17 – April 1994

Author: David Boulton. Published April 1994 in issue 17 of Sofia.

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Contents

Articles
Reviews

Editorial

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

This year we celebrate our fifth birthday - or our tenth, if you prefer. It was in 1984 that the Sea of Faith television series introduced a mass audience to notions of religious value wholly divorced from the supernatural and the transcendent. And it was in 1989 that some of those who found that such ideas were "speaking to their condition" formed the Sea of Faith Network.

No doubt we shall find ways to have our quiet celebrations before the year is done. For starters, Don Cupitt's book-of-the-series has been reissued (it is reviewed over the page), and cassettes of the programmes are available to local SoF groups (contact the Network Secretary). We are still but a few, but not so few as we were: add Network membership, magazine readership, local group subscriptions and overseas groups, particularly in New Zealand, and we are pushing the thousand mark. Both the religious and the Humanist press is publishing books which develop our perspective, reviewing them, and arguing about them. Broadcasters increasingly ask us to contribute "a Sea of Faith view", alongside others. Journalists write about us, particularly when one of us has upset a bishop.

We are visible, we are audible. We are not sure that we have a mission, but we have a message: religious expression, like painting, poetry, philosophy, politics, is wholly human, always no more and no less than a cultural product, bound by this our only world, invoking the gods and the mysteries as nothing more, but nothing less, than metaphors, figures of speech, strokes of the pen. And, like everything human, expressionist religion can be bad or good, useless or useful, helpless or helpful, enslaving or liberating, depending on what we make of it and what we do with it.

And what are we doing with it? "What do you actually do?" we are sometimes asked. "What should the Network do?" we sometimes ask ourselves. And looking around us, how much there is to be done! How much mental fight and spiritual sword-wielding before we build even a tiny corner of the new Jerusalem! There may be some abstract, philosophical sense in which liberation from superstition and authority ushers in the Kingdom, but there has to be more to the Kingdom than that! There is so much to be done!

Some see what should be done and think the Network should start doing it. Some still hanker after a line, and even, as one correspondent puts it, a "corporate policy", leading to corporate action. But we are a network, not a corporation. And though we may go on growing, and our structures may have to harden a little to carry the weight, we shall remain a network and resist the corporate tendency.

No-one should suppose that we don't believe in doing. Of course we do! Scratch any member of the Network and you are likely to find an overworked activist for the Oxfams, Shelters and Amnesties which are today's outlets for our humanitarian impulses. You'll find us in Labour and the Lib Dems, maybe even in less popular parties! You'll certainly find us in teaching, in social work, in pastoral work, in medicine.

Which is not to say there is nothing to be done specifically as SoF members. Some may dissent, but I would like to see special-interest groups, special-concern commissions or working parties, develop within the Network. One to start doing something about the injustice and insensitivity of privileging Christianity in religious education in schools; another to raise a stink about the privileging not only of Christianity but of one particular brand of it - Anglicanism - in our blasphemy laws.

There are many more. Each member will have her own priorities. Shared concerns within the Network can lead to shared action within the Network - without moving an inch towards the adoption of corporate policy.

Much of this will be under discussion at our annual Conference and AGM in Leicester from July 27 to 29. Details will be circulated shortly to all members. Others might like to contact the Conference Secretary, Roy Greenhalgh, Townwell House, Cromhall, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire GL12 8AQ. And whether or not you plan to be there, write and tell the magazine what you think. Please do! - DAVID BOULTON REVIEW KINGDOM COME?

Confronting confrontation Whilst I would agree that my language (Sea of Faith 16 and editorial comment) is somewhat robust, I do not see it - any more than David Boulton's - as confrontationist. However, I will always challenge any tendency to dichotomise - which is the word I used in my piece, and which is not the same thing as to confront.

And certainly I'm not in the business of making people feel guilty. In an open and honest discussion about matters of religion and faith there is no such thing as guilt.

