These days I do not have many face-to-face conversations about God. In my local parish I keep very much in the background. An application that I did make over a year ago for a PTO seems to have been lost in the bureaucratic in-tray of my diocese. It did not help that the mission-community leader, then overseeing our parish and my application, left the area two weeks after signing my form. This diocese seems to have ample supplies of retired clergy so that my potential contribution is not missed The sermons that I don’t preach in a real pulpit have to appear from time to time on this blog.
The short conversation that took place after church followed a sermon from our new Vicar which was a commentary on the first section of the Alpha Course. This is being used during Lent. I am not attending these sessions, but I gather that one question in the first session concerns the historical reality of Jesus. There is a real effort made to convince the Alpha attendees that Jesus can be believed in because both the historical evidence for his existence and his claims to be the Son of God are strong. There is the usual apologetic mention of Josephus and Suetonius which I believe are frequently appealed to in this context. The argument seems to be that if Jesus existed and the evidence for believing the claims made about him are strong, we have solid grounds for following suit. Everyone is faced with a choice – to believe or not to believe. If we do believe, we have solid reliable historical evidence to back our choice.
My quiet conversation after the service was with a man who has, like us, only moved into the area in the past few years. His wife is an enthusiastic Christian in a way that he is not. He comes along apparently to support her. His words to me were few but they communicated his difficulty in ‘believing’ what had been said in the sermon. There was no opportunity to go into the detail of the Alpha reasoning or what I might describe as black-white theology. I simply said there is a third way to approach the question of belief. We can, in the words of a course that I used in my church some years ago, be ‘living the questions’. I explained that the place of living inside a question was to allow that question to be alive and active inside us. The alternative positions, total acceptance or total rejection both seemed problematic. Each of these options did not appear really to engage with the discussion. One side was walking away from even considering the question. The other was claiming to have certainty over the question of belief without having necessarily engaged with it at depth. To claim to have certainty in respect of a religious topic may not necessarily be a healthy position. It implies that you feel you have arrived at a point beyond questions and doubt. You cease to be a position to learn anything further. Your stance appears to be sterile and implies that you have reached the end of your journey.
The conversation lasted only a minute or two and I did not develop it beyond the point of encouraging the man to think through the meaning of the phrase to live the questions. But it got me thinking about how I would have, in the past, preached a sermon to encourage people who found difficulties with aspects of belief and faith. To offer people certainty in religious or political situations is seldom the best option. The current crisis in Ukraine reminds us that certainty can be a lethal and dangerous commodity. Putin is an example of the way that one man’s certainty can lead others into a dark place where questioning and doubt are erased. Such a place can have terrifying results. Should not Christian believing always have an element of uncertainty about it? There are, I believe, reasons for us to hold strongly to a position where ‘living the questions’ is the right and healthy reaction to both the way we learn, and the way we practise our Christian faith.
The first good reason for some provisionality, even uncertainty, to exist in our Christian faith is that it allows an individual always to be open to something new. Scientific discovery, we are told, depends on a readiness to discard old theories when these cease to work. Truth for the scientist represents something tentative and provisional. If certainty were to be the goal of scientific enquiry, then scientists might believe that it was right to hope for a point where they no longer had to experiment or question their theories. While I am no scientist, I note the huge adjustments that have had to be made when a scientist probes the sub-atomic world. Common sense physics simply ceases to work at this level. The scientist has to operate in the mysterious language of mathematical formulae which are a closed book to the majority of us. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the Christian faith might be expressed in ways that transcend the limitations of our human languages?
