There may be no God, ‘but let us live as though there were’, says Bishop Richard Holloway
Bishop Richard Holloway admits doubting God's existence. Picture: Toby Williams
AS BISHOP of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway led his congregation in prayer and offered spiritual guidance to his flock in the Scottish episcopal church.
But now the former head of the Anglican church in Scotland has told how he began to lose his faith in God five years after he was ordained as a priest.
For years he was the tabloid’s favourite “Barmy Bishop”, as well as a popular if sometimes controversial figure among Scotland’s nearly 60,000 Episcopalians. Now Holloway’s new memoir, Leaving Alexandria, is rising rapidly up the best-seller lists and appears set to become a milestone in the 78-year-old former bishop’s career.
No stranger to controversy, the author of 25 books often wrestling with issues of faith told The Scotsman how his belief in the Bible began to ebb away within a few years of his ordination, although he continued to do his parish work.
He said he reached the conclusion that “there may be no God in the universe, but let’s live as though there is, and even if we are wrong it will be a glorious way to be proved mistaken”.
“About five years after I was ordained, in the Gorbals, I went through a phase of very radical doubt indeed and wrestled with that and struggled with it,” he said.
“And I arrived at a way of living within the church and the priesthood, almost as an existential gamble, that if there isn’t anything in this, there is a certain beauty and courage in living as if it were true.”
He was Bishop of Edinburgh from 1986 and was elected Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1992, but resigned in 2000. His other work included chairing the former Scottish Arts Council.
Leaving Alexandria is building up to be his biggest publishing success since he published the controversial Godless Morality in 1999. It tells how Holloway, from a poor working-class district of Glasgow, found his way to an Anglican monastic order in Nottinghamshire, Kelham Hall, as a 14-year-old boy to begin his training as a future priest. From there he rose to the highest ranks of his church.
After glowing reviews, the book has been in the Amazon website top 100 sellers for a week, peaking at number 55, and at number seven for pre-orders of the book, which is published by Edinburgh-based Canongate on 1 March.
Former poet laureate Andrew Motion said the book “gives a profound sense of the benefits, as well as the difficulties, that accrue from taking a zig-zag path through life”.
“It summarises an argument that a lot of people will find sympathetic, as well as compelling,” he added.
Best-selling author Philip Pullman called it an “endlessly vivid and fascinating” account that “will be a delight and inspiration to believers, non-believers, and ex-believers alike”.
Holloway was a controversial figure during his church career, and a favourite tabloid target, defending gay marriage and championing women priests.
He questioned the Virgin birth, and said he understood the “promiscuous genes” that drove men to promiscuity.
Breaking one church taboo after another, he called those who opposed women priests “mean-minded wee sods” and admitted smoking marijuana.
He left Kelham in 1956 and was ordained in Glasgow in 1959. But, by the early 1960s, he was questioning his faith, in a decade that he said was a “turbulent period” for theologians.
He described how he began by doubting the “physicality of the resurrection” of Christ only a few years after his ordination.
“I remember taking a walk with a Church of Scotland colleague, one Good Friday, because I had to preach on Sunday morning about the resurrection and I wanted to be as honest as I could,” he said.
“That mood deepened and I struggled to get back on track. It kind of calmed down for quite a long time… I contemplated leaving the priesthood then, but struggled on and stayed with it.”
He finally resigned as Bishop of Edinburgh after the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, George Carey, publicly attacked him for abandoning “Christian morality” in his writings.
A spokesperson for the Scottish Episcopal Church said yesterday: “It would be reasonable for Christians, including clergy, to be challenged by their faith and question parts of it from time to time.”
Asked whether a priest could continue working if they lost their faith, the spokesperson said: “I would imagine a number of clergy from time to time look at their faith and are challenged. There will be doubts, and they will work through those doubts, as part of faith.”
Email to a friend
Print this page- Scottish independence: I don’t want ‘separatism’ says Sir Tom Farmer
- Scottish independence: Labour voters ‘will deliver independence’
- Craig Levein insists Scotland will recover from US thrashing
- Rangers administration: End game nears for fallen icon
- Tom English: ‘A mammoth investigation, so vast that it is without parallel in the history of the Scottish game’
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Edinburgh
Monday 28 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 10 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North east
Comments
There are 116 comments to this article
Page 1 of 8
Richard Ashby
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 at 09:25 AMDoubt and faith allow for change and development. Certainty: 'the faith once delivered to the saints' is a recipe for stagnation and indeed bigotry, judgementalism and exclusion. Thomas Aquinas (or is it Augustine) said that after his six proofs of God one was still left with a mystery. Certainty detroys mystery and dimishes god and humanity. And please dont tell me that it's in the Bible, that is no argument whatsoever except to those who already have their certainty. Most of us live in the real world where there are shades of grey and little is black and white.
PeterVincent
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 08:32 PM"The opposite of faith isn't doubt, it's certainty." - please explain.
Richard Ashby
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 07:51 PMWhat a nasty lot of destructive and negative comments. The opposite of faith isn't doubt, it's certainty. At least Richard Holloway is a thinker and isn't afraid to articulate his thoughts rather than taking refuge in antique arguments formulated 3000 years ago and reinforced by those who wish to control what others do and think. As a Christian Agnostic, like Richard Holloway, I welcome the decline of an organised religion which is based on certainty, dishonesty, exclusiveness, bigotry and hate for those who are or think differently. The sooner that sort of religion, with its supporters in groups like the so called 'Christian' Institute, is dead the better.
