The Big Preachers
Of atoms were ignorant and molecules;
but thundered verbally from their high
pulpits, training captains pacing
their unstable bridges and warning always
of the wreck of the soul. No scientist
had their renown; the invisible
was undiscovered. What was made
plain by the lightning flash
of their faces was the Creator’s
inimitable purpose. And the people hungered
for more, exposing themselves Sunday
by Sunday to that tempestuous
weather, sharpening their appetite
thereby. You have heard the story
of the visiting preacher’s drawing
of a pretended bow, and how they parted
for the shaft to go by? Those
were the imagination’s heydays
and will not return. Being too thick
to give ground, we take our stand
now on the facts, and the facts
must do for us, a multitude at a time.
R.S. Thomas, Uncollected Poems, (eds.) T Brown and J W Davies, 2013, (page 120)
The title runs straight into the poem. The poet is a preacher himself, but not a big preacher. Some time in the past, within living memory, the big name preachers of Welsh Nonconformity, the revivalists, evangelists and revered expositors of the faith, showed a dismissiveness of new scientific knowledge. Not because they had understood it and answered its claims, but because they were ignorant, perhaps even culpably uninformed about developments in human knowledge, the new physics, the discoveries about how life is formed and matter is constructed. And consequently unperturbed by the implications of such new knowledge on the old faith.
Instead they perform like captains of a ship in trouble, "verbally thundering" from the bridge about the dangers of the storm and the risk of shipwreck for the soul. "No scientist had their renown;/the invisible was undiscovered." In this world of restricted intellect and spiritual excitement, there was neither time nor interest in the "invisible undiscovered", no curiosity about the how of creation, no interest in the inconvenient verging on blasphemous facts, that might dare question "the Creator's inimitable purpose."
Thomas was a pastor, a poet and a Christian with all the desperate questioning of Jacob wrestling through the dark night with an angel of the Lord, wanting to know who He was. Thomas's antipathy to technological control, and his suspicions about the machinery that served human greed for possession and lust for power, arose in part from his being convinced of science as a form of knowledge which challenged religious truth, however zealously proclaimed.
The image of thunder and lightning gives the big preacher's words an ominous sound; the lit up faces of the people suggests illumination, their seeing of truth only in the preacher's words, and they love it, lap it up, and hunger for more; and all the time, no scientist has their renown, they are ignorant of atoms and molecules. They love this tempestuous weather, the themes of judgement and shipwreck and last minute redemption; but are unconcerned about the other world, the real world, of reason, fact, experiment and proof.
The story of the preacher's pretended bent bow, and the impact of an imaginary arrow parting the congregation so sure that what is preached is real, exposes the disenchantment about to be told. "Those were the imagination's heydays / and will not return." The old revivals with their fire and rhetoric, verbal thundering and words hurled by tempestuous weather; they are over. That was then, and this is now.
The last four lines are after the storm, and into a chastened silence come words that acknowledge the triumph of science as the primary epistemology of the contemporary world. I'm not entirely sure what Thomas means when he says the people "are too thick to give ground." Thick, as in slow to understand, perhaps even lacking capacity to have seen all this coming? Careless, perhaps, in not taking time to adjust and expand the parameters of faith and science, and seeking mutual enrichment. Instead, they embrace the default negative options of either a fixed reciprocal hostility, or a truce with the protagonists now separated by a Berlin wall of indifference, making impossible any rapprochement of religion and science.
Facts. Atoms and molecules. Science and scientists renowned. No more verbal thundering. No longer the heydays of imagination. The day of the big visiting preacher with his pretended bow has gone, is finished The invisible has been discovered, and it has less need of God.
Being too thick
to give ground, we take our stand
now on the facts, and the facts
must do for us, a multitude at a time.
The age of science and technology, of new discovery and accumulating knowledge, of human understanding and knowledge based on autonomous reason and observed reality; facts. The last line is ambiguous, and may have an underlying admission that many of the claims at the heart of Christian faith may not stand up to the scrutiny of autonomous reason, and scientific facts. "Facts / must do for us, a multitude at a time." Faith could be overwhelmed by facts, by observed realities from atoms, to molecules, to matter, to a whole physical universe and its exploration and explanation in terms of science, not religion, of facts not faith, of human reason not God.
And so if "we take our stand now on facts, / the facts must do for us, a multitude at a time", we may be standing on that which cannot bear the weight of the asserted facts of Christian faith. Such credal truths as incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and the reality of God as revealed in those central claims of Christian faith, may not survive facts coming at them "a multitude at a time."
This is a courageous poem, honest about the religious history of Wales as it was in centuries past and in the more recent past of revivals and controversy over biblical truth, the decline of Nonconformity and its chapels, and unsettling scientific discoveries. Thomas writes with open-eyed realism about the 'now' world, and the changed ways of seeing, understanding and exploiting the world. I'm left wondering if Thomas is arguing (like Barth) that apologetics that seek to argue against the scientific world view, are doomed to failure – if Christians do that, "the facts must do for us, a multitude at a time."
On the other hand, if we are willing to enter into dialogue and live with scientific facts, however inconvenient; if we acknowledge and affirm that though some of the central claims of Christian faith are not verifiable facts, they are nevertheless true in ways beyond empirical laboratory observation. If we can do that, it is possible that facts will do for us, we can live with them, in that more secular world of science where faith relinquishes its stranglehold on all truth.
In reading Thomas, it is important to give full weight to the tensions and frustrations of this pastor of ordinary folk, trying to preach a gospel that is true and relevant to their struggles, all the while being careful not to claim more than he knew to be true. But what truth? Who's truth? And how does he know? Fact and faith are not opposites; each are ways of knowing, statements of truth, convictions based on lived experience. Thomas, who never aspired to be a 'big preacher', is not ignorant of atoms and molecules. In his pulpit he stands in that liminal space where faith is humble enough to be questioned, and he hopes science is wise enough to acknowledge it doesn't have all the answers to questions only a human can ask.
The poem was written in 1983. One wonders what Thomas would have made twenty years later in 2003, when the human genome mapping was completed. Perhaps a poem on such an event would have the same ending: "the facts / must do for us, a multitude at a time."