God after Christianity

"God blessing the seventh day" - a watercolour painting by William Blake, c.1805. "Poet William Blake's `mercy, pity, peace and love' in action - I repeat `in action' - sum up the essence of what we mean by God," says author David Boulton.

Religion has to do with God and the supernatural, right?

That is a common assumption and there is plenty of evidence among the world's religions to support it, with Buddhism a notable exception.

Today, however, it does not necessarily hold true.

In fact, the cutting edge of religion in the West is in the other direction as the supernatural fades from many people's consciousness, the concept of God is rethought, and the heartbeat of religion is identified more in subjective experience than in toeing any institutional or doctrinal line.

English journalist and author David Boulton reflects those trends in his search for a religion that makes sense in the modern world.

Brought up in the Plymouth Brethren, now a Quaker and a humanist, he describes himself as a post-Christian who nevertheless has no wish to abandon the Christian cultural tradition that did so much to shape him.

To those who like things cut and dried, that kind of mix may sound unlikely, but the very openness of his stance will appeal to many both within and beyond the churches.

For him, the enemy is dogmatic certainty wherever it surfaces, whether in religious believers, humanists or atheists - and he notes a tendency among humanists to be as literalist and dogmatic as their religious equivalents.

"Be open to the questions, interrogate your own certainties," he advises all round.

Mr Boulton is a non-theist, meaning that he does not believe in the existence of an objective God, as theists do - one of more than 20 books he has written is called The Trouble with God.

But that does not make him impervious to the value of God-talk when liberated from literalism.

"I see God-talk as a rich, poetic, metaphorical language that you simply can't abandon if you hope to remain in touch with the Christian faith tradition," he said during a visit to New Zealand last month.

"It touches the deepest thoughts and ideas that are part of the human condition. But the word is wholly symbolic. Poet William Blake's `mercy, pity, peace and love' in action - I repeat `in action' - sum up the essence of what we mean by God."

So while for Mr Boulton the idea of a transcendent God intervening in the world below no longer has a place in our modern secular and scientific society, God as a product of the human creative imagination certainly does - "it's impossible to escape from, it snaps at our heels".

Drawing on the poetry of God language to symbolise mercy, pity, peace and love in action is therefore perfectly valid, he says, as long as people understand that that is how they are using the language.

Similarly, more people find they cannot believe any longer in a supernatural realm of disembodied spirits overarching the physical world.

Again, however, Mr Boulton thinks it is possible for people to stand within a religious tradition where the supernatural seems built in, yet not treat it as real.

He draws a parallel with the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: "They're an imaginative, creative way of talking about the human condition, but you don't have to believe in fairies to register that.

What matters is the imaginative process, rather than what the language, taken literally, seems to be referring to."

No objective God, no supernatural, yet Mr Boulton is very much a fan of "Jesus BC" - that is, Jesus as wholly human, before the church exalted him after his death to become the divine Christ.

"The importance of Jesus is the way he personified and acted out the values he preached," he said.

"Not just the message, but the way he walked the talk."

Recent scholarship has restored a focus on Jesus' life and message, rather than on the divine Christ with its historical emphasis on deliverance from sin and death.

Mr Boulton contributed to that search with his book Who on Earth was Jesus?Like other post-Christians, he finds no continuing place for the concept of Christ as divine.

He concedes that without that development, the movement begun by Jesus might have petered out at the end of the 1st century AD, but after 2000 years he questions whether it still has anything to offer.

I think it does.

As a title, "Christ" is open to more than one interpretation, but it will always be central to a Christianity that goes beyond revering the memory of the human Jesus.

In our secular world it is another symbol in need of an imaginative rethink.

More on that another day.

Ian Harris is a journalist and commentator.