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Book Review: Like the Wideness of the Sea: Women Bishops and the Church of England by Maggi Dawn (DLT, 2013)

Maggi Dawn, Like the Wideness of the Sea: Women Bishops and the Church of England (DLT, 2013), 78pp.

It seems a long time ago, but actually only 3 and a bit months, since the General Synod of Church of England failed to vote in favour for women bishops. In that short space of time Maggi Dawn has written this response. It's short, readable, personal and powerful. I'm not a member of the Church of England, but the book deserves and demands a wider readership than those who are.

The first chapter makes the point that it is theologically a nonsense to affirm women as priests but to deny their possible recognition as Bishops. She offers a way forward in terms of a 'process of reception', a period of saying 'let's try this, with the open possibility that we may be wrong and so with space to reverse decision'. While I think this is a helpful way forward, a counter argument here might be that, it would be very hard to stop ordaining women as priests and bishops, once you had started ... in fact, it would be extremely damaging to in terms of the church's public image. She also suggests that there must be a way of accommodating the diversity of view in the church, although recognising that currently it is those against women in ministry who are protected, and not women ministers themselves, who, has the third chapter demonstrates, have experienced and suffered all too often appalling rudeness and more. 

The second chapter explores a spirituality of waiting, which can sometimes be a failure to overcome injustice and miss the fact that God is waiting for us. In short let's put waiting in its right place (Maggi has elsewhere talked about the importance of a waiting spirituality) and not use it as an excuse to defend a slowness that defies belief. 

The third chapter is the most raw and difficult to read. It is a story not heard enough.  Anyone who has had the privileged of being taught, led, or cared for by Maggi Dawn, must surely find it incredible to hear the abuse suffered. It makes me angry that this can be excused and overlooked. Her story is also, I'm sure, not unique. The Church of England is poorer for her absence. The Church of England is also the poorer for its failure to see women fulfil the role of bishop, its a denial of their gifts and vocation.

The book is best seen as a cry - a reasoned, powerful and passionate cry - that the Church of England decided for or against women in ministry. The current position being incoherent and damaging to all women priests. It is a cry that wants to continue to allow space for those who for reasons of conscience are unable to affirm women priests, but at the same time, see a culture change which enables women to flourish in a positive atmosphere, where their ministry is not continually being questioned or disparaged. 

Hopefully the Church of England has ears to hear, and other parts of the church, like the Baptists to whom I belong, recognise that many women ministers find themselves in a similar positions.

A final point is to say that Maggi Dawn is an excellent writer and theologian and here's hoping that it won't be too long before the next book.

 

 

Wisdom, Science and the Scriptures: Essays in Honour of Ernest Lucas

The last few years have witnessed a number of books to mark the contribution of Baptist scholars to the church and academy - see the collections in honour of John H Y Briggs, Nigel Wright, Brian Haymes, John Weaver - and it is good to see this trend continuing with this new book of essays recognising the contribution of Ernest Lucas. Ernest Lucas retired earlier this year from his position as Tutor in Biblical Studies at Bristol Baptist College. A position he has held since 1994 and so is responsible for the biblical education and formation of a whole generation of Bristol Baptist College ministerial students.

This collection of essays acknowledges the diverse areas of interest that Ernest has from the Old Testament and especially the wisdom literature, to the relationship between science and faith, to the enterprise of biblical studies, and also cricket!

Contributers are largely those associated with Bristol Baptist College (Steve Finamore, Brian Haymes, Simon Woodman, Mike Pears, Rob Ellis) and also from Trinity College (the Bristol Anglican college in partnership) - Gordon Wenham, John Bimson, Knut Heim. Alongside this are chapters by Paul Fiddes, Elaine Storkey and Robert White (Professor of Geophysics at Cambridge).

The chapters are stimulating and diverse, some providing exegetical studies of the Psalms, Job and Proverbs, others exploring the area of the environment  in relation to poverty, and to discipleship. Paul Fiddes brings the biblical wisdom tradition into conversation with healthcare. Brian Haymes asks the wonderful question 'Does Ernest Lucas know what he is talking about?' in a study of knowledge and belief.

