153 – Looking Back – Facing Forward

Editorial

The recent annual SOF Conference was held in London in July 2024. Its title was Looking Back – Facing Forward. This Conference issue of Sofia begins with the talks given by the three speakers. First, Anthony Freeman described the lifechanging event that happened to him when he was sacked from his job as a priest for publishing his book God in Us, which says that God is created by the human imagination.

Next Tony Windross spoke about how he was ordained as a result of the Sea of Faith but, he said, this made him feel ‘something of an impostor in the Church’. However, it gave him what Don said in his final Sea of Faith programme ‘was the purpose of religion: a spiritual path’. Lastly Linda Woodhead, a sociologist of religion, spoke about spirituality, which, she said, was growing in popularity whereas the organised churches were in decline. Many people in Britain now described themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’. In their discussion at the end Freeman responded that he would describe himself as ‘religious but not spiritual’.

I rather agreed with him. I love these ‘poetic tales’ and what they can say to us and inspire us to do, but I certainly don’t think of myself as spiritual. I remember the song sung by the Greenham Common women’s camp: ‘You can’t kill the Spirit, she’s like a mountain/old and strong…’. (Incidentally, in support of that ‘she’ for the Spirit, the biblical Hebrew word for spirit, wind and breath is ruach, which is feminine.) That’s the Spirit I prefer to a rather fuzzy ‘spirituality’.

There is plenty more in this Sofia. In her Penn’orth, Penny Mawdsley writes about ‘Fear’. John Pearson goes on ‘Going Green’. (He is also active in Green politics in Newcastle, where he lives.) There is poetry and a review by Kathryn Southworth of A Century of Poetry: 100 Poems for searching the heart, edited by Rowan Williams.

Dinah Livingstone

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