Expeditions into Faith

The artists Gilbert and George have announced their “manifesto”, which made up in brevity for what it lacked in originality and artistic flair.I trust they won’t sue me for copyright infringement if I reproduce it in full here:

“Ban religion. Ban religion. Ban religion”

In the brief slot on Radio 4, the pair explained that religion was an enemy of human freedom, and the presenter made the reasonable point that taking away people’s right to the exercise of their faith was hardly conducive to human freedom either.

But what I would have liked to ask is this: why, in this supposedly secular age, is art still talking about religion? Gilbert and George could have spoken in favour of any number of things, but instead they defined themselves by what they were against, and in the narrowest and most direct way possible.

Art and religion have always been closely linked. For centuries, stories and imagery drawn from Christianity gave Western artists a common cultural language with which to articulate deep human themes. Like all languages it limited what could be expressed as well as facilitating it. But without this framework, there is a Babel of individual voices, each work talking to itself in a language unique to its creator. Perhaps that is one reason why art still finds itself dependent on religion – even if all it has left to offer is a negation.

But the relationship between art and religion goes back far beyond the time of Christ, and is more fundamental than particular images or themes. Painted on the wall of caves, what appear to be symbolic and ritual images are present from the very dawn of visual art. Perhaps it would not be going too far to suggest that man’s first artistic impulse was also his first religious impulse.

There have certainly been attempts to turn art into religion. In the late 19th century, Wagner promoted the idea of “gesamtkunstwerk” – the complete art, art as liturgy, in which a variety of artistic disciplines contribute to give the work fuller meaning and to involve the audience more completely through all their senses. Oscar Wilde and others went one further with the idea of the “aesthetic” life, of life as art.

But does it perhaps make more sense to see religion as a form of art? The Byzantium exhibition, on show at the Royal Academy, shows the visual arts at the very heart of religious life. In “the triumph of orthodoxy”, the veneration of an icon becomes synonymous with true faith in Christ, the “icon of the invisible God”. In orthodox christian theology, we are all made “in the image of God”, and our goal in life is to express as fully and truthfully as possible the message of our creator. In this we bring together all aspects of our life in a complete art, and imitate the example of Christ, the most successful artwork of all time.

***

Gilbert and George are not the only ones who have recently been defining themselves against religion. The sides of London buses are to be emblazoned with adverts reading “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”.

I have no real objection to the posters, although I can’t help feeling the British Secular Society would do its cause more good by donating the money to the Trinitarian Bible Society; Dawkins’ depiction of Christianity as a dangerous hellfire-spouting propaganda machine is much sexier than the reality of soggy two-tone posters.

What makes me sad though is that somebody as clever and successful as Dawkins should define himself ultimately by what he is not. Atheism is not, as some of its opponents like to claim, a faith or a belief system. It does not offer answers to the ‘questions of life’ except for the one question “is there a God?” It is compatible with any number of ethical systems, values, lifestyle choices and personalities. By its very nature, it requires every one of its adherents to work those things out for themselves. Atheism does not and cannot have prophets, priests or saints.

If religion is, as it appears to be, the most important and definitive thing in Prof D’s life, he should go and get himself one. If it isn’t, he should stop worrying and enjoy his life.

For me, "current affairs" usually means the last century, but for once I've managed to be only a few months behind the debate. I've got round to reading ++Rowan's lecture and it reminded me rather of the debate a couple of years ago on the Gospel of Judas - i.e. it would be far more interesting if it actually said what the media claimed it said. In actual fact, the bish didn't propose any particular legal model, the introduction of Sharia law, or anything else; it was purely a theoretical and academic discussion, raising questions more than giving answers.

It's a pity, though, that the media interest in Sharia law led them to overlook more subtle but equally controversial points. Take this one, for example:

"And when courts attempt to do this [judge motives] on the grounds of what is 'generally acceptable' behaviour in a society, they are open, Bradney claims (102-3) to the accusation of undermining the principle of liberal pluralism by denying someone the right to speak in their own voice."

Or this:

"One of the most frequently noted problems in the law in this area is the reluctance of a dominant rights-based philosophy to acknowledge the liberty of conscientious opting-out [...]: the assumption, in rather misleading shorthand, that if a right or liberty is granted there is a corresponding duty upon every individual to 'activate' this whenever called upon."

The Archbishop's argument is that the practical enjoyment of rights conferred by the state doesn't require their general, universal recognition as "human rights". He draws a parallel between the right to an abortion and the right of gay couples to adopt. In the first case, it is accepted that individual doctors can opt out of performing or recommending termination, so long as this doesn't prevent abortion from being readily available to every woman who is entitled to it. On the other hand, all adoption agencies are now required to recognise the right of gay couples to adopt, even though the desired effect (adoptive children being available for eligible gay couples) would still be achieved if the requirement were only placed on publicly funded adoption services. Abortion is seen as a medical issue, so the priority is access to free medical services; but adoption is seen as a gay-rights / equality issue, in which the recognition of the right is as important as the outcome.

