Sea of Faith, Birmingham

Record of meeting, 7 October 2009

2009-10-09T17:01:00.001Z

We met on 7 October at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, Sara Clethero, Paul Graham, David Lambourn and Stephen Williams, with apologies from Stephen Cox, George Gregg and John Howard.

We spent most of the meeting reflecting on the Oxford conference “Reclaiming the Narratives of Faith” which several of us had attended. It was felt to have been a successful day although there was much about the content that was debatable so we ended up debating it!

We then want on to consider our future programme and organisation. We agreed that in general we wanted to stay with our present conversational format and David Lambourn is happy to go on hosting this for at least the next year. If we wanted the occasional larger event there would be facilities and possible partners in Birmingham. There was a suggestion that we might want some time to base our conversations on the experience and concerns of members of the group rather than always look outside to books or conferences for our starting points.

With regard to the convenorship, we agreed to let Stephen Williams stand down as soon as possible. David Belcher will take on responsibility for chairing and managing our meetings, and David Lambourn will deal with mailings and correspondence. For the time being, we will no longer keep a detailed note of each meeting.

Our next meeting, as previously arranged, will be on Wednesday 11 November at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. As planned, we’ll be discussing Don Cupitt’s latest book Jesus and Philosophy. Most of us at tonight’s meeting had already acquired and read it so if anyone wants to borrow a copy before 11 November, please get in touch.

The meeting after that will be on Thursday 17 December.

Record of meeting, 19 August 2009

2009-08-23T09:52:00.001Z

We met on 19 August at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, Sara Clethero, Stephen Cox (welcome!), Paul Graham, George Gregg, David Lambourn, Simon Mapp, Andrew Teverson and Stephen Williams, with apologies from Andrew Homer and John Howard.

As agreed, those of us who had attended the national SoF conference last month offered our various, generally positive feedback of the event (including some of the different workshops we had attended). It led on to a wider discussion about science and religion, developing a number of themes from the conference. We spent some time on different ways of understanding “belief in God” and were pointed to the book How to Know God by Dipak Chopra. We are expecting the main talks from the conference to be reproduced in the next edition of Sofia which can be shared at our next meeting.

David Belcher reminded us of the regional conference on 12 September. Details have already gone to those on Email; we liked the new title with the emphasis on stories and narratives (as we found at our last meeting, the Faiths/Beliefs distinction is quite confusing!).

We went on to look at future arrangements for meetings of this group. Stephen Williams pointed out that he had been convening the group for over five years. For much of that time, the group had been quite small with just 4/5 regular members and we had developed ways of doing business that suited that size of meeting. We are now rather larger and everything to do with the meetings, the content of our programme, time and venue, minutes, catering etc, should be up for review. We discussed some of these issues and will return to them at our next meeting. Stephen also gave notice that he would like to pass the convenorship on to someone else. As part of the project of moving the group forward this would be a good opportunity for someone with a different slant to take over the role; also, now that Stephen is a trustee and national treasurer, it seems better not to have too much concentrated in one person. (As a precursor to a change of convenor and so as not to set up expectations for a successor, Stephen will no longer aim to provide such a detailed write-up of our meetings).

As well as a further discussion on our future programme, we will also spend time at our next meeting on feedback from the regional conference. As previously arranged, that meeting will be on Wednesday 7 October 2009 at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston.

The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 11 November when we will discuss Don Cupitt’s latest book Jesus and Philosophy. (Hopefully most of us will have had the opportunity to acquire or share a copy before then).

Record of meeting, 8 July 2009

2009-07-14T21:38:00.002Z

We met on 8 July at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, George Gregg, Andrew Homer (welcome!), John Howard, David Lambourn, Andrew Teverson and Stephen Williams, with apologies from Sara Clethero and Paul Graham.

As agreed, we discussed Faiths and Beliefs in anticipation of the Oxford day conference on that subject on 12 September. David Belcher introduced the topic suggesting that behind the idea is a distinction between beliefs as propositional statements expressed in a form that is in principle either true or false; and faiths which are the values by which we live our lives and for which the test is essentially pragmatic. In everyday speech the differentiation is less clearcut and words are used more fluidly but we stayed with it for our purposes. (Judging by the reviews – no-one has read it yet – the latest book by Karen Armstrong – The Case for God – seems to be based on a similar distinction.)

We reflected on the role of religious education. It looks as though the otherwise desirable multifaith emphasis has often resulted in religions being presented as sets of propositions which can be compared and contrasted; religions are looked at from the outside from an implicitly atheistic perspective rather than in terms of their meaning for the lives and actions of their adherents. Many faith communities, it must be said, collude with this and seem much more comfortable asserting authoritative propositions (eg, the age of the universe, the authorship of the Koran).

So the question is not “what do I believe?” but “what do I do next?” It can be answered by reference to rules or by deference to authority. Or we can act on the basis of the expectations others have of us. Or we can aspire to personal authenticity, the act of will or self-expression (a leap of faith!). There are attractions in the spontaneity of free action but it is not entirely realistic. We function on the basis of what we remember or what we have learned; only an infant is rootless.

This led to thoughts about free will. It is now recognised that this is not the self-evident notion it was once assumed to be. Many of our actions are almost unconscious (and in what way is answering a call of nature is an exercise of free will?) More fundamentally, big choices are often shaped by habit and expectation. Free will is thus a myth, an idea that invites scepticism and challenge, but one that is still expedient for managing the business of everyday life.

Similarly, we may need more than spontaneous free will to make changes in our lives. We reflected on the idea of “ceremony” as a way of confirming and marking change and giving licence to move forward. Absolution, for instance, both expects and licences us to act differently. This is yet another angle on “faith”.

We may come back to this after the Oxford event. Before that is the SoF annual conference on science and religion which a number of us will be attending and we agreed to devote at least part of the next meeting to a report back. We will also pick up on the issue floated last time of reviewing the organisation and programme of these Birmingham SoF meetings.

We agreed last time that that next meeting will be on Wednesday 19 August 2009 at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 7 October.

Record of meeting, 20 May 2009

2009-05-23T11:38:00.000Z

We met on 20 May at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, Sara Clethero, Paul Graham, George Gregg, John Howard, David Lambourn and Stephen Williams.

Stephen Williams referred to informal discussions he’d had since the last meeting about future arrangements for the group and it was agreed that we should return to this at a meeting in the early autumn. We are a larger group than we used to be and it is timely that we should take stock of the frequency and content of our meetings, the way we go about things and our relationship with the national Sea of Faith network. Although I didn’t mention this at the time, I would also like to put on the table the role of group convenor. (I have been doing the job for five years and it may be appropriate to pass the role on to someone else with different ideas; I’m also not sure that it’s a good principle to combine the role with being a SoF trustee as I am since becoming treasurer last year).