One of the things I am grateful for in my life is the privilege of having studied theology at university level for eight years. The chief reward for this study is not some prestigious job in the Church but a wider sympathy for the infinite variety of ‘languages’ in which theology can be expressed. I am not talking about the actual languages of Hebrew and Greek in which the Bible was first written, but the way Christianity has adapted itself to the variety of cultures that are found in the world. Culture does involve languages, but it is also operates beyond words and concepts. To say that we truly understand any culture fully, even our own, is probably a dangerous claim. It is even more doubtful to lay claim to a culture that is not our own or expressed in languages which we have to work at studying. My theological journey has taken me across a variety of cultural and linguistic boundaries. 18 months of the eight years studying were spent attached to institutions abroad where English was not a first language. This privileged exposure has not provided me with superior knowledge of theology but has made me aware of the limitations of what I do know. Wisdom comes from recognising how much my background of being a middle-class English male have shut off huge areas of wisdom that are given to those who think and speak using totally different words and ideas. In short, my privileged theological education has allowed me to realise how much I do not know rather than what I do know.
Grasping that one does not know much in an area of knowledge, allows one to be extremely allergic to the language of certainty. A lot of my theological opinions are a work in progress. I shrink from settled opinions that are set in stone for fear of being suffocated by these opinions, when I want to take a new look at what I really mean in expressing them. Many of my readers will be sympathetic to the analogy of the journey or pilgrimage as describing the Christian faith. Because journeys involve movement there is always variety and newness built into what we can see. We can never see the totality of the journey, but we can describe episodes that occur along the way. The pilgrimage analogy is a good way of helping people, like the man in church, to realise that they can belong, even when they are uncertain about what they believe. The same humility could be asked of the militant atheist. How can anyone possessing the limitations of a single brain and living inside one culture feel able to pontificate what is ultimately real and true? Humility is required of the atheist dogmatist as much as it is of the religious believer.
The task of learning to be a Christian does not fit a textbook pattern. We do not learn something as children and then cling to it for the rest of lives. In practice all of us struggle with doubt, uncertainty and sometimes despair. The alternative to struggle and untidiness would seem to be something far worse. Coasting along, afloat on a raft of certainties and settled opinions, may sound all right, but it seems to offer a life devoid of texture, colour and meaning.
Christianity suggests that one day we shall face our maker to face some process of judgement. The idea of this judgement is often presented as a way of discovering whether we have lived good moral lives. If that is true, I also believe that we will be questioned about whether we have been living lives involving adventure and courage. Have we intellectually and physically pursued all our opportunities for learning and experience? Have we, in other words, lived life to the full, exploring the options given to us and opening ourselves the infinite variety of life? Have we, as well, pursued the many questions that life throws at us concerned with meaning and the nature of reality?
I’m grateful, in one sense, that your permission to officiate has been mislaid, if those of us online are afforded preaching of this quality.
For me, uncertainty and exploration are a progression from a rigidity of thinking and a sterility of living. It’s not always very comfortable of course.
My wife and I enjoy box sets of dramas and we’ve recently re-worked the 3 “Broadchurch” series. Without spoiling the plots too much, I can reveal that the vicar there turns out to be a surprisingly good bloke, not because he’s perfect. He’s not. He’s a recovering alcoholic. He attempts to minister to the people of the town through some dreadful experiences including death of a child, a serial rapist, suicide and so on. He achieves acclaim in my opinion, not because he knows the answers, but because he admits he doesn’t. He admits his own despair at the lack of answers to impossible questions, but lives holding the uncertainty on behalf of others, as an act of leadership. When I first saw the series, I’d assumed he would be a prime suspect. Clerics usually are in many of the current dramas in books and tv. I was wrong.
For me, certainty is often a superficial flight to safety. I spent the first couple of decades of my Christian life in this mode. The answers I’d learnt turned out to be completely inadequate to address the many challenges of a pilgrim’s journey. I can’t prove that God lead me out of my former way, but it’s a hypothesis I’ve been working on for some time now.
Thanks Stephen for the message you gave.
This is right, though the same media secularism that wants to spread the cliche of the wicked priest is just as keen to spread the cliche of the unbelieving or doubting priest.
Excellent piece, Stephen!
