31 January 2025
By Alison Webster
When I first went up to Cambridge to study theology in 1984, I was in love with a big idea. It came via The Sea of Faith television series, by then halfway through its run, presented by TV star Don Cupitt who died last week. On screen he seemed imposing, impressive, energetic. In real life this was confirmed for me on the first day of term when he swept into Lecture Room One of the Divinity School, short brown gown billowing behind him, full of vigour, welcoming us warmly to the faculty of Theology and Religious Studies.
Supervisions in his rooms at Emmanuel College were simultaneously terrifying and invigorating. He delivered what philosopher and theologian Professor Catherine Pickstock has named “Donologues”, taking his cue from the “little piece” you had been asked to write in advance.
After graduation, Don remained supportive, responding happily and positively to my various invitations to him to speak at conferences and write journal articles. For many years he would send me a complimentary copy of each of his new books as they came out, accompanied by a beautiful postcard – always a butterfly (he was a keen lepidopterist), or a photograph of his wife’s ceramic jugs, just signed, “D x”. His beautiful handwriting was evident even in those two letters.
The “big idea” was that to be a person of faith meant to commit to and immerse oneself in a creative process, “a bit like art”. To relish being human, with all its limitations and possibilities, and to cast off the shackles of the so-called “objective” God, and the correspondence theory of Truth. These were revealed for what they were – the products of ecclesiastical powerplay, designed to corral and control. As theologies of liberation unfolded before me, I understood what he meant.
Now, in our post-human context, our newfound connection with other creatures and the planet gives us a new perspective, and is something of a corrective to Don’s “Only Human” approach, with nothing outside language. But his work is (perhaps paradoxically) foundational and essential to the new ways of “being religious” that our contemporary world demands of us. He was a stellar personality with a solar ethic (“an ethic or lifestyle of all-out religious expression, the best kind of life that one could hope to live,” according to Cupitt) and an insatiable curiosity about the world.
He was a courageous human who faced down inner turmoil and external opprobrium to pursue a faith journey of deep integrity, enabling others to do the same. Cupitt’s own words in his book Impossible Loves (2007) now come into their own: “…we live by letting go and regaining, letting go and regaining, over and over, until the time comes for the final letting go. Which must be done without regret”.
In the same book he declared, “I am stuck in an impossible intellectual love-relationship with an impossible God. And I am not sure that I even want to be cured.”
That’s my kind of priest.
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Alison Webster is a Visiting Scholar at Sarum College.and General Secretary of Modern Church.
More on the life and legacy of Don Cupitt on the University of Chichester website
The only problem with Don Cupitt was that he did not really believe in God. And his disbelief in a version of the correspondence theory of truth is self-refuting. Why should be we believe in his doctrine if it did not correspond with the truth. Further I was amazed that he could remain in the CoE as a clergyman (with stipend) when he had ceased believing in God. Could he properly assent to the creed? Liberalism (of which his was a prime example) has had a dire effect on the CoE and it must account in part for the CoE’s current terrible crisis
Just to say thanks for your wonderful tribute to Don Cupitt.
Really appreciate everything you said about him here.
Like you I was lucky enough to be taught by him when I studied theology from 1992-95.
We believe in plenty of things which are not true. For example, we can see a marvelous film that makes us laugh, cry and gain a new understanding of what it means to be alive, and it being actors in front of a camera saying lines someone has written for them makes no difference at all. Cupitt attempted to save the CoE by taking what he could from what was still functional and making something fresh from it.