Crumbling Edifice: The Church Commissioners and the Decline of the Anglican Establishment

Review: Andrew Chandler, The Church of England in the Twentieth Century: The Church Commissioners and the Politics of Reform, 1948-1998 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2006).

On January 15, 1991, First Church Estates Commissioner Douglas Lovelock brought disturbing news to the bishops of the Church of England. After more than a decade of property speculation that had significantly increased the value of the investments of the Church Commissioners, the economic bubble had finally burst and the Church of England faced a need for drastic economic retrenchment. Almost overnight, a cacophony of protest erupted as Anglicans in the pews (and episcopal palaces) denounced the hubris of the Church Commissioners in so believing in their financial expertise as to squander long-term security for short-term gain.

Andrew Chandler's weighty tome on the fortunes the Church Commissioners represents a most valuable contribution to scholarship, with still relevant insights concerning the way in which ecclesiastical assets can and should be managed. Much of the value of The Church of England in the Twentieth Century derives from its reliance on the internal papers of the Church Commissioners, providing a window into the mindset of the relatively small group of men (and occasionally women) who set postwar fiscal policies that allowed the Church of England to establish adequate pay scales for its clergy and maintain church buildings that would otherwise have fallen into disrepair. Their correspondence throws an equally revealing light on the activities of Anglicans in the pews in the years following the Second World War. 

Formed in 1948 from the merger of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (a corporation established by Parliament in 1836 to manage church estates and revenues) and Queen Anne's Bounty (a charity organized in 1704 to provide grants to poor benefices and loans for the repair of clergy houses), the Church Commissioners were one of the fruits of the twentieth century managerial revolution, and enjoyed the active support of Geoffrey Fisher, perhaps the last archbishop of Canterbury to take much interest in the institutional church. Chandler demonstrates the increasing detachment of future archbishops from the work of the Commissioners, typified in the lament of Archbishop Michael Ramsey to the then bishop of London in 1967. "One of the more godly laymen on the Board of Church Commissioners," he wrote, "has asked why the meetings do not begin with prayer. When I became Chairman I was informed that it was not their custom to have prayer and I followed the existing pattern. I must confess that at the time I sometimes used to feel the proceedings were so ungodly that the custom was just as well, but there is really no reason why this should be the only ecclesiastical body which does not pray at its meetings." (Michael Ramsey to Robert Stopford, 19 May, 1967, quoted on 150-151).

Ramsey's comments reflect the unease with which many churchmen contemplated (and still contemplate) the world of finance. The general lack of clerical experience in that arena (the present archbishop of Canterbury notwithstanding) coupled with the perception that markets were not renowned for respecting the dignity of the individual only accentuated the gulf between the guardians of the Church's purse and the shepherds of its souls. That said, the history of the Church Commissioners is in great measure a history of the postwar Church of England. Despite the relative autonomy granted by the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act of 1919, the half century that followed attested to the enduring supremacy of Parliament (characterized most notably by the parliamentary rejection of a proposed revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 1928). The Church of England remained a national church, its clergy vested with responsibility for all within their pastoral cure, not merely those who identified as practising Anglicans, and its assets were intended to benefit the nation.

The early Commissioners, insists Chandler, bore the stamp of the era in which they were formed, "a pragmatic liberal bureaucracy; a brisk but humane enterprise set in motion by experienced and committed executors who understood their tasks sensibly, rationally, without the show of politics." (24) They were typified by Malcolm Trustram Eve, Third Estates Commissioner from 1952 to 1954 and First Estates Commissioner from 1954 to 1969. A seasoned industrialist (with interests in cement), Eve sustained and developed the policies adopted by the Church Commissioners in the late 1940s, that included an embrace of Stock Market transactions at the expense of the Church's earlier reliance on the purchase of government bonds, investment in commercial property and the reorganization and consolidation of the scattered agricultural holdings of the Church of England.

Such policies brought about a sea change in the relationship between the Church and those who continued to be its tenants, whether London householders or rural farmers. Particularly after the lifting of rent controls in London in the early 1950s, the Commissioners began to emphasize the income potential of their properties in the London districts of Maida Vale and Hyde Park (although they conceded the importance of affordable housing for their tenants in Paddington). Similar concerns reshaped relations with their farmer tenants, particularly after the suppression of the glebe as a mechanism binding the income from a specific piece of land to a particular incumbency. Agricultural land that failed to provide an assured source of revenue was now as likely to be sold as retained.

The transformations of the 1950s, though striking, were as nothing compared to the revolution of the era that followed. The success of investment in London commercial property during the 1960s and 1970s, encouraged the Commissioners to pursue more risky schemes a decade later. The lifting of exchange controls led to extensive investment in foreign property, both in the United States (especially California and Texas) and Japan, and by the early 1980s property accounted for two-thirds of their portfolio. The Commissioners also embarked upon a series of what Chandler terms economic "dreadnoughts," most notably shopping centres such as St. Enoch's in Glasgow and the Metrocentre in Gateshead. Sizable commercial loans (often without fixed interest rates) were secured from the high street banks, including a staggering £250 million line of credit from National Westminster Bank. With the hindsight of the past decade, the inevitability of a crash seems inescapable.

There was, however, another side to the story, one for which Archbishop Ramsey's earlier comment is revealing. Both the Church Assembly and its successor the General Synod responded to the Commissioners' early successes with requests for ever increasing levels of expenditure on clerical stipends, pensions and investment in bricks and mortar. The results of this collaboration between the Commissioners, the Church Assembly/General Synod, and the Dioceses were frequently beneficial but they were also costly. Few of the beneficiaries, whether parishes, clergy or bishops, seemed conscious that with increased costs come increased liabilities. The long drive to raise clerical stipends that culminated in the establishment of Central Stipends Authority in 1973 was accompanied by an unseemly degree of inter-diocesan strife over funding priorities. When the widening gap between assets and obligations toward clerical pensions became evident during the 1970s, the unwillingness of the General Synod to embrace a measure of fiscal restraint arguably set the Commissioners on the road to the speculative plunge of the 1980s. Dioceses and parishes were always quick to identify uses for new income but slow to propose sacrifices that might keep the budget in balance.

Chandler's narrative is replete with illuminating insights into the mind of the postwar Church that range from the debates surrounding the closing and consolidation of rural parishes to the bitter struggle over divestment from South Africa. Bishops, dioceses and cathedrals all receive attention, as do the financial ramifications of such intra-church matters as Faith in the City and the ordination of women. For an institutional history, the number of vignettes of local situations (the evoling of the debate over the sale of redundant churches first to Roman Catholics in 1950s and subsequently to Muslims and Sikhs in the 1970s and 1980s is particularly fascinating) is extensive. One will search in vain, however, for references to Honest to God or the "Durham Affair," there is little discussion of church-state relations prior to the cataclysm of 1991, and the wider Anglican Communion is conspicuous by its absence. Perhaps the most misleading feature of the book is its title, which might lead the casual reviewer to assume a comprehensiveness which is absent, but as a revelation of the workings of the institutional church, Chandler has provided something of enduring value. Anthony Trollope's Archdeacon Grantley would have understood the mindset of the Church Commissioners all too well, which perhaps adds poignancy to Chandler's ultimate conclusion:

The historian of the last fifty years is left only to wonder what the next fifty years will bring. Unless the societal patterns which have gathered such force in the later twentieth century are superseded by new ones which combine to benefit the cause of corporate Christianity, at some point decline must bite through the sinews of the body and into the structures, the very bones, which give it solid form and movement. Arguably it was the achievement of the Church Commissioners between 1948 and 1998 to maintain, by a steady, ongoing reform of particulars, the contours of an order and a method which might well have decayed and even collapsed in some areas without their efforts. Perhaps a future age will observe that their legacy was simply to hold back for a period of time a decline which was altogether too formidable to be halted by the Churches. (481-482)

From Glittering Images to Absolute Truths: Susan Howatch's Starbridge Sextet

Lent seems the perfect time to reflect upon the ecclesiastical novel.

