Category Archives: atheism

What makes me angry with (some) atheists

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Scott g asked me why I lose calm when discussing matters related to atheism, which I’ve been pondering. At root I don’t agree that it isn’t about praxis, although I accept that the link is not direct.

I think there are two sorts of atheist criticism, and one of them riles me, the other doesn’t at all (in fact I find it rather congenial – oops, there might be more on that another time).

The first sort I associate with Dawkins and his ilk, and it is by far the most common sort that I encounter (admittedly this might be triggered by people discovering who I am and what I do). This tends towards supercilious condescension (The God Delusion etc) and is convinced of its own intellectual superiority. This riles me because for various reasons I see it as not only intellectually inadequate but manifestly inadequate; that is, any fair minded investigation of the debate would undoubtedly consider the Dawkins critique to be not just false but foolish too (think of Terry Eagleton’s famous evisceration of that book). In other words, what engages me here is a conviction that the truth matters – and these sorts of atheists seem not to care about truth.

Now the second sort of atheist is rather different to this – and in fact, the variety of this second sort is much greater and more interesting than the uniformity of the first sort. Perhaps a better label would be ‘non-Christian’ rather than atheist, because I would include people with all sorts of diverse understandings here, eg Buddhists, pragmatists, MoQists and so on. Such people can criticise Christian understandings much more radically than the Dawkins-style fulminations because they are a) more educated and understanding of mainstream Christian thought, and b) they accept the reality and necessity for rejecting science as the primary boundary marker for knowledge and wisdom. In other words this second sort of ‘atheist’ is living in the same world that I’m living in, and we can have all sorts of productive conversations – and we do.

Really what my “thresholds” were about were fencing off the first sorts of atheists; or, perhaps a bit more defensible, they are ways for me to work out what sort of atheist I am engaging with. I really enjoy and value the conversations I have with the second sort, but not the first, which I find frustrating. Now that is a spiritual issue, because I don’t think that this reaction of frustration and anger is a defensible one; it’s a fault in me. Hence I need to try and cultivate my inner calm.

Thresholds for a sensible conversation with an atheist

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I’ve been musing – in between sneezes and christmas pudding – about what is needed to have an intelligent conversation with an atheist; that is, a conversation which has some chance of fostering growth in understanding on either side. There are general things to do with civil debate and openness to changing of minds, but there are some more specific needs as well. So I thought I’d jot these down (I’m sure an atheist could come up with some reciprocal ones from their side!).

1. The atheist needs to either understand, or be willing to be taught, the concept of idolatry. This is not new-fangled ‘liberalism’, this is the main root of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In brief, God is not a member of a class – any class. That class can be ‘existing things’ or ‘beings’ or ‘good’ – all of these fail to capture God. So often the understanding of God being rejected is not one that a moderately trained theologian could accept. As Denys Turner puts it, the atheist hasn’t even reached the ‘theologically necessary levels of denial’. A usual response at this stage is to say ‘well you and the theologians might believe that, but most Christians (Muslims/Jews) don’t!’ Well, that may or may not be true, but it’s a juvenile clouding of the issues. If we’re going to have a serious debate then we need to engage with the best exemplars of the tradition, the ones with most influence. It would be like saying that science is evil because of Mengele’s experiments.

2. Related to this, the atheist needs to have a broader sense of historical perspective that that dominated by post-Enlightenment controversies. If the arguments for the existence of God or the truth of Christianity are all centred on, eg, literalistic claims in Genesis vs geological evidence then we’re not going to get very far. Those arguments were generated by the scientific revolution, that is, the theological force of Ussher or Paley is within an already scientific epistemology. If that epistemology is not accepted – in other words if there is an epistemology with much broader and deeper roots in the Christian tradition being employed – then those arguments are frankly not very interesting. A different way of saying this is that you don’t have to be a fundamentalist to be a Christian – indeed the overwhelming majority of Christians in time and space are NOT fundamentalists, and it would be helpful if this were acknowledged by the atheist.

