Changing Winds of Change: Scrambling with Antillean God-Questions

By Kortright Davis

The people of the Antilles (Caribbean) have historically been surrounded by the rages and surges of changing winds, and the transforming effects of forces and faith-forms of alienating powers. Their struggles to survive in the face of heavily countervailing systems, structures, and strengths have constantly been marked by their determination to rely on their spiritual, cultural, communal, and creative skills and imaginations. These struggles have often driven them to scramble relentlessly with questions of fate, facts, faith, and the future. Where (how) is God in the mix of these Antillean experiences? What meanings do these Antillean winds portend? God-questions abound at home and abroad, with changing winds of fortune and undulating circumstances. This book brings together an anthology of contemporary topics, historical reflections, and theological explorations that will invite readers into an ongoing dialogue towards the rediscovery of the Caribbean (Antillean) sources of light, life, and liberation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228867357

Kortright Davis

Kortright Davis is an Anglican priest who is also Professor of Theology at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC. He has served in many capacities throughout his ministry, having been trained at Codrington College in Barbados. He was born in Antigua, West Indies, and ordained for the Diocese of Antigua (now known as the Diocese of North Eastern Caribbean & Aruba). He was one of the founding executive members of the Caribbean Conference of Churches (CCC), and was the principal coordinator of its inaugural assembly in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973. He holds degrees from the Universities of London, UWI, and Sussex, as well as honorary degrees from the General Theological Seminary, the Virginia Theological Seminary, and the University of the West Indies. He is a former member of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCICII), and the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (IATDC). He is the author of several books, including the widely acclaimed "Emancipation Still Comin'." He is the Rector Emeritus of the Church of the Holy Comforter in the Diocese of Washington, where he served from1986 to 2013. He and his wife Joan reside in Kensington, Maryland, USA.

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Changing Winds of Change

Scrambling with

Antillean God-Questions

Kortright Davis

Changing Winds of Change

Copyright © 2022 by Kortright Davis

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-6736-4 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-6734-0 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-6735-7 (eBook)

This book is dedicated to my Beloved Wife

JOAN IANTHE DAVIS

Whose unwavering love, and unconditional devotion,

and constant companionship have enriched

my efforts, fortified my faith, and

given me immeasurable joy.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter One: Changing Winds – Is It God?

Chapter Two: Winds of Faith: God is a Good Man!

Chapter Three: Slavers’ Winds and Freedom’s Challenges

Chapter Four: Bearers-of-Christ in Caribbean History

Chapter Five: Afro-Christianity: A Caribbean Dilemma

Chapter Six: Pro-creative Tensions for Caribbean Emancipatory Theology

Chapter Seven: From Our Common Ground to the Common Go[o]d

Chapter Eight: Spiritual Challenges for the Antillean (Caribbean) Diaspora

Chapter Nine: The Episcopal Face of Ebony Grace

Chapter Ten: Scrambling with Some Antillean God-Questions

Chapter Eleven: Finding God Again

Chapter Twelve: Let the Scrambling Continue

Appendices

Appendix I: Kortright Davis and his mother Florence Edna Mammie Albertha Clarke

Appendix II: Professor Kortright Davis Meets Pope John Paul II in Palazzola, Italy (1987)

Appendix III: Citation – Honorary Degree (DD) Virginia Theological Seminary (2009)

Appendix IV: Citation – Honorary Degree (LL.D) University of the West Indies at Cave Hill (2010)

Appendix V: Commencement Address, University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Christ Church, Barbados (2010)

Appendix VI: Citation – Faithful Meritorious Cross (Antigua & Barbuda) (2017)

Appendix VII: Retirement Tribute by Sir George Alleyne

Preface

My classes in Geography during my Antigua Grammar (High) School days were generally devoted to the information about the Caribbean islands, the five continents listed at that time, and the vast variety of geological formations, oceanic ebbs and flows, surges and sources. We were given summary descriptions of what natural products were available in the different climatic sections of the globe, and some education about hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes, and volcanoes. We were always thankful that tornadoes, snowfalls, and hailstorms were only heard of as distant ravages of nature that posed absolutely no threat to our climatic comfort and social well-being. We already had other natural calamities to worry about. Our geography lessons did not offer much on the demographics of the Caribbean or of the origin of the names of places—islands, regions, and zones—that marked out the Caribbean as a unique and distinct section of God’s good Earth.

