Noel Cheer questions the Networks’ relations with organised religion.
The Sea of Faith Network came about as a response to Don Cupitt's TV series of 20 years ago. The autonomous New Zealand Network started in imitation of the UK Network in 1993. From the start it has been a source of support and stimulation for those who, in increasing numbers, are leaving behind them the formal expressions of faith provided by the Christian tradition. "Anti-Christian"? No. "Post-Christian"? Yes, for some. "Christian-Reform"? Only incidentally. But, if we as SoF continue to locate ourselves only in relation to sof 65 May 2004 Christianity then we can look forward to a slow atrophy because our fate will follow that of the churches, a step or two behind.
We think that a response to the question ‘What do you actually believe?’ can be given only by individuals and then only on their own behalf because, in the end, faith (or profound trust) is of more importance that a recitation of propositions, such as the Christian creeds became.
The SoF Networks have no creed. We can't excommunicate or anathematize anybody. In the early sense that ‘heresy’ meant choosing for yourself rather than obeying dogma, then we are all heretics. We draw ‘freely upon our spiritual heritage without being bound by it’; and we promote ‘the quest for meaning and fulfillment as a human activity’.
So, dear shopper in the supermarket of faith, don't turn to us, (or anybody else for that matter!), for answers. But we can help you sharpen up the questions and, like Consumers' Institute, give some product if we as SoF continue to locate ourselves only in relation to Christianity then we can look forward to a slow atrophy evaluations.
I am confident that we are seeing the emergence of what might be called ‘our second constituency’.
Increasingly I meet people who have not previously had any specific religious component in their lives. They wouldn't be seen dead near a church. (Quite literally, as secular burials demonstrate!) As they move towards retirement age they ask, ‘Was that it? Was it all about merely following Darwin's script for propagating the species? Handing on the gene-baton in a species-relay race and paying the mortgage to house the products until they, too, are able to pass on their genes?’ I am increasingly meeting people who ask questions of this kind. The answers which came from traditional Christianity carry too many unacceptable assumptions for such people. They are too intelligent to fall for the Alpha programme or the ‘empty and ranting’ language of fundamentalists.
But, since they are already innately attuned to the value of a religious/ spiritual view of life and since many have had a formal education and an informal education which decades of living can bring, they find in SoF what they're looking for — without (to quote Don Cupitt) ‘the false assumption that somebody, somewhere, knows The Answer’.
Noel Cheer is Steering Committee Chairperson 2003-2004 of the New Zealand Network. This article is reprinted from the New Zealand Network’s news.
This article is reprinted from the New Zealand Network's news.