Yeah I'll Do It

We all grow old, though in his seventies Don Cupitt hasn't obviously lost enough of his brain cells to make a difference to his recall. But here is an interesting change, extracted by Alan MacFarlane. For so long he has emphasised the changes in his thinking: this phase and then that. Now, suddenly, he sees that so much of it has been alike. I've always thought that my own thinking and outlook has been alike, really, so the only problem has been institutional. I tend to 'question out' institutions. Cupitt later says he's never had to produce a CV like you do today and never had to sell himself: he was just taken up by this institution and that as they filled their numbers from the people in their walk of institutional life: he said Cambridge is a good youth club and old people's home. It is a lost world - just lost. But, anyway, I particularly like how he forms these thoughts into now seeing a consistency where your own life's output is your autobiography.

Kant and Kierkegaard were becoming the main influence; they still were in the 1960s when I didn't respond very warmly to John Robinson 'Honest to God'; I knew him quite well, but thought the 1960s radicals too keen to humanize God; at that time I was still very high orthodox; it is often hard to reconstruct one's own thinking in retrospect; when I read one of my old books again I am surprised how much of my later thinking is already in it, on the other hand, at that time I wouldn't have read them in that way and wouldn't have seen it; as the years pass, some things become more salient in your thinking and some less, as the arrangement of thoughts in your head changes; although it seems to me that my thinking has changed radically all my life, often quite recent thoughts are already to be seen in my early stuff; the whole notion of what our mental development is and how it takes place is rather mysterious to me; I have called my writing a 'projet fleuve' and you are meant to understand the whole thing as a kind of personal story because I don't believe that any human being will ever again be able to suppose that he has caught the whole of reality in a single system of thought; once you introduce a time dimension, once you think of everything as relative, transient, flowing, a 'projet fleuve' is all you can do, and this is how it has seemed to me over the period from the 1960s to now when I have been writing; my books are the only autobiography I can produce; I don't really know why I have travelled this way; I don't believe in metaphysics any more but I do believe in writing as an attempt to describe one's own journey; I have sometimes said, “Would anybody like to take up my project and continue from me as I lose the ability to continue with it?”; one or two people might want to try to do that; so instead of writing traditional, systematic, philosophy or theology, I have done a sort of confessional engagement with my own times - a kind of spiritual autobiography which has documented how someone like me has changed over these generations...

I'm curious about the text offered here. There is an element of conversation, of taking Don Cupitt back occasionally, and some words are suggested - like "thin religion" when Don had said "thick religion" for the likes of C. S. Lewis. So Don takes up the wording, but if I was making these notes I would put my own contribution in and also aim for more precision in more exactly his words - there is a little compression in places. The semi-colon approach is interesting; I think I would try to 'sentence them up' without trying to overplay a sense of perfect speech and diction.

Yes, I'd take up Don Cupitt's project. I'm a more sociological in approach but have pretty much the same conclusions.

By the way, a project fleuve is a project of a long novel, and a roman‐fleuve is a river-novel with a central character and characters running through them, though each can be read alone, like in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time which consisted of twelve novels between 1951 and 1975. So Don Cupitt's long series of books are his river novel, where each book can be read alone but they all form his autobiography of thought.

My Brain

Some will have seen Derren Brown rabbit on (and he does) about lottery numbers. He is impressive and one part puzzled me for some time, which is really about how one's brain works.

His crowd business about 'Wisdom of numbers' only works for an established object. If it is guess the weight of the bull then you need a bull, and you'll get many informed farmers guessing around the weight of the bull and then increasingly ignorant people either side. Do a distribution curve of guesses and the mean probably will end up at the weight of the bull. It does not work for predicting something random like lottery numbers. So that was a lot of bull-shit.

