Christian non-realism is essentially an approach to one’s Christian faith that interprets the ‘magical’ aspects of Christianity as metaphor. Christian non-realists reject all the supernatural elements of the faith and do not believe in an objective being or thing called God. The word ‘God’ is used in a plethora of different ways, but never to describe a force beyond the laws of nature. God is not a thing or a being, but rather an experience—an experience of the subjectively impossible being actualized in our lives, an experience of finding hope in hopelessness, a word that articulates something of the quality of sacred space, and a word that somehow describes something beyond words.

Christianity, then, is not uniquely privileged but rather is a language through which the ordinary everyday experiences of us all can be understood and interpreted—a language that we inherit from our ancestors, which orients us within a narrative through which we can draw out meaning and purpose for our lives.

This narrative in which we situate ourselves is not static, but ever-evolving as we grow in our understanding of who we are in relation to God. The Bible, then, can be taken as an extract from this meta-story of humanity seeking to comprehend itself and how it relates to God.

Of course, for non-realists, the figure of Jesus himself, as is the case with all Christians, is of central import. In Jesus, we have the principal metaphor of God being incarnated upon earth and dying—God choosing to self-annihilate.

Being a Christian non-realist is a challenging perspective to hold, for it confounds orthodox Christians and irritates atheists because it challenges common assumptions in both camps. It is a perspective that seems to have had its day in the established church, and in part, this led to my decision to leave Anglican ministry and pursue Unitarian ministry. I feel that Christian non-realism fits better into a Unitarian context, for the culture within Unitarianism is more egalitarian in nature.