On Not Feeling God: thoughts on a saying of Sister Wendy Beckett

Sister Wendy Beckett has died. She was a remarkable woman. Her obituary in the Guardian paid tribute to her insight into great art and her ability to excite and inspire a television audience. Perhaps no one was more surprised than she was that a catholic nun could become such a TV success.

The obituarist ends with a striking reference to her understanding of religious experience. Her views on God were challenging. When asked once what she felt about God, she replied, sharply: “I don’t think anyone can feel God. Those who believe in him most are most aware of his non-feelability, as it were. God is such a total mystery. My heart sinks when the word God is bandied around glibly.”

I put that quote out on social media and was surprised how much interest it aroused. A lot of people endorsed it and recirculated it. Clearly Sister Wendy spoke for them in some important way. And the more I thought about it, the more I sensed that she was articulating my own thoughts too. I can’t speak for anyone else. But let me try to think aloud about why her words seem not only accurate but important.

I’m one of those people who is easily moved to tears, whether it’s a film I’m watching, a poem I’m reading or a piece of music I’m listening to. And yes, by singing carols at Christmas and gazing into the crib. I’m grateful for the capacity to feel and to be moved: I understand what the desert fathers meant when they spoke about “the gift of tears”. 

And yet, I don’t altogether trust my emotional responses. I don’t mean the fact of them, rather, what they mean. Just because I feel a lump in the throat during the final scene of my favourite film Brief Encounter, it doesn’t follow that my response is especially deep or life-changing. It could be sentimental or nostalgic, none the worse for that perhaps but not to be invested with profound significance. Feelings and moods are very transient. We shouldn’t assign more meaning to them than they deserve. The actor Simon Callow once said, “the important thing is not to feel deeply but to feel accurately”. 

In particular, I’m wary of assigning divine significance to my emotions. Of course, God is as present in my emotional life as he is to every other aspect of my being: he is in my thoughts, my memories, my actions, my instincts and my emotions. He is as much in my heart as in my head, as much in my feeling as in my thinking and doing. How could it be otherwise if God truly is the ground of all our being? 

But I’m increasingly reticent about claiming to experience “the divine” in some direct, extraordinary way. It’s true that numinous places can move me profoundly, places that seem to speak of the Mysterium Tremens et Fascinans, as Rudolph Otto described it in his famous book The Idea of the Holy. In the past few months I’ve been touched in that way by the Ancient Greek site at Delphi, by praying quietly in Hexham Abbey one morning, by listening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, hearing my wife read a poem by R.S. Thomas, and by singing “Away in a Manger” with my grandchildren at the Christingle Service. These have all been, for me, religious experiences. Each has been a gift in its own way. You will I’m sure be able to speak in a similar way about the experiences that you will want to describe as “religious”. 

But far from leading me to claim that I’m somehow “feeling the presence of God”, I think I want to acknowledge how much more mysterious God seems to be precisely on account of these experiences and others like them. If God is, as theologians say, immanent within our world of experience, then I’d be wrong to privilege one kind of experience as somehow more religious than any other. The real test of how authentic my faith is has to be how far I’m able to speak about God as present within my ordinary, everyday experience, and especially  within those experiences that are difficult or baffling or painful. For if I can’t give some account of where God is to be found in the shadow side of my life, then it’s questionable whether I’ve come to understand God as embracing the whole of who I am, the dark, the light and all the greyscale in between. To “feel after God and find him” is indeed the goal of human existence as St Paul said on the Areopagus (Acts 17). But for me, that’s a rather different thing from “feeling him” directly. 

As a Christian, I was shaped in my teenage years by evangelicalism. I owe it a tremendous amount and am glad to acknowledge that debt. But as I look back, I realise that it was too definite about God’s presence and how a born-again soul should expect to experience it, too black-and-white about the endless complexities of human life. I’m learning - and I think this is wisdom - that trusting my experience is important, and that the essence of a healthy spirituality is to be able to reflect on it in wholesome ways. But I’m also learning that when we are in the presence, as we always are, of the profoundest mystery of life, which is what God ultimately is, then my experience is only an indicator of my personal response at the time, not some clue to the riddle of the universe. I might once have claimed such a thing in the face of goodness, truth or beauty. But I’m more reticent now. Practising “reserve” feels important.

