Ros WHEELER Faversham, Kent, UK. herringbone@lineone.net POSTSCRIPTS by Seafarer POSTICRIPTS Old old stories alman Rushdie must rank amongst the great story-tellers of our time. Not only are there the big novels, including Satanic Verses which put a price on his head, but there are all those magicalmystery children’s stories he has put together as Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Rushdie more than most surely knows the value of story-telling.
Can it, then, be the same S Rushdie who writes in the new Letters to the Six Billionth World Citizen that “As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn’t get it right.” Creation in seven days, as per one tradition? Wrong! God dancing the world into being, or vomiting out the galaxies, or impregnating himself orally to make a baby universe, as in other traditions? Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Now of course he is right, right, right to point out that our old, old stories don’t make much of a match with Newtonian or Einsteinian physics. They are not true in the way that Hansard or the telephone directory or news stories on Geoffrey Archer’s latest sleaze are true. Even when, as he acknowledges, the stories are beautiful and seductive, even when they offer the message that the primary creative impulse was love, they are not true like the earth going round the sun is true, or like evolution by natural selection is true.
What is going on here?
Bad stories hat is going on is that Rushdie is making a distinction between stories which require a purely literary response and stories to live by. For the former, we make purely literary judgments, so that this story wins the Booker and that one gets remaindered.
When it comes to the big stories, there is much more at stake. Stories to live by have to be good and true if the lives we live by them are to be good and true.
And that’s where religion’s old, old stories are so often bad stories, wrong stories, false and repressive stories.
Like Adam and Eve... a wonderful read (in King James English), but what _ has it told us about the relation of man to woman and woman to man, and how many million lives has it scarred and deformed? Like the virgin birth... reincarnation and karma... Krishna and the milkmaids... and all those stories of blind obedience, submission to authority, Chosen People, life after death...
In Sea of Faith we stress the importance of stories - and Story. But the stories have to be evaluated and reevaluated, not just for their literary merit but for what they do to us, how they teach us to live. Isn’t it time we took leave of some of the old, old stories, just as we have taken leave of the gods who inhabit them?
End of story nd replace them with what? With ew stories, of course (and our culture produces thousands of new stories every day). With a greater emphasis, perhaps, on those of the old stories which survive our critical scrutiny - like most of the parables of Jesus. But, above all, with the story we are all making up as we go along: the conversation we are holding with each other, the debates, arguments, negotiations which have replaced divine diktat, and in which we find our freedom.
Rushdie again: “Freedom is that space in which contradiction can reign, it is a never-ending debate. It is not in itself the answer to the question of morals, but the conversation about that question. And it is much more than mere relativism, because it is not merely a never-ending talk show, but a place in whiich choices are made, values defined and defended.
Intellectual freedom, in European history, has mostly meant freedom from the restraints of the Church, not the state. This is the battle Voltaire was fighting, and it’s also what all six billion of us could do for ourselves, the revolution in which each of us could play our small six-billionth part: once and for all we could refuse to allow priests, and the fictions on whose behalf they claim to speak, to be the policemen of our liberties and our behaviour. Once and for all we could put the stories back into the books, put the books back on the shelves, and see the world undogmatised and plain.” Discuss.
Swiss role D°: religion cause violence? Can religion stop it? ’ve been reading the “Geneva Spiritual Appeal” signed on October 26 by representatives of the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant faiths, and for good measure, by Cornelio Sommaruga, president of the International Red Cross, and Mary Robinson, UN Commissioner for Human Rights.
The document lists no fewer than 56 current conflicts around the world “linked to religion”, including Kosovo, East Timor and “the scandalous example of Northern Ireland”. William McComish, dean of Geneva’s Protestant cathedral and a spokesman for the organisers of the appeal, said “If you look closely at the 56 conflicts you see that they are to do with identity.
Religion is part of the identity by which one ethnic group sets itself against another”.
The appeal calls on world leaders (and the rest of us?) to refuse to invoke a religious or spiritual power to justify violence of any kind, refuse to invoke a religious or spiritual source to justify discrimination and exclusion, and refuse to exploit or dominate others by means of strength, intellectual capacity or spiritual persuasion, wealth or status.
Nail that to the gates of Jerusalem, the doors of Belfast’s churches, and the hearts of those whose ethical foreign policy includes an open-hearted refusal to discriminate when it comes to selling arms to buyers of all races, colours and creeds.
POSTSCRIPTS The organisers have had to work round the fact of cathedral evensong, and have suggested to the cathedral authorities that the service be incorporated within the Jesus “seminar”. What’s more, the idea is that the evensong sermon will be preached by — wait for it - Rabbi Dan Cohn Sherbok, himself a biblical scholar and member of SoF. If it comes off, it will surely be the first time in 2000 years that a Jewish rabbi has been the preacher at an Anglican prayer-book service. Book early (see page 5) to avoid disappointment.
Reading matters A; from our next issue, we'll be introducing a new regular feature in which our readers are invited to contribute brief reviews, notes or comments on books they have read which they think will interest others.
New books, old books, classics, whatever grabs you. Maximum 250 words, including title, author and publisher and price where applicable.
Best by email to davidboulton1 @compuserve.com, or on paper with disk where possible.
