Above Us Only Sky

Mike O'Brien - 2010-03-14

Several months ago I read an editorial by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat titled Heaven and Nature. Douthat had just seen the new blockbuster movie Avatar and he claimed that it has a deep religious meaning. He went on to explain that the religion that it espouses is pantheism and that Hollywood has been pushing pantheism for some time, and he doesn’t like the idea. He defines pantheism as a faith that equates God with nature. As Douthat sees it, pantheism calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world. According to Douthat, pantheism is what Kevin Costner found when he went dancing with wolves, and pantheism is woven into the Disney cartoons like The Lion King and Pocahontas. Indeed, pantheism is the force behind the Jedi’s in George Lucas’s Star Wars.

Ross Douthat is smart. He realizes that the word pantheism is a little difficult to define. He is well aware that Richard Dawkins has called pantheism “sexed up atheism”. And yet, he finds the word useful to define the thing that Hollywood is pedaling. I don’t know about the word pantheism. I think big words like pantheism can get us into semantics traps. But I can tell you one thing that I really do like. I love the idea of calling humanity into religious communion with the natural world! Hollywood didn’t make this up. George Lucas got his ideas for Star Wars from Joseph Campbell. I would love a religion that equates God with nature! I would love a religion that worships the natural world and leaves out the supernatural parts. And, considering the world wide popularity of Hollywood movies, apparently, I am not alone.

So, how do we get a religion like this? Christianity didn’t become a powerhouse religion until it acquired a solid foundation of theology and philosophy provided by the gifted theologen St. Augustine of Hippo in the forth century AD. Is there a thinker around today that can give a solid thought foundation to a religion of the natural world? I think there is. I think his name is Don Cupitt.

Don Cupitt was born in Lancaster, England in 1934. He was educated at Cambridge and became an Anglican priest in 1960. Cupitt began teaching religion and philosophy at Cambridge in 1968. In the 1970’s his books began to appear. He became somewhat famous in England for creating the television documentary series for the BBC known as “The Sea of Faith”. The Sea of Faith was broadcast in England in the early 1980’s. In this series Cupitt examined western thinking about religion and how it has changed. He argued that many people who once believed religion had supernatural origins now believe that religion is simply a human construction.

Cupitt stopped officiating at Anglican public worship in the early 1990’s and quit the church altogether in 2008. He has written over 40 books, including his latest titled Above Us Only Sky. In this new book Cupitt outlines his ideas for a religion that is respectful of both science and human emotion. He calls it A Religion of Ordinary Life. Cupitt is mostly dismissed by religious thinkers because he doesn’t believe in an objective reality called God or an inner reality called a soul. While he gets a much fairer hearing in philosophy circles, some modern philosophers look down on Cupitt’s work because he does not write in the scholarly philosophic style preferred by the academics. In short, Cupitt wants to be understood by ordinary people. Above Us Only Sky is a very readable book.

To make his argument for a Religion of Ordinary Life, Cupitt begins by going all the way back to ancient Greece. Perhaps no one has influenced humankind’s understanding of how people fit into the universe as much as Plato. He created the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his pupil, Aristotle, he helped lay the foundation for philosophy and science. He was truly a great thinker, and yet Cupitt believes he made a very basic mistake in his thinking. In Plato’s grand work, The Republic, the author presents the Allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, Plato imagines a group of people in a cave. These people can not see what is happening outside the cave, but they can see the reflection of what is going on outside on the cave wall. Plato goes on to explain that the people in the cave live lives like our lives. That is to say, their lives reflect only a small portion of what the true reality of human existence is.

Plato believed that there is more out there than our senses tell us. In essence, he created two worlds; the imperfect world that we live in and the perfect world that is somewhere else. Plato would say that I have two lives: the one that I am living and another ideal life somewhere else. This idea had an enormous effect on human history and it served humankind well for 2000 years. The Israelite prophets picked up this idea adding God and heaven to Plato’s idea. God is the one who sees the imperfect and perfect aspects of Plato’s reality. Heaven is the place where the perfect aspects of human life play out. Frederick Nietzsche said Christian theology is “Plato for the masses”. Cupitt thinks Plato was dead wrong on this idea and he wants to set the record straight. Cupitt does not believe that there are two versions of human life; one imperfect version that people live out, and one perfect version that is going on somewhere else. He does not think we are imprisoned in a lower world. Cupitt wants us to move beyond Plato and take a good, hard look at what is left; plain old life. We are what we are, and life is what it is. There is only one version of human life and that version is imperfect. Cupitt wants people to learn to live with that.