We heard about the Greater and the Lesser Antilles, and we learned about the Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands. I was born in Antigua, one of the Leeward Islands. But these designations had maritime significations that otherwise made little sense to our young and inquiring minds. But, it was the term Antilles that always carried with it some form of mystery. Was it a designation of places, or peoples, or powers, or wind forces, or ocean currents, or even geo-political privileges? What exactly were the Antilles, and where did the name come from? How did we become Antillean peoples?

The Antilles is essentially an archipelago that is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea. They are comprised of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico) and the Lesser Antilles (the Windward Islands, the Leeward Islands, and the Leeward Antilles north of Venezuela). The word, Antilles, was derived from the name Antila, given to some legendary and mysterious lands that were featured on ancient maritime charts prior to the European exploration and colonization of the Americas. Following the exploits of Columbus, the Europeans gave the lands various names such as the Forward Islands, but the term the Sea of the Antilles eventually became a synonym for the Caribbean Sea, being named after the Carib people who were known to be the first inhabitants of the islands.

The term Antilles is nevertheless associated with the landmasses off of the Americas and is often regarded as the sub-region of North America. This is further accentuated by the occasional designation of the Caribbean Sea as the American Lake. Regardless of land formations, (the Lucayan [Bahamas] Archipelago included), the legacies of colonial domination by the European powers, or the diversity of demographic and cultural linkages, the Antilles is to be known as regions where the Antilleans continue to be locked in by the realities of geographical connectivity, geopolitical captivity, and some existential complicity. Caribbean people, then, are cradled and constrained by an Antillean existence, driven by Antillean experiences, and challenged by Antillean explorations—whether material or mystical, sacred or secular, cultural or aspirational.

This volume is therefore an anthology of scrambled writings that are held together by three strands of some Antillean factors. First, there is the strand of the concept of Winds that have always blown from the East to the West, bringing explorers, enslavers, exploiters, invaders, investigators, and investors into the region; and all with so much expansive intensity that the region itself was thereafter termed as the New World.

The second strand is the reality of Change that radically transformed the region into a crucible of conquest and control, an incubator of racism, exploitation and subjugation, and a concourse of colonization and dependency, and more recently, a theater of neo-colonialism masking as sovereignty. Changes have taken place over the centuries at the environmental level, the industrial level, the social level, the personal level, and the religious level.

One is reminded of that famous pronouncement of Maurice Harold Macmillan, a former Prime minister of the United Kingdom, when he stated unequivocally in 1960 that the winds of change were blowing across the African continent: The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. India gained its independence from Britain in 1947 and the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1957. His famous statement was first uttered in Ghana in January 1960, and the following month in South Africa. However, it was the second iteration that gained world-wide attention and became etched in the global memory. Winds of change have continued to blow unabated. With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and the coronation of King Charles III, the meaning of change globally is about to be updated with the further de-monarchization of former colonial realms and territories. The possible reconfiguration of The Commonwealth that was conceived and headed by the British Sovereign may well be on the way.

The third strand is the plurality of God-questions that have accompanied the changing times and circumstances over the centuries in the Antilles. This strand is of crucial Antillean significance because of the military, religious, missionary, mercantile, and expansionist incentives that were attributed to God’s presumed guidance and protection. Papal decrees and some strange and erstwhile claims of moral authority/superiority have also been in the historical mix. How involved was God in colluding with Europe, Africa, and Asia to bring about such radical transformations and dislocations in the Americas and the Antilles? There are undoubtedly some lingering and critical God-questions that need to be scrambled and re-framed, considering the contemporary Caribbean (Antillean) contextual realities of this twenty-first century. All of this accounts for the various reflections of studies and discourses that are chronicled in this book, Changing Winds of Change—Scrambling with Antillean God-questions.

Most of the material in this volume comprises presentations and essays that have been available for various audiences over the years. The opening and closing chapters (1,2,10,11,12), however, have been carefully and prayerfully worked on, considering the current realities that seem to me to demand some deep and insightful reflections on the nature of our Antillean existence. Throughout the course of this volume, reference is made to Caribbean people and the Caribbean region itself. The underlying notion is to be understood within the wider and deeper context of their Antillean existence, and the exigencies of their diverse Antillean explorations. This unique and distinctive Antillean existentialism is a veritable crucible for the claims we make of God’s providential activity, as well as a theological theater for such religious and anti-religious affirmations that would seriously call into question aspects of Antillean history and their lingering effects. Generally, Antillean and Caribbean will be used interchangeably.