Meanwhile, some stimulating reading to be getting on with... Rodney Bamford, Honorary Canon of Southwark Cathedral, has produced The Symmetry of God, which argues that Freud’s Unconscious is “the best image we can have of God”. The story of Christ, he says, is like the stories of creation and the fall: a myth. But “myths can convey more important truths than facts”. I can already hear fundamentalist voices calling for the Funk on the road = various organisations involved in sponsoring Robert Funk’s “Jesus Seminar” tour of the UK next April have still to sort out their roles and responsibilities, but assuming that they can dot their i’s and cross their t’s, it should make for a memorable event.
Your steering committee and North-West SoF is expecting to take responsibility for the opening meeting in Manchester Cathedral on April 1 (which will only be All Fools’ Day for those who miss it).
Robert Funk’s life work has been the pursuit of the historical Jesus through objective scholarship, uncontaminated by faith commitment or religious prejudice. Bishop John Selby Spong comments that his work “will threaten the traditional, uncritical believer, but will excite, encourage and give hope to countless millions who are repelled by the theological structures which have captured Jesus”. Funk will speak in the morning session and answer questions later in the day.
The afternoon, however, should prove highly eventful in its own right.
Bible-belted | called Hicksville. _ please.
Ow y hear the story of a man Iwill call Dwight, because that i is not bhis name, who lives i ina Kentucky nbc eS town which i is not Dwight is “Minister of Music” in his local Souther Baptist church, and Sheriff of Hicksville, which has a population of 600 people, and eight churches. “I grew up here”, he says, “where the people were very loving. We were taught that the Bible was the uniquely inspired, literal, inerrant, infallible Word of God. Adam and Eve were real people, the ‘Snake really talked, and there was a boat which carried every one of the millions of life forms here on earth.” Dwight went to college and his horizons widened. He read Hardy’ s poems, Joseph Campbell on mythology, even Spong on theology and Funk on Jesus. But he stayed in the Baptist church which had nurtured him. He was one of the family. Besides, his position as music minister entitled him to an hour on the church’s computer once or twice a week.
And it was here, while surfing the Net, that he came across the Sea of Faith website “quite by accident... And now, here I am in this small Kentucky town, surrounded by radical fundamentalists who would denounce me as demon-possessed if they knew the kind of people I was talking to, communicating with SoF people all over the world, with access to all kinds of new thought-provoking ideas”.
For the present, Dwight must keep his new ideas to himself. He has shared his secret with his elderly mother, who is devastated, and terrified that “someone, anyone, might find out. All the other seven little churches that are more fundamentalist than ours would say ‘See, we told you, Dwight doesn’t even believe the Bible!’ I would lose my music _ ministry, and I'd be booted out of public office at the next election... “But it’s plain as plain can be that religion is a human creation. Sea of Faith magazine is a lifeline. I love your directness and your honest emphasis on the importance of humanism. How much we need it in grassroots fundamentalist America! I honestly have no-one here to talk to about these ideas. It can be very lonely and frustrating.” SoF’s website is at www.sofn.org.uk. For details of how to get on the SoF world-wide email discussion list, email Patti Whaley on 101335.3561@compuserve.com. And if you want to contact Dwight you can email him via davidboulton1 @compuserve.com — but no letters, — canon to be fired. Order from Free Association Books, 57 Warren Street, London W1P 5PA at £15.95.
And two excellent Unitarian books.
Unitarian Perspectives on Contemporary Religious Thought is a collection of seven essays, including a valuable introduction to Sea of Faith by Frank Walker, linking Cupitt’s work and SoF to the Unitarian and religious humanist traditions.
Available from the Unitarians at 1-6 Essex Street, London WC2R 3HY (no price given). They have also produced Celebrating Life, a book of alternative services for all occasions: religious and civil marriage, same-sex blessings, birth, divorce, death, thanksgiving. A treasuretrove of bright ideas and a stimulus to those in SoF who have been wanting us to make our own moves in this direction. From the same address, £14 plus £1.50 p&p.
My apologies, incidentally, to Unitarians for suggesting that Quakers are the only church which does not insist on belief in God. There was a time when a unitarian was someone who believed God was one, not three.
Now even the one is optional. And modern religious humanism probably owes more to the Unitarians than to any other tradition — including Friends.
Christmas, Tokyo When all the time You are wearing them.” SoF International oF may not be poised to take over the world, but we are to be found in some pretty far-flung corners. Apart from the large Network in New Zealand (which has just held its annual conference) and the smaller one in Australia (which produces its own excellent journal), this magazine finds its way to Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ghana, India, Norway, South Africa and USA. (OK, some countries have only one reader, but who’s going to point that out?).
We welcomed Peter Mavromatis from Tasmania at our Lake District SoF weekend in October. His poetry made a welcome contribution to our social evening. Try this for size: “Searching for God Is like looking for your spectacles Almighty taste A= reader fortunate enough to be able 0 get to Manchester should be sure to call at the Cornerhouse arts centre, Oxford Road, for a marvellous exhibition of the kinds of consumer goods — clothes, ornaments, fridges, wallpaper — by which virtually all of us express our taste, and so proclaim our identity.
It’s called “Taste: the new Religion”, and curator Michael Trainor writes: “Where there is choice there is uncertainty, where there is uncertainty there is doubt, where there is doubt there is religion and, as with any religion, there are always those who attempt to lead us out of the wilderness”.
If you think you define yourself more by what you believe than by what you wear, what colour you paint your walls, what you put on your mantle-piece, you need this experience. But tarry not: it closes on December 19.