40 years on
This year we will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of Don Cupitt’s BBCtv series and the publication of his book ‘The Sea of Faith’.
Two special events are being planned to mark this milestone.
1-2 July, 2024: Don Cupitt and The Sea of Faith 40th Anniversary Conference at Emmanuel College Cambridge.
20-22 September, 2024: Special symposium to mark 40th anniversary, Gladstone’s Library, Hawarden, North Wales. Featuring public lectures, archival exhibition, workshops and talks.
Further information will be available here in due course.
Elaine Graham & Graeme Smith shared their thoughts on the anniversary in ‘SOF: In Conversation‘ on September 20th.
You hear what they said here, on YouTube
Their website on Cupitt’s life and work – ‘Don Cupitt, the Sea of Faith and the future of Radical Theologies’ – can be found at: https://doncupitt.chi.ac.uk/
All six programmes in the Sea of Faith television series are available on YouTube.
Here is the first:
For our 20th anniversary the BBC allowed us to produce a 3 disc DVD of the programmes. If you or your group would like to borrow, or pssibly buy, a copy please contact us.
Wednesday 12th September 1984
21:30 on BBC Two
This is how the Radio Times introduced the first in the series:
On Dover beach, the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold found an image of the decline of Christianity – the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar of the Sea of Faith’. Twenty years later the German philosopher Nietzsche was proclaiming the death of God. Today many people don’t know what to believe any more.
In this series of six programmes Don Cupitt , Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, explores the revolution in ideas that has brought us from the secure world-view of the Middle Ages, to today’s crisis of faith.
1: The Mechanical Universe In Galileo’s villa at Arcetri, refurnished from the original inventory, Don Cupitt reconstructs the experiments which threatened the entire cosmology of Christendom.
For Galileo it meant the threat of the Inquisition; for the world it meant a mechanical view of the universe that in time found no need for the hypothesis of God.
The most creative response came from Blaise Pascal. Working as a scientist in 17th-century Paris, he came to see the very emptiness of the physical universe as the springboard for a new approach to Christian faith.
Our Annual Conference in this 40th Anniversary Year will be on Saturday 20th July, at St Johns Church, Waterloo, our meeting place last year.
Other events in 2024 will celebrate Don Cupitt, his works and their influence upon the world. The Network conference seeks to celebrate just that; the people, thoughts and events that have brought us to where we are today, and, with some forward thinking how religion will move on and how we might move on with it.
Detailed planning is still underway, but we have secured three excellent speakers, looking both to our past and to our possible future. They are:
Anthony Freeman
Long time SOF member and Anglican priest, who was dismissed in 1994 through his association with the Network and its thinking…
Tony Windross
Long time member and Anglican priest, writer and popular speaker at Conference for many years..
Linda Woodhead
Sociologist of Religion, F.D. Maurice Professor in Moral and Social Theology and Head of Department, Theology & Religious Studies at King’s College, London and erstwhile student of Don Cupitt at Cambridge.
This is the story of how the original television series presented by Don Cupitt has given rise to an international network. Today’s members of the Sea of Faith Network continue to explore issues from the future of Christianity to its relationship to secular humanism. And Don Cupitt himself reflects on how his own thinking has developed since the original programmes.
