88 – The Art of Humanity

Sofia Letters Editor Ken Smith, Bridleways, Haling Grove, South Croydon CR2 6DQ revkevin19@hotmail.co.uk Images and Ideas Dear Editor, Christopher Truman mistakenly attributes to me a quote by the former distinguished editor of the Roman Catholic journal, The Tablet (Letters No.87).

However, it is a view – that current global conflicts polarise around the values of the Enlightenment – I find entirely credible. It is endorsed on a daily basis by media reports of global current affairs. In contrast, the conflict over images – though deeply embedded in history, from Mosaic prohibitions through Byzantine controversies to the destruction of the Bamian statues and the Danish cartoons – is a detail of a larger, ongoing, religious narrative. This latter now pales into insignificance in the context of the fundamental change in human consciousness, that took place in the seventeenth century, of how we view the world: either in terms of the discourse of analogical inference (traditional ‘religious’ thinking) or the methodology of empirical verification (new secular thinking). The consequences of this epistemic change – extensively considered by the German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg and the French philosopher Michael Foucault, and of course Don (cf.

Talking with Dinosaurs) – now reverberate throughout our world, not only in terms of religious and secular societies but even between and within individuals within these larger entities. It is the most potent issue in human awareness, religious and ideological conflict, and in its terrorist consequences. In contrast, viewing a Botticelli might be regarded as light relief!

— Dominic Kirkham, Manchester

Dear Editor, David Warden (July 2007) finely describes the tensions and agreements that exist between humanists and members of the Sea of Faith.

Because there is no SoF group here, and encouraged by him, I threw my lot in with a very lively, local, humanist group and found its monthly meetings welcoming and stimulating. There was one personal reaction that I did not expect. As I told the secretary/leader, Edwin Salter, on leaving the Humanist meeting I feel more ‘religious’ than when I leave the Sunday service of my local chapel. ‘Religious’ in the sense of valuing my own tradition and devotional heritage. I found the hinterland of secular humanism emotionally bare.

There occurs a depth and warmth when using the metaphors of religion that encourages a caring concern, not just for the truth but for one another, when rational discussion fails. ‘Religious’ in the sense of witnessing to that tradition. Now I was on the other side of the argument. In church circles I am questioning and critical. As one Church Steward said when introducing me at a Sunday service, ‘We welcome him again to the pulpit. We don't often agree with what he says but he does make us think.’ But here I found myself with a defensive and protective attitude. This, I thought, is because secular humanism is so antagonistic to religion, all religion, that it attacks targets constructed in childhood which have been long since abandoned by the main stream denominations, and are naturally annoyed when their conservative theology is corrected. One visiting cleric who took a modest liberal line was told bluntly that he was a heretic. It is an achievement when a Christian is judged, condemned, and excommunicated by a group of humanists!

In this encounter it has been very difficult to express in a concise way the SoF position. I am sure that David Warden is right when he says that ‘we are navigating the same sea,’ though in the group I was advised that the SoF exploration sounds more like being in ‘the soup – of religiosity’.

— John White, King's Lynn, Norfolk

Yours, John White, 78,Suffield Way, King’s Lynn, Norfolk PE30 3DL john.white78@virgin.net letters The Great Oak At the bottom of my garden stood a great oak tree. It was there when a ‘select development of executive style dwellings’ was hastily assembled, which housed me and my family for about 12 years. It was there when a hundred years before, the Council created a Municipal Cemetery, an oasis of peace and sadness the other side of my garden fence. A place to visit, to remember, to bring flowers, to show love, to show you cared, to think of all the ‘if onlys’ which make up each person’s life story.

Each autumn, the Great Oak shed its harvest of acorns, a feast for the grey squirrels that lived their lives in its branches. Some they buried as a winter store, some lay undiscovered to grow into trees for another generation, as the Great Oak had become the gift of a generation now long forgotten.

At the first Sea Of Faith Conference, held on a cold but bright day many years ago, we gathered to talk about things most of us had never talked about in public before. How the world of religious thought no longer gave us answers that made sense, no longer helped us make sense of our lives. We discovered that we shared a common conclusion that it just didn’t work any longer.

It was all going very well, when a lady sitting in front of me (I used to remember her name but sadly no more) asked the distinguished panel of speakers, ‘but what about the heart?’ It was a question that has never been answered and I speak as someone who has read, sometimes over and over, most of the words written so beautifully by Don Cupitt, Don whom I first met as an earnest Theology undergraduate in 1967.

The lady, whose question lived longer than the memory of who she was, went on to say that intellectual discussion was all very well but making sense of your life was for her an affair of the emotions. Whatever common sense told you was all very well but some of us, maybe most of us, live our lives through our feelings about things. It was an affair of the heart. The answer to her question is quite simple even though it has taken me 40 years and a course of counselling to work it out.

To make sense of life firstly we need to feel we are loveable. Easier said then done. Then we need to feel we are loved. And finally we need to feel that ultimately all will be well. This is what the great religions have tried to do for us even though the intellectual infrastructure that supported them has crumbled and fallen away. To me this matters not.

The great religions are not ‘true’ in an intellectual sense but they can work ‘as if’ they are true. They can make us feel better about ourselves and our place in the scheme of things.

I often think of the electric light switch. I never understood or believed the scientific explanations as to how electricity works. Maybe that is taking scepticism too far but that’s how it was for me.

Despite this I have no hesitation in turning on the light when I need it and turning it off when I want to save the planet. I can even mend it when it doesn’t work. That’s how religion works for me too. Don has won the argument but religion was always about how we feel about things rather than how we think about things. However atheistic my intellect has made me, my heart lives in the certain knowledge that the person I created as a choirboy in the 1950’s, the Jesus of the story books lives with me as an everpresent friend and guide. A person without whom I could never have survived as long as I have. Day by day he’s there telling me that all will be well. That if there is only one set of footprints in the sand, they are his carrying me through.

The acorns from the Great Oak feed me as they feed the grey squirrels. It helps to have a positive mental approach to things. To think of life as a cup half full. To value what you have and not to be dragged down by what you don’t have, by the pain and the suffering we all endure. There are doubtless many ways of doing this but the one that works for me, the acorn that feeds me, is the certain knowledge that he is there for me as he has always been. Even though he probably never existed in the real world. Even though if he did we can never know anything about him.

The Great Oak disappears and the squirrels with it.

Acorns fall no more. The winter store is bare. I can’t imagine such a world. The intellect tells us we don’t need it any more. Maybe we can use the Internet as we used cemeteries, a place to show your feelings, to make sense of life. But what of the people in the select development of executive style dwellings? How barren will their lives be? Is the problem of the heart to be solved by another generation of wonder drugs from Glaxo Smith Kline Beecham?

The Sea of Faith has had its day, has run its course, has ebbed and now runs down the pebbles on Dover Beach. Sadly the question was never answered. What about the heart? The Great Oak is no more. The world will look for its answers somewhere else.

Stephen Broughton SBroug@aol.com Current Affair Comment by Owl There’s nothing an Owl likes better than a freshly opened can of worms. Not that the worms themselves need to be fresh, just fat and wriggly, like the mass of contributions to the latest debate on the singing of Jerusalem (‘And did those feet... ?’). In case you’ve missed it, there’s been an almighty rumpus following a report that Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark, does not regard William Blake’s verses as a suitable ‘hymn’ for memorial services.

— Stephen Broughton