3. Putting that same point in a different register: the atheist needs to understand the grammar of religious faith, that is, that religious faith doesn’t function as an inadequate precursor of scientific investigation. The role that the language of belief plays within the life of a Christian is not at all like that which the language of science plays in the life of (say) a biologist. It is integrated with a much broader way of life. Unless that is understood then the conversation never begins. Practice gives the words their sense; religious believers do things with words!

I think if these three elements were in place then a much more interesting conversation could result. I’d be interested to know what the equivalent requests would be from the atheist side. Possibly: “don’t assume you have to believe in God to be good”?

Kim Fabricius on Dawkins et al

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“Professor Dawkins himself has a knack for the memorable metaphor. His great book The Selfish Gene is a case in point. People can be literally selfish, but not genes. Indeed Dawkins does not even think that there are genes for selfishness. Okay, he wrote: “The gene is the basic unit of selfishness.” But he didn’t really mean it. Not literally. The author of Genesis said that the universe was created in six days. But who would take that literally except some crazy fundamentalists? Oops – and Dawkins.”

Marvellous.

Humanist institutions

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Time to keep pushing this one!

Neil said: “Why is it necessary to have “special” institutions that pass on humanistic belief? Surely it would be done from a humanist to his family, his workplace – sounds like evangelism! Schools and Universities would be the best example of humanist/secular “institutions”. Art and Media is then influenced by humanism, which we see presented on television, the internet, etc etc. So there’s no humanist churches. And there’s no special humanist “institution”, but does that mean that humanistic beliefs and attitudes do not influence society at large?”

If I might say so, this is a classically Protestant response!! But what I wanted to pick up on was the example of universities. These do indeed have a particular aim and ethos, and they are very good at instilling particular practices and habits in the students that attend (and later teach) at such institutions. So they could be called – with a nod to Robert M Pirsig – the ‘Church of Reason’. I would even go so far as to accept that they teach particular virtues, eg commitment to the truth and to honesty in research (which, by the by, shows up one of the dependencies of “scientific” research on moral culture). Yet would it be generally accepted that the universities produce people who are ‘more moral’ or ‘more good’ than the average? To go back to Scott’s summary of my quest, “I want to know where humanism is building up society in such a way that more people will tend to do good rather than evil.”

In addition to that, the universities and schools, especially in this country, are obviously dependent upon the Christian tradition for their founding and initial establishments and ethos. What is a) the distinctive humanist contribution to academic study, and b) what is the benefit to the good of society from that contribution.

The same thing applies in other fields. Think of hospitals and medical care generally – where, again, the Christian influence is pretty explicit. In terms of training of nurses or doctors today there are certainly institutions which – in theory – can shape people to work for the good of society. But what does humanism bring to this? Especially now, when the UK health care system has been overrun by the meddling mediocrities from Whitehall, and what matters is the meeting of some abstract ‘target’ rather than the healing of an individual person. (And there are issues lurking behind this as well, to do with the healing of the whole person rather than simply the ‘broken mechanism’ of their body).

Where is the humanist institution that is concerned with creating better people? (And it begs the question: what are people FOR?)

Pursuing humanism

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Let’s run with this a little longer as both Scott (Gray) and Neil (OSO) think I’m being unfair to humanists.

Firstly, I’m not aware of any theoretical reason why a humanist culture is necessarily incapable of sustaining long term moral endeavour and improvement. My concern is a practical one, ie that I’m not aware of this sustaining being done in this culture. (“This culture” mainly referring to the UK, but not excluding the other Anglo-Saxon societies).

Secondly, this point is one about religious belief over against secular thought. In other words it isn’t something that hangs on the specific beliefs advocated by Christianity. Confucianism, for example, is more than adequate to foster the social goods that concern me, and the theologies of Christianity and Confucianism (if the latter could be said to have a theology!) are very distinct.

