33 – Religion in the Mode of Passion

The Editor Sea of Faith Hobsons Farm Dent, Cumbria LAIO 5RF No name change, please Please don’t change the “Sea of Faith” name. The allusion to Dover Beach captures our purpose very well. The poem has “Ah, love, let us be true to one another!” as the response to the realisation that the world “Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.” Isn't this what we are all about? It is true that Arnold thought of the Sea of Faith as receding, but he forgot that tides return, and so his image doesn’t quite fit his thought. Even so, he says, “Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand”.

Have you never stood in that grating roar, felt your feet being dragged from under you, and your body pelted with the violent swirl of elements being rearranged? This evocation of the sea’s continual transforming action seems to me apt, even encouraging, for our Sea of Faith. The sea is such a rich source of imagery that it would be a pity for us to lose it.

POSTBAG One last point. we have entered the literary canon with our present name (and surely this cannot be the first time): Radio 4 has just broadcast a play Where Three Roads Meet by Don Taylor, in which we were mentioned.

Carol Sherrard, 1, Carnoustie Grove, Bingley, W. Yorks. BD16 1QF Ocean of Truth “Floccinaucinihilipilification” pips “antidisestablishmentarianism” by one letter and is thus (I am reliably informed by a fellow mathematician) the longest word in the OED and therefore (perhaps) the English Language. “The action or habit of estimating as worthless” is (of course) overstating the current unease with our name. (“Our name.” There, I have included myself at last).

— Carol Sherrard, Bingley, W. Yorks

For me the sea metaphor has an attractive rich heavy density. “The murmuring surge, that on th’unnumbered pebble chafes”, and Matthew Arnold’s “Naked shingles of the world” also call to mind Isaac Newton’s well-known (essentially optimistic) reflection on his life: “only like a boy playing on the seashore...diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me”.

Stephen Power, 24 Regent Street, Lancaster LAI 18Q Editor’s Note.

— Stephen Power, Lancaster

Being a dissident Catholic — one of His Holiness’ loyal opposition — I find in my papers, The Tablet and The National Catholic Reporter, pages of advertisements for courses, seminars, sabbaticals, workshops, conferences on umpteen varieties of spirituality: the spirituality of St Bernard, of St Ignatius, creation spirituality, Celtic spirituality — and let us not forget our own nonrealist spirituality.

You name it, you can go on a course on it — if you have the money.

This last point shows that it is part of the leisure industry which, with tourism, makes up the largest part of the world economy. Spirituality is recreation, available only to those whose material needs have been met, those who have disposable income.

What is its function? To reassure, to calm, to provide contentment, to validate the status quo and our own place in it. It is for what Bernard Shaw called reasonable people who seek to conform to circumstances rather than change them. It provides justification for what J.K.. Galbraith calls “the Culture of Contentment”. It is now the present-day equivalent of the Victorian cult of the family. Dickens, Little Nel] and all that; a refuge for the brutal world of the market economy, how more cruel and irresponsible than it was in Queen Victoria’s day.

Spirituality is anti-humanistic. The very word spirit implies in this context a dualism of flesh and spirit - but of course the human spirit is as much a metaphor as the supernatural one.

Whichever way you slice us, we are flesh all the way through. It is simply class interest; when your material needs have been met — when you are “comfortably off’ — you can pursue “the things of the Spirit” and feel superior to those who must graft night and day to meet the needs of the flesh; a roof over their heads and food on the table. I owe this insight to Eric Romm’s essay “The Dogma of Christ”.

One might think that SoF, by denying the “existence” of God, might see itself and its (mainly) Christian faith as a humanism, and might say that humans should take responsibility for the world and its history. It might say that our privileged status in the world economic order requires our repentance and a firm purpose of amendment to build a just global economy.

But SoF ignores the Carpenter. No way will it say “What a friend we have in Jesus” for it is now clear that the historical Jesus is best seen as a political, not a religious figure, and no friend to us rich.

Peter Lumsden, 23D South Villas, London NW1 9BT Who needs a development strategy?

— Peter Lumsden, London

In a Network like ours, where correspondents can fill the magazine’s postbag with a debate about something as fundamental as the name of “Sea of Faith”, what price a development strategy? The management of meaning is just as important as the management of people, physical resources or finance.

