Dean's Letter

July 2009

From The Very Reverend David Bird, Ph.D., Dean and Rector

Letter from England

In my youth I came to believe deeply in the existence of God.  In part it was my discovery of the transformative power of beauty, especially in creation.  Like many teenagers, I had yet to discover the brutality of much of the world and had no sense then of the poet’s description of “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”  Instead I was captured by the exquisite glory of the Warwickshire and Worcestershire countryside—a beauty which only yesterday was also the admiration of the rest of our family as we drove them to the West Midlands Safari Park approximately four miles from the first parish church which I served as a newly ordained priest.          

Though I have long since come to realize the often brutal reality of human existence, I remain convinced that beauty, truth, integrity and, above all, compassionate action on behalf of others, both individually and corporately, share in a greater reality that derives from God, “that Being than which no greater can be conceived.”          

Whereas so much passion in U.S. religious debate centers on the issue of fundamentalism, British culture focuses less upon the nature of authority.  It seeks more characteristically to ask prior questions, e.g., whether God exists or whether values exists beyond the immediate world of taste, smell, sense, success and sex.          

Two writers that recently have condemned religious belief are the scientist, Richard Dawkins, and the British journalist, Christopher Hitchens, both bestselling authors in their condemnation of religious belief.  Imagine the surprise, however, to find their writings searchingly questioned by an equally well known Marxist professor of English literature, Terry Eagleton.  In lectures delivered at Yale University and recently published, Eagleton descries the work of Ditchkins (a construct of the surnames Dawkins and Hitchins).  Eagleton is addressing the interaction of religion and science, but also takes time to criticize what he sees as the simplistic caricatures of Christianity in both writers.          

Clearly I need to go to the local bookstore to find a copy of Eagleton’s Terry lectures, at least as this week’s review in the Anglican Church Times describes his work.  Eagleton, the reviewer claims, offers an account of Jesus and his teachings which is as good as any outside the ranks of biblical specialists:  

Jesus the crucified revolutionary challenges the self-centered power complexes of his time and ours, so that Christianity “places love at the centre of its vision of the world”, and that is why it has proved “intuitively attractive to so many people”.  . .  

In the end, Eagleton opts for a tragic humanism, which holds that “only by a process of self-dispossession and radical re-making can humanity come into its own”. That comes close to encapsulating the essence of Christianity, and confirms that Eagleton may not be far from the Kingdom of God.  

After I have read this book, perhaps I shall have more to contribute.  For now I would merely add that we in the Church have the opportunity to bring before the world the enormous power of the figure of Jesus to transform our understanding of how we should live in the world and to offer a series of values and convictions to others.  If we do anything less than that, we let down society and the generations who will follow us.

— David

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