Thirdly the existence of humanists who do good things is insufficient to answer my concern. We can all agree on the existence of such wonderful people; conversely we can also agree on the existence of wicked people who happen to be religious believers. The question is about what fosters the goodness and inhibits or reforms the badness.

Fourthly, this is a separate point to the one of accountability (hence a separate post). Whether humanism can coherently give an account of its accountability is to my mind an open question (I’m pretty sure it can’t) but that’s not the concern here.

The issue is this: the mainstream of Christianity demonstrably cultivates the virtues, be they compassion, a desire for social justice, a commitment to the truth, and so on. These virtues are developed through the adoption of particular practices which embody them, and cohere through the telling of stories and sharing of expertise. There are institutions which exist to, amongst other things, foster this moral development. In Christian terms it is called discipleship; doubtless there are equivalent terms in the other religious faiths.

My point is that I am not aware of institutions which cultivate the development and amplification of a moral sense, with associated practices and disciplines, within this country, of a humanistic form. I repeat, such things are not at all impossible. They seem to have existed in Ancient Greece (the gymnasia). I just want to know – where are they? (It’s also perfectly possible that there are many such institutions, and this post is merely parading my ignorance of them).

Hence my comment in the original post, that humanism is drawing on the bank balance built up by centuries of Christian teaching. I want to know where humanism is putting money in.

(For those familiar with him, the influence of Alasdair MacIntyre should be obvious!)

To what are humanists accountable?

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I wanted to pick this element out from Ian’s comments, where he said: “To what is a humanist accountable ? … to humanity what else … and rest of the living cosmos. (which would merge with your view, on Pantheistic territory). The balance of freedoms (from) with responsibilities (to).”

Firstly – and for the record(!) – I’m not a pantheist!!! Once upon a time I might have accepted the label ‘panentheist’ but these days I’m more sceptical of all those metaphysical systems and am content with ‘Christian’.

However, the key question I want to pursue is: what does it mean to say that a humanist is accountable to humanity? Is that a democratically defined good? Or is there some other sort of value at stake here? If so, how is it pursued, how are conflicts reconciled, how is it explicated and communicated? In other words, what is the distinctive way in which a humanist cultivates the virtue of “humanity” in themselves and in their friends and neighbours? All these things are front and centre in a religious tradition, but seem absent from humanist (and atheist) discourse, on the whole. Humanism seems to be drawing on the bank balance built up by religious believers without paying anything back – which is why our society is now morally bankrupt and heading rapidly down the toilet.

Sorry for the rant, but I’m really interested in pursuing this aspect.

A response to Davidov on Godtalk

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Click full post for text.

My responses in italics.

Your post leaves me with two fundamental questions. First, the ideas you refer to would by some be called moral sense, sense of purpose and reflection respectively. What is a humanist missing if they have the same feelings but ascribe a different source? If they are not missing something (like a God which exists separately from our attitudes to him) isn’t religion just a choice rooted only in the subject’s personal views?

I think there is a lot of overlap. Not surprising as I also believe that all humanity is made in the image of God. Yet I would say that a religious perspective completes that which is only partial in a humanist perspective. In particular I think that what a religious perspective brings is a sense of the coherence and purpose that exists outside of the preferences of the individual. You could say: a religious perspective includes an accountability that is (usually) absent from a humanist perspective (for to what would a humanist be accountable?).

Secondly, where does this conception of God leave the basic understanding of Christianity common in our society?

I don’t have a dog in that race. That is, it is manifestly clear to me that “the basic understanding of Christianity common in our society” is mistaken.

Did God “create” the world?

Yes.

Can prayers be answered by God changing things?

I’m still thinking this one through, but I’m more minded to say yes than no.

Has any miracle, including those in the Bible, ever happened?

Short answer is yes, but I think your using a particular understanding of miracle here. Have you ever read this post?

What does life after death mean?

Something other than eternal life, usually.

Is there some external entity which forgives our sins if we repent?

This sounds like you’re asking if God is a being.

In what way was Christ more than a prophet?

He was raised from the dead.