I was reminded of this post from the ‘Brother, Give us a Word’ daily meditations by brethren of the Society of St John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Massachsetts:
Knowledge
Acknowledging what we do not and cannot know by the use of our human faculties of knowledge is a sign of wisdom. This surrender in faith to the reality that we are not God, and that God is pure and ultimate Mystery, is at the heart of the Christian journey. All of our knowledge is provisional, incomplete, and partial, the sacred knowledge as much as the secular.
Br Keith Nelson SSJE
Such a wonderful post – thank you. For me, living with questions, holding them alongside lived experience and inner spiritual life, has to be the only authentic way forward. If I couldn’t, or didn’t do this, then the paradoxes would be irreconcilable. In this context I am reminded of a statement by Richard Rohr:-
‘ We worshipped Jesus instead of following him on his same path. We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with God and everything else. This shift made us into a religion of ‘belonging and believing’, instead of a religion of transformation.’
Both heart and intellect leapt when reading this post last night . I agree with Steve Lewis above; much gratitude for this beautiful reflection. Thank you, thank you.
I wish I’d read this 30 years ago. But, if I had, would I have understood or been open to it?
I’ve spent the last few years wishing I could go back and preach many sermons over again, but very differently. I frankly wonder how much harm I’ve done. On the other hand, there are many people who need certainty for some or all of their lives; perhaps because of their psychological make-up, poor education, neuro-diversity, or the sheer hardship of their lives.
Stephen, have you found this approach effective among what used to be called working class people?
Some of the previous posters may be too new to the blog to know that Stephen doesn’t always practise what he’s preached in this sermon-post. Nevertheless, it strikes a good cautionary note.
One of the reasons given for my being turned down for ordained ministry was that I seemed to doubt my calling! As a cleric of my acquaintance said, it depends what you mean by doubt. And if the selectors are looking only for certainty, that explains a lot!
Perhaps you inadvertently dodged a bullet there English Athena? I know how gutted people are to be turned away by this process. I’d have been anyway. It can sit with you, the rejection, all your life. But much now sits on the shoulders of those who “qualified”, and much of it not very good.
I could easily foresee lengthy threads and posts on what “they” are looking for and not looking for in potential ordinands.
😀. Yes indeed! I’ve seen the stress some clergy endure, I’ve watched them reduced to being on hands and knees by the time they retire. And how can that be right? But I’m here because of bullying by the church. Twenty years of incompetent and downright nasty clergy! And I think, and I was turned down, and they passed fit??!
Seems like those selectors never heard of Gore Vidal – I expect you know the quote I mean?
Actually, no. I always think of Oliver Cromwell!
Which Cromwell quote would that be please?
I beg by the bowels of Christ, think, you may be mistaken. From memory.
I thought of that quote as it’s one of the few of Cromwell’s I know, but I don’t see why selectors would say that to you when you’re already self-doubting?
No. Gore Vidal said a lot of things, which quote do you mean?
“Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.”
It used to count against you if you were too sure of your calling. You’e supposed to be open to the Church ‘testing your vocation’.
Oh they decide before. If they like you, they think what you say is pleasing modesty or something. If they don’t, they don’t. It all depends on what references you get. Unless you’re very, very lucky. Selectors won’t go against a bishop.
It’s 20 years since I trained as a selector, and I had some issues with the training, but it wasn’t the case that the decision was made before the selection conference. Selectors do vary, and some may take against a candidate or be simply prejudiced (misogynist, homophobe, covert racist etc). And of course the system may have changed in that time.
If the bishop disapproves of a candidate, they’re unlikely to get as far as a conference. And I’ve known cases where a bishop overruled an ‘no’ to ordain a candidate anyway. That didn’t always work out well.
Oh, I know it’s complicated. I knew two selectors in my previous diocese. One was a divvy, one very, very tough but fair. I’ve also known people sent to a conference because their bishop didn’t want to be responsible for the decision. Two at my conference, one of whom was me! I also knew of one who was turned down but ordained anyway! He was a friend. But suborning the process always possible. I went during a period when there were big questions asked about the conduct of a number of conferences, three during one three month period. And then of course it improves for a while, and then someone tries it on again…. and here we go again! I’m sure everyone did their best when you were there, Janet. But, honestly, they don’t always! And in my day, three quarters of rejected candidates were later ordained IN ANOTHER CHURCH! And not usually in what my husband calls the peculiar brethren. Often the Methodists!
