I lost my faith in God’s CV, so I did a reference check

Towards the end of 2020, I remotely sat my HSC as part of the “class of COVID”. At the same time as cramming 13 years of knowledge into the hopeful foundations of a career, I found myself in a battle with the traditional faith of my family. I had been praying for a good HSC result, but this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.

From left: former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; Satara Uthayakumaran; Pope Francis.Credit: AP/Supplied/AP

Since childhood, my liberal parents taught me that the pursuit of justice, human rights and compassion for the marginalised were all integrated with a loving divine being who created everyone equally. However, as I came to study analytical subjects such as English, history and ethics, and involved myself in human rights campaigns that dealt with real-life suffering rather than theoretical teachings, I started to question accepted truths, and scrutinise my understanding of “God”.

Despite the lockdown, I wasn’t alone. Rates of worship have been declining since the 1960s, with a reduction of more than a million Christians since the 2016 Census. Suddenly, I was one of them.

I’m not sure why, at such a stressful time in my life, I went from passive Anglican with 18 years of worship in the bag, to someone who tripped over the lack of logic in it all, increasingly smelling the stench of hypocrisy in light of more claims of abuse in the church – exacerbated by the overruling of Cardinal Pell’s guilty verdict that very same year by the High Court.

So, rather than bothering with English essays on whether a blue curtain was a metaphor for the downfall of humanity, I did what I thought made sense at the time and went to the highest order in the land to settle both my internal debate and the dinner-table squabbles with my family – which took place almost always after a long day of work. When your parents ask you to set the table for a cordial family dinner, they don’t suddenly expect to hear: “Sure, but does God really exist?”

I contacted two of the greatest referees on the question of God: the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the Head of the Episcopalian Church, Bishop Michael Curry – the latter best known for his riveting sermon at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Wedding.

Losing my religion? Satara Uthayakumaran speaking at church.Credit:

Contacting two of the greatest theological thinkers seemed inconsequential at the time. After all, I had already contacted the Pope when I was 12 to ask why there were no female popes, given it was my dream job to head up the Vatican some day. Weirdly, I never received a response.

However, I did receive a reply from Bishop Curry, just a week after emailing him. He personally thanked me for my letter and for voicing my concerns. I could almost hear him, like a reassuring father figure, empathising that these questions afflicted most people of faith at some point in their life.

His advice was to ask myself: “What is the invitation God might be offering in the midst of this?” Although God doesn’t create the crisis, it doesn’t mean he is not reaching out in an unconventional way. He also sent me a copy of his book, all the way from New York to Sydney, which wrestles with some of the questions I asked. He then told me he would be praying for me and bestowed a blessing as I kept reflecting, thinking and discerning.

That, for me, was enough to reaffirm my faith – at least in humanity, if not theology. But then, the day after my graduation, I was having coffee with a friend in a local patisserie when I opened my emails and almost dropped my phone to see a reply from Rowan Williams. He also thanked me for my letter and reassured me these were the kinds of questions one should grapple with if they want to be both a person of faith and a contemporary thinker.

Among many, many other profound explanations, Dr Williams suggested that in an increasingly secular world, although churches are emptier, people continue to be baffled by natural phenomena, stopped in their tracks by something so strange, and exhilarated at unknown prospects. In his words, this was God continuing to make Himself known to humankind, albeit in subtler ways – or unconventional ways, as Bishop Curry put it. Further, people’s experiences of joy at a deeper level always have something to do with some letting go of our sense of self, or that sense of self that is important and in charge. For me, there was something quite euphoric in thinking about just letting go to become part of the magnitude of the universe, regardless of who had created it and who was in charge of it.

Just over three years ago, I never would have thought that a high school student from Sydney would be able to converse with two of the greatest theologians from the other side of the globe – nor would I have guessed the comfort their responses provided to a child on the cusp of adulthood, trying to make sense of her place in the world.

Even for those of us who don’t identify with religion, there are complexities within the universe that we all think about and struggle with. If those like Bishop Curry and Dr Williams are willing to engage with a 17-year-old from Sydney, then we should normalise having these conversations across age and profession, to enrich our understanding of our role in this vast expanse of space and magic.

So, I continue to believe. But I will also continue to question. And maybe one day, if we all continue to do so, we might have a female pope.

Satara Uthayakumaran is a writer and student at the Australian National University.

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