If none of this follows the traditional path (God created and cares about the world and sent Christ to redeem us from sin) what plans does the Church have to tell people that they can safely put these ideas to one side?

I’m wholly in favour of the traditional path.

Can I add a third? Isn’t this conception of God reactive to the success of science since the Renaissance?

Not at all. Science isn’t that important; or, to put that differently, science is itself dependent upon theological assumptions.

Most highly educated theologians, who can’t just be dismissed, seem to have had very simple ideas of God until quite recently.

Sorry, that’s rubbish. Unless you’re using ‘simple’ in a technical sense, in which it’s a truism.

You say that atheists (not me btw) want the concept of God to be ridiculous. Aren’t they just challenging the concept of God common until science cast doubt on it?

If a 15 year old cannot adequately defend the concept of evolution against criticisms from well-informed creationists, does this make evolution false? Very little atheism that I am aware of takes theology seriously; someone like Dawkins is much happier with a summary dismissal. See the quote from Denys Turner here.

To take two C16th examples – can it be that this conception of God was really the one for which Cranmer, Lattimer and Ridley were burnt to death when they could so easily have obtained a pardon?

The Reformation martyrs weren’t put to death for their conception of God. At least I don’t think they were. It was much more to do with how Christianity was to be pursued relative to the authority of the central institutions.

What sort of oddball, in the face of such a subtle and difficult concept of God, could not accept an alternative view or that there would be no detriment for bending with the breeze? What sort of psycho would pass the sentence when hanging was an option for non-religious crimes?

Some truths are worth dying for; in other words, sometimes it is more life-giving to be killed for living IN the truth than to go on living apart from the truth.

A few more (1) Those who debated Henry VIII’s first divorce in the context of Leviticus said they thought his breach of the law explained why he had no sons. The Pope was petitioned for divorce. Did those petitioning him and the Pope know that the premise was false

Pass(!)

(2) Didn’t those who denounced Galileo do so because they believed the cosmology in the Bible was accurate.

See my posts here and here.

(3) The last execution for heresy in Britain was 1697. Surely those accusing and trying him believed that his critcism of eg miracles was in fact wrong. Surely they themselves believed in miracles.

You know more about this case than I do.

Two more recent examples – in the late C19 a debate was arranged in Oxford between a Darwinist and a … Bishop. The Church was seen as the relevant other side of the debate. The Bishop propounded the Biblical view of creation and poured scorn on the idea that he was related to a monkey. This is very recent and the Bishop was not an idiot. (A woman cried out in protest and fainted when the Darwinist told the Bishop to his face that he was indeed related to a monkey – what a very C19th scene).

To my mind both sides of this debate had become locked into a non-orthodox world view.

At a similar time another Bishop calculated that the world was c.7,000 years old based on Bible passages. This implies that he believed the Bible set out facts about creation which would withstand rational analysis.

Archbishop Ussher. See my comment immediately above – it’s an extremely late development, and this IS a reaction to Renaissance science.

Here is a challenge. Can you name a Bishop in the C of E or Catholic Church who said, even in private papers, before 1900, that no miracles happened or the Virgin Birth was a metaphor?

Well… I’m not saying that no miracles happen; I’m saying (in effect) that the understanding of miracles common today, and shaped by scientific philosophy, is misleading and non-Scriptural. The straight answer to your question would probably be ‘one of the 18th century deists’ but no name springs to mind.

Very happy to pursue this further, though as I write this I realise I’ve written quite a lot about this elsewhere.

What do I mean when I talk about God?

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Click ‘full post’ for text.

