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[IR 9.1 (2006) 54-73]
Implicit Religion (print)
ISSN 1463-9955
Implicit Religion (online) ISSN 1743-1697
doi: 10.1558//imre2006.9.1.54
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2006, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London
SW11 2JW.

Religious Identity: In Praise of the Anonymity of

JOHN HEY
30 Denver Road, Mickleover, Derby DE3 OPS, UK
j.hey1@ntlworld.com

This is an essay about believing rather than beliefs. I use the term ‘anonymous’
to analyse Karl Rahner’s concept of ‘anonymous Christianity’, and to underline
the universality of believing.
Rahner’s ‘anonymous Christianity’ seeks to render universal a traditional
exclusive Christian message of salvation. However, in insisting that Christ
remains the pivot of this message, Rahner subverts the promise of his concept.
I
use the term ‘anonymous believing’ to emphasize that believing is a universal
human instinct to create meaning, from within an existence whose contingency
inevitably lies beyond explanation. Believing has a natural primacy over
knowing. Critical believing is the attempt to create meaning amidst the
complexities of our subjectivity, and the cultural contexts of our lives and of the
physical world, knowledge of which is constantly growing.
My contention is that the primacy of believing is undermined by the primacy
accorded to the knowledge-based assertions that are currently characteristic of
religious creeds and moral injunctions. Anonymous critical believing eschews
creeds, but embraces the values of justice, compassion and well-being, which
religions also espouse. There are close links between ‘implicit religion’ and
‘critical believing’. However, I believe the two are categorically different:
implicit religion is predominantly descriptive and substantival, while critical
believing is process orientated.
It is one thing to ask how we can tell if our beliefs are true; it is
another to ask what makes belief, whether true or false, possible.
(Davidson 2004: 3)
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© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2006.
Introduction
At first sight the concept of anonymity has negative connotations. It
signifies the lack of a name and therefore the lack of identity. However,
it captured my attention initially via Karl Rahner’s concept of anony-
mous Christianity. Moreover my focus on Rahner, and subsequent
critique, led me to consider the nature and process of believing itself.
Believing, I suggest, is something we all share as human beings as we
seek to make meaning. In this sense believing is implicit in human
living. What role then do religious labels play in helping us to under-
stand what it means to believe? Is believing simply intrinsic to our
shared humanity? Might believing be considered ‘anonymous’ in that
‘common’ sense? For understood in this way anonymity would have
positive connotations, underlining something which is common and
intrinsic to our being human. In which case does the believing that
undergirds our identity need the sanction of names and labels, includ-
ing religious labels? In relation to the title of this journal: is an implicit
human believing synonymous with implicit religion; and what about
the relationship between the concept of ‘critical believing’, which I shall
introduce here, and that of ‘implicit religion’?
Karl Rahner uses the idea of anonymous Christianity to emphasize the
universality of Christian belief. In other words, the Christian message of
salvation transcends the confines of Christian culture and history.‘True’
believing does not need the stamp of Christian identity. However,
Rahner still embraces the traditional teaching of the exclusivity of
salvation wrought by God in Christ, whether or not its unique source in
Christ is recognized by those who believe. The ‘anonymous Christian’,
therefore, is one whose believing is ‘true’, and yet who does not acknowl-
edge Christ as its source. Rahner’s concept of anonymity, therefore, has
a Christian label firmly attached! It is not the believing that is anony-
mous, but rather the Christian label that is anonymously conferred. I
want to argue, however, that it is appropriate to embrace this wider
concept of the anonymity of believing itself, and to distance it from
what seem to me to be the dangers of religious labelling.
Rahner’s concept of ‘anonymous Christianity’
For Rahner the concept of anonymous Christianity dependsupontwoa
priori theological propositions. God wills the salvation of all humanity,
but that salvation depends upon the unique act of God in Christ (Rahner
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1969: 395). Thus Rahner attempts to soften the traditional exclusive
teaching of no salvation outside the Church. His intention is pastoral:
to help Christian believers to orientate themselves more positively to a
multi-cultural world. His anonymous Christianity has, therefore, been
associated with an inclusivist model within a Christian theology of
world religions. Inclusivism offers preservation of Christian identity,
alongside an acknowledgement that the believers of other faiths also
have an identity as part of God’s plan of salvation.
In the debate of the 1980s Rahner’s inclusivist model existed alongside
traditional exclusivism as well as a more newly minted pluralism (Race
1983). Exclusivism asserts that Christianity is the one true religion; all
others are deemed false. Pluralism, on the other hand, contends that all
religions offer different pathways to salvation. Inclusivism seeks a mid-
dle way, that salvation, while universal, is made possible only through
Christ, whether he is acknowledged or not. Race says, ‘To be inclusive is
to believe that all non-Christian religious truth belongs ultimately to Christ and
the way of discipleship that springs from him’ (Race 1983: 38).
