In one of his ‘wee stories’ Billy Connolly describes the first time he encountered the freezing conditions of the North Sea, with his mother urging him on from the relative safety of the Aberdeen beach. The water temperature was horrendous, and he soon realised there were all sorts of biting and stinging creatures who were perfectly at home in it – which made him (painfully) aware just what an alien environment he was reluctantly entering. As he put it ‘We don’t belong there … We’ve got no f*!*! business there. The things that live there don’t like us … When are we going to take the hint – we are not f*!*! welcome’.
Which is not a million miles from what it’s sometimes like being a non-realist vicar in the Church of England. Operating in an environment where others feel completely at home. On good days, just about tolerated. And on less good ones made to feel ‘not f*!*! welcome’.
I’d been put in the church choir as a boy, by my religiously non-church-attending parents. But when adolescence arrived, other attractions took over. And there then followed some 20 years of ranting and railing at religion from the side-lines, on the grounds it was all too silly for words. This was long before Richard Dawkins ventured into such territory – but I had people like Freddie Ayer and Antony Flew to keep me company, as I did my best to juggle the day job of school teaching, alongside studying for an external London degree in Philosophy. My early enthusiasm for the clarity of the Logical Positivist position on religion gradually gave way to a far messier and more nuanced quasi-Wittgensteinian approach, as mediated by the saintly D Z Phillips.
There was no Damascus moment when the scales fell from my eyes. But a slow realisation that the price of intellectual closure (in any direction) was a loss of intellectual integrity. Certainty invariably comes with a large price tag attached, which meant the world became a whole lot more complicated – and worse was to come. It was 1984 and I somehow got to hear about a series to be broadcast on BBC television, under the title Sea of Faith. Talk about serendipitous timing! I watched the series and devoured the book, quickly followed by Taking Leave of God and The World to Come. Utterly amazing stuff.
I’d never heard of Don Cupitt before – but he changed everything for me. Not so much thinking-outside-the-box – as slinging-the-box-over-the-side altogether. He dared to ask the questions I’d barely allowed myself even to formulate. And (in true Socratic fashion) had the courage to follow the argument wherever it might lead. If he was correct (and most people, of course, thought he wasn’t) it apparently was possible to ask the most radical questions, and still take religion seriously. Possible to take religion seriously, in other words – without having to believe that there is some sort of Being/Be-ing/ up/out there (wherever ‘there’ might be).
Once I felt able to ask religious questions in a religious context without let or hindrance (and not obliged to try and twist my understanding into some kind of doctrinal straitjacket) – I was potentially in a position to re-engage with religion. I had no idea if it would ‘work’ – and that was a real concern. Would I feel a hypocrite, taking part in religious services – but from a completely different perspective to everyone else? Would all the old antipathies to the silliness of religion come flooding back? With considerable trepidation I tested the water – and found (somewhat to my amazement) that I could swim.
The framework and structure that religion provided was a lifeline. I needed it (and indeed had always needed it) and could now begin to make use of it. Which was why, not long afterwards, I began to explore the possibility of ordination. It was an idea which didn’t make much sense back then – and still doesn’t, 35 years later. But it felt mighty real at the time – as indeed it still does.
Which goes to show that the business of religion is a whole lot trickier and more interesting than most people think, with church insiders (as well as those who reject the whole thing) often giving the impression that they’ve got it all sewn up. But a moment’s thought would (surely?) show that if religion really is about wrestling with the most profound questions that human beings can struggle with – the sort of thing that poets and painters and composers and novelists and philosophers spend their lives agonising over – it’s just plain ridiculous to imagine that it could ever be remotely straightforward.
Somewhat to my surprise (and a lot of other people’s astonishment) – it did – and has done for over 20 years. But it’s not been an easy ride – and has come at a considerable cost. Because I see things differently from everyone I encounter in church circles, it’s difficult (verging on impossible) to find kindred spirits to share things with. Maybe that’s only to be expected? Maybe non-realist vicars were bound to be only ever a blip, a temporary aberration, soon to be extinguished by natural selection? Maybe the very idea of allowing open and totally honest ongoing conversations about religious questions, is so anathema to the institutional Church that it could never be permitted to continue?
But none of the journey might have got underway in the first place without the arrival in my life of the blessed trio of Ronald Pearse, David Paterson and Stephen Mitchell. They were the ones who got the SOF movement off the ground – and received no end of vilification for their pains. And SOF made all the difference in the world to me. The first Conference was in July 1988 – and I vividly remember the sense of excitement, coupled with a frisson of danger. It felt as if we were members of some illicit society – and many of the clergy present were worried in case their attendance became known to their parishioners or bishop. It’s difficult to overstate the value of being able to meet with like-minded people in an open and trusting environment.
What matters, I’m convinced, is not what goes on in people’s heads, but what goes on their hearts. And that’s because Ethics always trumps Theology. How we live is far more important, than how we think (which is why I’d much prefer the company of a compassionate literalist, than some of the angry non-realists I’ve met). I pay far more attention, in sermons or articles, to the Social Gospel than to radical theology. Not because the latter is unimportant – but because religion is a supremely practical business, and is judged by its fruits. I never rubbish understandings of God that don’t work for me – but set them alongside ones that I find more congenial.
My interest is not in trying to get anyone else to think along the same lines that I do – but to encourage others to explore religious questions (the ‘Big Questions’) as openly and as honestly and as fully and as generously as possible. I see religious faith as self-evidently a product of the human imagination – and that includes each and every religious concept. But to say that ‘God’ is a human creation, is to say nothing about the ontological or epistemological status of whatever it is that the word ‘God’ is pointing towards. The only reality we can know is the one right in front of our eyes. Everything else is mystery. Unknown and unknowable stuff – which if we take it seriously enough, is bound to elicit awe and wonder. Religion helps me to recognise and respond to that, by reaching the parts that other things cannot reach. Which is why it’s infinitely worthwhile putting up with whatever biting and stinging come along.
Tony Windross is the Vicar of Pevensey, Sussex. He will be a key speaker at the SOF Annual Conference in Leicester 21st–23rd July.