First, possibly my all-time favourite Wittgenstein quotation:

‘I should like to say that … the words you utter or what you think as you utter them are not what matters, so much as the difference they make at various points in your life. How do I know that two people mean the same when each says he believes in God? And just the same goes for belief in the Trinity. A theology which insists on the use of *certain particular* words and phrases, and outlaws others, does not make anything clearer… It gesticulates with words, as one might say, because it wants to say something and does not know how to say it. Practice gives the words their sense’. (From ‘Culture and Value’, in remarks dated 1950. The passage as a whole I would like read at my funeral)

So what do I mean when I talk about ‘God’? It’s a troublesome word. It’s normally (that is, normally in non-Christian circles, and even in some that are Christian) understood to refer to a being, of supernatural origin, who acts and intervenes in the world. The God I believe in is not a being – because he is not a anything. God is not the member of a class – any class. So is the word ‘God’ a metaphor? Of course. We cannot capture God in our language; all attempts ultimately fail; and yet the attempt is edifying and enlarging. It is like climbing a ladder. In order to climb, one must first place all one’s weight upon a particular step, but to progress, one must abandon it completely.

I have found it very difficult to get atheists to understand that point. That could be because they have much invested in the concept of God remaining ridiculous.

So what do I mean when I talk about ‘God’? Several things, in no particular order other than the order I’ve thought of them.

Firstly I have a sense – I guess most people have a sense – of when I have started down a wrong path; or, conversely, when I am pursuing a right path. This could be compared to the physical sense of balance; or, an image I’ve used elsewhere, it is like the ’tilt’ mechanism on a pinball machine. I will sometimes use the word God to refer to that which is calling me into balance, or warning me against being off balance.

Related to this is the sense of vocation, that is, that I am on a path with a particular destination, and that I am being led along this path from moment to moment. I will talk about God in this context, as that which is illuminating my next steps – a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path. In this sense God is a lure – an active and intentional agent drawing me forwards.

This broadens out into something about intimacy and concern. The creativity and desire which is drawing me forward is personal; that is, I relate to it as I would to a person. I don’t normally have a conversation – not in the sense that I would have a conversation with another human being – but that I am communicated with is undeniable. Indeed, it’s routine, it’s a large part of my prayer life, listening to what God might have to say to me.

Sometimes I have visions. I distinguish these from daydreams and the routine permutations of my imagination by the sense of seriousness and conviction with which they seize me (not all are equally serious). When this happens I take these to be particular and specific messages from God.

Another aspect to this is to do with truth. There was an occasion recently when I realised that I was not speaking the truth (that is, I was not persuaded of something that I was arguing for). I was not IN the truth. When I reflect on a situation like this then the distinction between one set of attitudes, beliefs and propositions and another set is very strong, and one set will seem much more attractive and luminous. I will use the word God to talk about the difference between them. Most frequently this will involve some sort of personal interrogation about motives, and the process of illumination will often disinter some sort of personal hurt or bad habit or vice which is preventing me from living in, and listening to, the truth. In other words, discerning the truth is a spiritual task, and this is one of the most important ways in which God makes himself clear to me. Crucially, all that I refer to when I talk about God is independent of my own conscious will and desiring.

Finally, I would want to talk about God in the external world, as an agent in the world. God is not an agent like other agents, however; not a cause alongside other causes. Rather, God is the precondition for all things that are held in being. When I see God at work in the world what I am really saying is that here my eyesight has been clarified; I’m not saying anything all that specific about God. God does not specially ‘intervene’, for God is always present. What changes is in me.

Now, to gather some of these strands together, I would want to talk about that which is intimately involved in my life leading me forward into truth and life and integrity and with which I can communicate in a personal way. That’s what I mean when I talk about God. Yet there is one thing more. In the same way that as you walk into the light it becomes more possible to see, so too as I have slowly walked into the light of God, I have been more able – ever so slowly – to discern what God looks like. And He looks like this:

The nature of an outsider’s perspective (part one)

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I didn’t succeed in recording the first part of my Learning Church sequence on evangelicalism, which is rather a shame. I’m going to try and write up my talk, in two parts. The first one about where I personally am coming from and why I have the perspective that I do. The second one will be about my triangle and how I use it to interpret goings-on in the Anglican Communion.

So you could call this my “testimony”, if you were so inclined.