Rahner’s work has enabled many in the mainstream Christian tradi-
tions to identify with this inclusivism. However, exclusivists criticize it
on theological grounds, for subverting the distinctiveness of Christ and
of Christianity. In particular, they criticize it for devaluing the costliness
of Christ’s death on a cross (von Balthasar, 1994). Pluralists criticize
inclusivism on ethical grounds, for its imperialist pretensions in its
assertion that believers of other religions should be labelled ‘anony-
mous Christians’ (Race 1983).
There seem to me to be two problems here. Since the time of the
Enlightenment in the West, the scepticism which is associated with a
contemporary secular society, has flourished partly because the appeals
to both reason and revelation have failed to establish a secure and con-
vincing epistemological basis for religious believing. And secondly, it
does not seem to be clear how dialogue between the religions can flour-
ish, when believing is understood in terms of rival and competing truth
claims, claims which in any case remain epistemologically insecure.
Thus, a preliminary conclusion suggests that Rahner’s anonymous
Christianity, in spite of his attempt to universalize the Christian mes-
sage of salvation, has merely succeeded in underlining the problem of
expressing any believing, let alone religious believing, in factual and
dogmatic terms which lack justification.
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Rahner and anonymous believing
But this is to get ahead of myself. My initial study of Rahner led me to
ask whether he was implying that human believing as such could be
termed ‘anonymous’. He introduces the concept of the ‘vorgriff’—the
pre-apprehension of being—as the condition of all human knowing.
Here God is not so much a knowable transcendent being, but rather the
transcendental condition of all our knowing. All our knowing and being
take place in the context of what Rahner conceives as a ubiquitous
grace. Therefore, salvation, for him, occurs when a human being recog-
nizes and responds in faith to that gracious state. Believing is thus a
natural human condition, an unconscious trust in the very apprehen-
sion of being. Rahner says,
Man is he who is always confrontedwiththe holy mystery, even where
he is dealing with what is within hand’s reach, comprehensible and
amenable to a conceptual framework… The holy mystery is notsome-
thing upon which man may ‘also’ stumble, if he is lucky and takes an
interest in something else besides the definable objects within the
horizon of his consciousness. Man always lives by the holy mystery,
even where he is not conscious of it (Rahner 1966: 54).
Is this a natural human believing, appropriating human well-being
without the need for religious labels? Does natural human believing
intrinsically possess an anonymous character? This is what excited me.
Rahner however, does not seem to endorse such an interpretation.The
notion that God is the transcendental condition of all human believing,
does not provide the foundation for his specifically Christian theology.
Karen Kilby (2004) argues that it is the dogmatic assumptions of this
theology which sponsor the notion of the ‘pre-apprehension of being’.
Rahner is not so much an advocate of anonymous believing, but rather
of the finality of Christian believing, from which anonymous believing
in some way derives its life because its source is Christ. Anonymous
Christianity, it seems, is founded on a revelation only captured in eccle-
siastical dogma.
Believing and knowing: natural and supernatural believing
In his understanding of believing Rahner attaches primacy to credal for-
mulations. Christ is accorded pivotal significance as ‘the final cause of our
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salvation’ (Kilby 1997: 27). God has a trinitarian nature. The Church is
‘the abiding and historically manifest presence of the saving grace in Christ’
(Rahner 1963: 202-203). Central to Christian believing according to
Rahner, it seems, is the assertion of knowable facts.
There seems to be some confusion here. The creeds begin by assert-
ing the primacy of believing in relation to an assertion of individual or
corporate identity, and validate that primacy with a set of historical and
metaphysical facts. So how is this relationship between believing and
knowing to be understood? In his article on ‘Belief’ in the Oxford Com-
panion to Philosophy (Honderich [ed.], 1995), Fred Dretske says:
Belief is often taken to be the primary cognitive state; other
cognitive and conative states (e.g. knowledge, perception, memory,
intention) being in some combination of belief and other factors
(such as truth and justification in the case of knowledge).
Here is an unambiguous philosophical endorsement of the primacy of
believing. By that, I mean that believing expresses our foundational
orientation both to the natural world and the world of humanity. Our
believing expresses our valuing of other people and the environment.
Many of the judgements we make which affect our actions are based on
beliefs, because we lack hard evidence to justify them. Of course, when it
comes to achieving some form of cultural assent to a proposition, or to a
course of action, then ‘knowledge’ is accorded primacy. ‘Knowledge’
may be defined as an informed and tested cultural consensus concern-
ing the way the world is. I prefer to be treated according to recognized
medical knowledge rather than by someone offering (possibly eccen-
tric) remedies on the basis of strongly held beliefs. Both believing and
knowledge, therefore, can each be said to have primacy in their specific
contexts.
