Making a Modern Faith: Myth in Twentieth-Century British Theology

Abstract

In a front-page article in The Observer on March 17, 1963, John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, summarized his recent theological ideas under the provocative headline “Our Image of God Must Go.” Two days later appeared Robinson’s book Honest to God, which presented his ideas in greater detail. As it turned out, the controversy generated by the Observer piece was ideal publicity for the book, which rapidly became the quickest-selling work of theology in history. By the end of the year more than 350,000 English copies were in print and within three years sales had reached almost one million. Honest to God outraged many, because the book gave the impression that a bishop in the Church of England was very publicly denying the Christian doctrine of God, in the opinion of many even to the point of atheism.¹ Immediately a heated debate emerged surrounding Robinson and his book, a debate that ranged from theological journals, to letters and columns in the daily newspapers, to hastily-written pamphlets critiquing Robinson, to discussion programs on both radio and television. The popularity of Honest to God established Robinson as the face of so-called “radical” theology in Britain even though much of his later work would be far more moderate and mainstream than his 1963 bestseller. Robinson’s Honest to God was to popular theology what Colin Wilson’s The Outsider had been to popular philosophy seven years earlier. And just as the media had labeled Wilson one of Britain’s “Angry Young Men” it now christened Robinson the leader of a new radical theology.