In the end he controlled the trick to 'predict' all the numbers, not the crowd of his followers, with whom he led a merry dance to the end (by the end they'd lost their critical faculties). My own guess relates to the regular/ irregular jarring of the camera. Had it been dead still, the join would have been more obvious between the stored balls on our left and the lottery live on the right. Had a person held the camera, it would have swayed unpredictably, and it didn't. Channel 4 showed the programme twice and twice more on Channel 4 plus 1. I bumped into that bit three times! So a jarring camera can connect with a split screen perfectly with "today's technology" (and he did say "my" and "a trick").

His three ways of doing it were thus none of them. He didn't predict the numbers, fake the ticket or intervene with the machine. He did a trick. Of course had he/ they predicted the numbers, he would have simply put the numbers out in front of the people in the same room and watched the lottery show. But he didn't. He moved into a "TV studio" out of their way and ours, and there the trick was done. The numbers were put in with the lottery programme and the split screen was ended.

But I was more interested in the three coins together trick, that is not a trick. Of course getting the first chap to choose Heads Heads Heads did mean Darren Brown's second player had more chance to win (becomes more quickly). But my head is very mathematically thick. I did learn the chi squared method for a lesson connected to an interview (no news after a week!) but I was actually more interested in the bell curve. There is a bell curve in the coins game too - there has to be. So I looked at various solutions, including this mathematical one that got me nowhere, and then I realised the clue was in another non-transitive game called Rock, Scissors and Paper. It is about blocking and power.

Then I worked it out that packaged and maintained unevenness (into three, and a rule) triumphs over the impression of evenness (the coins). I drew a diagram (I used to understand diagrams when I did economics - I never understood the equations) that showed four combinations of three coin throws had cul-de-sacs and four combinations had two 'blocking' moves. Indeed, to take a combination, and copy the middle coin, reverse it, put it to the front, and take the first three, never produces the four combinations of three in the cul-de-sacs (this amounts to the same thing). So the rule is decisive, and can come from any of the eight combinations of three coins, but only four can be produced. Indeed these productions are the opposites of the blocking (thus amounting to the same thing - they are the physical expression of the rule).

So I think logically, verbally and visually, and this was the result, added to my website. Some mathematician will tell me that I have the verbals somewhat wrong. Maybe I have (for example, the word 'block') but I think the explanation stands up and it would constitute that instruction "show your working" (not 'show you're working', which leads to a little cartoon).

So Profound

I've discovered this recent interview with Don Cupitt. It is about his life and work. The recording took place on 16th February 2009 by Alan Macfarlane and was edited by Sarah Harrison. Bang on the button, it is, regarding the present day. I have taken the same decision recently as him.

...John Robinson never recovered from 'Honest to God', he never got another job except as Dean of Trinity and that was a respectable niche where he could bat out time; 'Honest to God' gave a whole generation of young people the possibility of become Christians again; it was a great work of Anglican theology by a chap who was as Anglican as you can get; Michael Ramsey's refusal to back him and his kowtowing to evangelicals by condemning it meant that the radical position in the Church of England was really finished; in the long run the evangelicals took over after 1963, they are now the majority in the Church of England, and there is no future for people like me; I began to realize that in 1980; the church authorities would always side with the evangelicals because they were afraid that if it came to a major trial in the church courts the evangelicals would win as they were more orthodox in terms of literal adherence to the founding documents of the Church of England; this meant the kind of critical thinking I believe in is in the long run incompatible with membership of the church because it can never accept critical thinking; the Western church will have to go the same way as the Russian church in the end, and hopes of reform and renewal for the Episcopal churches of the West have had it; the whole idea that any community has a hot line to truth is out of date now; that is why I have now, very reluctantly and sadly just recently discontinued communion; it was very painful and I hated it, after sixty years, but I felt I had to do so; John Robinson, to some extent, tried to work his way back into respectability, but I won't do that; I think it is time to admit that once you move over to a critical view of scripture and Christianity you can no longer belong to one of the traditional scriptural religions which have a fixed framework of thought; in my most recent theology I align myself a bit more with people like the Quakers and say I am a post-ecclesiastical sort of Christian; I greatly love Christian culture, ethics and spirituality, I admire Jesus for his extraordinary ethical radicalism, and I would like to imagine a new secular future for Christianity, but I don't think we can any longer hope to maintain the continuity of the Church, the apostolic succession, the tradition of truth within a community.

