Atheists and Agnostics Doing Faith

Date: 23 March 2011 11:45:05

Q. What do an article by Robert Matthews in the current edition of BBC Knowledge Magazine and an interview with Naomi Wood in today's Metro have in common?

A. They both talk God and come to a conclusion which neither accepts the existance of God nor totally concurs with Dawkins brand of atheism.

They do this through coming to two different conclusions which I think people of faith need to sit up and acknowledge because I believe they are actually articulating the silent majority views in this country. Don't know but guess this might also be true in other countries, which according to this BBC article, religion is for extinction.

The Matthew article ends up by pretty much advocating the view of Stephen Unwin, a British Physicist, who argues a position of uncertainty regarding God. Unwin is quoted as saying that within current debates there is an "unpopularity of uncertainty when it comes to matters of God". It is this uncertainty which the article essentially advocates.

Wood, a new writer, whose debut novel The Godless Boys is published at the beginning of next month, takes a slightly different position. Within the interview with her Wood expresses that on an intellectual level she agrees with Dawkins, but she actually isn't interested in the debate around whether God exists. She is concerned that even if God is abandoned the sacred shouldn't be.

In the interview she makes an interesting observation about how she views the value of religion by saying:

‘I felt that The God Delusion, in abandoning spirituality, had also abandoned this idea of what is sacred and that really intrigues me because I think many atheists and agnostics understand the appeal of places such as churches, with their magical calm and the smell of prayer books.

'And if they are really honest, they envy the way faith gives you a community and offers you something more than spending your entire life shopping.

'I’m quite jealous of people who get together on a Sunday and have a singalong.’ She laughs. ‘I’m not a person of faith.

'But I do wonder if, at this point at which we are losing 2,000 years of religious history very, very quickly, non-believers need to heed some sort of warning call."

The two positions, as I say, probably reflect alot of people who we can refer to as the silent majority (or who for the purposes of theorising are known as "the open dechurched" and "the open un-churched). The two positions show there are alot of people who are either comfortable that they just don't know or who want the sacred whilst being able to intellectually reject the God who goes with it.

So what does it mean for those of us who are people of faith who want to engage in "culturally appropriate mission"?

Firstly, I think it means we have to be careful not to treat those who don't share our faith as a homogeneos group in terms of what they believe or don't. Both positions I read about today could be described as "open" positions but they are clearly different.

Secondly, I think that, to some extent we need to reframe the debates we have been having about the place of Fresh Expressions and traditional church. The myth that has developed is that people who want vicarious religion (i.e. religion done by others on their behalf) are more likely to be attracted to civic churches (like cathedrals) if they do church. This would be the group one would be likely to put Wood into.

However, reading her article this is not what I think she is saying. Yes, she does want our "heritage" preserved and it is these types of established churches which represent it. But and this is important there is a whole value system which she expresses some envy for. It is how to communicate the value system and share it with others and to explain what it is based upon beyond a simplified "God exists and so....".

We need to find ways to invite them in to share with our practices and find where they share in our ethos without forcing them, immeadiately, into what they may regard as anti-intellectualism.

In relation to the other group. We need to find away to be honest about our own faith in discussion with them and invite them to journey with us so they can adapt their doubts along the way and we can face our own.

Now, I recognise the difficulties with this. As a preacher one of the key things you learn is to be careful about bringing doubt into the pulpit. You have to be careful not to confuse or scare those whose faith may be fragile and who are not ready to be faced with the grey bits of faith. Yet, in order to engage with the Unwin brigade we need to be ready to embrace doubt and journey with it. In being able to do this I want to argue it will also enable us to be more honest about our own faith journey.

Thirdly, it means we will have to find places to engage in these conversations which allow us to bring those things which may already be valued by those with whom we are sharing without forcing them to take or leave the whole religious package.

Yet we have to do all these things without denying our own faith. Whilst we will have doubts we will also have certainties. The question is how we do this? Well, I don't know entirely, but I think one way may well be through reframing our questions and assumptions. It may be through learning that as unpopular as embracing doubt is that actually it was we need to be ready to do.

That said, engaging in doubt should not simply become the latest mainstream Christian fad. At the moment it seems that "heretic groups" are becoming popular in some quarters, (there isn't one up here but I am increasingly aware of these types of groups and courses through friends). I worry, that rather than engaging with people outside the church they are more false deserts which, as Christians, we are constructing and intellectual talking shops for the "educated middle classes" within our churches.

So where does that leave us? I don't know....but I do know that if we see these types of articles where "non-believers" are discussing God we should read them and engage with them as opportunities to listen. These brief articles are, I think, more useful than many other sources of data because they show, I think, the views of the silent doubtful majority who may not have faith in our God but who do value our and their religious heritage.

(NB tried 3 times to get paragraph breaks working after the quote...but they didn't want to and so gave up).