Organization development requires a shared vision and a sense of common purpose. We can be cheerfully anarchic and proud of our diversity, or we can have a development strategy. We cannot have both.

Without a set of fundamental shared assumptions, how can we determine our objectives and priorities? But we have to be able to do this if we are to draw up a job description for a development worker, cost the post, determine the length of an initial contract and work out the funds required. In management terms, we have to start by deciding a strategy which, in turn, becomes the basis for a business plan showing where the funds for a development worker come from and how that money will be spent. Any development strategy must surely have a minimum time horizon of five years. Assuming a basic starting salary of £15-20,000 pa plus pension and national insurance costs and allowing for operational overheads, we have to be looking at a commitment to raise at least £200,000 over a five-year period. Talking in terms of a one-year contract funded by a thousand members sending £20 each does not begin to address the issue.

At the end of a very thoughtful, positive article Miles Howarth tells us that we need a development worker to bring in promotional expertise [Sea of Faith, Spring 1998]. Is this promotion in the sense of PR and fundraising or does it mean promoting a philosophical/theological position and, if so, which? To whom is the Network to be promoted? What relationship is POSTBAG assumed between the Steering Committee and the local groups which are to be developed? I hope we can avoid getting into a position where the development worker is forced to concentrate on fundraising so that we can pay the salary of our development worker.

I gather that there are Network members who are so oppressed by their churches that their names do not appear in the Conference Handbook and who go in fear of being photographed in Sea of Faith company (I have always assumed they are clergy). Should we not be helping people like these and also others who might find themselves in a position similar to Anthony Freeman’s? If we are serious about raising the sort of money we need for development work, I think it would be better spent on establishing funding for an Escape Committee, an Amnesty Ecclesiastical. This would give a cutting edge to our radicalism and could act as a focus leading to a truly common purpose. Then would be the time to think about promoting the Network because then we could agree on what we have to offer.

— Mike Jenkins, Doncaster

Mike Jenkins, Chapel Corner, Doncaster Road, Branton, Doncaster DN3 3LT Experience beyond words As a non-intellectual member of the Network it does not cause me concern how other members classify me — modern, postmodern (an irrational appellation), or simply as one who is on board H.G. Wells’ time machine and has been seeking to engage forward gear for thirty years [Sea of Faith, Spring 1998]. The editor states that the notion of non-linguistic experience or non-verbal thought has been comprehensively demolished.

Cupitt also holds that there is no such thing as “experience” outside and prior to language. I remain unconvinced and seek a dialogue in terms which are understandable without the need for the technical language of the philosopher.

In observation I find that the majority of my experiences are non-verbal.

Every act I make involves a background of innate or learned competence. However, let me give as an example the sophisticated technical accomplishment of driving a car. Most of my passive experiences in driving are received and actively responded to without the use of language, and I do not think that anyone can persuade me that the events do not form experiences. The events make their impact, are assessed and are responded to quite apart from linguistics. Some events may be selected to be recorded cognitively, explored at a later stage, even communicated to others in language, but the majority are allowed to go to the mental disposal bin. My response to experiences does not usually involve language, and if I needed to vocalise before applying the car's brakes it would, sadly, be too late.

In my relationships with other people much interchange is non-linguistic, immediate, direct. So on the face of things J] suggest statements such as “there is no meaningfulness and no cognition prior to language” are either nonsense, or have to be explained ina highly technical use of words. The appeal for simplicity and the avoidance of too much intellectualism has been expressed elsewhere.

Cupitt sees a material world on one side of the language frontier and the world of mind on the other side. The idea of such a frontier seems to me to give too much importance to rational mental constructs, whereas I suggest that the world of mind is largely hidden and intuitive, rather than rational and cognitive. Elsewhere Cupitt has explained mystical experience as a feeling of successivelessness, spacelessness, unity, accompanied by a breakdown in ordinary temporal capacities, in which the distinction between subject and object is overcome and we are in a state of absolute knowledge. He regards such experiences as of very great value. I question whether Cupitt’s idea of a language frontier is a misconception and ask whether mind and matter are totally and inextricably interwoven.

Norman Richardson, 17 Water Lane, Ashwell, Rutland LE15 7LS POSTSCRIPTS Postscripts by Seafarer Too much humanism?

— Norman Richardson, Ashwell, Rutland