{"id":947,"date":"2023-03-29T11:13:42","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T10:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/?p=947"},"modified":"2023-03-29T13:52:06","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T12:52:06","slug":"did-you-hear-the-one-about-the-observer-the-bishop-and-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/did-you-hear-the-one-about-the-observer-the-bishop-and-god\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Did you hear the one about The Observer, the Bishop and God?\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sex and religious beliefs easily generate controversy and outrage, as well as delight and wonder, especially if they concern a bishop. The combination of the two, a clever newspaper editor and a sixties culture of revolt against authority provide the perfect pitch for an historic moment in public life. The Observer<\/em> article \u201cOur Image of God Must Go\u201d on the 17th<\/sup> March 1963 provided one such moment in the dramatic clash between liberal progress and traditional resistance that still echoes to this day.<\/p>\n

1963 wa one key moment in the step from the old-time \u201creligion\u201d and the beginning of the new faiths and new atheists. Within three years, John Lennon would signal that shift with his misunderstood interview remark that the Beatles were \u201cmore popular than Jesus\u201d. But the 60s revolution of belief was sparked in a different way when The Observer<\/em> published a bishop\u2019s summary of his forthcoming book. The Observer<\/em> article registered a new era in the religious life of Britain, breaking the old idols of the church and arguably starting a process towards increasing private spiritualities, outside traditional religious institutions.<\/p>\n

In the 1960s Bishop John Robinson, then Bishop of Woolwich, inadvertently captured public attention in two distinct ways: the first, in 1960, through his Old Bailey witness court defence of Penguin Books publication of D.H. Lawrence\u2019s Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/em>, supporting its publication and the sacredness of sex (a view of sex carried over from Archbishop William Temple in 1943 and which made the headline for Bishop Robinson\u2019s defence statement); and, the second, the public controversy over Christian belief in his short book Honest to God <\/em>published on the 19th<\/sup> March 1963; but a book largely brought to light by his pre-publication Observer<\/em> article \u201cOur Image of God Must Go\u201d a few days before. This article framed the reception and controversy of one the most highly debated and best-selling theological books of the twentieth century. The Observer<\/em> played an important part in making this historic moment. Arguably, it made theological history more than the book itself.<\/p>\n

The Observer<\/em> newspaper is perhaps less known for its place in theological debate, but it played a key role in this 1960s theological controversy. The editing of Robinson\u2019s Observer<\/em> article created the title for a debate that would land on the breakfast tables of Anglican families with shock and astonishment. Retired theologians have shared with me how they remember that moment as a child when the morning newspaper arrived, and a world of clerical controversy inspired them to read their first theological book; a text that still shapes discussion today. As the biographer of John Robinson, Eric James, indicates, it was the respected Observer<\/em> political correspondent Ivan Yates who suggested the feature, by virtue of knowing the SCM Press editor David Edwards, who published Honest to God<\/em>. John Robinson then provided a summary of his book for The Observer<\/em>, but the title of the article \u201cOur Image of God Must Go\u201d was not his choice and it was accepted reluctantly \u2018under pressure of time\u2019, according to Eric James. But this title awoke a belief challenged nation.<\/p>\n

The article set the public mood and reception; and the responses and criticism to the book were more based on the Observer<\/em> article rather than the book itself. For example, at the time, the Bishop of Exeter confessed to not reading the book following his own criticism. It also generated complaints to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, and was cause for thousands of letters of both criticism and praise to John Robinson himself, as well as leading to numerous articles and satirical cartoons – and it even landed John Robinson an appearance on the 1960s TV show That Was The Week That Was<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Archbishop Ramsey\u2019s response at the time – later regretted – was critical of John Robinson, but this only added to the interest and created the image of an apparent non-believing and rebellious bishop. It attracted even more readers to a book that would never have been considered for a second by the public. As one correspondent wrote to Robinson and reported in Eric James\u2019s biography: \u201cAll the more fortunate that your book was attacked and you yourself reproached by the hierarchy!\u201d The spirit of 60s revolution and resistance to authority was in the air.<\/p>\n

What the Observer<\/em> article did was lift a set of largely obscure reflections about the idea of God into the changing spirit of 1960s beliefs. The old images of God \u2018out-there\u2019 in the sky were redundant in a world of science and secularity and Robinson\u2019s answer was to introduce three German theological inspirations: Bonhoeffer (\u2018religion-less Christianity\u2019), Bultmann (\u2018demythologizing\u2019) and Tillich (God as \u2018the ground of being\u2019) as new ways of thinking about belief. It was, however, the Observer<\/em> that achieved the focus and attention to the problem, whether fully liked or appreciated by the Conservative Party at prayer. In reflection of the diversity of views, The Observer<\/em> also created space for C.S. Lewis seven days later to write his own response to Robinson in the article \u201cMust our Image of God Go?\u201d (24th<\/sup> March 1963), setting the tone of the debate that has continued over the decades since.<\/p>\n

Subtle nuances about the idea of God are difficult to sustain when you have become notorious through media scandal. Being misunderstood is part of a world of mediated reactions rather than reality. So now 60 years later, when the dust has settled, we might require a new title, \u201cour Image of John Robinson Must Go\u201d, because, as he has signalled many times following the Honest to God<\/em> debate, his radicality was \u201crooted\u201d in faith. It was not a faith based on \u201ca<\/em> person\u201d in the sky, but in an \u201cultimate reality\u201d that was \u201cpersonal<\/em>\u201d (an italicised distinction for an undergraduate seminar no doubt, but something easily lost in a newspaper article). Our image of John Robinson must surely be one of courageous thinker \u2013 the art of honesty \u2013 and a little less the non-believing Bishop than might be imagined, because his aim was to ensure faith survived in the scientific world.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Carrette is Professor of Philosophy, Religion and Culture at the University of Kent. <\/em><\/p>\n

CAHT hosted a conference on <\/em>Honest to God at the University of Kent on 18th<\/sup> March 2023 to commemorate 60 years of the book and the papers will appear in the July edition of the journal <\/em>Theology. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sex and religious beliefs easily generate controversy and outrage, as well as delight and wonder, especially if they concern a bishop. The combination of the two, a clever newspaper editor and a sixties culture of revolt against authority provide the perfect pitch for an historic moment in public life. The Observer article \u201cOur Image of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1119,"featured_media":950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-anglican"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":956,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/anglican-history-theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}