You have to admit he has a point. Unfortunately, this is the point at which Dr Williams' nerve fails him. He accepts that religion is not a 'purely private matter', inhabiting a separate space from other types of opinions and identities such as political beliefs, race or social tribe. He could propose a radical model of purposive law in which only the outcome is important, leaving significant space for people to find their own individual way of living within that law. Instead, he chooses the standard 'opt-out' model, in which religious beliefs are treated as a special category and exempted from otherwise general rules.

The problem with the opt-out is that, if it is not to become a free-for-all, there has to be some kind of limit to what people can claim they are doing on religious or 'conscientious' grounds. ++Rowan settles for the standard fudge - religious opt-outs have to be backed up by authority, i.e. the clear requirement of an institutional church or the consensus of scholarly opinion. Paradoxically, individual conscience has to conform to the expectations of society.

It seems to me that the word "conscience" is losing its natural meaning. Naturally, it ought to imply a personal conviction based on compassionate instincts. The concept of "conscientious objection" has always been associated with the Quakers - who reject the idea of authority in religion but were often prepared to suffer ostracism and prison for their refusal to kill. It now appears that a "conscientious" scruple means precisely the opposite of that deeply personal, isolating situation. Instead, it can only have its conscientious status validated if it is based on obedience to authority and required as membership of a (respectable and recognised) group. That traumatic responsibility which used to be the mark of conscience has been abdicated or 'delegated-up' to another.

In so doing it has, arguably, also lost that element of compassion. It was truly sickening to hear representatives of Catholic adoption agencies - good people, undoubtedly, who had tried to help both childless couples and neglected or unwanted children - insisting that their consciences required them to close their agencies and give up their valuable work. In fact, the chances of a gay couple actually approaching a catholic adoption agency are slim. Even if such a couple did approach a Catholic agency, it is only their sexuality which could not be taken into account in deciding whether to place a child with them. Religion, cultural background and opinions can all be taken into account; in fact there may even be an obligation to place a child from a Catholic background with a practising Catholic couple. There was even the option of ignoring the law - not something I would generally recommend, but more principled than the attitude of "play by my rules or I'm taking my ball home".

The people I have sympathy with are the social workers - people on the front line, not in a palace in Rome - who are in the position to truly have personal convictions about what is best for a child, based not on dogma but on compassion and on experience. Social workers must find it difficult turning down perfectly acceptable parents because they don't have the same ethnic or religious background as a certain child, or they fail in some way to fulfil the middle-class ideal of the perfect parent. As far as Rowan Williams is concerned, theirs is a second-class conscience.

Well, I've finally put my money where my mouth is. I've signed up for a week-long trip to Taize. This won't be my first religious-themed trip, but it will be the longest and most intense - not to mention the only one to involve camping. And there will be no escape. Far from being a retreat into private prayer and silence, there will be nothing but a piece of canvas between me and five thousand fully paid-up Christians - from many nations and many churches but all of them under thirty.

From everything I've heard, this should be an incredible spiritual experience. But I have to admit to a certain amount of trepidation. At least fifty per cent of this is the deeply trivial question of where I'm going to plug in my hair dryer. I am a profoundly shallow person, and I'm faintly terrified by the possibility of finding myself surrounded by happy campers who can throw up a tent in two minutes, fit their worldly possessions into a rucksack, and whose love of God is all they need to keep them warm at night. My heathen credentials may be betrayed less by my unorthodox theological opinions than my unsuitable shoes. On the other hand, Taize worship is incredibly moving and hypnotic, and often involves the use of candles and icons - not something I normally associate with the earnest, wholesome type of Christian!

What most intrigues but slightly concerns me is the community's emphasis on "young people". The Taize project itself is in no way new or immature - it is a brave experiment in ecumenical monasticism, born out of the experience of the second world war, and it has been spectacularly successful. Given that people often find it hard enough to get on with other people in their own churches, whom they see once a week on Sundays, the fact that men of different religious traditions are living the religious life together is truly admirable. And, until his death at the age of ninety, it was led by the same man who founded it in the 1940s (Brother Roger, who did not die peacefully in his bed, as a nonogenarian might have the right to expect, but was murdered in full view of his congregation). Nevertheless, the community's website does somewhat give the impression that anyone over thirty is rather past it.

In the case of Taize, I think this emphasis on youth may be a hangover from hippy influences in the 'sixties - a new generation finding free love in chastity and obedience and in the shadow of mediaeval Cluny. Its worship seems to owe more to the idealism and Eastern-inspired mysticism of the Summer of Love than the slick down-with-the-kids trendiness of the modern megachurch. There has obviously been a lapse of architectural taste at some point - its church looks like the misbegotten bastard of a swiss chalet and the Taj Mahal - but on the whole it seems to avoid novelty for novelty's sake.

The same can't be said of all churches, though. There is a worrying pressure on churches to make themselves more modern, more accessible, more youth-centred. The result, in my opinion, can be horribly patronising. Youth pastors wearing jeans as if neither their congregation nor God deserved the same respect they would show to a business colleague; Alpha course posters asking if there's more to life than your mobile phone (well, oddly enough, yes); or the campaign by one church a couple of years ago (as seen on TV) entitled "Church Lite - it's better for you". If somebody offered me Church Lite, I'd wonder why they didn't think I could cope with the real thing.

