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The unusual power of silently remembering together

The collective silence of remembrance acts is unusual. Listen to its powerful lesson.

Christie Gilfeather

Christie Gilfeather writes about the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and its relevance to culture. She has a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of Cambridge and is a parish priest in Hertfordshire.

Princes and army officers walk away from a war memorial while others look on.
Then Prince Charles at the Cenotaph war memorial, 2017.
Number 10, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Every year on the 11th of November at 11am, people across the UK stop whatever they’re doing and keep a two minutes silence in honour of those who have died in war. This collective silence provides the opportunity to reflect on the loss of life and cost of peace. It gives us the chance to consider the conflicts raging around the world today.   

Collective silence is an unusual thing in our culture. There are few, if any, other opportunities for silence which are as widespread as the tradition at the centre of Remembrance Day. Silence is, however, a powerful tool in relation to suffering and death. It acts as a reminder that in the face of some horrors, there is simply nothing to say. Presence becomes all that we have to offer, because words simply cannot capture the depth of the sadness to which we bear witness. And we must bear witness to them.  

No words are said. People stand alongside each other and bear witness both to the grief and to the light of hope represented by the flickering candle.   

Remembrance Sunday is one part of the wider season of remembrance in the church. This season begins with the feast of All Soul’s, when the church gathers to remember by name those who have died.  

A powerful tradition lies at the heart of All Soul’s services: the priest reads out a list of names of the dead. If you are grieving a loved one, it is a great relief to hear someone else say their name. Grief can be intensely lonely and easily forgotten by others. But the church promises not to forget, honouring the beloved memories of those missing from our communities on the feast of All Souls. In many churches, after the list of names is read a silence is held in which the congregation comes forward to light a candle in memory of their loved one. No words are said. People stand alongside each other and bear witness both to the grief and to the light of hope represented by the flickering candle.   

The value of silence is easily lost in this world which prompts us to rush to speak about everything that is happening. The Bible, though, offers us examples of the power of times of silence and the wisdom that can emerge from them. 

They did not speak, because this was not a place for words. They remained with him to bear witness to his suffering without trying to resolve it.

At the beginning of the book of Job in the Old Testament, we find the protagonist in the midst of disaster. Job has lost everything, his home, his livestock, his family and his health. When Job’s friends hear about what has happened to him, they seek him out to be with him amid his suffering. The story tells us that  

‘They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great’.  
There are no platitudes here. No hastily put together explanation of why this might have happened or what Job needs to do about it. The friends saw that Job’s suffering was ‘very great’ and they allowed their presence to be enough. They did not speak, because this was not a place for words. They remained with him to bear witness to his suffering without trying to resolve it. In the story this silence eventually gives way to unhelpful words, but it is striking, nonetheless.  

We find another example of silence during grief in the New Testament. John’s gospel recounts the death of a friend of Jesus. Lazarus becomes ill and quickly dies, and upon hearing the news Jesus makes haste to join Lazarus’ sisters and bear witness to their pain. There is some dialogue in the story, but the most striking part of it comes when Jesus reaches the grave of his friend. The shortest verse in the Bible is found here. It simply says, 

‘Jesus wept’.  

At this point, Jesus doesn’t say anything. He simply weeps, moved as he is by the death of his friends and the grief of those around him. Jesus weeps, even though he knows that before long Lazarus will rise from the dead.  

But Jesus does not rush to the surprise and joy of resurrection. Jesus’ silence and his weeping is an example of what it means to grieve well alongside others when they are hurting. In what is perhaps one of the purest expressions of the human condition, Jesus responds to the weight of loss and the fragility of life in his silent bearing witness to the loss of his friend.  

When we bear witness to the suffering of others without seeking to fill it with our own explanations or opinions, we honour the loss that is before us.

Within the Christian tradition there are also many examples of protest and speech in response to injustice. Silence is vitally important, but at some point, it must give way to speech and action when questions about human dignity are at stake.  

But in order to know how to engage in resistance to that which diminishes others, periods of silence are necessary. When we bear witness to the suffering of others without seeking to fill it with our own explanations or opinions, we honour the loss that is before us. That is at the heart of the national two-minute silence for Remembrance Day. In remembering those who have died in war, and considering the conflict that marks our world today, we bear witness to the fragility of the human condition. Out of silence, comes the resources to know how to speak with wisdom.  

 

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Confessions of an atheist philosopher. Part 2: The making of rage against religion

In the second of a series, philosopher Stefani Ruper explores the roots of science and religion, and a manufactured rage.

Stefani Ruper

Stefani Ruper is a philosopher specialising in the ethics of belief and Associate Member of Christ Church College, Oxford. She received her PhD from the Theology & Religion faculty at the University of Oxford in 2020.

Part two of Stefani Ruper

My name is Stefani. I was a committed atheist for almost my entire life. I studied religion to try to figure out how to have spiritual fulfillment without God. I tried writing books on spirituality for agnostics and atheists, but I gave up because the answers were terrible. Two years after completing my PhD, I finally realised that that’s because the answer is God.  

Today, I explain how and why I decided to walk into Christian faith.  

Here at Seen and Unseen I am publishing a six-article series highlighting key turning points or realisations I made on my walk into faith. It tells my story, and it tells our story too.  Read part 1 here. 

