Unbelief is now a scientific study
From Professor Ken Miles
Madam, — The Revd Dr David Heywood (Letters, 30 May) characterises the traditionalist Church as unwilling to respond to profound changes in social life. Yet, many reforms aimed at adapting the Church to modern culture have their own assumptions that need to be re-examined in light of the emerging science of unbelief.
Academic interest in atheism and unbelief is growing, reflected by a rising number of scientific studies and the Templeton Foundation’s recent $2.5-million grant for multidisciplinary research into unbelief in God and other supernatural beings. Scientific inquiry in this area has consistently shown that one of the most important variables determining whether an individual explicitly believes in God is their exposure to religious action.
These findings underscore the importance of church rituals that enable people to display the depth of their commitment. Moves to simplify worship in ways that make it more “secular” risk being counterproductive, however well-intentioned.
Moreover, research into medical conditions associated with altered religious conviction or disordered belief point to a significant part played by biological factors in belief formation. The actions and postures adopted in traditional worship align with our biological make-up in ways that sustain belief and signal commitment to others.
While culture evolves rapidly, human biology changes far more slowly. Rituals developed through centuries of trial and error should be no less effective today. Although new approaches may offer fresh possibilities, if they are to address unbelief effectively, they will probably be as distinct from secular culture as traditionalist worship itself. Perhaps the issue is not traditional forms of church, but the absence of explanations that make these traditions relevant to contemporary culture. Fresh explanations may be needed more urgently than fresh expressions.
The Anglican Communion Science Commission has called on all Anglicans as they participate in mission to recognise within science God-given resources for the life of faith. Can the Church afford to overlook scientific knowledge about the non-believers its mission aims to reach?
KEN MILES
Southbank, Paignton Road
Stoke Gabriel
Devon TQ9 6SJ
Charitable governance
From Dr Colin Podmore
Madam, — Back in 2013, in preparation for the creation of a new trustee body for Forward in Faith (FiF), the then FiF Council adopted a Conflicts of Interest policy requiring trustees to declare their interests in relation to agenda items and in some cases to withdraw from discussions. The policy was re-circulated prior to, and noted at, every trustees’ meeting. A Register of Interests, covering not only trustees’ relevant interests, but also those of the Director, was maintained and regularly reviewed.
I wholeheartedly endorse the Bishop of Oswestry’s call (Comment, 30 May) for Anglo-Catholic charities to review their governance in the light of the Nolan Principles. Where basic elements of good charitable governance such as a Conflicts of Interest policy are not in place, these should be adopted as a matter of urgency.
COLIN PODMORE
16 Isla Road
London SE18 3AA
Israeli policies and the recognition of Palestine
From the Revd Stephen Cooper
Madam, — The Revd Jonathan Frais (Letters, 30 May) suggests that we should find another word than “apartheid” to describe the relationship between the State of Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza.
I would agree that “apartheid” is not the correct word to describe that situation. Nothing that happened under the apartheid regime in South Africa, for all its brutality and oppression, remotely approaches the concentration of violence, destruction, death, and now starvation by policy decision which is happening in Gaza as the State of Israel’s response to the evil attacks by Hamas on 7 October 2023 and the taking of hostages, 58 of whom continue to be held.
“Apartheid-like” would, however, seem to be a fair comparison for the oppressive regime under which the State of Israel occupies the West Bank and East Jerusalem, contrary to international law. There, Israel constrains where Palestinians live, how they can move about; it can judicially expropriate their homes, businesses, farms, and olive groves, turns a largely blind eye to settler violence, and arrests and imprisons Palestinians without trial. While not exactly matching the apartheid laws, they provide a good historical comparator.
As in the situation of apartheid South Africa, the question where the Christians should stand and how they should act in the face of the complexities and the violence on both sides is powerfully challenging. What persuasion should be brought to bear on our own Government, which continues to supply Israel with tank shells, bombs, spares for F35 jets, and other controlled military equipment, to the tune of £127.6 million in the last quarter of 2024 (up from £30,000 in the first quarter)?
What will be the future, and how should we support ordinary Palestinians caught between the competing violence of the extremists on both sides, not least the clearly articulated and accelerating determination of Mr Netanyahu and his coalition, backed by the United States, to fulfil the aim of the likes of Theodor Herzl and Israel Zangwill, founders of the Zionist movement in the 1890s, and later by others among the political and military leaders of the nascent State of Israel, both before and after its founding in 1948, that the “Arab” population would have to be removed by persuasion, payment, or force if necessary to ensure the future security of the State of Israel?
What will be that future when Mr Netanyahu completes the plan for the new Middle East which he presented to the UN General Assembly on 22 September 2023, in which the Palestinian territories would be expunged completely?
STEPHEN COOPER
Flat 15, 3 Addington Road
South Croydon CR2 8RE
From the Revd Dr Alan Billings
Madam, — The House of Bishops, you report (News, 30 May), in a statement on the war in Gaza, call on the Government “to recognise Palestine as a sovereign state”.
This is the sort of gesture politics that the Church should resist — unless it has put in some hard yards and can give some content to what it is calling for.
What are the boundaries of this state? Hamas has a version: it runs from the river to the sea and eliminates Israel. Some Israelis have a version: Gaza and parts of the West Bank, though minus some settlements. Is East Jerusalem in or out? We could go on.