I grew up in what might be considered a typically Anglican family – there was belief but not a great deal of belonging. As a family we went to church three or four times a year (always at Christmas and Easter) and the Bible, stories of faith and prayer were a part – not a huge part – but definitely a part of the context of my early life. I have a distinct memory of when I was about seven years old of starting to read the Bible from the beginning – I think I got as far as the first genealogy! There was an occasional attendance at Sunday School, but no great commitment to it. On one side of the family was an active Anglican commitment (one grandparent being a church warden for some fifty years); on the other side a much more non-conformist ‘chapel’ heritage, with a strong commitment to social activism. It’s interesting seeing those two strands wrestle within me every so often.

At the age of eleven I was sent off to Boarding School. This was a Christian foundation and the school assemblies every morning were embedded in Christian worship, including the singing of a hymn every day; in addition there was a full church service every Sunday morning, in the chapel, attendance at which was compulsory. In my second year at boarding school I remember a conversation with a class mate about Gandhi, and whether he was bound for hell or not. As I took my friend’s understanding of Christianity to be ‘the truth’, and as I couldn’t accept the justice of Gandhi being doomed to eternal torment, I became an atheist. At first not a very active one, but over time, more and more determined. When I was about fourteen some Jehovah’s Witnesses came to visit and left a tract detailing their opposition to the theory of evolution. I read the tract; thought ‘this is interesting’, and decided to explore further. I wanted to hear from an alternative point of view so I purchased Richard Dawkins’ ‘The Blind Watchmaker’. This I found much more persuasive, and, along with the acceptance of evolution I accepted his general antagonism towards religious belief.

In essence the rejection of Christianity was driven by two things: a sense that it was unjust, and a sense that it was untrue. However, being at boarding school meant that I continued to be fed the diet of worship, including the singing of hymns, recitation of set prayers, and listening to sermons on a regular basis. I am certain that this has strongly shaped many of my attitudes to liturgy today, both positively and negatively.

My antagonism towards Christian belief manifested itself as antagonism towards religious believers, ie my classmates, including the very same classmate with whom I had had that original conversation about Gandhi. The trouble with me, however, was that I wouldn’t let things alone, and whenever the opportunity arose I would engage vigorously in discussion about the truth or otherwise of Christian doctrine. The real truth was that I was obsessed with God! (I still am really.)

When I was seventeen there were a couple of knocks to my sense of self and sense of purpose, one of the more significant being a rejection from Oxford University. I had a distinct sense that I was going to end up at Oxford, so, whilst ‘banking’ an offer from the LSE I resolved to try again in the context of a year out. What actually happened over that year, however, was a more general ‘drift’. Most of my ambitions had either been realised or put on hold and I had the opportunity to explore and read more widely. Most crucially, whilst thinking through my re-application for Oxford I came across a description of the Philosophy and Theology course, written by one of the students, which was headlined ‘You don’t have to be religious to work here’. This caught my interest, and the more I explored it, the more I thought ‘this is actually what I want to study’.

My motivation was not entirely honourable. I read ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ at around this time, and was intrigued by the thought that modern scholarship provided much more heavyweight tools for attacking Christians with! Following some pleasing A Level results I then reapplied to Oxford and the experience could not have been more different than before – all the doors seemed to open up before me, and I got my place, to go up in the Autumn of 1989.

That summer, with my future settled, and after working in Colchester doing various exciting and exotic jobs(!) I spent three months travelling around the United States and Canada with a friend. I had recently read Robert Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ for the first time, and that had a huge impact upon me. I had always had a strongly ‘mystical’ streak, even in my aggressive atheism, and I devoured a lot of material on the occult and New Age spirituality. Pirsig’s account of Quality made a tremendous amount of sense to me – it still does – but it was probably the most important factor in dismantling the aggressive atheism that I had imbibed from Dawkins.

