Sea of Faith Conferences

Sea of Faith National Conference 2011

Friday 22 – Sunday 24 July 2011
University of Leicester
“Brain, Belief and Behaviour”

The subject of this year’s conference is religion and psychology, getting to the heart of our understanding and appreciation of religion as a human creation, the evolution of our brains, and our behaviour as the earth’s most intelligent species.

Our principal speakers will be:

Colin Blakemore: Professor of Neuroscience at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick, Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, and writer and presenter of “God and the Scientists”, part of the 2009 Channel 4 Series “Christianity: A History”
Gwen Griffith-Dickson: Director of the Lokahi Foundation research institute, Professor Emeritus of Divinity at Gresham College and Visiting Professor at Kings College, London.
Alan Allport: former Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, currently reinventing himself as a field naturalist. He is passionately concerned about the future of humanity in a warmer world.

Full details and booking form can be found on the conference website. Book now to avoid disappointment.

Please note, the email address on the booking form for enquiries is now:

sofconf11@yahoo.co.uk

In fact, if you have any enquiries about our annual conference 2011, please email:

sofconf11@yahoo.co.uk

Sea of Faith London Conference 2011

Saturday 26 March 2011
‘The Lust for Certainty’
St John's Church, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8TY
10.30 – 5.00pm

Speakers: Kenan Malik, David Boulton, Julian Baggini, Mark Vernon

Full speakers' details can be found on the conference website.

A transcript of Kenan Malik's talk is now available on the following link http://www.kenanmalik.com/lectures/moral_certainty.html

A 4-disc audio CD set of the conference is now available. Cost per set of 4 discs including P&P is £11 from:

Chris Avis, 37 Clifton Road, Exeter EX1 2BN

Please make your cheque payable to C. Avis, not SoF.

2010 National Conference

The 2010 conference was held in July at Leicester University and was on the topic of Religion and Justice

Speakers were:

Maryam Namazie: Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
Kumi Naidoo: Executive, Director of Greenpeace International
Julian Baggini: Philosopher and Journalist
Don Cupitt: Reflecting on each day's activities

You can listen to the podcast of Maryam Namazie's talk, No Sharia Law in Britain or download the transcript

You can also listen to the podcast of Kumi Naidoo's talk, Witness, Wisdom and Justice or download the transcript

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.

2008 UK National Conference

Creativity in Religion and the Arts

Speakers were:

George Pattison: Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, University of Oxford
Patrick Sandford: Artistic Director of the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Don Cupitt: Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Honorary Life President of Sea of Faith (UK)

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.

Sea of Faith Network

"Exploring and promoting religious
faith as a human creation..."