Worse than that - the aim to be accessible can often have the opposite effect. Margaret Hodge recently complained that the Proms are not sufficiently 'inclusive' or accessible - not because of their price (about that of a cinema ticket) nor because of their location, but presumably because they're full of classical music. Now I write as somebody who finds eighty per cent of classical music impenetrable and I have an attention span of five minutes tops, but it seems to me that it begs the question - what is it that you want people to have access to? It's all very well including everyone, but what are you including them in?

In the world of 'culture', we are in danger of entrenching class distinctions, creating cultural ghettos. If so-called 'high art' - opera, ballet, Shakespeare - is seen as elitist and inaccessible, and children and the general public are no longer introduced to it, then it will be restricted to precisely that 'elite' who go on their own initiative. Young people from backgrounds that aren't associated with 'culture' will grow up feeling that it's 'not for the likes of them'. The drive towards accessibility will lock people out from the very world it is meant to be providing access to.

Perhaps the same is true in the world of faith. In some churches - the churches that don't try to be accessible to "the youth" - there is a real sense that this is something different, something special. It's something worth wearing a hat for, worth looking a bit silly for, worth putting some effort into trying to understand. I'm a young(ish) person from a non-christian background, and those are the churches that I love. But it doesn't surprise me that many people view them with suspicion and feel intimidated. I've heard it said numerous times that certain traditional aspects of worship are "distancing" or "exclusive" - always, of course, from people who don't do it themselves and haven't tried to understand it. If people are always being told that the church is elitist and unwelcoming, is it surprising that they think they won't be welcome?

The premise of Taize is that "young people" will want to spend a week chanting, looking at icons, and talking God - and it appears that they do, in vast numbers. Perhaps the key to making faith accessible to a new generation can be found in a remote field in France and the legacy of a ninety-year-old monk.

Apparently, John Lennon's atheist-marxist anthem "Imagine" is the nation's favourite song. Why? I suppose because it does what many people today would like religion to do - easy answers, cosy cliches and a catchy tune. It gives a very good superficial impression of being profound, and makes people feel good inside, whilst at the same time it is too radical as a manifesto for anyone to be seriously expected to do anything about it themselves. It used to be one of my favourites too, when I was at a predominantly Christian school and still thought of myself as part of a radical minority. But now I think it's just irredeemably banal. Nothing to kill or to die for... nothing to get out of bed for, more like. It's the kind of naive wishful thinking that every thoughtful eighteen-year-old thinks they're the first person to come up with. Religion is regularly explained as/ accused of being a source of comfort for those who cannot bring themselves to face up to the reality of widespread and arbitrary suffering - but it's no wonder that religion isn't up to much nowadays, when even atheism has descended to that level.

In a similar vein, Amnesty recently launched a campaign called "Unsubscribe". The idea was that one could visit a website and "unsubscribe" from torture and human rights abuses. Now, I heard about this campaign because I'm an Amnesty member and support their work, but I didn't visit the website. The reality of suffering is unpleasant but, unlike unwanted marketing, there is no opt-out. You can't resign your membership of the human race. World peace, contrary to the assumption of all Miss World contestants and most world leaders, cannot be ordered on-line to arrive in time for Christmas.

One of the arguments for (at least the monotheist) religions being a comforting delusion is that the state of the world is incompatible with the existence of any almighty and benevolent deity. Surely any believer must be wilfully ignorant of the realities. Some even say that it may have been understandable in past centuries, but it is impossible to believe in a benevolent god having witnessed the events of modern times - two world wars, the holocaust, the millions killed in the USSR, Cambodia, Africa... The whole gamut of man's inhumanity to man over the course of the twentieth century. Well, let's get something straight. War, famine and cruelty are not new. What is new is that we're so suprised by them.

When most of the world's major religions were born, and in most of the times and places where religion is or has been predominant, life has been hard. For most of history, when crops failed people died. Infectious disease was rife. Violence was a way of life. And religion was not a comfort. Perhaps sometimes it made things more explicable, but usually only by piling blame on top of existing misfortune. More often, it has been stressed that the will of God is inscrutable. A favourite theme of mediaeval art was the arbitrariness of death, which comes unannounced and is no respecter of persons.

For most people in history, and for most of the world's population today, death was terrifying because it was so close. For us, unfamiliar with death, it is more than terrifying. It is unspeakable, almost unimaginable. Death is in bad taste. I recently attended the funeral of an elderly gentleman who had passed away peacefully - and I was shocked by the way the crematorium sought to make death neat and palatable. The coffin arrived, already closed, and was placed not in the centre but on a conveyor belt to one side, as if the ceremony was just a pause in the process of tidying-away. After a few, fairly cheerful, hymns, the priest committed the body 'to be cremated' - no mention of flames. And then a prudish curtain, moving with smooth motorised propriety, concealed the coffin from sight and another loud hymn blocked from the mourners' minds and ears the distasteful physical fact of the cremation.

