I was brought up in what, in those days, we were pleased to call a Christian country. Sundays were very different back then; the only shops that opened were newsagents for about an hour in the morning, and except for going to church, or maybe visiting relatives, most folk stayed at home. Some people had to work on Sunday of course, to maintain essential services, but doing business was definitely frowned upon. Sunday school was a highlight for me. Each week we were told a different story from the life of Christ and were given a small, sticky backed, picture to paste into our books - a full book of bible pictures would earn you an attendance certificate. It was nothing but indoctrination, and in my teens I rebelled against it and became an atheist.
For twenty years I was an atheist without belief. My wife and I chose not to have our children baptised, which caused quite a stir among our families, even in the mid 1970s. Our two daughters were encouraged from an early age to think for themselves, to acknowledge diversity and contrary views, and to understand that reality is just another subjective concept. While this was happening the Christian country of my childhood was also changing, fewer people were attending church, there were now other religious groups (Moslems and Hindus especially) visible in our communities in a way that would have been unthinkable a generation before, shops and businesses were opening on Sunday, which was becoming a day of leisure more than a day of rest.
A turning point for me was when a close friend, whom my wife and I had both known since school, died very suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage; she was thirty four years old. The funeral service was conducted by a Christian Humanist minister who, after welcoming the congregation, said,
"Many people, perhaps many of you here today, live their lives in the hope of finally being raised from the dead not realizing that they already have been."
This was my Damascene moment, when I realised that Jesus had not been teaching us how to get to Heaven but how to live with each other on Earth - he didnt come to save us, but to show us how to save ourselves. Suddenly all those bible stories had new meaning. In rediscovering Christ, I found a new connection with my own cultural heritage. I was heir to two thousand years of Christian tradition, of law and convention, of art and literature, of philosophy and theology, and of ritual. I read the great Christian thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, and saw them struggling with the concept of God as long ago as the thirteenth century. Most importantly I realized I had a place in the Christian community, not just any place but a place at the leading edge of that community.
All around me I saw other Christians experiencing an awakening, coming to terms with a modern World and beginning to accept ideas such as homosexuality, gender change and women priests. Admittedly, not all churches were moving at the same speed on these issues but they were, or at least seemed to be, moving in the same direction. Since Copernicus the Church had been learning to accommodate a scientific view of the World alongside a spiritual view and over centuries it has been increasingly understood that science and faith occupy separate realms which are not inevitably in conflict. Indeed it is not only desirable that Christianity accepts scientific knowledge, it is, in my view, essential. Scientific advances often raise moral questions which are more aptly the province of churchmen than of scientists, but how can the Church give moral guidance if it begins from the premise of rejecting the science?
I believe that eventually Christianity will leave behind superstition while still retaining its essential traditions and, most importantly, its moral compass. Although I see developments in the major churches that encourage me to this view, I am dismayed that in some Christian communities adherents of a more medieval version of faith still reject all scientific knowledge and social advances that they deem un-biblical. This is less encouraging for the future. It is difficult to be optimistic that the U.S.A., for example, can maintain a leading place in science and technology while dragging along large sections of their population for whom science is just a competing religion. I now understand a little better why New Atheism seems to be taking such hold over there, but I am entirely doubtful that becoming strident in criticism of faith will achieve anything except increased polarization.
For twenty years I was an atheist without belief. My wife and I chose not to have our children baptised, which caused quite a stir among our families, even in the mid 1970s. Our two daughters were encouraged from an early age to think for themselves, to acknowledge diversity and contrary views, and to understand that reality is just another subjective concept. While this was happening the Christian country of my childhood was also changing, fewer people were attending church, there were now other religious groups (Moslems and Hindus especially) visible in our communities in a way that would have been unthinkable a generation before, shops and businesses were opening on Sunday, which was becoming a day of leisure more than a day of rest.
A turning point for me was when a close friend, whom my wife and I had both known since school, died very suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage; she was thirty four years old. The funeral service was conducted by a Christian Humanist minister who, after welcoming the congregation, said,
"Many people, perhaps many of you here today, live their lives in the hope of finally being raised from the dead not realizing that they already have been."
This was my Damascene moment, when I realised that Jesus had not been teaching us how to get to Heaven but how to live with each other on Earth - he didnt come to save us, but to show us how to save ourselves. Suddenly all those bible stories had new meaning. In rediscovering Christ, I found a new connection with my own cultural heritage. I was heir to two thousand years of Christian tradition, of law and convention, of art and literature, of philosophy and theology, and of ritual. I read the great Christian thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, and saw them struggling with the concept of God as long ago as the thirteenth century. Most importantly I realized I had a place in the Christian community, not just any place but a place at the leading edge of that community.
All around me I saw other Christians experiencing an awakening, coming to terms with a modern World and beginning to accept ideas such as homosexuality, gender change and women priests. Admittedly, not all churches were moving at the same speed on these issues but they were, or at least seemed to be, moving in the same direction. Since Copernicus the Church had been learning to accommodate a scientific view of the World alongside a spiritual view and over centuries it has been increasingly understood that science and faith occupy separate realms which are not inevitably in conflict. Indeed it is not only desirable that Christianity accepts scientific knowledge, it is, in my view, essential. Scientific advances often raise moral questions which are more aptly the province of churchmen than of scientists, but how can the Church give moral guidance if it begins from the premise of rejecting the science?
I believe that eventually Christianity will leave behind superstition while still retaining its essential traditions and, most importantly, its moral compass. Although I see developments in the major churches that encourage me to this view, I am dismayed that in some Christian communities adherents of a more medieval version of faith still reject all scientific knowledge and social advances that they deem un-biblical. This is less encouraging for the future. It is difficult to be optimistic that the U.S.A., for example, can maintain a leading place in science and technology while dragging along large sections of their population for whom science is just a competing religion. I now understand a little better why New Atheism seems to be taking such hold over there, but I am entirely doubtful that becoming strident in criticism of faith will achieve anything except increased polarization.