— Adam Thomson, Brussels, Belgium

The second highlights a worry I have had for some time within the confines of SoF conferences and the Network. Goodies and Baddies there may be but I have been fortunate enough to have met two remarkable people who have manifested the human love sought after by the Christian religion. One was an elderly Church of England priest and the other a Jewish Rabbi. Both epitomised warmth and simplicity that was very encouraging in pointing to what is possible in human nature.

Whatever the ways, some of our kind are able to touch base and we need more of them. - Bob Smith, Lynton, 70 Shefford Road, Clifton, Beds SG17 5RQ.

— Bob Smith, Clifton, Beds

Inventing ourselves Dear strangers, "all the world's a stage", yes, and as some exhausted journalist once remarked, what with our fascination with living vicariously and our childish surrender to distraction, our world will soon be nothing else and we shall be nothing but "players". I am a human being born into this mysterious universe and now not far from my death: I know that but can I feel it? In my struggle to keep spiritual awareness I talk to myself, mostly in bad verse. Yesterday I produced the line "Death must reveal its meaning, but to whom?" I was childishly pleased. Surely that line would win me some attention? And suddenly I realised I was only "staging", only inventing myself.

Do you know this experience? You wake for a moment to the realisation that you are spiritually dead, that you no longer live from your authentic self. Have you asked yourself whether helping to create a social movement, the SoF Network, is an attractive preoccupation simply because you can't face accepting your deepest and purest feelings? "If you think you are strong because you refuse to make a fool of yourself and to suffer, you're nothing but a dupe". Vincent van Gogh wrote that. Why don't we listen to the great teachers? Let's help each other by giving up worrying about a coherent theology and, instead, revealing ourselves as we truly are: now that would be "religious". - Rex Gibson, Bankside, Snowshill, Broadway, Worcs WR12 7JU.

— Rex Gibson, Broadway, Worcs

It would be easy to put together a Humanist Christian "service" leaving out all reference to God, but with Jesus as the example of an outstanding Humanist. Poetry and classical music could replace prayers and hymns. The story of the Good Samaritan could be read. The hopes and fears of members could be shared.

In creating such a service, with strictly no mention of God, are we going too far? We may be happy not to say the Creed or sing hymns, but what about the great religions' classical music? If God is a naughty word, one could hardly sound a bleep in a great choral work every time his name is mentioned! I once attended a weekend course given by the composer Robert Simpson. He said, "I am a non-believer, but I find religious music deeply moving". There is a problem here if we are going to be really strict about abandoning realist religious language.

My own rather unsatisfactory way of solving it is to go to church to hear Beethoven's Missa Solemnis but to say no to a Sunday service which involves saying the Creed or singing hymns. But can one say that the former is art and the latter is not? Line drawing is always difficult and a Humanist Christian service isn't quite as easy to work out as it first appears. - Angela Barkshire, 44B Norfolk Road, Rickmansworth, Herts WD3 1LA.

— Angela Barkshire, Rickmansworth, Herts

Faith or spirituality?

— Vivien Gibson, Ealing, London

I agree with Elizabeth Reid (Sea of Faith 16) that the stated objective of the Network carries constraining connotations. It implies that we are in search of a new, or newly expressed, "faith" in the sense of a series of beliefs or propositions that could "succeed" a traditional faith such as Christianity. Yet this assumes that religious faith is desirable, when most SoF members, along with most people in our modern society, probably feel little need for faith in this traditional sense.

What is present, in this desert of materialism, is a longing for the rediscovery of a spiritual outlook. Our present situation has partly come about because the biblical world view divorced spirit from matter and Western science compounded this, leading to the current malaise whereby the world around us has been emptied of its spiritual content, while much of the spiritual language of the traditional religions is outmoded. A new spirituality is however evolving where all life will again be seen as spiritual (sacramental) and where science and religion are mutually supportive rather than exclusive.