Church-centred fiction frequently has difficulty resolving the Christian dilemma of being "in the world and yet not of it." If an ecclesiastical novel confines itself to the life of the Church, it risks alienating the reader unfamiliar with—or even antipathetic to—matters considered "churchy." If, on the other hand, it engages excessively with the Church in the world, it risks creating a narrative in which all consideration of the transcendent is sacrificed and the ecclesiastical environment becomes merely a setting for characters shorn of heavenly aspiration. Fortunately, there are novelists capable of transcending such conflicts and Susan Howatch is certainly among their number.

Howatch's Starbridge Sextet was published over a period of seven years, the last—and arguably the finest—Absolute Truths, appearing in 1994. Like Anthony Trollope, her setting is a Cathedral community in southern England (Howatch wrote in the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral). As with Trollope, the conflict between the Bishop and the Dean of the Cathedral forms the central dynamic of the final three novels, but unlike Trollope, the reader is never presented with a cast in which hero and villain are easily identifiable (there are no Obadiah Slopes or Francis Arabins). Indeed, Howatch's twin preoccupations are human fallibility and the necessity of a life transformed by divine grace. Furthermore, although these are novels that focus upon the lives of men engaged in the business of the Church, they are set in the context of a turbulent Great Britain passing from the horrors of economic depression and global conflict of the late 1930s to the cultural unravelling of the late 1960s, when crisis theology or the "new morality" still had meaning beyond the portals of the seminary. In an age when the observations of most bishops of the Church of England evoke little interest even among church-going Anglicans (never mind the wider public), it is well to be reminded of an age when the pronouncements of a George Bell or a John Robinson had the capacity to excite public interest.

Another ingenious feature of the sextet is that while it follows a chronological progression, it also reflects a re-telling of a common story from different angles, most notably those of the three principal characters, Charles Ashworth (Cambridge don and later Bishop of Starbridge), narrator of Glittering Images (1987) and Absolute Truths (1994); Jon Darrow (a member of an Anglican religious order released from his vows to function as a laicized spiritual director), narrator of Glamorous Powers (1988); and Neville Aysgarth (Archdeacon of Starbridge and later Dean of Starbridge Cathedral), narrator of Ultimate Prizes (1989). Outside perspectives are also provided by Aysgath's erstwhile lover Venetia Flaxton, narrator of Scandalous Risks (1990) and Darrow's son Nicholas, narrator of Mystical Paths (1992), though neither novel has, in my opinion, quite the power of the other four.

Howatch's three principal characters—while unquestionably individuals—also serve as theological "types." At one extreme we find Jon Darrow, representative of the Anglo Catholic party at its zenith but also of a mystical tradition that is, as the character acknowledges at one point, beyond parties. At the other pole is the liberal Protestant modernist, Neville Aysgarth, whose disdain for the trappings of ritualism is never far from the surface. Between the two, we find Charles Ashworth, a Prayer Book high churchman increasingly dedicated to resisting the tides of modernity sweeping through the Church of England. Such single sentence summaries do less than justice to the complexity of the characters involved, however, for Howatch displays an enviable skill in exploring both their strengths and their weaknesses. Such a narrative, rendered all the more effective by the fact that it is generally the character that testifies against himself, articulates with resounding force the messages of Sin and Redemption, Incarnation and Atonement, Good Friday and Easter that amplify the limitations of the human condition.

Subsequent posts will explore the principal features of each novel in detail and will be linked to this introduction. It might seem strange to propose such literature for Lenten reading, yet I would personally recommend Absolute Truths (although it is the final part of the sextet, and the penultimate chronologically, it is not necessary to have read the others to appreciate it) as an example of the depths from which a Christian can recover and a reminder that "failure" is as much a part of the human condition for the clerical order as for that of the laity.

Faithful Division: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Postmodern Anglicanism

Review: Nancy James, The Developing Schism Within the Episcopal Church. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.

In the introduction to her recently published history of North American Anglican conflict, Nancy James observes:

Every action and decision entrusted to a bishop reveals the working of his or her mind. In the complex relationship between a bishop and his diocese, or a bishop active in the House of Bishops, or a Bishop in the Anglican Communion, certain theological values are seen in realized action. A lived theology, a bishop acting in history, emphasizes that God moves within human history. The specific task of a bishop is to over-see the church from a theological perspective. To state that this is a controversy about homosexuality might attract journalistic and press attention, but this radical simplification of the controversy misses the heart of why many have poured their hearts into the struggle. (4-5)

James is to be commended for the admirably neutral manner in which she delves into the spiritual journey pursued by the Episcopal Church (TEC) over the past eight years and the ultimate emergence of a new contender on the American denominational scene, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Sadly, this reviewer is unable to accord The Developing Schism an unqualified seal of approval, for its most frustrating feature is not the line that it takes, but the fact that it too often leaves the reader uncertain as to the conclusions its author intends to draw.

Reflective of James’s approach is her opening chapter, which provides background on Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) theologian Charles Price (whose image graces the book’s cover). Price’s life and writings could well have served as a template for the dissolution of relationships within TEC, but instead he flits in and out of the narrative in a somewhat ghostly fashion. Little effort is made to demonstrate either his impact on Broad Church Anglicanism in North America or his relationship with conservative students at VTS and when the principle authority cited in support of his theological importance is a volume of essays written in his honor, the reader can be forgiven for wondering how vital a role he actually played.

James is correct to suggest that a comprehensive account of all groups and movements involved in Anglican realignment would be a monumental task (v-vi), and yet there are significant omissions that leave her argument considerably weakened. As the author of a study of Anglican renewal in Pittsburgh I must confess partiality, but I do feel that confining discussion of Pittsburgh to its bishop (now archbishop) alone is to neglect an important diocesan relationship that preceded Robert Duncan’s arrival in southwestern Pennsylvania and which helped nurture the leading conservative Anglican seminary – Trinity School for Ministry – and foster ties with Anglican provinces in the Global South. Indeed, a section of The Developing Schism entitled “The Formation of Trinity Episcopal School” is noteworthy for the sparseness of references to the seminary in question. (116-119)

If anything, The Developing Schism gives undue prominence to the charismatic elements of the renewal movement, to the detriment of both the Anglo-Catholic and non-charismatic Evangelical contributions. Coupled with the lack of discussion of the establishment of the Anglican Communion Network, the reader is left with the impression that there was no intermediate step between Gene Robinson’s consecration and the departure of the parishes that formed the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) in 2006 and it accords an exaggerated significance to CANA at the expense of, for example, Christ Church, Plano (formerly in the Diocese of Dallas).

