From 2025 I shall be editing Sofia magazine: the magazine of the Sea of Faith Network.
Or, more precisely, I shall be editing the magazine of the Sea of Faith Network which is currently called Sofia, because it is not a forgone conclusion that it will retain the name Sofia. Personally I think Sofia is a great name: 'Wisdom' and a clever play on 'SOF'. But some network members have suggested that with the change of editor it might be appropriate return to just calling it "Sea of Faith" as it was before the present editor, Dinah Livingstone, took over in 2006.
Knowing that I am taking this on has spurred me into thinking about my faith, and especially exploring just how well I fit to the Sea of Faith Network. At the moment I would say: surprisingly well!
My plan is to use this blog chart the exploration.
A sentence on the front page of the Nework website declares:
SOF is about exploring and promoting religious faith as a valuable human creation for this life
I've been working on the consequences of religion as a human creation, and that's what I hope to discuss in the next few blog posts.
Here's a start.
One of the ministers at the church I attend likes to engage with the congregation as follows:
Minister: God is good
Congregation: all the time!
Minister: And all the time
Congregation: God is good!
I, along with some of the other old reactionaries in the membership have been reluctant to join in. I think that if I am honest it is because I feel manipulated that I don't like it, but someone else said they just couldn't go along with the simplistic notion: God doesn't always appear to be good!
Well now here's what I'm now thinking from a "religion as a human creation perspective". This mantra that God is good all the time is not descriptive: it is normative. We are creating/defining God, and we require that (s)he is good all the time. This makes a whole lot of sense to me. A God that is not good all the time is no use to us, so we define God as such.
That's enough for today.
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