A cynic’s guide to unbelief

Navigating post-­faith scepticism

Featured in

  • Published 20241105
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-01-2
  • Extent: 196 pp
  • Paperback, ebook, PDF

THE TITLE OF this article is misleading – because I don’t know anything. This is important to note in case you are here thinking you might learn something. You might – but it certainly won’t be because of me.

Earlier this year, I spoke with the writer Charlotte Wood, whose latest novel, Stone Yard Devotional, is about a woman who unsubscribes from her life (and her emails) and runs away to live in a small religious community on the Monaro plains. It sounds like housewife fantasy-­fiction, but it’s more like a meditation. Charlotte said that she was raised Catholic but was not a believer anymore. I asked her what she considered her new church to be, and she replied art. She went on to say that even though she was an atheist, Catholicism had left her with a ritualistic void in her life. The Mass. Rites, liturgy, communion. It’s structural. Something to hang your mystical and spiritual moments on. When you leave your faith and its rituals behind, a hole appears.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Instructions for killing monsters

I do know this: Never in the history of the world has any monster been defeated with fear. (Literally, never. I checked.) Ultimately, the only shields against the powers of destruction, death and evil are the qualities that come under the banner of love, which is the bright day to fear’s night.

More from this edition

Religion as resistance

Non-fictionIn their youth, my parents participated in the anti-­apartheid movement, attending meetings and outlawed protests. From birth their lives had been prescribed by the apartheid regime, from the suburbs they could live in to the beaches they could swim at to the benches they could sit on; there was little it saw fit to leave unregulated. Both of their families had been forcibly relocated from District Six when it had been reclassified as a whites-­only area. They attended Coloured schools, where they were taught by both white and Coloured teachers. At one of these schools, my teenaged mother challenged a teacher for making a racist comment and subsequently chose to leave the school when they backed the teacher instead. My father’s father was a Shaykh, his uncle an eminent Islamic scholar known across both the Cape and wider South Africa. In their youth, my parents participated in the anti-­apartheid movement, attending meetings and outlawed protests. From birth their lives had been prescribed by the apartheid regime, from the suburbs they could live in to the beaches they could swim at to the benches they could sit on; there was little it saw fit to leave unregulated. Both of their families had been forcibly relocated from District Six when it had been reclassified as a whites-­only area. They attended Coloured schools, where they were taught by both white and Coloured teachers.

Land, sea and sky

Non-fiction YOU CAN ONLY imagine what it would have been like. On 1 July 1871, the warrior chief Dabad and his men stood and watched...

Through the looking glass

In Conversation Photography and truth have always had a complicated relationship. Long before AI and deepfakes recalibrated our trust in the medium, we’ve seen reality reinterpreted...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.