The Enduring Legacy of Don Cupitt
Author: Professor Elaine Graham
The Cambridge philosopher and theologian Don Cupitt died in January 2025, aged 90. For many he will be best known for his 1984 BBC Television series The Sea of Faith which catapulted him from University don to ‘Telly Don’,[1] a national celebrity and public intellectual. His broadcast work was but one element of a prolific career in which he produced over forty books, countless articles, reviews and other broadcast appearances.[2] Yet his views also generated considerable controversy, most notably for his advocacy of ‘non-realist’ theology, a concept that signifies the collapse of metaphysical theism and the rise of human-centred spirituality. Cupitt's death last year invites us to reconsider and reappraise his project anew, reflecting on what it might offer today. What might we learn from his philosophy and his vision of the religious life? I will argue that despite being portrayed as one who sought to undermine the Church, he was deeply invested in the future of Christian spirituality, and that this personal concern underpinned his search for a faith which was intelligible and credible to the world beyond the Church.
Born in 1934, Cupitt originally went to Cambridge to read Natural Sciences, before deciding to pursue ordination in the Church of England. After serving his curacy in Salford, he moved into academic theology, and was appointed Dean of Emmanuel College Cambridge in 1965, taking up an additional post as lecturer in philosophy of religion three years later. In the succeeding thirty years until his formal retirement in 1996, and throughout an active post-retirement career of writing and public speaking, he relentlessly pursued his intellectual and spiritual quest to rethink Christian belief and practice for modern times, advancing a radical revision (or re-vision) of religion as a wholly human creation.
What has Cupitt’s work and legacy to offer progressive Christians trying to rethink Christianity for today’s world? My suggestions would be as follows:
1. He takes secular modernity seriously
This is essentially the starting-point for all Cupitt’s work. He is often misunderstood by his many critics as seeking to destroy Christianity in the face of the challenges of modern science, Biblical criticism, secularisation and religious pluralism. Instead, he is asking his readers to confront these challenges honestly and unremittingly, but nevertheless to find new approaches to faith.
The impact of modern thinking on traditional religion was explored most fully in his magisterial TV series, The Sea of Faith (BBC, 1984) and its accompanying book. In six episodes, focusing on a pantheon of intellectual figures, Cupitt traced how the certainties of medieval Christendom had gradually been dismantled. First, he demonstrated how the rise of early modern science exposed the vastness of the universe and brought about a shift to a heliocentric world-view, something which diminished any sense of human uniqueness. Once religion defined and delineated our understandings of time and space as either secular or sacred; but the rise of empiricism and rationalism, together with the new discipline of Biblical Criticism, displaced Scripture and tradition as authoritative sources of knowledge. This signalled the erosion of the ‘world of gods and spirits’ in favour of a ‘man-made world of ceaseless change and movement.’
Second, the emergence of natural history, especially Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution in the nineteenth century, called the literal truth of Genesis’ account of creation into question. A third revolution within modern thought for Cupitt was its claim that human agency, rather than divine will, was the source of moral integrity and determined the course of history. The scientific and democratic revolutions of eighteenth-century Europe confirmed a belief in the virtues of human self-determination in the face of (religious) authority. Societies were fashioned according to new laws of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ and the conviction that society could operate on the basis of reason and enlightenment rather than superstition or tradition. Such a focus on radical immanence and human experience as constituting the nature of reality should, he argued, disabuse us of fantasies of a world beyond this one.
Cupitt was concerned that such profound paradigm shifts (at least in the West) demanded that the Christian Church needed to adapt accordingly, or else face a painful loss of credibility followed by an inevitable decline into irrelevance.
