It was the writer and broadcaster Damian Barr that first alerted me to Richard Holloway. I watched a few interviews posted on You Tube and I found someone who said a lot of things that were very pertinent to the present state of my spiritual life and experience of it. Particularly the relationship between faith and doubt, our grasping for certainties where there may not be any, and the pain of parting from institutions you have grown to love, but need to leave none the less. All these issues resonated strongly.
Leaving Alexandria is both an autobiography and a meditation on the reoccuring themes that have emerged from Holloway reviewing his life. It takes you from his childhood in Alexandria near Glasgow to his resignation as Bishop of Edinburgh several decades later. Its subtitle A Memoir of Faith and Doubt, describes this probing vein of self questioning that runs through out this retelling of his life story. It is his frank honesty that is often the books most striking feature. He speaks quite plainly of his perceived short comings, his heart searching, the pleasures, enthusiasms and dilemmas of following a religious inclination.
At an early age of fourteen he decides to go to Kelham Hall, in Nottinghamshire. Then the headquarters and training college for The Society of the Sacred Mission. An Anglo-Catholic organisation dedicated to providing a spiritual voication for young men from underprivileged backgrounds. The young Holloway was inspired in a highly romanticised way by its idealism and rituals, but soon found himself floundering in the rather muddy waters if his burgeoning teenage libido. In the end he is forced to give up his Novitiate status.? But this was only the beginning of a lifetime of struggle between his ideals and the lived actuality.
His life subsequent to leaving Kelham Hall is plagued by regret and a sense of having fallen away from his rather exalted ideals. Everything he chooses to do infused with an air of imperfection, of not being quite good enough. Leaving Kelham Hall, was like his leaving of his family home in Alexandria, another example of his restless roaming spirit. He tried to quell what was essentially a self doubt that undermined his efforts. Taking on challenges and positions because he thought they might in themselves deepen his faith, commitment and resolve. As a strategy this appears rarely to have worked.
Eventually he became Bishop of Edinburgh and a vocal champion of the ordination of women and challenging the churches views on homosexuality and gay clergy. Realising the two issues were linked because both unsettled the dominance of male power in the church and more widely in society. Though there was a growing unease at some of his pronouncements and the adverse publicity they caused, it was as nothing to what was to follow. Once he published a book Godless Morality-Keeping Religion out of Ethics. His position as Bishop became untenable and he had to resign.
Since then Holloway appears to have flourished as a writer and commentator. No longer feeling he has to tow a doctrinal line and present unquestionable certainties to a congregation. He remains 'comfortably uncomfortable sitting on the edge' Neither fully a believer nor a non believer. He has become more adept at faithfully travelling alongside his doubts. Not trying to force a resolution to them via theories or principles abstracted from lived experience. Fixed doctrinal certainties so easily leading, in his view, to cruelty and moral misjudgements.
I found this an inspiring and frequently poignant book, leaving me with much to ponder and reflect on.
CARROT REVIEW - 7/8
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