Reformers or heretics?
Guy Fawkes Night wasn’t a good evening for those expecting fireworks.
Anyone anticipating flashes and thunder from two titans of theology would have left the November discussion at St Andrew’s disappointed after 90 minutes of intellectual sparkle but no big bangs
However others in the 180-strong audience who arrived feeling gloomy about the fate of faith in Aotearoa departed in a different mood. They were uplifted by the optimism of Kiwi Christian Sir Lloyd Geering, 92 (above) and British Buddhist Stephen Batchelor, 57.
Differences in age, background and following didn’t spill into their attitudes towards religions and society.
Sir Lloyd recalled that 50 years ago Presbyterians weren’t even talking to Anglicans. Now they’re finding more points of agreement not just with fellow Protestants, but even with Catholics. In Wellington at least, Buddhists are sitting and talking together with Christians in a church whose founders would have never contemplated such a communion.
Stephen Batchelor is a Scottish-born philosopher and author who calls himself a ‘Buddhist agnostic’. As a monk he studied in India, Switzerland and South Korea. In 1985 he disrobed and married Frenchwoman Martine Fages a former Buddhist nun.
The Batchelors are now involved with the Sharpham College for Buddhist Studies and Contemporary Enquiry in Devon, England and have been in NZ on a speaking tour.
There’s also been big change in Buddhism in the past half-century. In his early days Mr Batchelor could find few monasteries and retreats in Western countries like Australia and NZ. Now they’re almost commonplace.
The double billing was refereed by TV interviewer Noel Cheer, a self-proclaimed ‘post-Christian-religious-humanist'. He introduced the event as ‘A Christian without God meets a Buddhist without belief.’ It was sponsored by the St Andrew’s Trust and the Aotearoa Buddhist Education Trust.
Officially the discussion was titled: Can Christianity and Buddhism remain relevant in the 21st Century? – and the answer according to the two radicals on the platform was a loud Yes – provided the religions adapt and evolve.
“Religion must be relevant to the times in which we live,” said Sir Lloyd. “This day and age is so different to any period up to the last 200 years. Christianity in its classical form had already died when I was a student – it was preached as a way of life. Unfortunately ‘religion’ is a blocking word. It’s associated with the supernatural.”
The St Andrew’s Theologian in Residence (dubbed the Methuselah of Theology by moderator Noel Cheer), took aim at his favourite target.
Fundamentalists, he said, were people who saw traditional religions being challenged and feared the change. They felt their own ways were under threat and reacted because they were “too lazy to think”.
Mr Batchelor urged people to move away from the current view of the secular being opposed to the religious. He said the original meaning of the Latin word was ‘of the age’ and that he wanted a marriage of the two apparent opposites.
“I see secular Buddhists applying core Buddhist values in a secular world,” he said. “All religions need to have their feet in the past – but how firmly?”
Sir Lloyd said the secular referred to the temporal world where we live irrespective of religious beliefs. It was being driven by and open to scientific exploration that is constantly being reviewed.
“Science doesn’t provide any values – it’s value free,” he said. “Science gives us knowledge. Religion is a way of living. Science doesn’t give us this.”
“Buddhists find themselves in a similar situation to Christians,” said Mr Batchelor. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to uphold traditional Buddhist beliefs in a secular world.
The two men agreed in their hostility towards the development of organised religions. “Ossified by their own institutional structures,” according to Mr Batchelor, while Sir Lloyd was blunter: “In divining Jesus the church destroyed everything He stood for – He was dressed in a false set of clothes and put on a pedestal.”
They agreed on the need for religions to embrace ecological issues and be involved in politics. Sir Lloyd confessed to being a member of the Green Party.
They also shared support for voluntary euthanasia, a dislike of dogma and approval of parables as a means of teaching. Parables and short, pithy sayings opened up opportunities for readers and listeners to interpret the stories for themselves.
If there was any disagreement it came in their views of the faiths. Sir Lloyd said the differences came out in the characters of Buddha and Jesus, with the former looking in and the latter looking out.
“I agree if that’s relating to mainstream Buddhism. We need to seek to recover the historic Buddha,” said Mr Batchelor. “There’s not an intellectual foment withing Buddhism as there is in Christianity. But Buddhists were setting up orphanages long before Christians got involved.
“Buddhism has survived because it has transformed in each society and entered into the conversation. Buddhists don’t believe in God, but it would be wrong to say we are not religious.”
Sir Lloyd, said he’d learned more from Buddhism than any other faith outside Christianity. Buddhism had survived for 2,500 years without belief in God, and could point the way to Christianity without God
He also paid respect to Islam, a faith that in its early days, particularly in Andalusia, had contributed much to the world’s learning. This included mathematics, our numbering system, science and “a new burst of theology.”
“If it hadn’t been for the contribution of Islam, Christianity might have died a natural death,” he said. “Religions provide the time-tested frameworks of values. They help us learn how to be human beings and live with one another.
“Although there is no unchangeable essence of Christianity that I want to defend, the chief benefits of the modern world have all come out of the Christian West.”
“Diversity of religions is a very good thing. What we’ve learned through ecology is that life evolved because of diversity. As humans we are an unified organism, not separate bodies.”
First published in St Andrew's News, December 2011
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