The added gem to this collection are a series of prayers by Sian Murray-Williams - a prayer follows each chapter, picking up the theme and shaping it into prayer. These are honest, funny, challenging and a demonstration of how to bring the whole of life - and in particular the academic endeavour - to God.

The book is a worthy testimony to Ernest Lucas, who whilst retired from teaching, we hope hasn't retired from writing and research. At £15 the book is well worth reading. Copies can be obtained through contacting Bristol Baptist College or here.

Faith in Suburbia and the need for a Primitive Piety

Ian Stackhouse's new book Primitive Piety explores whether a passionate Christianity can be resdiscovered in middle-class suburbia. He argues that Christianity has, in many places, largely become too nice, it flattens out into a middle-class conformity that seems far removed from the early church, far removed from the reality of life. In what could be seen as the usual suspects, Stackhouse says we need to recover the centrality of the cross and the holiness of God, we need worship that has mystery and terror and we need more honest prayer - prayer that doesn't fall into politeness. Beyond this we need faith that has some emotion in the face of middle-class suburban piety (spirituality) that often feels to remove all emotion. So Stackhouse explores faith that gets angry, faith that embraces and befriends our desires, faith that is enjoyed and knows how to laugh. The final three chapters engage with the life of the church. A primitive, passionate Christianity must learn to love the church and the place and community where it is found, in all its messiness and idiosyncrasies and overcome the search for the ideal and perfect church. This primitive Christianity requires a leadership that goes beyond the tendency towards professionalism and manageralism, that goes beyond attending conferences and formulas, for a leadership that loves people, that puts pastoral care up front and centre. Thirdly this primitive Christianity must rediscover hospitality.

Stackhouse can write a good sentence and can also find a good sentence, the majority belonging in this book to P. T. Forsyth. You could see the book as an update on Forsyth's argument for gritty, passionate faith. Stackhouse is searching for the possiblity of being Christian, being church, in culture that makes 'niceness' a virtue. Reading the book, left me wondering whether living in suburbia, being middle-class is one of the biggest obstacles to following Jesus. Despite early good intentions, we get sucked into a life that leaves Jesus seperate from most of life. We're doing a series on Christian ethics at the moment in the church where I am minister, and the biggest challenge in our conversations is to remember Jesus, to remember to ask what difference does following Jesus make in thinking through, exploring responses to whatever issue is before us. It seems the same with how we engage with issues of food and eating, shopping and working, banking and travelling. 'Nice' Christianity is not interested in any of this, it seeks rather what one sociologist has coined a 'moralistic therapeutic deism' - a god who loves me and meets my needs and to whom I try and be good. The temptation or unconscious action is we leave Jesus behind, Jesus does not seem relevant to most of life.   

Stackhouse's book has definitely prodded me again to not settle for a polite, moderate, safe, pleasant Christianity - it seems we must question whether this kind of Christianity is in fact Christianity - and pulled me to look for and embrace a Christianity that is more honest, messy, scary, mysterious and passionate.

Book Review: Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating by Norman Wirzba

Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (Cambridge, 2011), 244pp

This is a delightful book, wonderfully written, with much to ponder. How often do we stop and think about food? Its such a part of everyday life that perhaps we've never wonder what faith, theology and God have to do with food. Norman Wirzba helpfully leads us in seven chapters to explore food and eating from a Christian perspective. He is not the first, there have been a number of recent books, which have begun to explore food biblically and historically (in terms of the Christian tradition). Wirzba is a professor at Duke University and has written on ecology and keeping sabbath.

The book engages with contemporary food politics - issues of food production, food security and food scarcity - in the context of exile, sacrifice, eucharist and saying grace. The subtitle is a 'theology of eating' and this is a work of serious theology, engaging with the tradition. The index reveals an engagement with a theology of creation, death, the Trinity, eucharist, sacrifice and resrurrection. Wirzba explores the language of 'communion - literally 'one who shares bread' in the context of eating together, but helping us see that eating together brings us in relationship with the earth and ultimately with God - 'eating is a spiritual exercise'.

