Book Review: Val Webb, In Defence of Doubt: an Invitation to Adventure, Mosaic Press , Nov 2012
It is a huge pleasure to review a book by another Eremos member. Val Webb’s books have been reviewed in earlier years, and she has been a valued speaker at Eremos gatherings as well as those advertised in our pages. I began corresponding with Val while she was still living in USA, after I read “Why We are equal”. I had many copies of the first edition of the Doubt book, but all of them were given away as gifts. If you are looking for a book, hot off the press, to give to anyone who is at all interested in faith matters, this is the book. In the preface Val describes the changes she has seen in the seventeen years since she wrote the first edition. It continues to be a book which gives permission to us all to go on doubting and growing, but also throws a lifeline to those caught in oppressive and imposed theologies. I am even more enthusiastic now than I was when I first read it.
In the course of the book, Val explains terms such as liberation and feminist theology, process theology, Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts, what is meant by modern and post-modern thought and how they all relate to the tensions produced by doubt in the lives of people such as most Eremos members.
The style is simple with no complicated theologies to push, but along the way she gives a bird’s eye view of many of the theologians who are influencing our thinking right now: John Cobb (expounding Whitehad’s process theology), Charles Birch, Albert Schweitzer, Henri Nouwen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karen Armstrong, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Frederich Buechner, John Hick, Mary Jo Meadow, Rita Gross, Natalie Goldberg, Sallie McFague, Catherine Keller, Virginia Mollenkott, Richard Holloway and John Selby Spong.
Val Webb loves biographies and autobiographies. She tells a lot of her own story in the book, and introduces other surprises such as the confessions of Mother Teresa, revealed in her letters. The book is worth reading just for these. Val has added another chapter of examples of doubters, with many more women included in this edition.
Messages about doubt are reiterated through the book: “doubts are part of an ongoing process of faith but the first step is key- to accept that doubts are not negative but positive (p76); these moves were initiated by doubt composted over time, and both challenged the authority of a previous paradigm (p82); to doubt and work through our beliefs is not to lose faith. Rather, it is like running away from home, knowing we can come back home for dinner (p84); the element of doubt is an element of faith itself…One can never promise not to doubt (p90); most religious doubt is around traditional ideas about God and how God acts in the world (p106); theology has never claimed a single image of God but rather has evolved through the centuries. The problem for doubters is that such evolution of ideas has not always been offered to those of us sitting in the pews (p106); doubt is being vindicated for what it is in most other disciplines, the honest, creative response to inconsistencies, out-dated truth and oppressive authoritarianism (p173). Quoting Richard Holloway: “our doubts and loves can cause all sorts of lovely flowers to bloom, such as tolerance and compassion…faith has to be co-active with doubt or it is not faith but its opposite, certainty” (p173).
Contributions to the cumulative message are made through stories from many other ancient and modern scholars: Frankie Schaeffer (son of Francis), Paul Tillich, William Cowper, Bertrand Russell, John Bunyan, Soren Kirkegard, St Augustine of Hippo, Thomas a Kempis, Edward Schillebeeckx, Schleiermacher, Dostoyevsky, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anselm of Canterbury, Karl Barth, Tertullian, Rudolf Bultman, E.O.Wilson, Frances Ridley Havergal. Yet all these names do not make the book heavy. I found it riveting.
I would be surprised if Eremos members could read this book and not see themselves described in many places. This is especially true for me when Val describes the pain that often accompanies a person being deemed to have lost her faith because she has rejected some of the beliefs she once held. I warmed to her description of a compassionate and hospitable community that gives space for doubting. She encourages us all to sign up for Karen Armstrong’s Charter of Compassion. Leading up to her discussion of interfaith dialogue, she points out how all the faiths include the golden rule as part of their belief. I enjoyed her division of responses to interfaith dialogue as being from exclusivists, inclusivists or pluralists.
I quote her last paragraph in full. “The invitation to doubt has been extended, to cherish and nurture doubts as sacred gifts that lead into richness and freedom. Freedom is to doubt so boldly that all issues of belief and faith can gain a hearing. What is the promise? Not constant sunshine, instant success, unlimited wealth, immortal health or a personal genie. Rather, it is the hope that, if we open the windows of our lives and allow fresh winds to blow through- and sometimes cyclones, tornadoes and thunderstorms- we will also recognise a caress that lightly touches our face, or the inner joy of interconnectedness with the universe and with something many call God” (p186).
Sue Emeleus