Books Worth Reading (13): For Good: The Church and the Future of Welfare

Samuel Wells, Russel Rook and David Barclay, For Good: The Church and the Future of Welfare (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2017).

This short (90 pages) and highly-readable book addresses the  role of the British churches in welfare in the light of the economic and political fragility of Britain's famous post-World
War 2 Welfare State. Its starting point is the need to reflect (theologically, sociologically and politically) on the phenomenon of growing church involvement in welfare as the securities provided by government welfare weaken.

The authors provide a brief sketch of the history and foundations of state welfare, focusing particularly on the impetus and legacy of the 1942 Beveridge Report which set up Britain's approach to welfare. From its beginning the approach was oriented to the alleviation of (to use Beveridge's now anachronistic terms) 'Want, Idleness, Ignorance, Disease and Squalor'.

Whilst acknowledging the immense achievement of the welfare state, the authors argue that welfare must do more than alleviate such deficits, it must be oriented to the development of assets and/or goods. Economic circumstances also mean that there needs to be a reconsideration of the allocation of respective responsibilities to the state and other institutions (including churches) in order to effect that shift in the aims and practices of welfare. In place of Beveridge's 'deficit approach', the authors identify five 'good's or 'assets' which should be cultivated: relationship, creativity, partnership, compassion and joy (see pp 13-17). In a key plank of the argument, it is proposed that among the roles of the churches is the need to:

work actively and tirelessly to model a social role that is appropriately modest - because it doesn't demand that they step in where they  have relatively little expertise and where the scale of the challenge is enormous - but is eminently achievable, in that it affirms what the churches do best, which is create cross-generational community and cherish people for what they are, not what they are not (p.12).

The book is grounded in the actual experience of churches navigating their way into this new situation. In addition to a well-sketched but brief and accessible theological rationale, there is a whole chapter devoted to case studies of church social action. The case studies are stories of successful engagement with developing goods and assets in local communities. Yet they are not 'glossy' stories - the problems and challenges are identified and engaged. The first is of a Pentecostal church in Burnley, Lancashire, responding to the social divisions  manifested and reinforced by community riots in 2001. The second is of a Baptist-based movement, Oasis, which has developed community hubs through sponsorship of, and engagement with, poorly-funded state schools. The third is an Anglican parish in Shadwell, East London which, through an alliance with the Centre for Theology and Community (which had been renting the church's crypt), became intentional about linking worship with social activism.

Another, more theoretical, chapter articulates various models of church social action. It is based around a 'spectrum' of such models. They authors maintain that different churches are called to adopt different modes of engagement depending on their context. That context might also required them to adopt more than one such mode at any one time. They use the following diagram to set out the range of models.

From p. 66

It is important to note that spectrum is not intended as an abstract model of church-state relations (as if there was ever one thing called 'church' and one thing called 'state'). It is, as the heading indicates, a social 'action' spectrum. This conforms to what is a warning earlier in the book:

The danger is that, for all their growing social impact, churches become defined more by what they believe about the state's role than what they believe about their own (p.33).

Indeed, the church's self-understanding is one of the most important themes of the book. It also picks up the issue of what it is about Christianity that means that the church should have such a role in the first place. There is an endorsement of Pope Francis' comment that the church needs to be more than a "compassionate NGO". There are some very helpful reflections which subvert the binary between, say, social action and disciple-making (especially pp. 31-36), but the relationship between the church as a gathered community and the development of social goods is perhaps best captured in some remarks about the work of the Anglican parish in East London. The more the congregation engaged in its various projects of social activism and renewal, the congregation itself was renewed. The authors suggest that this should not be surprising:

After all, the worshipping community is the place where goods often abound. Here men and women find new relationships, means of expression, opportunities to serve, individuals to love and reasons to celebrate (p. 63).

It is this quote which has been for me the most helpful bridge between this British study and the similar, but quite different, issues faced in the Australian context, and in the Uniting Church in particular. Of course, much of what is outlined in this book is already in place in such movements as Common Grace, Sydney Alliance and Assets Based Community Development.

Anyone familiar with the UCA, however, will know that there for some time there has been discussion about the relationship between congregations and our community services agencies. Sometimes it has been as silly as a tussle between the two to be the  'future face of the church'. Other times, it is a discussion seemingly caught in conflicts between corporate and ecclesial cultures. Then there are times when the discussion gets trapped in a mixture of nostalgia and mutual suspicion. I've argued elsewhere that whilst there is indeed an urgent need to address the ecclesiology of large-scale institutions such as UnitingCare, there is also a need (equally urgent) to address the nature of congregations as communities oriented to the world precisely and simultaneously because they are oriented to God.* We would have achieved nothing if we did sort out the ecclesiology of the agencies, but didn't similarly renew our reflection on the nature and purpose of congregations as communities of worship, witness and service. This where I find the above quote so helpful.

What if we unpacked the idea of our congregations being places where 'goods abound'? This is not an alternative to thinking of congregations as communities of worship, witness and service. It does, however, provide a different language by which to ground and interpret our activities of worship, witness and service. It might also help us move beyond the now almost-hackneyed term 'mission'. The idea of 'goods abounding' might help us more easily see the connections  between the life of congregations and the church's involvement in developing goods in the wider community. There is no doubt that these connections do exist, but much of our received language for these issues hides them or plays them down. A shift to the language of 'goods' and a commitment to their 'abundance' both within and beyond the gathered community could be sustained by a well-grounded confidence and orientation to the gospel of God's love made known in Jesus Christ. For it is, after all, that love which unites, and is the common focus and driving force of, our worship, witness and service. Equipped with that confidence, churches could be relieved of the pressure to legitimate their contribution to society by the scale of that contribution. A gospel-grounded confidence would nurture the 'appropriate modesty' of the church's role which the authors of For Good call for (see quote from p.12 above).

For Good is written with just such a quiet confidence that the church and the gospel it proclaims in word and deed actually matters, not least in the world of welfare. Notwithstanding the need to make adjustments for its British provenance, I found it the most helpful overview I have read of the vexed question of the church's engagement in welfare. Without question this is a book worth reading.

*See A Genuinely Theological Church: Ministry, Theology and the Uniting Church (Reservoir: Uniting Academic Press, 2018), 69-76.

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This occasional series of 'books worth reading' engages an eclectic selection of books: some directly related to my teaching, some to the UCA, and some of more general theological interest. They are not offered as technical book reviews, but as summaries which highlight why I think they might be useful resources, good conversation starters, or volumes that make helpful contributions to scholarly debate.

Books Worth Reading (12): Post-Truth by Lee McIntyre

Lee McIntrye, Post-Truth (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2018)

This is as good an introduction to the emergence of the post-truth era and its consequences that I can imagine being condensed into 170 pages. McIntrye, a Research Fellow at the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science at Boston University, writes in an engaging and lucid style. The story he tells is an unhappy one, and no reader will be left in any doubt about the seriousness the problems he highlights. But he also points in several directions for how resistance to the apparent triumph of post-truth rhetoric, ideologies and political strategies might be carried out.