Similarly, while James stresses that the beginning of the national schism can be traced to VTS and the Diocese of Virginia (iv), her discussion of the history of the the CANA congregations is patchy. It is not until the reader is more than half way through the book that Truro Episcopal Church is mentioned, and only then in the context of a sermon delivered by Dr. Price in 1987. (119) The construction of the networks of evangelical association that began at Truro during the 1970s is not addressed (nor the role of the now retiring Bishop of Central Florida, John Howe, then an outspoken Evangelical priest at Truro). The influence of the future CANA congregations in the governance of the Diocese of Virginia and the generous financial support they provided in the 1980s and 1990s is also undocumented. Without such context, the casual reader is abruptly thrown into a discussion of the breakdown of relations with Bishop Peter Lee, the drafting of the now notorious Protocol and the celebrated votes of disassociation in 2006 and subsequent lawsuits that seems to emerge from thin air. (149-153, 159-160, 163-167, and 175-179) Equally curious is the abrupt incursion into the narrative of a reference to Pope Benedict XVI that moves unevenly from Benedict’s support for Anglican conservatives to the sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. (181-183) Both topics might have been profitably addressed by James, but here they seem to have no connection to the wider narrative.

At the heart of James’s account are eighteen interviews with prominent figures in the controversy, including two African archbishops, Peter Akinola and Henry Orombi; American conservatives Robert Duncan, John Guernsey, and Martyn Minns; and American progressives Peter Lee, Gene Robinson, John Chane and Louie Crew. Notable by their absence are the present and former Presiding Bishops, Katharine Jefferts Schori and Frank Griswold. While it would have been very effective to use those interviews as the basis for a study of the “mind of the church,” which James does on occasion, the switching back and forth between narrative and personality ultimately works to the detriment of both. Both Peter Lee and John Chane receive considerable attention from James, but ultimately her stream of consciousness mode of description leaves the reader grappling adequately to summarize the theological views of her subjects. It is not that there are no insights, merely that they require great effort on the part of even the informed reader to discern them.

One of the strengths of The Developing Schism, it must be said, is that it does identify a strain of what James terms “remnant theology” that existed in both reappraising and reasserting – to use Kendall Harmon’s terminology – Episcopal groups during the 1970s and 1980s. (28-29) That the former would have largely won the debate within the wider Church by the mid-1990s was by no means assured in the mid-1970s, the acceptance of the ordination of women notwithstanding. If John Allin (who goes unmentioned by James) could be elected Presiding Bishop in 1973 in succession to John Hines, one cannot conclude that TEC’s present course was at that time inevitable. The failure of the center to hold in the late 1980s and early 1990s is one of those questions that historians still struggle to explain definitively. The Developing Schism does not really offer a clear explanation, but the author does document the importance of liberal organizations – particularly members of Integrity – both in lobbying and securing election to policy-making structures within the Church. Indeed, it was a supporter of Integrity – Edmond Browning – who was elected as Allin’s successor as Presiding Bishop in 1985. (51-52)

Some will decry James’s assumption that both sides are seeking out the transcendent, either in “realized justice” or in “religious laws” that “allow the free action of the Holy Spirit,” (40), yet it seems a not unreasonable proposition. Louie Crew’s invoking of the language of “new life of the Spirit” in support of gay identity (48-49) will perplex (or anger) many, but to dismiss it as inauthentic is as unwise as to presume that a traditionalist concern with social morality is mere window-dressing for covert racism and misogyny. James’s chapter on African Anglican identity undoubtedly provides valuable context for what it means to be practitioners of a persecuted faith, whether it be the Ugandan Christian martyrdoms of the Amin era or Peter Akinola’s more personal experience of the darker aspect of Nigerian indigenous religion (67-94).

Towards the close of her story, James identifies a profound truth about spiritual jurisdiction:

The schism raises questions about whether a postmodern diocese is an ontological state rather than a geographical unit . . . Though living on different continents, the Orthodox Anglicans bear resemblance to their charismatic counterparts in Africa . . . Possibly the idea of the sanctity of [the] geographical diocese is an Enlightenment idea whose time is past. (205)

James here enunciates the future Anglican reality – a “postmodern” North American traditionalism that downplays those hierarchical structures that are part of the warp and woof of the churches of their Global South brethren. Here in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, the decision to explicitly vest all parish property in the parish corporation, while partly a reaction to perceived abuses in TEC, also reflects a new practical congregationalism. Moreover, the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh has been receiving extra-diocesan parishes into its ranks from California to North Carolina and from Wisconsin to Texas since its inception. Such trends may be explained as part of the reality of the mission-centered church, but they also foreshadow new ways of embodying Anglicanism in the twenty-first century.

“Maybe some will regret thoughts they have expressed or deeds they have done,” James concludes, “but in the early twenty-first century, we have witnessed some honest, fallible seekers after God” (227). With such a conclusion, this reviewer wholeheartedly concurs.

Holy War, Unholy Peace: The Chalcedonian Compromise and the Decline of Christianity in the Middle East

Review: Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years. New York: HarperOne, 2010.

When Philip Jenkins first published The Next Christendom in 2002, it swiftly achieved cult status thanks to its prescient vision of the shifting center of gravity of global Christianity from the industrialized First World to the rapidly expanding nations of the Global South. Eight years on, and after the publication of such works as The New Faces of Christianity (2006) and The Lost History of Christianity (2008), Jenkins has chosen for his subject the narrower canvas of a Fifth Century Christian world menaced from without by the Hunic and Vandal hordes and subverted from within by frenzied doctrinal disputes over the human and divine natures of Christ that pitted the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Rome against one another. The failure of the theological compromise engineered at the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) to reconcile followers of the Monophysite (One Nature) school – centered on Alexandria – to Catholic Christianity set the stage for the withdrawal of members of some of the oldest Christian churches in Syria and Egypt to ultimate eclipse under the suzerainty of an emerging Islamic state that was willing to afford them religious toleration in exchange for political submission. This, as Jenkins soberingly puts it in his penultimate chapter, is “How the Church Lost Half the World.”

Jenkins’ approach concedes the importance of historical contingency. While the vocabulary of the Catholic West has been shaped by the assumption that Chalcedon was a decisive rebuke to the pretensions of Alexandria and the beginning of the inevitable ascendancy of a “Two Nature” understanding of the person of Christ, Jenkins argues that such ascendancy was far from inevitable. Monophysite theology endured throughout the East, even when Chalcedonian-inclined emperors deposed hostile bishops and imposed episcopal overseers more to their liking. Furthermore, the ecclesiastical history of the Fifth Century, as retold by Jenkins, relegates the Roman primacy to a relatively humble position in the struggle, with few occupants of that office – aside from Leo the Great –enjoying the status of the eastern patriarchates. Yet historical contingency goes only so far. “In one sense,” writes Jenkins, “ancient Christians were exactly right to be so passionate about their causes, if not the means by which they pursued them. Far from being philosophical niceties, the central themes in the religious debates really were critical to the definition of Christianity and to the ways in which the faith would develop over the coming centuries. The Christ controversies did, and do, have immense consequences, for culture and politics as much as for religion.” (2-3)

American – and for that matter English – readers will find aspects of the story to have a contemporary ring, a fact to which Jenkins does not fail to allude (15-16). The eclipse of Alexandria and Antioch, he notes, ensured that the church-state alliance promoted by the western Church would become the model for world Christianity, while the Chalcedonian-Monophysite cleavage ensured that Islam would face little resistance in the lands of Christianity’s birth. While the heated nature of theological debate is all too evident today, the lengths to which the protagonists are willing to go in defense of their position are, thankfully, absent. And yet there is a very real irony in discovering that the forerunners of those who today argue for theological pluralism and the free exchange of ideas were more likely to be found within the imperial administration than among ecclesiastical officeholders. For the leaders of the Church, the preservation – at least on paper – of the ideal of an undivided Church left no room for those whose views were, frequently temporarily, in the minority.