Don't get me wrong - a funeral is for the living more than the dead, and it was clear that the family found the service very appropriate, which is the most important thing. The deceased (how tastless it would have been for me to write 'the dead man'!) had been over ninety, and had I suppose been on the conveyor-belt to his grave for some time. Weeping and wailing and rending of garments would not have been appropriate for what was, after all, the best kind of end any of us can hope for. But I cannot imagine how that crematorium would have coped with the death of a young person, or with a suicide, or even with a surviving widow. Unexpected death is so relatively rare now that we do not know how to react - there is no etiquette for it.

Once upon a time, death and the dead were our constant companions. In graveyards, and even more in the cairns and necropolis sites of the pre-literate world, there is a sense that the dead are an important part of the community and the commemoration of the dead a vital part of what made the naked ape into a human and the group into a society. Just a century ago, every lady who passed by in a black gown and bonnet was a public reminder of the devastation that a death can wreak. Modern death is a private matter - the families take their dead away in a smart little urn and perhaps, if they so wish, leave a little plaque in weather-resistant plastic with a personal message ('reunited' is a particular favourite in this supposedly secular age). "Stop all the clocks" is a favourite poem at funerals, but in practice it is no longer considered the done thing to inflict the atrocity of your bereavement on those who are not directly concerned.

I couldn't help contrasting the restrained, respectable treatment of an actual death (in a Christian family, by the way) with the only requiem mass I've been to - not for an individual but for All Souls. This time, the (empty) coffin was at the centre. And what a coffin! Draped in black velvet and attended by four tall candlesticks - the Catholic church showing that it can do goth chic as well as the Satanists, and did it first. The words of the requiem spoke of torment, of terror, of pleading. This is not the comfort of a cosy afterlife, the tidy compensation for injustices in life, the tying off of loose ends. This is the comfort of stopping all the clocks, of spending an hour looking death in the face and not being ashamed of your grief. Perhaps something similar is offered by the two minutes silence on armistice day - a time when we cannot politely avert our eyes from death.

Whether or not the idea of the afterlife is a comforting one depends on your own viewpoint. But life after death was certainly a very relevant question when one might at any time be a week away from finding out the answer. Although the death rate has remained steadfastly at 100%, death in our own time and place has become much less prevalent and visible. What was once one of Christianity's great selling points is now more of a liability - the vagueness with which the afterlife is described, and its general implausability, are fundamental weaknesses when life is pretty good and most people find it hard even to believe in their own death.

But whilst most of us are pretty ambivalent about immortality, an increasing number long to taste mortality. Sir Edmund Hillary, who died this week, is not remembered for any great achievement in extending or improving our mortal span, but for risking his own life in a delightfully insane demonstration of human willpower and endurance. Whether it's mountain-climbing, parachute jumping, swimming with sharks or spending a week in the jungle, risk for the sheer sake of it is now a popular past-time. There is something fundamental, uniting, even peculiarly life-affirming about mortality. When the prophets wanted to find god, they too went up the mountain, away from everything that humans have made, to confront what made them human. Perhaps what religion can still offer us is not a superfluous life after death, but a reminder of the vulnerability and thankfulness of fragile human life.

I've never much gone in for 'concentrating on what unites us rather than what divides us'. For one thing, I can't see how tolerance and mutual understanding can be based on an unwillingness to face up to difference. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and anyone who assumes that all religions are pretty similar really is likely to end up treading on a few cultural sensitivities. Besides which, some of us don't get to join in with this multifaith group hug, since what people of faith can agree on most easily is that they don't like unbelievers.

However, I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that some day soon I may have to eat my words.

One of the most spiritually moving things I've read recently is a collection of extracts from the Upanishads, the Hindu philosophical and theological texts - translated from Sanskrit to English by a Spaniard, Juan Mascaro. The ideas in these texts, at least as explained by the extraordinary Mr Mascaro, go far beyond the myths and doctrines of Hinduism - they illuminate Christianity too, and perhaps point towards something primal behind all religions.

The first experience I had of Hinduism was through a copy of the Bhagavad Gita given out on the street by the Hare Krishnas (or International Society for Krsna Consciousness), with their own commentary. One thing that really struck me was the sense of trinitarianism in the commentary. There is a transcendent God, Brahman (usually described as the Godhead); an immanent spirit described as the Paramatman (roughly, I think, Universal Soul); and then there is a divine-human or avatar, Krishna, who is described as divine and as the perfect archetype of a human. The International Society for Krsna Consciousness (ISKCON) emphasises a relationship of love and service with Krishna, in the way that Christianity emphasises a relationship with Christ.

Of course, ISKCON is a 20th century religion with many adherents from western countries, so the parallels with Christianity are probably not coincidental. The learned and poetical introduction to the Upanishad collection by Mascaro - practically a spiritual scripture in itself - makes explicit connections with traditionally Western faiths. But in neither case are these interpretations completely imposed from outside.