Perhaps the most important point he makes near the outset of the book is that post-truth refers to  a situation where truth is not necessarily denied, but where it is consistently, aggressively and dishonestly subverted - and for political purposes: "...post-truth is not so much a claim that truth does not exist as that facts are subordinate to our political point of view" (p.11). The dishonest element of post-truth is made abundantly clear in the sketch he gives of the organised science-denial organised by the US Tobacco Industry in the 1950s. Strategies employed then would later be deployed in the denial of climate change.

The commercial and ratings-inspired roots of cable news are explored. The shift of TV news from information to entertainment, and its consequences for public debate, are clearly set out. Reading the origin of the portrayal of false-equivalences between genuine experts and opinionated activists, reinforced by the split-screen of talking heads, made me ponder just how pernicious these developments have been and how deeply embedded they now are in the way we discuss issues. The seeds of 'fake news,' 'alternative facts,' and the discrediting of the mainstream media were sown long ago. They will be hard habits to break even if society at large generates the will to do so.

The penultimate chapter, 'Did postmodernism lead to to post-truth' was certainly the chapter which I found pressed the most significant intellectual issues. He claims that the "pathway from science denial to full-blown reality denial itself seems undeniable." He continues: "What would an application of postmodernism to post-truth politics look like? It looks a lot like the world we now inhabit" (p.144). Interestingly, he places this connection against the backdrop of competing politics: "What a complete misfire of the original politics that motivated postmodernism, which was to protect the poor and vulnerable from being exploited by those in authority. It is now the poor and vulnerable who will suffer most from climate change." In all this, he says, the academy has failed in its responsibility: "It's all fun and games to attack truth in the academy, but what happens when one's tactics leak out into the hands of science deniers and conspiracy theorists, or thin-skinned politicians who insist that their their instincts are better than any evidence"(p.145).

He laments (and alleges) that philosophers have been silent as the post-truth forces gathered momentum in recent decades. But he commends Daniel Dennett for the latter's critique of postmodernists. He favourably quotes Dennett's claim that postmodernists "are responsible for all the intellectual fads that made it respectable to be cynical and about truth and facts. You'd have people going around saying: 'Well you're part of that crowd who still believe in facts'" (p.148).

And therein lies something of the source of my own criticism of the book, notwithstanding that it is very much a book worth reading. The quotation from Dennett contains the important and necessary distinction between truth and facts. I'd like to have seen McIntyre discuss at much greater length the modes of truth telling which are not reducible to announcing or reciting facts, and how such modes of truth telling are themselves important resources in combating post-truth.(That might also have necessitated a more nuanced account of postmodernism than the one given, but that's another matter.) I think there are important philosophical reasons for such a discussion and there are certainly good Christian theological reasons as well. In fact, Christian theology's long and sustained reflections on truth, language and faith may well have some helpful and unexpected contributions.

The book concludes with some brief case studies of where courageous resistance to post-truth denials of truth have been carried out - including by politicians. McIntyre's final paragraph is both challenging and (cautiously) hopeful - but certainly not triumphalist:

Post-truth is not about reality; it is about the way that humans react to reality. Once we are aware of our cognitive biases, we are in a better position to subvert them. If we want better news media outlets, we can support them. If someone lies to us, we can choose whether to believe him or her, and then challenge any falsehoods. It is our decision how we will react to a world in which someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Truth still matters, as it always has. Whether we realize this in time is up to us (p. 172). 

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This occasional series of 'books worth reading' engages an eclectic selection of books: some directly related to my teaching, some to the UCA, and some of more general theological interest. They are not offered as technical book reviews, but as summaries which highlight why I think they might be useful resources, good conversation starters, or volumes that make helpful contributions to scholarly debate.

Books Worth Reading (11): Rachael Keefe's Barefoot Theology: A Dictionary for Pilgrims, Priests and Poets

Raechael A. Keefe, Barefoot Theology: A Dictionary for Pilgrims, Priests and Poets (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2013),

Notwithstanding its title this is not the usual sort of theological dictionary. In fact, it's not really the kind of theological book that academic theologians are terribly comfortable with. There are no long historical, exegetical, doctrinal or philosophical discussions. The entry on 'hemenueutics' extends to only four lines. On the other hand, the entry on 'questions' runs to three pages. And, gosh, there is no entry whatsoever for homoousious! Still, I think many theological students would profit from having this book sitting beside their more usual dictionaries, encyclopedias, and textbooks. This dictionary defines through poetry.

Theology is necessarily discursive, analytical, exegetical and historical. But theology is ultimately an imaginative discipline. Precisely as a technical discipline - or set of disciplines - it shapes and reshapes our imagination. In other words, it shapes and reshapes how we imagine God, creation, salvation, Jesus, the Spirit etc. Sadly this is not always immediately apparent to theology students as they engage the technical disciplines required of them. But I think it is one of the responsibilities of a theology teacher to help students grasps the imaginative functions of theology. And that requires providing diverse points of entry into theological work to match the diverse ways that people cultivate their imagination. I know that my imagination is actively engaged and stimulated by engaging with ideas, concepts and texts. But I recognise that this is not the case for many others. That does not mean, however, that we obliged to set aside the conceptual and analytical. It does mean that multiple points of entry into them need to be developed. This is not to deny that the poetic and the artistic do not have an integrity of their own. But as well as that they can helpfully open the imagination to the technical discourses of theology.

If pressed, I would ultimately place this book in the genre of the devotional, but it is devotional in a way that is intentional about speaking to the mind as well as the heart. Let me cite just two examples.

The entry on 'kerygma' is actually built around a mediation on Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman. The last stanza of the 'definition' runs as follows:

If we really want that early church preaching
then maybe we should get ourselves to the well
with all the sinners who thirst for Living Water
and are afraid to drink in the presence
of the Word who comes to us
in the fullness of grace and truth
until our testimony pours our
new life
abundantly

And on 'redaction', after several lines  reminding readers of form and grammar, and original languages, the poem, written in a chiastic structure, concludes

These are good to tools to use lest we forget that
every writer has an agenda, a goal, a reason
to spin a story in a certain direction,
especially when politics and
religion are twisted together
lie they were in the
church's very
early days
as they
now
are.

Not all the 'definitions' sit comfortably with me, but the approach Keefe pursues does. Whilst this book could only accompany and not replace other more conventional theological dictionaries, I think for a theological student (regardless of how right- or left-brain they are) to have the meanings of some key theological words expanded by poetry is important. After all, it involves the same kind of imaginative shifts involved when we move from doctrine to prayer and hymns in worship.