However, it is important to adhere to the principle of the primacy of
believing for two reasons. First, we can never know things as they are in
themselves. We only know them in relation to our own and our culture’s
experience. We are often seduced into thinking that in naming some-
thing we know it. However, we only know it as it impinges upon us, not
as it is in itself. The name we give it is a reflection of our experience and
our culture. The name we give it does not capture the nature or reality
of the thing as it is in itself. In this sense it is important to recognize
the fundamental anonymity of things we name and claim to know.
This explains why knowledge changes. We also know things that were
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unknown when many religious creeds were formulated. Secondly, cen-
tral to our believing is our valuing, which is not capable of verification.
Ethics and aesthetics fall into this category and have as great, if not
greater, significance for how we direct our lives than our so-called
knowledge of facts.
When it comes to the expression of religious believing, is it not an
error to subvert this natural primacy of believing, by granting primacy
to credal knowledge? Since the time of the Enlightenment in the West
scepticism has arisen over whether it is possible to establish the exis-
tence of a supernatural creator by means of reason. The alternative to a
rational justification of religious believing has been one based on reve-
lation. This seemed to be the basis Rahner opts for, and indeed it is
arguably the basis which the Church has relied on for its credal formu-
lations. However, the appeal to revelation to justifysupernaturalknowl-
edge claims has not carried conviction within the prevailing culture of
the secular West. What the different traditions claim as revelation bears
too close a relation to the cultural values created by human beings within
specific historical contexts. This leads me to suggest that it is grossly
misleading to transfer the natural primacy of believing as a founda-
tional human activity to the primacy of a supernatural believing vali-
dated by the appeal to revelation. It is hard to distinguish supernatural
believing from unsubstantiated claims to know, and thus from a
dubious supernatural knowing. The only believing open to humanity is
a natural believing. I contend, therefore, that it is a mistake to see as
central to human believing, dogmas which contain historical facts,
metaphysical ‘facts’ and absolutist ethical injunctions.
Natural believing: critical and uncritical believing
Dretske (op. cit.) speaks of ‘believing as a primary cognitive state’. Believ-
ing expresses the primary nature of the relationship between the self in
its cultural context and the world which forms both the source and the
backcloth of our interpretation of experience. Moreover, what informs
this believing is an inner subjective dynamic interaction between know-
ing, feeling and valuing. But of course this inner triangular dynamic can
only exist in the context of the world which forms the physical back-
cloth to my subjectivity, and in the context of the variety of cultural
life-settings which act as the cradle wherein my subjectivity formulates
its beliefs. Thus the inner subjective triangle is itself part of a second
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triangular dynamic consisting of subject, world and culture (Davidson
1994: 234 and Farrell 1996: 113-14). It is out of this complex network of
interactions that human identity is created, be it the identity of a musi-
cian, a political activist, a religious believer, or a drug addict.
Thus, believing as this natural condition should not be construed as
either positive or negative. Some believing may result in personalities
which offend others and identities which grieve even the subject. The
drug addict and the child abuser may recognize a chronic dissonance
between their feeling, knowing and valuing. The believings of others
may be subjectively consistent but at odds with what is generally
accepted knowledge of the world, or accepted cultural valuations. I
think of fundamentalist creationist believing, misogyny, homophobia
and racism. Thus believing may result in either fragmented subjective
identities, or in strong subjective identities which gain their strength
through failure to engage with either the world or cultural debate.
Believings in this category have negative connotations, being damaging
to the individual and the wider society. Although they retain the label
of natural believings, I also label them as ‘uncritical’. Most of us prac-
tise uncritical believing in many areas of our lives!
However, believing may result in the creation of a positive sense of
identity, able to hold together the subject’s own feelings, knowledge
and valuings. At the same time, this identity is able to acknowledge
current trends in knowledge while recognizing the complexity of a
society of many cultures. Here too is a natural believing, but this believ-
ing I label ‘critical’. It is the attempt to achieve a delicate balancing
between feeling, knowing and valuing, while at the same time seeking
to relate that ‘balancing’ with an openness to knowledge about the
world, and a recognition and appreciation of cultural tensions. Critical
believing helps in the creation of a positive identity which recognizes the
good of the individual and the wider society. However, paradoxically, it
is important to be clear that achieving a positive identity through one’s
critical believing does not mean having a fixed identity. Because of her
openness the critical believer will have an identity that is more ‘anony-
mous’, less amenable to labels, because it is ready to learn and change
and adapt, and does not claim a definitive knowledge of who she is.
The foundation of critical believing lies in an awareness of the com-
plexities of believing. It is an attempt to manage the inner tensions of
the subject’s own consciousness and the tensions existing between the
subject’s experience of the world, and of the cultural traditions which
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shape the subject’s identity. Critical believing, therefore, recognizes the
parameters of human being set within the context of the wider structure
of being. Those parameters exist within the subject herself, constituted
by feeling, knowing and valuing. They also exist in the relationship
between self, world and culture.