Back at the Sixth Form

Down in the Anglican Old School the Head of the Sixth Form again calls Christopher Sheitz, Philip Headturner, Fred Frame Righter and Davina McCall (who is male) to his office.

They wait outside his oak door office. To the side a red light goes off and the green light below comes on. They walk back in and, responding to the head's hand signalling, gather round the desk.

Head of Sixth Form: I need to talk to you boys about your work again. I wonder whether you boys have been listening to anything I have said.
Fred Frame Righter: What is wrong this time sir?
Head of Sixth Form: When was the last time you handed in an essay?
Davina McCall: Sir, yesterday, the eighth of September.
Head of Sixth Form: Which teachers asked for this essay so soon after that 27 page one?
Christopher Sheitz: None of them sir, but sir we needed to write some more. Sir this was much briefer - we took your advice.
Head of Sixth Form: None of your teachers asked for this essay; are our overworked teachers expected to read this? It was handed directly to me. I noticed the aspiring to be Head Boy Newt S. Temperament is not involved this time.
Fred Frame Righter: He thought better not this time. Sir he might be writing a project of his own.
Head of Sixth Form: Now it happens that I have read this essay myself, and I think you boys are being presumptuous. After discussing that the school down the road is run by its headteacher and hierarchical staff, you have written here about your own school:

Neither the school's constitution nor its teaching contracts contain any provision establishing a hierarchy above the level of the classroom. Thus, in our school, the classrooms are to a school in a way similar to that in which the other schools are to the Education Authority. This feature of our school's polity was articulated fully by fifteen members of staff and the three schoolboys of the sixth form common room last April in their 'Staff's Statement on the Polity of The School.'

Head of Sixth Form: I am sorry young men, but you keep peddling this nonsense about our school. The fifteen staff you refer to are a bunch of short term contract, new staff, nearly retired and retired members, and you members of the sixth form are really neither here nor there. The senior staff, however, and those on long term contracts, have been establishing in law (should there be any doubt about it) that this school is a hierarchical school like any other run by the Head and the senior staff, like myself, and is run under the Governors Meeting once every three years.
Philip Headturner: Sir, we are entitled to our opinion.
Head of Sixth Form: Your opinion is as good as Tommy Rot. Furthermore, you seem to want to contradict the conversation held between seven members of staff and the Head Boy only the other week.
Davina McCall: Sir, we are actually responding to that meeting.
Head of Sixth Form: That meeting might have considered what openings there are for individual classrooms to make their own decisions, but the meeting also concluded that the whole school should be urged to sign on to the Local Authority Schools Provision. In other words, the Head Boy and the staff seems to be of the view that this school as a whole can decide this matter, and this is at some variance from your own pathetic opinion. The result is that you are contradicting more influential and important people. Your pathetic opinion has been sidelined, and I think you have written yet another essay in some panic.
Davina McCall: Sir, we are having to articulate our view.
Head of Sixth Form: No! And by the way, Davina, I really must ask your parents about whether you should be in a boys' school. You don't look male to me. I think we are getting a little fed up with your group's instant essay journalism, and I have read your argument and find it bogus. The more you produce these essays the more we just ignore them. Don't think you will get your qualifications secured this way. If anything, you are going backwards, laddies.
Fred Frame Righter: Sir, are you done with us? We may need to write some more.
Head of Sixth Form: You presume much, Righter. I'm done with you, but I advise you to find something more productive to do. By the way, if you see Head Boy Roman Williams, send him to me. I would like to know what the seven staff said to him and he to them because he is beginning to confuse us all again. Now go, all the lot of you, laddies.
Christopher Sheitz: Yes sir, I think we would like to be clearer too.

