Divide bridged


God’s Biologist: a life of Alister Hardy David Hay


DARTON, LONGMAN & TODD, 364PP, £24.99 ■Tablet bookshop price £22.50 Tel 01420 592974


P


rofessor Sir Alister Hardy was a brilliant biologist and distinguished Fellow of the


Royal Society. On retirement he became an explorer in the realms of religion, a Gifford lecturer and a recipient of the Templeton Prize for his empirical work on the mysteries of spirituality. Hardy was professor of zoology at Oxford from 1946 to 1961 (one of his students was Richard Dawkins), all the while convinced that the scientific mind could be employed to support religion. He pressed biology in the service of faith several decades before Dawkins attempted the reverse. Alas, few were prepared to listen to Hardy during the period when The Selfish Gene became fashionable in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The scientific study of religious


experience has become routine nowadays; and yet there is a significant divide between exponents of such enquiries. There is the destructive and reductive tendency, eminently promoted by some of Hardy’s former students. Then there are the initiatives of institutions like the Cambridge Faraday Institute of Science and


Sweet singing in the choir


Christian Music: a global history Tim Dowley, ed.


LION HUDSON, 264PP, £20 ■Tablet bookshop price £18


he history of Christianity resounds with music. St Paul exhorted the Ephesians to “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves … making melody to the Lord in your hearts” and, since the earliest times of the Church, music has been central to Christian worship and culture. It was a hot topic in the Renaissance and the Reformation; in the colonial period, it stimulated intercultural dialogue; and today denominations and national Churches are immediately recognisable by their distinctive “musics”. Tim Dowley’s history is a welcome project containing as it does within one attractive volume an impressive amount of information on a crucially important subject, beautifully presented and accessibly written. Dowley has gathered together a genuinely global and ecumenical group of scholars and musicians to write a history that encompasses Christian music ancient


T 24 | THE TABLET | 1 October 2011 Tel 01420 592974


Religion, which supports research demonstrating that there are many positive links between science and religion. Whatever one’s standpoint on the religion-science divide, however, there is a systemic problem. Experience of the spiritual has, by definition, a subjective or phenomenological dimension, which hampers and even thwarts the objectivity of scientific method. This was the conclusion of the Jesuit scholar Fr Herbert Thurston, who embarked in the 1930s and 1940s on a series of empirical enquiries into instances of popular mysticism, resulting in his book The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism. While his case histories were never intended to prove a divine origin, at least he could identify the bogus. But there has been another way forward, mainly in consequence of the work of William James, who wrote in his book Varieties of Religious Experience that religious experience constituted “… the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine”. James’ approach has encouraged those who seek a unity within the many religions of the world. James’ thesis, however, has been


challenged by professional theologians who object that God is not to be understood as an object competing with other objects in the world for our attention. We learn to find God, they argue, in the totality of our lives. And yet, James’ contention suggested a


Musical angels by Simon Marmion, from The Art of Worship: paintings, prayers and readings for meditation by Nicholas Holtam (Yale University Press, 120pp, £12.99)


and modern across the world. He offers a narrative history with short interpolated essays on myriad subjects as varied as Hildegard of Bingen, the history of church bells and the Salvation Army. The style is engaging and the authors make full use of original texts and images, so that the reader gains fascinating insight into the many ways in which music has been described and discussed – often passionately – by the Christians who made and encountered it through the centuries. The central narrative is of Christian music in the West, from the Jewish and Hellenistic influences on the early Church


way forward for the empirical investigator. Why not allow people to express what they have felt and then apply systematic analyses, familiar in sociology, the natural sciences and statistics? Would this not tell us something useful about the prevalence of religious experience in James’ terms? After retiring from his chair, Hardy founded the Religious Experience Research Unit in Oxford, associated at first with Manchester College, an institution run by Unitarians. Hardy worshipped in the chapel of the Unitarians, who do not believe in the divinity of Christ. He did no favours for himself when he told his Unitarian associates that he might return to Anglicanism if it suited him. The association he had with Manchester College was eventually terminated. Hardy attracted thousands of letters from people who claimed to have had experience of a higher power beyond themselves. He worked out statistically that up to 40 per cent of people are convinced of a spiritual dimension in life and argued that spirituality is part of our nature, perhaps bestowing an evolutionary advantage. His research unit did not thrive; but his initiatives have become an important part of the reconciliation between science and religion. David Hay, himself an academic biologist, has written a poignant and enthralling biography of an extraordinary man who was living proof that brilliant scientists are not by definition unbelievers. John Cornwell


through to medieval chant, the Renaissance and Reformation, and finishing with several chapters on twentieth-century and contemporary trends in Christian music. Alongside this narrative there are case studies on such topics as Byzantine music in the Middle Ages and modern period, Christian music from Latin America and studies of African, Asian and Antipodean Christian music, all written by specialists and practitioners in these fields. The “global” view is thus grounded in real scholarly knowledge and real experience. Some might feel that the centrality of the


West in this scheme is unfortunate given the book’s claim to universality; but to give a full treatment of all Christian music as it has proliferated across the world since the early modern period would make the book at least double its length, and sacrifice its coherence, making it into an encyclopedia instead of a history. But the clarity of presentation and ease of style ensure that the narrative is not swamped by the many names and dates, and beautiful colour illustrations make it delightful to browse. This is a book for anyone with an interest


in Christian culture in general, not only music enthusiasts, and although specialists will find inaccuracies and lament omissions, such an ambitious and successful project is to be commended. Matthew Ward


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