have ever been or done. We can discuss them, we can criticise them, we can even gossip about the frequently dubious lives of the geniuses responsible for their creation. But we can never finally deny them. It is a simple truth that, in certain works, we find ourselves, in the words of the poet Wallace Stevens, ‘more truly and more strange’.
Anybody who claims otherwise, anybody POSTSCRIPTS who does not glimpse something of the transcendent and the miraculous in Vermeer or Mozart, has simply not been paying attention.” So far, so great. But Appleyard pushes on. Don’t let’s hear any of this relativistic nonsense about “local products of specific cultures”. Such arguments are “corruptingly wrong” and “should, in the interests of humanity, be eradicated from the educational curriculum”.
Masterpieces are absolute. “The idea of the masterpiece, of the sacred work, is a timeless and universal aspect of human experience. It is hard-wired into our sense of ourselves and the world. We simply cannot talk ourselves out of those moments when, stunned into silence, we understand.” See what Alison Webster says to that on page 18. Then discuss® Iris Murdoch 1919-1999 God + ‘o’ ris Murdoch, who died in February, was one of those great minds who manage to discomfort both theists and atheists. Theists, because she believed passionately in a religious commitment without believing in God, and atheists because she disbelieved in God without discarding religious commitment. She would have made a great SoF conference speaker before her last illness gripped her. She said that God only made sense to her if an extra o were added in the middle. Good be in my head, and in my understanding...@ Log on, all ye faithful [°° have bowed to the inevitable and gone on line. The first site I visited was our own SoF UK website on www.sofn.org.uk, which has a lot more to recommend it than some. If you really want to dabble in cyber-religiosity you could try the Extropians, a Californiabased (where else?) group who believe that in the next millennium it will be possible to download the informational essence of their minds into their computers and thus live for ever. The Extropians figure large in a new book, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace by Australian science historian Margaret Wertheim. Her comment: “Cyber-religionists want all the good things of religion - immortality, eternal youth, a realm beyond sickness and decay, a realm to fulfil all their dreams - but they don’t want any moral responsibilities”.
Extropianism is apparently just one branch of “techgnosis”, which writer Jim McClellan describes as “a kind of information age update of gnosticism, a Christian heresy in which believers rejected the world of matter and yearned for gnosis, a flash of transcendent illumination in which individuals cast off the body and ascended to the real world of the spirit. Net culture is filled with people in search of techno-transcendence.
They long to rid themselves of their clumsy bodies and re-engineer themselves into pure information”.
I prefer Calathumpianism, whose bestknown practitioner - the very Don Cupitt of Calathupianism, or is it Calathumpomania? - was Germaine Greer’s father. Its three admirable tenets are: freedom of religion for those who want religion; freedom from religion for those who don’t want religion; and excommunication for anyone who lacks a sense of humour about religion. Come to think of it, I suppose I’m a Quaker Humanist Calathumpian, nonrealist section. There’s not a lot of us about, but wait till we publish our mission statement... on the Net, of course @ On the list ’ve also, naturally, joined the SoF email List only to find myself plunged into a vigorous series of exchanges on every SoFish subject under the sun. On-line SoFties (Seafarers never really caught on there) from all over the UK, New Zealand, North America and Europe are busy bombarding each other with their thoughts on language (how can we say language is outsideless when we can’t get outside it to find out?), nonrealism (how do nonrealists explain that their toe really hurts when you drop a book on it?) and the SoF “mission statement” (pleas for “religion as a human invention” rather than “creation”, as “creation sounds too religious...”).
There’s currently a great discussion going on around Varaghosa’s article on Buddhism as a human creation in this issue of the magazine. Yes, this issue, because Varaghosa shrewdly thought he’d try a first draft on the email list. The strength of the list, of course, is that everyone makes his or her own contribution exactly as they want to, without filtering and doctoring and tidying-up by censors and editors - a doomed breed if the Net wins out over the old steammedia, like magazines and broadcasting.