2. Cupitt invited his audience to embrace a ‘non-realist’ theology and ethics
Essentially, then, Cupitt was asking himself and his readers: What might faith look like if we fully accept that we live in a post-metaphysical age? In the final episode of The Sea of Faith and in subsequent books, Cupitt argued that in place of a belief in an objective, all-powerful and supernatural reality who intervenes in human history (something that a modern world-view had entirely discredited), we should embrace a ‘non-realist’ theology. This is the idea that God isn’t an external supernatural being ‘out there,’ but a symbolic or imaginative focus of human spiritual life.
Cupitt was therefore increasingly viewing religion as an entirely human creation, emphasizing the symbolic and linguistic nature of religious beliefs. Works such as The Long-Legged Fly (1987) reflected the influence of the Austrian philosopher and mathematician Ludwig Wittgenstein, who led Cupitt to focus on the importance of language. Religions, including Christianity, are human constructs and the way in which they are become meaningful is through the words we speak.
The word ‘God’ has value and meaning not because it refers to a transcendent being found somewhere in the ‘heavens’ but because it is a name or a word we use, thereby attaining ultimate meaning and force. In other words, non-realists are not seeking to describe a being who is other to the world of immanence but instead focusing on the way language about ‘God’ functions as a kind of regulative ideal, rather than a description of an objective or transcendent being.[3]
This, argued Cupitt, enables a greater rapprochement between science and religion, since theology is no longer a question of empirical or historical truth, or even a set of literal and propositional beliefs, but can be reinterpreted as a form of practical wisdom: that which informs a particular ethical outlook, or way of life.
3. Religion is a creative, ethical practice
So rather than grounding religion in fixed doctrines, Cupitt emphasises the significance of the human search for meaning[4]; language, story, and ritual as world-building and constructive activities;[5] and the imperative of ethical living in the present.[6]
In Solar Ethics (1995), Cupitt advocates for ‘solar living,’ which involves living generously, expressively, and without fear or inhibition. It is a life of self-expending creativity and love, akin to the sun's constant outpouring of energy. Cupitt redefines spirituality as a lifestyle and practical philosophy of life, emphasizing autonomy, creativity, and the pursuit of happiness. This is a form of ethics that does not rely on the metaphysics of a powerful deity who dispenses eternal reward or punishment, but focuses on the vitality of the present moment, as lived out in a spirit of generosity and human solidarity. In the face of radical doubt, one must embrace the uncertainties of one’s existence and choose life. This does, admittedly, require a measure of moral and existential courage to choose one’s own path through life, unencumbered by metaphysics or absolutes, and to allow personal integrity alone to serve as one’s moral compass. ‘We must choose what to be, what to value, and what world to constitute about ourselves, and that fearsome responsibility is absolutely primal.’[7] Cupitt therefore proposes a shift from worshipping a transcendent God to sanctifying life through artistic creation, moral practice and aesthetic celebration. This resonates with progressive Christianity’s focus on justice, compassion, and creative spirituality over dogma.[8]
4. Cupitt was offering a constructive future for Christianity
From the opening episode of The Sea of Faith in October 1984 Cupitt attracted virulent criticism and robust support in equal measure.[9] Many correspondents accused him of attempting to destroy the simple belief of ordinary Christians and undermining what they regarded as the Bible’s literal truths. Others, however, welcomed Cupitt’s attempts to offer a credible alternative to a traditional, realist faith, often recognising that Cupitt’s own intellectual and spiritual journey mirrored that of
academic philosopher, was surely one aspect of his appeal to his viewers.
