In Your Loving is Your Knowing: Elizabeth Templeton—Prophet of Our Times

“A wonderful book . . . [Templeton’s] style and material are a very appealing combination of the cerebral and the down-to-earth, full of humor and a seasoning of personal anecdotes.” —Coracle

An anthology of 33 talks, articles, lectures and sermons by one of the most outstanding theologians of her generation. Elizabeth Templeton’s accessible and passionate writing is both refreshing and thought-provoking, exploring ideas that concern us all—life, freedom, forgiveness, death, love, evil, culture and belonging, among many others.

All the pieces dive with apparent effortlessness to the heart of the issues, combining brilliant original scholarship with a warm sensitivity to the difficulties of many people in decoding theology, relating it to their own life and thought.

“[Templeton] was known and appreciated for her freedom of speech and attentiveness to anyone and everything . . . Her interest in the Church’s relationship with the world is what comes out in theses texts.” —Conference of European Churches

“This collection of [Templeton’s] unpublished addresses and writings testifies [that] she brought as much theological acuteness and passion to sermons in local churches as she did to the World Council of Churches Assembly, or the Lambeth Conference . . . Matheson and Hulbert have negotiated their [editorial assignment] sensitively and coherently . . . Readers will find many more valuable nuggets for themselves.” —The Church Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781788851732

Book preview

Illustration

In Your Loving Is Your Knowing

Front cover picture: Since long I expected you

Dag Magne Staurheim, etching,1979

Courtesy of the Student Christian Movement of Norway

The poem (which is inverted in the etching) translates:

Since long

I expected you

like a wind

you came

threw all

stones and fences away

But I

I could not

in spite of my longing

meet you

in your whirling stream

Trembling with loneliness

I will be standing

In Your Loving

Is Your Knowing

Elizabeth Templeton – Prophet of our Times

Edited by Peter Matheson and Alastair Hulbert

illustration

First published in 2019 by

Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © 2019 the Editors and Contributors severally

For a full list of copyrights and permissions, see p. 247.

The Editors and Publisher gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the Drummond Trust towards the publication of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 78885 173 2

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta

For Douglas, Kirsten, Alan and Calum Templeton and with grateful thanks to Vivian Baker

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction: Elizabeth Templeton – An Appreciation by Peter Matheson

Part 1   Christ and Culture

Introduction by Richard Holloway

1. Theology and Experience

2. Don’t Shut Out the World!

3. Worldly Ministry

4. Becoming and Belonging

5. Angels in the Trees? A Theology for Today

6. Are the Christians Still Among the Prophets?

Part 2   Making Sense of Theology

Introduction by Charlotte Methuen

1. What Is the Church’s Task in Apologetics?

2. Theology as a Tool for Transformation

3. Contemporary Trends in Theology

4. Gifted Knowing

5. Dealing with the Dark Side: The Problem of Evil

6. Critique of the Reformed Position on the Problem of Evil

Part 3   The Common Life

Introduction by Tim Duffy

1. Scottish Parliament: Time for Reflection

2. Towards the Realisation of Common Life

3. Self and Word

4. Intellectuals Between Power and Resignation

5. The Churches’ Mission in a Secularised Europe

Part 4   Ecumenism

Introduction by Alastair Hulbert

1. From Canberra to Jerusalem

2. The Church’s Task in Reconciliation

3. For It Was Not the Season for Figs

4. Identity and Authority in the Anglican Communion

5. We Still Have No Small Distance to Go

6. The Stillness of the Heart

Part 5   Living, Loving and Dying

Introduction by Lesley Orr

1. Sexuality and Marriage

2. Nature, Nurture and Grace

3. God the Phoenix

4. Thought for the Day

5. Bereavement, Sexuality and Spirituality

Part 6   On Being the Church

Introduction and Epilogue by Rowan Williams

1. You Cannot Know What You Do Not Love

2. The Unity We Seek

3. The Ritual Dimension of Faith

4. The Weakness We Are Learning

5. The Word of God

Contributors

Acknowledgements

Index

List of Illustrations

Elizabeth and her brother Peter on holiday.

As a pupil at Hutchesons’ Girls’ Grammar School in Glasgow.

Meeting the Duke of Edinburgh at the opening of the English Speaking Union Debating Society in Edinburgh.