Someone asked me today what I made of the Incarnation and whether beholding God’s grace and truth in the face of the Word made flesh didn’t open a door to “feeling God” in our own  sensory experience. I replied: For me, what I *feel* when beholding God’s grace & truth in the Incarnation is adoration, gladness, contrition & love. That’s a more reliable (& humble) statement than anything I could say about “feeling God”, though it’s incontestably true to say we believe he is fully present. That may seem a trifle tentative. But I think it’s important only to speak of what we know. The thing about Mystery is that it’s essentially unknowable in its fullness. Which is why, when Moses found himself in its presence at the burning bush, he could only be silent and adore. Could it be that learn this best from art, poetry and literature with their capacity to help us grasp symbolism and metaphor, “tell it slant” as Emily Dickinson said in one of her poems? 

Which is why Wendy Beckett speaks for me. And yes, my heart sinks too when the word God is bandied about glibly as I’m afraid it so often is by people who should know better. I’m ill at ease with the kind of talk that pretends to know what God is doing in the world and in the church when my experience tells me that the truth is altogether more mysterious, and more wonderful, than I can ever glimpse. This God who “plants his footsteps on the sea and rides upon the storm” is not one who is susceptible to being described or understood by my feeble sense. As C.S. Lewis put it, Aslan is not a tame lion. 

What I must learn to do is trust him for his grace. That means walking by faith, not by sight and not by feeling. Religion is a journey “towards the unknown region” in Walt Whitman’s phrase. Let’s not tame it by speaking too glibly about our experience of God, and thereby rob it of all that makes it infinitely beautiful, adventuresome and life-giving. Let’s give ourselves to this Mystery in which we live and move and have our being, and to the life of contemplation and action to which Love Incarnate calls us.

The Wicker Man and Derby Cathedral

There's a bit of a brouhaha going on in Derby at the moment. The Cathedral is showing a series of films next month in collaboration with the local arts centre QUAD. Some are "for the whole family" such as The Greatest Showman. Others have raised eyebrows, like The Wicker Man, Don't Look Now and The Life of Brian.

In his statement, Dean Stephen Hance has set out the Chapter's thinking about this. First, the Cathedral wants to reach new audiences who, it is hoped, will be drawn in by an adventurous contribution in a unique environment to the city's arts programme. Secondly, film reflects the power of story to engage the imagination, face uncomfortable truths about our human condition, and be made to think. This, says the Dean, is central to the way Jesus taught and how faith is transmitted. And finally, there is the financial aspect. The Cathedral has to find new income streams to fund its mission in challenging times. To me, this all seems entirely uncontentious.

So why the fuss?

It's true that all three films I've mentioned as eyebrow-raising are, to quote the Dean, "edgy". But that's because they all belong to cinema's front rank, all speak powerfully by exploring the "faith, doubt, fear and obsession" (to quote the Dean again) that underlie so much of human attitudes and motives. Whether it's the corruption of a society that embraces outright paganism (The Wicker Man), the crazying effects of loss where the grieving process is distorted (Don't Look Now) or the strange capacity of parody to highlight aspects of truth (The Life of Brian), these films confront us and ask us to reflect on our identity as men and women, what we believe about our place in the world, what our ultimate aspirations and hopes really are. These are, of course, profoundly spiritual and theological questions. So alongside the films, Derby Cathedral will be offering events to "help people reflect theologically on these films", says the statement. That's as welcome as it is necessary (but of course the media don't mention this aspect of what they love to call an "unholy row").

Take The Wicker Man. (I presume it's the original 1973 version we're talking about, preferably the director's cut, not the 2006 remake which, judging by the reviews, I've no wish to see.) If you haven't seen it and intend to show up at the cathedral for the viewing, I won't let spoilers ruin it for you. Suffice to say that this intriguing film is entirely to do with religion, specifically, an island community that has embraced paganism and thrown itself heartily into its attendant myth-and-ritual. Why and how this has happened is part of the film's interest. And yes, of course the eroticism and violence of naked (excuse the word) nature-religion feature, not least live sacrifice. It's disturbing and it's meant to be.

On to this seemingly innocent island an unwary Christian policeman sets foot to investigate. The brilliance of The Wicker Man is that we the viewer are unwary too, not ready for what is to come. We are shocked by a climax that's as powerful as any I can think of in films I've seen. And central to it is the head-on encounter between Christianity and paganism, not least in the policeman's tenacious adherence to his faith and his bravery in bearing witness to it. You couldn't have a more overt faith-related film than this. That it should have become something of a cult film among cognoscenti says something about the perennial power of religion to fascinate us.