David Belcher reported on progress on the regional conference now fixed for September 12 with the provisional title “Faiths and Beliefs”. We talked around it for a bit, getting our heads round the topic and raising some points which David will feed back, but it looks good. The Oxford group are in the lead role but we are cosponsors (together with Banbury and Southampton) and if people from this area are to hear about it, it will probably be down to us. We should have more details by the time of our next meeting.

David Belcher then introduced the main topic of the evening, a discussion based on his reading of David Boulton’s recent book Who on Earth was Jesus? It is a long book with the greater part taken up with a review of all the efforts to date to pin down the historical Jesus. It’s done very thoroughly and would be very useful for anyone wanting a readable summary of the material but we focussed on the later chapters where David Boulton seems to conclude that there are no conclusions. Everyone has preconceptions of Jesus and can find what they’re looking for. We can accept the probability of a few key facts about Jesus but beyond that there are so many gaps in the record and there have been so many vested interests eager to fill them that it is better to recognise that we can be certain of nothing.

We thought the quest for certainty about Jesus, even from the most academically respectable, had parallels with fundamentalism. It involves tidying up the texts to present a coherent picture, but if we think the Jesus story worth spending time on at all then we must be prepared to live with its ambiguities and paradoxes. It’s down to us to make what we can of it. As good SoF people we see Jesus as a human creation!

This led on to a broader discussion of Truth with the suggestion that it has become an idol. There are technological truths which we rely on for the conduct of our everyday lives but sometimes the pursuit of truth seems to be about fixing ideas which should be kept open. At its best science is about establishing truth by eliminating what is false and is therefore always open-ended (we should generally have a clearer idea of what is false than of what is true). What we think we know is always provisional (a concrete example being aspirin which we continue to use even though we now have a completely different understanding of how it works).

Scepticism is a virtue, prompting the question of how it is to be fostered. It is often seen as an adult quality but children are moving towards adulthood from the time they are born and should be helped to develop habits of scepticism. More often the assumption is that children require certainties, something well demonstrated in the practice of churches. The church infantilises even its adult adherents so that the questioning common to theological students is so rarely shared with the laity.

We have already set the date of our next meeting Wednesday 8 July 2009 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. We agreed to explore our understanding of “Faiths and Beliefs” in anticipation of the September regional event. The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 19 August.

Record of meeting, 8 April 2009

2009-04-13T21:18:00.001Z

We met on 8 April at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, Paul Graham, George Gregg, John Howard, David Lambourn, Andrew Teverson and Stephen Williams (welcome to George and Andrew) with apologies from Sara Clethero and Simon Mapp.

Stephen Williams and David Belcher gave brief updates on the national conference in July and on the more local “roadshow” being planned for the autumn. We then moved on to our planned topic for the evening: “Easter”.

We noted the prevalence of spring festivals in most religions and cultures of the northern hemisphere, even if Christianity got it at second-hand from Passover. Ideas of renewal, new life and fresh beginnings resonate with the time of year, while the Christian and Jewish stories express an added force as their narratives begin with the experience of death and despair before the eventual triumph. They have a dramatic quality which is picked up in the theatricality of their celebrations (and not just in the purely religious rituals – a secular event like the Good Friday performance of the St Matthew Passion has a sense of occasion about it).

We pondered the variable date of Easter. It defies our customary calendar by being tied to lunar cycles; it is in that sense out of our control and demands that we be humble in embracing the experience of renewal and regeneration.

The power of the Easter/Passover/etc stories is their ability to move from the particular to a universalisation of human suffering and the hope of the new. But does that mean that they are available only to “believers”? From a SoF perspective we would want to celebrate and own these myths as the products of human creativity meeting human needs and aspirations but the structures for marking the season are largely in the control of institutions wedded to supernaturalism (less obviously perhaps in the case of Passover where Judaism can exist independently of belief). The supernatural is highly valued by those who believe in it and can be personally beneficial and therapeutic (although also serving to justify evil actions) but the potential of “Easter” is lost if it cannot be shared without dogma. Only art and music have made that a possibility; we ended back with Bach and an exuberant recording of one of his Easter cantatas (BWV 66).

We had referred at times during the discussion to the history underlying the Easter story and to David Boulton’s book Who on Earth Was Jesus?. David Belcher, who is currently reading it, offered to introduce it at our next meeting with the help of anyone else who may have read it by then. Offer accepted!

As previously arranged that meeting will be on Wednesday 20 May 2009 at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 8 July.

Record of meeting, 25 February 2009

2009-03-02T23:18:00.002Z

We met on 25 February at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, Sara Clethero, Paul Graham, John Howard, David Lambourn, Simon Mapp and Stephen Williams.

As agreed we discussed The Meaning of the West by Don Cupitt (and had an interesting and stimulating conversation, even though several of us had not got round to reading it yet, myself included). For those who had, it is clearly an important book engaging us with significant ideas, and perhaps one of Don Cupitt’s most important books to date.

Inevitably, when several of us are quite familiar with a lot of Cupitt’s work, a new book is looked at not just for what it says but for what it tells us about the progress of his thinking. It was suggested that The Meaning of the West is in some ways more orthodox (unless it’s orthodox thinking catching up) but it also includes Cupitt’s final abandonment of the prospect of church-Christianity ever being reformed to speak relevantly to the modern world. Instead his central theme is that the West has been shaped by Christianity in spite of the Church and that in fact it is only with the collapse of the Church (and of ecclesiastically authorised theology) that the true progressive message of Christianity has been able to be realised in the contemporary west. It is as though a hidden thread has preserved what is best in the words of Jesus (on social justice, the rights of women etc -– a kingdom rather than a church) notwithstanding the efforts of institutional Christianity to suppress it.

There is a lot that is attractive in this idea, but in our discussion we weren’t sure that it all stood up. This “West” seems to belong in post-war northern Europe inspired by Beveridge-style welfare states and collective reconstruction; few Americans would recognise it and much of that spirit has been superseded in Europe. The Meaning of the West is less an achievement to be celebrated than the basis of a critique to be applied to the world we find ourselves in. It was also felt that insufficient regard was paid to the multifaith character of the modern west and that the book presumed the superiority of Christianity. If, however, Christianity is able to take this surprising turn at this late stage in its history, we should be open to similar surprises in other faith traditions. A criticism from the opposite direction was that the book’s focus on the institutional “Church” overlooked other long established forms of Christian organisation such as Quakerism with its consistent social agenda; and even the Church is still a force for social action in particular localities.

