44 – Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom

Author: David Boulton. Published November 2000 in issue 44 of Sofia.

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Regulars and Occasionals

Editorial

ISSN 1460-5244 © SOF, 2000 bloom There’s a wind of change blowing across our patch of the seas of faith. It has been puffing away in little breezes for a year or so, ruffling the surface waters. Occasionally it gusts up and animates the sails. There’s the promise (or threat) that it might get us up and moving.

In one sense, we’ve never not been on the move as a Network. We began in the 1980s as a theologically-focused body, and that focus has gradually broadened to encompass a wider, more diverse philosophical and cultural zone of interest.

And, unlike most issue-based or value-seeking bodies, we have never stopped growing numerically. We have slightly more members at the works become dead seas. end of this year than last, and the subscription base of the magazine has grown significantly as we have advertised ourselves, within the strictures of a very limited budget. True, we had fewer members at our principal conference this year, but we also had more conferences: “Honest to Jesus” in Manchester in April (and its very successful locally-organised counterpart in Colchester) and the Religious Humanism conference in London in September, added to the annual fest in Leicester, notched up some 600 attendances (recognising that perhaps half came to more than one event).

To these growth points we should add the expansion of the magazine from four to six issues a year, the growth of Portholes from an occasional round-robin for the steering committe to a regular newsletter for all members, the development of our website and email discussion list, the employment of a development worker charged with initiating our Sea Change educational course, and the foundation of an SoF charitable trust. This is steady growth. So what is this new wind of change which I’m going on about?

Its essence, I think, is a mounting sense, increasingly openly expressed, that it’s not enough to be a talking shop. We've been talking to each other for quite a while now - and of course we'll go on talking, for how else do we explore our own and others’ experience, how else do we shape our values together, how else build a new community let a hundred flowers We do or die. “Action is the life of all”. Seas of faith without seas of editorial Hobsons Farm, Dent, Cumbria LA10 5RF of faith which no longer relies on the old dogmas (or the new ones, for that matter)? If, as we keep saying, our knowledge and experience is languagebased, language-constructed, language-mediated, then dialogue - talking and listening, reading and writing - will be at the heart of our explorations and our adventure together. But is it enough?

As a Network we have always been chary of moving from dialogue to taking up positions, let alone acting on them. Whilst acknowledging that most members will be “liberals” or “radicals” on such matters, we have been keen to emphasise that the Network as such has no “line” on issues of ecclesiastical policy: establishment versus disestablishment, ordination of women, church schools and so on.

On rare occasions, after debate at our agms or steering committee meetings, we have taken up positions on issues which are clearly directly related to our expressed aim of exploring and promoting religious faith as a human creation, such as supporting Anthony Freeman in his fight against removal from his parish and, more recently, backing the interfaith project at Derby. But these have been exceptions proving the rule. We are quick to talk and slow to act.

What I am sensing, from chats at this year’s conferences, from correspondence, from discussions on the email list, from our steering committee meetings, is that there must come a point at which talk produces action. We do or die. “Action is the life of all”. Seas of faith without seas of works become dead seas.

So what do we do? What are the things we are leaving undone which we ought to have done or be doing? Ironically, that’s what we need to start talking about! I want to put four modest proposals.

They are modest because they will not change the nature of the Network by trying to transform it into a social justice pressure group, a political movement, or just one more humanitarian, charitable institution. They will not take the place of talk and dialogue and exchange. But they will add an active dimension to our exploration and our work. They will give us work to do.

First, and most modest of all, this magazine could aim to include a little more on the active humanitarian agenda, even if this means a little less space for speculative theory. Next year’s issues could each include an “Action File”, highlighting 3 SOF 44 / November 2000 SOF 44 / November 2000 particular causes in which our members are actively involved. Individual members, local groups and others could all contribute, or nominate causes. Criteria for publication would include compatibility with the Network’s aims and objects, which would cover a very broad range of positive humanitarian causes but exclude negative and reactionary campaigns such as Forward in Faith (or Misogynists for Christ) and anti-gay crusades.

Yes, there would be borderline cases, and yes, not all members would support every cause featured. But we could talk about that! And we should not limit ourselves to the safe, liberal, apple-pie-and-motherhood causes.

Could we not more actively explore the links between our theological, philosophical and cultural radicalism and the social, economic and political radicalism of the directaction protesters at Seattle and Prague, and the women who take a hammer to the private parts of Trident submarines?