The struggle that faced the Fifth Century Church, Jenkins argues, was not over whether Jesus should be considered divine – that had been resolved at Nicaea – but preventing him from becoming “entirely God.” (19) It was, however, a struggle lacking defined processes, and “the councils were marked by name-calling and backstabbing (both figurative and literal), by ruthless plotting and backstairs cabals, and by the pervasive threat of intimidation.” (22) Such debacles as the infamous Second Council of Ephesus of AD 449 (the “Gangster Synod”) offer a less than happy picture of Christian deliberation. The parade of mutual anathemas, depositions and vigilante ‘justice’ which characterize the era from First Nicea (AD 325) to Chalcedon (AD 451) and beyond is far removed from what we often conceive of as the Early Church. Here one arguably finds the second modern-day comparison, since Jenkins argues that the religiously-inspired instability and violence of the period reflect the increasing inability of the state to regulate private violence. While his assertion that violence is no more in the DNA of Islam than it was in Fifth Century Christianity (30) will be controversial, those Monophysite monks who razed pagan temples, assaulted imperial officials and threatened recalcitrant bishops present unhappy testimony to the mood of the times.

Theology, as Jenkins points out, can be a singularly elusive discipline and at times one could be forgiven for thinking that the distinctions served purely as cover for ecclesiastical political maneuvering. And yet the conflict embodied a very real difference in outlook. Between the poles of an Alexandrian church that celebrated the hypostatic union of the human and divine natures of Christ such that the human elements were subsumed in the divine and an Antiochian church that favored notions of the Logos-sax, or the assumption by Christ of a fully human status, lay a grey area that would provide the basis for depositions of patriarchs and bishops. (51-53) Much of the theological language involved subtle distinctions that made misunderstanding and misrepresentation all too easy.

For Alexandria, with its Greek influences and powerful monastic tradition, the age seemed to offer its patriarchs the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Athanasius, who had triumphed over the Arians at Nicea, and propagandize the rest of the Christian world. As the secular Roman world trembled from the onslaughts of the pagans and Arian Christians, Cyril of Alexandria carried the day against Constantinople’s Nestorius (a product of Antioch), for the offense of questioning the title of the Virgin Mary as Theotokos (God-bearer), and with the backing of the Emperor Theodosius II oversaw his deposition at the First Council of Ephesus in AD 431. Eighteen years later, the aforementioned Gangster Synod marked the high tide of the crusade against Antioch by Cyril’s successor Eutyches in a council, which, even by contemporary standards, had more the characteristics of a kangaroo court than a synod of bishops, with critics even prevented from taking notes of the proceedings. (187-192)

The death of Theodosius II in AD 450 paved the way for the Council of Chalcedon and the reversal of Alexandria’s run of success. The new emperor Marcian’s sympathies were with the opponents of Eutyches, as were those of Pope Leo. Chalcedon accepted the condemnation of “Nestorianism” (which did not necessarily correspond with the beliefs of its purported founder) at First Ephesus, but rejected the deliberations of Second Ephesus – and its depositions of those who opposed its teaching – in favor of the “in two natures” formula that later came to inform the wording of the Athanasian Creed. (212-214) As a compromise, however, it represented a distinct shift away from the Alexandrian position and one which many Egyptian Christians profoundly resented. From that date, Egypt would begin a process of steady disassociation, while Antioch – hitherto a bastion of Two-Nature theology – would witness the triumph of the Monophysite party in AD 469. Though the imperial authorities would struggle on for another 200 years, their ability to marry the aims of state and church was increasingly constrained. Quoting the contemporary historian Evagrius on the situation in AD 500, Jenkins strikes a surprisingly familiar note:

the Eastern bishops had no friendly intercourse with those of the West and Africa, nor the latter with those of the East. The evil too became still more monstrous, for neither did the presidents of the eastern churches allow communion among themselves, nor yet those who held the sees of Europe and Africa, much less with those of remote parts. (243)

What lessons, then, can we draw from this narrative? Humility, perhaps, about the inevitability of salvation history. Not that God has no purpose, but that the Church often gropes haphazardly towards divine design. At the same time, however, Chalcedon may be seen as the working out of Divine Providence precisely because at the time it seemed so far from inevitable – a political compromise effected against the reality of Monophysite strength throughout the eastern churches. “Somehow, amazingly, the church preserved its belief that Christ was human as well as God. And today, that belief is the standard, official doctrine for the vast majority of Christian institutions – all Catholic and Orthodox believers as well as virtually all Protestants.” (270)

Jesus Wars packs a great deal into less than 300 pages. It comes well supplied with appendices that provide details on the various councils, doctrinal debates and principal protagonists that are helpful to non-specialist and specialist alike. It has much to teach about the process of theological debate and disagreement and cautionary warnings both to those who glorify consensus and those inclined to view every theological battle as one to be fought to the bitter end. The questions are not new; it is the story of salvation history that is ever-changing.

A Man of His Time? Rowan Williams and the Crisis of Anglican Order

Review: Rupert Shortt, Rowan’s Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008).

“Rowan’s room for manoeuvre on the national stage was always going to be limited in important respects. For example, it is hard to defend an establishment institution in decline, particularly when you have a reputation for being anti-establishment. It is hard to defend English culture, of which the Church is a part, when you are committed to multiculturalism . . . And it is hard to avoid compromising yourself by taking conservative views into account, whether Evangelical or Roman Catholic, when you are committed to ecumenism and mutual respect.” (279)

When Randall Thomas Davidson was enthroned Archbishop of Canterbury in 1903, the relationship of the Church of England to the nation state, both at home and in the colonies, was paramount in Anglican identity. The next twenty years formed the cusp of the ecumenical movement, marked by such noteworthy events as the Edinburgh Missionary Conference (1910), the Patriarch of Constantinople’s appeal for Christian unity (1920), the Anglican-Catholic Malines conversations (1921-1927), and the Lausanne World Conference on Faith and Order (1927). By contrast, Anglicanism’s search for denominational identity and authority remained at low ebb, not least because Anglican establishment provided all the glue necessary to bind Anglicans throughout the empire together.

A century later, and the relative importance of these elements – erastianism, ecumenism and conciliarism – had been almost completely reversed. The Church of England’s ties to the state looked remarkably threadbare; as Lady Bracknell might have remarked, establishment had “ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up.” Ecumenical dialogue, though in some ways more structured than at the beginning of the 20th century, had also lost much of the fiery optimism that had governed the earlier conversations, as the prospects of organic unity receded, the failure of Anglican-Methodist unity talks under Michael Ramsey during the 1970s being an obvious case in point. Conciliarism, by contrast, had assumed center stage as rapidly growing national churches in the Global South achieved provincial independence and long-established national churches in the Global North pushed the limits of Anglican diversity. While all of Michael Ramsey’s successors experienced pressure to redefine Canterbury’s status as primus inter pares, it was only with the primacy of Rowan Williams that this issue took on an urgency that could not be gainsaid.