We noted the tendency throughout Christian history for the person of Jesus to be reinterpreted to reflect the preoccupations of the age. We cannot objectively recreate the historical Jesus but must always rely on our own and others’ images of him. Making sense of the message of Jesus is therefore at least partly an exercise of the imagination. It was pointed out that the period of the emergence of the West was marked not just by innovative science and philosophy but also by the arrival of the novel (Descartes and Cervantes were contemporaries -– David L recommends The Art of the Novel by Milan Kundera). In that context, the story of the West is about the creation and reinvention of new narratives. This thought prompted us to think about the significance of writing and still more of printing. The written record fixes thought -– without it fundamentalism probably couldn’t exist. On the other hand writing gives the writer space to depart from the rigidity and discipline of an oral tradition and introduce something new. In fact we need both writing and live interpretation (“leapfrogging”); at its best a sermon was about interpretation but sadly has become an object of ridicule.

Whatever our criticisms, The Meaning of the West certainly succeeds as an imaginative reinterpretation of Christianity and deserves the kind of discussion we gave it. Those who haven’t read it will now probably want to.

For our next meeting just a few days before the event, we agreed to discuss the meaning of Easter. No-one could suggest a single book or reference for us to focus on so it was left to us separately to sort out material that might be relevant. That meeting will be on Wednesday 8 April 2009 at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road Edgbaston.

The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 20 May.

PS The latest edition of Sofia is now out and with it literature for the 2009 Conference. There is also a review of The Meaning of the West.

Record of meeting, 14 January 2009

2009-01-17T11:52:00.009Z

We met on 14 January at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, Sara Clethero, John Howard, David Lambourn, Simon Mapp and Stephen Williams, with an apology from Paul Graham. David Belcher reported back briefly on the London SoF Conference where he had been especially impressed with the contribution of Mohammed Aziz.

As planned, we went on to share our choices of poetry and prose, covering a range of material although as someone suggested at the end we could probably have done a bit less and allowed time for some things to be repeated. However, we can always look them up! This is what was read:

John Brackenbury: “And on Clear Days, France”, with the challenging first line “Where we are is the only vantage point”

Alan Bennett: the discussion between Hector and Timms on the value of poetry from The History Boys

Thomas Hardy: "The Impercipient”

Dylan Thomas: extract from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

David Hart: “Naming, my friends”

T S Eliot: extract from “The Dry Salvages” (...we have to think of them as forever bailing, setting and hauling...not as making a trip that will be unpayable for a haul that will not bear examination)

Robert Graves: “Broken Images”

Stevie Smith: “Why are the Clergy...?”

Günter Eich: “Messages of the Rain”

Brian Patten: “So Many Different Lengths of Time” and also “Devilment”

Dylan Thomas: extract from “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” (read with an impressive accent)

W H Auden: “In Memory of W B Yeats”

Dylan Thomas: “The Force that through the Green Fuse drives the Flower”

David Hart: “Holding the Moment Steady”

A lot of SoF discussion reflects the importance of language as marking the limit of our capacity to think and communicate, but an evening spent sharing such a range of creative writing brings home just how complex and subtle the idea of language can be. David Hart’s tentative exploration of words, and Dylan Thomas’s exuberant syntax are just the most obvious examples.

For our next meeting we will return to more customary fare, and as provisionally agreed we will look in more detail at Don Cupitt’s The Meaning of the West. As arranged, that meeting will be on Wednesday 25 February 2009 at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston.

The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 8 April. We’ll agree the subject next time but may want to look at some other stuff from Don Cupitt (Radical Theology, Above Us only Sky) or at the work of Theodore Zeldin.

Record of meeting, 12 November 2008

2008-11-20T07:45:00.003Z

We met on 12 November at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, Sara Clethero, Paul Graham, David Lambourn and Stephen Williams, with apologies from Michael Bennett and John Howard.

David Belcher referred to “Living with Difference” the London SoF conference on 22 November which he’ll be attending (1000-1600, Friends Meeting House, Euston Road; advert in latest Sofia). Tickets are now available on the door.

We started talking, not altogether irrelevantly, about the election of Barack Obama, before getting on to our planned topic “The meaning of the West”. The Obama story, certainly as reflected in his memoir (Dreams of my Father) seems to have both personal and global significance, and suggests a more complicated relationship between private life and public service than the distinction apparently being proposed by Don Cupitt in his Sofia piece. We inevitably referred frequently to that article during our discussion and found a lot to challenge, but reminded ourselves that it is just one chapter from a larger book and our questions may be answered elsewhere.

The Meaning of the West we took to be about the relationship between modern secular culture and the West’s religious, and especially Christian, history. Cupitt emphasises the continuity in that story (as he did originally of course in the original Sea of Faith programmes and book). Religious ideas and principles are transmuted through the Enlightenment to modern science and ethics, and contemporary civic society has been able to leave behind what is worst and embody within secularism some of the best of Christianity. That seems, at least in those direct terms, too simple, not really fair to either the pre-Christian Greeks or the post-Christian Arabs. Also while public service may share positive qualities with religion it can as easily share its negatives: ritualism has its parallels in bureaucracy. (Within the current debate about “Baby P” is the question whether procedures have helped or hindered).

Furthermore, the continuity from religion to secularism is always contested. The roots of the secular ideal within Christianity can be traced to the idea of Incarnation but the process has never had a clear run. It was arguably one of the underlying issues at Nicaea, where it lost out to Trinitarianism, and from the beginning the Church has used its clerical structures to contain and manage the challenge of a humanistic understanding of God and religion. We should not expect many within the churches to recognise Cupitt’s continuity.

Another strand in the process is the emphasis on reason and systematisation, rather than continue to hold to beliefs simply because they have always been believed. Cupitt’s example of the difference between a medieval Herbal and a modern Flora illustrates this well. However, alongside those Enlightenment virtues of reason and order, there is a place for something more expressive – Richard Holmes’ recent book The Age of Wonder sets the scientific discoveries of the late 18th century in the context of the Romantic Movement and describes a world where artists, scientists and poets inhabit the same intellectual circles.

We also wanted to set alongside the story of secularisation, one of sacralisation, a process whereby essentially secular institutions take on qualities of religion, in particular the notion of a superior authority beyond rational challenge. A positive example of this might be the Green movement, but more sinister examples lie in the history of totalitarianism (cf. Michael Burleigh), or for a more bizarre instance, Lord Dacre on the public right to invade the private lives of prominent individuals. Others would see that as simple hypocrisy, but it also illustrates the impossibility of achieving a definitive understanding of the world that can no longer be questioned. All thought happens in a social context (David Lambourn refers us to The Social History of Truth by Stephen Shapin).

The idea of a continuity between a Christian past and a secular present might be instinctively attractive to many SoF members, but the more we thought about it the notion of the West as essentially Christian looks a difficult one to sustain. There is probably a simpler narrative that brings us direct to where we are now. We agreed provisionally to return to this topic in a couple of meetings time when we should have had the opportunity to look at the whole of Don Cupitt’s book.

For our next meeting we agreed to share some significant poetry. John Howard had opened the way to this some time ago when he circulated his Desert Island Poems but we have never talked about these and other members will have poems or short prose texts that express important ideas for them. Hopefully most of us will be able to bring something.

