Religion
12/9/09: This is the page where it’s possible to turn people right on or right off with a simple sentence, so here we go – I’m a Christian. I could even put born-again in front of the C word, but that adjective conjures up too many mistaken impressions to be safe with.
I went on an Arvon Foundation writers’ course where I met Jim Crace, the award-winning writer, who had just written Quarantine. I was surprised to find that he was a ‘third generation atheist’. However he wasn’t an evangelical atheist. He’s not like Richard Dawkins or Ludovic Kennedy – arrogant, dismissive of all things religious and certain they have nothing to learn.
I think it’s important to understand why others think as they do. Maybe it helps you to understand yourself too. I think I mainly wrote Going Astray out of a sense of confusion over the antics of certain kinds of Christian. My faith in Christ has often needed too protect itself from the attitudes of other Christians. I have to keep my God a bit separate and unsullied somehow. I’ll drop in a few views on hell and homosexuality sometime.
As much as I can accept many religious viewpoints and am respecting of yours, I find it hard to reconcile this with your view (expressed on the politics page) that Polly Toynbee is OK. As much as I believe in freedom of religon and freedom of expression, there is a line, and Polly Toynbee, for me, is on the wrong side of it.
Otherwise, keep up the good work
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Thankyou, Jenny, for passing a comment on my ‘religious’ views. I don’t like to think of Polly Toynbee as insprirng religious fervour – or any kind of fervour. Sorry she’s on the wrong side of your line. I can’t manage to feel religious hatred for her either. She’s not worth your ire. I stand by ’she’s OK sometimes’. Surely that’s faint enough praise. I’ll get round to some views worthy of a heartfelt response soon.
By the way I don’t even know how to put those little fac