SEAfarer PROMOTION PROSPECTS What do we mean when, in our Statement of Intent, we talk of "promoting religious faith as a human creation"?
Exploring the idea is clear enough: we debate, argue, kick it around, feel out its strengths and weaknesses, test it against our experience and that of other explorers, and try to work out the practical implications. But promoting?
That's a different matter.
We tend to share a revulsion against anything that smacks of evangelism and proselytising. The assumption by any body - church, political party or creator of new isms - that it possesses the Gospel Truth to which it wants to convert us is deeply unappealing: especially when the only truth we can confidently assert is that there is no absolute truth, that even truth is provisional. So "promoting religious faith as a human creation" is unlikely to drive us to our soapboxes.
The description of the Sea of Faith Network which appears on the new' 1993/4 membership form (and on page 2 of this issue) perhaps helps a bit. SoF, it says, "promotes the validity of creative, human-centred religion". But that's a very modest commitment. It could mean no more than that we defend the right of people to hold such views, and will act in solidarity with any of our members who get into trouble with their bishops or overseers or whatever. The question I am asking is: shouldn't promotion mean rather more than this? Specifically, should we promote the Network, and if so, how?
Two arguments are sometimes advanced for not doing more than we do to promote the organisation. One is that, with approaching five hundred members, we are already near the limit of operating effectiveness. If our conferences get bigger they will lose their informality and spontaneity; if our membership grows, the task of servicing it with newsletters, magazines, meetings will put an intolerable strain on already seriously overburdened voluntary officers. But there is surely a complacency at the heart of this argument: we don't want to spoil what we've got, or change the way we do things, so let's be satisfied with the SoF we've got.
The second, more serious, argument is that we are essentially a supportive network with a therapeutic mission to offer solidarity to those who are painfully feeling their way towards our view of religion as a cultural construct, with all the trauma that so often accompanies the rejection or radical redefiriition of traditional religion. This kind of mutual aid is more important, it is suggested, than going for growth. But are the two mutually exclusive?
Let me relate my own experience. I came to the view many years ago that God and religion were products of the creative human imagination - that religious faith was a human creation. I was excited to find that view so wonderfully articulated by Don Cupitt in his 1984 television series, and so stimululatingly developed in his avalanche of books. But it wasn't until last year that I heard there was a Sea of Faith Network, a whole crowd of people who shared, or at least were prepared to explore, the same conviction.
I believe there are a lot of people out there, many more than we think, who share our approach without ever having heard of us. Some feel no need for an organisation or network and are not inclined towards exploration. Fine. But many would enjoy what we enjoy: the stimulation of discussion, argument, shared activity. And I think we should make more effort to go out and find them and welcome them in.
We perhaps spend too much time discussing the differences between networks and movements and pressure groups; and in any case, while we argue about how to categorise our little organisation it has a tendency to change whether we like it or not. The wholly informal network of five years ago, linking members whose first concern quite often was that their names be kept secret, has become a more formal body with an annual conference, elected officers and a developing literature.
We are more than half way out of the closet. Let's adjust our dress and come out properly!
Ronald Pearse in the Newsletter enclosed with this issue calls for a debate in SEA OF FAITH magazine about how we can deliver. What do you think? What should we be doing that we are not doing? What can we do better?
Should we produce more and better literature promoting ourselves and our ideas? Can we make better use of the magazine? Should it be available to non-members, perhaps with a cover price? Why not put it in libraries, shops, church bookstalls? Is this compatible with the objective of remaining primarily a communication resource?
SoF need not become a CND (Campaign for Nonrealist Deism) or a CAMRA (Campaign for Religious Atheism) or an SPCK (Society for the Propagation of Cupittian Knowledge). But nor need it remain a small, enclosed network, a device by which gnostic communicates only with fellow gnostic. The challenge is to find ways of growing, ways of challenging the old thinking, ways of exciting others with the liberating possibilities of humancentred values.
We look forward to hearing from you! Articles, letters, suggestions to David Boulton, Hobsons Farm, Dent, Sedbergh, Cumbria LA10 SRF. - THE EDITOR