How, then, is critical believing to be managed, and by what criteria?
All believing is related in some sense to survival. Thus I value those
things which enable me to survive. I also value those things which
enable me to prosper and to take pleasure in existence. The founda-
tional notion of survival for believing, however, does need some qualifi-
cation. For some people survival and the pursuit of pleasure exist in
tension. The racing driver clearly values the thrill of speed, and thinks
the excitement of the race outweighs the risk of injury and even of death.
For others the tension between pleasure and survival cannot be rationally
balanced. The drug addict and the alcoholic are so dependent upon
their addiction for stimulation that it damages the survival instinct. At
the other extreme there are those who value the survival of others above
their own survival.
However, given in the main the primacy of survival for believing,
how might that foundational instinct relate to the dynamic of critical
believing? What do I need to survive? As a child I need food to grow,
and, when I am mature, food to replenish my body. I also need shelter
for my protection. I also need relatedness to develop a sense of identity.
My sexual needs present themselves and are clearly linked with securing
survival for my genes. Obviously my valuings are geared to preserving
my existence in all these ways.
Three key aspects enable me to give my existence some continuing
security. The first is knowing; my knowledge of the world, the basic
other which confronts me, is vital to my survival. I have to balance my
need to explore the world with the need to avoid danger. Every child
knows this as he or she learns to walk.
The second key aspect in my search for survival and security is
ethics. My instinct to survive is closely related to the achievement of
my well-being. The concept of ‘good’ is introduced into the analysis of
valuing and believing. What is ‘good’ for me is inextricably linked with
what is ‘good’ for others in a bewildering complexity of valuings.
The third aspect is aesthetics. Pleasure and happiness are prime objec-
tives as far as human well-being is concerned, and thus are both directly
and indirectly important contributors to survival. In the context of
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human culture, however, aesthetics is not simply a means of creating
and experiencing pleasure in a selfish or hedonistic sense. Pleasure can
be understood in terms of an engagement with profound, disturbing,
painful and tragic human situations in the context of literature, art and
music.
‘Critical’ believing then, as opposed to uncritical or unconscious
believing, may be understood as the attempt to balance the intuitive
human drives to know, to value and to gain aesthetic pleasure, in the
context of the double triangulation I have spoken of above: that is, the
subject’s own tensions with regard to his/her feelings, knowledge and
valuing, and the wider context of critical appreciation of traditional and
cultural values, alongside critical openness to the rapidly expanding
horizons of human knowledge.
Critical believing and religious identity
Critical believing seeks to avoid the danger of dogmatism in an under-
standing of identity and the nature of identity. I have to be aware of the
‘gap’ that exists between the identity I either take, or convey, within a
specific cultural and historical context, and the unknowable being which
I hold or possesses intrinsically in myself. The substantive which I use
to convey identity never conveys the nature of the person or thing in
itself. It can only mark the process of naming something or someone
through an experience of that object or person. The name I use, there-
fore has, paradoxically, an intrinsically ‘anonymous’ dimension in a
metaphorical sense. Thus if I describe my mother as a ‘brick’, I conjure
my experience of her as supportive and loyal, but I do not think of her
as solid and oblong! Thus beyond the characteristics I attribute to my
mother, I need to recognize that she has ‘anonymous’ qualities which
are not apparent to me.
Of course, I cannot function as a member of a society without assum-
ing and bestowing identity. As an elderly male, husband and former
teacher I have to relate to my wife, children, grandchildren, doctor,
librarian, ticket collector, check-out assistant. But it remains important
to recognize always the provisional nature of these labels and roles.
Thus, when I seek to come to an understanding in relation to my own
identity, it is important to eschew using labels as the affirmation of
either an over-confident identity in relation to others, or as a means of
concealing an insecure identity behind the mask of culturally deter-
mined roles.
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In this sense it is important to acknowledge as a critical believer the
anonymity which is intrinsic in attaching labels both to others and
oneself in the giving and accepting of identity. I should always respect
the ‘anonymous’ unknowability of someone whose identity I label, just
as I should acknowledge the ‘anonymous’ incompleteness in the under-
standing I have of my own identity.
To return briefly to Rahner’s understanding of the identity of the
‘true’ believer, my discussion of Rahner demonstrated his insistence on
the substantive nature of religious identity. Believing in Christ was
pivotal for human salvation. This suggests that where religious identity
has become substantive, justified by credal formulae, it is the antithesis
of critical believing. However, that is not to suggest that critical believ-
ing outlaws religious identity in principle. One of the most significant
elements of critical believing is its attempt to hold in balance the ten-
sions between knowledge, feelings and values, which constitute indivi-
dual subjectivity, as well as the dynamic between subject, world and
culture. The tools appropriate to tackle this task are those epistemologi-
cal, ethical, and aesthetic criteria which seek the good of the individual,
society and the environment.