I’m not saying everyone did their best – I said selectors vary, and some are prejudiced or just difficult.
But, in my experience, selectors at a selection conference don’t decide the outcome beforehand. Diocesan vocations advisors are a different matter.
I was turned down for ordination. I have always felt, based on the dismissive interview that I had with the vocational advisor, that he had made his decision in advance based on his assessment of the paperwork I had sent in. The bishop had told me he thought I was a good candidate. It’s difficult to know these things, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.
I’m sorry. And people can be very dismissive. And if there’s evidence that the process wasn’t fair, it’s hard to believe in the outcome. People constantly made me false promises that I’d be given another chance. It keeps you hanging on, I mean, if you’re trying to be faithful to your sense of call, what can you do? I can’t make any wise suggestions, John! I’m afraid I never discovered the way to being treated decently! Only. Try not to let “them” govern your life. Easier said than done. Have a virtual hug! O
After I was turned down for ordained ministry (at diocesan level), I was advised to submit a Subject Access Request. The letter from the bishop which declined sponsorship to BAP was very much about how he had prayed about the decision and how he had discerned that this was God’s will for me. The Subject Access Request revealed what were actually very worldly discourses between the sponsoring bishop and the DDO. As someone who works in a secular, professional environment, I was actually quite shocked at the tone of some of the language used in the e-mails between them and others.
Having read the SAR, I would much rather they have just said that they didn’t like me (or preferably, given that that was the case, not dragged me through the stress of interviews) than to put on this performance and drag God into it. I do find the bringing of God into the decision to be the part which has had the most lasting damage for me. It showed little regard for me as a child of God, whatever they may have thought of me as a candidate for ordained ministry. I have since left the Church of England and have a valued and supported ministry in another denomination, but I can easily appreciate why others in this position drop out of churchgoing or even (sadly) out of their faith. Even now, as someone who has a respected ministry and valued ministry, I do have some of those ‘dark nights of the soul’ where what the bishop wrote bounces around my mind and causes me to doubt myself and my value to others, and indeed, to God.
I would advise anyone who has found themselves in this position to spend some time in another denomination, even if it just to rest and recuperate before returning to the Church of England. I think that they will gain a wider sense of the Christian world, and as someone who had been an Anglican since their adult coming to faith, spending time elsewhere and embedded in another ecclesiology (i.e. non-episcopal) really opened my eyes on many matters. Indeed, I suppose that the proof is that I stayed!
I’m glad you’re happier now, James, and your ministry is valued.
The C of E is institutionally corrupt and abusive, though of course there are still many good people and pockets of good practice.
Indeed.
Thank you, Janet, I really appreciate that.
I suppose that to be seriously contemplating ordained ministry, you have a hope for the best vision of what the Church of England can be. I was always quite open to the prospect that my calling might take me into a direction other that priesthood, perhaps to LLM or something similar. However, I wasn’t expecting my experience to be something akin to the end of the Wizard of Oz, where I discovered that behind the veneer of the beautiful buildings and liturgies actually lie some quite grubby and cold mechanics which were then dressed up and presented as being God’s will.
Like you, I know many good people who continue to minister and worship with the Church of England, so I do believe that there is hope there. That said, I think that the changes required on many fronts are monumental, and having read some of Froghole’s astute comments in recent months, I fear that the tide of ageing demographics and narrowing financial margins (exacerbated by the current inflationary trends) may not turn soon enough for much to be salvaged which will resonate with the non-churchgoing population of this country. Perhaps the Church of England’s most lasting witness will be the buildings after all?