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This (very occasional) series of 'books worth reading' engages an eclectic selection of books: some directly related to my teaching, some to the UCA, and some of more general theological interest. They are not offered as technical book reviews, but as summaries which highlight why I think they might be useful resources, good conversation starters, or volumes that make helpful contributions to scholarly debate.

Books Worth Reading (10): Rowan Williams' Being Disciples

Rowan Williams, Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life  (London: SPCK, 2016)

This is an excellent book. It is well worth reading, or, more precisely, well worth using.

As something of a sequel to his earlier Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer (also a Book Worth Reading), this latest small book (just 87 pages) is another instance of Rowan Williams addressing some of the basic issues entailed in living as Jesus' disciples.  The book distills for us 'ordinary' Christians the somewhat unique combination of scholarship, pastoral insight and ecclesiastical leadership that Williams offers the whole church.

Each chapter was originally a lecture or presentation given to lay audiences whilst he was Archbishop of Canterbury. Although those presentations spanned a six year period and were given in various locations around the world, they have been combined quite seamlessly in this volume.

After an introductory chapter on the overall theme, Being Disciples, the following chapters explore five distinct but related themes: Faith, Hope and Love; Forgiveness; Holiness; Faith in Society; and Life in the Spirit. The writing is very accessible, at times quite beautiful, always to the point, and often unsettling. Each chapter starts with a reflection on a particular New Testament passage but then opens out into wider issues. Accompanying each chapter are some discussion-starter type questions.

The most useful way of providing a taste of this book, is to offer a short quotation from each chapter.

On 'Being Disciples' 
"Awareness, expectancy - all of this is bound up with the idea of the disciple as someone who follows. This listening awareness, this expectancy, presupposes following because it assumes that we are willing to travel to where the Master is, to follow where the Master goes. And, of course, in the Gospels, where the Master goes is very frequently not where we could have thought of going or would have wanted to go... Familiar and pious language, which we need to hear afresh as the chilling and sobering summons it really is" (p. 9f).

On 'Faith, Hope and Love' 
"[In] this sense of confusion and loss where our understanding is concerned, faith grows in its true meaning. It appears not as a system, a comprehensive answer to all our problems. It appears quite simply in the form of 'dependable relationship'... You realize when the signposts and landmarks have been taken aware there is a presence that does not let you go. And that is faith, I would say, in a very deeply biblical sense" (p.25).

On 'Forgiveness'
The person who asks forgiveness has renounced the privilege of being right or safe; she has acknowledged that she is hungry for healing, for the bread of acceptance and restoration to relationship. But equally the person who forgives has renounced the safety of being locked into the position of the offended victim. ... Both the giver and receiver of forgiveness have moved out of the safety zone; they have begun to ask how to receive their humanity as a gift" (p.40).

On 'Holiness'
"[T]here is no contrast, no tension really, between holiness and involvement in the world. On the contrary, the most holy, who is Jesus, is the most involved, most at the heart of human experience. And we really misunderstand the whole thing very seriously if we think that holiness means being defended from our own humanity or other people's humanity: quite the opposite." (p.50)

On 'Faith in Society'
"Christians...are not called to impose their vision on the whole of society. If they have a role in the political realm, it is that they will argue that the voice of faith should be heard clearly in the decision-making processes of society. The Christian disciple, in other words, does not campaign for political control...but for public visibility - for the capacity to argue for and defend their vision in the public sphere, to try and persuade both government and individuals that a better moral basis exists for ordering public life." (p. 71)

On 'Life in the Spirit'
"To be opened up [by the Spirit] is to discover joy: not happiness, not a transient feeling of euphoria, or feeling it's basically all right in a kind of shoulder-shrugging way, but joy - the sense that we are connected with something so real that it will break every boundary or container we try to confine it in, a sense of something overflowing, pushing outwards." (p.85).


I said at the outset that it is more precise to speak of 'using' this book rather than 'reading' it. I hope these cameo quotes indicate why this is so. I'm sure any study or discussion group which chose to use this book would not be disappointed.

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This occasional series of 'books worth reading' engages an eclectic selection of books: some directly related to my teaching, some to the UCA, and some of more general theological interest. They are not offered as technical book reviews, but as summaries which highlight why I think they might be useful resources, good conversation starters, or volumes that make helpful contributions to scholarly debate.

Books Worth Reading (9): The Songs of Jesse Adams by Peter McKinnon

The Songs of Jesse Adams (Melbourne: Acorn, 2014)

The Songs of Jesse Adams is a contemporary allegory of the New Testament story of Jesus. Well, ‘contemporary’ inasmuch as it is set in 1960s Melbourne. We see the Jesus figure appearing at the Sydney Myer Music Bowl and meeting up with associates in Nicholson and Lygon Streets. We see the political, media and religious leaders doing their conspiring in Spring Street. Echoes of Henry Bolte and his ilk resound across the story. Readers are invited to imagine the front page of the Sun News-Pictorial – the original morning half of what has now become the Herald Sun. And AFL tragics get to be reminded of the ’Roys at the Brunswick Street Oval. There are also forays to Sydney and the moral ambiguities of King’s Cross. And Byron Bay gets included as well. Yes, something the hippie scene of 1960s Australia is part of the background to this Jesus figure, Jesse Adams.

The book is written by Melbournian, Peter McKinnon – a friend and fellow member of Brunswick Uniting Church. Peter is a trained psychologist, and this is evident in the way he develops the characters in this book. All the characters are believable and have, well, character. Peter also writes with a deft literary touch and creative flair, but the creativity is never indulged or allowed to slip into exaggeration. The allegorical parallels are teasing - obvious enough but sufficiently different to keep the reader on his or her toes. There’s a definite familiarity, but not so much so that you know exactly what the next turn in the plot will be.

But to the story. Jesse Adams is a talented musician who has grown up on a Victorian farm. As a young man he heads to the big smoke to pursue his musical dreams. But it turns out there are other dreams as well which are driving him. A certain eccentricity, or deeper calling, disorients both him and also, more deeply, those who gradually gather around him: other musicians, entrepreneurs, friends, journalists, fans and his puzzled (but not entirely surprised) mother. There is, as the saying goes, something about him. He eludes categories.

Jesse’s wilderness experience was in the dunes near Port Phillip Bay’s ‘The Rip’. He arrives there uncertain, hungry, homeless and confused. He is protected by local indigenous men who, in some deep, spiritual way, “were in touch with what was happening to him”.

He attends a teenage wedding. His mother tells him that the motel has mucked up and there is no champagne for the toasts. Jesse organises, not for water to become wine, but beer to become champagne. There’s some nodding and winking that invites you into the mystery. There’s no rationalising of how it happened.

