Beloved Father, Beloved Son: a Conversation about Faith between a Bishop and his Atheist Son

Beloved Father, Beloved Son: a Conversation about Faith between a Bishop and his Atheist Son by Graeme Rutherford and Jonathan Rutherford

A reflection by Carol O’Connor

In Michael Mayne’s work Learning to Dance he references the Scottish poet D.M.Black. In Black’s poem, ‘Kew Gardens’ he remembers his father, an eminent scientist who taught him the names of all the plants and the science behind their existence.  However, now the poet son desires ‘to sing an excess which is not so simply explainable’ and to say ‘I do not believe your science, although I believe every word of it, and intend to understand it.’ The poem ends with these words:

Thus I understand and contradict you, I, your child

who have inherited from you the passion to oppose you.

D.M.Black is given a scientific vision of the world from his father, but now, with the very same passion of his father, ‘opposes’ this viewpoint.  In Beloved Father, Beloved Son we witness a similar dynamic in a father-son relationship. But here, unlike Black’s poem, the passion for faith lies with the father, reason and science, the son.  From Graeme, Jonathan has inherited a passionate curiosity about the nature of faith, the intellectual gifts to reason and articulate his inquiries, and has always been given the space to express this and be heard. Grounded in the Christian faith since birth, now as an adult he chooses the path of atheism. And he walks this path with the same enthusiasm that his father treads the way of Anglicanism.

This is a work about the debate, we hear it so much now in the public domain, between atheism and faith.  But what we don’t hear so much is the debate in the context of a relationship: a father-son relationship. The familial relationship between Graeme and Jonathan, and the vulnerability each exposes in this discussion, sets the discussion on a very different ground from previous debates on atheism and faith. This is a vital strength of the work. For those of us who are Christians, Anglicans, this approach to the debate is helpful. It can be confronting and challenging, but it is not alienating. For the discussion here does not denigrate or diminish, but respects and affirms each position. With gentle humorous intimacy Graeme complains about the junk Jonathan has left in his garage. We all leave junk in our parent’s garage (mind you, much of it given to us by them), things once valued and reluctant to part with. Part of individuation is clearing out this junk. But not only do we inherit from our parents, we give back something, or leave something of ourselves with them when we move out. For here is the place of memory, connection, as well as letting go and the subsequent coming of a new mutuality.

Reading this book is like having the privilege of eavesdropping on a father-son conversation as they sit together in the garage of the heart and speak frankly and openly with each other. There’s a sense that past storms of conflict have died down. Like two well-experienced strategists over a chessboard they can enjoy each other’s movements of thought. Not that atheism and faith is a game, or that either person is any less passionate. But depicted here is not a contest of wills that seek a winner. Here, in the garage of the heart, checkmate has become irrelevant.

Jonathan is a ‘convinced atheist.’ He believes that ‘nothing exists beyond the known universe.’ For him, scientific method and rational argument are the best devices we have to understand the universe. God is ‘a human idea or concept and nothing more.’ Mystery has a place, but its place does not lie with faith. There are atheists in the public domain who, because of the polemical, vehement and dogmatic expression of their views, give the position of atheism a bad name.  Such an attitude can also be said of some Christians. Just as there are atheists I avoid because there is a sense that they are certain to a point of closed mindedness, so too there are Christians who would have us sent to hell for questioning belief. But in this book, this is not the case on either side.  Jonathan admits that ‘perhaps (his) atheism is based on self-deception’ and so remains ‘open to an authentic encounter with the divine.’ It doesn’t happen in the course of this book. Graeme, whose life’s investment for over fifty years has been the church and ‘keeping the rumour of God alive,’ admits that being open to Jonathan’s atheism has presented him with uncomfortable challenges and the re-examination of his own faith.

So, rather than the father-son relationship being one that devolves into personal grievances or aimless tussling, the work is carefully designed to continually open up the conversation. It reads like a Socratic dialogue.  And this is a dialogue that not only takes place between Graeme and Jonathan, but also invites response from the reader. Though a slender book, 130 pages, it’s a slow read because the reader’s mind continually engages with the questions each author brings forth.  The work is divided into eight chapters, each focusing on a particular area of difference between the position of atheists and that of Christians: how we came into existence, random suffering, importance of the Bible, meaning of the Resurrection, the place of morality and the human search for meaning. The content is challenging on both sides. For me it is too condensed. On many topics, as both Graeme and Jonathan would know, much more can be said.  For example, in the discussion on ‘suffering’, a distinction needs to be drawn between consequent human suffering from actions of evil, and that suffering experienced from tragic accidents or natural disasters. There are many different types of suffering - each with its own nuanced implications. So these chapters, challenging and thought-provoking as they are, become the seeds for a more indepth discussion. And the reader is invited not only to hear their dialogue, but to be a participant in an ongoing discussion.

In this work, faith and doubt become like two sides of the one coin. In Leaving Alexandria Richard Holloway speaks about the perils of certainty in religion and of ‘religious overconfidence.’  For him ‘authority does not prove, it pronounces, rules rather than reasons, issues fatwas.  It refuses to negotiate.’ Graeme thanks Jonathan in the epilogue for keeping him honest in his faith, from stopping him from thinking that he has preserved him from ‘pretentiously thinking that (he has) captured God with (his) theology.’ As a bishop, the desire to box God in would be all too easy. Many Anglican parents I know who have been strong opponents of gay rights or women clergy, have subsequently come to change their thinking after their child has ‘come out’ or entered ministry. Sometimes it’s only through an intimate filial relationship that true listening begins to take place. Not that Graeme is in danger here of becoming an atheist, but such a mindful dialogue veers him away from becoming removed from the realities of life around him.  And such a dynamic, open conversation confronting matters so close to his vision of life subsequently keeps him engaged with the wider community of faith that he also moves in. Paradoxically, this dialogue links Graeme in closer to his own Christian community because it deepens his humanity. Faith is something never to be taken for granted. It always needs sharpening, always prayer. And true faith is never that which is yielded in the manner of fatwas, the turning of knowledge into ammunition. 

As an Anglican, I know that reason is one of the three legs on that stool of our faith. But reason alone will never give you faith. As I read it, Jonathan in his head may never think he has faith, that he is a confirmed atheist, but the love and openness we witness in the heart of his words in this book reveal to me that he abounds in faith. As we read in the 14^th century work, The Cloud of Unknowing:

Every rational creature has the power of knowing and the power of loving.  Our Creator endows us with both, but God will forever remain incomprehensible to the knowing power.  Through loving power, however, each of us may know God.  Love is everlasting and miraculous.