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Reforming Christianity
Christian churches are seemingly in terminal decline. Is a reformation and renewal of Christianity still possible, even at this late hour? Don Cupitt argues that it is possible, but will be difficult. Church Christianity as we have received it is handicapped by two great errors—a mistaken interpretation of Jesus as having been the co-equally divine Son of God incarnate and the mistaken belief that there is a controlling supernatural world beyond this world. To escape from these errors we need to go back and start again from the historical Jesus and his message about 'the Kingdom of God' on this earth. We need to create a modern version of his kingdom religion—a religion that is immediate, beliefless, and entirely focussed upon the here and now. Reconstructing Christianity in this way calls for a revolution in thought At present, the churches don't even want to think about reform and renewal; but if thery are ever to become serious, this is the path they'll have to take.
156 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
4 people want to read
About the author
Don Cupitt
72 books15 followersDon Cupitt was an English philosopher of religion and scholar of Christian theology. He had been an Anglican priest and a lecturer in the University of Cambridge, though he was better known as a popular writer, broadcaster and commentator. He has been described as a "radical theologian", noted for his ideas about "non-realist" philosophy of religion.
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June 26, 2024
CUPITT PROPOSES STEPS TO REFORM/CREATE A NEW “CHRISTIANITY”
Don Cupitt (born 1934) is an English philosopher and theologian, who was an Anglican priest from 1960 until he resigned in 2008; he taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge since 1965. He has written many books, such as Taking Leave of God; Radicals and the Future of the Church; After All; After God: The Future Of Religion; Reforming Christianity; Radical Theology]], etc.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2001 book, “The Christian churches are melting away; in Europe, at least…they are currently losing almost a quarter or what’s left in each decade, and a half in each generation. The main reason for their decline is a general loss of public confidence in the objective truth of the major Christian beliefs… No church has been more disastrously affected by these developments than my own church, the Church of England… It may be thought that the very idea of religious reform in the modern West is out-of-date… In that case, why am I talking about a rationalizing reformation of Christianity?... my reformed Christianity will be POST-DOGMATIC, in the sense that it will not pretend to be putting forward any publicly authoritative supertruths. It will simply aim to show how the profession and practice of a thoroughly reformed version of Christianity could again come to look attractive to a thinking person, AFTER dogma, and AFTER the Church… we should be content to propose Christianity as offering a form of life … which rings true to our sense of ourselves, true to the way things currently are, and true to our life as we now live it.” (Pg. 1-2)
He states, “I am suggesting that today the reformation of Christianity must proceed by going back to the beginning in order to go forwards… it is now time to abandon Church theology and push the Christian movement forwards into the next and long promised stage of its historical development: the Kingdom. The Kingdom is purely of this present world: it is a new ethic, and a new way of relating oneself to life. It is post-ecclesiastical and post-dogmatic. We’ve been praying daily for it all these years. Now, its time has come.” (Pg. 8-9)
He points out, “When religion is mediated, there are sharp battles over whose system of mediation is the original and authentic one; but when we pass over into immediate religion we move into a region where all is utterly familiar and nameless. Labels are no longer needed. They no longer mean a thing. So although this book bears the title ‘Reforming Christianity,’ people will of course say that the kingdom religion I describe is ‘not Christianity’---and we must of course be utterly indifferent to that charge, because it is based on an obsolete assumption.” (Pg. 31)
He explains, “for me… kingdom theology is an interpretation of our own human condition that I am led to by philosophy, and kingdom religion is a form of religious response to life… I cannot, I concede, expect to succeed in developing, within ecclesiastical theology … an argument that will push the Church into reforming itself beyond itself and into the kingdom. But I can argue… that kingdom theology is the TRUTH of our own times, and that kingdom religion… is the form of religious life that is TRUE TO our own times. That is, you may protest, a very queer sort of argument for the truth of (a version of) Christianity; but I am deliberately presenting here a new sort of apologetic that does not appeal to tradition, or to authority, and does not propose any supernatural beliefs, but merely tries to show how it currently is with us.” (Pg. 39)
He notes, “In the new Kingdom religion there is no use of Christian symbols and myths to construct a disciplinary cosmology, nor to validate hierarchies of spiritual and temporal power. But we do not therefore discard them altogether. Not at all: we simply restore them to their proper, emancipatory and religious use… the old myths become programming that helps us to function as religious artists; that is, it shows us how and it helps us, through our own expressive activity, to build and redeem our worlds. We see now why we have to talk about ‘reforming Christianity,’ and about a major shift, a change of dispensation. For it is only when we have fully understood how and why the old kind of Church Christianity is simply untrue… that we can … come to a religion where, to our astonishment, Christianity turns out to be true after all. NOT as a cosmic ideology of social control, but true after all as emancipatory, liberation RELIGION.” (Pg. 45-46)