Jesse pursues his calling, playing his music around the town. His popularity grows – but not just for his music, but also for this something else that accompanies and drives him. He gets a big gig at the Raspberry Hill music festival. Music gives way to a summons to the tens of thousands hanging on his music and his words: “The world’s a dark place…  You can be the light… Be the revolution. If the bloke beside you needs a shirt, give him yours – give him two…”  You get the drift.

He heads to King’s Cross, befriends a young girl about whom he knows more than she would like him to know. She’s trapped by the local porn movie business. Incensed by what it has done to her, he seeks out the theatre during a showing. He discovers various respectable authorities exercising their hypocrisy,  pulls the plug on the projector, turns everything and everyone upside down, runs off with the projector and heaves it into the El Alamein fountain. There were, however, too many of those respectable people with all their connections at that theatre for this not to get him into big trouble. The powers that be begin to marshal their forces against him.

Still, concerts and gigs follow. Music is the medium of his message; it’s the point of connection with the cultural ferment pervading the nation. It’s also the platform that gives him an audience. Then there’s the anti-Vietnam war Moratorium. The crowd hear that he’s at the march – they demand he be given the stage. He took it. He called the crowd to follow his way as the alternative to war. The crowd begins to demur: is this about Vietnam or about Jesse Adams? He’s the guest speaker at the Lord’s Mayor dinner, but provokes a walkout of all those finely-dressed dignitaries with his straight talking. He walks up  to  Spring Street, invites himself in to the parliamentary chamber, and predicts that "this house will be destroyed and a new one rise in its place".

The conspirators can take little more. A darkness begins to descend on the story – a climax approaches. He’s set up. Being interviewed on national television, he is presented with a photo of him offering a healing  touch to young girl. Yes, he had his hand on her leg – that was the touch of healing.  But now, before the nation, it’s evidence that he’s a paedophile.  But, at the same time, because he doesn’t have a girlfriend, he’s ‘accused’ of being gay. So, from hero to figure of scandal and suspicion.  

But Jesse and his associates also knew a thing or two about the conspiratorial authorities – too much for their own good. They knew about corruption that was rotting the core of society. And they knew who was running it. Therefore, humiliation on television wasn’t enough. He had to be eliminated, and on a dark inner-suburban street he was. He’s gone – until, though, there was a series of ‘appearances’ to those who had known him: weird, suspicious, unbelievable, disorienting but somehow real.  Jesse may have been killed but not vanquished.

This bare summary doesn’t do justice to the richness of the plot and its various subplots which weave their way through the book. The threads of the plot outlined here don’t reveal the complexity of Jesse’s own character, the depth of his relationships, or the volatility and range of the reactions he provoked. It’s an absorbing and enticing story.

What might we make of this as the allegory it seeks to be?  For me, the great value of this particular narrative is how well it captures, allegorically, the puzzling nature of Jesus. For all the familiarity (at least to Melburnians) of the setting, and even the familiarity of some of the causes (e.g. opposition of Vietnam war, or the rage against corruption), Jesse is never predictable. He consistently eludes the categories in which people try to place him: political and religious. People are no sooner drawn to him than they are confused by him.

In that regard, this is a very timely telling of the story. Christian faith has managed to domesticate Jesus in so many ways that the New Testament narratives of Jesus have often ceased to be of much interest to Christians themselves, let alone to non-Christians.  Unless we Christians allow ourselves to be puzzled by Jesus as he is presented in the New Testament, and resist the urge to stifle our questions with familiarity, we are likely to lose interest in the faith’s own central, pivotal figure. Jesse Adams supported all the right causes – but over and above that he presented himself. Yes, this self-presentation was often cryptic and disorienting. But perhaps that’s why those who were closest to him couldn’t quite let him go

.

The Australian church has had minimal success in generating much interest in Jesus. Perhaps there is an opportunity for the church itself to rediscover Jesus for his own sake and for the sake of those seeking and questing. The Songs of Jesses Adams could well be an effective conversation starter to kick start that rediscovery.  

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This (very occasional) series of 'books worth reading' engages an eclectic selection of books: some directly related to my teaching, some to the UCA, and some of more general theological interest. They are not offered as technical book reviews, but as summaries which highlight why I think they might be useful resources, good conversation starters, or volumes that make helpful contributions to scholarly debate.

Books Worth Reading (8): Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept by Brent Nongbri

Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of  a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013)

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The very first piece of reading my PhD supervisor gave me to read – now some twenty-five years ago – was an essay from the then current issue of Modern Theology, “A Certain Politics of Speech:  Religious Pluralism in the Age of the McDonald’s Hamburger” by Kenneth Surin.  It was an exhilarating read. Political, theological, historical and philosophical arguments were mounted to deconstruct the concept of religious pluralism, and to expose it as the somewhat blunt construct of Western-based intellectual traditions that it is. His thesis was not new, but its presentation was captivating. The category of 'religion' and its plural 'religions' emerged as the West encountered and decided to classify traditions that had some overlap with Christianity. Whilst once used to demonstrate that Christianity was the 'true' or 'best' religion it gave way to proposals for the equality of all religions. Yet, the category could never be extracted from Western assumptions that had invented it. This issue has remained a side interest of mine over the years.

Maintaining this interest has involved trying to keep tabs on what is in effect a minor publishing industry. Surin himself was already drawing on Wilfred Cantwell Smith's seminal 1964 work, The Meaning and End of Religion. Australian scholars Philip Almond and Peter Harrison contributed, respectively, The British Discovery of Buddhism (1988) and 'Religion' and the Religions in the English Enlightenment  (1990). In 1998 Daniel Dubuisson published The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge and Ideology and in 2005 there appeared Tomoko Maxuzawa's The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Harrison's The Territories of Science and Religion (2015) is also relevant, although more broadly oriented (and the subject of an earlier blog post). My inclination has been to believe that this entire line of enquiry has rendered the concept of religion so fragile and intellectually compromised that its continued use is testimony to the power of intellectual and cultural convention.

One of the interesting features of Brent Nongbri's recent contribution to this area of scholarship, however, is that, whilst making his own contribution to exposing the ideologies behind the concept of 'religion', he presents a case for the continued use of the term. I'll summarise a couple of his key contributions before picking up his argument for continuing to use the term 'religion'.

He demonstrates that prior to the invention of 'religion', the various traditions and ways of life had their own concepts, strategies, and ideologies by which they described themselves and, indeed, how they assessed and categorised alternative traditions and ways of life. But Nongbri also demonstrates how these earlier and diverse ways of negotiating identity and difference have largely been obscured by the modern conceptual dominance of 'religion'. This dominance is seen very clearly in the  translation of key terms in Christian and Islamic texts. Latin's religio, Greek's threskia, and Arabic's din and umma have often been rendered as 'religion' in modern translations, thus absorbing these ancient texts into a specifically modern (and therefore Western) conceptual apparatus which flattens out their differences. He shows how in their original contexts each of these words carries a broad range of reference (variously legal, moral, ethnic, liturgical) that calls  this modern translation practice into question. In sum: "Those aspects of life covered by these  terms (social order, law, etc.) fall outside the idealized, private, interior realm associated with the modern concept of religion. Translating these terms as 'religion' or conceptualising any particular individual ancient religio, threskia or din as 'a religion' is thus bound to be a misleading practice" (p.45).