Films like those chosen for the Cathedral speak for themselves. They don't need interpretation, though they do call for interrogation and reflection. But if we are looking for an analogy to help us see the value of showing films in sacred spaces, I would suggest the morality play. Popular in the late middle ages and the early modern period, morality plays like Everyman brought home moral and spiritual truths to their audiences by personifying fundamental values and their opposites like good and evil, truth and falsehood, wisdom and folly, weakness and strength, life and death. Over all these God presided, weighing up the destiny of mortals in the light of the moral choices they made. This, I think, is akin to what is going on when religion encounters drama or film within the setting of the sacred.

Of course, it happens in ways that are subtle and nuanced, symbolic and metaphorical and not always obvious at the time. We must also understand how the setting in which a film or drama are presented makes a difference to our reading of it. A sacred space conditions us in key ways. When we are sitting in a church, the questions that come to us will often be different from those we would put in the theatre, the cinema or in front of our TV screens. And the performance will put different questions to us too. We shall often find that in sacred space, we are unconsciously pulled towards a theological and spiritual framing of our questions that is different from anywhere else. The "reader-response" is as much about our own setting and context as it is about the art itself.

I recall a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni in Sheffield Cathedral. It was one of those cut down productions accompanied by a piano and small band. But it was sung in full. The actors deployed the spaces of the Cathedral brilliantly. As Dean I got to sit in the front row in my cassock. I was taken aback when the Don took up position in front of me, knelt down and sang the famous Catalogue Aria, that musical list in which he brazenly chronicles his seductions of vulnerable women across the continent. It was as if he was parodying the act of confession by singing that aria to a priest.

Beneath Mozart's ravishing music is a terrible tale of brutality, abuse and rape. And it was being acted out in my cathedral! But the whole point of the opera is that Don Giovanni gets what he deserves. At the brutal climax, the fires of hell open before him and swallow him up. Sin is punished, wickedness condemned, goodness vindicated, noble love honoured. Ethical order in the universe is restored. It's a pure morality play. And that's why it was good to perform it in a sacred space. It challenged its audience precisely because it was being staged in a church. It was an unforgettable spiritual experience as well as unforgettable opera. I could say the same of an unexpectedly powerful student production of Romeo and Juliet in Durham Cathedral during my time.

The church has always flourished when it has cultivated a close relationship with the arts, even if it can be tense at times. Earlier this month, nude paintings were removed from an art exhibition in Portsmouth Cathedral after complaints from worshippers. In Durham Cathedral in the 1990s, a video installation, The Messenger by Bill Viola, had to be screened off from open view on the advice of the police who thought it might cause public offence. When an episode of Inspector George Gently was filmed in the Cathedral in my time, I received letters from the public (interestingly, none from the North East) objecting to the firearms that were featured in that episode, though if ever a TV drama came close to a morality play where good and evil were clearly identified, this was it. Like the poor, offence-takers will always be with us.

So I don't think Derby Cathedral should be unduly worried that their film series has provoked debate. I'd say that was a good and healthy thing. Indeed, theology and film offer incredibly rich resources to each other, as a large and growing literature demonstrates. What matters is that when decisions of this kind are made, they are guided by the values the cathedral stands for, and the purposes it exists to fulfil. Does this proposal enhance our mission, or is at least consistent with it? Not everything is appropriate in a sacred space, even if it purports to be art. But the mission of the church would be severely compromised if it only said yes to art that was conventional and bland, that did not stretch horizons or provoke debate (in which case I doubt it would qualify to be called art at all).

What they are doing at Derby does push boundaries. That may have taken some courage. But as the Dean wittily said, they won't be showing God anything he hasn't seen before. This project is about engaging with what is real in life, both the light and the shadow. Cathedrals have always been good at that, delighting, stimulating, pioneering and provoking by turns. That's a gift we can be thankful for. It's one of the reasons we cherish them.

No Crying He Makes

Was ever a Christmas carol so maligned?

I'm thinking of Away in a Manger. At this time of year there's always a steady stream of people, mostly carolled-out clergy, who share their grumpiness about this sweet, innocent and much-loved carol. Special opprobrium is reserved for the middle stanza:

The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes,
But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.