If you want to join, and don’t mind having to take in, read, file or bin a dozen or more emails a day, ranging from the brilliant to the bizarre, contact Patti Whaley at 101335.3561@compuserve.com @ Our kindly atheism ack in the world of steam publishing, I’m pleased to see good reviews for our very own This is my Story in the Methodist Recorder and in Movement, the lively magazine of the Student Christian Movement. Richard Jones, editor of the Epworth Review and a past President of the Methodist Conference, writes in the Recorder: “These stories are fascinating in their honesty, diversity and zeal to sort out the meaning of life. One might expect that, since many had had crass experiences of the Church, they would be caustic and antagonistic. Not so... The one unifying thread seems to be their deep need to be able to think freely, in imaginative ways untranamelled by dogma, and to be listened to respectfully.
For anyone feeling that need, this book is something of a must”.
He finds it “most intriguing” that the 16 contributors “sit lightly to the avowed presuppositions of the Network”, which he summarises as “all forms of religious faith are human creations”, a formulation he considers “a singularly dogmatic position” and “the kindliest form of atheism around”. But “one would not sense this when reading here, for there is no desire to say to the reader ‘now believe as I do’, but only a somewhat winsome desire that the reader should understand why faith is so awkward today and why glib Christianity is so hurtful”.
If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, let Ronald Pearse fix it for you. (Details in the ad on page 5)@ Paine in the memory =. monarchy and Lords are “as absurd as an heriditary mathematician, or an hereditary wiseman, as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate”.
Not, alas, T. Blair but Tom Paine, who celebrated his 262nd birthday on January 29. Paine played a leading part in both the American and French revolutions, and was banned from England for seditious libel. His Rights of Man and Common Sense, attacking privilege and superstition and articulating a “religion of humanity”, would make more instructive reading for our children if they replaced most books of the Bible in schools RE.
There’s a campaign to put him on a pedestal: the empty one in Trafalgar Square. But his best memorial would be a de-hereditarised House of Lords. Better still if it were also de-bishoped...@ Donald Soper: ‘gentle warrior’ Red or blue God? e’ll probably be reviewing Alan Wilkinson’s new book on Christian Socialism (forward by T. Blair) in a later issue. But I can’t let the moment pass without paying my respects to Donald Soper, who died at Christmas. No nonrealist, this other Don, but a gentle warrior for a religion of this world, focused on the quest for the kingdom of God.
Humanist Nicolas Walter called him a “true Christian gentleman”. That was a more generous tribute than some fellowMethodists accorded him: those who had been enemies of his life-long pacifism and resented his cheerful assertion that Jesus of Nazareth was the true founder of a communitarian Christianity which hasn’t yet been tried, let alone found wanting® Firing the Canon ocean “Jesus is Alive”? Nearly ten years ago, in one of its early mailings, SoF was startled to find its envelopes franked by the Post Office with this slogan, sponsored, as it turned out, by an evangelical group. It seems that “Jesus is Alive” is still alive and kicking. They have mailed supporters about the Pocket Canons (reviewed by Leslie Griffiths elsewhere in this issue), demanding that they be banned. “We believe that the Bible is the Word of God”, they say, “divinely revealed; therefore every word is true. What we don’t POSTS CRIPTS want is any fundamental questioning of that text.” Their objection, of course is to the Introductions by writers who are not themselves exactly of the fundamentalist persuasion.
Supporters are invited to pray for a ban, press the publishers to withdraw the books, or write to the Scottish Bible Board asking that the licence to use the Authorised Version be revoked. Since the Bishop of Edinburgh is one of the Introduction authors, it seems unlikely that the Board will comply. The publishers are laughing all the way to the bank.
So that leaves God. Will he answer the prayers of “Jesus is Alive”? I’m sure he will, but the answer will be No @ Geoffrey Rush as Helfgott in ‘Shine’ Jesus would, you feel, not have been an eager convert to PR. “But who knows?
