Bishops who don't believe in God

Believe it or not, the bishop's an agnostic

Richard Holloway says the worldwide Anglican Church has made room for "happy clapping" evangelicals, bells-and-smells Catholics, women priests and, in the United States, openly gay clergy and even practitioners of other faiths. So surely, he argues, it can find room for people like him - Christians who don't believe in God.

Holloway, contrary to popular belief, has not left the Episcopal Church, as Scottish Anglicanism is known. He may have taken early retirement as Bishop of Edinburgh but the writer remains an ordained priest and consecrated bishop, who still preaches from the pulpit, performs baptisms and weddings and even presides at communion.

"I had a crisis in 1998 and I was in a kind of internal exile for a bit," he told the Herald yesterday, while en route to Sydney, where he is a speaker at the Sydney Writers' Festival.

"I am in a slightly mellower place with the church right now. I've still got my pilot's licence, so to speak. They didn't take it away from me."

But Holloway has abandoned his belief in - or at least certainty about - God and the afterlife, and is now known as a "Christian agnostic".

"I am not trying to persuade people in the church to adopt my angle," he insists. "I just want space enough to be honest about my own convictions. The congregation I belong to in Edinburgh knows my position and is hospitable enough to include me."

That he still presides at communion - indeed, as recently as three weeks ago - raises the thorny question of how an agnostic, unconvinced about the divinity of Jesus, can consecrate the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ. Surely, it becomes a mere gesture? "It very much depends on the interpretation you put on it," he explains.

"I still very much believe in the community of the church. One of the most fundamental strengths of the church, or any religious community, is that it is still an expression of the human family.

"The eucharist [communion], in my understanding, is the family meal. It is the way you express your identity and membership of that body. I happen to believe that it is a beautiful art form as well."

Holloway - whose most recent book, Between The Monster And The Saint, contemplates the way humans wrestle with their impulses towards evil - sees the church as a valuable institution, as much a social club, welfare organisation and counselling service as a community of believers - or doubters.

He still believes humans should live ethically, as though there is a promise of an afterlife. "What I hold is another great philosopher, [the Spaniard, Miguel de Unamuno], who said, 'Man is perishing, that may be, but if it is nothingness that await us, let us perish resisting and let us so live that it will be an unjust fate.' I want people to live as though life had eternal meaning. Even if you don't believe in a God of unconditional love, choose to live as though there were."

Richard Holloway will speak at the Sydney Writers' Festival tomorrow, Friday and Sunday. See swf.org.au.