He also demonstrates with his own examples the now familiar view that a certain Christian bias enters even the attempts to resist Christian superiority. A case in point from the seventeenth century is Lord Herbert's 'common notions' of religion which tried to establish some 'original', 'natural' or 'universal' form of religion. So for Herbert, "Christianity is just another form of the original religion". But as Nongbri notes, although Herbert was "interested in showing that all religions are at a basic level good religions,...his criteria for what constitutes 'good' and what constitutes 'religion' are very much indebted to the Christianity of his day" (p.95). Moreover, this is equally the case in describing the negative aspects of religion. He refers to how Herbert takes then contemporary critiques of priesthood (drawn from particular debates internal to Western Christendom) and imposes them on other 'religions' to demonstrate their  alleged deviant forms - as if priesthood was always and everywhere what it is in Christianity (and always and everywhere corrupts in the same way it does in Christianity)! He traces the impact of such intellectual strategies on the creation of  the category and academic discipline of 'World Religions'. On this issue he quotes Jonathan Z. Smith: "It is impossible to escape the suspicion that a world religion is simply a religion like ours..." (p. 129).

A similar practice emerges when looking back to the so-called religions of antiquity (and this is Nongbri's key focus). This once again involves the imposition of a modern construct on diverse patterns of ancient life and belief. He makes this point very sharply and is worth quoting at length:

If we want to go on talking about ancient Mesopotamian religion, ancient Greek religion, or any other ancient religion, we should always bear in mind that we are talking about something modern when we do so. We are not naming something any ancient person would recognize.... Religion is a modern category. It may be able to shed light on some aspects of the ancient world when applied in certain strategic ways, but we have to be honest about the category's origins and not pretend that it somehow organically and magically arises from our sources. If we fail to make this reflexive move, we turn our ancient sources into well-polished mirrors that show us only ourselves and our own institutions (p. 153).

So, is it valid to go on using the term and indeed even to regard 'religion' as a valid field of study? In giving an affirmative answer to this question, Nongbri insists that 'religion' must be used not as a descriptive concept, but as a redescriptive concept. As such it could be used as second-order category of analysis. He suggest that so used, we would learn to ask not, 'Is X a religion?' but something like: "Can we see anything new and interesting about phenomenon X by considering it, for the purpose of study, as a religion?" (p. 155).

This is a very good book and, although dealing with some quite technical arguments, it is highly readable. I'm sure that anyone interested in the study of religion, the ideologies of religious pluralism or, more broadly, the history of ideas, would find it well worth reading.

*****

This (very occasional) series of 'books worth reading' engages an eclectic selection of books: some directly related to my teaching, some to the UCA, and some of more general theological interest. They are not offered as technical book reviews, but as summaries which highlight why I think they might be useful resources, good conversation starters, or volumes that make helpful contributions to scholarly debate.

*****

Books Worth Reading (7): Postliberal Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed by Ronald T. Michener

I have never been a card-carrying postliberal theologian. Nevertheless, my engagement with the postliberal theologians of the 1980s and 1990s undoubtedly shaped my approach to the study of theology and, and more enduringly, my interest in the diverse roles of doctrine in the church’s life. Central to the postliberal school was George Lindbeck’s 1986, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and theology in a Postliberal Age. I read it for the first time just as I embarked on my postgraduate studies. If I can say this without being too presumptuous, it woke me from my doctrinal slumber. It snapped me out of the dreary liberal/conservative rhetoric of the mainline protestant theology I had imbibed by being part of mainline protestant church. Lindbeck’s typology of doctrine –  experiential expressivist, propositional, and cultural-linguistic –  provided  me with quite different and more interesting ways of mapping the theology I was learning. It made me realise that to describe a theological position as liberal or conservative was to say almost nothing intellectually interesting, let alone informative, about that theological position. Moreover, reading Lindbeck made me realise that the study of doctrine and the many functions it performs in the church was at least as interesting, complex and fascinating as the study of hermeneutics or method or the various backgrounds to the biblical writings.

As a specific school of thought, postliberal theology had a relatively short life. Paul de Haart has even written about its rise and decline. The questions it raised, however, are still worth pondering. Indeed, to some extent, they are inevitable in any study of Christian theology, whether or not that study is shaped by exposure to specifically postliberal writings. So, for instance:

• If doctrines aren’t propositions, what are they?
• How is narrative related to truth?
• What is the relationship between theology and practice?
• Can theology be non-foundationalist without becoming fidestic?
• Are the discourses of different religions incommensurable?

So the postliberal school may well have passed into history, but if you want to see how postliberal theology brought such questions to focus and how it helps address them, then Ronald T. Michener’s short 2013 book, Postliberal Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed would be a book well worth reading. As with other books in Bloomsbury’s Guide for the Perplexed series, it’s pitched at readers able to engage arguments typical of tertiary education, it provides a helpful overview of the topic without bypassing the critical questions, it is relatively short (140 pages), and it has many helpful suggestions for further reading.

The book consists of 5 chapters. The first, ‘Introduction’, does what its title says. It’s a very general overview of postliberal theology which locates it in the midst of other twentieth-century theological movements. Chapter 2, ‘Background’, provides a very useful summary of the wide range of philosophical, anthropological, sociological and theological backgrounds to the movement. (Throughout this chapter readers would glean some insight into the important contributions to postliberal theology of Augustine, Aquinas and Barth.) Chapter 3, ‘Theological exponents of postliberal theology’ provides sustained engagement with the three major voices of the movement (Frei, Lindbeck, and Hauerwas) and a quick overview of ‘other voices’ (David Kelsey, William Placher, Bruce Marshall, George Hunsinger and Kathryn Tanner). The title of Chapter 4, Problems and Criticisms of Postliberal Theology, speaks for itself as does that of Chapter 5, ‘Prospects and proposals for postliberal theology today’.

So what is 'postliberal theology'? Early on Michener offers what is less a definition and more a set of observations that help to locate this particular theology:

Postliberal theology has always been more a loose connection of narrative theological interests than it is some monolithic agenda. It represents an overarching concern for the renewal of Christian confession over theological methodology. Rather than reliance on  a notion of correlative common experience, postliberal theology moves towards the local or particular faith description of the community of the church (p.3).

As such it is a  "tertium quid solution" between the two major protestant responses to modernity: fundamentalism and liberalism. More specifically, postliberal theology rejects the identity of truth with doctrinal propositions characteristic of fundamentalism. At the same time it rejects the location of truth within a putatively pre-cognitive domain of human experience (of which doctrines are contingent ‘expressions’) typical of liberalism. In contrast postliberal theology locates truth within Christianty’s own practiced and articulated narratives: i.e.,  the narratives that shape the church’s life – creeds, liturgies, scriptures, confessions etc. And here, of course, is what is usually perceived as the major problem with postliberal theology: it so completely internalises truth, that it is essentially sectarian and fideistic.

Of course, postliberal theologians have frequently addressed this question, but the criticism persists. Michener sets out some of these response as well as his own in Chapter 4. In the response to the charge of the inevitably of isolationism which attached to postliberalism, Michener cites the example of the Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to the massacre of their schoolchildren in 2006. Here was a community which prima face represents what a postliberal church might be: isolated and so formed by its own internal traditions that it was unable to relate to the world. Yet as Michener indicates, it was precisely that internal formation which enabled this community to practice forgiveness under the most extreme provocation. Michener makes this observation:

This is a remarkable example of how a commitment to one's faith, fully embedeed in the narrative and tradition of that faith, even with (what is often seen as) an extreme sectarian context may still have a radically profound impact on society. The Amish are certainly no friends to modern culture and society. ... [Nevertheless] with no regard to society's value or acts of self-aggrandizement  a faithfully devout community can still have a powereful effect on that society (p. 117).

Now, there are quite properly serious limits to this most extreme example. By itself it should not be taken as a justification for postliberal theology or as a response to a major criticism of it. Nevertheless, it does provide a lived example which calls into question the assumption made in theory that faithfulness to a tradition necessarily leads to public isolation.

The other aspect of Michener's critical discussion which is worth noting relates to the Holy Spirit. A little surprisingly, Michener draws some parallels between Postliberalism and Pentecostalism in their shared rejection of modern reductionist rationality. He quotes James K.A.Smith's reference to Pentecostalism's  "more expansive, affective understanding of what counts as knowledge and a richer understanding of how we know" (Smith, quoted by Michener, p. 136) and suggests this as an area of shared concern. It is not entirely clear where that parallel might lead, but the shared concern is at least worthy of note and any pathway to deeper mutual understanding between mainline and Pentecostal theologies is worth pursuing.

This is a good book. It would be useful to any one already interested in and familiar with postliberal theology. It would also be well worth reading for anyone keen to find out about it for the first time.

* * * *

In second semester this year I'll be teaching a unit, 'Doctrine, Truth and Pluralism'. Although postliberal theology will be only one part of this unit, questions such as those listed above will be the unit's major driving force. It will be taught as a two-part intensive, July 29-30 and Oct 7-9.  Check out this promotional video and the course outline on pp. 92-94 of Pilgrim's 2016 Handbook. The unit will also be available for on-line enrolment.

* * * *

(This series of 'books worth reading' engages an eclectic selection of books: some directly related to my teaching, some to the UCA, and some of more general theological interest. They are not offered as technical book reviews, but as summaries which highlight why I think they might be useful resources, good conversation starters, or volumes that make helpful contributions to scholarly debate.)

 

Books Worth Reading (6): The Territories of Science and Religion by Peter Harrison

Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

In recent years I have found myself in several conversations during which a definite disquiet has greeted the suggestion that modern science depended on Christianity for its origins. The claim has often been heard as an triumphalist apology for the Christian faith (and by extension a denial of the legitimacy of, for instance, Islamic science). It is actually a historical claim about the history of ideas and, as a historical claim about the history of ideas, it is (more or less) uncontroversial. That the claim has become historically uncontroversial owes much to the work of Peter Harrison, formerly the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, and now the Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Over the last decade or so Harrison's work has significantly re-shaped the understanding of the history of the relationship between science and religion by demonstrating that both 'religion' and 'science', as we use those words today, are modern conceptual inventions and that the invention of the latter was especially shaped by theological considerations. Many of the arguments that ground these claims (together with some new arguments) are presented in The Territories of Science and Religion, the published version of Harrison's 2011 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh.

The essence of the argument is crystallised in a helpful analogy at the book's outset. Harrison invites his readers to imagine a contemporary historian presenting a claim about a war between Egypt and Israel in 1600. Such a claim would actually be meaningless because neither 'Egypt' nor 'Israel' - as we now understand those signifiers - existed in 1600. Yes, there may well have been a war between different parties which then occupied parts of what our maps now identify as 'Egypt' and 'Israel', but this would not have been a war between the modern nation states that are now designated Egypt and Israel. Analogously, claims about the history of science and religion can involve projecting these modern concepts onto earlier practices which only just, if at all, overlap with what we mean by 'science' and 'religion'.

So what were scientia and religio in the ancient world and how do they differ from what 'science' and 'religion' are in the modern world? In brief, and with all the dangers of summarising a complex argument, the differences can be explained like this. In the ancient world, both scientia and religio were more like inner virtues than external practices. In the modern world, on the other hand, both 'science' and 'religion' are external, objectified practices. In the ancient world, the purpose of scientia was to form particular mental habits. In the modern world the purpose of 'science' is to advance the human capacity to manipulate the physical world. In the ancient world, religio was identified by the cultivation of piety. In the modern world, 'religion' is identified by bodies of belief and identifiable institutional, communal practices. 


In the first instance, recognising this conceptual history enables some critical historical leverage on the commonly-held idea that with the emergence of Christianity, the previous  progress of 'science' on the part of the ancients was arrested, impeded by the allegedly intrinsically obscurantist tendencies of Christianity. Only with the loosening of Christianity's influence in the modern era, so the argument goes, has 'science' been set free again to take up its historical trajectory of bringing light where religion only brought darkness. This particular 'myth of the conflict between science and religion' employs the same degree of category mistakes employed in the analogy about the 1600 war between 'Egypt' and 'Israel'. In the ancient world, 'science' and 'religion' were not the sorts of things that would be in conflict. (To add my own analogy, it would be like suggesting that the Australian Football League was in some perennial, essential conflict with the Oslo Society of Cabinet Makers.There is simply nothing about their respective concerns that require them to have a relationship of any sort, let alone one of conflict.) Only in the modern era do 'science' and 'religion' emerge in ways that the possibility of 'conflict' attaches to their relationship.