Second, could we not make more effort to build alliances? The Religious Humanism conference sought out participation from the British Humanist Association, the Rationalist Press Association, South Place Ethical Society, the Quaker Universalists and other organisations with which we share some common ground despite our differences. We could aim at similar conferences with other organisations where there is an overlap of interest: with other networks, like the New Times Network, for instance, which is post-Marxist in much the same way as we are postchristian, or with the radical scientific networks, radical arts and culture movements, or with liberation theology. How about conferences organised jointly with Political Theology or Movement or other journals - if they’ll have us? They might learn something from us. We could surely learn something from them.

And what we learn by talking together might lead to us acting together.

Third, could we not be much more pro-active in setting up SoF special interest groups, bringing together those members who wish to work with each other for a particular cause, under an SoF banner if they wish? We have a precedent in the Church Members in SoF group, and we have tried (with varying success) to encourage special interest groups on religious education and youth.

Why not a rituals and rites of passage group, a peace group, a group to combat prejudice and discrimination against gays and lesbians, a group to work for reconciliation in Northern Ireland, a pagans in SoF group, a Christian Socialist SoF group... and so on? It would be a mistake to wait for the steering committee to set up such micro-networks: its members are already severely overstretched. But you could do it, and use the magazine to gather support and find like minds.

Fourth, perhaps we should be less petrified of the Network itself adopting positions, supporting this, opposing that. Maybe our agms could be less anaemic, with more time given to serious debate about the causes for which we feel we can stand up and be counted. Of course there will be controversy and disagreement. Of course there will be majorities and minorities. But we can surely take that in our stride? If a majority were to vote to support the campaign for women bishops, for instance, making that SoF policy, would those who opposed it feel obliged to jump overboard? I doubt it!

Most of us have spent our lives in minorities. It’s when we find ourselves in majorities that we get really worried.

Let me, finally, focus on a particular practical issue.

The steering committee has been discussing a proposal that we give open, official support to Amnesty’ International’s campaign on behalf of prisoners of conscience - men and women who have been imprisoned, and are often tortured, for their conscientiously held religious or political beliefs. It is hard to think of any cause closer to our exploration and promotion of a wholly human-centred religious faith, our religious humanism and radical humanitarianism.

Indeed, by actively supporting Amnesty we'll be doing no more than many conservative churches and prepostmodern religious institutions have been doing for years!

How should we do it? By a Network declaration of support, leaving it to individuals to sign up with their local Amnesty group? By seeking affiliation to the British Section of Amnesty - and if so, at Network or steering committee level? Or by setting up a SoF Amnesty special interest group, with its own convenor and membership, to take on the individual case-work, the campaigning, the writing to heads of state, just like any other Amnesty affiliate?

The fact that we are exploring such practical issues, and have been pushed towards exploring them by a membership which seems increasingly to want to make the Network a work-shop as well as a talk-shop, is the answer that is blowing in the wind. Let it blow where it listeth. And let a hundred flowers bloom in the breeze. publications — : _ NOW IN ITS THIRD EDITION! ad ps A REASONABLE FAITH Pal ee Introducing the Sea of Faith Network by David Boulton 0952393018. ar ae Price £2 including p&p “Faith for us is the trust that it is possible to give value and meaning to life: we can’t prove it, but we choose to live by that faith, to trust to it, much as we choose to have faith in our friends and lovers... Sea of Faith has become a place where humanism and radical religion meet and overlap, and ‘humanist’ has taken its place alongside ‘radical’, ‘postChristian’, ‘non-literalist’ and ‘non-realist’ as alternative descriptions we have come to use of ourselves.” First published in 1996, this booklet, now in a new third edition, i | answers some of the questions most frequently asked about the Network.

Stephen Mitchell is Rector of Holy Trinity, Barrow-upon-Soar, and chair of the SoF steering convmittee postbag Cutting the apron strings I congratulate the compilers of SOF on not only the improved design of the magazine but the far-sighted inclusion of a number of its recent articles. Specifically Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok’s radical critique of Christian ethics (“Taking Leave of Jesus”, SOF, May 2000), and Dinah Livingstone’s broadside (“A Mess of Postmodernism”, SOF, July 2000) against the lassitude and intellectualised complacency of postmodernism, as found in Don Cupitt. It is refreshing to see any organisation have the confidence to question the ideas of its originator. Perhaps Sea of Faith is relinquishing the dual apron strings of Cupitt’s evolving canon and post-Christian Christianity. Freed from such constraints, it could bring its much-needed approach to a far broader audience.

