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We of Little Faith?

In a new television documentary airing tonight, William Crawley reflects on his own faith and asks why there has been a dramatic fall in the number of people attending Northern Ireland's churches

Monday, 12 October 2009

I discovered the other day that Richard Dawkins, the world's most famous atheist, has been donating money to a church. The church in question is the Chapel of New College, Oxford, where Dawkins was a Fellow for many years.

The Chapel's medieval stained glass was recently restored, so perhaps some of the proceeds of The God Delusion, Dawkins' best-selling assault on religion, may have helped to pay for the renovation. There would be a delicious irony in an atheist helping to clean stained glass, which was, for the medieval church, a kind of picture-book of theology, a visual proclamation of faith.

But you don't need to be religious to go to church. And going to church certainly doesn't make a person religious. New Atheists like Dawkins may applaud the architectural heritage of the medieval church, but they are stridently opposed to what's being served up inside the churches. Religion divides people, they declare; it cultivates sectarianism and triggers wars. Just look at Northern Ireland, they say.

Northern Ireland may wish to be known for basalt columns on the north coast, or as the home of the Titanic, or the birthplace of Seamus Heaney, but when the rest of the world thinks of us, they are thinking about religion.

Oddly enough, as a population we appear to be thinking less about religion ourselves than ever before. Do a focus group on the word 'religion' and ask a cross-section of our population what other words they would associate with that term, and I'd predict your list could include 'dusty', 'institutional', 'dry', 'dull', and 'boring'.

Ask the same group to respond to the word 'spiritual', and I suspect you might get very different answers - words like 'open', 'personal', 'diverse', and 'holistic'. More and more of our under-35-year-olds are comfortably described as 'spiritual'; more and more are self-confidently not 'religious'. The religious landscape of Northern Ireland is being transformed.

It seems that churches can no longer take their existence for granted and church leaders can no longer assume that their words carry moral authority. In the past, some kind of association with a church was taken for granted within our society; today there is no social stigma in not being a churchgoer. In the past, the two main Christian traditions set the agenda for our society's moral and religious conversation; today, people of other faiths, and none, are joining the dialogue.

And there is a new breed of 'religionless Christians', who would never darken the door of a church, but nevertheless, see the world in spiritual terms.

I've been fascinated by religious ideas since I was a child.

I wasn't raised in a Christian family, but in my teens I had a religious conversion experience at an evangelistic rally in Newtownabbey. A visiting evangelist I'd never heard of was preaching, and after the sermon he invited new converts to walk forward to the front of the room - a large tent in a field - and I was one of those who responded.

That was 25 years ago, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that my life changed dramatically after that evening.

I became a preacher myself, trained and lectured in theology, and served in churches on both sides of the Atlantic.

But today, I am not a member of any church and I am not a regular churchgoer. What changed? I changed. A few years ago, I decided to take a sabbatical from institutional or organised religion: time out to think and ask some questions about my attitude to faith and values.

I'm still on sabbatical. I realised that my ideas about the world, the Bible, religion, and the meaning of faith itself had changed. I am still part of the religious conversation, you might say, but I've changed where I am sitting at the table.

In Losing Our Religion, a new documentary I present for the BBC, I returned to church to see if I was missing anything.

And, for the first time since the evening of my conversion 25 years ago, I meet Barry Moore, the Canadian evangelist who preached that night and changed my life.

We filmed him preaching at a church in Belfast, and at the end of the evening, he asked for people to raise their hand to signal their conversion.

As I sat in the church, listening to his altar call, I was taken back to that moment in my childhood when his message made sense of everything I was experiencing at that time.

I remember leaving the tent that evening feeling like I'd just woken up from a very long sleep. Now, 25 years later, I left the church feeling like I'd traveled backwards in time.

I suspect I am typical of many people in Northern Ireland who have had an experience of religion - or a religious experience - but who are still trying to work out what role religion, or spirituality, should play in their life.

Perhaps that is a restless and lifelong conversation we have with ourselves. To 'be religious' is to see the world in a certain way; it is to join the dots in a certain kind of pattern.

In the opening paragraph of his autobiography, St Augustine addresses God and says, "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you."

That restlessness is at the heart of religion: a sense that we are part of something bigger, that we are held by something, or someone, that we cannot fully grasp - that we are not alone.

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Altruism has been observed in many other species, (youtube "Dog Saves Dog").

If there are aspects of animal behaviour you find difficult to understand in evolutionary terms you can either accept that "goddidit", and bow down, or you can look for plausible explanations and _test_ them, and maybe learn something new.
I know which approach I prefer.

A good question to should ask yourself often is "what evidence would change my mind about 'X'"

WRT altruism & god what would your answer be?

Posted by John | 14.10.09, 11:18 GMT

@ John. While I can cetainly recognise some of what you describe in relation to Romania I have to say, in all honesty, that my experience has been mostly positive with volunteers.

As to your evolutionary explanation of non reciprocal altruism; well I'm afraid that is merely a 'just so' story' something that seems to plague evolutionary theory, as noted by the late Stephen J Gould.

I don't think the poster is Richard Dawkins. The use of English and punctuation is suspect.

Posted by Hugh | 13.10.09, 15:23 GMT

@hugh, I too have been to Romania to offer aid and what I saw was a fairly widespread racket that offered little long term help and a considerable number of 'feel good' cheap holidays for a bunch of NI based guitar playing freeloaders.