While Cupitt disagrees with Plato’s “two worlds” idea, he respects other aspects of his work. He credits the Greek philosophers with creating the western tradition of critical thinking and he sees critical thinking as the glory of the west. It has given us science and the modern world. Science has gives modern people lives that are longer, less burdensome and healthier than our ancestors. Science is a very good thing, but it has its limits. For one thing, science doesn’t tell us how to live our lives. Most of us understand the importance of critical thinking while limiting its influence in our daily lives. Most people find that their emotions and sensibilities play a big part in their appreciation of life. Facts are important, but there is a reasonable limit to critical thinking.

Cupitt says that until about 1970 it was possible to embrace critical thinking and still believe in God. Around that time the center of religious thought would not hold, and liberal religion collapsed. He believes that now no religion on the planet can stand up to rigorous critical thinking. Cupitt wants to go with critical thinking all the way. I want my religion to be able to stand up to rigorous critical thinking. Cupitt has crafted the basis of a religion that does exactly this.

Before the coming of science, religious faith was all about truth. A certain religion defined truth in a certain way, and everyone in the group accepted it. Then science came along and started defining truth for everyone, including people from different religions. This really shook religions up. The whole idea of dividing people up into different religions was challenged. Religious faith stopped being about truth and started being about loyalty to your people and your tradition. Take the example in the Middle East. Sincere people set forth a Jewish/Muslim dialogue. This very phrase suggests that Jews and Muslims never evolve and the best they can do is have a dialogue. It sounds like these two religions have become all about loyalty to their people and traditions. If this is the case, their differences may never be resolved. For some, their group will always come first and humanity will always come second.

So, what is this new approach to religion all about? Don Cupitt’s Religion of Ordinary Life can be summed up in 5 basic ideas.

1) Life is all there is. It is of no use to think about what lies beyond or after. Everything is contained in this life. He asks us to not live a lie. Our lives are all that we have and all we will ever have.

2) There is no ready made meaning out there. There are no shadows on the cave wall. We give our lives meaning by the language we use to describe it. The language we use to create meaning is constantly changing. This gives us the freedom to remake ourselves in the world.

3) Life has limits. Life has no fixed realities, identities, or standards apart from what we put into it. Life is not perfect, and our lives will come to an end.

4) Life is a creative process. The secret to leading a good life is to find joy in the process of creating that life. All of my interests in life must be continuously renewed and continuously let go of.

5) Our common humanity is the only basis for ethics. Most all of us believe that life is worth living. Our common humanity calls upon us to make life worth living for everyone.

Embracing the Religion of Ordinary Life would mean giving up on the idea of transcendence. Certainly, humans have been dreaming of escaping dreary, miserable lives, probably, since the beginning of human existence. To this Cupitt would say that they were only dreams. Human existence cannot be transcended. We are, however, not powerless to deal with the loss. We have tools that we can incorporate into our everyday lives, tools such as meditation, creativity, myth and love.

1) Meditation. Not meditation to remove us from our human existence, but to connect us to it. Meditation that helps us to concentrate on living in the present moment is a powerful tool in the Religion of Ordinary Life.

2) Creativity. Just as an artist uses her power of creativity to produce art, we can craft a meaningful life for ourselves. Creativity and imagination are potent tools in the Religion of Ordinary Life. Cupitt asks us to live as creatively as we can for as long as life remains. We don’t need a transcendent religion; we need imagination to find things in this life that we love.

3) Myth. Since the beginning of human history, people have been creating stories to explain how their lives fit into the whole. This is how we create meaning. Though many of these stories have been canonized into religious dogma, there is still much wisdom there. We need to understand these stories metaphorically. The modern world is characterized by an ever increasing pace of chance. We also need to create new myths to keep up with our ever changing lives. This is what literature, theater and cinema are for.

4) Human love. Many of us have experienced the power of human love first hand. Love is a powerful thing. One of my favorite movies is Hannah and Her Sisters. In the first half of the movie Hannah’s sister, Holly, is a truly miserable person and no one wants to be around her. Then she meets Mickey, a divorced TV producer. They fall in love and Holly is transformed into a charming young woman who simply bubbles over with enthusiasm for life. It is an truly amazing transformation. While human love can’t help us transcend life, it surely can transform us in this life. Cupitt believes that human love is the closest thing we have to transcendence.

Cupitt believes that the Religion of Ordinary Life is quietly slipping into place all over the world. Men and women from all walks of life, in all corners of the globe are finding the courage to say yes to life and to find joy in life, in spite of its shortcomings. Even though Cupitt has written 40 books describing the coming of the Religion of Ordinary Life, he admits that it would arrive without his help. He is only saying what many of us already know.

The Religion of Ordinary Life is certainly evident in our UU services. We begin by reciting “we gather together to celebrate life” (hold up the bulletin). We sing songs from the hymnal called Singing the Living Tradition. If Don Cupitt is looking for an existing religious organization to nurture his Religion of Ordinary Life, he may well find it in the Unitarian Universalist Church.