Elizabeth Anne McLaren, as she was then, at her graduation at Glasgow University, 1967.

Meeting the Pope as part of a British Council of Churches delegation to the Vatican in April 1983.

With members of the British Council of Churches delegation and Pope John Paul II.

Douglas and Elizabeth with Kirsten and Alan on the beach at Southend, Mull of Kintyre.

Elizabeth with Kirsten, Alan and Calum and their friend Catherine Hepburn in 1984.

Elizabeth and her friend Catriona Matheson from Dunedin, New Zealand.

Elizabeth and Douglas with Alan at his graduation from Aberystwyth University, July 2003.

Elizabeth and Douglas with their friend Ute Fleming and her two children, and their dog Donald.

Elizabeth was active in the charity Missing People after the disappearance of Alan in 2006.

The Promise conference, at which Elizabeth delivered the address, Angels in the Trees? A Theology for Today.

With participants of one of the two very successful International Theological Summer Schools at Scottish Churches House.

The Interim Management Group of Scottish Churches House in 2005.

Elizabeth and Donald Smith, Director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh.

On holiday on the Isle of Gigha.

With friends Heinke and Peter Matheson during a visit to New Zealand in 1991.

Elizabeth and Douglas outside their house at Milton of Pitgur, near Pitlochry.

Elizabeth Templeton.

‘My whole vision of theology is a convivial, energising conversation, engaging every aspect of the self, and open to every partner from any quarter. That it is so often experienced, inside and outside the Church, as a dry, remote, eccentric and restrictive discipline is tragic and needs remedy!’

– Elizabeth Templeton

Preface

Not long after Elizabeth Templeton died in April 2015, a round-table conversation was organised by the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at New College, Edinburgh, to remember her, review her life and work, and suggest what might be a fitting way to keep her vision and insight alive for succeeding generations of students. Her involvement in the fields of theology, Church, education, broadcasting, ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue, as well as elements of her life story, were the themes discussed. Rather than seeking someone to write a biography of her, it was agreed that an anthology of her talks, addresses and sermons would be more appropriate and useful. An editorial group was appointed to carry forward this intention, composed of Alison Elliot, Richard Holloway, Alastair Hulbert, Lesley Orr and Donald Smith.

However, without the extraordinary perseverance and imagination of Elizabeth’s friend Vivian Baker, who gathered together over a hundred scattered papers – lectures, talks, sermons, addresses, meditations – this book would never have appeared. Many of them had to be transcribed from Elizabeth’s handwriting, and this was graciously done by Alison Elliot, Sheilagh Kesting and Johnston McKay. The editorial group agreed to invite Peter Matheson, an old friend of Elizabeth’s and a former lecturer at New College, now Professor Emeritus of Church History in Dunedin, New Zealand, to select and edit the texts and write an introduction. In this he was helped by his wife Heinke, for many years a close friend and confidante of Elizabeth’s. Peter’s edit allows for some overlap in the texts, given the wide variety of audiences and occasions represented by the addressees. Gendered language is left as in the original context. The language also reflects the times in which the pieces were written. Incidental comments which are no longer relevant have been edited out.

Alastair Hulbert ensured e-mail communication between Peter and Heinke and the editorial group in Edinburgh. Elizabeth’s brother, Peter McLaren, contributed much-appreciated support for the book project, including biographical information and photographs of Elizabeth, while Richard Nicodème of Creative Context lent his artistic and graphic skills to develop the imagery of the book.

Warm thanks are due to the Drummond Trust, 3 Pitt Terrace, Stirling, for its generous financial assistance in publishing the book. Thanks too to Ann Crawford and her colleagues at Birlinn Limited who were keen to publish it.

The book’s contents are divided into six thematic parts, with each part being introduced by a member of the editorial group to provide context and commentary. The group was joined by three other contributors: Tim Duffy, Charlotte Methuen and Rowan Williams.

Thanks go to all these good people and organisations who have contributed to making In Your Loving Is Your Knowing a challenging memorial to Elizabeth Templeton. The New College Library will maintain an archive of her work. Kirsten and Calum Templeton, Elizabeth and Douglas’s two surviving children, have asked that royalties from the sale of the book be given to the charity Missing People, in memory of their brother Alan.

