Don Cupitt
I take secularism to be the doctrine
that there is only one world. Around this world, we have constructed
various special theories—historical theories about how the world
got to be as it is and scientific and mathematical theories about how
it works. But, still, there is just one world—our world.
If we are soon to enter a period of
ecological catastrophe, it may be that our present civilization will
be destroyed. In a new Dark Age, only fundamentalist religion may
survive among a reduced population.
But I hope that all humans will survive
and that secularism will prevail—in politics, in ethics, and even
in religion. It is hugely liberating for human beings at last to be
able to affirm life in this world, despite its transiency,
contingency, and the imperfect nature of our physical bodies. I am a
philosopher of religion, and I would like to point out that, in the
Christian tradition, we always hoped that at the end of history
everything would return to this life, on this earth. This hope for
the complete secularization of religion was once called the coming of
the Kingdom of God on Earth and was even part of the American dream.
Intellectually, we are about due. When it comes, we will learn to
love life exactly as our forbears once loved God.
Don Cupitt is an Anglican priest and
writer. He spent his career lecturing on the philosophy of religion
at Cambridge University, where he remains a Fellow of Emmanuel
College. He has published almost forty books, including The Sea of
Faith (1984), which sparked a religious humanist movement in the
United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.
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