If such a spirituality can be described as religious "faith", then fine, but I think that the term "religious expression" is a better one since it allows better for the diversity that is inherent in modern society where the uniformity characteristic of traditional creed "faiths" is uncongenial to the modern mind. - David Hay-Edie, 1 The Gables, Mt Hermon Road, Woking, Surrey GU22 7UA.

— David Hay-Edie, Woking, Surrey

No party line Your leader in the January issue ("What's Our Line?") has a much wider application. SoF is unique in valuing honesty to such an extent that we recognise that everyone's views are different and change over time. To pretend to toe the "party line", whether of a church, a political party, a company, a government or any other corporate body involves being "economical with the truth" and less than honest. Such bodies need to decide what to do but should not dictate to their members what to think. If we can spread this recognition more widely, SoF will have made no mean contribution. - Denis Gildea, 35 Lovelace Road, Dulwich, London SE21 8JY.

Buddhism no answer I write as one who was born a Catholic and who became a Buddhist, and at the age of thirty gave up Buddhism and became a spiritual wanderer. Now, at the age of forty I have given up giving up things and have joined SoF.

— Denis Gildea, Dulwich, London

I was pleased to see Kulananda (Sea of Faith 15) referring to the Buddhist belief in reincarnation as being optional, for my inability to believe in it was one of the reasons I lost interest in Buddhism. The other problem is the Buddhist idea of Enlightenment. The transcendental treasure trove at the top of the ladder of spiritual status is as much an anachronism as the idea of a personal God. But as a metaphor for the journey from confusion to simplicity, from fragmentation to integration, it is still valuable.

The anthropomorphic idea of a personal God playing games with human destiny is an anachronism that is two thousand years past its sell-by date and deserves to go the way of other such absurdities as human sacrifice and the divine right of kings. This is not the decline of religion, this is the evolution of religion. Not religion as a truth handed down by God, but something infinitely more and better: religion as a truth offered up to God. - T D McCready, 105 Wynford Road, Islington, London N1 9TY.

— T D McCready, Islington, London

On doing without reviewers I don't mind my inadequate efforts being damned with faint praise as little more than a "stimulating read" (Trudi Newton on my book On Doing Without God in Sea of Faith 14); but I would appreciate it if reviewers who make such judgements showed that they realised the point of what I said.

I offer the beginnings of a theological reconstruction based on the recognition of a unique global state of affairs in which our thinking therefore has to be on a global scale. Two factors support this. There is on the one hand a global crisis in which the world is at the mercy of a number of totalising threats and on the other, humankind has reached a new stage of evolution which is self-conscious and self-directing. The crisis can be met by a commensurate evolutionary change which is in progress.

The "God" we once believed in has failed us because that culture-bound "God" is part of the problem. To propose immanently evolving "God-ness" as packaging the values with which to manage a hitherto non-existent reality is hardly to say "This is where we are now". It is possible that others have proposed this solution before I did, and if reviewers are aware of this they are at liberty to say so. - Rev John Macdonald Smith, 38 Main Road, Norton, Evesham WR11 4TL. [Trudi Newton described On Doing Without God not only as "a stimulating read which will encourage debate and provide an excellent reference point", but also as "mapping the current territory - the eco-crisis, nuclear dilemmas, nationalism, the new Right, spiritual cop-outs, multi-culturalism - in a dense and exiling survey of today's ideas, and how we arrived at them". But we are pleased to have John's own comments. - Editor.] POST SCRIPTS Smoke gets in your eyes I like Richard Smith's story about the Symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme (see page 15): the one about him preferring to see the world in soft focus through a haze of cigarette smoke. But in the interest of balancing left- and right-brain modes, I have to add another story, this one from Gordon Millan's new biography of the French pioneer non-realist, A Throw of the Dice. Millan records that the young Mallarme, when living in digs off Leicester Square, was almost asphyxiated by the smoky London smog. Too much soft focus can be dangerous to your health.

— Rev John Macdonald Smith, Norton, Evesham