I wish to acknowledge, with immense gratitude and deep appreciation, the invaluable suggestions from Jackie Brady and Michael Davis (my Beloved Offspring), and the editorial assistance from The Reverend Sylvia McDonald-Kaufman, Dr. Faye Calhoun, Ms. Monalie Bledsoe, and my Darling Daughter, Andie Davis (her professional editorial expertise, spread large in many international bodies, truly warms my heart, and deepens my pride!). I bear full responsibility for all the errors and eccentric ideas and terms which might show up throughout this volume, and humbly plead forgiveness for any sins committed unwittingly!

It is my earnest hope that the range of ideas and insights that are found in these pages will provide some impetus, however limited, for robust debate and deep reflections about the confluence of our intercultural narratives, and our cross-cultural morphologies. We must continue to struggle for authentic meaning, for human flourishing, and for greater social maturity in the context of our Antillean existence. For now, we continue to scramble with Antillean God-questions in the pervasive climate of the changing winds, and the incessant winds of change.

Kortright Davis

Kensington, Maryland, USA

October 2022

Introduction

Scrambling With Antillean God-Questions

As we sail anxiously into the headwinds of the third decade of this millennium, we have certainly witnessed some extraordinary shifts of circumstance and conditions in the Caribbean (Antillean) region. Many of these shifts have been caused by the changes in economic and geopolitical fortunes in the rest of the global community, especially in the North. Russia’s ruthless invasion of Ukraine has detonated a global wave of disaster, death, and deprivation far beyond the borders of that European theater of violence and destruction. The unprecedented waves of fires, heat waves, and climatic turbulence have brought home to all the world that the myth of climate change has indeed become the reality of human misery, and the reversal of social fortunes. The agony of dependence and structured poverty that gripped the post-independent Caribbean has persisted unabated, notwithstanding the international reconfigurations such as the South-South intercultural and socio-political dynamics.

The effects of such socioeconomic, geopolitical, and ideological shifts have changed the political and cultural landscape, and the ecological sea-scape, have become painfully evident in the lives, conditions, and aspirations of Caribbean people. The Caribbean is now being swept by a massive offshoring system in banking, tourism, communications, entertainment, lifestyles, sale of citizenships, cybernetics, and social media dominance. The rise in Chinese influence in the region, and the effects of American imperialism and selective xenophobia, have washed Caribbean shores with surges of climatic changes and environmental challenges, whether they be ecological, cultural, racial, or industrial. It might well be surmised that recolonization is well on the way in the region. Besides all this, Haiti feebly struggles with national turbulence and uncontrolled violence. COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on all our lives and livelihoods, Cuba has survived its leadership transitions, and Venezuela is in a state of turmoil.

The quality of life for Caribbean people during this period has been severely tested by the crosswinds of forces both from the South and the North. Chief among these forces has been the high demand for illicit drugs in the North, copiously satisfied by an ever-increasing supply from the South. In the meantime, the growth, sale, and uses of marijuana have become more of a legal norm in many sectors of American society (whether for medical or recreational purposes), and these developments are having enormous ripple effects on the social, cultural, political, and religious discourses throughout the Caribbean region. Additionally, increasing resistance to emigration from the region to the Northern countries has been made worse by Trumpism and its aftermath, and the rapid increase of returning Caribbean nationals from the North, often caused by judicial deportation.

The post-independent Caribbean has therefore sought to seek new ways of experimenting with national sovereignty, political independence, and cultural identity and self-determination. Barbados, for example, is no longer Little England,, and has become a Republic. Jamaica promises to follow the same path soon. There is increasing evidence of new alliances being explored and threatened, with novel ways of industrial development and marketing, with experimental projects for social re-engineering, and increased efforts at regional cooperation and solidarity. Violence has also been on the rise, especially with the proliferation of guns and gangs. The diminishing capacity of regional governments to deliver the required goods and services, with guaranteed security, to their respective populations has been compounded, in most cases, by their inability to keep pace effectively with the rapid advances in criminal and cyber technology. The prospects for true and lasting emancipation from all forms of historical bondage have been dimmed by the advent of new forms of cultural dominance, extra-regional affirmations, moral revolution, societal accommodations, and secular ascendancies over sacred norms and values. Emancipation may have been meant to come and stay in the Caribbean, but alas, true emancipation seems to have been put on hold, because of some formidable countervailing and retrogressive forces. But none of this has stopped the Carnival!