He clarifies, “In this present book we … do not propose church reform, holding it to be impossible for two reasons: the first is that the internal power structure and the group dynamics of the Church combine to ensure that the Church will always successfully resist reform to the bitter end… And the second reason … is that the intellectual breakdown of theology has now gone so far that there is no prospect of liberal theology being once again able to set out an intellectually respectable core syllabus of religious belief. On strictly rational grounds, you have no reason whatever to be pleased that your daughter has become a nun rather than a Moonie---and everybody knows it.” (Pg. 79-80)
He acknowledges, “the Church is still the necessary theatre; partly because the church is still the best public space or theatre in which to proclaim and test out the new initiatives in lifestyle and spirituality; and partly because the church… still carries deeply buried in its memory the necessary concepts for explaining and interpreting the Kingdom religion. That the church is still the best available frame… is recognized by all those people who use it and borrow its vocabulary in order to propagate their Liberation theology, feminist theology, black theology, green theology, black feminist theology, and so on.” (Pg. 85)
He suggests, “The hypothesis for consideration, then, is that in the kingdom era which has now begun Christianity no longer needs to be embodied in a distinct institution over against the rest of culture… it now seems to do better as a ubiquitous presence or influence within the general flow of cultural life. But it must be admitted right away that this suggestion will alarm many people, because the church has meant so much to so many for so long.” (Pg. 115)
He summarizes, “Hence our painful and paradoxical present-day condition, as radical theology interprets it… The Church has declared itself indefectible and inerrant. So it no longer saves, because it no longer knows of anything higher and better than itself… The paradoxical result of all this is that today the best secular morality outside the Church represents a much more developed form of Christianity that is available from within the Church… So for the radical Christian, postmodern culture with its ubiquitous, scattered religiosity and its opposition to discrimination is a secular realization of the traditional kingdom of God… I do see in our postmodern humanitarian ethics the best realization of the Christian ideal yet seen on earth.” (Pg. 125)
He concludes, “In kingdom religion life is endless and outsideless, but we give ourselves to life in the clear-eyed recognition of life’s contingency, finitude and transience. Because we do not believe in any metaphysical soul or core self, we give ourselves completely and continuously into life all the time. We are not afraid of death, because we live by dying all the time… And our consciousness that we are and have nothing permanent in ourselves … is our version of Jesus’s moral urgency and his eschatological consciousness. Take it all in, assimilate it, and then first mark and then re-read the solar passages of the Sermon on the Mount---and it all makes sense. Surely, he can return.” (Pg. 137)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying contemporary/progressive/Radical Christianity.
Don Cupitt (born 1934) is an English philosopher and theologian, who was an Anglican priest from 1960 until he resigned in 2008; he taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge since 1965. He has written many books, such as Taking Leave of God; Radicals and the Future of the Church; After All; After God: The Future Of Religion; Reforming Christianity; Radical Theology]], etc.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2001 book, “The Christian churches are melting away; in Europe, at least…they are currently losing almost a quarter or what’s left in each decade, and a half in each generation. The main reason for their decline is a general loss of public confidence in the objective truth of the major Christian beliefs… No church has been more disastrously affected by these developments than my own church, the Church of England… It may be thought that the very idea of religious reform in the modern West is out-of-date… In that case, why am I talking about a rationalizing reformation of Christianity?... my reformed Christianity will be POST-DOGMATIC, in the sense that it will not pretend to be putting forward any publicly authoritative supertruths. It will simply aim to show how the profession and practice of a thoroughly reformed version of Christianity could again come to look attractive to a thinking person, AFTER dogma, and AFTER the Church… we should be content to propose Christianity as offering a form of life … which rings true to our sense of ourselves, true to the way things currently are, and true to our life as we now live it.” (Pg. 1-2)
He states, “I am suggesting that today the reformation of Christianity must proceed by going back to the beginning in order to go forwards… it is now time to abandon Church theology and push the Christian movement forwards into the next and long promised stage of its historical development: the Kingdom. The Kingdom is purely of this present world: it is a new ethic, and a new way of relating oneself to life. It is post-ecclesiastical and post-dogmatic. We’ve been praying daily for it all these years. Now, its time has come.” (Pg. 8-9)
He points out, “When religion is mediated, there are sharp battles over whose system of mediation is the original and authentic one; but when we pass over into immediate religion we move into a region where all is utterly familiar and nameless. Labels are no longer needed. They no longer mean a thing. So although this book bears the title ‘Reforming Christianity,’ people will of course say that the kingdom religion I describe is ‘not Christianity’---and we must of course be utterly indifferent to that charge, because it is based on an obsolete assumption.” (Pg. 31)