One of the great Anglican “what ifs” of the 21st century will surely be the course of the Anglican Communion had Richard Chartres or Michael Nazir-Ali succeeded George Carey in 2002. One may argue that the then Bishops of London and Rochester would have been obliged to moderate their forceful rhetoric once they filled the chair of St. Augustine and that the role of Archbishop of Canterbury has always been limited. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Rowan Williams has put his stamp on the course of events that stretches from the Windsor Report of 2004 to the Dromantine and Dar-es-Salaam meetings and the 2008 Lambeth Conference. The question inevitably arises as to what drives the present Archbishop of Canterbury to act as he has done. Rupert Shortt’s biography provides some excellent insights into the world of the man on whose watch the Anglican consensus finally began to crumble.

This is a sympathetic though not uncritical account of an ecclesiastic generally acknowledged to be one of the great minds of Anglican theology in the second half of the twentieth century. Of the three archbishops who in the last hundred years had a claim to original theological scholarship, Shortt ranks Williams considerably higher than William Temple or Michael Ramsey, although he admits that such intellectual mastery is not always contiguous with clarity, noting theologian Oliver O’Donovan’s verdict that Rowan wishes to “make Christianity difficult – reversing the strategy of the apologist who wants to purge religion of its bewildering aspects – but then making a missionary opportunity out of the resulting sense of dislocation.” (13) He also cites a passage from Williams’ Lost Icons, in which the latter warns of ‘all kinds of difficulty about appealing as a moral sanction to the danger of diminishing the solidity of the self by ignoring the perceptions of others,’ which Shortt helpfully translates as “talking in a diffuse way about the danger of selfishness.” (224)

Conservative Anglicans may well feel that while Shortt exposes the exaggerations and oversimplifications of all the archbishop’s critics, he has much less sympathy with those on the theological ‘right.’ Writing of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, he describes many African bishops as displaying a double standard on sexuality, having appealed only a decade earlier for tolerance on the issue of polygamy, even though the latter question had been concerned less with permitting already converted Christians to have additional wives as with the procedures to be followed with an already polygamous household that converted to Christianity. (205) While Stephen Noll would probably have no problem being described as “stridently conservative” (227) Andrew Goddard may bridle at being referred to as an “outspoken hardliner,” and the allusion to the “squadron” of Oxford-based Evangelicals who mobilized to oppose Jeffrey John’s appointment conjures up some wonderful images (268). Much of this is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Shortt may not like the more conservative Evangelicals, but he lets them speak and also demonstrates how much they still have in common with Williams. Moreover, anyone who believes that stridency in orthodox circles invariably (as opposed to generally) correlates with a passion for truth obviously needs to read a little more widely.

In his account of Williams’ early life, Shortt draws particular attention to the former’s reputation as an intellectual high-flyer and his early emergence as a critic of the prevailing liberal theological consensus at both Oxford and Cambridge. The procession of teachers who were soon obliged to admit that they had nothing more to teach him becomes annoyingly repetitive. More singular was Williams’ dissent from the presumptions of such works as John Robinson’s Honest to God (1962) or the essays in Soundings: Essays Concerning Christian Understanding (1963). His rejection of the notion of Jesus solely as a moral mentor and conviction of the basic truth of the Gospels foreshadowed a counter-cultural stance that sits ill with today’s perception of him as an apologist for unbridled modernism. His early interest in both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are well documented – not least his doctoral dissertation on Vladimir Lossky – and his fascination with the writings of Early Church Fathers would endure. Nevertheless, his was not a straightforward conservatism:

In the theological scheme to which Rowan felt increasingly drawn, liberals tended to err through saying too little, while many conservatives overlooked the dangers of saying too much. The most credible stance was based on a balance between two sorts of awareness – that religious truth (as opposed to truth revealed in a test tube) can never be simple or slick, because it lies at a depth where things are often murky; but the burrowing process must be engaged with unflagging commitment nonetheless. (98)

Williams’ subsequent academic career at Cambridge (chaplain at Wescott House and Clare College) and Oxford (Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity) demonstrates certain character traits that remain with him to this day, including a predisposition toward conflict avoidance and a profound sympathy with the underdog. (108) It also witnessed his first engagement with the issue of homosexuality and the Church’s response to it, perhaps most notably in The Body’s Grace, a 1989 lecture that affirmed his basic conviction that changes in the theology of sexuality could not be made by reference to prevailing social mores but must be informed by scriptural principles. (143-146) This was not, as Shortt makes clear, the sole – or even principal – preoccupation of these years. Williams’ prodigious literary output revealed a deeply grounded Trinitarian faith and conviction of a God active in human history, though Shortt treats Williams’ exploration of the Church’s role in the political sphere as insufficiently nuanced.

The chapter on Williams’ translation to the Diocese of Monmouth throws further light on his pastoral development. Shortt does not spare his subject in noting his failure to implement needful but drastic administrative reforms or his willingness to accept people for ordination out of sympathy for their personal story rather than conviction of their call. What does emerge, however, is a picture of a pastoral bishop desirous of being accessible to his flock. Equally revealing are the facts that he was the only Welsh bishop to support an evangelistic initiative known as Good News in Wales and was an active promoter of church plants (something that might come as a surprise to many Evangelicals). Among other formative experiences, Shortt devotes significant space to the lasting impact of being present at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. (212-222)

Williams’ elevation to Canterbury was received with enthusiasm by a wide spectrum of opinion, a sentiment that would hardly last the year. Citing Oliver O’Donovan’s prescient confidential letter of July 4, 2002, Shortt draws attention to the telling phrase that “the efforts of the harder elements [of the Global South], initially intended to focus on you, are to be directed more constructively, to the general question of accountability and authority within the Anglican Communion,” (243) even as Williams’ record on the presenting issue of homosexuality – on which both sides drew for encouragement – was recognized to be “a highly forthright lecture, an open-handed pastoral policy, and a declaration of deference to the collective mind of the Church.” (244)

It is clear that until 2003, the Archbishop continued to hew to the view that better communication rather than enhanced central authority was the cure for the Communion’s ills. The Jeffrey John affair, which Shortt describes in detail (264-277), demonstrated both Williams’ commitment to the mind of the Church in overseeing his own province and the vast gulf between his critics on left and right. It also revealed his dangerous ability to see all sides of the argument and rarely to convey to anyone in personal conversation that he disagreed with them (less helpful in a bishop than an academic). That said, the aftermath of John’s rejection and Vicki Gene Robinson’s consecration as Bishop of New Hampshire saw an incremental shift in his thinking toward the more structured model for the Anglican Communion envisaged in the Virginia Report. Shortt has little time for conservative critics like Peter Jensen or Bob Duncan – he uses the phrase “purporting to be on a golfing holiday” to describe Duncan’s presence at the 2005 Dromantine meeting (312) – but he recognizes their impact and he refrains from expressing a personal view of the famous meeting of 2004 at which, supposedly, archepiscopal approval for the Anglican Communion Network was given. (288-289).

By the spring of 2006, it was evident that the actual choices to be made reposed not in England but in Africa and the United States. The aftermath of the 2006 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, the appeal for alternative primatial oversight, the election of Martyn Minns as a Nigerian missionary bishop and the subsequent vote of the Northern Virginia parishes all testified to something very different from the two-tier Communion that Williams had proposed. Shortt’s account of the Dar-es-Salaam meeting (367-369) is a little one-sided, since it is presented as a defeat for the principle of a separate American province sought by Peter Akinola, rather than as an acceptance of the principle of the need for external oversight, something later rejected by the Episcopal Church.