Caribbean (Antillean) countries have nevertheless made some great strides within the last two decades in such areas as: infrastructural developments, educational institutions and opportunities, social amenities, indigenous leadership, and cultural upliftment with empowerment. Standards of living have modestly improved, and there is significantly more general participation in the affairs of governance and the public square. Can the Caribbean survive and thrive on its present course? Will it? Will the winds of change now sweeping the global community make life better or worse for the people of the region? Can the region expect to make a more viable contribution to its own qualitative development as this millennium sails on its uncertain course? What are the historical and cultural antecedents for an answer to such questions? What will become of the Caribbean’s youth, with their passionate aspirations and justifiable expectations for fertile growth, and their demands for social and developmental opportunities? How can the indigenous cultural and natural resources, deeply rooted in the history and religion of Caribbean people, serve to offset some of the negative fall-out which continues to assault the dignity and freedom of the Caribbean human condition and social conscience? What socio-religious resources and layers of moral capital will be required to ensure a better Caribbean future? Who is God in the Caribbean? Where, and how, can that God be found again, and again?

In my book Mission for Caribbean Change (Lang, 1982), I had suggested that the Caribbean of the 1970’s was characterized by poverty, dependence, and alienation. These characteristics were deeply embedded in the nature of the political, social, and cultural systems and life of a people who were just emerging from centuries of oppression, through slavery, exploitation, and colonialism. I linked those characteristics to the inherent human resources and creative capacities for change, which, if properly harnessed, could bring about a significant transformation in the process of authentic and sustainable Caribbean development. I offered suggestions of ways in which the religious leadership of the region could be more practically involved, with the promotion of greater self-reliance, and structures of social justice and human equality, at least at the ecumenical level.

In Emancipation Still Comin’ (Orbis, 1990), I attempted to outline how the theological and religious context of the Caribbean people served to illuminate much of what they did, and the hope for which they might strive. I attempted to suggest several ways in which the emancipation project for Caribbean people still needed to be pursued if they were to take their God-given freedoms very seriously. I suggested that they were to become viable participants in the task of their own human development, social transformation, and cultural liberation, especially in the areas of social justice, regional integration, and genuine independence. Much has transpired in the region since that publication to merit further analysis and reflections on the current crises particularly in the English-speaking Caribbean. Perhaps there is a need for some further theological excursion into the historical antecedents, moral and cultural resources, and the possible prospects for some ecumenical, ecological, and evangelical imperatives for Finding God Again. The region cannot afford to succumb to the growing surge of ecumenical fatigue and foreign evangelical tele-invasion.

Changing Winds of Change is therefore my attempt to offer personal reflections on some of the critical issues of Caribbean religion, history, and politics, with some reference to their Northern connections. This collection of reflections will seek to address some of the major areas of human and social concern, which lay behind the Caribbean theological and religious traditions, institutional arrangements, and global alliances. It will seek to explore new ways of understanding what Caribbean social and religious freedom can mean in the light of prevailing and countervailing circumstances, both within the region and beyond. It will also attempt to offer some fresh guidelines for further study, reflection, and collective action at the grass-roots level. It will try to tap into the Caribbean wellsprings of resilience, creativity and self-determination that have sustained generations of its people through the various seasons of disaster and depression, despair and discrimination, and domination and denigration. In other words, this book is to be a historical and theological scrapbook, which scrambles on re-framing some Antillean questions about the practice of faith in God’s future, in these times of inglorious uncertainties.

Wiser and younger minds will be required to make their own suggestions to the political directorates of the region, especially with respect to the new threats of regional fragmentation and external domination. These reflections can only attempt to speak to the ordinarily concerned persons in the streets and villages of the English-speaking Caribbean (in the main), and to their churches and allied groupings. In the light of the region’s history, and of its potential for positive development and change for the better, what will these times require of us? This work will seek to offer some ways of reinforcing Antillean (Caribbean) determination to survive with dignity and freedom, and in solidarity with the highest reaches of our human potential. It will thus seek to offer one small contribution to the wider contemporary debate about the direction of the Caribbean religious landscape, offered by a Caribbean diasporic theologian, whose relentless scholarly interests are inextricably bound with the true human development and purposeful independence of all our Caribbean (Antillean) people.

