Sea of Faith Network
"Exploring and promoting religious
faith as a human creation..."
Sea of Faith Conferences
Sea of Faith UK Conferences
2009 UK National Conference
Science and Religion
The Sea of Faith's 2009 UK annual conference, 21 - 23 July, held at Leicester University, explored the The Sea of Faith's message that both religion and science are human creations which enables us to value religion and science as insights for which humanity is totally responsible, both for their content and for the use we make of them.
2007 UK National Conference
The Good life
The Sea of Faith UK annual conference, 24-26 July at Leicester University, explored the relationship between spirituality, sustainability and the good life. Speakers included:
Jonathon Porritt, co-founder of Forum for the Future and chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission;
Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey, and Director of a new research group on Lifestyles, Values and the Environment";
Stephanie Dowrick, author of Forgiveness and other acts of love.
Podcasts and texts of the talks will follow shortly
2006 UK National Conference
Taking each other seriously: exploring the Otherness of the Other
You can listen to audio versions of these talks on our Podcast page- The Religion of the Wilful Disbelievers by Noel Cheer, chair of SoF NZ.
- The Otherness of the Other by Ataullah Siddiqui
- Learning to Live Without Identity by Don Cupitt
2005 UK National Conference
Beyond Good and Evil: the challenge of reconciliation
The Sea of Faith welcomed Richard Holloway and Mary Midgley to join Don Cupitt in discussing the nature of good, evil, forgiveness and reconciliation in a post-realist context. Here are some of the conference materials:
- Don Cupitt on The Ethics of Value-Creation
- Mary Midgley on What, if anything, is moral relativism?
- Richard Holloway speaking on May the Force Be With You Not
- Richard Holloway assembled and led a Liturgy for a Meditation on Force
- Here a sample workshop on Derrida's essay On Forgiveness. As the essay is not easy to grasp, we tackled it by "mindmapping" the two types of forgiveness ("political" and "pure") and examining the questions and conclusions that arose from the maps. The full essay is published by Routledge as part of their excellent "Thinking in Action" series.
2004 UK National Conference
Sea of Faith: the first twenty years
The Sea of Faith conference celebrated twenty years since the original Sea of Faith TV broadcasts with a conference featuring Don Cupitt, Keith Ward and Nigel Leaves. Some highlights:
- Don Cupitt on The Return of the Great Questions
- Keith Ward: Some reflections on Life, Life
- Nigel Leaves: Twenty years on—Christianity reformed or a smorgasbord of therapeutic spiritualities?
- The closing liturgy included some excellent poetry by Gilo, a member of the SoF network
2003 UK National Conference
Taking a stand: Radical theology as social and cultural critique
The Sea of Faith UK annual conference and AGM was held at Leicester University, on 22-24 July. Featured speakers included Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, writer for The Independent; James O'Connell, Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies at University of Bradford and President of the Partnership for Theological Education; and our own Don Cupitt.
2003 London Conference
The Sea of Faith London Group held its fourth open conference, titled "A World of Difference: Diversity and Division within Religious Traditions", featuring speakers Peter Clarke, Don Cupitt, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, and Merryl Wyn Davies. Here's a report of the day.2002 UK National Conference
Faith and Fantasy
- Don Cupitt on Fairy Tales, Religion and Life
- Philip Pullman on Writing Fantasy Realistically
- David Boulton on Broadcasting Faith and Fantasy
Oct 2001 One Day Conference
I'm Talking about Jerusalem
SOF Magazine and the journal Political Theology held a one-day conference featuring Tony Benn, Leslie Griffiths, former president of the Methodist Conference, and Christine Evans, Executive Director, Catholic Institute of International Relations. David Boulton provided a report on the conference.
2001 UK National Conference
A Faith Odyssey
- Don Cupitt's talk on Journeys, stories, and the meaning of life
- David Paterson on The One and the Many
- Ruth Robinson on her personal Odyssey.
Sept 2000 One Day Conference
Religious Humanism
David Boulton and SOF magazine hosted a one-day conference on Religious Humanism in September 2000. Here are the main papers from that conference:
- David's introduction to religious humanism
- Don Cupitt asserted that Life is God
- Patti Whaley discussed common ties between Human rights and non-realism
- Anthony Freeman spoke about Christian Humanism
- Robert Ashby argued for Humanism without adjectives
2000 UK National Conference
Faith in the future?
- David Boulton's Reflections on the conference
- Don Cupitt's plenary talk, Christianity after the Church
1999 UK National Conference
What is religion for?
- Report by John Klopacz
- Don Cupitt's plenary address, The Radical Christian World-View
1998 UK National Conference
What on earth is spirituality?
- Introduction: 20 questions about Spirituality by Patti Whaley
- Back to Spirituality, by Diarmuid O'Murchu
- The Fellowship of the Human Spirit, by Robert Ashby
- Spirituality Old and New, by Don Cupitt
- Report on the conference, by John Klopacz
- Report on the conference, by David Boulton
1997 UK National Conference
- General report, by John Klopacz
- A second opinion, by David Boulton
- From Religious Doctrine to Religious Existence, by Don Cupitt
- An Ethic for the 21st Century, by Daphne Hampson, author of After Christianity
- Why so conservative?, by Thomas J.J. Altizer, author of The Gospel of Christian Atheism and The Contemporary Jesus
1996 UK National Conference
- General report, by John Klopacz
- World Religion, by Don Cupitt
- Economics, Ecology, Ethics: Making the Connections Theologically, by Lloyd Geering.
1995 UK National Conference
- Our Dual Agenda - by Don Cupitt
- Religion as a Human Creation? - by Jack Spong
And from earlier conferences:
- Kingdom Theology,—keynote speech from the 1994 UK conference, by Don Cupitt
- Real Evil Needs a Real God?—keynote speech from the 1992 UK conference, by Ronald Nicolson of the University of Natal in South Africa.
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