Part 299. Sea of Faith

The Sea of Faith movement has been a major influence on my thinking.  The following summarises its development based on the television series of that name presented by Don Cupitt.

SEA OF FAITH AT 40: Forty years after The Sea of Faith was first broadcast, Elaine Graham examines its impact. 

"In 1984, BBC Television began screening a six-part series, The Sea of Faith. Written and presented by the Cambridge philosopher and theologian the Revd Don Cupitt, the programmes examined the impact on traditional Christian belief of a selection of modern critics of religion. They included Galileo, Blaise Pascal, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche, all of whom, Cupitt believed, had contributed to a significant intellectual crisis of faith in the churches. Cupitt invited his audience to embrace a “non-realist” theology which challenged the notion that language about God refers directly to an objective, transcendent, supernatural Being. Instead, we should regard God as a spiritual ideal, the ultimate reality towards which we orientate ourselves. It follows then, that contemporary religious belief must be focused not on a preoccupation with the existence of God, but instead on the meaning and practical efficacy of the idea of God. Cupitt was not simply presenting the religious alternatives as a straightforward dichotomy between fundamentalism and atheism. Rather, the series amounts to an apologia for the view that critical thinking and intelligent questioning might still be compatible with a credible and positive religious commitment. It stands as an important attempt to present contemporary theological and philosophical thinking which responds sympathetically and constructively to modern and postmodern intellectual trends".