The focus of these texts from the Upanishads is 'Brahman' (which is not to be confused with Brahma or a Brahmin. Obviously!) This is the true God of Gods - uncreated, transcendent-and-immanent, without size or number. Essentially, this is the same kind of god that Christian theologians have been trying to get their flocks to believe in for the last two millennia, but the Man with the Beard kept getting in the way. The Hindu writers seem to have done much better at beard-avoidance - perhaps because they have so many lesser gods to distract the anthropomorphising tendencies of the faithful - so much so, in fact, that they generally avoid the translation 'God' in favour of 'Godhead'.

The basic concept is that the Atman or individual human soul is identical with Brahman, and true enlightenment or freedom comes about through the realisation of one's own identity with the universe. I had always assumed that the aims of eternal life and freedom from reincarnation were opposite goals. In the latter, life is a rather pointless suffering from which we should wish to escape; in the former, our aim is to live forever in an improved version of our earthly life. On the contrary, the sections of the Upanishads which I've read so far often describe freedom from the cycle of life and death as a form of eternal life. The enlightened one becomes united with Brahman and thus goes 'beyond life and death', becoming one with the eternal. There are distinct similarities with the 'Eastern' (i.e. Greek, Eastern European and Middle Eastern) branches of Christianity, which emphasise the goal of union with God and ultimate 'deification' or participation in the divine. Again, though, Hinduism is braver in going beyond the literal. Some of the Upanishads talk of this transformation or union as taking place during life and 'in the mind', so that eternal life becomes a psychological state. Union with the divine is about realising that you're already there.

The main difference 'eastern' teachings such as Buddhism and Hinduism have from Christianity is that they see the main path to union with the divine as being a detachment from the world and particularly the overcoming of all forms of desire and yearning. Although there's a strong anti-material current in Christianity (and even more so in some of its heterodox offshoots) there's also room for passionate emotions and for social action. And I don't think any Christian writer would go so far as does the Bhagavad Gita, in which the prince is advised that it is not wrong to participate in a civil war against his own relatives, just so long as he concentrates on dedicating the action to Krishna rather than on any material outcome.

What the two approaches seem to have in common, though, is the idea that one can transcend good and evil; that the ultimate holiness is not just 'being very good' but actually being beyond good and evil. The Upanishads talk about the enlightened person going beyond Karma so that the spiritual consequences of their good and evil actions no longer touch them. In a similar way, St Paul describes the Christians as beyond the law. That doesn't mean that Christians should do bad things, but they have been freed from the penalties for sinfulness and the slavery to sin. Mankind, which learned good and evil in the Garden, has now transcended it.

I'd heard mixed reviews of the Alpha course. In its original form, it had a reputation for pushing an uncompromising brand of evangelical christianity which scared off as many people as it attracted. But many churches from across the spectrum have found it a useful resource to adapt to their own needs - now there's even a Catholic Alpha. It's certainly successful, and claims significant numbers of converts. For me, its popularity and methodical approach were the main attractions. Over the last few months, I've been approaching Christianity from a rather unusual angle, and I felt it was time to take a cold hard look at the solid core of Christian teaching. Perhaps Alpha would give more of a structure to my thoughts about Christianity, and act as a useful counterbalance to any warm fuzzy ideas I might have picked up from liberal christian friends.

Now I've seen the Alpha phenomenon at first hand, it's hard to say whether I'm disappointed or pleasantly surprised. From everything I'd heard, I expected the course to be as slick, effective and unimaginative as its marketing - a production-line for transforming fashionably skeptical Young People(TM) into trendy Christians just buzzin' with the Spirit. In fact, it was pretty much like any other Church group. We were a small, friendly group of predominantly women, and I was the only non-Christian there.

On the one hand, it was clear from the outset that these were not the scary biblical fundies I'd expected. There wasn't going to be any hell-fire, any gay-bashing, and certainly no risk of speaking in tongues. One woman even asked with some trepidation if we were "all powerfully believing Christians", and was deeply relieved to find that we weren't. The vicar, leading the session, was an intelligent and compassionate man who actively encouraged "honest doubt". On the other hand, it quickly became apparent that this was unlikely to be the structured taught course in Christian basics I'd been expecting.

In the first part of the session, we watched a videoed lecture by Nicky Gumbel, rector of Holy Trinity Brompton and the creator of Alpha. This was the first time I'd heard this well-known preacher, and he was certainly engaging, with a personal and humorous style. However, I was less impressed with his train of argument. The first concern he addressed was the textual transmission of the New Testament - an interesting academic subject, but not first in the mind of most doubters. He appeared to think that possible changes in the biblical text were the only reason one might doubt the Bible. He didn't address the possibility that the gospels could have been inaccurate from the beginning; nor did he consider the claims of other religions - such as Islam, which can put forward at least as good a case for accurate transmission of its holy book. The rest of the points he made were relevant and interesting - did Jesus claim to be God? Was Jesus insane? Why was the tomb empty? - but there was no time for him to really discuss these questions. Instead, he 'answered' them with biblical passages, as if the case for biblical inerrancy had already been made.