All Aboard

Thinking Anglicans includes the full text of the Report from the Communion Partner Bishops, the seven who had a private meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Thus we have the continuing saga of the Covenant (and why I continue to cover it). These bishops appreciated his recent Reflections on the decisions of The Episcopal Church at the General Convention (in which, clearer than ever before, Rowan Williams determined against those decisions that gay and lesbian people cannot represent Anglicanism at any levels of ministry). In response, Williams again mused whether "elements" in provinces against the Covenant will be free to sign up to the Covenant, but the meeting leads to the report concluding (among other things) about the Covenant, to:

urge its adoption by General Convention, or to endorse the first three sections of the Ridley Cambridge Draft and the Anaheim Statement.

This is not the view of the Archbishop's self-appointed interpreter, Bishop Tom Wright, and his pals at the Anglican Communion Institute, with their long essays. This Report suggests that, whilst there is potentially track 1 and track 2 with the Covenant, Williams might like all aboard on track 1 despite what The Episcopal Church (TEC) has passed and intends. It is not absolutely clear this is Williams's view, but it is their view.

Presumably these bishops and probably Williams see that with TEC on board it will at least take into account other conservative views against inclusion as part of its move towards inclusion. There might be a foot on the brake as well as a foot on the accelerator, or at least a messing around with the gears and clutch before pressing the accelerator. Such a Covenant would be the ultimate piece of rubber - not rubber that forms a shield but rubber that is very bendy and wraps around any shape.

Thus the bendy Covenant becomes like a piece of temptation, saying, "pick me, pick me," as if this deepens the togetherness. It becomes, instead, only another stage on which to argue. It is, yet again, another attempt to get this thing through the final goalposts, having come through lots of little goals along the way, with insufficient opposition at each stage.

The Covenant is there for one reason and one reason only: to restrict. As such, it either does restrict, or it increases the Anglicans' necessary ability to practice duplicity. The whole dispute, at present, is an argument about the boundaries of duplicity, that TEC really does want to include faithful gay etc. relationships as part of the transformation of baptismal life, and others who say it is not possible to include such relationships. The Covenant arises because of this dispute, is framed by it, and then the suggestion is that it includes both positions negates itself and adds to the problem.

Furthermore, the Covenant does give legitimacy to central institutions that at present are doubtful; that people can say 'so what?' to the passing of the Lambeth Conference 1998 1:10 resolution by a body meeting to chat and pray. Not when there is a Covenant, however.

To then use that resolution inclusively would have to be like John Henry Newman and his Tract 90, turning the Thirty-nine Articles on their head to mean what they don't mean. Under the Covenant someone will write how Lambeth 1:10 approves of loving, faithful, same sex relationships. So in time the Thirty-nine Articles, disliked by Catholic and liberal, were downgraded into historic formularies; but this would not be the case with Lambeth 1:10, which would have been upgraded.

Plus, when there is a Covenant, and say the Church of England makes a move to act (perhaps on women bishops) that receives objection at the international level, then legal wrangles are potentially large and continuous. To then take action that assumes direction of any sort from the international level will result in legal advice and potential action. Saying 'do this or lose your membership' could be tested in the courts as an intention of international oversight and control. The Covenant could be a spur for all kinds of legal battles. In any case, it is quite possible that the General Synod will regard the Covenant as juridical and punitive, and reject it. For legal reasons here and elsewhere, the Covenant and its statements could be rendered impotent in a short period of time, once adopted, as it then faces both ways at once.

Best not to have it, not to succumb to the temptation, and to let other Anglican Churches reject it too, with a good head of steam for the Church of England to reject it as well.

GBLT Mountaineering

The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GBLT) Society are welcoming fresher students to its membership, and older students are telling the freshers about last year's events, including having plenty of outdoor activities.