What is harder to discern, as one moves into the account of GAFCON and the Lambeth Conference of 2008, is how Shortt understands Rowan Williams’ current view of authority. At home, the Archbishop undoubtedly is as aware of the post-erastian reality of English Anglicanism (which Shortt regards as the underlying point of his much-debated sharia address) as many of his critics. What is not clear is how he wishes to apply these principles elsewhere. The failure to exclude the consecrators of Bishop Robinson as well as Robinson himself from the Lambeth Conference, surely laid him open to the charge that it was Robinson’s character not the principle of breaking the bonds of Communion that was at issue. Shortt also notes the positive comments of Williams on the GAFCON meeting, even as he disagreed with its structural solution (409-410), something that would be consistent with earlier statements that he had made, but calculated to perplex his liberal admirers.

Williams’ later remarks on the tone of the debate on women bishops in the Church of England testify to recognition on his part that, ultimately, holding everything together may prove to be a bridge too far. It is noteworthy that this biography was published prior to the contentious February 2009 meeting of General Synod that rejected statutory protections for Anglo Catholics and the even more embarrassing debacle at the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Jamaica that witnessed the gutting of Clause Four of the Anglican Covenant, without which it is debatable if any meaningful confessional identity for the Anglican Communion could be assured. To read this biography is to understand better what shapes the mind of the present Archbishop of Canterbury but it fails to explain why one so passionately convinced of the importance of organic unity and so evidently committed to historic Christology has shied from articulating an overt defense of those who have sought to do the same. Given his clear recognition of the declining importance of the national church, it would surely not have gone beyond his brief to offer more than nominal moral support to like-minded Anglicans in other provinces. By his deference to the leadership of other national churches, Rowan Williams may ultimately have precipitated the eventuality that one feels he always wished to avoid.

Accountability Globalism: The Wave of the Future?

Review: Miranda K. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies are Reshaping Anglicanism. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

Miranda Hassett has set herself a challenging task, yet the result is worthy of wide scrutiny, by liberal and conservative alike. Indeed, the title of this book combined with the author’s forthright disclosure that she is both a liberal Episcopalian and an anthropologist, makes her balanced treatment of the subject matter all the more commendable.

Central to Hassett’s approach is her understanding of globalization not as an impersonal and irresistible force but as a process shaped by human agency. Conservatives – religious and otherwise – have traditionally been understood as hostile to globalization; yet Episcopal conservatives have recently learned to cultivate transnational networks with Third World provinces that have resulted in a process of shared identity. At one point, Hassett contrasts what she calls diversity globalism (as espoused by liberal scholars like Ian Douglas) with the new accountability globalism: “Accountability globalism is a true globalism . . . This is no veiled anti-globalism or reactionary vision, in which the older authority structures of white male Euro-American dominance are reestablished to maintain order in an increasingly complex worldwide organization. Instead, this conservative vision embraces the diversity and complexity of the contemporary world.” (127)

Hassett is also concerned with the construction of relationships, a very necessary part of the call to discipleship. To study the phenomenon, she elected to spend four months in an Anglican Mission in America (AMIA) parish, pseudonymously dubbed St. Timothy’s, and six months in central Uganda observing how the patterns of global relationship and self-understanding had been transformed by the evolving crisis within the Anglican Communion. In accordance with anthropological practice, except for statements in published sources, all the testimony in the narrative is anonymous. While this may seem strange at first glance, it comports with the tradition of rural American sociology popularized in the 1920s by scholars like Edmund Brunner, and has the added advantage of freeing her subjects to express exactly what they are feeling.

The case of St. Timothy’s is itself fascinating in that it traces a distinct paradigm shift in how the transnational perspectives of affluent middle class Americans have been transformed by the development of ties to Africa that are not based solely on First World largesse. Hassett describes how St. Timothy’s followed the not untypical renewal pattern of the 1980s, developing a charismatic style and attracting evangelicals who had not been raised within the Episcopal Church. For many, Rwanda had not been on their radar, even during the 1994 genocide, and when they joined AMIA in 2000, their principal concern had been to escape from the Episcopal Church. Yet in the years that followed, there has grown up an identification with the Anglicans of Rwanda that is much deeper and is predicated on a better understanding of the essence of the Rwandan Church. Hassett describes how a group who undertook a mission to Rwanda expected to be besieged with requests for material assistance, only to learn that what their hosts most desired was simply to begin to build a relationship. (162-65)

In examining the origins of the conservative movement in the Episcopal Church, Hassett challenges some widespread opinions held by members of the liberal community. The oft-repeated charge that the support of Global South bishops for American conservatives at the 1998 Lambeth Conference and subsequently was “bought,” she dismisses as reflecting an inadequate grasp of where most of the Southern bishops stood. That there are problems with the disparities of wealth between North and South and how wealth is shared between the two cannot, she believes, explain why the crisis has developed as it has done. More controversial, especially in America, will be the conclusion she draws from her experience of worshipping and talking with members of St. Timothy’s, regarding the genuineness of the professions of concern for moral teaching that come from groups like AMIA. “Although homosexuality is often singled out for particularly vehement opposition,” she writes, “my time at St. Timothy’s showed me that evangelical Episcopalians’ responses to homosexuals are framed in the same language of sin and the need for transformation through a relationship with Jesus Christ that they apply to their own lives.” (42)

Conservatives, however, should not become complacent. Hassett has her own view of the myth that has grown up around Philip Jenkins's The Next Christendom, which has led some to see the shift in the locus of power to the Global South as the inevitable triumph of Christian orthodoxy. (249-52) Her Ugandan experiences demonstrate that the sense of a monolithic Southern Church that one can sometimes derive from the statements of certain primates is far from accurate. She notes, for example, the greater degree of tolerance for homosexuality (though not a denial of its sinful nature) displayed by the Bakolole fellowships that emerged from the East African Revival; the understanding of homosexuality as an imported “colonial” practice that has made it a matter of nationalist well as religious significance; and the continued reservations expressed by Ugandan bishops and priests about the wisdom of constituting AMIA.

Perhaps most interesting of all, in her discussion of conservative idealization of Africa, is Hassett’s exploration of the five key themes of youth; zeal; numbers; suffering; and poverty. (177-97) Her objective here is not to claim that the points raised are wholly invalid but that they are often projections of what conservative Northerners expect to see rather than what those who are enduring them actually experience. Ugandans continue to worry about “nominal” Christians and the superficiality of belief, dislike the notion that their continent should so often be portrayed in terms of chaos and destruction, and fear that endemic poverty, far from producing a stronger faith may actually weaken it. “Conceiving of African Christians as people of pure and simple faith,” concludes Hassett, “invokes concepts ultimately derived from older and negative views of Africans as childlike, primitive and uncivilized. To be sure, these negative images have now been turned on their heads to become idealizations, but the fundamental idea of African otherness carries on unimpeded into the new romanticized images.’ (205)

This book points a way forward in terms of understanding the implications of globalism for the ever-expanding Anglican family and the patterns of relationship that are being developed to transcend physical barriers. Comparable studies of parishes affiliated with CANA, as well as of conservative parishes still within the Episcopal Church, would be a valuable addition to the literature, as would parish-level studies of diversity globalism and how liberal Anglicans understand it. “My account of current debates in the Anglican tradition will no doubt be contested;” notes Miranda Hassett, “my hope is that people on all sides of the current debates will find an equal measure in these texts with which to take issue.” (22) As far as this moderately conservative Anglican is concerned, she has more than achieved her goal.

