bound for extinction. I believe that is why I get so many more letters from skeptics and agnostics than anyone would suppose.
Before he retired, the old archdeacon under whom I had served my curacy in 1955/6 paid me a visit in my West Hill parish, at the end of which he said, “Let me give you a piece of wisdom. If you can survive as many years as I have in the ecclesiastical industry [the institutional church], you have to still believe in miracles.” I spent enough time in and around “the industry” to know it intimately myself. He certainly spoke the truth. I want to claim that miracle here. While my understanding of religion in particular has been utterly transformed, reaching out to every living being on the planet and to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, I find my belief in the dimension of being that most of us call God is stronger than ever before. I have witnessed the shadow side of religion both in its bitter, warring past and in the various religions today. When doing investigative journalism on religion, I learned “where the bodies are buried”—and have critics and even enemies because of that. But I have also seen and known first-hand its glories, its great achievements for good, its help for the needy and championship of the oppressed. There is deep within me a confidence that not only Christianity but the other world religions can be born again.
But there is a secret to this. It cannot happen simply out of enthusiasm for something fresh or fear of failure. The secret has two fundamental aspects. In the first place, all faiths need to recover the central meaning and transforming power of myth. The greatest potential for evil done in the name of God flows from a failure to comprehend this. All religions begin with mythology because mere history and dead literalism cannot convey eternal truths. However, the huge error of taking myth as history has wreaked untold havoc, from the earliest book burnings and slaughter of “heretics” by overzealous Christians to the horrors perpetrated today by Islamic terrorists in the Middle East and around the world. Ultra-extremist Jews in Israel are victims of the same phenomenon. I repeat: the “letter kills” as Paul says, but the Spirit gives life.
The second insight that is essential to a rebirth for not just the Church but the other faiths as well is equally potent and indispensable. It is this: all language about God and the activity of God’s Spirit is first and foremost that of symbol, of metaphor, of verbal imagery, poetry, music and art. As Nhat Hahn says in the passage quoted earlier, no notion or idea we can formulate can represent or verbally communicate that ultimate presence. The ultimate dimension of reality (which is as close as words can come) cannot be precisely conceived of, cannot be contained in creeds or formulae. He-She can only be known by a deep, intuitive knowing of the heart and mind together. That is why the Psalmist of old said, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” It is an invitation, under a metaphor, to experiment and to trust that ultimate presence for oneself. You can know God’s reality both with intuition and rationally. This is true gnosis, a knowing that nothing can shake.
World religions can never experience what it means to be born again without a clear awareness of their true purpose and raison d’être. It is to constantly remind their followers of who they really are, from whence they came and whither they eventually are bound. The authentic spiritual journey the religions came into being to foster and nurture is that of personal transformation for the believer. There is an illustration from the lore of classical Greece which for me illuminates this process. The famous sculptor Pheidias (c. 480–c. 430 BCE) spoke of his art not as imposing his own form on the blocks of marble upon which he worked. Instead, he said he saw his task as that of liberating from the inert stone the lovely shape or being that was already there within. Each cut or blow of his chisel was aimed at revealing the beauty of the image that was already present beneath the rough exterior, as it were, struggling to be free. So too with the spiritual dynamics of transformation or metamorphosis from within ourselves. With our inner eye fixed steadfastly upon the model of wholeness (holiness) afforded by the teachings of all the great world faiths, we are daily being changed and set ever freer to be what we are meant to become. The Spirit is the master sculptor behind it all. As St. Paul says, “We all . . . beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being changed into the same image from glory unto glory, as by the spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The Greek word for “changed” in the text means “metamorphosized.”
Although my eightieth birthday is behind me, I feel so much younger now in spirit because of a lively, reasonable hope engendered by a fresh understanding of life itself. Because, in the end, there is the assurance that while here we have no “continuing city,” ultimately “we seek one which is to come.” If we daily practise sitting still and “waiting upon God,” as the Psalmist says (what the Buddhists and those who use their meditative approach call “mindfulness”), we find the Spirit of God working always within us. I believe that while the natural body steadily grows older, our inner self (the true self) is being renewed by the energy of the Spirit within. To be very direct—I don’t mean that I hear some voice speaking to me, or see some mystical visions of another realm, or feel some strange otherworldly emotions within, although I am aware that some do. In a lifetime of prayer and of trying to be faithful to such truth as has been made plain to me, I have never once had what I would describe as a supernatural encounter of any kind. Yes, there have been great heights and some inevitable lows. But I do try to spend some time in meditation—or directing my thoughts and heart to the God within me and without—every day. In Christian terms, this is the Christ within. This often happens when I am alone in my study in the morning. But if not there, then while walking the dog or enjoying nature in our daily strolls. At times the awareness of the divine presence is very vivid, at others not so much. However, one’s trust in God doesn’t depend on what you feel; it depends on an act of will and of total commitment.
Readers of my work over the years and of what I have set out in these pages are naturally aware that I am critical of the evangelical faith in which I was reared and which for many years I served. It would be an error, however, to suppose that I am unaware of great debts owed by me to that community of believers or to think that I make the mistake of lumping all of them together under the label “the religious right.” Evangelicals today are far from being a homogeneous group and significant changes are presently taking place within their ranks. Top American evangelist Tony Campolo, who in the 1990s made headlines when he agreed to be a spiritual counsellor to President Bill Clinton, in his 2004 book Speaking My Mind said that evangelical Christianity “has been highjacked by the religious right.” He hammers those in the movement who have given the world the impression that to be evangelical is to be anti-feminist, anti-gay, pro-war and pro-gun, pro–capital punishment, negative towards other faiths and oblivious of the world’s poor. Campolo is on the liberal side on all these issues. He notes in particular the deep need for respect of Islam: “We don’t want to call its prophet evil. We believe we have got to learn to live in the same world with our Islamic brothers and sisters and we want to be friends. We do not want to be in some kind of holy war.” Campolo has been severely criticized by extremists, of course. But it is a fact that he represents a fast-growing group of evangelicals in the United States and Canada who are breaking through the typical media stereotypes. These folks are anything but anti-intellectual or dumb. They are grounds for hope.
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