If there is to be a solution, it will need Palestinian, Israeli, and international leaders who can agree on where those boundaries are and can persuade the people of these lands to accept them. That suggests a lot of hard work over a long peiod of time. Calling for “recognition” is hardly the “first necessary step” : more like the last.
ALAN BILLINGS
43 Northfield Court
Sheffield S10 1QR
Commissioners’ research on South Sea Company
From Professor Richard Dale
Madam, — The Church Commissioners’ historical advisers, Professor Richard Drayton and Dr Helen Paul, take issue with my contention that the South Sea Company’s notorious trade in slavery was consistently loss-making (Comment, 22 March 2024).
First, they dispute my statement that the South Sea Company was paid £100,000 by Spain in 1750 as compensation for losses incurred in the slave trade. They refer approvingly to the historian, Victoria Sorsby, both to rebut my assertion and to support their counter-argument that the money was intended to cover forfeiture of future trading profits due to premature termination of the Company’s Asiento contract with Spain.
In direct contradiction of their argument, the abstract of Sorsby’s thesis (“British Trade with Spanish America under the Asiento”) states: “. . . after a severe financial loss the directors [of the South Sea Company] concentrated on obtaining compensation. In 1750 the Asiento contract was terminated and the South Sea Company paid £100,000 to cover their losses in the trade” — a conclusion elaborated on in the main text.
Second, the authors dismiss the historian Adam Anderson’s account, quoted by me, of slave-trading losses incurred by the South Sea Company: “It was admitted on all sides that the Asiento Contract for the supplying of Spanish America with negroes was not only a great losing trade to this company but was well known to have been so for all former Asientists.”
They surmise, without evidence, that these are deliberately misreported losses attributable to the Company’s negotiating tactics vis-à-vis Spain. The self-same losses were, however, in 1733 debated in the South Sea Company’s “general courts” (shareholder meetings) to the point where shareholders “becoming uneasy on account of their late losses by their Asiento and Greenland [fisheries] trades petitioned parliament for a further stock split” (Anderson).
Given such compelling evidence from the chief clerk of the South Sea Company, an employee of 40 years’ standing, it is not surprising that a leading historian should conclude that the South Sea Company “persisted in the slave trade, but it was never to prove profitable to them” (Carswell).
Of course, it is well documented that the gruesome business of slave-trading was highly profitable to some individuals. Anderson himself refers to the “illicit and very profitable, trade carried on by the [South Sea] Company’s supercargoes, factors, captains and other servants”, made possible, he says, by the company’s mismanagement of its employees and agents. The company and its shareholders lost out, however, which is what matters for those seeking to persuade everyone that Queen Anne’s Bounty (the Church’s benevolent fund) was a major beneficiary of slavery.
RICHARD DALE
Longfields, Whites Hill
Owslebury
Winchester SO21 1LT
Hymns and their tunes
From the Revd Professor Ian Bradley
Madam, — I share the Revd Professor Andrew Davison’s enthusiasm for hymn tunes (Faith, 30 May), but he is, I fear, out of date in his comment that “even in our secularised society, the songs that people know communally, the songs they sing together outside the church, are predominantly hymns”. No longer, alas. Pop songs and numbers from musicals and films have largely taken over as spontaneous communal anthems, notably “Sweet Caroline” and “You’ll never walk alone”.
I would also question his contention that “many of the best tunes in our hymn books have a folk origin.” They are certainly among the easiest on the ear, but they do not always do justice to the words to which they are set. I find Kingsfold, which he commends in its pairing with “I heard the voice of Jesus say”, too light and bouncy for the subtlety and depth of Horatius Bonar’s text.
Much truer to its theme, surely, is Dykes’s Vox Dilecti, crafted to fit these particular words, as so many Victorian hymn tunes were, with its change of key and mode halfway through each verse, accentuating the contrast between Jesus’s invitation and the human response to it.
While on the subject of Victorian hymns, I fear that Canon Malcolm Guite misquotes one of the greatest of them all in Poet’s Corner (same issue). It is “I lay in dust life’s glory dead” that forms the third line of the final verse of George Matheson’s “O love that wilt not let me go”. It has nothing to do with laying down flags and everything to do with the power of sacrifice.
IAN BRADLEY
4 Donaldson Gardens
St Andrews, Fife KY16 9DN
Watch for goldfinches
From the Revd Nigel Sinclair
Madam, — I was surprised by how “baffled” Canon Nicholas Cranfield was by the National Gallery’s new acquisition of The Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret (Arts, 23 May).
What he describes as a chaffinch is clearly a goldfinch. There are hundreds of examples of this symbolism in Renaissance art, and there is nothing unusual about the Christ-child holding it upside down (e.g. Gaddi, 1355, Uffizi) or by the wings (e.g. Camaino, 1340, V&A). He is not, of course, “preparing to rip off one of its wings”. Neither is the dove on Margaret’s shoulder a bird of prey.
Perhaps more intriguingly, the goldfinch is a common motif in Southern Europe, but extremely rare in Netherlandish paintings of the early 16th century. Its presence gives weight to the view the painting is from France, where there is some evidence that the goldfinch symbolism first emerged (as seen in a number of 13th-century French sculptures in the V&A).
NIGEL SINCLAIR
St Margaret’s Vicarage
Hall Park Avenue
Horsforth, Leeds LS18 5LY
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