NEW HUMANIST The Quarterly Journal of the Rationalist Press Association Volume 99 No 2 Autumn 1984
CONTENTS Editorial
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Rationally speaking
Nicolas Walter Quarterly diary
Jim Herrick Objectivity in broadcasting
John Ranelagh Humanism and literary theory today 9 Peter Faulkner The future of Humanism: a response to Paul Kurtz
David Oppenheimer Not such a bright idea
Jim Herrick Lord Houghton talks about the Video
Recordings Bill
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5
6
11
13
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The pretensions o f style
F. R. H. Englefield The Punjab tangle
G. N. Deodhekar The miner's strike: symptom of malaise
Roy Hyams O cautious new world: the Wamock
Report
Not taking the Oath
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19
21
22
23
Reviews
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Paperbacks
Comment
Controversy
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30
31
Religious Education in London
Letters
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33
Published by the Rationalist Press Association Ltd Views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the RPA
Editorial and Publishing Offices: 88 ISLINGTON HIGH STREET. LONDON N1 8EL 01-226 7251 ISSN 0306-512X Second class postage paid at New York Office. NY © Rationalist Press Association 1984
Christianity Not Mysterious was the title given by John Toland to his deist treatise published in 1696. People have been taking the mystery out of Christianity ever since. Two Anglicans who have recently done their best to propound Christianity minus the mysterious bits are David Jenkins, the new Bishop of Durham, and Don Cupitt, the Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
The Bishop of Durham’s alleged denial of the Virgin Birth caused a rumpus which was inflamed by the fate of York Minster transept. There are no doubt many others in the church hierarchy and among its followers who are agnostic about the Virgin Birth—and the Resurrection, the after-life and a personal God—for the unreasonable bits of Christianity rest uncomfortably in the twentieth-century mind. So the Bishop could perhaps be forgotten, once recognised as a sign of the chameleon nature of Christianity for ever changing its colour, and quite divided about which hue it most favours.
But the Bishop shows no sign of slipping out of the limelight quietly to pursue his pastoral duties. Having upset the traditional dogmatists, he has now distressed the politically conservative by his comments on the miners’ strike. At his enthronement he declared that the miners must not be defeated, and asked for the withdrawal of the leaders on both sides of the dispute as a step towards a compromise. Subsequently, the Archbishop of Canterbury, after a meeting with senior Anglican bishops, condemned the Government’s politics of confrontation, denounced unprecedented levels of unemployment, despair and poverty in the community, and said violence on the picket line could be traced back to “the cheap imputation of the worst possible motive, treating people as scum in speech”.
On this occasion the Archbishop has spoken with the quiet voice of common sense at a time when such voices are not being heard. However, it is a measure of the continuing power of the established Church that its leaders are still accorded full-scale media attention. There is no inherent reason why the clergy’s views on the miners’ dispute should be of any more relevance than that of actors or astronomers.
The situation of the coal industry is not insoluble, but both the arbitrary closure of “uneconomic pits” and the unconstitutional strike are objectionable because they prevent rational discussion or humane solutions of the problems. The powers of reason can be used to estimate future “economic” costs and powers of rational persuasion can be used to make obstinate individuals and groups which feel deeply threatened listen and think. Humanists are sometimes accused of a lack of economic perspective and too rosy a view of the potential for resolving conflicts between different power groups. But ideologues who assume there are impersonal forces of conflict underestimate the power of reason and persuasion to bring change. The resolution of disputes should be a reasonable not a mysterious process.
The principal mystery about Don Cupitt, whose television series The Sea of Faith has been much promoted by the BBC, is why he considers himself a Christian. The programme, although extremely effectively filmed, is infuriating. In each programme Cupitt carefully outlines a strand in the history of the loss of faith: the growth of a picture of the mechanical universe, Darwinian and Freudian ideas, the development of biblical scholarship, and so on. He then proceeds to conclude with an uplifting picture of someone who has held to some mysterious religious ground, which is why Galileo is followed by Pascal, Freud by Jung, and D. F. Strauss by Schweitzer. Cupitt’s subtitle, Christianity in Change, reveals what he is about: an attempt to retrieve from Christianity in decline a non-theological, non-mythological religion. Underneath the historical account is a passionate attempt to create a Christianity which has power without irrational beliefs.
Cupitt wants to “invoke the resources of faith, not in order to explain events, but in order to call up the strength to face events”. There is every point in trying to stimulate human resources to face events—including loss of jobs—but what has this to do with faith? Cupitt is no doubt sincere, but he seems to be doing with Christianity what conjurors do with coloured handkerchiefs, make them change colour and reappear just after they have vanished.
Rather than mystery, we need a recognition of the unknown, rather than faith a sense of human wonder, rather than dogmatic argument a summoning of human resources.
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