Here, for example, is a blog I read over the weekend. What a load of nonsense is written in some Christmas carols. Of course, many are excellent. But along with the gold there is a lot of dross. Take the line in 'Away in a manger' which asserts boldly: 'Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes'. Really? On what basis is that stated? It's certainly not in the Bible. The author then turns his wrath on I Saw Three Ships before majoring on We Three Kings of Orient Are. What have they done to deserve it?

It's a depressing take on a familiar aspect of Christmas, this proscribing of what generations of children and adults have loved singing and found to be strangely heartwarming. So let's think about no crying he makes. The usual criticism is that the infant Jesus would hardly be a normal (or "real") human child if he did not cry. So the line questions (it's alleged) whether this nativity would be a true taking of our humanity into God. Moreover, it hints that goodness consists in being seen but not heard, as in another popular and sometimes maligned hymn Once in Royal David's City where the author writes: Christian children all must be, mild, obedient, good as he.

I find this logic faintly absurd. For one thing, every parent knows that all but the most distressed children do, from time to time, wake up but do not cry. Especially is this likely when his or her mother is at hand to offer comfort, reassurance and nourishment. So in the picture language of the carol, the Holy Child lying in tranquility is emtirely consistent with what we know about the behaviour of our own children in their infancy. But the image takes us beyond this. It seems to say to us that this Child knows himself to be in a completely safe place. He is in loving communion with his parents, with his guests, with the animals. His little world is one where the song of the angels is already being fulfilled, because here, in this intimate circle of the nativity scene, there is “peace on earth, goodwill to all people”.

Let’s pursue what this no crying represents in the way the Christmas story has been told down the centuries. It echoes a very long "apophatic" tradition that sees in the incarnation a mystery so profound that silence is the only way of doing it justice. So almost universally, the old master paintings of the Nativity depict a scene full of a peaceful, restful, quietness. Angels and shepherds, and often magi as well, revere the new-born King in a carefully composed atmosphere of stillness. Often, the Child is depicted as asleep, but if he is awake, he is gazing peacefully on his parents, or the shepherds, or the animals among whom he is born. “No crying he makes!” And even when shepherds journey and angels hover, their movements are gentle as befits this great mystery. There is no dissonant commotion or harsh noise to shatter the restfulness, the serenity of the scene. At the crib, human hearts are stilled. We are silenced because no words could do justice to the glory we behold.

In terms of visual art, these nativity scenes probably go back to St Francis who is credited as having created the first Christmas crib as a kind of icon to inspire the devotion of the faithful. But the tradition that links incarnation with silence goes back even further. The key text is in the Wisdom of Solomon (18.14-15): For while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half-gone, your all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne into the midst of a land that was doomed. The early fathers loved that saying. In the development of the liturgy, it was quoted, almost word for word, in one of the antiphons for Christmas morning. In wisdom literature, the "word" was the logos or mind of God, so it was only a short step to read back into it the Christian meaning of incarnation, the "word" or "wisdom" of God becoming enfleshed in the person of the Child born at Bethlehem.

We could almost say, in the imagery of the carol, that the little Lord Jesus is awake yet silent in the face of the mystery of his own incarnation. It's the kind of thought you find in the poetry of Thomas Traherne who imagines a new-born child wondering with joy at the realisation of being alive and inheriting the world. Who's to say that new-born babies don't experience this kind of wonderment at suddenly finding themselves outside the womb and gazing at a loving mother's face? That at least is the direction taken by psychoanalytic writers who regard the bond of love established between a mother and her child as determinative for the whole of human life.  Or we could think of Thomas Hardy’s poem The Oxen where he imagines the ox and ass kneeling in front of the manger as midnight strikes on Christmas Eve. Are these poetic images "biblical"? Hardly, if you're looking for texts to justify them explicitly. But are they biblical in the more profound sense of being completely true to what the scriptures want us to hear, understand and cherish? Undoubtedly!

So it's not surprising that we find this gentle silence that enveloped all things referenced in our Christmas hymns and carols. Think of these well-known, oft-sung examples:

The world in solemn stillness lay
to hear the angels sing.

How silently, how silently
the wondrous gift is given!

Silent night, holy night...

Of course, silence is not the only Nativity motif. Just as important in the spirituality of Christmas are the themes of carolling, exultant celebration, joyous music-making, heaven and earth joined in praise of the God who comes among us. Nor should we neglect the "noise" and pain of the Nativity story: that it happened in a cave because there was no room at the inn; Herod's massacre of the innocent children, the Holy Family's flight into Egypt. These represent some of the realities of the suffering world into which Jesus was born. The Coventry Carol is just one medieval example that recognises the painful realities into which the Infant comes. It's important that we don't repesent the mystical silence of the Nativity as some kind of escape from the real world (a perennial Christmas temptation, whether in liturgy, consumerism or partying).