"And then there was when we went on outdoor pursuits. We went whitewater rafting, kayaking, canoeing, and next day we went mountaineering where, near the very top, some of us got stuck."
"Did you drag yourselves up?"
"No no, we always wore the proper clothing and equipment."

I thank you...

Future of Anglican Conservatives

In the distant future, there is very little future for the sort of conservatism displayed today. The reason is that there used to be more of it in the past, but what passes today for orthodoxy would have been dismissed on all sorts of arguments now hardly ever observed. All orthodoxy is relative to its time and day, a sort of few steps backward from where we are.

Today the sociology of knowledge determines that we think practically and in a this worldly fashion. We do not expect God to send the rain, push up the crops, or have demons making us unhealthy. Some sects still think like this. Slowly people are understanding the quantum world and its meanings thanks to virtual reality - working on computers and a reality that never has to exist as 'hard copy'. As a result, religion also is being understood at a fantasy level - a good story, a novel by which to live your life, if it seems relevant.

Combine that and practicality and we can see that the notion of a true, historical, religion is being overtaken. Plus the arguments are now widely disseminated about why Christianity is not 'historically true' as given, whereas the arguments used to be the preserve of academics.

The idea of the Bible as a faith document - or documents - of faith communities decades later, of only secondary documentation of what is its core focus, is gaining wide knowledge. Everyone knows how stories become refocused, changed, magnified and diminished according to the present into which they are told. Also those who today rewarp those stories are noted for their highly selective use of the secondary sources, turning relative statements into tablets of stone, commentaries and stances into laws. Such laws are brittle.

Faith has to be practical - about what you do. Some of what is done is worship. Its best hope for regulation is orthopraxic, not orthodox. Following a liturgy is not the same as following a description of things, but is a stance and can be a like-stance at some degrees removed. But then we realise, with the relativity of everything, that we can make it all up. We made it up in the past, and we can make it up now. Revelation turns out to be the skill of the storyteller, whether around a camp fire or on to paper or into the computer.

When I do earth, fire, water and air, I know that these elements are not elements. They are symbolic elements. They represent the winds of the UK and its neighbours. They can include the UK's four main saints. They can get us to a material appreciation, an appreciation of our mythic and historical past (which overlap, depending on methods). They substitute for science and allow us to incorporate evolution. These elements allow a symbolic display - a sacred circle or egg, and an altar, and thus emphasise place, even the idea of enchantment in a magical place. In other words, religion visibly becomes like art, as indeed it is like art. And thus we add in actual art, and music - and silence too. In the end religion is a reflection upon being conscious, and self-conscious; but if you have a symbolic space and display then this is done with others. We build ourselves together through exchange (with benefits and growth), and sometimes exchange turns into the gift (the spiritual offering in a material setting).

When priests do bread and wine, they are not doing anything but juggling. It is just symbolic exchange-gift ritual. It can still be a focus, but it has no absolutism about it whatsoever. Prayers are also reflections, thoughts, in your mind and shared with others - here today and gone tomorrow. You can meditate to clear the mind of clutter, and become more aware: that's a good idea. Good then to go into a space and contemplate, not in a sleepy way but in an aware way. Clarity is never a bad idea.

Yet, all in all, everything passes away. Nothing lasts. If religion manages anything, it is how to deal with transience, and how to allow for and accept death and the end. If you hang on to anything, including orthodoxies, they will bite you in the bum. The obsession with them, their institutions, their rules and methods, become a distraction from clarity.

Conservative religion cannot handle any of this. It is stuck and is a biter in the bum. In the end, it is as transient as everything else - it just won't admit it.

Such groups end up in their own stuck institutions and at continued war in compromising institutions until they have faded away or as a rump merged into their nearest stronger and different group; the question then actually becomes one whether Anglican liberalism has the flexibility to move on itself, to leave the conservatives in their boxes doing whatever it is they still want to do. Or have we arrived at a point where even Anglican liberals are quite conservationist and thus conservative themselves in their own ways?