Maybe it was inevitable in half an hour that he would raise more questions than he could answer; perhaps that was the job of the discussion afterwards. But I got the distinct feeling that the creators of Alpha knew they would be preaching to the converted. Consulting my handy green course-book, I saw that the third talk in the series (which usually lasts ten to fifteen weeks) is 'How can I be sure of my faith?' - a question hardly likely to arise in a group of atheists! By the fifteenth week, Gumbel and co. are confidently predicting speaking in tongues and healing through prayer. The posters offer an exploration of 'the meaning of life', but there was nothing in this course to suggest why anyone should look for personal meaning in religion.

Since most of the others were churchgoers to a greater or lesser extent, and most had attended an Alpha course before, we quickly moved on from discussing the questions raised in the video. Nevertheless, the discussion gave me an insight into mainstream anglicanism. Most of the people there were what you might call 'rank and file' Christians - sincere in their faith, but cautious of academic theology and charismatic zeal alike. None of them had unanimously churchgoing families and none denied that they had doubts and 'gaps' in their faith; their faith was something personal and important to them.

My final verdict? If the only thing putting you off Alpha is the fear of forced conversion, find a small church and give it a go - you're just as likely to get a glass of wine and a friendly chat. If you want a thought-provoking course in Christian basics for non-christians, Alpha may be a disappointment. If you're looking for the meaning of life... you're unlikely to find it on a DVD.

In my last post, I said that I'd been challenged to observe one day of Ramadan. I agreed to do a day of fasting near the end of the month, when the days are at their shortest and so the fast is easier. I had no worries about going without food, but it wasn't until the morning of the allotted day (Thursday) that I was finally resolved to go the whole way and give up fluids too. I didn't mention this to my Muslim friend, though, in case I had to go back on it. I normally drink a lot and become very irritable and headachy when dehydrated, so I felt certain I wouldn't be able to last ten minutes without water.

My prediction was very nearly proved correct when I realised, within minutes of getting up, that I had to take my pill and brush my teeth. I'd completely neglected to ask my friend how to cope with this. I managed with about three sips of water. I suspect a strict Muslim would count this as breaking my fast before it had even begun, but it was significantly less than the pint or so I would normally drink before going to work.

From previous experience, I was convinced that I would have a terrible headache and be desparate for a drink by the time I got to work - if I didn't actually collapse by the roadside. But in fact, when I arrived to see half a glass of orange on my desk, I felt absolutely no desire to drink it. I didn't feel any urge to drink or eat all morning. And when chocolates were offered out, I felt completely indifferent towards them - a novel experience for me! Even when I came to break my fast at about 6.45, I felt no urgency about it. I ate a single chocolate biscuit which made me feel completely satisfied (although in the end I decided it was most sensible to eat a proper evening meal anyway).

I can only assume that my lack of appetite or thirst was because I had nothing to drink or eat when I got up. My friend told me that he never gets up before dawn during Ramadan, since a normal breakfast prepares the body to expect food, by stretching the stomach and increasing the metabolism; still, I was amazed at the extent to which my body adapted. It also seemed to help that I had a particular aim and a sense of purpose.

In fact, the fasting seemed at first to have a beneficial effect on me. Free from my habitual constant desire for food and drink, and without my regular caffeine fixes, I felt more focussed and more aware than usual. Even in the evening, I felt very peaceful and relaxed. When I went after work to pick up tickets for a concert, and found there was only one ticket reserved for two of us, I took it with unprecedented equanimity.

There was a down-side, however. In the afternoon, I started to feel very sleepy and less able to concentrate, and had to drink the half-glass of orange to make me feel more alert. I had been playing about on the internet and even closed my eyes for a while, something I would never normally do at work. I can only assume that my sense of equanimity and indifference had gone too far and had started to affect my inhibitions.

I'm not sure it would be healthy or sensible to do it for a whole month, but I was genuinely surprised at the sense of wellbeing it gave me. As the time for breaking the fast came closer, I also felt a sense of fellowship with Muslims, knowing we were thinking about the same thing. Islam so often seems very alien, and it was valuable to be able to bridge that gap.

I've also learned something about the idea of overcoming attachment to the world. I had always assumed that extreme fasting of this kind was some kind of macho-masochism, borne out of a hatred of the world and a desire to punish the body. I was skeptical of the idea that one can or should find peace by overcoming cravings and desires, imagining that it would be a constant struggle and would deprive one of perfectly natural and harmless pleasures. Now I think I can see what attracts some people to this kind of life. The impartiality that I felt towards food was not contempt or aversion or lack of interest; when I ate my chocolate biscuit it was a very real pleasure. But not eating it might well have been equally pleasant.

But enough of the mystical stuff. My next foray into the world of faith will be quite different: Alpha.

Well, I've skipped church this morning because I have a hangover :-( Not a good start. Still, I might as well use the time to add my next post...