As previously agreed, that meeting will be on Wednesday 14 January 2009 at1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 25 February.

Record of Meeting, 24 September 2008

2008-09-29T17:37:00.002Z

We met on 24 September at David Lambourn’s house. Present were John Challenor, Paul Graham, John Howard, David Lambourn, Simon Mapp and Stephen Williams, with apologies from Sara Clethero, David Belcher and Michael Bennett.

As arranged, David Lambourn introduced a discussion about “Rites of Passage”. These are ceremonies or performances that mark important stages in individual growth and development and conventionally have three elements: separation (from a past life), liminality (what happens during the process), and reincorporation (as a changed person). In most cases they are typically accompanied by formulaic language and actions and the wearing of special clothes. According to Wikipedia, they are becoming less common, but we recognised many contexts, and not just religious ones, where they are still significant e.g. education (starting school, graduation ceremonies), the armed services (passing-out parades), youth organisations (moving from cub to scout).

Many rites of passage are however associated with the church, including important life events like birth, coupling and death, as well as those with more a narrowly religious purpose. Arguably it is the Church’s control of these processes that has sustained its growth as an institution (Don Cupitt in The Sea of Faith writes of Joss Brooks, a 19th century predecessor in Salford, who was a rough, eccentric character, chiefly remembered for astonishingly large and chaotic mass baptisms and weddings). The contemporary enthusiasm for faith schools reflects perhaps a similar assumption of a religious endorsement if not ownership of today’s central rite of passage, the acquisition of educational qualifications.

In introducing the topic, David had focussed on the individual’s relationship with the Church. The term “rite of passage” contains a metaphor of a journey, yet the Church has no apparent way of marking intellectual development or spiritual growth; the only rites of passage after confirmation are excommunication or funerals! This is a significant issue for SoF members in churches (and many others surely) for whom religious understanding is always dynamic and changing (the underlying theme of the original Cupitt TV series). The paradox of rites of passage is that they exist to mark and celebrate individual growth and development but culminate in a return to a community to which the individual is subservient. It would be nice to think that the Church could give approval, if not necessarily celebrate, when its adherents develop new insights and understandings, but it’s hard to think of a rite of passage that could give effect to it. Rites of passage are essentially conservative and hierarchical in their function and are suspicious of innovation and imagination.

Rites of passage are also social occasions; they imply an audience, who in turn are presumed to buy into the rationale of the event. One way of squaring that potential conflict is to modernise or customise the event and we talked a bit about funerals and what might have been lost in the rush from traditional formulae. On the other hand to persist with customary forms can put an audience in a real bind if the forms imply dogmas that are questionable or even unbelievable. The example we discussed was confirmation where the congregation can only really participate in the event by affirming credal statements that leave no space for non-literal, let alone SoF-type, interpretations. This led us to reflect on the tyranny of creeds and the irony that what are now regarded as criteria for membership were originally designed to exclude; affirming a creed or articles of faith is essentially to declare “I am not Arian/Catholic/whatever”.

Why then do we bother? In the face of the obvious recourse of simply walking away from the whole business, we recognised that traditional rites of passage still have a resonance, even if a diminishing one. This suggested a topic for our next meeting, whether what we are experiencing is a break with the past or some kind of evolution from it. It is the question often asked about the Enlightenment and is perhaps nicely summed up in Don Cupitt’s phrase “The Meaning of the West”. We agreed to look at this next time, taking as our starting point, but not restricted to, Don’s piece in the latest edition of Sofia.

As previously agreed, that meeting will be on Wednesday 12 November 2008 at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. The provisional date for the meeting after that is Wednesday 14 January 2009.

Record of Meeting, 13 August 2008

2008-08-26T17:34:00.000Z

We met on 13 August at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, Michael Bennett, John Challenor, Sara Clethero (welcome), John Howard, David Lambourn, Simon Mapp and Stephen Williams with an apology from Paul Graham. As arranged, we discussed art and religion in the light of the national conference.

David Belcher and Stephen Williams reported back on what had been a well-run and very enjoyable conference. Many of the workshops were activity-based (singing and dancing etc) and more generally there had been an emphasis on expression rather than argument. It made for a more nuanced approach in which different, sometimes ambiguous or contradictory ideas could be embraced.

The main “academic” input had come from George Pattison, reflecting on monotheistic religion’s problems (or rivalry) with artistic creativity, and arguing instead that both art and religion are in the business of transformation of matter and experience. In the central part of his address he reflected on the idea of creation out of nothing drawing on his special expertise, the writings of Kierkegaard. The freedom to be ourselves, the foundation of creativity, can be too great to bear, and there is comfort in conformism. If we think, however, about the transformation or “re-creation” of real life, both art and religion can be sources of consolation. The argument here had been quite difficult to follow and was not helped by the excessive heat in the room so the reprint in due course in Sofia will be much awaited.

Sara Clethero went on to talk about her experience in teaching singing and more generally in the use of voice, in the context of both performance and therapy. She suggested that unlike other forms of expression, voice belongs in the moment and with the speaker or singer (cf. post-modern approaches which treat products as objects and therefore public property). Voice is existential (Sara has an academic interest in existential Christianity) and has its own authenticity. She gave as an example the ecstatic vocalisations to be found in Pentecostalist churches. Other members of the group were less sure of the distinctiveness of voice as against for instance writing, especially when we shift the emphasis from expression to communication. Where in that context does the listener or reader fit in?

The discussion led us back to the concept of performance and looked forward to the idea of rites of passage, the ceremonies used to mark significant life stages, that we had already identified as a possible topic for the next meeting. As previously agreed that will be on Wednesday 24 September 2008 at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 12 November.

Report of Meeting, 3 July 2008

2008-07-08T06:32:00.002Z

We met on 3 July 2008 at David Lambourn’s house. Present were John Challenor, Paul Graham, John Howard, David Lambourn, Simon Mapp, and Stephen Williams, with apologies from David Belcher and Michael Bennett. As arranged, we discussed the interviews with Don Cupitt, John Gray and Karen Armstrong in Conversations on Religion, the book we looked at more generally last time.

John Gray has been described as a contrarian, an arguer for unfashionable causes, but whatever, we found much to reflect on in his observations. He sees religion as a special case of myth and it is myth, the narratives that transmit meaning, that he regards as a near-universal characteristic of human consciousness ( although somewhat condescendingly he puts himself in the category of the few who don’t need it). Thus he includes the secular ideologies of the twentieth century as well as presumptions about the inevitability of scientific progress or the workings of the free market in the same general class as religious myth. He suggests, however, that some of the old myths have acquired a depth of meaning and interpretation that is missing from their more superficial modern counterparts, and that process is developed further when myth is recognised for what it is and when those who subscribe to them are prepared to “interrogate” them to uncover new meanings. He refers positively to Rowan Williams in this context. Myths gain their power through being shared, both contemporarily and as traditions developed over time, and that is why we cannot invent our own private myths but select from the repertoire available to us. We liked the thought of myth-making as an artistic project!

