A life in letters: Holloway, Richard (1934-) 1

Richard Holloway was born into a working-class family in Alexandra in Dumbartonshire’s Vale of Leven, some twenty miles north of Glasgow in 1934. As a teenager he entered training for the Episcopal priesthood with an Anglican religious order at Kelham House in Nottinghamshire. By the age of 25, he was an Scottish Episcopal clergyman working in the Glasgow slums. Later, he served in Old St Paul’s Church in Edinburgh, in the USA and briefly in Oxford before being appointed Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, positions he held from 1986 until his resignation in 2000

Throughout his ministry, Holloway had a questioning, agnostic approach to faith, considering that evangelicals are more certain about theological issues than it is possible for anyone to be. He resigned because of the level of opposition he was facing within the Church due to his support for the recognition of gay partnerships, and his book Godless Morality: Keeping Religion out of Ethics  (1999). In this work he argued that since religious people frequently have profound disagreements over moral and ethical issues even though they are arguing from the same starting-point – the Christian faith – it would surely be more satisfactory to leave God out of the debate and find good human reasons for the moral positions we are advocating.

I read a couple of books  by Richard Holloway in the early 2000s – Doubts and Loves (2001) and Dancing on the Edge (1997), books in which on the basis of his own experiences he explored the theme of the believer’s doubts. I particularly liked Dancing on the edge – the title resonated with me, reminding me of my own occasional epiphanies of clarity and joy among the uncertainties, when the journey’s landscape was instantly transformed and serenity broke through. And yet Holloway’s books did not in the end satisfy me either, because it seemed to me that he questioned and questioned until there was nothing left except questions. Was this really the only way to go? I remember discussing Richard Holloway with one of the elders at Holm Evangelical Church who was particularly supportive of me in my struggles to find a firm place to stand. ‘Do you think he will find himself with God when he dies?’ he asked, testing me. ‘Oh yes,’ I said, for I sensed that despite all his questions this man was a true fellow-traveller, and I recognised that the path I was taking was similar to his. ‘I certainly hope so!’ The sympathetic elder smiled, I think in agreement.

In 2012 Holloway published Leaving Alexandria, in which he charted his entire faith journey. I loved this book, and I emailed Richard, expressing my fellow-feeling and offering him ‘a big brotherly hug’ of empathy.

One reason for my enthusiasm was my discovery of similarities between myself and its author. Like Richard Holloway, I find it almost impossible to throw myself wholeheartedly into anything: part of me remains detached, observing, criticising what I am doing. Holloway refers to a ‘wee man’ perched on his shoulder (p207) and to ‘one me watching the other me’ (p110)  I too have one of those shoulder-perchers.

Like Richard, I find myself able to understand and appreciate all the points of view on many issues, theological and otherwise, and so find it difficult to discern what I myself actually think. Quoting James 1:8 – ‘A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways’, Holloway adds ‘It took me a while to realise that I was double-minded and unstable, if not in all my ways, then certainly in many of my attitudes and opinions.’ (p227) I saw myself in the mirror of these words too.

In the light of my own experiences, it was fascinating to read of Richard’s brief engagement with the charismatic movement in the 1970s, which he thought ‘might be the answer to my own need for direct experience of God.’  (p206)  He travelled to London for a meeting with Graham Pulkingham, the American founder of the Community of Celebration. When Pulkingham prayed with him, he had an experience which could be interpreted as a baptism in the Spirit, accompanied by speaking in tongues. Subsequently, Richard, his family, and his colleagues experimented with living in community at the Old St Paul’s Rectory in Edinburgh.

He was entranced by a poem by D. H. Lawrence which expressed his longing to borne up by the Spirit’s gentle current (p212):

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time

In due course the tongues grew silent and Richard Holloway concluded that the charismatic experience of Christianity was not for him.

Like Richard, I have come to realise that some questions have no answers, and that all we can therefore do is to live with the lack of answers. We try to theologise, and create watertight explanations for the extensiveness of human suffering, but none of these seems completely convincing to me, and so I park the questions, neither hiding from them, nor letting the absence of answers extinguish my faith. Says Holloway ‘Living with the unanswerable question is the key to our humanity.’ (p196)

(See also the two subsequent posts, Part 1 and Part 2)