On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 19:25:36 +0100 Jim heartfield
<jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>In message <19990828.065657.3454.1.farmelantj at juno.com>, James
>Farmelant
><farmelantj at juno.com> writes
>>Jim H,
>>
>>Is it true, as I have often heard that many RE teachers in Britain
>>are atheists or agnostics?
>
>A good friend of mine is teaching a degree course in teacher training
>in
>RE, and is just completing a PhD in theology. She is also an atheist.
>When she taught RE in a secondary school, a vicar who's son she taught
>asked her at one parents' evening what her own beliefs were. Thinking
>that she was about to be rumbled she thought she had better brave it
>out. 'I'm an atheist' she said. 'Very good' he said 'very good'.
>
>There is a current in the Church of England at the moment who talk
>about
>the 'inner God', meaning that they are essentially Feuerbachian
>atheists, who believe that Christianity is a metaphorical humanism.
I take it that you are referring to Don Cupitt's "Sea of Faith" crowd which views God as a metaphor. That tendency within the Anglican Church seems to have its roots in the tendency that was given expression in Bishop John Robinson's book *Honest to God* back in the 1960s. However, as you point out such tendencies within Anglicanism go back much further since both Marx & Engels were commenting on them back in the last century, and as I recall there was some references to them in Thomas Hardy's novels.
Anyway, I have heard that the current Archbishop of Canterbury has made some effort to crack down on priests who openly espouse such views, especially those who hold posts in institutions for the training of future priests.
>Marx
>said years ago, something to the effect, 'Church of England, which is
>to
>all extents and purposes agnosticism. Today you would have to say
>atheism. Church attendance is in single percentage points.
There is so I am told a resurgent evangelical wing in the Church of England which would like to return the church to some semblance of orthodoxy but one suspects that it is way too late for that to happen.
>--
>Jim heartfield
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