Of course, the most obvious form of personal devotion is Prayer. I was brought up with the assumption that prayer was an individual 'conversation' with God, usually personal though sometimes from a book. It always struck me as something extra-pious, rather selfish (please god let me pass this exam, etc.) and generally as something which I would feel very silly doing. When I decided that private devotion was an essential part of my experiment, I steered clear of anything that felt like talking to myself. I decided it was safest to start with meditation, since it's fashionable and free of doctrinal additives, and doesn't involve the P-word. I chose the sanskrit mantra So Ham (or Ham So) meaning "I Am That" - which had interesting judeo-christian resonances as well as expressing (according to wikipedia!) a union with creation. Unfortunately, keeping focused was difficult. It was a surprise to me how many minds I seemed to have - the one that was chanting and breathing, the one that was watching the chanting and breathing and thinking how well I was doing at not thinking, the one that was watching the second one and realising that after all I was thinking about not thinking, the one that had wandered off and was writing a shopping list... I decided I need professional instruction.

In the mean time, I tried the rosary. After all, that involves repetitive words but also thinking and concentrating. It took me a while to find out how to use it, and longer to get over the 'weirded-out' factor of doing something I associated with devout catholic ladies in their mantillas. But there I had the opposite problem: I just had too many things to think about at once. After all, how do you 'meditate on the joyful mystery of the Annunciation'??

One option is to give somebody else the responsibility: use regular structured Offices. From an atheist or indeed a protestant perspective, that seems rather mindless and implies that the prayer is something God needs rather than something that people need. But one thing that Christian writers often emphasise is that one shouldn't get too hung up on 'feeling the right things'. If you don't feel inspired, that doesn't mean you shouldn't pray and see what happens.

I recently spent a couple of days in a monastery. I loved the regular services, with their focused, unhurried, repetitive chanting. I didn't have to concentrate on thinking or on not thinking - just on singing. The words and notes weren't easy at first, but they were a damn sight easier than trying to sing some stodgy Victorian hymn, when you haven't got the music, everyone else in the congregation knows it (or thinks they do) and the organist is playing seventeen different harmonies with the volume turned up to eleven. After a while, you're able to chant without worrying about it, and either give your mind a rest or think about something appropriate.

The most spiritually moving service I've been to was a Taize service, named after the non-denominational monastery of Taize in France. They use songs with a single repeated verse, and often with candles and icons. After a certain number of repetitions your mouth just starts singing automatically and instead of looking forward - thinking about the end of the song or what's happening next - you just accept it as an ongoing state which you could remain in all night. I was thinking about a number of things which were worrying me, and I found that the service gave me space not just to think but to let out my emotions. Perhaps that counts as praying.

But it's not so easy to recreate regular prayer at home. For a start, I couldn't get hold of a book of hours at a reasonable price, and nor could I find any simple plainchant. I was left with the Book of Common Prayer, which might as well start with the words Caution: Do not try this at home! Perhaps the compilers of the book were distrustful of private devotion; certainly the morning and evening prayer need a priest, a church, and half an hour.

I found I enjoyed the psalms. They're often maligned as having a violent and selfish attitude, which they do - but it's refreshing to realise that these elevated texts are actually the voices of lay people from over two thousand years ago, being petulant and self-righteous and demanding, and getting angry with God. It's a reminder of the very immediate, present, practical relationship the writers felt they had with God, and it's encouraging that even the most ignorant and self-serving kind of faith can be made holy.

I also found, after a few weeks, that I started to feel as if I had prayed even if I hadn't. Everyday things began to take on a quality of worship.

On the other hand, that could be just an excuse, because I've very quickly lapsed from saying prayers twice a day. I've begun to see why monks make a profession out of this - you really can't say the morning office with any degree of seriousness whilst waiting for the kettle to boil. I always feel too hurried or too tired to do it justice. It's starting to look as though, if I want to make a go of this prayer-life lark, I may have to make more changes in my life than I thought.

Mortification of the flesh is not really my thing. When my body is in discomfort or pain, it demands my whole attention - it's certainly not an aid to spiritual contemplation. So I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed a bit of fasting.

My only serious experience of fasting was one Lent, when my sister and I decided to become vegan for a while. I did a bit of research on the history of Lenten fasting, and found that originally Christian fasting was very similar to the Muslim Ramadan - they didn't eat anything during the day, but could have one meal of any kind of food in the evening. Over time, the one meal got earlier and earlier, but more types of food were restricted: no meat, eggs, dairy, alcohol or olive oil. Partly it was to do with the idea that animal products are 'carnal'; partly it was simply that they were luxuries, and often in short supply during Lent anyway.

I didn't want to do anything extreme, which could have a negative effect on my health, my ability to work, or my relationship with my family, so we just restricted the types of food but without reducing the number of meals. She became properly vegan, as she was veggie already; I also ate some fish, in line with christian fasting practice. Luckily, chocolate hadn't been discovered by Christians by the time they wrote the rules :-)

I've never been able to stick to a diet in my life, but I found that the hard-and-fast rules and the fixed length of time worked well for me - we had fun trying out peculiar recipes (chocolate cake made with vinegar, anyone?) and I lost two inches off my waist. More surprisingly, I found that it did have what you might call a 'spiritual' effect. Now, I certainly didn't starve myself - we're not talking here about some kind of religious experience involving light-headedness brought on by lack of food. But I did find that I was thinking far more about what I ate, and appreciating it more. I used to crave good food, and I was very disappointed if I couldn't have what I wanted or it wasn't as nice as I'd expected. On the vegan diet, my choice was determined not by what I wanted but by what was available. When choosing food, I found that I really did care more about following the rules than about having exactly what I wanted, and I appreciated it just as much if not more. It reminded me of something a Jewish friend of my sister's said: that it isn't the rules themselves that are important, but that following the rules makes you think about what you're doing and about God.