AuldLochinvar
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 02:08 PMI'm grateful to to the critic of Ben Gunn who induced me to read #13. But I'd love to know if Charles Linskaill really believes,#8, the story of the fig tree. I simply refused to accept that Jesus was so petulant, even when I was a Christian.
AuldLochinvar
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 01:59 PMIt is my belief that when an association, such as the Tea Party in the USA, or the Christian or Islamic religions in some places, acquires a reputation for doing good whether deserved or not, it tends to attract people who desire to do good. In Africa, where female genital mutilation is traditional,Christian missionaries indeed have been doing good, by opposing that horrible practice. The crazy Christian mythology has nothing to do with it. Strangely, the Tea Party attracts to the Republican fold people who genuinely detest the results of what "the government" did under the Republicans, when the things planted in eight years came to fruition under the Democrats.
AuldLochinvar
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 01:47 PM#107, Tartancult: I prefer to give credit for ideas that I've been given, to the people from whom I got them. Unlike the Bible, which has sayings attributed to a totally imaginary being. Some of my own ideas you'll find at the website skepticva.org, especially under EnergyIndependence.html
AuldLochinvar
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 01:42 PMHarbinger: The "global warming crowd" has actual evidence, and measurements both of global warming in the present, and of significant global cooling during the 64 million years when the fossil fuels were being laid down. The question usually asked is whether it's attributable to human burning of that fossil carbon. Moreover, since the change in atmospheric carbon dioxide is going up now at hundreds of times as fast as it came down in the Carboniferous, it's not something to which we can expect the Earth's biosphere to adapt. Evolution requires longer than mere extinction.
PeterVincent
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 05:46 AMCantoneze, Father Chen from the aptly named diocese of Xi'an, wrote," during the “last 20 years 400 churches have been built in the province" and that "Another important aspect of the growth of the diocese is the pastoral attention given to young people and the increase in vocations at the region’s two seminaries"
PeterVincent
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 05:37 AMCanton-eze - "exploding numbers" - I was quoting a BBC article on the11th Sept 2011called - "Christians in China: Is the country in spiritual crisis?". The text of the article appears to counter many of your assertions. The way Christ's message has spread, often under adverse conditions, is truly remarkable.
Tartancult
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 01:34 AMAuldlochinvar, if we took away your ability to quote other people you would be struck dumb - not a bad thing, I suggest.
Canton-eze
Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 08:14 PM#98 PeterVincent - I agree that is" impossible to say how many Christians there are in China today," but am less sure about the "exploding numbers" bit of your assertion. Find the verifiable stats then we have a basis for evaluation. From my time in China (ongoing), I know personally many Chinese people (professional women mainly) who claim to be Christian. When it is raised in conversation the reply that I mostly hear is that it is along the lines of "something to do", whatever that means. That mindset will no doubt have its various individually subjective interpretations. I'm not deriding their belief if indeed "belief" is what it is. If it's an "up-yours" to a paranoid ruling elite with nasty tendencies (and in many cases it is), then good luck to them. I applaud their courage.
AuldLochinvar
Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 07:14 PM#32: jdships: In Exodus, chapters 20 to 23, there are more like 50 commandments, including "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" and several which deal with you responsibilities to your immediate neighbours, including (BP supporters, pay attention) that you must pay compensation to people injured because you dug a hole. If it were possible to prove that Bush II and his henchmen are indeed in league with the Prince of Darkness, who thus made Bush president, I can see some justification for the first one here, too. But I think it was a commandment written at the behest of priests who disliked competition from other psychics.
AuldLochinvar
Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 07:04 PMDear Johntt, #47 about those "same old biggotted atheists and secularists" -- the reason we do it is that we have very strong moral observations about the damage done by entrenched religion. More to the point, the existence of a belief in ANY dogma is a threat to all that modern humanity enjoys. In 1920, Bertrand Russell shocked his fellow socialists with the observation that Lenin's beliefs and demeanour were very much like any religious fanatic's. Do you claim that a person's belief that the principles of operation of the Universe, misleadingly known as the Laws of Nature, are fixed and inviolable, is mere bigotry? None of us claims that they are completely known, but we do insist (even since Spinoza) that even if there were a God, it would be ludicrous for Him to suspend these Laws at the request of "a petitioner, confessedly unworthy" as Ambrose Bierce puts it. All scientific progress depends upon the insistence that mere opinion or even holy scripture, e.g. "The Origin of Species", is subject to the condition "there is no theory, however beautiful, that cannot be slain by one ugly fact" -- provided that fact exists. According to David Attenborough, the proposition "God is Love" is difficult to reconcile with the fact that there exists worm-like organisms which bore into the eyes of infants in some parts of the world, making them blind.
AuldLochinvar
Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 06:42 PMDear steve660 @ #69 It HAS been argued that the monasteries were havens of literacy and learning. There's an excellent book "How Ireland Saved Civilization" to that very effect. Oh, and another, written by an American, "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" Part of the argument of the latter is that the Calvinist insistence, that every man was his own priest, was superior to the old belief of some persons being born intrinsically superior to others. There is yet another book, called I think "The House of Wisdom" , to the effect that the Muslim region, Al Andalus, of Spain was far more tolerant and enlightened than Ferdinand and Isabella's Christian Spain. Remember the Inquisition?
AuldLochinvar
Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 06:33 PM#84, Simonsaid: I think you're being too harsh in calling a man a hypocrite, who has actually made clear to his ecclesiastical superiors that he strongly disagrees with their interpretations of God's Will. In the case of the Prime Minister, who admitted that he wasn't much of a churchgoer, but though we should all believe the doctrines taught there -- and being a Tory clearly doesn't believe what Jesus told the rich man -- there we do have a hypocrite.
Page 1 of 8
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.