There is a problem that “myth” has an everyday definition that puts it in the realm of legend or fairytale and trying to talk about myth can often put us at cross purposes with those who would equate it with falsity. Gray takes on A C Grayling for oversimplifying this issue, but many religious people would make the same association and find in the language of myth a challenge to realist belief (the CofE is not yet ready to adopt the 39 myths!). In Gray’s terms myth works because it is functional and its content transcends what is supportable by evidence. It is about uncertainty and ambiguity and he sees the future in a greater understanding of this and a human willingness to embrace and value it. (Is this Gray’s myth?) He quotes Keats on “the irritable demand for certainty” and P G Wodehouse finding it “frightfully hard to tell” if he had any religious belief. We enjoyed these as well.

The idea of embracing uncertainty or contingency, as we would expect, figures in the conversation with Don Cupitt. Here, time, contingency and mortality are the central preoccupations of religion and remain so even when we leave church religion behind. We felt Don’s contribution was quite personally revealing, inviting us to share his sadness at the inability of church Christianity to accommodate his perspective. The implication of what he says, however, is that if there was ever a time when the church could have used his ideas to speak relevantly to the modern world, that is now past, and he now puts forward an every-day-life-centred view of religion in which the old religious concerns are now worked out in the here and now rather than through ecclesiastical institutions. It is still, however, a fulfilment rather than an abandonment – “The Sea of Faith” was of course a story of the development not the rejection of religious thought. Of the three pieces, Don’s was the most forward-looking and optimistic, albeit at an individual rather than a communal level, and for those who don’t know what he’s about, these few pages would be a very good introduction.

Karen Armstrong’s contribution also reflected a very personal story in which religion had been oppressive and authoritarian. It leads her, however, to a generosity towards religious thought and ideas, especially towards non-credal religion. Christianity in particular looks to define what people think and believe and in the process restricts human personality and potential; she is more tolerant of those religions that concern themselves with practice and behaviour. Perhaps, because of her critique of dogmatism her own ideas are often hinted at rather than directly expressed. Unlike John Gray or Don Cupitt she accompanies rather than leads you through her thinking. She understands the significance of religion to the communities who live by them – it is arrogant to reject them as irrational when the real issue is whether they help people to lead fuller lives as human beings. Her sense of the communal value of religion is, however, not one that she can share. Her own history makes her a non-joiner.

All three conversations had touched on the artistic and cultural context of religion and make relevant the topic for our next meeting. By then at least three of us will have been to the SoF conference on creativity in religion and the arts, and for those who won’t be there the latest edition of Sofia is devoted to the same subject.

As previously agreed that meeting will be on Wednesday 13 August 2008 at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 24 September when provisionally we agreed to look at christenings, weddings, and funerals.

Report of Meeting, 21 May 2008

2008-05-24T16:23:00.004Z

We met on 21 May at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, John Howard, David Lambourn, Simon Mapp, and Stephen Williams, with apologies from Michael Bennett, John Breadon (and for some meetings to come!) and Paul Graham. Stephen referred briefly but optimistically about his first meetings with the SoF trustees and we talked a bit about the annual conference in Liverpool. At least a couple of us will be going.

As arranged our main topic for the evening was the book Conversations on Religion edited by Mick Gordon and Chris Wilkinson. The book was assembled for a drama of that title but at this stage is essentially a collection of interviews rather than conversations. The interviewees make up an impressive range of individuals, all drawn from broadly western atheist or Abrahamic traditions although several touched on eastern or “alternative” religious notions in their replies. Although many of them were previously familiar, the format encouraged an often personal response and they were largely very readable and jargon-free (apart from Rowan Williams who got into a very abstruse discussion of the Trinity). The flavour varies – for some people the spoken word transcribes better into print than for others – and some contributors were much more dogmatic. These were likely to insist on a definition of terms that in practice allowed them to shape the argument, while others were open to alternatives and seemed more relaxed with a degree of ambiguity.

We all found the Moslem contributions interesting, perhaps because the ideas were less familiar to us. There were some informative comments on how to read the Qur’an and on a tradition of interpretation and reinterpretation that is antifundamentalist. A lot of this is very creative, although you feel that that creativity is inevitably hemmed in by the notion of a “final” revelation – some of the other interviewees would happily see this as myth and none the worse for that, but that may be a step too far for even the most open-minded of the Moslem contributors here.

Julia Neuberger and Jonathan Sacks offer a distinctive perspective, in different ways emphasising community rather than dogma as the basis of religion (and not so much answering Grayling and Dawkins as suggesting that they have missed the point). The view is nicely illustrated by Sacks’ answer to the question of the notion of an afterlife in Judaism: “Yes, but we don’t talk about it very often”. The idea of community also came up in some of the Moslem contributions and there was an attempt to explain the reaction to the Danish cartoons (and the related issue of why criticism of the prophet is somehow more offensive than criticism of God) in these terms but the argument was difficult to follow.

Alister McGrath also took the argument away from the Grayling/Dawkins ground with his emphasis on religion as transformative but many of the other contributions grappled in their different ways with their interest in the nature of religious truth. It was interesting how often they came up in various responses, and while there are familiar criticisms of Grayling and Dawkins for the way they stereotype religion there are examples here of their own position being misunderstood or misrepresented.

Not surprisingly the contributions that rang most bells for us were those that not only expressed uncertainty but made a virtue of it. If the issue is about the future, then we liked the ideas of the way forward from Karen Armstrong (“Study”) and from Jonathan Sacks (“Stop Competing”). That religious openness is not new of course. David Lambourn referred us to Grace and Personality by John Oman, looking early in the last century at how religion has to be reenvisaged for a world that is known scientifically rather than by assertion. And there is still the key thinking of the later Bonhoeffer.

This led us to reflect on the vitality of religious thought in the 1960s and what went wrong. The fate of the Second Vatican Council was critical although developments went much wider than just Catholicism. There were clearly powerful groups within all religious establishments who found the changes threatening and looked for opportunities to mitigate or reverse them but there was also a broader social context so that new thinking in religion seemed was also viewed as part of the wider challenge to the moral consensus.

Conversations had been an interesting book to discuss but logistically a difficult one. The various interviews are largely self-contained and there is no obvious logic to the order in which they had been presented. We had not really done justice to it and agreed that we would like to return and spend more time particularly on the contributions of Don Cupitt, John Gray and Karen Armstrong.

This will be the topic of our next meeting, which as previously arranged will be on Thursday 3 July 2008 (yes, Thursday) at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 13 August when provisionally we agreed to look at art and creativity in the light of the upcoming SoF conference.

