Library
The Sea of Faith Network has built up a large library of articles and recordings of speakers from our conferences. The full digitisation of these articles into a searchable format is ongoing, but a significant number are already searchable and viewable on this website.
You can browse our content below, including by written article, video or audio / podcast, as well as by author and topic.
You can search the digitised portion of our library using the search box below.
As I Please: Cats and Dogs
John Pearson reflects on cats and dogs. Alas, poor Inca, I knew him well … for about six months at any rate. Seldom has this column courted much feedback … half a dozen responses, mixed,...
Review: Collected and New Poems by David Perman
Kathryn Southworth reviews Collected and New Poems by David PermanRockingham Press (Ware 2021). Pbk 208 pages. £14.99. David Perman is best known as a supporter of poetry, founder of the Ware group of poets and...
Jesus and the Powers by Tom Wright and Michael Bird
Our world is ‘dangerously combustible, due to financial crises, pandemics, increasing injustices and inequalities, democratic chaos, geopolitical upheaval, wars and rumours of more wars to come.’ So begins this book by two distinguished New Testament...
Book reviews, notices and Conversation
Book Reviews, ‘Notices’ and Conversation The many changes happening around us call for some change in our ‘Books’ section. I hope to include more short ‘notices’ of books that members have found useful. These will...
Network Matters: Sofia
These pages will consider an aspect of the Network’s work in each edition. This edition considers the Sofia and its aim. The Charity The Sea of Faith Network is an educational charity that exists ‘to...
Saint Sophia and her Daughters, Saints Faith, Hope and Love
The widow Sophia and her daughters, Faith Hope, and Love, are said to have lived in the first or second century and to have been martyred in Rome in one of the Christian persecutions, perhaps...
Faith, Trust, and the Courage to Live Truthfully
On faith as trust, exploring what contemporary responses to trans lives reveal about how faith is practised today, by John Billings
Lived Religion: Simon Cross
Q: Simon, you’ve had quite a personal and professional journey over the past years, from journalism, writing on New Monasticism, doctoral research at Hull, and into urban ministry. You continue writing and are Chair of...
On Lived Religion
The study of religion in everyday life, as developed within the fields of sociology and practical theology, challenges us to reevaluate and redefine our understanding of religion. In sociology, the French la religion vécue of...
Learning from Interfaith Dialogue
A large part of my spiritual pilgrimage has been the journey into the faith of others. It has been a sacred encounter and a journey which has truly enriched my soul. It began when, as...
The International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF)
Bringing together liberal religious individuals and communities by Łukasz Liniewicz. The Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Thinkers and Workers, which met for the first time 125 years ago in London, has survived to this...
Reflections on Religion and Worldviews Education (RE)
Part 1: Keeping Faith in Religion and Worldviews Education (RE) by Dave Francis and Denise Cush We have both dedicated our working lives, and even quite a bit of our retirement to date, to the...
Editorial: Living Faith
Living Faith This year marks the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the First Congress of The International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers. Hosted in London (26 May—3 June 1901),...
Faith Beyond Certainty: Rethinking God and Belief
Jessica Eastwood explores Don Cupitt’s religious non-realism and its potential to reframe engagement with religion beyond theism and atheism.
Pass it on
A small campaign to boost Network coverage Earlier this year the SOFN Steering Committee decided to reproduce a leaflet explaining what the Network does and who it might appeal to. You should find a copy...
Worldviews Navigator: Understanding the obvious
Is it just older people who begin most of their conversation starters with, “What I don’t understand is…”? You can complete the sentence with your favourite bugbear: “…why people think it’s OK to drop litter...
Religion in my Life: Kiran
Like all of the subjects of the Religion in my Life column this year, Kiran is an activist working for the good of the community and has resisted prejudice and injustice all her life. In...
How Minds Change The New Science of Belief, Opinion and Persuasion by David McRaney.
How Minds Change The New Science of Belief, Opinion and Persuasion by David McRaney. Oneworld (London, 2022) 352 pages. Pbk £11:99 Reviewed by Digby Hartridge Journalist David McRaney has written what amounts to a very...
The Joys and Troubles of a Missionary Life: Jowett Murray in the China of 1909-1945
by David Murray (Author), Ruth H Finnegan (Editor). Callender Press (Milton Keynes 2025) 212 pages, Pbk £19.99 Reviewed by David Chapman This is not a book I would have read were it not that I...
Consume! Note we have carrots, also sticks.
Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, New Year – what an exemplary spending spree. But the advertisements showed just how happy and popular we would be: it’s only failures who can’t afford it and miseries who opt...
From Religion to Philosophy
There has always been ‘religion’ I have read somewhere though it makes me wonder if that has indeed been the case. ‘What is religion?’ This is not a serious question for me – the word...
Defend Our Juries: Lift the Ban
Defend Our Juries (DOJ) was established to “shine a light on the constitutional crisis taking place in our courts”: Juries of 12 randomly selected citizens put the moral intuitions of ordinary people at the heart...
Protest
John Pearson considers the efficacy of climate (and other) protests The Climate Crisis is not something that can be read about, reflected upon and then set aside. Each of us, individually, with our hearts and...