Peter Matheson and Alastair Hulbert

Introduction

Elizabeth Templeton – An Appreciation

Peter Matheson

Elizabeth Templeton was a freelance theologian, engaged like Don Quixote in the knight-errantry of the heart. Her being and thought was consistently lived on the edge, symbolised by the remote cottage near Pitlochry which was her home in later years. She was never captured by the establishment; rather, she captivated it. Her life was rich in contradictions. Although in demand as a speaker on the world scene, she was probably most at home in informal local gatherings. Often impatient with her own Church, she was chosen to convene a key working party of the Church of Scotland as it struggled for doctrinal coherence on issues of human sexuality. She was Scottish and indisputably Glaswegian, but found attentive listeners in England, Ireland, the continent of Europe, Australia, the USA and elsewhere.

Elizabeth was excited about theology, and committed to the Academy, but her real passion ignited when theology illumined and was fed by the lives of young people and their parents, by poets and professionals, lay people and those alienated from the Church. Again and again in her books, lectures and broadcasts, one is reminded that here a busy mother is speaking, a genial host at hastily improvised meals, a wife, a special friend, the compassionate carer for an apparently endless succession of the lost and the lame.

Post-war Scotland with its rationing was not the easiest of places in which to grow up, especially as her father, Peter McLaren, had been in Barlinnie Prison for the whole of 1942 and more briefly later because of his unflinching pacifism. Yet her brother Peter, three years younger than Elizabeth, comments: ‘As children we had a very secure existence. We weren’t rich, materially, but we never had a sense of being deprived of anything. We lived in Govan on the edge of one of Glasgow’s poorest districts, but in a big, old, end terrace house, with a front and back garden. There was no TV, no car, and the phone arrived relatively late on. Books mattered, doing well at school brought praise. . .’

Elizabeth’s mother, also Elizabeth, a primary-school teacher, ran house and family while holding down a full-time job. Her father, a clerk in the Water Department, went to university as a mature student, and after a teacher-training year became a secondary-school teacher.

The family would go on trips by tramcar or bus to places round Glasgow – the Red Smiddy at Inchinnan, the Fossil Grove in Victoria Park, Hogganfield Loch (‘You can see Barlinnie from here,’ her dad would say), the art galleries, criss-crossing the Clyde from Govan to Finnieston on one of the little passenger ferries that took shipyard workers or football fans north or south of the river. Walking under the Clyde by the Finnieston Tunnel was a special thrill!

They played in the street, ‘heidie’ football or chases, swapped scraps and football cards, played ball against the Co-op wall, wore Clarks sandals in the summer. Saturday meant a walk through Bellahouston Park, a visit to Ibrox for the last twenty minutes of a Rangers match when the gates opened, a trip to Mosspark Library: there were no distractions to dilute the thirst for reading. Summer holidays were spent in boarding house or rented flat, doon the watter – in Rothesay, Arran, St Monans, Nairn, Grange over Sands, St Anne’s on Sea.

Anne (Elizabeth’s name at home) sat the entrance exam for Hutchesons’ Girls’ Grammar School and started her secondary education at this selective, fee-paying institution. It may seem surprising that a lifelong socialist like her father should send his children there. Yet it was what you did at that time. She embraced the competitive and academic culture of Hutchesons’, earning the accolade of school Dux, joined the English-Speaking Union Debating Society and won competitions with Katie Thomson, her lifelong friend. She was invited to the ESU headquarters when it was opened by the Duke of Edinburgh. The Scotsman featured a photograph of her in school uniform, complete with hat, under the headline: ‘Talkative Schoolgirl Meets Duke’. She won the Britain-wide competition organised by Time and Tide: John o’ London’s magazine with the essay ‘The Strength to Dream’.

Their father never talked about his experiences in Barlinnie Prison, but every week he sent out a dozen copies of Peace News. This involved careful folding of the paper into its printed paper wrapper, and a trip to the nearest post office, where a long tail of 1d and ½d stamps was obtained from the stamp machine. Her parents visited several churches until they found one where the minister – the Rev. Gilbert George – chimed in with their own political pacifist beliefs. Her father was the Sunday School Superintendent there – it was a conventional orthodox religious upbringing. Elizabeth even succumbed for a short time to zealous pietistic pressures.

