Ray Billington
Ray Billington
Ray Billington is the author of Religion Without God - a former Methodist minister and self-described non-theist who thinks religion has been appropriated by the world's religions.
In this broadcast talk Ray gives his personal experience of 'deconversion'.
I was actually (and this is ironic) preparing a sermon for the following Sunday, and reading Julian Huxley's Essays of a Humanist. As I read, I came to the realisation that I not only agreed with his ideas, but felt the same drive within me.
I walked up and down my study saying over and over again, "I am an atheist". It was an experience of great joy which has motivated me ever since.
Ray recalls the radical theology of Bishop John Robinson, whose Honest To God caused a furore on its publication in 1963. But he goes further than Robinson did, proposing that religion is better off without God.
From Lent Talks: The Human Face of God, broadcast 23 March 2003, Radio 4