Chapters on gardens and gardening and saying grace are full of food for thought, theological depth and practical wisdom. In other chapters are conversations around eating disorders, vegetarianism, and feasting and fasting, amongst others.

This book will leave you looking at food and eating in new ways and hopefully encourage us to new habits and practices that recognise in renewed ways that food is gift from God and eating, when our table manners are learned from participating in the eucharist, is a taste of heaven.   

Book Review: A Faith Not Worth Fighting For edited by Tripp York and Justin Bronson Barringer (Cascade, 2012)

Tripp York and Justin Bronson Barringer (eds.), A Faith Not Worth Fighting For: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Nonviolence (Cascade, 2012), 243pp

You say you believe in Christian nonviolence and almost immediately will be the response but what in x or y situation, surely you would be willing to use violent force? Or, what when the bible says or Jesus says? This book A Faith Not Worth Fighting For aims to answer exactly those kind of questions, to demonstrate that nonviolence is not only an option, but is the option for those who claim to follow Jesus. The book seeks to argue that Christian nonviolence is not impractical or non-biblical.

This collection of essays is the first book in a new series called Peaceable Kingdom, which 'seeks to challenge the pervasive violence assumed necessary in relations to humans, non-humans and the larger environment'.

With a foreword from Stanley Hauerwas, the premenient Christian pacficist theologian, this book brings together a line-up of leading thinkers including Sam Wells, D. Stephen Long, Gregory Boyd, Gerald Schlabach, Robert Brimlow and Amy Laura Hall, amongst others. Hauerwas welcomes the book, as you would expect, and sees it as a 'new stage in the conversation' about Christian nonviolence.

The editors suggest this is an 'easy-to-read' book. I think that might be a little generous in both ways we might interepret this phrase. The book is in many ways a demanding read - the arguments made are theological, philosophical and biblical, that is, there is an academic rigour to them, and the book is uncomfortable read in that challenges us to practice nonviolence in the face of responsibilities we feel we have towards family, nation, etc where they might be threatened. The chapters cover questions such as what about Hitler, what about if a loved one was being attacked, what about the police, what about violence in the Old Testament, what about Jesus' action in the Temple, what about the presentation of Jesus in the book of Revelation.

The two chapters I was most interested in were, what about the protection of third-party innocents and what if someone were attacking a loved one? The latter surely being the most asked question and the former being the question that exercises me. The question of third-party innocents is addressed by D. Stephen Long. After a fairly biographical and descriptive part of the chapter, he attempts to answer the question. The answer being that yes we must be prepared to let our neighbours or other innocents die.  Long argues that this response cannot be immoral unless those who advocate just war acknowledge that their position is equally immoral as an in any war 'the innocent will be killed alongside the aggressor.' The just war theorist may respond that they do not intend the death of innocents, whilst the pacifist must. Long responds that is 'to attribute an intention to an action becuase of others' abuses.' Long argues that 

'In truth, we live in a sinful, fallen world, where we cannot secure our existence, or that of our friends and families, against all potential aggressors. To live if we can is simply to deny the reality of sin. To live as if we must is simply to deny the resurrection.'

How is this not unjust? How is this not quietism against abuse? Long claims that 'christological pacifism' can only be taken seriously when we work to 'provide ways for securing the lifeof our neighbors by other means than violence.' While I agree with Long, and with the likes of Hauerwas and others, it seems to me that there does need to be a stronger answer to how we might respond to violent oppression and injustice, especially as we see it in other nations, like Zimbabwe or Syria. One response that Shane Claiborne and others will make is the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams. I want to ask what else? 