At Glasgow University, poetry entered her bloodstream. She relished the renaissance of Scottish literature, and wrote poems herself, though none, alas, have survived. Later in life, her talks were invariably enlivened by poetry and by the fables she composed. Favourite poets were Iain Crichton Smith, Edwin Muir, Norman MacCaig, e e cummings, T.S. Eliot, Zbigniew Herbert, W.H. Auden, R.S. Thomas, Philip Larkin, John O’Donoghue. She was to become an avid reader of Iris Murdoch and Graham Greene, but also of Australasian writers such as Janet Frame and Patrick White.

Literature walked hand in hand, however, with philosophy. She put herself through the mangle of the logical positivism which then dominated the academic scene. Little if anything of the gentle piety of her childhood and adolescence survived. Her lecturers’ critique of religious language and thought hit home. There emerged, however, a lasting delight in cleanness of thought, an intellectual gutsiness, whatever it cost. Professor Keith Ward, then lecturer in logic at Glasgow, recalled that she was the brightest student he had ever taught.

The clash of head and heart led her to New College, Edinburgh University, not so much with any thoughts of becoming a minister, though she took the pastoral courses, but to see if faith, as represented by a strong and diverse theological faculty, could answer the questions which had become her own. While enjoying her time there, major questions remained unresolved: what was meant by discourse about God, what to make of the reality of evil, of prayer, worship, the Church? Despite her doubts, she was appointed to be a lecturer in the philosophy of religion at New College, her sharp and adventurous intellect obvious to all. She shone as a teacher. As Lesley Orr, who was one of her students, has commented, ‘Her inspirational dialogical teaching, fearless encouragement to explore, and gift for friendship had a deep and enduring impact on a generation of students.’

A turning point in her personal religious quest was the deepening engagement with Greek Orthodox thought, mediated to her by a new colleague, John Zizioulas, as is obvious from the frequent references to him in the papers in this book. She also gathered around her a group of radical friends, who explored different patterns of Church life. Contacts with Eastern Europe, and the exploration of Christian–Marxist dialogue, became important for her.

One story from the early 1970s illustrates her confidence that risk-taking could puncture the doublespeak which followed the collapse of the Prague Spring. Her friend, Vlastá Nosova, worked as a secretary in the offices of the Church of Czech Brethren. ‘With typical Czech passive resistance, the office staff worked out a plan to show their hostility to the regime. Each year, one member would be deputed to take the inspectors round. The rest would sit at their desks or typewriters, stonily working. Not a smile, not an eye contact, not a word of greeting. The year it was Vlastá’s turn, after half an hour, she could bear it no longer. How can you do this job, where everybody hates you? she asked. At that, one of the men burst into tears, and the two of them began to describe what it was like to work as quislings for the central bureaucracy. And in the end, the whole office was talking with them, exploring how to live with the pain of occupation.’

In 1977, Elizabeth married a colleague, the New Testament lecturer Douglas Templeton, after a whirlwind romance which took her out to his beloved Greece to rescue him from a hospital where he had been incarcerated. Douglas was highly cultured and erudite, with a deep love for the classics. He was generous to a fault, and, like Elizabeth, deeply devoted to his students. Having done his national service in the Black Watch, his everyday dress was a kilt of the Black Watch tartan. An eccentric traditionalist, he was in many ways a rebel against the mores of his affluent Glasgow background. But he was not a feminist – and Elizabeth, who wasn’t either, carried the main load of family responsibilities which came with marriage. They shared a love of the wilderness, of art, music, literature, of friendship and hospitality and good food. Yet evident too were their differing social and political backgrounds, disparate approaches to child-rearing and education, to lifestyle and work routines. Elizabeth left New College in 1980 to care for the growing family; and, though later on she applied for several jobs, including at least one professorship in a Scottish university, she remained freelance all her life.

They had three bright and beloved children, Kirsten, Alan and Calum, who, like many others of such gifted and driven parents, bore the weight of their parents’ professional commitments. For years, Elizabeth managed to juggle an often chaotic domestic life with a growing international reputation as a teacher, author and speaker. Frequently she would be up at the crack of dawn to meet a deadline for a book or lecture. Somewhere, honest with herself, she describes Christian faith as being about the unmanageable.