Critical believing might thus be said to endorse traditional concepts
such as justice, freedom, well-being, and compassion. And it is note-
worthy that some of the more inspiring parts of the Hebrew scriptures
are prophetic denunciations of injustice and empty religious ritual. In
Hosea knowledge of God is synonymous with an ethic of faithfulness
and loyalty (Hos. 4.1). Gutierrez (1974: 195) makes this concept a lynch
pin in his Theology of Liberation. He says, ‘To know Yahweh…is to estab-
lish just relationships among men, it is to recognize the rights of the
poor… When justice does not exist God is not known; he is absent.’ In
the Christian scriptures the teaching of Jesus embraces sinners and out-
casts and enjoins the radical love of the neighbour. The Matthean par-
able of the sheep and the goats powerfully underlines this concept.
Where is Jesus to be encountered? He is to be found in the needs of the
hungry, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner. In the parable Jesus says,
‘Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my
family, you did it to me’ (Mt. 25.40). Here, on the lips of Jesus is, argu-
ably, an endorsement of anonymous believing through this self-effacing
Christ who might be seen as an indictment of an exclusive Christ-centred
believing. Similarly, within Sikhism Guru Nanak is scathing about the
hypocrisy of much religious ritual and enjoins the Sikh community to
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strive to live a truthful life rather than squabble over rival religious
truth claims.
Thus I contend that, lying within religious believing, and thus poten-
tially intrinsic to religious identity, are qualities of knowing, valuing
and appreciating, which criticalbelievingwouldwholeheartedlyendorse.
Moreover the anonymity I propose lies in the refusal of the critical reli-
gious believer to restrict such qualities to any one tradition or religious
label.
Believing and transcendence
My discussion of critical believing thus far leaves unanswered the ques-
tion about how human believing relates to a concept of the transcen-
dent. The argument that factual assertions are not central to critical
believing only exacerbates the problem, for belief in God does invoke a
transcendent reality responsible for the creation and sustenance of the
world, as well as for the creation of meaning within it.
Two things: the first is that just as it is inappropriate to see belief in
the fact of a transcendent creator as being central to critical believing,
so belief in the fact that no transcendent creator exists is equally inap-
propriate. For this reason critical believing is fundamentally agnostic
over the existence of God as transcendent being.
This openness in turn sheds light on my second point. Because there
is no answer to the question of a transcendent creator, the value and
significance of critical believing is not impaired by lack of that specific
knowledge. In fact its value is enhanced. This is because the seriousness
of the business of believing is fully focused on the process of believing
itself. In my understanding the term ‘God’ can best be understood not
as some mysterious transcendent object, but rather as the symbol for
the seriousness of the process itself.
In short, critical believing is a transcendent process, in that arriving at
beliefs on the part of the critical believer cannot be accomplished by the
fixing of beliefs in a secure knowledge of the world, in inherited cul-
tural traditions or in the prejudices and partialities of personal experi-
ence. It is a transcendent process on account of its intrinsic dynamic
and its reaching beyond the comfortableparameters ofsubjectiveexperi-
ence and cultural indoctrination.
Understood in this way, critical believing is the creation of meaning,
value and purpose. Because of the very nature of these concepts it is
tempting to see their human creation as discovery, as though they were
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written into the way things are. It is characteristic of any believing, let
alone critical believing, that the beliefs are held and practised ‘as if’
they were ‘true’. It is only thus that human valuing can be accorded the
seriousness it warrants. And this seems to me to be quite appropriate,
in that the process of valuing takes place as a dynamic within the para-
meters of self, world and culture wherein the epistemological, ethical
and aesthetic drivers power the process of interaction. And, although
the process is self-validating in one sense, it still remains open to the
question of whether that dynamic has a transcendent grounding or a
transcendent raison d’être. However, it is important not to allow this
theoretical possibility to be seen to possess or to be given a hidden
significance, a sort of backdoor into a traditional transcendent belief.
Critical believing properly adopts a stance of agnostic openness to the
factual question of transcendence, in order that the transcendence of the
process of meaning-creation can the more appropriately be engaged in.