Ecumenical Dialogue: An Older Paradigm?

This first appeared in Church History 74:2 (June 2005): 427.

Review: Thomas E. Fitzgerald, The Ecumenical Movement: An Introductory History (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004)

Comprehensive discussions of the ecumenical movement are few and far between, and Thomas Fitzgerald has helped to fill an important niche. Dr. Fitzgerald is well suited to comment on the phenomenon, as an Orthodox priest, church history professor, and former officer of the World Council of Churches. The ecumenical movement, as he defines it, is the "quest of Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Old Catholic, and most Protestant churches for reconciliation, and the restoration of their visible unity in faith, sacramental life, and witness in the world" (1). The search for this visible unity reflects an essential yearning for the undivided church. Ecumenism is distinct from interdenominational and interconfessional activity because it represents a higher end: the practical achievement of the unity that must describe the gathering of God’s faithful people, since nothing that is fully derived from God may be divided.

Fitzgerald first surveys the early church, with its message of universal salvation, and the Pauline assumption that truth and unity must go hand in hand. He notes the importance that the church fathers ascribed to visible unity and stresses that by the fourth century the patriarchates, while united in essence, diverged in language, theological emphasis, and liturgical custom. In analyzing the separation of the Oriental Orthodox churches, the division of Roman Catholicism from Orthodoxy, and the emergence of the Protestant churches during the sixteenth century, Fitzgerald emphasizes that all these separations occurred over an extended period of time and involved unhappy conjunctions of theological controversy and social and political discord. While acknowledging that these separations left lasting wounds, he maintains that division was by no means an inevitable result.

Fitzgerald then examines transnational ecumenism from the early nineteenth century to the present. The earliest ecumenical dialogue was embodied in such nondenominational groups as the Evangelical Alliance and the World Student Christian Federation. This was followed by interdenominational interaction, and the role of the Orthodox Church, particularly its dialogues with Anglican theologians, receives good treatment here. The early twentieth century witnessed the rise of the "Life and Work" and "Faith and Order" movements, devoted to the removal of obstacles that stood in the way of unity in the life of the church, but also recognizing the attachment of believers to the historic churches. The story concludes with an account of the establishment of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948, incorporating a new focus on the role of the laity and a Christocentric theology. In the wake of the 1968 WCC meeting at Uppsala, marked by the first attendance of Roman Catholic observers, social justice issues came to the fore in ecumenical discourse. Fitzgerald then turns his narrative to an exploration of ecumenical perspectives within the three largest Christian blocs--Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant--and concludes with an examination of the various bilateral and multilateral theological discussions that have taken place in recent years and a case study of ecumenism in the United States since the 1950s.

Fitzgerald’s study provides a very readable account of ecumenical developments over the past two hundred years, one that will undoubtedly provide the stimulus for greater research on more specialized topics. Of particular value to the Western reader is his consideration of the role of the Orthodox churches, a very necessary corrective to any model that divides ecumenical dialogue into a largely intra-Protestant conversation prior to 1962 and a call to dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. He also has an extensive bibliography that will be of use to any scholar or student new to the topic, although it is regrettable that the combination of a lack of bibliographical subject categories and comparatively sparse footnotes makes it hard to determine which books may be most relevant.
Somewhat lacking from his account, however, is discussion of the First World/Third World ecumenical dichotomy discussed in Yacob Tesfai’s Liberation and Orthodoxy: The Promise and Failures of Interconfessional Dialogue (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), and Philip Jenkins’s The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Both note the shift of Christendom’s center of gravity from the Global North to the Global South, but while Tesfai stresses Third World detachment from the "doctrinal" ecumenical movement in favor of "justice" for the downtrodden, Jenkins reminds us that the tendency of African and Asian Christians to ignore denominational lines in their daily lives should not be confused with liberal positions on sexual morality or even the role of women in the church. Their "ecumenism" is hardly consonant with many of the positions advanced by First World advocates of liberation theology. In this context, Fitzgerald might profitably have addressed the contribution to ecumenism of the independent Bible and charismatic churches that dominate much of the Third World.

Fitzgerald might also have devoted greater attention to criticisms of the World Council of Churches (Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., In One Body through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), 24-25). While he acknowledges that tensions have always existed and continue to do so, his discussion is comparatively brief (119-21). Such matters as sexual morality (the solidarity manifested between evangelicals and Roman Catholics in opposing abortion is cited by the Princeton Proposal as a significant ecumenical achievement) and dialogue with non-Christian faiths would be appropriate topics. Questions might profitably be asked about the contribution of WCC administrators to the ecumenical debate. If bureaucrats can structure political discussions at the United Nations to advance their own agenda, it seems reasonable to assume that they exercise a similar influence over theological discussions at the WCC. Finally, greater attention might have been paid to the process of "reception" by individual churches of ecumenical documents like Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, as Gillian Evans does in Method in Ecumenical Theology: The Lessons So Far (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 182-218. Although Fitzgerald addresses contemporary ecumenical initiatives (193-219), even a reader new to the topic could benefit from greater theological specificity.

Global North Meets Global South: New Christian Paradigms for a New Century

Review: Lamin Sanneh and Joel A. Carpenter, eds., The Changing Face of Christianity: Africa, the West, and the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).


The reality of a twenty-first century Christianity powered by the mushrooming churches of the “two-thirds world,” as some observers have recently dubbed it, is now upon us and yet for those of us in the post-industrial West, an understanding of what constitutes the new Christian order remains as yet unclear. This volume of essays edited by Yale scholar Lamin Sanneh deliberately refrains, as he puts it, from providing “one comprehensive explanatory theory, one all-encompassing answer for the riddle of one universe of facts.” (16) Instead, through a diversity of perspectives drawn from the fields of anthropology, religious and cultural history and theology, it seeks to explore the nexus of relationships that exists between the Christian world that initiated the great missionary undertakings of the nineteenth century, and the spiritual heirs both of those who undertook those missions and those who benefited from them. Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that as the mission impulse and the Christian particularism that sustained it have waxed cold in the nations that gave it birth, the communities that profited from their missionary zeal now display a similar ‘enthusiasm’ for Gospel proclamation and conversion. “The variety of forms and styles,” writes Sanneh, “the complex linguistic idioms and aesthetic translations, and the differences in music in worship patterns show world Christianity to be hostage to no one cultural expression and restricted to no one geographic center.” (5)

This notion of a variety of forms could certainly be said to apply to the subjects touched on by several authors. In the first section, devoted to Africa and the African diaspora, these include the role of music in the religious life of the US Virgin Islands (Harkins-Pierre), the relationship between belief in the occult and Christianity in western Nigeria (Vanden Berg), the changing nature of the relationship between the Southern Baptist Convention and its missions in Zimbabwe (Mwase), the churches as advocates for peace in Mozambique (van Butselaar) and two case studies of Ghana (Gifford and Bediako). The second section on Asia includes a case-study of nineteenth century mission work among the Karen of Burma (Case), and examinations of the role of Hendrik Kraemer in developing a theology of mission between 1925 and 1955 (Plantinga) and of the redefinition of Christianity in China during the same period (Shenk).