In the 1970s, she was the secretary of the General Assembly’s so-called Committee of Forty, set up to make recommendations for the reshaping of the Church of Scotland. Along with the committee’s convener, Professor Robin Barbour, the two made a formidable combination. They had the satisfaction of seeing their radical proposals for the reform of the Church approved in 1978, but little came of them in the end.

Her first book, The Nature of Belief (1976), one of a series to introduce students, senior pupils and the general public to major issues in religious studies, was partly in dialogue form, and peppered with quotations from poets and novelists. All manner of questions about the evidence for, or indeed the possibility of, belief were opened up by her earthy, engaging manner. A flurry of books followed in the 1990s. They included God’s February (1991), a biography of Archie Craig, pacifist and ecumenist, and a rather saintly Moderator of the Church of Scotland, though no friend of affectation, as seen in his comment on ‘Barthian cockerels crowing in front of every theological barn door’. Elizabeth admired his rare quality of humanity.

Travelling with Resilience (2002), her edition of essays for Alastair Haggart, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, offered an empathetic, differentiated picture of this determined man who, perhaps more than any other, transformed his Church. God, Haggart would insist, created us with a brain as well as a nose. He was utterly committed to the alliance of faith and scholarship.

Elizabeth was greatly influenced by these male ‘fathers in God’: Gilbert George, her old parish minister; the future Moderators, Robin Barbour and Archie Craig; Bishop Alastair Haggart; and John Zizioulas. In 1993, however, she edited A Woman’s Place: Women and Work, which opened up the issues of sexism in the workforce, and brought together an intriguing group of women involved in industry and in the churches. Also in 1993 came her most allusive work, The Strangeness of God, a passionate call to dig deeper, to go behind our often trite language about God to the actual allegiances and longings which make us what we are.

She was making a name for herself by 1980 as a lively and provocative speaker, a public intellectual. She toured the world like a concert pianist, addressing the Lambeth Conference of Bishops, the Faith and Order Conference of the World Council of Churches (WCC), and clergy refresher courses in Ireland, the USA and Australia. She prepared these addresses and courses meticulously, often sending off material well in advance. It was a costly business in time and effort. Her energy was prodigious. She was also, however, a skilled networker. Without the willing support of key figures within the Church of Scotland and the Scottish Episcopal Church, none of this would have been possible.

At the heart of her concerns, however, was the promotion of lay access to, and appreciation of, theology. This extended from editing Trust, the newsletter of the SCM Press, to founding Threshold, a drop-in centre for theological discussion in Tollcross, Edinburgh. On the face of it, this was a totally unrealistic undertaking, but it was carefully planned, and it really took off. Ron Beasley, a friend and leading layman, contributed his organisational skills, and many others were involved as well.

Another grassroots educational venture close to her heart was the Adult Learning Project (ALP), the initiative of community workers like Stan Reeves and Gerri Kirkwood in the Gorgie/Dalry area of Edinburgh. Their work with groups of people at local, national and international levels was influenced by the pedagogy of the Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire. From systematic studies of social issues, the ALP groups would determine a programme of learning and action in the community. In this very secular setting, Elizabeth’s input on the history – and development of the theology – of Protestantism in its particular Scottish context proved very insightful for those trying to make sense of Scotland’s culture. Her ability to clarify, in simple language, these powerful cultural forces was always valued in the project.

She tutored the postgraduate work of an inmate in one of Her Majesty’s prisons. She was in demand as a religious broadcaster. Aware of the challenges facing religious educators in schools in the new pluralist Britain, she was also drawn increasingly into the area of inter-faith dialogue. She threw herself into the promotion of Scottish Churches House in Dunblane, and the brave ecumenical experiment, Action of Churches Together in Scotland. The Churches’ attitudes to sexuality was another area on which she began to gather expertise. The controversies around gender issues in the Churches led her from convening a working group of the Church of Scotland’s Panel on Doctrine on sexuality into unexpected directions, including a growing solidarity with LGBT groups. She had a gift for helping quite traditional people to open up. In her view, everything was ultimately determined by how personhood and indeed the nature of God was perceived, and she sought to bring theological perspectives to bear on the controversies.