So I went up to Oxford, all the chips on my shoulder still intact, and waded in to my tutorials with my prejudices. Which didn’t last for very long. Very gently – astonishingly gently really – my principal tutor, who was the College chaplain, slowly took apart all of my beliefs about what Christianity actually was, and demonstrated, both through his teaching and example, that Christianity was intellectually credible. You didn’t have to leave your brain behind when you walked in the door. Essentially, what I had been rejecting as Christianity I would now recognise as fundamentalism, and there is the world of difference between the two.

However, this change in my attitude was not enough to bring me to a form of belief. Logic and reason can do many things but our foundational commitments are not borne on either, they’re much too important for that. What triggered the change was a religious experience. I was on my own at home in the August of 1990 and reading the book ‘Green Christianity’ by Tim Cooper. I remember vehemently disagreeing with him about God, and thinking ‘but God’s not like that!’. And I caught myself thinking that, and realising that I was arguing from a position of accepting God – in other words I realised that I did believe in God – and at this point my head exploded. I fell to my knees and my sight was wiped out with white brightness. Two things in particular erupted into my consciousness. The first was about the overwhelming priority of love. That love was, in the strictest scientific sense, the fundamental force governing the universe; that I loved God – and always had – and that I was loved by God; that love literally made the world go round. The second is caught in the phrase ‘become who you are’. There was an astonishing degree of affirmation involved – an affirmation I still draw on today – and I was on an emotional high for quite some time – weeks – afterwards. This was the foundation of my vocation.

Well I returned to Oxford a little chastened, in that a lot of the positions I had adopted I now repudiated, and I largely withdrew from active involvement in many wider endeavours. I had received the wound of knowledge and I needed to dig down and work out where that wound had come from. So I actively pursued my studies, and explored Christianity, and slowly more and more pieces fell into place. I was confirmed in the Church of England one year later – as someone who still had lots of doubts, and was undoubtedly ‘unorthodox’ in belief, but someone who was also committed to this path.

In 1992 I left Oxford and went to London, working for the Civil Service. Church attendance fell away during this time, although my own personal explorations of the faith continued actively. The next really significant breakthrough occurred in 1995, when, as a result of my wider personal life becoming rather complicated (see here) I had another religious epiphany. This one was not so positive, in that God made it clear to me that I was embarked upon the road to hell. He also made it clear that I was called to the priesthood; specifically I was given a vision of celebrating the Eucharist – THIS was what I was called to do. I resisted for as long as I was able to – about two days – because the thought of becoming a vicar was anathema to me. To me a vicar was a figure of fun, an ineffectual wimp tossed hither and thither by cultural forces beyond his comprehension, an intellectually vacant space. I gave in, of course. (In retrospect I’m sure that reading the Susan Howatch novels in the months preceding laid a foundation for this; ignoring the literary merit I think they’re pretty sound theologically).

Once more my life changed course, but this time it was through a commitment not simply to exploring the faith in an intellectual sense, but through starting to change my life and habits away from ‘the works of darkness’ and putting on the armour of light. I became actively involved in the church I had recently begun to attend and put out feelers concerning potential ordination. I left the Civil Service one year later and worked as the school caretaker in the church school, joining in the Daily Office and generally getting embedded in the church life.

I also started up a Master’s degree at Heythrop, as this seemed to be a part of the vocation. My intellectual gifts had helped open up the path of faith for me in the first place, and it seemed natural that they would be a part of the vocation itself. In this I was encouraged and affirmed by the church hierarchy. This was a mistake. The first fruits of the mistake came at the end of the first year when I received a mark in an examination on Wittgenstein which was a) by far the worst mark I had ever received in such an examination, b) on the basis of what was, without doubt, the best work I had ever done, and c) which caused consternation to my tutor and fellow students (in other words, it wasn’t just me who thought the mark surpassing strange). Despite their best efforts to have the work re-marked the college refused and the papers were later destroyed. I later discovered, through a friend, that the principal examiner for the paper was not familiar with one of the key works on the topic (Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer). In my various answers I had adopted an extremely allusive style, with a great many references to Wittgenstein’s writings on religion, which someone familiar with the field would have recognised instantly. However, for someone not familiar with the writings, they would undoubtedly have appeared strange and idiosyncratic – hence the low mark. I abandoned the MA in bewilderment, but trusted that God was in charge.

