The Work
In 1963 the Observer newspaper carried the headline ‘Our Image of God Must Go’. What made this remarkable and controversial was that the headline was reporting the views of a serving Bishop of the Church of England, arising from an interview he gave to the paper. The headline thrust Bishop John Robinson into the public limelight and his book, Honest to God became a national and international best seller. Robinson argued that our image of God must change, as a result of advances in scientific knowledge, from a notion of God, ‘up there’, as it were sitting on a cloud, to one which understands God as ‘down here’, caught up in human life. His views upset conservative Christians as much as it delighted liberals. The resulting controversy propelled theological debate into the national consciousness.
Speaker
The Very Revd Dr Anthony Cane is Dean of Portsmouth. His previous roles include Chancellor and Canon Librarian at Chichester Cathedral, and Senior Chaplain at the University of Brighton. His doctoral research was on the place of Judas Iscariot in Christology, (published by Ashgate in 2003) and he is an experienced teacher and lecturer, most recently teaching a module on the theology of film at the University of Chichester.
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