He explains, “for me… kingdom theology is an interpretation of our own human condition that I am led to by philosophy, and kingdom religion is a form of religious response to life… I cannot, I concede, expect to succeed in developing, within ecclesiastical theology … an argument that will push the Church into reforming itself beyond itself and into the kingdom. But I can argue… that kingdom theology is the TRUTH of our own times, and that kingdom religion… is the form of religious life that is TRUE TO our own times. That is, you may protest, a very queer sort of argument for the truth of (a version of) Christianity; but I am deliberately presenting here a new sort of apologetic that does not appeal to tradition, or to authority, and does not propose any supernatural beliefs, but merely tries to show how it currently is with us.” (Pg. 39)
He notes, “In the new Kingdom religion there is no use of Christian symbols and myths to construct a disciplinary cosmology, nor to validate hierarchies of spiritual and temporal power. But we do not therefore discard them altogether. Not at all: we simply restore them to their proper, emancipatory and religious use… the old myths become programming that helps us to function as religious artists; that is, it shows us how and it helps us, through our own expressive activity, to build and redeem our worlds. We see now why we have to talk about ‘reforming Christianity,’ and about a major shift, a change of dispensation. For it is only when we have fully understood how and why the old kind of Church Christianity is simply untrue… that we can … come to a religion where, to our astonishment, Christianity turns out to be true after all. NOT as a cosmic ideology of social control, but true after all as emancipatory, liberation RELIGION.” (Pg. 45-46)
He clarifies, “In this present book we … do not propose church reform, holding it to be impossible for two reasons: the first is that the internal power structure and the group dynamics of the Church combine to ensure that the Church will always successfully resist reform to the bitter end… And the second reason … is that the intellectual breakdown of theology has now gone so far that there is no prospect of liberal theology being once again able to set out an intellectually respectable core syllabus of religious belief. On strictly rational grounds, you have no reason whatever to be pleased that your daughter has become a nun rather than a Moonie---and everybody knows it.” (Pg. 79-80)
He acknowledges, “the Church is still the necessary theatre; partly because the church is still the best public space or theatre in which to proclaim and test out the new initiatives in lifestyle and spirituality; and partly because the church… still carries deeply buried in its memory the necessary concepts for explaining and interpreting the Kingdom religion. That the church is still the best available frame… is recognized by all those people who use it and borrow its vocabulary in order to propagate their Liberation theology, feminist theology, black theology, green theology, black feminist theology, and so on.” (Pg. 85)
He suggests, “The hypothesis for consideration, then, is that in the kingdom era which has now begun Christianity no longer needs to be embodied in a distinct institution over against the rest of culture… it now seems to do better as a ubiquitous presence or influence within the general flow of cultural life. But it must be admitted right away that this suggestion will alarm many people, because the church has meant so much to so many for so long.” (Pg. 115)
He summarizes, “Hence our painful and paradoxical present-day condition, as radical theology interprets it… The Church has declared itself indefectible and inerrant. So it no longer saves, because it no longer knows of anything higher and better than itself… The paradoxical result of all this is that today the best secular morality outside the Church represents a much more developed form of Christianity that is available from within the Church… So for the radical Christian, postmodern culture with its ubiquitous, scattered religiosity and its opposition to discrimination is a secular realization of the traditional kingdom of God… I do see in our postmodern humanitarian ethics the best realization of the Christian ideal yet seen on earth.” (Pg. 125)
He concludes, “In kingdom religion life is endless and outsideless, but we give ourselves to life in the clear-eyed recognition of life’s contingency, finitude and transience. Because we do not believe in any metaphysical soul or core self, we give ourselves completely and continuously into life all the time. We are not afraid of death, because we live by dying all the time… And our consciousness that we are and have nothing permanent in ourselves … is our version of Jesus’s moral urgency and his eschatological consciousness. Take it all in, assimilate it, and then first mark and then re-read the solar passages of the Sermon on the Mount---and it all makes sense. Surely, he can return.” (Pg. 137)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying contemporary/progressive/Radical Christianity.
March 8, 2020
Loved it. Cupitt is always fantastic at laying out theology in a logical, accessible way. In this book he lays out concepts like solar living, the painted veil and kingdom theology in a way that helps the reader frame the issues with modern church Christianity
July 30, 2023
I enjoyed so much reading this book. Sometimes it is complex so I had to go back and reread portions. I liked his idea of Solar Action or Solar Living. His thesis is that we need to move from ecclesiastical religion to Kingdom religion. I found the premise very hopeful.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews