V—) > < O ae ~_ Oo = QO [a e ) ae [a 4 REVIEWS: HOLLOWAY SPECIAL DAVID BOULTON looks at what the papers said, Sifting the Shock-Horror! from the So What? u have to hand it to Jamie Byng Y of Canongate Books in Edinburgh.
He knows how to get the columninches. First he had the bright idea of publishing the “Pocket Canon” — books of the Bible with very untheological introductions by people like Will Self and Fay Weldon — and then he commissioned this one from the bishop who memorably and refreshingly described opponents of the ordination of women as “miserable buggers and mean-minded sods”.
Predictably, it was the tabloids which were most outraged by Holloway’s outspokenness on sex and drugs, subjects close to their editorial hearts. The Scottish Daily Record couldn’t even bring itself to print the bishop’s words in full, referring coyly to “sh***ing culture”.
Holloway, wrote the paper’s leader writer, was “a silly old bishop who preaches a dangerously naive gospel”.
The Mail on Sunday somewhat curiously accused Holloway of saying that “young people should be taught how to use” cannabis — a ludicrous distortion of his suggestion that drugsuse would be better controlled if it were decriminalised. For the Times, it was still that word which bothered them, quoting a spokesman for the Prayer Book Society as suggesting that he deliberately used such language in order to “sink the church”. The paper did concede, though, that “the bishop had no personal experience of the phenomenon”. Since Holloway is married with three children, “the phenomenon” presumably means casual sex.
Both the Times and the Scotsman sought out rent-a-quote George Austin, who obliged with “There’s no point in him being a bishop, he’s just a loose cannon”. Not bad from a loose archdeacon.
The serious papers treated the book more... well, more seriously. The Guardian spread it over three pages of its G2 section. “There’s nothing wrong with casual sex, it’s OK to try soft drugs, and Jesus probably wasn’t resurrected” was its somewhat simplified summary. But James Meek thought the question most “liberalminded non-churchgoers” would be The Scottish Daily Record couldn’t even bring itself to print the bishop’s words in full, referring coyly to “sh***ing culture”. asking was “Why is this perfectly sane, rational, sensible man, with his moderate, thought-through social views and his honest uncertainty about right and wrong, continuing to dress up in fancy robes and perform an archaic religious ritual the traditional meaning of which he questions? Why is he still a bishop — and not just any old bishop, but Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church?” The Observer’s Stephanie Merritt made a similar point. “Those who consider themselves atheist or agnostic, who choose not to subscribe to the idea of God at all, no matter how liberally He or She may be reinterpreted, might feel surprised that Holloway’s ‘godless’ morality requires such lengthy and complicated metaphysical arguments to reach conclusions arrived at by most intelligent men and women on the Left years ago”.
ENTER CUPITT Such people might wonder what practical use God can be if he is told to keep out of morality. If matters of right and wong are nothing to do with him, thank you very much, what is he for?
Holloway’s God strikes me as being like the elderly pensioned-off grand-dad you keep in the back room, treated kindly, praised for not being too much of a nuisance, but firmly prevented from participating in the running of a home of which he was once the undisputed master.
The Sunday Herald's reviewer nevertheless described Godless Morality as “the most startling book by a bishop for several decades”. The reviewer was Don Cupitt. But the former Dean of Emmanuel wasn’t going to stop there. “Holloway”, he continued, “wants to break with the Ten Commandments and moral absolutism. He wants us to acknowledge that morality is a human creation and subject to constant revision, like everything else that is human.” But what about religion itself? “Holloway’s arguments to show that morality is just a human creation apply equally strongly to religion,” Cupitt continued. “Isn’t religion also something we made and continually remake? From his text, it is clear Holloway is well aware of this possibility. He refers obliquely to the thoroughgoing religious nonrealism currently propagated by people such as me and the members of Sea of Faith... In the long run, we will gain by admitting that religion is only human. Holloway wants to avoid being driven to this conclusion.” And this refusal to follow through means that his position is “unstable, and illustrates the way in which Anglican liberalism has recently come to an end”. The moderate Anglican “third way” is blocked. “In the long run we must choose between fundamentalism and thoroughgoing religious humanism”.
Ron Ferguson in the Glasgow Herald also found Holloway exploring territory “covered more rigorously by Don Cupitt” and other radical theologians. “What is missing from Holloway’s analysis is a serious engagement with some of the sophisticated Catholic and Protestant theological ethicists like Paul Lehman, Paul Ramsey, James Nelson, Karl Rahner...” But Godless Morality “will provoke interest, excitement and debate about current ethical issues, the resolution of which may mean life or death for the planet”. It may not bring the clubbers and ravers into church, but from much of the reaction, traditional church-folk would be stalking out if they did dance in.
It may not be breaking any moulds to suggest that what we do with our money, for instance, is of more moral significance than what we do with our private parts. But when a bishop says it, it shows that some sections of the church are ready to join the twentieth century — even if there’s only a month of it to run.