Thank you Athena, much appreciated. I left church not long after being turned down – my particular circumstances made it impossibly difficult to stay. That was fourteen years ago, and I have never found my way back. I have, however, found God in many unexpected places since then.
In my experience, God delights in turning up in all kinds of unexpected places. Glad you’ve found that too.
I’ve also learned more about God from novels and poetry than I have from many a devotional book or commentary.
I wonder when the inflection point was.
Re the post, rather than the discussion, I realised recently that I would still follow Jesus if his bones were to turn up one day, proving it was all a fraud, because I am so impressed with his character as displayed in the gospels.
How do you feel about C S Lewis’ famous trilemma?
Or 1 Corinthians 15:12ff….
Those rejected by the establishment Church are of course in good company. Jesus Himself was rejected completely by them. Mind He never exactly tried to endear Himself to them; quite the reverse obviously.
And then a new church was established after Him.
The hard thing for me at least, is the painful and still emerging discovery, that what I once held dearly contains a great deal of rot.
I must admit, Steve, that I have done a lot of reflecting upon Karl Barth’s cynicism about the Church being tied to the state!
I have also done a lot of reflecting about whether the rot is due to the Church’s failure to adjust to what has become a more marginal role in society that it would like, or whether the rot has been there for a long time but has only come to widespread attention in recent years through social media, the retrospective emergence of successive abuse scandals, etc.?
I think that what is clear is that now that the curtain has been opened, there is no going back for the Church (or at least not whilst it continues to travel along its current trajectory). When I have described my experience to atheists / non-churchgoers in my acquaintance, I have been met with a fair amount of “Well, what did you really expect of the Church?” That loss of standing (indeed, respect) from wider society is something which will be very difficult for the Church to recover, and it is a sad indictment of the current state of play.
To some extent most other churches are tied to the state too, in substance by their charitable tax recovery status, if not in form. Society allows this as long as there is some perceived public benefit, but I agree that there is increasing marginalisation; a steady drift away from attendance being relevant.
Arguably media have been deprecating, although often the converse is the case.
In fiction, the construction of nasty vicars is hardly a recent phenomenon.
A new transparency with the infamous internet has had the effect of speeding the unmasking of Church corruption to breakneck pace. Attempts to conceal only make the publicity worse. The opportunity to track the integrity (or otherwise) of a speaker has probably never been greater. Perhaps this keeps us all honest?
This is hardly a topic that the intellectually disadvantaged can join in?
I both warm to it and sense danger. I warm to the idea of honesty but, can ‘Honesty’ be more than an Idea, knowing the evasiveness of human nature?
The danger is that as I write this, I can hear Don Cupitt talking about his ‘’non realist God” (god?)
Chris Pitts
Hi, Chris! Nice to “see” you!
Thank You EnglishAthena
Peace
Chris
Like many earlier commentators, I found this post very helpful and reflective of the journey that I have made as I now approach 80. Many years ago, a friend commented following a sermon given by Bishop David Jenkins, admired and reviled by many in equal parts, that the Bishop had given us permission to have doubts. I certainly have been helped by the writings and preaching of Richard Holloway (who, incidentally, was Michael Berkeley’s guest on ‘Private Passions’ this Sunday past). I also found that ‘The Widening Circle of Us: A Theological Memoir’ by Peter Francis also usefully thought-provoking. In many cases our leaders, both political and religious, display all too much certainty and not enough humility. As a retired university teacher of English I am simply unable to read the Bible without paying attention to all its ambiguities (all seven types, pace William Empson) and it is that open-ness to ambiguity and different readings which gives it its power. We are reading a document which has come to us by way of oral traditions, copying by fallible human beings, translation at various stages and so absolute certainty cannot be possible. For me words are not enough. I need music and the arts in order to approach God. We are approaching ‘Messiah’ season and tomorrow evening I shall hear once again Handel’s setting of ‘I know that My Redeemer liveth’ and once again my all too uncertain faith will be refreshed. Thank you Stephen.