What is a Devout Skeptic vs. Cultural Christian ?

I ran in to a comment via e-mail that mentioned something in terms of not being PC for a Cultural Christian or a Devout Sceptic.

Devout Skeptic? What’s that?


Never heard that one before. And believe it or not, Wikipedia does not have a small article of explanation for the phrase. Rather odd.


Needed to do some Internet research.


I did run into the British spelling of skeptic as sceptic.


Apparently there was a Brit radio show for many years by that name which is a possible answer to the question of what is a devout skeptic?


Bel Mooney

She was a regular presenter on BBC Radio 4 from 1982 until 2008, notably as presenter of Devout Sceptics, a programme devoted to public figures' private beliefs, not necessarily agnostic or atheistic, as the name might suggest.

A quote from Theo Hobson, a British “post-Anglican” theologian:

Confessing Evangelical

…this: a certain dishonesty and laziness of mind, and a certain pretentiousness. The Devout Sceptic wants to lay claim to the glamorous depths of religious tradition, without the embarrassment of actually identifying with it. Do not confuse me with a common atheist (he says), like that brash chap Dawkins, who is blatantly ignorant of the controlling passion of Western culture. Consider me to have the integrity and depth of a believer, yet also the searching mind and defiant heart of a Romantic.

And going back to Mel Mooney:

Devout Sceptics

… Ever since, at the age of sixteen, I rejected the idea of God - believing that no God of Love could preside over a world so apparently lacking in that commodity - the longing for him/her/it has been like a guilty secret inside me, with no curtained confessional in which to whisper. When a bereavement left me bleak and bitter, I skulked around lighting candles for comfort yet hurling insults at a God I steadfastly denied….

Devout Sceptics are seekers who won’t trust the maps they have been given, but know there is a destination towards which to stumble. Even if it proves to be the place they began at, and (to invoke T.S. Eliot) they know it for the first time.

It is not atheism, not quite agnostic and a phrase that I think in some ways has an affinity with the term cultural Christianity.

So in conclusion, a Devout Sceptic is, in my opinion, is one in a personal comfort and at a certain distance amid the sea of many religious beliefs and practices.