____

“Idiots,” I mumbled under my breath. 

I was fourteen. I was in the local library, spending the day with a stack of books about evolution. I walked past a conference room where a small group church meeting was taking place.  

“Idiots,” I grumbled again, a little louder this time. 

Rage began to simmer in my blood. Religious people swore allegiance to an invisible entity for which there was absolutely zero evidence—actually, that demanded their fealty against evidence! It made me so mad. I was studying science because we needed to stick to the facts! If society was to move forward, we needed to leave our religious superstitions where they belong… in the past.   

Twenty years and a PhD in Religion & Science later, I cringe at what I used to think and feel. I’m not upset with my former self—it wasn’t my fault. But today, instead of fighting in the war between religion and science, I am fighting to end it.   

Here’s what I learned that changed my life. 

Science came from Christian Theology 

Many assume science and religion have always been at odds. But science grew out of the soil of Christian thought.   

To medieval Christian thinkers, nature was God’s Creation. They studied nature to glorify God and to nurture their own spiritual health. As William of Auvergne put it in the 13th century, studying the “book of Nature” led both to “the exaltation of the creator and the perfection of our souls.”   

They also saw God as an all-knowing, all-powerful source of Order. This predisposed them to look for overarching, universal patterns that would later become known as natural laws.  

Contrary to the common assumption that medieval thinkers were dogmatic, they were extremely humble about their truth claims, because they compared their ability to know to God’s and found themselves wanting. So when Aristotle’s systematic methods of observing nature were re-introduced to Europe in the 12th century, they seized the opportunity to enhance the rigour of their studies. As they began implementing Aristotle’s techniques, they realised they could combine them with the Platonic mathematics they had already been using for centuries. This was a powerful combination that resulted in uniquely accurate theories and predictions. It illuminated just how much Order there was to Nature—in fact, more than ever previously demonstrated. It also provided a way to formalise the study of Nature into the methods we today recognise as science. 

It is often said that over the next few hundred years scientists (then called “natural philosophers”) fought against the Church for the sake of science (“natural philosophy”), but this is an anachronism. Philosophers did begin to debate the best sources of knowledge. There were some major conflicts. But the vast majority of these people continued to study nature as a way to know and glorify God as its Creator. 

Huxley and others also re-wrote the history of science to make it seem like it had always existed and been conducted by freethinking naturalists challenging the religious status quo.

Shots fired!   

The supposed conflict between “Religion” and “Science” only really emerged about 150 years ago. In Victorian England it was becoming increasingly acceptable to criticise the church. Most wanted to reform it, but a few began to want to defeat it entirely. 

At the same time, various areas of natural philosophy were proliferating into specific disciplines becoming known as “sciences.” Some people, including influential scientist and public intellectual Thomas Huxley (who hosted an exclusive dinner club for advocates of naturalism called the X Club), saw this as an opportunity to discredit religion.   

One strategy was to unite the growing pool of various scientific disciplines under the umbrella of a singular “science” that could be defined as oppositional to religion. Science was rational, so religion became irrational. Science embraced facts, so religion entertained superstitions. Science honoured truth, so religion enabled wishful thinking. The success of theories such as evolution helped lend credence to such claims. These naturalists began to argue that science doesn’t just disprove specific notions (such as that the Earth is 6,000 years old) but all beliefs in the life beyond entirely.  

Huxley and others also re-wrote the history of science to make it seem like it had always existed and been conducted by freethinking naturalists challenging the religious status quo. In Evolution and Ethics Huxley declared, for example, that “’scientific naturalism took its rise among the Aryans of Ionia.” And he described naturalism as appearing wherever in history “traces of the scientific spirit” were visible. 

Finally, Huxley used his considerable influence both in the UK and the USA to push religion and religious people out of the sciences. As a member of the Devonshire Commission and having several other prestigious roles and memberships throughout his career, he strategically placed his naturalistic protégés in influential university positions, and he re-wrote science textbooks and exams to exclude religious ideas, motivations, and people. In a very short amount of time, Huxley and others succeeded at pushing religion to the margins of the sciences (not entirely of course, but enough to make a difference) and making it seem anti-science. 

Overcoming rage and hate with humility 

I used to think that religion was silly and weak. I thought this view was rational, and I was intellectually superior because of it. I now know I only had these perceptions because I was born into a specific worldview in part manufactured by Huxley and others. By the same token, many fundamentalist religious people—while influenced by many sociopolitical factors—are anti-science in part because their forebears were derided as irrational and intentionally alienated from the sciences. 

Both “sides” of this supposed war have inherited simplified views of one another and are taught to fear and to hate. Without learning this history, most never realise what has biased their enemies--or themselves. And virtually everyone in our society carries misperceptions about there being some kind of intrinsic conflict. When I tell people I have a PhD in the relationship between Religion and Science, most laugh and say: “but is there one?!” 

There is, and it was once beautiful and harmonious.  

The truth is that science is a way of investigating the order of nature, which can be done with or without belief in God. Today, many scientists eschew faith, but many others continue in the medieval tradition of studying Nature as God’s Creation with great integrity, rigour, and depth.  

We don’t all have to return to such beliefs. But one medieval practice we may all do well to reclaim is to approach the world, ourselves, and one another with deep humility concerning the limits of our knowing.  

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