But it's also important not to worry away at the detail of the poetry and art that adorn the Christmas message. To read Away in a Manger and object to its imagery is to read poetry as if it were cold prose, and confuse symbolic language with material fact. That's the trouble with a lot of religion today: it has lost touched with the imagination because it has forgotten the kind of language it's handling. So what's required is not to demythologise our Christmas carols but to re-enchant them, or rather, allow them to re-enchant us. In this respect, children seem often to be closer to the truth of Christmas than adults, to grasping the essentially symbolic, metaphorical, poetic character of religious language. Is this one of the reasons that Jesus spoke about becoming like little children if we are to enter the kingdom of God? And could our children and grandchildren help us celebrate a more childlike Christmas if only we paid attention?

Maybe as we grow older, we become more relaxed with the symbolic register of Christmas language. Perhaps that's because our conception of "truth" is enlarged as we reflect on what life has meant for us, and we realise that "truth" is a far bigger thing than we once dreamed. Perhaps the memories of past Christmases become stronger with age, especially those of our own childhood or our children's. Once, decades ago, I sang Away in a Manger at a funeral on Christmas Eve. I've never forgotten how poignant it was, the contrast between infancy and old age, gift and loss, happiness and grief. Above all, the carol spoke of the Christian hope we glimpse in the Christ Child:

Be near me Lord Jesus; I ask thee to stay
close by me for ever, and love me I pray.
Bless all the dear children in thy tender care,
and fit us for heaven to live with thee there.

It was one of the most moving funerals I can remember. Even Victorian poetry can work miracles. So if I find myself on my deathbed one Christmas time, I'd love it if some little children could come and sing Away in a Manger for me. I would try to join in if I could. It would be immensely comforting. It would bring happiness and hope. But as for no crying he makes, I can't promise I myself would get through it without shedding a tear or two.

**Image: the east window of St Cuthbert's, Haydon Bridge by Charles Kempe (1837-1907), created at around the time "Away in a Manger" was written.

Should Theologians take a Hippocratic Oath?

I was intrigued to see a letter in The Guardian last week suggesting that scientists should swear an oath similar to the Hippocratic Oath. That oath, or a version of it, has traditionally been taken by physicians and medical practitioners in the west ever since the fifth century BC when it was first penned in ancient Greece. Here are three of its central clauses.

I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free.

Patrick Butterly the letter-writer argued that it is not just the medical profession that should undertake to "do no harm". Like physicians, the knowledge scientists hold gives them huge power to do good and enhance human life. But they also have the capacity to damage and destroy. So scientific knowledge should be used not out of self-interest, personally or collectively, and especially not for destructive ends, but for the common good and the welfare of humanity. Like medicine, science needs to practise to the highest ethical standards. And a public vow to hold to those standards would be a reminder to everyone of what the purposes of good science ought to be. Here's the letter's suggested text: I promise to work for a better world, where science and technology are used in socially responsible ways. I will not use my education for any purpose intended to harm human beings or the environment. Throughout my career I will consider the ethical implications of my work before I take action. While the demands placed upon me may be great, I sign this declaration because I recognise that individual responsibility is the first step on the path to peace.

I thought to myself, why not theologians too? Theology at its best is a life-enhancing science (scientia = knowledge) because its concern is to reflect on our human condition and experience in the light of religious faith. Fides quaerens intellectum said Anselm, "faith seeking understanding". Good theology adds to the spiritual and intellectual capital of the human race. We are the richer for it, and the wiser and the healthier. To borrow a metaphor from John Calvin's Institutes, it's like putting on spectacles so that things are brought into focus and we see clearly. (He used the analogy specifically of reading the scriptures, but it surely applies to every way in which truth-seeking brings clarity to the way we think.)

Theology, the "study of God", is a matter of finding a discourse with which to speak about God and his ways in the world. It's important to qualify this working definition. For one thing, good theology is prayed as well as thought. Worship and spirituality are as much a source for theological understanding as every other aspect of our experience.