Believing and anonymity
What conclusions then are to be drawn concerning the anonymity of
believing? Rahner uses the concept to enable him to assert that non-
Christians can be saved, even though Christ’s sacrifice is the exclusive
mediation of human salvation. I have argued that human believing is
damaged and distorted by being given a cultural religious identity when-
ever excessive or sole emphasis is placed on supposed historical, meta-
physical and ethical facts which, on examination, lack epistemological
justification. Therefore, anonymous believing demands the eschewing
of these as being intrinsic to believing. Believing should not be given a
factual core. More positively, anonymous believing means embracing
wholeheartedly an anonymous identity. Who am I? How can I describe
myself? Clearly certain labels are important, such as my name, status
within a family, academic achievements, employment setting, and reli-
gious affiliation. I do not suggest that anonymous believing means shed-
ding all these labels and cultural signposts. But the danger is that I
protect myself from a critical search for meaning by using cultural and
religious labels to give myself a false sense of substantive identity. Fun-
damentally, I do not know who I am. I only have the identity of a con-
tingent being whose contingency renders any Olympian perspective on
my identity necessarily incomprehensible. Here is my anonymity. And
it is this anonymity which enables me to engage in the process of critical
believing, freeing me from attaching too much importance to the labels
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of identity which only provide, at best, an approximate sense of iden-
tity, and at worst, an illusion of it. I am not tempted to see my believing
as providing factual answers to the fact of contingency, which is neces-
sarily incomprehensible. It is this anonymity, however, which guards
the seriousness of the human search for meaning.
Critical believing and implicit religion
At the beginning of this article I asked about the relationship between
an implicit human believing and implicit religion, and also about the
relationship between critical believing and implicit religion. In this
final section I shall try to focus this question.
I have argued that believing, that is the attempt to make human
existence both meaningful and purposive, is implicit and intrinsic to
human life. However, I am not sure that this is synonymous with impli-
cit religion, and I have argued that implicit believing is not synonymous
with critical believing. Critical believing is an attempt to recognize the
parameters within which human meaning-making takes place, in parti-
cular the constraints that need to be recognized with regard to the
knowledge claims that we make. Implicit believing can easily shade
into unquestioned, dogmatic believing when these parameters are not
recognized. Neither implicit believing nor critical believing are neces-
sarily religious.
Implicit religion is a term coined by Edward Bailey some thirty years
ago. Bailey, in his article ‘Implicit Religion’, explains:
The approach opens up the possibility of discovering the sacred
within what might otherwise be dismissed asthe profane, and of find-
ing an experience of the holy, within an apparentlyirreligious realm.
Above all, in contemporary society itallows for the discovery of some
kind of religiosity within what might be seen as an unrelievedly
secular sphere (Bailey 1998).
Implicit religion, therefore, seeks to embrace the secular, rather than
seeing it as something that stands over against the religious. ‘Whatwere
seen as belonging to two separate worlds (secular and faith) can now be
seen as belonging together like two sides of the same coin’ (Bailey 2001:
3). Bailey wants to both widen and deepen the concept of religion; widen
in the sense of discovering religion in patently secular spheres, and
deepen in the sense of recovering an implicit dimension beneath the
cultural manifestations of explicit organized religions. He says, ‘Explicit
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religion has always been seen by this student as a possible and proper
expression of implicit religion’ (Bailey 2001: 87).
If I understand the concept aright the student of implicit religion is
engaged in a twofold task. In the first place, she is offering a new form
of apologetic for religion in a postmodern social and cultural context, by
suggesting that a religious consciousness permeates many, if not most,
areas of secular life. And secondly, she is embarking upon a specific
form of academic study, which investigates the phenomenon of ‘religi-
osity’ within a whole variety of areas of social and cultural life. So, for
example, this Journal includes articles on implicit religion in psycho-
therapy (Implicit Religion 7.2), and the notion that discourse on human
rights can be labelled a ‘secular religion’ (Implicit Religion 6.1). This
apologia for the recognition and study of implicit religion is therefore
critical of the assumption that explicit religion separates itself from the
secular world. It is also critical of the secularisation hypothesis, which
suggested that social and psychological needs are sufficient explanation
of the phenomenon of religion. Once these needs are understood, the
thesis suggested, religion will be seen to be redundant. This notion was
current in the early expressions of the sociology of religion.
Bailey supports Durkheim’s view that religion expresses a more basic
and fundamental dynamic between the individual and society. Bailey,
in an article entitled ‘Sacred’, says, ‘Emile Durkheim’s point (1912)—
that the sacred is part of the structure of consciousness, and indeed the
continuing sine qua non of all its development, rather than an early stage
that can be left behind—may have validity’ (Bailey 1998). This would
help to explain not only the survival of religions, but also the contem-
porary currency of concepts like ‘spirituality’ and ‘sacredness’.
There are then considerable similarities between the concepts of
critical believing and implicit religion. In both concepts believing is a
basic and unavoidable dimension of what it means to be a person, in
our attempts as human beings to create meaning. Moreover, because it
is fundamental in this way, it is entirely natural, permeating both
secular areas of experience as well as the more obviously and explicitly
religious spheres. Both concepts see themselves in practical terms. At
the heart of Bailey’s definition of implicit religion is the concept of
‘commitment’. Both, therefore, may be termed heuristic by nature, that
is, they are themselves experiments in believing in order to create
meaning. Bailey says,
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The first, specific meaning of implicit religion is with reference to
contemporary, ‘secular’ society. It is intended to flag up a heuristic
device… The method is to adopt the hypothesis that it has such a
religion, in order to see whether that enhances our empirical, theo-
retical and practical understanding of its secularity(Bailey 2001: 85).