VARAGHOSA ds@clearmind.fsnet.co.uk 95, Inverness Place, Roath, Cardiff CF24 4RW Send your letters to:

— Varaghosa, Cardiff

Patti Whaley Letters Editor SOF 145 Petherton Road London N5 2RS email 101335.3561@compuserve.com constantly rethought, inevitably brought him into conflict with ecclesiastical authority and led to his excommunication. His grave in Heraklion bears a simple inscription which should be appreciated by members of the Sea of Faith: “I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free”.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT Mesofaith@aol.com Mistaken Passion Your excellent review of Martinu’s opera The Greek Passion (“Passion Play”, SOF, July 2000) contained an inaccuracy.

You correctly say that the opera derives from Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Christ Recrucified which incidentally was originally published under the title of The Greek Passion. But you go on to say that this same book became the basis for the film The Last Temptation of Christ. The controversial film was in fact based on another Kazantzakis novel of that name.

Kazantzakis may be said to have exercised a “Sea of Faith” role in relation to the Orthodox Church. His autobiography, Report to Greco, charts his intellectual and spiritual journey noting the influences of the philosophers Bergson and Nietzsche, the religious figures Jesus and Buddha, and the political thought of Marx.

But Kazantzakis was heterodox rather than orthodox in relation to all these sources. To refer to him as a “communist” writer obscures the fact that he was critical of many aspects of Marxism and primarily concerned with its spiritual basis. His gift was to take orthodox doctrines, religious and political, and reinvent them. Thus in his novel God's Pauper he regards Saint Francis as fulfilling the highest of human obligations: “to transubstantiate the matter which God entrusted to us, and turn it into spirit”.

— Michael Elliott

What is perceived as a Christian dogma is revealed as a human activity, a natural element in the struggle for life.

The constant questioning of his own Greek Orthodox tradition on the basis of his convictions that religious truth needs always to be updated and one’s view of God Brave Crusaders It was fascinating to read in the editorial (“Flags and Drums”, SOF, July 2000) a reference to the Crusaders Bible classes. It must be the first time I have seen that organisation mentioned since I left 33 years ago. Yet I can trace a direct line from a house in Mill Hill, North London, where the Bible class met, to my present membership in SoF. We had football and ping-pong on Friday evenings followed by an hour of discussion on a Bible subject. We covered controversial subjects such as predestination, socialism and what Jesus was actually like. This was followed by a middle of the road “three hymns and a sermon” service on Sundays.

Gradually the two sessions came to represent the opposites of certainty and questioning that characterise old and new religious faith, and I found that the sermons meant less and less. I can remember the germination of many seeds, of doubt, certainly, but also of the search that has occupied me since.

Why did I leave? I wish I could say a search for truth, but it was the usual search that preoccupies most adolescents. Are there any other ex-Crusaders out there in SoF?

JIM SAMSON sampojnrs@supanet.com 16 Beech Lane, Cockermouth, Cumbria CA13 9HQ Taking the world by the throat Seafarer asks (“Strangled Cry”, SOF, September 2000): “So what enables you to take the world by the throat?” An excellent question! It is one that has exercised me for sixty years non-stop.

— Jim Samson, Cockermouth, Cumbria

An understanding of the dynamics of personal/social being is a life’s work. It leads, climactically, to two intimately related ends: the annihilation of the ego, and the discovery of the ultimate significance of imagination, i.e. of the human genius itself.

Such a conclusion took me back to the beginning - to SOF 44 / November 2000 SOF 44 / November 2000 holism as defined by the pre-Socratic Greeks, philosophy defined as wisdom in action. Action is the key to ultimate experience. To find the right action, at the right time, in the right place with the right people - to do that is to take the world by the throat!

As to motivation - God knows! “All divinity resides in the human heart”. There is something indestructible about the human spirit in its unspoilt condition. Preserve the divine spark!

— Peter Cadogan

PETER CADOGAN PeterCadogan@aol.com SoF rehab centre?