Chapter One

Changing Winds – Is It God?

Chapter One

Changing Winds – Is It God?

God is a Fraud! God is a Liar! God is a Joke! God is not real! God is a Fiction! God is an imagined Figment! God is an Idea! God is an Ideal! God is Mystery God is a Spirit! God is Love! God is a Good Man!

These exclamations all have their contexts, their exponents, their adherents, as well as their opponents and their critics.

They emerge out of a vast and ever-expanding range of existential realities, personal experiences, organized experiments, ideological explanations, and religious affirmations.

They convey a broad and blistering array of human emotions, plus a sustained and sinister panoply of social exigencies, cultural predilections, and traditional prejudices.

They constitute the freedoms of thought and expression that often undergird the fabric of public discourse and personal explorations, whether intellectual, philosophical, spiritual, moral, psychological, theological, or political.

They generate such reactions and responses that human relationships and socio-political agendas have become definitive of religious climates, styles of civic systems and customs, class distinctions, structures of authority, and patterns of social access and interaction.

They represent that basic thrust of the human mind and will to reach beyond themselves into presumed existential realms of belief or disbelief, whether they be material, aspirational, mystical, or even mythical.

They serve to satisfy and sustain the human heart as it wrestles with feelings, fears, fantasies, faults, futures, and fates.

They emerge as the resultant trends of changing surges of failure, fortune, function, and faith.

They straddle the contours and edges of human life and livelihood and encapsulate the limits of human existence that are now buffeted, and then buoyed and replaced, by the changing winds of change and circumstance.

All these assertions and estimates of who God is, what God is like, and whether God is real, form the basis of the human quest for meaning in life, for truth and trust, for value and virtue, for strength and survival, for purpose and power to struggle against the ever-present threat of nothingness.

Our world is a veritable theater that stages the constant interface of language and living produced by the vitalities of faith and the vagaries of futility. Take, for example, the first and last assertions about God at the beginning of this Chapter – God is a Fraud, and God is a Good Man. We will discuss the former assertion in this Chapter with reference to the contours of atheistic claims and cultures, followed by an extensive reflection on the impact of the latter assertion that God is a Good Man in the next Chapter.

Is God A Fraud?

It has often been said that one of the main sources for the evolution of atheists is to be found amongst those who claim to believe in God, but who, at the same time, behave and subsist in ways that are incompatible with the reality, or possible existence, of any such God. The claims that they are said to make about their God, the virtually impossible proclamations of their God-directed schemes and practices are taken to be unreal. The staging of miraculous successes, and the otherwise inexplicable stories of divine good luck (blessings) and material good fortune, all induce increased levels of incredulity, cynicism, and outright rejection. These readily converge in leading to criticisms of religious fraudulence and intellectual dishonesty. They generate an impassioned search for radically new forms of alternative paradigms of meaning and value.

The machinations of unenlightened self-interest can often be reinforced by exorbitant claims of divine interventions and unvarnished self-projections of supernatural experiences. Disappointments, disillusions, distortions, and deceptions unveiled, are almost always inevitable compulsions for asserting that claims about such a God must certainly be fraudulent. The question thus arises about how we might reframe the God-question in such a way that can create a sufficient distance between the religious claimants and the claims themselves, while, at the same time maintaining the viability and value of a faith that is immune from the volatility of strange and excessive belief-claims. Generally, claims that God is a fraud, or a liar, or a joke, are often ways of characterizing the behaviors and contradictions of those whose pretensions of rigid religious certainty and mysterious connectivity are either vacuous or misconceived, or both. In other words, it is more about the claimants than the claims themselves.

On the other hand, outright rejections of the God idea are not always the result of feelings of mistrust and opposition to the character and claims of believers. The internal winds of change can often rage within the lives and lifestyles of those who have themselves been believers, whether by tradition or training, or by compulsion and compromise, or by crisis and conviction. These changing winds within the lives of such persons can bring about such radical transformations that the language of faith and acceptance can, over time, become the language of disbelief and rejection, without any reference to the sustained claims of believers.