Report of Meeting, 2 April 2008

2008-04-21T21:46:00.002Z

We met on 2 April at David Lambourn’s house. Present were David Belcher, Michael Bennett, John Challenor, Paul Graham, John Howard, David Lambourn and Stephen Williams. Stephen reported that he had been co-opted as a SoF trustee with a view to becoming treasurer. Watch for further news.

As agreed our starting point today was the distinction between the public and private spheres. What people believe in private is their own affair but how far should those beliefs encroach into the public realm? At one level the issue is simple: no-one can claim special authority for their beliefs on the basis that they represent revealed truth and then seek to impose them on others (the attempt to impose a “Catholic whip” on the embryology bill is a current example). Democratic politics in particular is about argument and requires a shared commitment to rationality in which no viewpoint is in a privileged position.

Moving beyond that simple case, however, the boundary between public and private looks less clear-cut. Rorty also sees actions as public but thinking as personal, but for him this is an instance of irony, our ability to live two lives at the same time. It allows alternative ways of thinking to coexist and is essentially creative. The preoccupation with the truth/falsehood dichotomy overlooks the more interesting distinction between fact and fiction: we can recognise fiction (and its special case, myth) for what it is, but then still engage with it and be moved by it. Dawkins is surely wrong when he appears to suggest that the St Matthew Passion can be appreciated as pure music as if the setting of a very specific text is not integral to the whole enterprise.

The fact/fiction or fact/myth distinction appears to cause problems not just for religious critics but also for many religious practitioners. This is the issue in the quotation from Michael Elliott’s piece in “Time and Tide” (misquoted in my last letter – sorry!) about “talking privately among friends”. There is a presumption in many churches that those holding a non-literal understanding of religious belief should keep it to themselves, or whisper it among a few like-minded companions out of earshot of the orthodox. This is an issue for those of us no longer involved with churches but who toy with the idea of returning.

John Challenor reminded us of the Latin derivation of the words public and private, the one associated with the populus, the people, the other etymologically connected to the idea of deprivation. In the classical world, to be excluded from public life and society has negative connotations whether it is physical imprisonment or banishment, or the silencing of one’s thoughts and ideas that excludes one from public participation.

Beliefs are there to be shared. We must be able to think for ourselves and take responsibility for our own beliefs but we also need others to confirm and challenge our ideas. The essence of the exercise (which we would like to think this group epitomises) is the practice of conversation, an activity that is both public and private, underpinned by trust, hospitality and companionship as much as by the exchange of ideas.

A question begged by Dawkins, Grayling, etc is whether the family is part of the public or private sphere. They worry about parents indoctrinating children with false ideas, but it would be an odd family where beliefs and their significance were not part of the domestic conversation. Parallels can be found in other social settings. Religion, where it is understood as a source of myth rather than authority, should open up conversation rather than close it down. What we often then find, as the story of SoF illustrates, is a continuum of beliefs and values rather than a set of compartmentalised positions.

The topic for our next meeting seemed to choose itself. We agreed to look at Conversations on Religion edited by Mick Gordon and Chris Wilkinson (Continuum 2008). As previously arranged that will be on Wednesday 21 May 2008 at 1930 at David Lambourn’s house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. The meeting after that will be on Thursday 3 July.

Report of Meeting, 20 February 2008

2008-03-19T19:09:00.003Z

We met on 20 February at David Lambourn's house. Present were David Belcher, John Challenor, Paul Graham, John Howard, David Lambourn, Simon Mapp (welcome), and Stephen Williams, with an apology from Michael Bennett.

As agreed we discussed Against All Gods by A C Grayling, although as the conversation progressed it became questionable whether it had been worth the effort of reading. It started well with a sensible critique of the role and claims of religion in society and ended with an unobjectionable argument for a social ethic based on humanism. However in the central chapters, he, like some other recent critics, argues against a depiction of religion that is not really recognisable to those more versed in the range of religious practice or the sophistication of religious understanding. In particular by insisting on a notion of religious belief as a set of propositions about the world as it is, rather than an exploration of meaning through myth and metaphor, he makes his whole case much too easy for himself. It becomes simply a matter of whether statements are true or false; be can present his position as rational and naturalist, by definition superior to religious irrationality and supernaturalism. In his own terms he is right to defend himself from the argument that atheism is a faith position, but in so doing he has to ignore the personal and ethical meanings, choices and commitments that atheism makes possible. He is bemused at the thought that religious people can also be humanists rather than acknowledge the fluidity of boundaries that makes meaningful dialogue worthwhile.

Grayling is more generous than some others in tolerating religion for those who want it. His main concern is to keep it as a hobby, confined to something pursued in private that does not overflow into the public realm. Reflecting on this, however we were not sure that the public/private boundary can be that clearly established or policed. Religion is not simply a body of beliefs that individuals choose (as a result of not reasoning properly, according to Grayling) but also needs to be understood as a sociological and cultural phenomenon, inherently the shared property of a community. (Even the Birmingham SoF group is about hospitality and a shared history as well as the ideas we discuss!)

We also recognised a different public/private issue that is closer to home for us in SoF. We obviously want to defend the kind of understanding of religion that we have been exploring over the years from the simplistic criticisms of Grayling et al, but given that he comes to this as an outsider basing his arguments on the most readily available manifestations of religion then his conclusions are very understandable. SoF type arguments or even radical mainstream positions don't get much coverage and, where they do, they invite ridicule or accusations of sophistry, and that response is as likely from within religious institutions like churches as it is from external critics like Grayling. SoF members who maintain a church life must often "walk silently among friends".

We felt that we had dealt sufficiently with Grayling's book, but that some of these other ideas were worth exploring further. We want to look more at the question of distinct public and private spheres, and the related dichotomies of sacred/secular and ethical/legislative; and we want to do this in the context of both larger society and the churches.

This will be the topic for our next meeting which, as previously arranged, will be on Wednesday 2 April 2008 at 1930 at David Lambourn's (0121 242 3953).

Report of Meeting, 10 January 2008

2008-01-22T19:03:00.001Z

We met on 10 January at David Lambourn's house. Present were David Belcher (welcome), Paul Graham, John Howard, David Lambourn and Stephen Williams: with apologies from Michael Bennett and John Challenor. David Belcher is in contact with some SoF-sympathisers in the West Midlands and is exploring the possibility of a day-time group but will want to stay involved with us.

As agreed, we discussed the reprinted talks from last year's conference and at Stephen's suggestion focussed on Tim Jackson's contribution which he had thought was the most original. His central point was that religion has historically provided a ''sacred canopy'' (Berger's phrase) enabling humankind to find order socially and psychologically in a world of suffering and injustice, but that in modern secular life consumerism can be shown to serve the same sociological functions. His conclusion is that consumerism cannot be countered by exhortation or rational argument and that it is necessary to tackle the symbolic and cultural drivers of consumerism, to build ''alternative theodocies''.