Both concepts, then, might be said to share an understanding of
believing as being fundamental, natural and practical. In addition they
also recognize and emphasize the importance of the existential dimen-
sion of believing. Bailey is critical of the phenomenological approach to
the study of religion as advocated by Ninian Smart, who embraces the
notion that ‘Expression can be bracketed, so that Religionitself exhibits,
but without directly Expressing, what it is that the Expresser is attempt-
ing to convey’ (Smart 1973: 52). In Smart’s terms, then, the anatomy of
religion can be studied by the student of religion, and the expression of
the believer, that is to say what he/she believes and takes most seri-
ously, can be appropriately bracketed. Bailey rejects this understanding
of the phenomenology of religion: ‘Phenomenology might provide the
cure [to the problem of describing one’s faith— my interpretation] but
not if it too becomes functional and morphological, omitting the sub-
jective from its objectivity’ (Bailey 2001: 18).
I sense, therefore, that Bailey’s existential concern is to the forefront
in his work on implicit religion. When he writes of ‘a cleric setting out
on the study of religion, in contrast to theology, as a prolegomenon to
converting “implicit religion” from a hunch to a hypothesis’ (Bailey
2001: 57), I see this as Bailey himself, concerned to resist on the one
hand the secularist reductionism of religion, and on the other the
increasing isolation of the theology of the church. Implicit religion is a
way of providing a new context for religion and religious believing
which will allow the ‘new’ cleric and the church to function in a way
more closely related to the needs of a postmodern, multi-cultural, secu-
lar society. Similarly, my notion of ‘critical believing’ stems from my
own conversion, from language teaching in secondary school to the
teaching of religion and theology in both school and university, as a
vehicle for enabling my students to reflect on their own and society’s
values, and to engage critically with them. Bailey’s existential context
was church and community, mine was education in school and uni-
versity.
In the previous sections I have set out a rationale for critical believ-
ing and its anonymity on the basis of my critique of Karl Rahner’s
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concept of ‘anonymous Christianity’. But how does the concept of
‘implicit religion’ work? What can we claim to know about ‘implicit
religion’, and on what basis can we claim to know it? What sort of epis-
temological basis is either claimed or assumed? This strikes me as
being an important question.
It seems to me that Bailey offers us three ways of recognizing and
knowing implicit religion: the psychological, the sociological and the
religious. Bailey points to findings by Alister Hardy’s Religious Experi-
ence Research Unit, where a third of respondents testified to experiences
which they labelled as religious (Bailey 1998). Similarly, David Hay
speaks of implicit religion in both psychological and sociological terms,
but with a predominantly psychological epistemology. He understands
religion as a socially constructed system of symbols, which is a ‘response
to a universally available dimension of human experience, biologically
inbuilt and commonly labelled in Western culture the “sacred” or the
“transcendent”’. The implicit dimension of religion is important to
recognize, because in a secular society ‘religion does indeed suffer from
a socially constructed suppression of the form of consciousness that
underlies religious insight’ (Hay 2003: 18). Thus religious experience
might be said to be evidence of a unique and universal form of human
consciousness, which evidences itself much more widely in human
society than simply within the confines of specific religious traditions.
Secondly, it is understood in sociological categories. Bailey refers
with approval to Durkheim’s concept of the ‘sacred’. For Durkheim the
reality which undergirds the ‘sacred’ and religious symbols is society
itself and its power. Religion thus reflects the relationship between the
individual and society, a relationship which inevitably persists both
within and without traditional belief systems.
Finally, it is understood religiously. Describing his notion of‘secular
faith’ Bailey says,
Properly understood it may already run the gamut of sensing a cosmic
sacred, encountering a personal holy, and commitment to an ineffable
quality of humanness, consciously or unconsciously, in some degree,
daily (Bailey 2001: 4).
I’m not clear whether this passage relating to the ‘sacred’, the ‘holy’
and ‘commitment’ is intended purely descriptively i.e. merely describing
what some people claim to know, or whether it implies an epistemologi-
cal justification for the claims to have this ‘religious’ knowledge on the
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basis of a unique type of experience which can be labelled ‘religious’.
Certainly Bailey rejects the idea that ‘the experience of transcendence is
restricted to the exceptional’ (Bailey 2001: 25). Most religious pract-
tioners,
thought their belief was primarily to do with the ordinary, theusual.
That is what popular religion (and superstition and magic) have
always been about: to make use of the incomprehensible was natural,
rather than supernatural’ (Bailey 2001: 25).
What is happening here? Are these religious terms ‘transcendent’ and
‘the incomprehensible’ justified in their use, either by Bailey’s practi-
tioners or by Bailey himself, simply because they are ‘religious’? Or is
there an implicit theological epistemology present here?