God moves in mysterious ways and trying to second guess Him is pointless. Perhaps even now Heaven’s number-crunchers are wrestling with the complexities of AV with top-up and God will plump for Jenkins. On the other hand, Labour’s readiness to open nightclubs on the Sabbath may boost Tory hopes of gaining Paradise Central at the next election. Short of an NOP survey of the heavenly choirs, the only reliable indicator is John 1:18: ‘No man hath seen God at any time’, and His voting preferences passeth all understanding.” @ Hague: God is a Tory Tories target Paradise Central Te Christian Socialists are not having it all their own way. William Hague has been addressing the Conservative Christian Fellowship and claiming that whatever party Jesus favoured, at least his Father was a Tory. A Guardian leader queried this: “God’s political views are notoriously difficult to disentangle. He has of course yet to grant an interview to Martin Bashir, and His manifesto is open to wide interpretation.
Conservatives have tended to find solace in the Ten Commandments and in the more robust teachings of the Old Testament, with its emphasis on reaping whirlwinds, smoting widely, and extracting eyes for eyes. The left has preferred the more communitarian parts about blessing the poor, exalting the humble, loving your neighbours and driving out money-lenders. Jesus, smoter and emoter at different points, has been claimed by both sides. Only the LibDems have had difficulties:
God's help hine the movie had its TV premier the other night: the “true” story of pianist David Helfgott (“God’s help”) who overcomes a terrible mental breakdown to fight his way back to the concert platform. But the real David’s sister challenges the accuracy of the movie, particularly its portrayal of their father as a holocaust-haunted monster whose tragic past determines David’s troubled future.
The new film about Jaqueline Du Pré has been attacked on similar grounds. So has virtually every bio-pic:
Amadeus, Wilde, Ken Russell’s Mahler.
Stoppard’s Shakespeare in Love sits very light to history (Stoppard: “There is a point where accuracy becomes the last resort of the scoundrel”). And what about the Bard’s own Richard III? Does it matter? If these were drama-documentaries, strict fidelity to known facts would be an issue. But they are movies: dramatic constructs which have their own artistic truth - or not, as the case may be. Shine is a great movie because it tells a great story, celebrating both the mystery of art and the human spirit at its most inspirational.
The Matthew, Mark, Luke and John versions of the life of Jesus no doubt tell a different story to the ones his mother or brother or Mary Magdalene might have told. But that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate them for what they are. Great stories. And as Tom Shone writes in the Sunday Times, what’s so special about a true story? “If a story is going to insist on turning out to be true - in defiance of all the luxuriant lies that cinema has to offer - then what’s the point of it being a story?”®@ In the beginning was the work inah Livingstone, who wrote that Darcelient poem Time on Earth which we uncharacteristically splashed over several pages of issue 32, has edited a fascinating anthology called simply Work, looking in prose, verse and oralhistory transcripts at the experiences of hospital cleaners, midwives, carpenters, clerks, farmers, temps, tarmac makers and more. The sub-text is an uncompromising indictment of “the neoliberal global market with its cuts, casualisations and pursuit of profit, whatever the cost to workers and the earth” - but you’d be wrong to dismiss this as just another last gasp of Old Labour. The voices here ring true, and it is hard experience rather than political theory which gives the book its strength.
The anthology opens with an extract from William Morris’s visionary 1887 essay How we Live and How we Might Live, which converted thousands to ethical socialism, and concludes with a very SoFish (but left-SoF) essay by Dinah herself on Work and Life, first given as a lecture to the South Place Ethical Society in 1997. Work is published by Katabasis, 10 St Martins Close, London NWI1 OHR, at £12.95.
Worth it@ Snowballing, St Peter’s Square, Rome Lines from the Oval Orifice alking of poetry, Patti Whaley sends me the following moving lines from a new collection called Poetry under Oath: “There are no curtains on the Oval Office There are no curtains on my private office There are no curtains or blinds that can close The windows in my private dining room.
The naval aides come and go at will.” Yes, it’s verbatim testimony from the Bill and Monica show, arranged as free verse. “Better poetry,” Patti comments, “than most people can write intentionally” @