We hear a lot about spirituality these days, whether with faith
or without, whether ‘modern spirituality’ or traditional religious spirituality. Even Sam Harris, arch-atheist as he is
supposed to be, is searching
for spirituality without religion. And the RSA,
with its strapline ‘21st Century Enlightenment’, has just published
a report entitled ‘Spiritualise: revitalising spirituality to address 21st century challenges’. It quotes a 2013 survey by the think-tank
Theos suggesting that 59% of people believe in 'some kind of spiritual being or
essence'.
SPIRITUAL, NOT RELIGIOUS
And why not? When we
discussed this at Wychwood Circle someone suggested that to be ‘spiritual’ is
just to be serious about life, the world and humanity. And that means thinking about how we live and
what values we live by. Madeleine
Bunting, panellist at the Beyond Belief: Taking Spirituality Seriously events at the RSA, said that the
conversation was about 'what is our human nature, what are we as human beings?'
At Wychwood Circle we have been clear from the beginning
that we wanted to discuss not just 'what we believe' but 'what we believe in'
and for our first few months in 2012 we took Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to
a Compassionate Life apart chapter by chapter.
We encountered religion and philosophy, politics and psychology, ethics
and justice – but one thing which united our contrasting approaches was that we
all agreed that we believed in Compassion.
WHAT MATTERS IS NOT THE LENS BUT SEEING THROUGH THE LENS
Borg, good liberal scholar that he is*, seems to endorse in
the final chapter of our current
book a view which we also came across with John Caputo (On Religion, 2001),
namely that it’s not so much what you believe as how you live that
matters. Borg is big on metaphors (his
own, and the many biblical ones he writes about) and he says here, referring
particularly to some of his students’ more conservative views:
Thinking of the Christian life as being primarily about believing in God, the Bible, and Jesus is thus a modern mistake, with profound consequences. … What matters is hearing the voice that speaks to us through the tradition, not believing in the tradition.
His favourite metaphor in this book is the more visual one
of seeing ‘the Bible, Jesus, and central postbiblical traditions’ as ‘a lens through which we see God and our
relationship with God. What matters it not the lens but seeing through the lens.’
ALTERNATIVE VISIONS
So, if you’re not a Christian, or ‘religious’ – but maybe
‘spiritual’, who knows? – is there anything for you in this ‘vision of the
Christian life’? The Church of England,
with its classic habit of speaking only to itself, has called a crucial and
very relevant recent report Developing
Discipleship. In modern English
that off-putting word ‘discipleship’ means (as Borg uses it) 'following after
Jesus', in other words, taking seriously what Jesus took seriously.
NT Wright in his parallel chapter on Christian living
developed the theme in terms of four areas of ‘Christian experience’:
Spirituality, Theology, Politics and Healing.
Borg answers the question of what about Jesus we should follow in terms
of 5 inter-connected characteristics which he thinks are ‘most central’:
a life centred in the Spirit, lived by an alternative wisdom, marked by compassion, concerned about justice, and lived within the alternative community of Jesus.
MORAL CLAPTRAP
The key words ‘alternative’, ‘compassion’, ‘justice’ and
‘community’ demand – particularly in an election year in the UK – an essay to
themselves. The Archbishop of York has
just published a book which apparently criticises governments for creating ‘a
tale of two cities’ and contemporary society for being dominated by consumerism
and selfishness. The Archbishop of
Canterbury meanwhile preached this week in New York about ‘a society in which
the weak are excluded’ and where religion is reduced to morality. The life of Jesus, he said, 'challenges every
assumption'. More on this in a later post.
SEEING DIFFERENTLY: WISDOM, COMPASSION AND JUSTICE
What cannot be ducked is this insistence on things
spiritual. This is what Borg has in
mind:
Spirituality is one of the major focal points of the Christian life. … It typically involves regular prayer, whether verbal or non-verbal, and perhaps other traditional spiritual practices. It also happens through worship that manifestly mediates the Spirit, whether the charismatic worship of Pentecostals, the silent gathering of Quakers, or the sacramental worship of more liturgical traditions.
This in turn allows us 'to see everybody and everything' differently; it leads us to see common
categorisations of people and behaviour (eg as good or bad) as 'very often
simply based on deeply ingrained cultural convention'; it 'awakens not only compassion but also a passion for justice'.
William Bloom, author of The Power of Modern Spirituality (2011), began his career with a
doctorate in political psychology at the LSE before going on to work with
people with special needs and deliver training in the NHS and elsewhere. The word ‘God’ doesn’t feature in his book
but he is clear that spirituality is all about Connection, Reflection and
Service. He begins his penultimate
chapter thus:
It is empowering to be clear about our values and to live our lives in accordance with them and to be of service to those around us through acts of sharing, generosity, care, courage and compassion. Yet in spirituality there is also another dimension to service that is more subtle, invisible and metaphysical.
INTEGRATION
Co-author Tom Wright’s approach to the Christian life starts from a more
conservative view and he is keen to integrate ‘the Jesus of history and the
Christ of faith’ as well as the different facets of Christian experience. With a lifetime of experience as academic, churchman and communicator, Wright's conclusion is to ‘focus both history and
faith on Jesus of Nazareth’ as he has described him, which may lead us to
find that creation, sacraments, human life, politics, history, and faith come rushing together in new integrations for which as yet we have no language but worship.
For upcoming Wychwood Circle events, starting with the discussion anticipated above which takes place on Sunday February 1st, see the previous post.
*Sadly, Marcus J. Borg died
earlier this month and so references here in the present tense are to his
words of 1999. His most recent book
(2014) was his own memoir, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most, which
could well form the basis of a future Wychwood Circle event.
COMING SOON ON THIS PAGE: Reflections on Archbishop Sentamu’s new book On Rock or Sand (maybe also a future book for discussion in election year), which
brings together contributions by Andrew Sentance, Julia Unwin and Ruth Fox (and
others) on topics in which they are experts, such as economics, poverty and
democracy.
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