In 2006, Elizabeth and Douglas’s son Alan disappeared. He was twenty-five. It was not until 2012 that his remains were found. Throughout that dreadful time of searching and waiting, there had always been the hope that he might be alive, and Elizabeth played a leading role in the charity Missing People. She continued to preach in her local church, and was active in the work of Scottish Churches House, but much of the old vibrancy had gone. The stigmata of Alan’s disappearance and death were deep in her and Douglas’s souls. Living, simply living, had become an often overwhelming task; something was lost that could never be found. Both theologians, biblical scholars, in the grief and terror of Alan’s loss, she and Douglas would sit by a lighted candle in the window of their house at Milton of Pitgur, and read together from the Psalms. A supportive circle of friends and family became increasingly important to them, and nothing gave her greater joy than the arrival of Judith, a wonderful granddaughter.

It would be a mistake, however, to explain her gradual withdrawal from the larger scene by this personal tragedy. Other factors were in play. She was now in her late sixties. Politically and ecclesiastically, it was a very difficult time. Her father would have despaired of what had become of the Labour Party. The high hopes of the ecumenical movement were increasingly a thing of the past, and it was a particularly savage blow for her when Scottish Churches House was closed in 2011. She had fought for it tooth and nail. It had been a beacon for the universal appeal of the Gospel and for a renewal of the life of the Churches. So, her last years, and then the long months in hospital after the diagnosis of liver cancer, were very difficult.

At her funeral in Dunkeld Cathedral in April 2015, it was as if all Scotland mourned. As Professor Stewart Brown expressed it: ‘She was one of Scotland’s leading theologians – and a woman of great compassion and humanity, who worked tirelessly to make Scotland, Britain and indeed the world more open, inclusive and caring.’ He recalled, too, at the dedication of the Elizabeth Templeton Lecture Theatre at New College in October 2016, that with her political concern for the disadvantaged and marginalised went a personal practice of generosity and hospitality. ‘From the 1970s until the late 1990s, she and her husband Douglas hosted a weekly informal at home in their Edinburgh flat, inviting all New College students, spouses and friends to drop by for conversation over a cup of coffee or a dram. For many students, especially students from overseas, these gatherings helped to make Edinburgh a home.’

Freedom, community and inclusiveness as the pointers to the boundless generosity of God were her bywords. Over four decades, her intellectual courage and perceptiveness had opened up theology in a new way, and not only for lay people. She had asked many of the right questions about the future shape of the Church and offered suggestions about the way ahead. If the projects she was involved in, such as Threshold, or indeed Scottish Churches House, did not outlast her, the signals they sent out remain as relevant as ever. It seems altogether fitting that a lecture room in New College has been named after her, and will perpetuate her memory.

PART 1

CHRIST AND CULTURE

Introduction

Richard Holloway

For readers unfamiliar with the technical language of Christian theology, the title of this section requires some explanation. Behind the shorthand phrase Christ and Culture lie centuries of conflict and disagreement, so I’d better begin by trying to define the terms.

Christ is the Greek version of the Hebrew word messiah, meaning ‘anointed one’. In the last days, according to the Jewish Bible, God would send his Christ to establish a reign of justice and peace on earth. And, according to the Christian Bible, a first-century Jew from Nazareth called Jesus was the Messiah so promised, hence the name by which he is known in history, Jesus Christ or Jesus the Messiah. But theological development did not stop with the identification of Jesus as the Messiah. It went on to define him as the incarnate presence of God in history, now represented on earth by the Christian Church. So, the term ‘Christ’ in the phrase Christ and Culture carries a hefty punch. It is shorthand for the mind and will of God as revealed or made known to the world through the agency of the Christian Church.

The opposing pole in our phrase, the term culture, is a more slippery word. The most useful definition I know is that it is any widespread behaviour transmitted by learning rather than acquired by inheritance. But even that definition needs further explanation. Speaking very broadly, culture is what distinguishes humans from the other animals on the planet. Like them, we acquire much by inheritance, including the natural instincts that drive our behaviour. The difference between us and them is that we are not entirely programmed by these drives. We have more self-conscious agency than they do, so we are not completely dominated by instinct. This enables us to transcend nature and make our own mark on the world. The shorthand term for this agency and the way it changes the world is culture. It includes everything that is transmitted by human learning, such as how to build bridges and fly aeroplanes and compose symphonies and write theological essays. It would be no exaggeration to say that culture includes everything that is distinctively or uniquely human, everything we have invented, including religion – though, as we’ll see, there are versions of religion