To address your other point. You feel altruistic because for most of evolutionary time most of the people your ancestors met most of the time would be close relatives, and being nice to them helped many of the genes they carried themselves. Your ancestors had no more reason to learn to cope with news reports about orphanages a thousand miles away than pheasants had to learn of cars and roads before their invention.

If the fact of a careless universe makes you think that life is purposeless and absurd .. thats your own problem. I think its an unspeakably incredible privilege to be custodian of a thinking mind in this careless universe :o) (and count years spent in church a terrible terrible waste)
PS Is the author going to respond to Prof Dawkins

Posted by John | 13.10.09, 11:08 GMT

I was a confirmed atheist from about the age of 15. I had become absolutely convinced that organised religion was nothing more than a means to control the masses and the notion of god was a pure invention to help people cope with the reality that life was ultimately purposeless and absurd.
I began to doubt my unbelief in my twenties when on a bus to Romania loaded with aid for the orphaned children. If we are mere lumbering robots, fooled by our genes into believing we have agency, free will for the express purpose of perpetuating those genes then why, I asked myself, was I risking my neck for other people who had no genetic connection to me? How did evolution (which I don't deny) explain non reciprocal altruistic behaviour? If free will is an illusion and our brain development is only for our genes why should we trust what they do? Evolution is not interested in truth after all, merely what is effective. That was when the edifice of naturalism began to crumble and I came back to God.

Posted by Hugh | 12.10.09, 20:07 GMT

"I discovered the other day that Richard Dawkins, the world's most famous atheist, has been donating money to a church. The church in question is the Chapel of New College, Oxford, where Dawkins was a Fellow for many years."

I still am a Fellow of New College, and I have donated money to the college, setting up an annual lecture on public understanding of science. I have never knowingly donated money to its chapel, however. Where did you 'discover' that? Please either name the person who misinformed you, or else please admit to having invented it.

Richard Dawkins

Posted by Richard Dawkins | 12.10.09, 17:43 GMT

Anglicans watch as Catholics take the first few steps away from the Pope.
Protestants watch as Anglicans question clerical authority.
Deists watch as protestants struggle with scripture.
Atheists watch as Deists struggle with life sciences.
Humanists watch as Atheists struggle with moral issues.

Where are you on the spiritual ladder? And who is above or below you?

Posted by Tim | 12.10.09, 16:09 GMT

I grew up as an atheist; I never knew that I was an atheist until a couple years ago. I just never really thought about it or understood the scientific meaning behind the term atheist. I went through a divorce and felt that I was missing something. Someone introduced me to the Jesus Christ idea and so I became saved. That lasted about three months. I went to church, read the bible, and went to study sessions, but always felt as if something was wrong. As I read and studied I was introduced to ideas from Sam Harris and others of the same sort of philosophy. This introduction sent me on a wild fire study into this atheism thing. I am now what you could consider to be a militant atheist. I do understand the value behind belief though. It can move mountains as stated in Sam Harris' book "The End of Faith." I just do not think that the world is going to survive peacefully much longer with religion in the back ground.

Posted by Jeremy | 12.10.09, 14:13 GMT

If a person is born on a remote island, to two parents who have never heard of god, then the likelihood is that child will never know about god either. The only reason that we know about god is because of modern religions and their previous incarnations. Religions told us about god, usually from a young age, with or without parental consent. To then try to separate god from religion, and call it spirituality, is dubious at best and delusional at worst. God, whichever one you like (there are apparently quite a few of them), is a product of religion, not the other way around. Religions may claim to have started because of god, but they are mistaken. They invented god themselves by creating a 'fictional' character in their own chosen religious texts, all of which, by the way, have been discredited in no small measure.

William, you have discovered that you do not need religion any more. Why, therefore, have you quickly grasped for a new 'security blanket' called spirituality?

Posted by WH | 12.10.09, 13:47 GMT

Nice article. Religion is a personal belief, but you would be wrong to think that others share that sentiment. And it can only have a truly positive effect if the morality encoded within the Bible (f.e.) isn't degrading to anyone, and everyone follows these 'rules'.

So major kudos to you, for at least you have educated yourself and seem to be aware of your position and that of religion in today's world - whether good or bad.

"Northern Ireland may wish to be known for basalt columns on the north coast ..."
There are, of course, those who want to change the history of this island to align with their religious beliefs. Which is a step backwards for everyone.

Posted by SB | 12.10.09, 13:29 GMT

I think there is a fallacy that organised religion is about morality,ethics and goodness when actually it appears to be a tribal ethos based on the supremacy of doctrine, much of which has a poor historical provenance or is based on (Deliberate?) mistranslation and misinterpretation of scriptures. There are many who believe in a Divinity in some form who find this doctrine unacceptable and are not attached to a religion. From daily observation I do not think that organised religions do have higher standards than the non attached, in fact looking at daily events and behaviour I would say that the organised religions have poorer standards by virtue of their obsession with doctrine. Certainly I think man is a spiritual being but I also think that the organised religions and their dubious doctrines bring about lower standards, even than those of the non religious, and are what stands between God and man.

Posted by Keith | 12.10.09, 11:29 GMT