What are we FOR?
Sea of Faith is often faced with the challenge: “We know what you don’t believe, now tell us what you do”. And we reply that we have no dogmas, no creeds – and no belief that “beliefs” are the essence of religious faith. But from time to time it may be a useful exercise to reflect on where we think our “exploration of religious faith as a human creation” has taken us and is taking us. What can we say together which broadly reflects a current “SoF way of looking at things”? What follows is designed to stimulate discussion, NOT establish an SoF orthodoxy! It is meant to OPEN UP a debate, not close it; to raise questions, not lay down answers. Readers, SoF members and local groups are invited to work through the ‘ten hypotheses’ discarding what doesn’t hold good, improving whatever may seem to be useful. Then send us your visions and revisions! Turn our draft into a better draft by drafting in your own experience! We may end up with many different versions, all provisional, temporary and wholly unofficial. None will ever be put forward as the SoF creed – and we have no plans to nail them to the door of Lambeth Palace! But if the exercise helps us think through what is distinctive about Sea of Faith, and what we mean when we say that religious faith is a human creation, it will be worth the effort (and, no doubt, the arguments!).
So try these for size…
Ten Hypotheses
1. No set of statements about religious faith will ever tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Time will fray them all as our insights and our ability to articulate them change. This naturally holds good for the hypotheses that follow.
2. All religions, faith systems and varieties of religious or spiritual faith and practice are human constructs: part of the wondrous complex of experience, accumulated knowledge, creative imagination and reflective consciousness which we call culture. We may speak of the divine, the transcendent and the ultimate, but we do so in the clear understanding that these are human concepts. We created them.
3. We each live one natural life in one natural world. What we may choose to call supernatural is a product of our creative imagination, itself a part of our natural world which is made intelligible to us through the signs and symbols of language.
4. As religion itself is the product of the creative impulse, so too are its gods and goddesses, spirits and demons, angels and devils. They are human creations, imagined into being by human communities in all their rich variety of histories, languages and cultures. All deities reside in the human breast, including the god of the great monotheist traditions, the god named God. The Creator God is our creation, the Father God our projection, the Saviour God our own solution to our own inadequacies and alienation. Heaven is the best we can imagine, hell the worst, and both are here and now.
5. All religious scriptures, like any other writings, are the work of fallible individuals and communities, and therefore themselves fallible, open to critical scrutiny and creative reinterpretation. Their stories and songs have helped us make imaginative sense of an apparently senseless world, enabling us to fashion meaning and purpose for our lives. They help us see visions and dream dreams. We belittle these stories at the risk of undervaluing a rich heritage and impoverishing our imagination: but we elevate them into expressions of eternal truth at our peril.
6. Our faith is religious in the depth of its seriousness and the sincerity of its commitment: but it is also secular in the literal sense that it is of this world and for this age, the only world we know and the only age we can experience. It is a faith that dissolves the old differences between the sacred and the secular, the human and the divine, the natural and the supernatural. It does not deify humanity, but it understands that the values which lighten our darkness are human values, and could be no other.
7. We are believers. We choose to believe and have faith in the values of mercy, pity, peace and love, and whatsoever things are true, honest, just, lovely and of good report. For many, God remains a potent, inspirational symbol of these values. Where God is worshipped, it is these values which are affirmed as expressions of the wholly human spirit, and thus of the spiritual life.
8. True religion and undefiled is to visit the afflicted, feed the hungry, empower the powerless, evict the humble and put down the mighty from their seats. Religion detached from justice and the relief of suffering is at best incomplete and at worst a delusion. False religion and defiled invokes an imagined supernaturalism to impose authority, sanctify power, promote fear and superstition, foster division, fortify the strong and gull the gullible. It holds out false hope of compensation for present woes in a future heaven and threatens punishment for present disobedience in a future hell. It puts a self-centred quest for individual salvation before the greater good of the whole community of humanity and all living creatures. It turns the God of our imagination into a tyrant.
9. The life of faith is a life of change, growth, renewal: a life of exploration and experimentation, of making new discoveries and discarding them when they fail us. It is a life on the ocean wave, not one that seeks the seclusion of a safe harbour. It is for the seeker, not the finder; for those who would make meaning and purpose rather than buy them off the peg. It demands hope, charity, determination, and a well-developed sense of humour.
10. We cherish the best in our human heritage of religious faith, tradition and practice as we cherish the best in our rich heritage of music, poetry, the arts, the sciences, and everything that gives eloquent, imaginative expression to the wholly human spirit. We made it; and because we made it we can refashion it to meet our changing needs, understandings and experience. To explore and promote religious faith as a human creation, a human recreation, a human responsibility to ourselves and to all living creatures, and as a source of delight: this is our challenge and our adventure.