
The death has just been announced of the theologian & philosopher, Don Cupitt, who died on Saturday at the age of 90.
Described by Angela Tilby, Canon Emeritus of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford, as “the epitome of intellectual sophistication: mild-mannered, laid-back, and devastatingly sharp,” he was Vice Principal of Westcott House theological college in Cambridge until 1965 when he was appointed Dean of Emmanuel College and then a Cambridge University lecturer in philosophy of religion.
However, it is for the BBC series ‘The Sea of Faith’ (1984) for which he will be remembered by the majority of British people. The series dealt with the history of Christianity and how it had responded to the challenges of the (then) modern day, such as scientific advances, political atheism and secularisation. From this point onwards Cupitt became regarded as something of a ‘New Wave Believer’ because of an article published in the Radio Times to accompany the series, which aroused considerable controversy.
Father Hilary writes: “In the summer before I went to Oxford to read theology in the mid-1970s, a collection of theological essays ‘The Myth of God Incarnate’, was published, with the aim of introducing a broader public to the findings of theological study over the past 50 years or so. It caused quite a stir among the more conservative element of the church, and huge excitement within the liberal wing. I was particularly delighted to discover that among the contributors were not only some of my new lecturers, but also the principal of our college!
“But one of the best contributions was entitled ‘The Christ of Christendom’, and was written by Don Cupitt and cut to the heart of who Jesus really was. I didn´t meet him until some years later when I became Curate of the University Church in Cambridge, where he would occasionally speak. Despite all the controversy that seemed to follow him, I both liked him as a person and found his honesty about our inheritance of faith hugely engaging. I do not believe we are supposed to take Christian doctrine on board uncritically. Any genuine search for truth has got to be a search for God. Or to quote Don Cupitt, in ‘Above Us Only Sky’, “scientific knowledge is advanced by the systematic criticism and purging of what currently passes for knowledge. So in religion too we need to criticise and expel all the illusory and dysfunctional religious material we have inherited.”
“Great words, although he will probably be better remembered for his quote about Christmas, which he described as “the Disneyfication of Christianity!”
Read the Church Times article, here.