I was accepted for training for ordination, and after a tour around different theological colleges – I was keen to go to an evangelical college like Ridley, but my Bishop talked me out of it(!) – I went up to Westcott where my training was a combination of vocational work and a PhD. At first I flourished – there is an important part of me that revels in academic life – but in the second term the academic side completely fell apart. I realised that I had a profoundly different approach to the role of academic theology in the life of the Spirit, and that the essential thing for me was to be formed as a priest, not trained as an academic. I abandoned the PhD but then had a frankly awful time at Westcott as the institution sought to ensure that my academic training was sufficient, while I was spiritually straining in a completely different direction. I also met my wife at this time – in church – and after an extremely rapid courtship we got married. All of this rather overwhelmed me and with the benefit of hindsight I can see that I was deeply depressed throughout my second year there.

I then returned to London where I pursued my curacy in the East End. This was, on the whole, a very positive experience, a good grounding for ministry, but the last year of this was intense and draining, and involved the sudden death of my father (for more in this see here). Once more I was in a state of bewilderment, but it became clear that I needed to take time out. Through a legacy, my wife and I – and a newborn son – were able to spend a year on sabbatical in Alnwick, Northumberland, surely one of the most beautiful places on God’s green earth. This was a year in which I was able to catch up with myself, and digest all that had happened. In particular this was a time when I was able to come to terms properly with the collapse of all my academic pretensions and ambitions. I gave very serious consideration to pursuing a PhD at Durham, but in the end it became clear that parish ministry was the right next step. I still have a distinct academic ‘itch’, but I am much more relaxed about whether it will end up being scratched or not. In particular it is much more clear to me that the role of the intelligence is in the service of the church and whilst it may be possible for that service to overlap with the needs of the academic institutions there are definite times when there is conflict. And my calling is to serve the Body – the cloister not the academy.

All this was prior to Mersea. When I saw the post advertised I immediately felt ‘this is it’. I withdrew from another post that I was exploring and, as had happened occasionally before, felt that all the doors were opening up. It’s a bit like cracking the combination of a safe – slowly all the tumblers fall into place, things get turned one way or another and then – it all opens up.

Now since my rejection of fundamentalism at the age of 12; and then my intellectual explorations of the faith through University; and then my immersion in serious religion of the Anglo-Catholic sort through my church sponsorship, training and curacy, I had never had to deal all that seriously with evangelicals. They represented a sort of ‘here there be dragons’ element in my mental map, and, in particular, I found it hard to distinguish them from fundamentalists and other lunatics. Yet here on Mersea I was immediately immersed in a context where there were a great many evangelicals, and even more on the way, especially amongst my colleagues. So I have been forced to engage with what evangelicalism is and means. I am an outsider to evangelicalism; it would be a mistake to class me AS an evangelical; but I find, after a number of years getting to know it as an ideology and getting to know evangelicals as individuals, that I am much more sympathetic to it than I would ever have expected.

That is the context in which I shall be exploring evangelicalism from an outsider’s perspective. As someone convinced of the reality of God and the overwhelming love of God; one who is committed to a historically grounded orthodox faith; and one who has a growing sympathy with the evangelical tradition – but also as someone who remains an outsider.

Philip Pullman is an idiot

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Not because he’s an atheist, but because he completely misreads Tolkien: “No-one is in any doubt about what’s good or bad; everyone knows where the good is, and what to do about the bad. Enormous as it is, TLOTR is consequently trivial.”

Lots of really interesting stuff in the interview, which is on one of my favourite blogsites.

And for the record, I really enjoyed ‘His Dark Materials’, I’d be quite happy for my children to read them in due course, and I have a quotation from Pullman stuck on the side of my computer box so that I can ponder it every day. I just think he’s got rather a significant blind spot.