How To Be An Agnostic
be used there. That is fair comment. But my diffi culty is not so
much with the Christian nature of the language. After all, there
is no such thing as generic religious language: it always origi-
nates in specifi c traditions that inevitably have a certain hue.
This is why agnosticism and atheism are recognisably related to
the religious systems that they are struggling with or objecting
to. I don’t seek a perennial philosophy, so generic as to have lost
any particularity and colour. My diffi culty is more with the tone
of the language; its seemingly unguarded affi rmations.
There are services that are exceptions to this. At the midnight
mass of Christmas the story of the birth and the time of day both
work to put a narrative in the foreground, not statements of
belief. Alternatively, cathedral worship, with its glorious aesthetic,
gains the advantage that the action of the liturgy transcends its
literal content. Might it be that the persistent popularity of these
kinds of service, amid otherwise declining congregations, has
something to do with the way they allow the spiritual search of
the agnostic? (In similar mood, I sometimes wonder whether a
return of older forms of language might do wonders for numbers.
It would be an advantage to hear the wonder of God conveyed in
the poetry of the words themselves.)
A different rejoinder would emphasise the point that reli-
gious language is always part of a tradition. Take the creed. It
is a historic formulary that originated at a particular moment
in the church’s history. Today it should be read as an expres-
sion of the church’s connection with the past and its continuity
over time. That is true. But as a historic formulary, it was specifi -
cally designed to defi ne who was orthodox and unorthodox. It
not only achieved its purpose then but achieves the same effect
today – forcing the agnostic out of their closet. I have also heard
it said that the creed should be read – or even better, sung – as a
hymn of praise. There’s something in that: I remember reciting
it to the melancholy chant of Merbecke in my grandmother’s
church, and that just about conceals its bureaucratic origins.
A fi nal rejoinder would want to correct the perception of reli-
gious language as straightforwardly affi rmative. The fundamental