A whisper will be heard
The cathedral of the Christian faith has stood for two millennia. Its choirs have sung sweet songs; its priests have prayed great prayers; its people have done wondrous deeds. Now, as the choirs fall silent, as the priests tell their beads and mutter ancient biddings, a new whisper is being heard.

It has been almost drowned out for more then two hundred years by the clamour of the faithful in procession . Only a few sharp ears have caught the sound above the ritual chants. Richard Holloway, until recently Primus of the Anglican Church in Scotland, is one who has heard the whisper and is telling others about it. If this book is anything to go by, he stands at the cathedral door, peering into the gloom inside and wondering, perhaps, if anyone in there is listening. 

Holloway is one of a few whose message is heard by society at large. Traditional Christians find him hard to handle. He hasn't yet left the cathedral - but he stands at the doorway as if he might walk out with not much more than a backward glance. It's precisely that which makes what he has to say so attractive. Standing at the door, speaking in both directions as it were, is perhaps the hardest of all stances to take. Those outside think one foolish; those inside think one misguided or worse. Is it possible to be faithful to the truth and at the same time faithful to those one calls "brothers and sisters in Christ"?

The only possible answer is, I think, that to be faithful to the truth is to be faithful to one's fellows.

Shining through Holloway's writing is the sensitive care and charity with which he strips away layers of silly teachings with which the Church attempts to protect itself from contemporary knowledge. Holloway is only mildly polemical. But, thankfully, that doesn't rob his views of either impact or precision.

He's all the more convincing because, as he reveals, he has moved to his present position from one in which he once attacked people who held views similar to those he now espouses. So when he writes of those who go against reason, it's not a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

A trampled yard
Why is this book needed? Because, as he writes, "It is tragic that the religion which grew round the remembrance of Jesus of Nazareth should have become the vehicle of such hatred and intolerance." Certain aspects of Christianity are becoming a scandal, thinks Holloway. It's as though the ground of the Church's yard has become so trampled and hard, that God's soaking rain cannot penetrate and soften it.

The "hatred and intolerance" were witnessed by the author at the 1998 Lambeth Conference in the United Kingdom when Anglican bishops condemned homosexuals as sinful. The debate, says Holloway, was "... filled with a hateful glee which prompted one English bishop to liken it to a Nuremberg rally."

It's not only at such gatherings that God's rain can't penetrate. Holloway's book is about some of the specific doctrines which, perhaps because they have been around for millennia, can no longer flourish in the alien soil of modern culture. He is, thankfully, content to point out just how these doctrines go wrong without slating those who propound them. Unlike many of his detractors, he doesn't seek refuge in ad hominem argument.

The backbone of the book's fifteen chapters is a series of lectures by Holloway as Professor of Theology at the Gresham College in London. His writing bears the mark of its target audience. It also helps to know that Holloway is an excellent preacher. As William Hazlitt once remarked, "... few persons can be found who speak and write equally well." Holloway writes lucidly, illustrating his points with personal anecdotes and apposite illustrations.

A ruined house
The first chapter is entitled "The end of Christianity". This is not to say that it's the end of religion in the West: "The religious quest is the deepest passion of  our nature, because it is prompted by our ultimate concern." The end of Christianity, says the author, is coming because there is a system undergirding the traditional "economy of salvation" which is more concerned with preserving its own power than exploring the truth.

It's a system which requires uniformity and which can't easily tolerate our multi-faith and multi-cultural society. "After all, if you are invested in the proclamation of a particular system of meaning and value, which you believe to be ... the only true and saving one, then you are bound to be disturbed by the new plural culture." The power-brokers of the Church prefer, it seems, to preside over a crumbling ruin than get their hands dirty building a new house of God.

The fundamental error in which traditional Christians are fatefully mired is the belief that the accidents of the faith are more important than the essence. When we do that, we are dragged into the patronising viciousness of Lambeth bishops who by all accounts forsook common decency, not to say Christian love and compassion, to condemn a minority of their brothers and sisters in Christ.

The opposite error is the insistence that "... the Bible presents us with a permanently valid way of understanding the universe and ordering human relations within it." The fundamentalist approach is to refer to the architect's plans, to read them avidly, to affirm that the original building was good - and to carry on in the ruins as though nothing has happened. Even though rain pours in and drafts chill the bones, there's a certain comfort if not perfect safety in knowing that one has the ultimate blueprint.

What then is the way forward? What can be done by those who observe the shaking of the foundations, whose doubts and loves drive them towards a radical position - neither set in the concrete of tradition nor blinded by biblical certainty? Holloway sets out to discover "new ways of using the Christian tradition that will deepen our humanity, our care for the earth and for one another."

Positive deconstruction
It may be that for the time being some Christians must bend their energies towards breaking down traditions which make no sense to the modern mind. Holloway does just that here but at the same time affirms that "... my ultimate intention is resoundingly positive. I am more interested in using the power of these great themes for our lives today, than in discarding the ancient containers that convey them to us."

And a good job he does of it.

• The "God " of tradition is something like the Cheshire cat of Alice in Wonderland - gradually fading away even as the Church claims absolute truth for its doctrines. Critical realists, on the other hand, hold that "... it is necessary to put religious claims to careful examination and interpretation".

• "All the ladders start in the human heart." Some claim revelation, some nature, for the source of our understanding of God. In truth, we create our own metaphors for the immortal, unknowable, invisible "Being" we call God. "The revelations of our religious imagination are among the most powerful of our creations," writes Holloway.

• "The notion that there is no fixed truth out there is extremely difficult for many people to accept." Even science is a socially-conditioned system of thought. Religious doctrines and symbols can't be given final status. The Christian myth must be constantly reinterpreted - a process which is "...always resisted by its official keepers".

To be positive while trying to redefine Christianity is to be committed to rebuilding the ruined edifice of the past. Holloway thinks this can be done. He doesn't propose a programme, a structured process by which certain goals are aimed at. Nor is his desire to disturb the peace of those who "...are able to take the ancient narratives of religion at their face value." We should let them sleep in comfort with "...the emptiness and horror which confronts them."

Those of us who care at all about being Christian in a way congruent with contemporary world views must, he thinks, first revise the way we perceive our relationship to life itself. Only then can we focus properly upon what Christianity really is - a way of living, an orthopraxy rather than an orthodoxy. 

[Home] [Back]