Religion for atheists?

Sheffield Cathedral – Evensong (Easter 5) 27.04.14
Readings: Zechariah 4.1-10; Revelation 21.1-14

A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine from Sheffield Hallam, loaned me a book entitled Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton. I don’t think she was making a comment on my theological views though it did remind me somewhat of a conversation that I had with a member of the university’s counselling service about eight years ago.

This was a person who held very strong atheistic views and who, as I soon discovered after arriving there as the chaplain, certainly had her doubts about anyone with a religious conviction. Happily, we got to know each other as colleagues, and I knew I had cracked it when, over a cup of coffee just before her retirement she said to me: ‘Ian, I just want you to know that as an atheist I have no problem referring students to you’.

I think that was a compliment – and an acknowledgement of how we had found a creative space within which our very different takes on the world could inform each other, rather than a grudging middle ground between polarised positions. It was a reminder to me that atheists and Christians do not have to define themselves by the extent to which they attack the other. Fundamentalists – whether religious or secular – unfortunately generate lots of heat but very little light.

So the book loaned to me proved to be a refreshing read. Each time I came to the end of a chapter I kept thinking, ‘Here it comes, the anti-religious attack must be next’. Not a bit of it. Alain de Botton tackled a range of subjects including art, architecture, community, education and institutions, the common thread being the way in which religion addresses human needs in a way that secular humanism has not managed to do.

While he dismisses any notion of belief in God as little more than superstition, he nevertheless acknowledges how religious practice fills a deep within the human spirit. If I can presume to sum up the gist of his book it would be an exhortation to secularists to create their own parallel institutions, buildings, art, rituals and so on, but stripped of any religious content: As it says on the cover, ‘Religion for Atheists’.

To put it another way, he is arguing for the benefits of religion without religion itself; in effect, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Religious belief, practice, and experience connect at a profound level with the human spirit, acknowledging that there is more to us than our constituent parts. It helps us to find a sense of purpose and meaning in a bewildering universe, contributing something different but not contradictory to the perspectives that science brings.

In his book Confessions, St Augustine of Hippo once wrote that ‘our hearts are restless until they can find rest in you’; that is, in God. Religion at its best points us to the God in whom we live and move and have our being. This, I believe, if the essence of what religion gives to the world and to which Alain de Botton’s book alludes – though he would not use that description himself. This is also the reason why the notion of religion for atheists is an anachronism, unlikely to gain any traction because the very needs to which it points are dismissed as illusory by the atheistic worldview and would require a significant but unlikely re-evaluation of those aspects of our humanity which do not lend themselves to scientific verification.

This evening’s readings remind us of the yearning of the human spirit to touch the transcendent and to know that behind the universe is the God who called us into being, who loves us, and who calls us into relationship with God. It is belief in such a God that is our source of hope in a world where life brings joys and sorrows our way.

Both Zechariah and John record visions which provide hope and comfort in difficult times. In the 6th century BC and the 1st century AD respectively the writers wrestled with the question, ‘where is God to be found in the midst of all this?’; no less than we do today in a world where ferries sink, schoolgirls are kidnapped by extremists, and mine disasters strike.

Zechariah was writing in the time of the Jewish restoration after captivity in Babylon. The people of Jerusalem had problems. They had begun to rebuild the Temple, but new it could never match the splendour of the original. There was no Davidic King, and Judah was only a small part of the Medo-Persian empire.

The chief purpose of Zechariah was to rebuke the people of Judah and call them to repentance, but also to encourage them that they had not been abandoned by God. In the first eight chapters of his book Zechariah is given a series of meaningful visions to help the people face the reality of their existence without losing hope. Some day, the Lord’s chosen king would reign again in Jerusalem and all nations would turn to the Lord and become his people. The people were to live faithfully in the present with hope in their hearts for the future.

John’s revelation was written in a time of growing persecution for Christians under the reigns of Nero and Domitian; the cult of emperor-worship being enforced with extreme violence. John writes to encourage the faithful to resist this pressure. Persecution would only increase but Christians were to stand firm, even unto death, in the assurance that their eternal future was safe in God’s hands. John was holding out hope to his readers in the darkest of times.

We see in the reading from Revelation 21 a clear affirmation of God’s desire for communion with human beings, and it provides a fitting conclusion to the book. God with us! The promise of incarnation will be consummated at the end of time. God-with-us is, of course, the primary reason for the church’s existence.

The church that is not seeking communion with God, that does not recognise the God shaped hole that is part of human yearning, is not a church at all but a secular institution with religious trappings.
John’s words must surely have encouraged his readers as they faced the barbarity of the Roman regime. Mortality will be swallowed up by immortality and the great ‘I AM’ who sits on the throne will one day make all things new.

Those visions from Zechariah and Revelation give us a glimpse beyond the curtain, as it were into the nature of the God who comes among us; in whom our future is secure; who is with us in the midst of suffering and sorry; a source of hope in the darkest of times. In the words of Mother Julian of Norwich: ‘All will be well’. Faith in God’s future strengthens us in the now. God is with us; God will be with us; the Alpha and the Omega.

Alain de Botton would, I am sure, disagree but my own view is that the source of human yearning, longing and creativity – attributes which his book describes so eloquently – is the God whose very existence he denies. Our hearts are restless because we year for relationship with God; not with a remote deity – the straw man which is so easy to tear down – but with the God whose nature we see manifest in Jesus Christ, God with us.

What his book does remind us of, however, are the great opportunities that we have as the church to provide opportunities for people to encounter this Christ-shaped God who alone can fill the God-shaped hole that is part of our human existence. Through our buildings, our liturgies, our art, our fellowship and friendship we can meet people in their deepest needs. This is both the joy and the responsibility to which the church is called – and we are the church.