In a letter written by my grandfather from Japan in 1911 to his mother back home in Cork, he says that if the resurrection was not literally true then “Christianity is the greatest of great delusions”. This was almost a century before Richard Dawkins published his book The God Delusion.
He had sailed to Japan as an Anglican missionary five years earlier to spread what he believed to be the truth. He had some success with his style of preaching about Salvation and those who didn’t engage and chose to leave his service early were intercepted at the door by his colleague, a man named Robinson, who had another go at them.
But, unlike his predecessors who seemed to have a clear run in their mission, he found himself frustrated by competitors. There was “widespread diffusion of agnostic and Unitarian literature” promoting a conflicting truth, some denying “such fundamentals as the Resurrection and in fact all miracles”, he wrote.
How many people today believe in the resurrection as a literal truth? Fewer and fewer, I would suggest. But were Christians ever meant to believe this as something that actually happened or was it simply meant allegorically?
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Which leads to the question: in religion what is true and what is not? And why is it that religions, who promote the concept of truth, seem to expect their followers to say they believe in things which they quite possibly don’t believe in and, perhaps, were never actually meant to believe in?
I was brought up in a very loving and extremely Christian family. We were Church of Ireland and I attended Sunday School and church every week as I was expected to.
In the Church of Ireland primary school I attended, I learned the Lord’s Prayer off by heart along with various other set pieces of church liturgy that we recited every Sunday.
The most important part of the weekly church service was the Creed, when everyone stood solemnly and stated their firm belief. As a teenager I started to think about these words, which I had learned parrot-like as a very young child. I realised that I did not actually believe these things and felt that, in all conscience, I should not say them.
This led to great disquiet and I was told that I must say them, they were fundamental to my Christianity. Further debate led to it being suggested that I shouldn’t perhaps take it all so literally. But how else was I to take it?
The Irish Constitution opens with references to a Trinitarian, Christian God and includes a requirement for a religious oath for high office, thus alienating a sizeable cohort of the population
These were very straightforward declarations: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary ...”
I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe that God made heaven and earth or in the virgin birth or the resurrection and certainly not in the ascension. So why should I be expected to say I believed them?
Later on, as I learned more about the universe and the evolution of man on our planet, it dawned on me that the whole Genesis story about Adam and Eve was just that: a story. Nobody really believed it – but you were expected to believe the rest of it. Or were you?
I’m often asked why I dwell so much on these topics. Why should it matter to me what people do or do not believe? Well, it doesn’t matter, of course, at a personal level; individuals should be free to believe whatever they like. But when these beliefs are allowed to impact on the structures of the State then it is most certainly not all right.
The Irish Constitution opens with references to a Trinitarian, Christian God and includes a requirement for a religious oath for high office, thus alienating a sizeable cohort of the population.
It puzzles me that, despite being brought to the attention of successive administrations, nothing has been done to address this issue. Ireland has advanced greatly in recent years on a number of social issues but still remains out of step on others, the most fundamental being the non-inclusive language of our Constitution.
Ireland continues to live a sort of double life where citizens who do not subscribe to any religious belief are expected, in certain circumstances, to pretend that they hold these beliefs. Surely there is a parallel here with those attending church services being expected to recite their fundamental Christian beliefs in the knowledge that these declarations are not being made in a truthful manner.
It seems to me that both church and State are lacking in integrity here. They each create a situation where there is an expectation that insincere declarations are made. Putting all this down to tradition or culture is not good enough. It’s time for change.
Brian Whiteside is a humanist and funeral celebrant.
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