‘We are all each others’ interpreters – a process requiring trust and rootedness.’ Photo: by Andrei Panfiloiu on Unsplash
A process of creativity, hospitality and courtesy? Peter Bevan investigates ‘Implicit Religion’
‘Theology should focus on understanding life and the world as experienced by people in the messy process of living.’
In Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton identifies two sets of human needs that secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill. The first of these is the need to live together in communities, despite our deeply-rooted selfish and violent impulses. The second is the need to cope with terrifying degrees of mental pain, from professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones, and to our own decay and demise. God may be dead, says de Botton, but the urgent issues that impel us to invent God still demand resolutions. He concludes, in his introductory pages, that it is possible to remain a committed atheist but still find religions sporadically useful, interesting and consoling, and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm. From this perspective he identifies the daily interaction of the secular with the sacred.
In Shaping the Church, the theologian Martyn Percy acknowledges this challenge, noting the ‘inclement ecclesial weather’ within which we live (this is the result of ‘unfettered capitalism and rampant individualism’, he says). He recognises a growth of interest in existential issues, such as the search for meaning, transcendence, personal integration and social transformation. According to Percy, this reflects the search for a deep communion between cosmic nature and inner reality. While there is no formal external guidance (otherwise called God) for this secular spiritual journey, there are spiritual guides. Perhaps I can go further and suggest that we can be prophets and guides for each other.
The tension between spirituality and personal integration, if indeed there is a tension, can be summarised in two definitions of spirituality given by another theologian, Sandra Schneiders:
• the experience of conscious involvement in the project of life-integration through self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives
• the gifts, life and discipline of the Spirit in the lifetime project of developing a sense of holiness by living the relationship between God and humans.
Note the distinction between personal faith and institutional religion. How we place ourselves here determines further distinctions – between faith and action, between conviction and responsibility, and between faith development and personal integration. A further challenge comes from sociology. Some sociologists suggest that a human-constructed moral order can be projected as a universal reality, which then reinforces the original human construction.
Here I want to introduce the concept of ‘Implicit Religion’. This is an attempt to override the prejudices and stereotypes that so often colour our responses towards established rituals of belief. Edward Bailey, widely regarded as the founder of Implicit Theology, argued that theology should focus on understanding life and the world as experienced by people in the messy process of living. It could be described as a form of pastoral theology. Thus it is necessary to go beyond the identification of religion with churches, sects, and institutions. Going beyond these forms of religious expression means admitting the possibility of Christianity without explicit supernatural faith, and of Christianity without church. It identifies a hidden religiousness outside the sacred fence, emphasising experience and placing it within a reframed religious context. Further, Implicit Theology emphasises the demand for meaning within the less visible layers of society.
Although Bailey does not claim that his theology is essentially Christian, I think these constructs can have a theological basis. My personal search has led me to a consideration of the Catholic Karl Rahner. He wrote that ‘all persons are created into relationship with God by virtue of their human existence and not, as in textbook theology, by virtue solely of a superstructure of divine powers flowing into a person through ritualised action’. He used the phrase ‘supernatural existentialism’ to suggest that we are hardwired to God. Given a certain amount of imaginative generosity, we could argue for a cosmos in which all participants (living and non-living) interact to create an integrated worldview. Rahner included all those whose lives are touched by the grace of Christ, even if they are seemingly outside Christian fellowship.
This approach leads to a theology of reciprocity – of giving and receiving, where giver and receiver are engaged in a process of creativity, hospitality and courtesy. We are all each others’ interpreters – a process requiring trust and rootedness. The otherness to which we are open also makes us other. It begins a process of never-ending interaction and transformation. This is a brave act. We are always losing part of our identity and gaining new perspectives. The act of creative receptivity enables the expression of what George Steiner calls an ‘inexplicable presence’ – a search for ‘concentrated common sense’.
The problem before us is whether all this lies within the domain of the church, or whether it is better described as a more general ‘spirituality’, in which sources of spiritual uplift lie outside religious institutions. For me, the spiritual discipline of being open to the inexplicable is more frequently met and practiced outside conventional religious settings. Friends could welcome this, using these events as a baseline for reflection and social action. Quakers already recognise the interaction between the inexplicable and everyday life, and aim to express it in everyday language and symbols. These instances may be an incomplete revelation, but being vulnerable to them allows a source of authority (however defined) to be experienced and expressed.
This, radically, means treating values that have yet to be fully comprehended as sacred. It means living among immensities of meaning that deny summary explanation. Such believers are always learning, moving in and out of speech and silence in a continuous wonder. It is a continuous turning inside-out of mind and feeling. Does this paint a picture we recognise most times we pray?