We liked the proposition, but on reflection wondered if the argument was overly skewed towards the psychological needs that consumerism unsatisfactorily satisfies. The comparative neglect of the social means on the one hand that we overlook the powerful economic forces behind it (producerism?) and on the other that we miss out on possible ways forward -- Tim Jackson finished on an upbeat note but it seemed pessimistic -- without a sense of the kind of solutions we should be looking for. These could well lie in our social lives, in sharing with others and mutually reinforcing aspirations for a more restrained, less profligate mode of contentment, and an ability to recognise rather than strive for happiness (ideas that actually bring us back to some of the points made by Stephanie Dowrick and Jonathon Porritt in their conference talks).

Toying with the idea of theodicy further however, some of us wondered if it was not at heart dishonest. The search for order and meaning in a suffering universe makes no sense if in reality there is no meaning beyond the way things just are, or if its only meaning is the one we choose to give it (with the emphasis on we, sharing). A more grown-up response would be to invite spontaneity (Cupitt's Solar Ethics?) and we played with the idea of carnival or as on a previous occasion jazz as more appropriate models. We remembered that Pelz had made a lot of the humour in Jesus' parables, with parable itself a demonstration of how significance is found in the way things just are (I looked this up afterwards). On the other hand, if Tim Jackson is right about the prevalence of human need for its sacred canopy then it is probably right not to expect people to abandon it in numbers; his argument is persuasive and his conclusions are at the very least expedient.

For our next meeting, David Lambourn suggested that we look at A C Grayling's recent collection of essays: Against All Gods. It's short enough to be read by then so we agreed to make that our topic. David will be able to share his copy for anyone who can't get it elsewhere.

That meeting, as previously arranged will be on Wednesday 20 February 2008 at 1930 at David Lambourn's house, 28 Frederick Road. Edgbaston. The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 2 April.

Report of meeting, 14 November 2007

2007-11-27T18:48:00.000Z

We met on 14 November at David Lambourn's house. Present were Michael Bennett, John Challenor, Paul Graham, John Howard (with thanks for his Desert Island Poems), David Lambourn and Stephen Williams.

Michael was attending his first meeting (and his first encounter with SoF) having recently moved away from a long-term involvement with evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity and wanting to see if SOF offers a way of making sense of that journey. We left our provisional programme for the evening to hear about Michael's story and to share bits of our own journeys and explorations. For those of us old enough to remember it was a pleasant opportunity to reminisce about the sixties!

We recognised that the move away from traditional religious ideas was more than just an intellectual exercise. If reason and evidence were sufficient, then we could simply share our discoveries and others would be persuaded. In fact, giving up long held orthodoxies can be painful and it is often easier to try and accommodate different ideas within the orthodox system than to think radically; similarly, we embark on the process as much because of our discomfort with the tradition as because we have been exposed to some telling new argument. Traditions are held in place by social ties of family and friendship, and leaving those shared assumptions behind can put what had seemed secure friendships under strain.

Despite its claims to objective certainty and authority, evangelical fundamentalism relies on customarily accepted interpretations. It remains, however, preoccupied with text and with the verbal formulation of belief rather than the notion of right action (as, to be fair, do many other forms of Christianity and, yes, we even find it in SoF). Following the meeting, I was prompted to reread God is No More and found the Pelzes saying something similar: "The very fact that the Church has a dogma...has encouraged us to put concepts in the place of living experience".

David illustrated this by reference to the gospel story of the woman of bad reputation anointing Jesus. Despite the determination of orthodox Christianity to interpret it as a demonstration of Jesus as forgiver of sins, a straightforward reading of the story makes clear that the woman is already forgiven through her own loving action. Once we started thinking about it we quickly found other examples of the same principle. What matters (another Pelzian idea) is our openness to the unexpected and our responsiveness to what we find there.

Michael asked about ideas for future reading, which was one of the things that took us back to the sixties, the period when radical theology moved out of academe, but we were also able to suggest more recent books including key Cupitt works, with "The Sea of Faith" now available on DVD in its original form. Our next meeting is already arranged for Thursday 10 January 2008 at 1930 at David Lambourn's house, 28 Frederick Road, Edgbaston. The topic will be that originally planned for tonight: "The Good Life" based on the talks reprinted from this year's conference. The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 20 February.

Stephen Williams (Convenor)

Report of meeting, 10 October 2007

2007-10-29T23:02:00.000Z

We met on 10 October at David Lambourn's house. Present were John Challenor, Paul Graham, John Howard, David Lambourn and Stephen Williams.

As arranged, Stephen talked about The Human Touch by Michael Frayn (now available in paperback). It had been a demanding read, not because of the style but of the complexity of the argument and the scope of the material covered. The subtitle is ''Our part in the creation of a universe'' and the central idea is that while the universe exists independently of human consciousness nothing can be said about it that is not mediated through that consciousness. He uses the word ''traffic'' to indicate our interaction with the world around us, a two-way process in which we both experience the universe and shape it. The universe is characterised by indeterminacy and it is we who give it form and structure, not as a mechanical exercise but in response to specific motives and purposes.

The idea of indeterminacy comes from quantum physics which Frayn in works like Copenhagen has obviously found very stimulating, but his argument goes much wider. In successive sections of the book he looks at the physical world, including things like our understanding of causality; mind and emotion, including ideas of free will; literature and metaphor; language; and the way, we experience consciousness of dreams.. He is particularly taxed by artificial models that simply push explanation one stage back without explaining anything so that he is critical for instance of Chomsky's linguistics or modern fashions in literary criticism. In contrast his argument is a celebration of human imagination and creativity.

Not surprisingly for a novelist and playwright, the chapters on literature illustrate this particularly well. He starts with the question in what sense it is true that Lensky killed Eugene Onegin in Pushkin's poem and how this compares with the real life event of D'Anthes killing Pushkin in similar circumstances. He argues that we are quite capable of understanding the truth of the two events in different ways and takes issue with the idea of suspension of disbelief : fiction and drama aren't meant to be believed in that sense and we don't approach them with an attitude of disbelief that has to be suspended before we can enjoy them - we all know what they're about!

Thinking about it we recognised that that argument doesn't really work in a religious context where belief is part of the currency - we may have literally to suspend disbelief to share in communal religious experience. However, Frayn's argument is very relevant to ideas of realism and non-realism in theology by placing human creativity and ingenuity at the heart of the way we make sense of things. He touches on religion in passing without exploring it systematically but it seems clear that the book occupies some of the same territory as SoF and offers some stimulating new ideas. It's worth the effort of reading.

We agreed that at our next meeting we would look at the talks given at this year's conference, now reprinted in Sofia. That will be on Wednesday 14 November 2007 at 1930 at David Lambourn's house in Edgbaston (0121 242 3953 and David.Lambourn@blueyonder.co.uk). The meeting after that will be on Thursday 10 January 2008.

