How To Be An Agnostic
and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are
struggling to make good.’
That Sunday, I refl ected upon the fi rst time I celebrated the
Mass myself, two and a half years earlier. Then was a time of
optimism, when my hope was as strong as the incense that
hung in the air; when my faith mirrored that of the people.
I had entertained intellectual doubts about Christianity at theo-
logical college. However, once ordained, at least at fi rst, wor-
rying over the literal veracity of this or that doctrine seemed
a distraction from the certainty of the mystery they tried to
express: God is love. We could sing because our future, and the
world’s, was destined to be caught up in that divine and con-
stant care.
But it turned out that that Sunday was my last. For the next
one was very different. I did not ring the Angelus or lay out the
vestments. I was 200 miles away, in Bath, staying with friends,
having left the church. I felt free. I felt that, perhaps for the
fi rst time, I had made a decision that could be called grown-up.
I had converted – to atheism. Now, my notice had been served,
pastoral niceties had been performed, and my new Sunday ritual
was bedding down fast: newspapers, coffee and conversation.
Did I miss St Cuthbert’s? A little but at fi rst only in the way a
teenager misses the presence of parents during their early days
away from home. No more did I need to breathe an atmosphere
thick with theism, I thought. I would rely on the heady drafts
that were human and only human. For the next while a new
certainty framed my life: life is all there is. The challenge is to
live it.
So what had happened in between Billingham and Bath? How
could it be that an individual with a sense of God clear enough
to be ordained moves, within months, to the other side? What
brings about such a change of heart?
The answer, of course, is complex and can be told in many
ways. It was, in part, loneliness on the job. It was, in part, anger
at the conservative attitudes of the church. It was, in part, the
shock of wearing a dog collar and having to be an ambassador