John Rutter on religion

I have just come across this interview with John Rutter the composer and I find it absolutely delightful - I identify with it so strongly - and his extraordinary personality shines through. I have edited it heavily, as the original is long (and can be found here: http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/DO/filmshow/ruttertx1.htm). I think the first and last sentences are fascinating!

"I am friend, fellow traveller, and agnostic supporter of the Christian faith; in my early days, people described themselves by default as Church of England if they didn't really have any religious affiliation...........I sang in the chapel choir and was always interested in religious studies, but somehow being a non-joiner became a habit; although I think I probably was religious in quite a powerful sense when I was young and into my twenties, not least because I felt so lucky as my career began to take off and things began to go well for me.......... a kind of theology of gratitude; probably can't take it very far because what happens when something goes wrong in your life? - the sense that there must be some benevolent deity behind all this is a bit like American religious thought; when I began to travel to America I started to meet an awful lot of Christians;....... the American faith world contains some of the very finest and most searching of theology and religious thought and practice, and some of the worst; I have experienced the full spectrum; ........ if I wanted to be honest about my own faith journey it has been backwards over the years; I am afraid what slightly began to sow the seeds of doubt was seeing the absolute certainty of religious adherents in America, and some of the harm that that certainty could lead to; I started by thinking there must be many paths to God and went from there to a rather tougher position which is that the universe is basically numbers, and in some sense mathematical and a lottery; if there is a controlling deity he is a bit like a Mafia don who is capable of doing good and charitable things, but also almost takes pleasure in doing malicious and harmful things, sowing the seeds of long-running dissent and problems; that is hard to reconcile with the Christian concept of a loving God; I don't find it helpful either to say that you have to have a personal relationship with Jesus; numerous of my religious friends say that if you are not born again and if Jesus is not your personal friend, then you are not a true Christian; I always remember the words of the Rev. Professor Charles Moule, a most searching theologian, who said he was perfectly sure he had only been born once; .........; people sometimes have asked me whether the fact that my son was killed affects my faith position; it happened in 2001 when he was nineteen and a student here at Cambridge, and he got run over crossing Queens’ Road one night; completely unforeseen and random, but I think that the answer is no, as by then I wouldn't have described myself as a believing Christian; on the other hand, you have to consider the alternatives; a world without any churches or space for religious thought or contemplation, or based only on material values, would be a hell; in a sense, if you believe the specific doctrines of the faith, I think that just the statement it makes about how man should not live by bread alone, is immensely important; music is a part of that because it is useless in a literal sense, you don't have to have music to survive, yet it has always been there; imagining a world without it is impossible, as is a world without faith; even though you might say that religion is an invention of man, I don't think it invalidates its worth; ....... it began to look to me as if the whole edifice of religion was a man-made construct; I do remain hugely sympathetic to the church, its music, its liturgy, its traditions, and, with some caveats, its ministry; on the whole, the Church I was baptised into, is trying to do good in a difficult situation, and is making a statement on behalf of qualities like compassion, forgiveness, charity, that everybody would support; I would be heartbroken if the Church of England closed its doors tomorrow; I hope to be buried in a country churchyard with a funeral service according to the 1662 Prayer Book, and all my favourite pieces of music; I suppose that is wanting it both ways - both the trappings without necessarily subscribing to the doctrine; I think there are quite a lot of people like me; Vaughan Williams was similar in that he had a sense of generalised spirituality which was triggered by things like standing on top of the Malvern Hills and contemplating the beauty of nature, or walking through the west door of a cathedral and being awestruck by the grandeur and mystery of the building, or being inspired by 'Pilgrim's Progress'; I think he would not have called himself a Christian, yet his life was steeped in Christianity at every point; I am like that and my moral compass probably does derive in large part from Christian ethic and teaching; I owe Christianity a huge debt and it is rather ungrateful of me not to believe in it more."