Report of meeting, 29 August 2007

2007-09-19T08:04:00.001Z

We met on 29 August at David Lambourn's house. (There had been an informal meeting as planned on 11 July with an apology from Stephen). Present this time were John Challenor, John Howard, David Lambourn and Stephen Williams.

Stephen reported back positively on the Conference. He had been especially taken with the talk by Tim Jackson and recommended looking out for it when it appears in Sofia. Regarding the health of the network, he had been pleasantly surprised by the numbers of new people around since he last attended and it was also reassuring to discover that at least some of the apparent loss of membership was down to administrative cockup: that the system is now back in the safe hands of Peter Stribblehill and that the financlal predic- ament, if any, should become clearer. The magazine is to revert to quarterly publication but the AGM rejected the more extreme economies that were being canvassed.

Stephen also got the impression that there were fewer ‘unattached' members and more who combined SoF membership with affiliation or at least association with other organisations, both churches or things like the BHA. It is as if SoF has a role in supporting or invigorating its members in their engagement with other groups, rather than acting on its own behalf or for its own purposes (probably rightly, given SoF's traditional commitment to openness and dialogue, and its reluctance to adopt party lines). This thought seemed to link in with the planned topic for today's meeting.

As agreed, David introduced a discussion on 'the temptation to go back'. It had special poignancy as he had returned that day from the funeral of John Austin, former Bishop of Aston, an event attended by many bishops and clergy to varying degrees associated with an open, liberal approach to their faith, and there was something attractive in being part of such a gathering. David went on to remind us of his personal history. his work as a cleric, how he came to understand the importance of myth and metaphor, and how that caused him to become unemployable as a parish priest. He pursued a career elsewhere and looked to other sources for the development of his ideas, notably the work of Richard Rorty.

The temptation to return is partly to do with unfinished business. There is much wrong with religion, especially when it seeks a privileged place for itself in public life (e.g. education) or when it seeks to impose dogmatic, fundamentalist positions on public debate (e.g. on sexual morality or freedom of speech). 'Return' could be with a view to diminishing it, refreshing it, or in a more selective focussed way doing a bit of both. Similarly an engagement with religion could be from within or outside formal membership and David showed how these possibilities could be explored in a 2x2 grid. It became clear, however, that 'return' in David's terms meant working to change what he found there.

We recognised that this would be a difficult undertaking, and in practice impossible without allies. There is probably more sympathy within church memberships for the idea of religion as a human creation than is acknowledged (I have just seen the letter from Robert Norton in the latest Sofia) but it is not organised to take on the conservatism of the institution. There is of course a SoF in the Churches group but it appears to have become marginalised within the Network and none of us were really sure what it did. It seems to be a support group for SoF members rather than a focus to challenge the churches to adopt(!) or at least accept as equally valid a SoF approach to religious belief and values. Perhaps SoF in the Churches could be more upfront about what it is up to (through Sofia?).

We recognised that an understanding of religion as a human creation can take us in different directions. It can be a spur to transform religion so that its beliefs and traditions can be properly interpreted as values and deployed for human and social benefit (and so that David does not need to defend a Christianity without supernaturalism). There is also the implication, however, that what humans have made we can unmake. The choice is ours.

Stephen has enjoyed reading the first chapter of The Human Touch - our part in the creation of a universe by Michael Frayn, and offered to share his thoughts on the whole book at our next meeting. This will be on Wednesday 10 October 2007 at 1930 at David Lambourn's home in Edgbaston (David.Lambourn@blueyonder.co.uk for details).

The meeting after that will be on Wednesday 14 November.

Stephen Williams.

Report of meeting, 30/5/2007

2007-06-15T13:04:00.001Z

We met on 30 May at David Lambourn's house.

Present were John Challenor, John Howard, David Lambourn and Stephen Williams. John Challenor had brought some copies of Sofia with a request to leave them where they might attract new interest; a couple of us took them with ideas to do this but we were a little unsure what this said about the current state of the Network.

As planned, our topic was ''Living Deliberately'' which we had taken as an elaboration of Cupitt's idea of commitment to everyday life. If we reject a reductionist view in which human motivation is seen as mechanistic, populist or market-driven; and if we can no longer rely on religion to articulate the significance of human life, then we need to find other formulations for purposeful living. Our economic wellbeing is tied up with the idea of companies whose primary responsibility is to return a profit to their shareholders rather than to deliver a benefit to wider society (although these are not always in conflict – some overly innovative, profit-seeking directors have ruined their businesses while some steadier companies, alert to their customers and employees, will often do well for the bottom line). The sense of an integrated human personality can be lost among all these categories: share-holders, managers, consumers and workers.

David introduced 'The Meaning of Life', the recent book by Terry Eagleton in which he draws an analogy between life and jazz. Jazz musicians respond to each others' creativity to produce something that is both individual and collective, and which in turn communicates and is appreciated by a wider audience. That undogmatic, open approach could in principle still relate to religion, which is what in a different context, Martin Rees was arguing at Hay this week. He suggested that scientists had a common interest with many religious people in opposing superstition and should not go out of their way to antagonise or insult potential allies.

With some justification, however, Richard Dawkins had countered this with the reality that while there are sensible and rational people within the churches, they are not in practice prepared to take on the superstition in their midst and instead provide a sanctuary for it to flourish. The SoF network is predicated on the notion that whatever we think about it, religion is sufficiently important to justify the time and resources we devote to discussing it, but if the implication of what Dawkins was saying is correct, then there can be no future for religion unless it is prepared to risk disunity.

Similarly, it is only by risking the end of religion, that we can really work out what living deliberately might mean, in more concrete terms than albeit attractive and stimulating analogies such as the jazz band. Bonhoeffer had been developing these ideas with his conception of religionless Christianity but he was coming at them with the language and discipline of a Christian theological tradition (as was John Robinson twenty years later). Sixty years on, this doesn't seem to work, or does so less obviously, and any form of Christianity, religionless or otherwise, looks inadequate.

To the question of what would arise in the absence of religion, there is obviously no answer: we'll find out when it happens. It might clear the decks for totalitarian and inhumane relationships but it might also be the basis for liberal and responsible society.

At present, the persistence of religion is a barrier to living deliberately and it could be argued that we should be working for its demise. Emotionally, that is a hard bullet to bite and it is not surprising that SoF, for instance, wants to go on talking productively about something that can be retrieved and reformulated as part of the jazz.

David acknowledged that within this discussion at least he was the least ready to abandon religion completely. He agreed to take this further at our next meeting with a contribution with the title The Temptation to go Back . As previously agreed this will be on Wednesday 11 July at 1930 at David Lambourn's house (call 0121 242 3953). We did not finalise a following meeting but it will probably be on either the 22 or 29 August (both Wednesdays).

Stephen Williams.