Building Community

Do humans need a religious basis on which to build a community?

We were in Wellington to attend the annual conference of the Sea of Faith, an organisation we have belonged to, at a distance, for nearly 25 years. It explores all sorts of ideas that are or have been associated with religion. Many of its members are "progressive" or "liberal" christians, some are more inclined to other world religions or atheism.

The organisation itself holds an annual conference (this year at Silverstream) and publishes a newsletter.

Each conference has four keynote sessions followed by discussion in smaller groups and winds up with a panel which enables everyone to ask questions of any of the speakers.

This year was kicked off with an address by Lloyd Geering, who put forward the idea that the evolution of the world has produced more and more complex organisation, both in the physical world and in the world of ideas. He drew on the writings of Jan Smuts and Teilhard de Chardin to elucidate ideas like "complexification" and "noosphere". 

Lloyd suggested that the ultimate result of these processes would be a world community which has been developing out of the Christian West over recent centuries.

The second address was a recorded one from Michael Benedikt, who is an American architecture professor who has written a book called "God is the good we do". Michael's parents were both holocaust survivors who became very opposed to religion as a result of those experiences.

His idea is that God only exists through the good we do. When we do ethical things we create God. He calls this idea "theopraxy".

The next speaker was Gretta Vosper, a minister of the United Church of Canada, who leads a church in Toronto. She has declared herself to be atheist; her church does not use any of the traditional christian language, but what they do and what they talk about amounts to christian values and christian practices translated into secular terms.

This has put Gretta and her church at odds with the United Church authorities. Discussions are continuing; watch this space!

The last session was addressed by Geoff Troughton from the Religious Studies Department at Victoria University. He summarised the present state of the religious life of New Zealand, as measured by census returns and and the Study of Attitudes and Values. 

The main point he made was that the numbers of people with any connection with christian churches is dropping, while the numbers who report "no religion" is rising, which we all know anyway from anecdotal evidence.

We had missed the conference for several years; it was good to reconnect with several old friends from other parts of the country.