Even allowing for Sanneh’s disclaimer regarding comprehensiveness, an obvious criticism of the volume, especially in the section on Africa, is the limited spectrum of countries involved. There is a certain irony in that Ghana – which has an interesting story to tell – receives such attention, while the Nigerian case focuses on one small sub-group of a remarkably diverse nation. Omitted from any mention are such countries as Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and even South Africa (though the cases of South Africa and Rwanda are discussed in passing by van Butselaar), all of them countries with large Christian populations. Even more striking, at least from an Anglican perspective, is the general omission of discussion of how Africans are reshaping Christian paradigms within both Roman Catholicism and the original mainline Protestant churches. While independent and Pentecostal groups throughout the African continent exert significant influence, it seems curious that the only direct reference to the Roman Catholic Church is its role in the peace negotiations in Mozambique, while Anglicanism rates mention only in relation to Desmond Tutu and to Bishop John Spong’s famous denunciation of his brother bishops at the 1998 Lambeth Conference as cultural primitives (220). In a continent that boasts such figures as Nigeria’s Francis Cardinal Arinze – once seen as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II – and Archbishop Peter Akinola, bane of Anglican liberals and church-planter extraordinary, such lacunae are troubling.

Despite such caveats, the essays undoubtedly illustrate key aspects both of Christian enculturation within the two-thirds world and of the dynamic that characterizes discourse between churches of the Global North and those of the Global South. An internal debate within the book is set up by the contrasting essays of Paul Gifford and Kwame Bediako on the nature of Ghanaian Christianity. For Gifford, the mainline churches that helped build modern Ghana have been largely superseded by charismatic and Pentecostal groups structured around a “Health and Wealth Gospel” of personal success through faith (in an intriguing example of American religious ‘imperialism,’ Gifford notes that pirated Nigerian editions of works by Norman Vincent Peale circulate widely in Ghana). Gifford further argues that this Prosperity Gospel is linked to a “deliverance” theology that emphasizes the use of prayer rituals to cast out the ‘evil spirits’ that stand in the way of a Christian’s ‘natural right’ to success. Gifford’s association of contemporary African Christianity with pre-Christian African spiritualism is echoed by anthropologist Todd Vanden Berg in his study of the persistence of belief in witchcraft amongst the Longuda of Nigeria and their incorporation of this belief into their Christian world view. African theology, Vanden Berg maintains, lacks a developed theory of sin and evil, and the Longuda continue to associate evil phenomena with external occult power: “This conceptualization of evil persists among Longuda Christians to the extent that the Christian perception that evil occurs as natural result of the fall is not stressed or acted out on a daily basis.” (57)

Such analyses would certainly seem to be at odds with what is frequently proclaimed by Anglican and Catholic bishops throughout Africa in terms of traditional Christian theology regarding human sin and the necessity of sacrificial living (though Vanden Berg, at least, would argue, that they do not necessarily speak for every member of their flocks). Kwame Bediako’s study of Ghana serves to remind us that commentators from the West are at least as shaped by the secular culture in which they have been raised, when they comment on the ‘spiritualism’ of Africa. “It stands to reason, therefore,” he writes, “that an African quest for the social and public significance of ‘Christianity’s transcendent claims’ is compelled to look, for its foundations, to the experience of African Christianity.” (121) That experience is inevitably shaped by the status of the churches as the one institution that has largely escaped the taint of corruption and dictatorship that has characterized all too many nations in post-independence Africa. Whether in their contribution to Ghana’s budding democracy in the early 1990s or in the manner in which the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches of Mozambique provided ‘neutral’ space within which the Frelimo government and the Renamo resistance movement could reach a settlement of their bloody civil war, the churches have minimized the danger of becoming simply another player in the political game by forswearing a desire to exert political power as such (the case of the Anglican Archbishop of Zimbabwe and of certain Rwanda bishops during the 1994 genocide, notwithstanding). In this respect, most of the negative associations of being a state church have been avoided, even as Christian churches in Africa continue to exert an influence over public culture that would have been envied in nineteenth century Europe.

If there is a local Christian dynamic at work within the two-thirds world, relationships with ‘mother’ churches continue to have relevance. Isaac Mwase demonstrates with brutal directness how, despite exceptional growth of the Zimbabwe Mission during the 1950s and 1960s, the Southern Baptist Convention largely lost interest in sustaining a community of fellow-believers strong in faith but weak in material resources. Mwase sees this shift as a deliberate abandonment of a “holistic” mission strategy (reflected, for example, in the famous “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence” initiative adopted by the Anglican Communion in the 1960s), in favor of a focus on simple evangelization of unchurched regions, a change prompted not by financial necessity but on deliberate ideological grounds. Jay Case, by contrast, speaks to the volume’s only nineteenth century case study, by exploring how North American Baptist wrestled with the problem of evangelizing the Karen residents of Burma, already partially aware of the nature of the Bible, who came to the Baptist missionaries requesting evangelization. Case demonstrates how the proactive approach of the Karen severely disrupted the missionary view of how witness to ‘primitive’ peoples was supposedly undertaken. After a rare period in which indigenous Karen missionaries were ordained to minister to their people, the Baptists ultimately proved unwilling to face the theological conundrum such a strategy produced and reverted to the view that indigenous religious leadership could only result from intensive education.

Perhaps the most thought-provoking essays are those by Wilbert Shenk and Richard Plantinga. Shenk documents the seismic shift in mission theology that took place in the context of Chinese Christianity that replaced the idea of the steady development of indigenous churches based on a Western paradigm, with the concept of contextualization - the development of a theology responsive to local historical, political and cultural contexts. In China, mission-based Christianity had never been seen as anything other than foreign, something that missionaries like the Anglican Roland Allen increasingly came to appreciate. During the 1920s, Chinese Christians increasingly revisited this issue, arguing that Chinese Christianity was now at the point of ‘making’ itself indigenous. The ultimate Chinese form of this indigenization was that propounded by Nee Tuo-sheng (Watchman Nee), whose preference for a non-hierarchical, locally based Christianity ultimately resulted in the House Church Movement of post-1949 China.

Plantinga’s essay also has relevance for today’s African and Asian Christians, even though its subject, Henrik Kraemer, can hardly be represented as a product of the two-thirds world. Previously a Dutch missionary to Indonesia, Kraemer made singular contributions to the post-First World War debate over what strategy should be adopted in mission work amongst non-Christians, most notably at the Tambaram Conference of 1938. What is striking about Kraemer’s mission theology is its aggressive neo-orthodox concern with Christian particularism. Kraemer definitively took the view that general revelation – i.e. those truths expressed within non-Christian religious traditions that testify to the omniscience of God – could not be permitted to obscure the uniqueness of Christ’s call to salvation. While he therefore espoused humility on the part of the missionary toward other religions that he encountered, he rejected the notion that somehow the unique message of Jesus should therefore be obscured. To surrender Christian exclusivism was, for him, to surrender the heart of the Bible message. What is intriguing about Kraemer’s approach is less how it is critiqued by advocates of religious pluralism in the West today than about how close Kraemer’s views seem to run to many of those Catholic and Anglican leaders who are coming to the fore in Africa and Asia. Kraemer’s message may have been discounted by many of his own generation, but for the leaders of the “Next Christendom” it may be considered a blueprint for evangelism.

This volume of essays is to be welcomed for what it conveys about the nature of the emerging global Christian family to which we all belong. One can but hope that others will continue to flesh out the nuances of the analysis to date and reveal the future of a Christian community in a two-thirds world poised to assume ever greater responsibility for its neighbors in the post-Christian West.