It is now generally held that Cupitt’s radical views prevented him from achieving greater preferment, either at Cambridge or within the Church of England. For the rest of his career he was pilloried as ‘an Atheist Priest’[10] or ‘a household word for extreme theological liberalism’.[11] Many others considered his position on doctrine to be incompatible with his remaining in holy orders.[12] Yet Cupitt was not seeking to destroy the Church or promote a secular atheist agenda. Rather, his mission throughout his career was to rework religious faith as a credible prospect in the face of modern and secular world-views. Cupitt was concerned that unless the Church could speak to every new generation, accepting the intellectual premises of the wider world, then it would become increasingly irrelevant. He continued to believe that despite the onslaughts of scepticism and atheism, a new kind of Christianity was still capable of offering a life-affirming, robust and efficacious path through life.[13]
5. … and he may still have something to say to us today
Over forty years on from The Sea of Faith and more than a year after his death, we might consider what Cupitt’s lasting legacy and influence might be. Much of his writing was framed as a response to over two hundred years of modern thinking during which science, individualism, technology and secular humanism had come to predominate. He embraced postmodern thinking in some of his work on non-realism and the fluidity of language and meaning; and (as I have been explaining) his mission was essentially to chart a new course for religion after theism and realism. Yet today, many of the shibboleths of modernity have themselves come into question, not least the inevitability of secularisation and the ‘death of God’. Modernity has been revealed to be a primarily Western preoccupation. Much of the Global Majority world is not secular but deeply religious. Populist politicians – albeit controversially -- evoke Christian identity and symbolism as fundamental to their visions of nationhood and community. In addition, some recent evidence suggests a growing interest in religion and spirituality on the part of younger generations: something unlikely to contribute to the wholescale revival of the institutional Church’s fortunes, but symptomatic of new spaces in which questions of belief may be explored.[14] Does this mean there might be a new audience for Cupitt’s approach? How and through what means might people encounter his ideas today?
If there is a renewed appetite for many of the same questions Cupitt was asking throughout his career, and while this might not necessarily involve a process of ‘taking leave’ of God and orthodox belief in order to embrace radical doubt, many of his concerns still resonate. These include the compatibility or otherwise of scientific and theological world-views, the relationship between belief and doubt, faith and science, and whether it is possible in his own words, to combine ‘religious seriousness and critical faith’.[15] Above all, Cupitt’s own unstinting commitment to intellectual honesty and religious authenticity should still resonate with those today who look for opportunities to engage in open, critical and honest discussion about the existence of God, the nature of faith and the future of the Church.
Endnotes
[1] Angela Tilby, ‘The Post-Christian Pilgrims’, Church Times 29 April 1994: 16.
[2] All Cupitt’s books and papers are now housed in the Sea of Faith Archive at Gladstone’s Library, Hawarden, North Wales.
[3] See, for example, Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God (SCM, 1980).
[4] Don Cupitt, The Last Philosophy (SCM Press, 1995)
[5] Cupitt, What is a Story? (SCM Press, 1991).
[6] Cupitt, The Time Being (SCM Press, 1992).
[7] Cupitt, The Sea of Faith: 20.
[8] Cupitt, After God (SCM, 1997).
[9] Correspondence arising from the BBC series forms a major part of the Sea of Faith Archive at Gladstone’s Library.
[10] Scott Cowdell, Atheist Priest? Don Cupitt and Christianity, (SCM Press, 1988).
[11] Walter Schwarz, ‘Our Father Who Art on Earth,’ The Guardian 21 September 1987: 21.
[12] Elaine Graham and Graeme Smith, ‘Prophet without Honour: The Marginalisation of Don Cupitt.’ Theology Volume 126 Issue 1 (January-February 2023): 20-27.[13] Graham and Smith, ‘Prophet without Honour’, 2023.
[14] Rhiannon McAleer and Rob Barward-Symmons, The Quiet Revival (London: Bible Society, 2025).
[15] Cupitt, The Sea of Faith (BBC TV, 1984, Episode 1, ‘The Mechanical Universe).
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Elaine Graham is Professor Emerita of Practical Theology at the University of Chester and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is the author of many books, including Transforming Practice (1996), Between a Rock and Hard Place (2013), Apologetics without Apology (2017) and (with Heather Walton and Frances Ward), Theological Reflection: Methods (2nd Edition, 2018). She was Principal Investigator between 2021 and 2024 on a British Academy/Leverhulme funded research project based on the Sea of Faith archives at Gladstone’s Library. See www.doncupitt.com.