At its October meeting, the SoF Steering Committee reviewed the magazine and received the following report from the editor, which it asked to be printed in the next issue.
What are we for? cult magazine to edit. It is a privilege and a pleasure to do the job, but it isn’t getting any easier.
On the surface, there’s no problem.
The real hard production work is done by Martin Davies, who does a brilliant job, producing a magazine which, issue by issue, looks good, feels good and is good by the very highest professional standards. I am almost embarrassed by the shower of compliments we get after virtually every issue: each of the last eight has produced at least half a dozen “Best issue yet” letters. So why am I saying that the job of editing the magazine is getting harder?
Because the magazine is written and produced primarily for the Sea of Faith Network. And the Sea of Faith Network isn’t what it was.
Of course, it never was what it was: the Network has never had a fixed and final form. It has grown and changed and matured. And it has become both more diffuse and more diverse.
Which is a Good Thing. Unless you are the editor of its magazine, trying to establish a clear profile of your readership.
Once upon a time, when the Network was young and small, its membership was easily identifiable: it was, to begin with, substantially Anglican and closely identified with Don Cupitt’s nonrealism as expressed in his 1980s series of books, especially Taking Leave of God and The Sea of Faith.
But the Network grew. Soon there were other denominations:
Unitarians, Quakers, Methodists and S= of Faith is becoming a diffi- Catholics. From the start, the Network made it clear that it welcomed members from all the faith traditions, and from Humanists and others who didn’t consider themselves part of any faith tradition. But in practice, Network membership remained overwhelmingly churchbased. When the press and the outside world noticed us, it was as a society of “godless vicars” and church members who, scandalously, said the Creed without apparently believing a word of it.
Again from the start, the Network declared its purpose as exploring and promoting religious faith as a human creation. I may be wrong (because I wasn’t in at the beginning) but I think most founder-members understood this very much in terms of Cupitt’s nonrealism. After all, the Network was inspired by Cupitt’s books and took its name from his TV series. His message was the Network’s message: all religions, all forms of religious faith, are cultural products. The truths they express are human notions of truth, the gods they worship have no independent existence outside human imagination and consciousness, encoded in our language and culture. There is no supernatural realm, no other-worldly mystical energy or spirit.
The Network’s job was to explore the implications of this understanding of religion. And promote it. So long as we all knew what we stood for, all knew what we were exploring, all knew what we were promoting, it wasn’t difficult to produce a magazine with a cleaf focus and a confident sense of direction.
But we were successful. The Network grew, from 150 to 250 members, from 250 to 500, from 500 to 750 and upwards. More to the point, it set up lots of autonomous local and regional groups. Many of these were (and are) loosely organised discussion groups with wide-open agendas.
There was less emphasis on exploring the implications of seeing religion as wholly human, and more on discussing general issues about the relevance of religion and _ spirituality.
Promotion definitely took a back seat.
Meanwhile, Don was moving the argument on. Many of us were still struggling to “take leave of God” when we were asked to contemplate “ecstatic immanence”, “solar ethics” and “Be-ing”.
Many magazine readers today have not read any of Cupitt’s books, let alone any of the radical theological and philosophical works which inspired them and which underpin the Network’s distinctive position.
Some are uncomfortable with the culture and language of postmodernity, which for others is the very water in which we swim. Some are made uneasy by expressions of the outright humanism clearly inherent in “religious faith as a human creation”, while others find parts of the Network too churchy, too cautious, too otherworldly. That’s diversity for you.
I repeat that it’s good — unless you are the magazine editor, trying to keep all your diverse readers happy all the time! Trying to respond to those who say “I can’t pass the magazine on to my church friends because its rampant nonrealism would offend them”, and those who say “I can’t recommend it to my humanist friends because it is still so frightfully Christian!” So, what to do?
The first thing is that the magazine must continue to be open to all in the Network. It must welcome contributions from all quarters, in a spirit of openness and pluralism. So there will be articles and letters from those who choose to belong to a religious community, and from those who do not: from clerics and anti-clerics, humanists and worshippers, iconoclasts and those who seek to breath new life into the old idols rather than break them.
This means that no-one is likely to like all of the magazine all of the time. Every issue is likely to contain something to infuriate as well as something to celebrate. We have to learn to delight in our diversity, not be threatened by it.
But while opening its pages to all strands of the Network, and to those outside who share some of its radicalism, the magazine must, in my view, hold to a clear, focused editorial position. While encouraging open discussion, and supporting the growth of the Network as an open forum for religious ideas, the magazine’s editorial policy must be to proclaim with no uncertain voice that religious faith in all its forms — Christian, Judaic, Islamic, Buddhist, Pagan, the lot — is entirely manmade (for man read humankind), entirely human, entirely natural “Religion can kill and maim and terrify, but it can also inspire and transform and delight. We have to make choices about religion, as we do about politics and poetry. We are better-fitted to do so when we are clear that our religious choices - including the choice whether or not to hold on to the language and practice of religion - are human choices. It’s all down to us. It’s all up to us.” rather than supernatural, entirely cultural and earth-bound rather than revealed by the Great ExtraTerrestrial In The Sky. Where the gods (and God) live on, they live in the human imagination.
In a religious supermarket with a million brands of religion on special offer, the Network and its magazine promote a distinctive view of religion: that, like the arts and sciences, like music, dance, poetry, politics, sport and biochemistry, the world of religion and spirituality is a human creation. We made it. We can remake it.
Our will be done, in heaven as it is on earth (for heaven and earth are one).
Religion can kill and maim and terrify, but it can also inspire and transform and delight. We have to make choices about religion, as we do about politics and poetry. We are better-fitted to do so when we are clear that our religious choices — including the choice whether or not to hold on to the language and practice of religion — are human choices. It’s all down to us. It’s all up to us.
To explore and promote religious faith as a human creation: that is the core purpose of the Network, written into our constitution. And, within a framework of openness, pluralism and diversity, that will continue to be the core editorial policy of Sea of Faith magazine.
David Boulton is editor of Sea of Faith magazine Now we are FIVE e are very pleased to Wisrnounce two new appointments to the magazine’s editorial team.