So how did 'religion' and 'science' emerge as modern concepts and what is it about their respective definitions which means that they might be in conflict? In the case of religion, a principal factor was the insistence of the sixteenth-century Reformers that 'faith be explicit' in contrast to the 'implicit faith' of medieval Catholicism. As Harrison notes: "The Reformers insisted instead that Christian believers be able to articulate the doctrines they professed, and do so in propositional terms" (p.92).  As such, religio as a virtue was replaced by 'religion' as body of beliefs. Now externalised, it could become the object of comparison and objectification: religion becomes something that attracts the definite article. Harrison documents this shift with reference to the emergence of the phrase 'the Christian religion' in books published in English between 1530 and 1690 (see pp. 92-94). The shift is also crystallised in the translation history of the title of John Calvin's Institutio Christiannae Religionis. The title given in English translation changed as follows:

• 'The Institution of Christian Religion' (1561)
• The Institution of the Christian Religion' (1762)
• 'The Institutes of the Christian Religion' (1813).

Thus, the "modern rendering is suggestive of an entity 'the Christian religion' that is constituted by its propositional content - 'the institutes'. These connotations were completely absent from the original title" (p.11).

If religion now attracts the definite article, it can also be pluralised. Religion becomes a genus of which there are particular species. This move is especially highlighted in the way the West designates as 'religions' the other traditions and ways of life it with which it comes into contact during colonial expansion. This phenomenon has, of course, been well-documented in recent decades. Harrison draws particular attention to the fact that colonial expansion was more or less coincident with the religious fragmentation of Europe. 'World religions', itself a new concept, "came into existence through the projection of the religious fragmentation of Western Christendom onto the rest of the world. ... The 'other religions' were thus constructed as inferior versions of the territorialized Christian religions of Europe" (p.99). (An upcoming 'Books Worth Reading' will be summarising Brent Nongbri's Before Religion: The History of a Modern Concept (2013) which addresses this issue in much more detail.)

What then of the origins of science? Those who first developed an experimental approach to understanding the natural world did not at first necessarily consider themselves 'scientists'. Yes, they were producing bodies of knowledge about the world that represented a shift from scientia as an internal virtue to something objective and measurable. In producing such bodies of knowledge they would have they thought they were doing 'natural philosophy' or even 'natural theology'. But, at some point, not before the nineteenth century, these experimental activities, and their consequent bodies of knowledge, came to be described as 'science' and to break free of their philosophical and theological frameworks. Harrison quotes an 1867 article which defines science in terms of "physical and experimental science, to the exclusion of theological and metaphysical" (William Ward quoted by Harrison, p. 145f.). This is the significant move which constitutes modern science: not that people were only now using experimental methods to increase their knowledge of the world, but that the knowledge so produced was being separated from any philosophical or theological framework. Harrison summarises this shift in these terms:

In the nineteenth century, 'science' as we now understand it, came to be constructed in a way that resembled the early modern construction of the idea 'religion'. That is to say, it was aggregated from a range of activities and distanced from the personal qualities of those who practiced it. This took place when 'science' came to be linked to a putatively unified set of practices ('the scientific method'), associated with a distinct group of individuals ('scientists'), and purged of elements that had once been regarded as integral to its status and operations (the theological and metaphysical). Modern religion had its birth in the seventeenth century; modern science in the nineteenth. Properly speaking then, this belated appearance of 'science' provides the first occasion for a relationship between science and religion (p.147).

Only in the nineteenth century, therefore, do religion and science - both defined as bodies of knowledge, produced by particular communities engaging in certain practices to make particular claims about the world - become the kinds of phenomena which can be compared, contrasted - and brought into conflict.

Yet, as Harrison explores developments in science's self-understanding, it becomes apparent that certain remnants of its theological origins remain. (This is also a helpful way to return to the disquiet about those theological origins noted at the outset of this post.) The early experimental scientists used theological ideas to evaluate and understand their scientific work and its achievements. To take one example of the many which Harrison provides, Francis Bacon. With a particular understanding of Genesis providing the backdrop, Bacon writes as follows of how science is able to 'repair' the fallen state of humanity.  

For man by the fall fell at the same time from this state of innocency and from his dominion over creation. Both of these losses however can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and sciences. For creation was not by the curse made altogether and forever a rebel, but...is not by various labours...at length in in some measure subdued to supplying of man with bread; that is to the uses of human life (From Bacon's Novum Organum, quoted by Harrison, p.138).

This leads to a link between science, the 'relief of the human estate' and therefore 'progress'.  "The stuff of nature is pursued not only for the purpose of moral edification, but also to yield technologies that will offer ways of relieving the human condition. In time the latter will completely displace the former" (136). In other words, the link between the rhetoric of progress and modern science has a theological foundation, and even if the theological foundation is discarded (which it now has been), the nexus between science and progress has its origins in that cluster of Christian theological convictions.  From this emerging independence of the rhetoric of progress other things flow: "Progress had once been understood as progress towards a particular end. Now it had become an end in itself" (p141). A new cultural status is now granted to both the discipline of science and its practitioners:  "Now the wonders of nature become the wonders of science, understood as the product of scientists' rigorous application of the scientific method" (169). So yes, the theological origins of science are clear enough: but given the ambiguity of 'scientific progress', Christians might pause before pointing to the 'Christians' origins of science.

Harrison concludes the book by referring to various contemporary debates. These include debates about the coherence of science, something which is prone to being exaggerated. He insists that 'science' and 'religion' are not cultural constants, highlighting as he does so the manner in which ideological atheism is parasitic on the distinctly modern construct of 'religion'. He also cautions against over-enthusiastic claims about a "consonance between science and religion", precisely because such claims often involve conceding the cultural authority of science and the propositional nature of religion.

It goes without saying that this book is a work of advanced scholarship. It would be most easily read by people with some existing knowledge of the history of ideas in general and, more specifically, the history of science and religion. Nevertheless, Harrison presents his arguments in an accessible and engaging style. Some of the more technical details of the various arguments are placed in endnotes, thus allowing the general reader to take in the larger argument more easily. The book would be of interest, I imagine, to anyone (Christian or not) involved in the science/religion discussion. It would also be of value to ministers and preachers who confront the pastoral issues raised by the rhetoric of conflict between science and religion (remembering, though, that this is not a book of Christian apologetics) as well as to anyone who wishes to know a little more about the history of Western culture and some of the formative ideas which have given it the particular shape it has.

* * * * * *

Links to videos of the lectures at which Harrison first presented the material making up The Territories of Science and Religion are available here.

 * * * * * *

(This series of 'books worth reading' engages an eclectic selection of books: some directly related to my teaching, some to the UCA, and some of more general theological interest. They are not offered as technical book reviews, but as summaries which highlight why I think they might be useful resources, good conversation starters, or volumes that make helpful contributions to scholarly debate.)

Books Worth Reading (5): Christianity: A Very Short Introduction by Linda Woodhead

Linda Woodhead, Christianity: A Very Short Introduction 2nd ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

This book is neither a work of apologetics directed to non-Christians nor an exposition of the Christian faith written for insiders. It is a social, historical and cultural description of Christianity written for readers who are theologically uncommitted and culturally-  and/or  intellectually curious.  But it is, nevertheless, a book that the theologically-committed insider could find well-worth reading, precisely because it gives something of an outsider's perspective on this phenomenon we know as 'Christianity'.