Those who were once Believers have become Be-leavers (my term). Pain and suffering, misfortunes and mistakes, tragedies, and traumas, they all have the capacity to produce Be-leavers;–persons who find it necessary and compelling to take their leave of God, and to recondition themselves into radically different forms of life-justifying ways of discourse, discernment, and decision-making. So, the language about God is subverted. The language of religion is reframed. The crucible of life is reset, and the hierarchy of virtues and values is reformed. The changing winds of change can often produce a radical metamorphosis of life, language, and leaning. Is God in the winds?

Two very powerful forces of personal change are Grief and Loss. They have the power to assault the human spirit, to disrupt the legitimate hopes and aspirations of people yearning for genuine and sustainable progress, and to reverse all those noble dreams and designs for a better life. Quite often, these dreams and designs are mixed with a strong belief that their faith in God, however faint or feeble they might think it to be, can still bring about some favorable outcomes that are sustainable and secure. When life takes a turn for the worse, rather than for the better, the almost immediate feeling is that either God has failed them, or that there is really no God after all. These feelings may be transient. These feelings may be bitter. These feelings may be so explosive that they reverberate beyond individuals towards relationships, alliances, and preferences that are contrary to their former ways of life. The winds of change can be ferocious and devastating for personal growth, spiritual maturity, and moral constancy.

There are, however, several other causes for personal changes of faith and fortune. The trauma of Grief and the tragedy of Loss, whether episodic or gradual, can generate flows of emotions and channels of illusions that reorient ways of listening to the sounds of life, hoping for the joys of living, and hindering the means of believing. Questions of Guilt and Failure inevitably arise. Charges of Deceit and Dysfunction emerge from the bowels of Memory and the mirky clouds of Imagination. There comes into traumatic evidence a confluence of Contempt, Confusion, and Conflict, at levels both sacred and profane. All the faith-claims about the reality of God begin to be submerged under the torrents of incipient Atheism. How does one become an atheist? How well does Atheism thrive in the face of contrary winds of cultural traditions, social mores, religious majorities, and personal fortunes, or misfortunes?

Further to the scenarios we have just been describing, there are innumerable reasons and traits that can often lead to the emergence of atheistic postures and conversions. These range from the insatiable determination to assume the commanding heights of one’s personal and moral independence, without any intentions of yielding to a moral authority that is said to be transcendent (divine). Some would claim that there is more value in promoting love for fellow human beings rather than focusing on a love for God; for this preference claims universal support and seems to be common in most religious enterprises. Cultural and genetic histories that exclude any dependence on either religious beliefs or divine protections can often be reinforced by very strong analytical skills, scientific knowledge, and intellectual neutrality.

The claims of those who posit the universality of the religious instinct as basically human often rail against any argument for the existence of a divine reality to account for such a common phenomenon. There is also the argument that people can be either good or bad without any need for a religious foundation or external moral endorsement or blame. While scientific theory and discovery can be reviewed and applied to practical purposes and empirical human development, religious claims and ideas/ideals cannot be independently reviewed, tested, or even authenticated. Matters of interpretation are not synonymous with modes of authentication. It might be claimed that the rise and pervasiveness of human fears and social uncertainties, can be better assuaged and placated by the efforts of institutional agencies, with practical and positive results (for health and happiness) that are not deliverable by even the most fervent reliance on religious beliefs and practices.

There is undoubtedly the ongoing challenge of authenticating the claims that traditional religions make about their origins, their mystical traditions, their language, and its meaning, and most particularly, their religious (and historical) narrative. It is within this scenario that the dialectic between charges of fraud and the professions of faith becomes very personal, even to the point of some radical conversions. Doubts and disagreements can often create patterns of dysfunctional faith and mental cynicism that navigate their way through Agnosticism and eventually to Atheism. This pattern of personal change can be termed as a process of de-conversion..

Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, for example, the traditional narratives that are characterized by episodes, events, experiences, and encounters that often seem to challenge human credulity, and defy the norms of natural science, can generate intellectual doubts all on their own, since they tend to stretch the limits of the human imagination. The wilderness traditions, the stories of Elijah and Elisha, the many phases of the miraculous, the historical claims of victory and prosperity, all carry with them the problems of meaning,