Network News The SoF Southampton Roadshow Most Network News is reported in Portholes but longer reports of salient events will be published in this magazine. Here Mary Lloyd reports on the Southampton Roadshow, which took place on 16th October 2004.
The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Roadshow on 16 October 2004 saw some 80 people crowding into the Dining Hall of King Edward VI School, Southampton. We enjoyed a day packed with intellectual challenge, a questioning of ‘received wisdom’ from varied standpoints, a good deal of humour – and an excellent lunch.
David Boulton kicked off with reminiscences of boyhood among the Exclusive Brethren, eliciting wry laughter as he recalled his parents’ dilemma in the face of the adolescent logic that there was: ‘No point in doing homework if the Lord was coming back next week.’ With a glancing reference to the old certainties in his assertion that, ‘a journalist will always find a place in heaven for the despised and rejected,’ David moved smoothly on to the real substance of his talk.
Pointing to Islam’s fundamentalist revival which has seen it double its world membership since 1970, at the same time as the TV evangelists have moved in to control vast tracts of Africa, South America and the former Communist bloc, he reminded us that it is no longer possible – as it was only 20 years ago – to assume that Christianity will gradually evolve into ‘something’ humanitarian and post-modern. The need for new thinking is imperative!
Asking us to consider ‘What on earth is religion for?’ he moved on to the need for rigorous definition of what we mean by ‘spirituality’; a recognition that the Bible, as one mythology amongst many, can still be seen as a way of telling truths about what we need; and a telling account of a Hindu scholar who had reached the point where he could assert: ‘I believe passionately in every aspect of Ganesh – except his existence.’ Urging us to recast our understanding of the word God as the embodiment of Blake’s ‘Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love’ – and adding a fifth: Justice – David provided us with a telling piece of theatre to drive this point home as it applies in the real world – the only world we have. Numbering his audience from 1 to 75 to represent the global population, he made 58 of us stand: we represent those who are actively polluting the environment. Only 21 were identified as ‘white’ – the rest, of course, being labelled as ethnic ‘minorities’. Finally, asking just 3 people to stand, he pointed out that these 3 own 40% of the world’s wealth and resources.
Elizabeth Stuart, who describes herself as orthodox in belief but radical in practice, had been invited to challenge us out of any risk of complacency. A professor at University College, Winchester, a bishop of the Catholic Episcopal Church and the author of Religion is a Queer Thing, she drew our attention to the radical de-stabilising of gender identities offered by Queer Theory. Arguing that the church has handed over its real, radical position to the conservatives, and has only recently idealised marriage and family life – ‘in Christ there is no male or female’ – she holds that we shall return to a sexless state, of which the ascetic life is the precursor. She suggested that Christianity needs again to discover the possibilities offered by parody, defined as ‘extended repetition with a critical difference’. Perhaps one of the most memorable moments of the day came with her reference to angels as agents of self-help who ‘just make our world easier to bear’.
Unsurprisingly, Don Cupitt cut acerbically across this mood in interrogating us on the central issue of ‘Where have we got to?’ He reflected that if God, the Author, is gone, the world is not guaranteed to have its own great unifying story. How can we continue to assume the unity, intelligibility and describability of ‘creation’? We have no right to believe in truth out there, underlying everything.
We have no way of checking our language, our worldview, against any absolute, objective vision of the world.
There is only the human. We must content ourselves with what we make – our world, our language, our common human life. There may have been those in the audience for whom this message seems too bleak to bear. However, Don went on to remind us that religion does not have to be based on metaphysical beliefs about unseen powers. We can embark on the religion of life, in which the love of life largely replaces traditional, credal, institutional religion.
Richard Hall, who brought wit and urbanity to his role as anchorman, left us with final food for thought. He recounted his horror when, as a theology student more than 30 years ago, he was instructed by his tutor, ‘You have to divide your brain into two halves: one for thinking and studying with – and the other for preaching.’ More than 20 of those who attended the conference (including a few clerics!) showed their commitment to continue thinking and questing by attending the inaugural meetings of the Hampshire Sea of Faith group in the second week of November. sof 69 January 2005 Is Foxhunting a Religion? sof 69 January 2005 News Forum A group of hunting enthusiasts is setting up its own ‘church’ in an attempt to stop the government from banning its favourite sport, reported The Daily Telegraph.