In my ninetieth year, and so, facing the end of life, Ihave encountered SoF for the first time. The comfort one of your correspondents (SOF, June 2000) has found from membership is, and will continue to be, sufficient justification for the existence of Sea of Faith. But the assiduous seeker of enlightenment, having thrown off the blinkers that an upbringing in orthodox religion fastened over her/his eyes, will progress beyond the valuable shelter afforded by SoF —a sort of rehabilitation centre, as I see it, Serious study of recent developments in life-science theory — for example, Lynn Margulis’ What is Life? and Fritjof Capra’s Web of Life — will liberate the mind both from Genesis-inspired views of humans in dominion over nature, and from puzzles left unanswered by Darwinists.

Exposure of the limitations of the Cartesian framework and the realisation that “the whole is much more than the sum of the parts”, and that systems thinking applies to life itself, open up new, rewarding and deeply satisfying views of our planet's history and of human nature as part of it.

No need any more to be reluctant to give up old comforters. I am personally grateful to have lived long enough to have met such clarity.

— Cyril Eyre, St Mabyn, Bodmin, Cornwall

CYRIL EYRE, OBE Mutton’s Cottage, S‘Mabyn, Bodmin, Cornwall PL30 3BP Frustrated I went full of enthusiastic expectation to the day conference on religious humanism in London (16 September); but dare I say that I felt just a tiny bit frustrated? Each speaker described in their usual professional and excellent way what they meant by “religious” “human /ism” either separately, together or in tension, but I found myself wondering — so what?

Is it not time for the theorising, no matter how intellectually exciting or stimulating, to give way to the more practical problem of application in our daily lives?

How, for example, is my belonging to SoF going to help in moral decision-making now that I have let go of the “god out there”, and in so doing, let go of that justification for right behaviour, or even its definition?

The question has been addressed to some extent in previous SoF conferences. For instance, Anthony Freeman looked at the parable of the Good Samaritan and we saw how Biblical stories still speak to the human condition and offer moral guidance in the 21st century; Daphne Hampson, the feminist theologian, proposed Aristotelian virtues as a basis for moral decision-making; and more recently Stephen Batchelor spoke of the Buddha who taught not something to believe in but something to do.

Perhaps it wasn’t within the remit of the religious humanism conference, but the day would have been more instructive if Patti Whaley, for instance, had tackled the ethics of genetically modified food /crop testing in the light of global ethics; or if Don Cupitt had considered the tragic moral dilemma concerning the separation or not of the Siamese twins, from his “religious” standpoint.

So — may I put ina plea to our gurus in SoF for more debate on the particular and less exposition on the universal?

— Pat Caddick, Castle Donington, Derby

Mrs PM CADDICK 10 Park Lane, Castle Donington, Derby DE74 2JF Thanks [ want to say a big thank you for the religious humanism conference - one of the most successful of SoF events. We - the whole of Sea of Faith - are so lucky to be able to benefit from your skill, your enthusiasm, and your great sense of humour. Thank you very much.

— Susan Olver, St Andrews, Fife

I was most interested to hear from Peter Cadogan and other radical humanists, and although Anthony Freeman was unable to be with us I found the day very thoughtprovoking and enjoyable. [am always particularly interested in what Robert Ashby has to say, as to my mind he has the ideas that Sea of Faith urgently needs if we are to move creatively forward... Maybe we should have a satellite conference, “Radicals in the Sea of Faith”!

SUSAN OLVER 13 Queens Gardens, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9tA Ethics man What is religion for? What is humanism? Surely the answer to both is ethics — how to live, to have life abundantly, to live together in co-operation and happiness, and thus to make a better world.

In 33 years as an active Anglican, I was never really convinced that God needed worshipping, or could be persuaded to fix things for us. I hoped for a way of life.

Eventually I concluded that the church was a costly and inefficient way of achieving right attitudes and motivation, and a more direct method would be more effective. But I now wonder if I was wrong. As the church has declined, so has the moral urge. A tautology like “We ought to do the right thing” is no longer universally accepted. Should we have an ethical foreign policy? No, we should fight for British interests against foreigners. Should a company act morally? No, only in so far as it helps to maximise profits for shareholders.

Perhaps we must write off ethics, morality, right, wrong, goodness as old-fashioned words, ruined by their Victorian associations, and talk about values, fairness, social justice.

— Denis Gildea, Dulwich, London