However, I also learned the importance of fasting with someone else. When I tried the same experiment the next year, I couldn't stick to it, because my husband wasn't fasting. I also found it hard to explain to people why I was doing it, and tended to say that it was to lose weight (which was also true). Once I started thinking of it as 'a diet' and treating it that way, it was much harder to motivate myself. Instead of having absolute, unbreakable rules, I was looking for a reward (a better figure) and that was counterbalanced by other priorities, such as keeping my husband happy with big hunks of meat and cheese! The long-term aim of losing weight always lost out.

It reminds me of something I heard on the radio which was very moving. A chaplain asked an experienced prison guard what things he thought could truly reform an offender. The prison guard replied that there were only two things: religion or the love of a good woman. It's both tragic and rather wonderful that human beings are so often unable to change themselves for their own sake, because they deserve a better life, but are so remarkably able to change for the sake of someone else. If we choose to do something for ourselves, we can always change our minds - but a promise, witnessed by others, stops us from giving up.

UPDATE: A Muslim friend has challenged me to observe part of Ramadan with him. I feel I can't really take this experiment seriously and turn down such a challenge - so watch this space...

I realise that my previous post concentrated rather heavily on Christianity. And that's likely to carry on being the case. But why? It certainly wasn't my initial plan. In fact, it disappoints me that so many of my fellow-atheists define themselves against Christianity to the extent that they don't really consider other religions. Some will 'go easy' on non-Christian religions, because they don't feel they know enough about them to criticise. Some even enlist them as part of their arguments against Christianity - praising the scientific advances of early Islam or the peaceful nature of Buddhism. I certainly planned to be different.

But in practice, sadly, it just isn't possible to give all religions full attention, especially when they're from outside one's own culture. I realised pretty early on that I wasn't getting much sense of the true lived faith of Christianity by reading books and websites - you have to talk to the people and take part in the worship. With other religions, it's that much harder to find a broad range of believers to talk to, or to go to religious services without being stared at.

The sheer number of religions is one of the great barriers to exploring religion at all. If you are a believer, it's likely that your own faith seems sufficiently convincing that you don't feel exploring other options is really a pressing need. But if you were generally unsure about the whole 'religion thing', how would you know where to start?

Many religious people would, I think, be happy for such a person to start by believing there's 'something there', god-wise, even if they didn't immediately pick a religion. At least they would be 'a believer'. But there is so little agreement between (and even within) religions on the definition of God/the gods/the Divine that this is harder than you might think. As soon as you start believing in a god - if your belief means anything more than just assent to the words - you're already believing in one person's god rather than another's. Moreover, it seems rather peculiar to decide that there is a deity without this making any difference to your own life. Unless you end up as a strict Enlightenment-style deist (in which case, it was barely worth the effort) any question of god's existence is also a question of your own relationship to that god - in other words, your religion.

When Pascal came up with his famous wager, he only saw two options: atheism or Catholicism. If you had any inkling at all of the existence of a god, become Catholic. And that's what probably happens with most converts - they start getting interested in religion because they encounter one particular religion and start to be attracted to it or convinced by it. Other religions don't get a look in. But if you are being intellectually honest, if you've started to take seriously the possibility of gods, miracles, afterlives and so-on, as proposed by one religion, you have to at least consider the evidence from other religious groups which make similar claims. Any argument that Religion A may advance for the existence of a divine force is also likely to be evidence for Religion B. It's even been used as an argument for atheism: why are you prepared to believe this about your own religion, when you would ignore similar evidence from another?

You can take the pragmatic approach. The main reason for an atheist to take religions with any degree of seriousness is, arguably, the large number of people who profess one, and the persistence of them through time and accross cultures. On those criteria, you can narrow it down to six or seven 'world religions'. However, that assumes that the main criterion for judging a religion's likelihood of being true is its persuasiveness or popularity - something that many religions would themselves deny. It also assumes that each religion has to be taken 'as a package' and that different religions are mutually exclusive. Whilst I'd say that's generally true, many people would argue that there is some truth in all or many religions, and that the real 'answer' is a mixture. To give a fair hearing to every possible combination of religious beliefs would take a lifetime.

So it's more or less chance and practicality that have determined my concentration on Christianity. But to my surprise, Christianity is so far in my personal Top Two of world religions (matched by hinduism, though I know much less about that). I like it because it's complicated - although that may, of course, be just because I know more about it. Buddhism seems to be offering a personal solution: how to avoid suffering and escape rebirth. Islam says this is how it is and this is what you should do. It's pretty simple. But Christianity tells a story - and if there's a moral to the story, it's that you can't expect it to be easy.