For another thing, it is of the essence of being divine that God transcends human knowability and language. We don't expect mere words to penetrate the ineffable, that which is incapable of being expressed in human terms. The best we can do is to be silent before a mystery we cannot fully know or speak of. And then to recognise that when we resort to language, it's as much about saying what we do not mean as well as what we do. The via negativa puts us in our place as theologians, teaches us to be humble about claiming too much for the statements we make. Before God, everything is provisional, a work in progress. And even when theology finds a more confident register, such as in the liturgy and the creeds, so much of its language is analogy, poetry, metaphor, more susceptible to being sung than said. Even the simplest of utterances like "our Father in heaven" or "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again".

Yet words are among the primary tools of theology. That straight away gives them enormous power. And here's where the capacity to do harm comes in. Words create allegiances and inculcate behaviours. We all know this as we listen to politicians' speeches during election campaigns. In particular, familiar words and formulae come to function as badges or codes that articulate our belonging, where and how we place ourselves on the political or theological map. (Compare Mrs May's oft-repeated "strong and stable leadership" and the debate around the Archbishops' election letter in which they commend the virtue of "stability".) Words have the capacity to divide people. The tribes of politics and religion coalesce around the words they agree about, and the words they collectively decide to dissent from.

There is nothing new in any of this. History shows how theological words have become rallying cries that have led to huge destructiveness. The troubles in Northern Ireland are a recent example of how Catholic words and Protestant words divided communities and fostered bloodshed. In the year we celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation (or more accurately, of Martin Luther pinning his Ninety Five Theses to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517), we see how Europe was torn apart by theological slogans bandied about on both sides. Sola fide! ("by faith alone!") cried the Reformed. Semper eadem! ("The Church is ever unchanging!") affirmed the Catholics. Princes took sides. On the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (whoever your ruler is, you follow their religion), Europe was partitioned along religious fault-lines. What began as a war of theological words (or a clash of theological civilisations?) began to claim human lives. The Reformation changed Europe for ever.

Religious words and ideas underlie one of the most pressing challenges of our times, the violence that is inspired by radicalised religion. I'm thinking of the kind of theology that characterises Daesh and groups like them. Not all originate in Islam though it's those that come out of fundamentalist corruptions of that great faith that are the most familiar to us in the west. The cry Allahu Akbar, "God is most great" frequently shouted as acts of terror are committed illustrates how even the most noble of theological words can acquire a blasphemous destructive power. Yes, in all these instances, we are probably talking more about the abuse of words than the words themselves. But it's the words themselves that get shouted.

Philosophers talk about "speech acts". J. L. Austin wrote a famous book called How to Do Things with Words. He was exploring how language changes situations, often irrevocably, such as a judge passing sentence on someone who has been found guilty, or a couple saying "I will" to each other on their wedding day. You can effect lasting change just by saying something. This is the whole point of preaching and political speeches. When words evoke strong attachments and feelings, as the words of politics and theology do, they can easily slide into becoming speech acts that change things, often permanently. That can be (to go back to the marriage analogy) for better or for worse.

So wouldn't it be good if theologians and preachers took a kind of Hippocratic oath? We would promise only to use words for good. We would undertake not to speak in ways that destroy and overthrow but only to build up and plant, to borrow a phrase from the Book of Jeremiah. We would vow to practise theology and talk religion ethically for the sake of human flourishing and to serve the common good. We would help our faith communities to speak in ways that promoted what is wholesome and would decry the hijacking of religious language in the cause of conflict and violence. There's a special responsibility for preachers here, the local theologians who do so much to shape how communities of faith not only think but behave.

It is heartening to know that theologians from across the world's faith communities are increasingly meeting together to explore how to speak about God in ways that build understanding, friendship and alliances of hope. The shared study of one another's scriptures is one way; visiting one another's places of worship is another. It all helps to build up "religious literacy", a real need at a time when religion is proving an increasingly divisive force. And if we can do this locally as neighbours and friends who come from different faiths but share a common vision for a more peaceable world, who knows what a difference it may make?

Here is a draft text for theologians and preachers with acknowledgment to Patrick Butterly. If you are a theologian or preacher, try it for size and suggest how it could be improved.

I promise that my study and practice of religion and theology will always seek to be with integrity. Conscious of the power of religious language, I undertake to use it responsibly and ethically for the building up and flourishing of communities and individuals. I will resist all attempts to exploit religion for destructive purposes that cause harm to human beings, society or the environment. I promise to be a reflective practitioner who has regard for the ethical implications of my public words and actions.