Bailey (2001) in his The Secular Faith Controversy does not speak
directly of theology. He refers to it for the most part in relation to
organized religion, and conjuring notions of a traditional dualism of
the natural and the supernatural. It is usually set in some form of
contrast with the religious. This leaves me in something of a quandary
as to how to understand his justification for the knowledge claims he
makes about implicit religion. He himself addresses the problem as
‘one of validating transcendence’. Let me quote what seems to me to be
a significant passage:
Thus the belief itself follows the object of that belief in being sui
generis and, therefore, simultaneously and inevitably unprovable
except through the witness of ‘religion’ and of life itself. For his (the
‘personal’ transcendent) and our silence is otherwise ambiguous. It
could be a mark of respect for his ubiquitous presence orconsequence
of his unreality. It could signify reverence ordenial’(Bailey 2001: 25).
It seems to me there are two possible ways of understanding the
ineffability that is contained within this implicit religious belief: that
is, either ‘expressively’ or ‘theologically’. It can either be understood
‘expressively’ in a way which D. Z. Phillips (1976), following Wittgen-
stein, might advocate, that is, functionally, without the need for further
explanation. In that case the meaning of ineffable is to be understood in
terms of the ‘form of life’ which it both evokes and participates in,
namely the specific commitment or commitments undertaken. Accord-
ing to this interpretation these religious, sociological and psychological
dimensions, or ‘grammars’, are the means by which these religious ‘forms
of life’ find expression. In so doing they provide a postmodern way of
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understanding which truly values the ‘difference’ in the approaches to
the experience. The epistemological question, that is the question of the
legitimacy of the knowledge claims, is seen to be redundant and even
mistaken.
The alternative is a cryptic ‘theological’ interpretation, implicit in
either the understanding of Bailey’s subjects and/or Bailey’s own under-
standing of implicit religion. I offer this view because the passage I
have quoted above reminded me strongly of Karl Barth’s justification
for Christian belief and theology. For him, there were no rational or
human means of validating knowledge of God. Knowledge of God was
only possible because a Wholly Other God vouchsafedhimself to human-
ity uniquely through his revelation in Jesus Christ. Certainly for Bailey’s
subjects, and perhaps for Bailey too, the religious experience is ineffable.
It cannot be justified, except by its own ineffability, that is to say by the
ubiquity of its revelatory impact. If this is the case, then here is a theo-
logical epistemology which successfully outstrips Karl Barth’s own
epistemological tour de force.
At this point I confess to feeling confused. I find myself confronting
either a postmodern epistemology which isa foundationless anti-episte-
mology, or else a widespread cryptic theology validated by the apparent
revelation of some inevitable ineffability. It is here, therefore, where I
would wish to draw a distinction between implicit religion and critical
believing. It seems to me that the two concepts are categorically differ-
ent. Implicit religion is presented as an implicitly substantival concept
with heuristic aims. It is an understanding of religion offered as an
object of study in its own right, as well as a means for the study of
human society in general. It is an attempt to discover religious belief
where it is scarcely recognized as such: an attempt to reveal where peo-
ple apprehend a ‘sacred’ dimension in ordinary secular life. Religion, in
an unspecified ineffable shape or form, exemplifying theimplicitnature
of believing itself, remains the central object of enquiry. However,
although it reflects the implicit nature of believing in general, because
of its attempts to widen and deepen the notion of religion, to adopt an
open, embrace-all approach, I suspect that it lacks the critical tools to
discriminate between more or less appropriate ways of believing and
beliefs, which is a critical faculty that I claim for critical believing.
Critical believing, on the other hand, should not be understood in a
predominantly substantival way. It describes a process. My main aim in
using the term is to emphasize the primacy of believing over knowing.
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Its focus is the activity of believing. Its critical function is twofold.
First of all, the double triangular model by means of which I have char-
acterized critical believing sets forth an epistemological rationale for
the primacy of believing. It seeks to justify believing’s primacy, over
against a mere assertion of it. And secondly, this same model of the
double triangulation provides a way of understanding the relationship
between believing and knowing to enable a critical perspective on
knowledge claims, particularly in this case the knowledge claims made
by religions.
In summary, critical believing does not seek to rediscover the ‘spiri-
tual’ or the ‘religious’ amidst a prevailing secularity which scorns tradi-
tional religion. Instead, it seeks to create meaning within a natural world
consisting of both an infinitely complicated cosmos and a sophisticated
and barely understood human consciousness amidst a bewildering vari-
ety of cultural traditions. With regard to the question of religious identity
the central issue is not the identification of distinctiveness with respect
to ritual, creed, language or architecture, within or without a specific
religious tradition, but whether and how religious believing can help in
the wider task of a critical believing that is prepared to embrace a funda-
mental and inescapable anonymity.
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