Woodhead is Professor of Sociology of Religion in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University.  She is one of the most prominent and prolific sociologists writing on religion, especially on religion in the UK. As a sociologist she has particular ideological commitments shaped by that discipline, but that in no way devalues the book or lessens its value to a Christian reader. It is impossible to tell from this work her own relationship to the Christian faith (and this is a strength and not a weakness of the book). 

Belonging to this particular OUP series, it is, obviously enough, a very short book: only 120 pages. It is divided into 6 chapters: (1) Jesus: the God-man; (2) Beliefs, rituals and narratives; (3) The spread of Christianity; (4) Church and Biblical Christianity; (5) Monastic and mystical Christianity; and (6) Christianity in the modern world. Then follows a Conclusion, a two-page chronology of the major events in Christianity's history, and the customary Suggestions for Further Reading.

She describes the first two chapters as introducing "the basic Christian repertoire" (1). It's an interesting phrase which offers a rather different framework than might, say, 'doctrines' or 'beliefs'.  Indeed, she uses it to identify what it is typical of Christianity across it doctrinal diversity. She refers to how "we can turn down the volume on such differences in order to introduce common themes in the Christian repertoire" (p.21).

It is of course, the person of Jesus and some basic beliefs about him which constitute the core of this 'repertoire'. She makes the fairly obvious point that the "canonical Jesus is far more influential than any 'real' Jesus who lies behind the gospels and inspires their portraits" (p.7). Because she is not writing for the theologically-committed, she can make this historical and cultural observation without having to enter contemporary theological debates about the relationship between Jesus and the gospels: "So far as history is concerned, it is the Jesus of the New Testament who has inspired more lives and worked more miracles than the elusive figure historians struggle to reconstruct" (p.7). The theologically committed will take comfort or discomfort from this depending on their views of the status of the 'biblical' or 'canonical' Jesus, but the theologically-neutral observation about the historically-influential Jesus, needs to be weighed in any attempt to find a more 'real' Jesus allegedly more germane to contemporary or culturally-specific interests.

Woodhead's sociological framework is perhaps most evident in her alertness to the connections between social conditions and the spread of Christianity over its 2000-year history. In this regard her brief overview is a helpful foil to the often romanticised and triumphant accounts of Christianity's expansion. For instance, she notes the pre-700AD limited eastward-spread of Christianity towards India and China and their existing religions. She then  contrasts this with the more successful westward spread during the same period. Of this contrast she notes: "Without political backing Christianity was unable to do more than win over small marginal social groups when other religions dominated a territory". On the other hand, the alliance between Christianity and power which accompanied Christianity's renewed attempts to move into those areas in the area of European colonisation did not necessarily lead to greater acceptance. If anything, it has been the "withdrawal of Western colonial powers [that] has led to greater opportunities for Christianity than before" (p. 54). In an important passage, she notes the alliance between certain forms of Christianity, globalisation, and the twentieth-century expansion of Christianity into the global south. Here she finds parallels with the spread of  Islam in the same areas during the same period. Her comments are worth quoting at some length.

In this post-colonial phase, Christianity has been more fully owned and adopted by people who were previously colonial subjects. Many parts of the southern hemisphere have witnessed the growth of new globally networked forms of Christianity, most notably the Pentecostal and Charismatic.... Since their rise has been contemporaneous with that of resurgent Islam, it is interesting to compare the two. Both have flourished in territories which were previously under western colonial control. Both have a globalizing tendency. Both represent indigenous movements of modernization. To be part of recent Islamic or Charismatic upsurges is to be part of global movements with the resources and sense of universal, triumphant purpose that entails. Individuals' horizons and sense of identity are raised from the local or even the national to the global level by belonging to these religions, and power is enhanced accordingly. Through membership one can lay hold of many of the benefits of modernity - including education, technology, and affluence - but without having to westernize. The best of both worlds (p. 54).

There are all sorts of interesting sparks to reflection here, not least the connection between faith, power, globalization and modernity. And the relation of this phenomenon to the attraction of earlier power-less forms of Christianity to 'small marginal groups' warrants considerable theological reflection. 

The expansion of Christianity during the previous century has, of course, taken many forms. Yet, for Woodhead,"[u]nderstanding this huge internal variety within Christianity is less important than understanding the religion's main fault lines" (p.57). To this end (and with a sociologist's nod to Ernst Troeltsch) she believes the diversity of Christianity can best be described in terms of what she designates as its four major types: church, biblical, mystical and monastic. Her descriptions of each of these types are highly illuminating. Perhaps just as illuminating is her suggestion that despite the recent expansion and diversification, none of the new manifestations of Christianity in Asia or Africa, for instance, has introduced any new basic type. Pentecostalism, Fundamentalism, and Charismatic Evangelicalism can still be classified by new four-fold typology, even if in different configurations (see p. 89). In other words, the expansion of Christianity in Asia and Africa is proceeding along trajectories which are generated by the basic reality that Christianity is and has been.

 

As she surveys the contemporary global phenomenon of Christianity, she does seem to suggest that there is one particularly decisive fault line which runs through and across all the different types of Christianity: "More than modern science, it is modern liberal values and a turn to subjective experience which have challenged and divided Christians" (p. 90). She also suggests that Liberal Christianity will have to come to terms with its own failed promise. At it origins, Liberal Christianity saw itself as part of the onward march of modern history which would sweep aside tyranny and "superstition, and replace them with more liberal political arrangements and more rational faith" (p. 97f). 'History', however, has pursued different paths and Liberal Christianity is largely being bypassed:  "Right up to the 1970s it seemed reasonable to think that Liberal Christianity would continue to dominate the Christian, especially Protestant world.... Despite the considerable success...by the end of the 20th century it was clear that confidence in its inevitable triumph had been misplaced" (p.98f). (This observation certainly warrants reflection within the UCA and other mainline protestant churches which have been deeply shaped by the traditions of liberal theology, but that's a task beyond this present post.)

As I noted above, although the book is written for the theologically uncommitted, I think that the theologically committed would find it well worth reading precisely to get a taste of how Christianity is presented when there is no grinding of the theological axes which (inevitably and often quite properly) preoccupy the churches. In that way the book could be a helpful change of pace for church discussion groups which might otherwise draw on typically internal resources to spark their discussions. In short: this book could serve such groups very well and help them get even just a hint of what Christianity looks like from the outside - across both time and place. I can't help but think that that would be a good thing.

(This series of 'books worth reading' engages an eclectic selection of books: some directly related to my teaching, some to the UCA, and some of more general theological interest. They are not offered as technical book reviews, but as summaries which highlight why I think they might be useful resources, good conversation starters, or volumes that make helpful contributions to scholarly debate.)