The other chapter on what do I when a loved one is being attacked is written by Amy Laura Hall and Kara Slade. Hall and Slade appraoch this question by questioning the question itself - who is you, who is the loved one, who is the attacker, and what sort of attack is implied? The 'you' they suggest asks whether they you physically could do anything if the 'someone' attacking was bigger, stronger - Hall suggests the 'you' can only evoke laughter in reference to her. They then recognise that 'you' is here is generally asked in reference to a man in defending his family. What would a man 'do' they suggests is bound up with 'assumptions about masculinity' and that to do nothing is to be seen as less than a man. They also, following Yoder, push against the view that the question only has two outcomes - tradegy or successful attempt killing. when it comes to the 'someone' attacking, they suggest that this someone is implied as different - and they suggest behind this is a question of race. The sort of attack implied, Hall and Slade will come down to rape. What they are revealing is that it is culture that often determines the answer to this question and not the gospel. There is more going in this question of what you would do in this situation, which is worth uncovering and so what would become a natural response to resort to violence, becomes less straightforward. They end by noting there is no easy answer, and to keep persisting in that 'frustration' for an answer. Hall and Slade make plain that issues of gender lie behind this question. They make some insightful observations. It would I think be helpful to read some other response to this and the other question that Long explores above.

This is a good book, an important book, and hopefully, as Hauerwas suggests, will take forward the conversation regarding Christian nonviolence, and seeing many Christians recognise that nonviolence is the way of the gospel. 

The Day Is Yours: Slow Spirituality in a Fast-Moving World

Part of being a new minister means being encouraged to read. Next week I return to Regent's Park College for the day to reflect on my continuing development in ministry. For this we have had to read The Day Is Yours by Ian Stackhouse, who will be there to talk with us about the book and its implications.

I've had the book for a while, gave it a quick skim read on purchase, but then has been on shelf ever since. Read it today (well most of it!). This is a good little book, which brought a fresh challenge to embed more fixed rhythms of prayer and rest into my life. My first two responses were to encourage the small support group I am part to read it, so we might help one another live it, and to earmark it as a book to encourage the church which I belong to read, so we might help one another live it.

Stackhouse argues that in a world which moves too fast, where we in thrall to our email inbox, our twitter and facebook accounts, the ringing of our mobile phone, we try and manage our time without success. We try and fit everything in as if it was possible. Stackhouse argues we need to slow down, take proper sabbath rest, live in the present, and to give prayer its proper place at the beginning and ending of our day. As Dave Hansen writes in the foreword this is a very ordinary spirituality, or to use a phrase from Luke Bretherton, a 'mundane spirituality', but a necessary one, says Stackhouse, if we are stand apart from the consumer mentality that pervades our whole culture and give thanks for our daily bread. Stackhouse argues (I thnk rightly) for the importance of gathered Sunday worship - its the Lord's Day - and is critical of those voices that suggest this is just a 'christendom' thing that we can do without. This is not about campaigning to keep sunday special, but to recognise that this is a practice from the early church, is a central means of formation and is a witness to the wider world of the Christian claim 'Jesus is Lord'. In many churches the shape and content of gathered worship needs renewing, but its place is (I think) beyond question.

This a good little book. Read it. Live it.

Multi-Voiced Church

Multi-Voiced Church is a new book by Stuart and Sian Murray Williams. It is a very good book, a very helpful book, a very accesible book and as such deserves a wide readership. Written in a similar format to Stuart Murray William's Post Christendom and Church After Christendom, it says what it is - here a multi-voiced church; why and how it was lost; and how it can be recovered, in lots of different practical ways. The basic argument is that the early church was a multi-voiced community - an active congregation - which during Christendom became increasingly mono-voiced - pastor/priest dominated and so a passive congregation - and therefore we need to re-balance church life again to be more multi-voiced in worship and preaching, discipleship and in decision-making.

I do think re-balance is the right word, as I would argue still for the importance and necessity of ordained ministry in the church, but not to the extent that this excludes the ministry of the church as a whole.

Stuart and Sian say the book emerged in part out of the work of Eleanor and Alan Kreider (see their Worship and Mission After Christendom, especially chapters six and seven), but also the conversations within the Anabaptist network and amongst the ministerial students Sian has taught at Bristol. It is thus a multi-voiced book!

The practical chapters, that follow the historical introduction, are packed full of ideas and suggestions for encouraging and enabling the church's worship, learning, community discipleship and decision-making to be more multi-voiced, and more Baptist (for those of us in that tradition).

I've asked the deacons in the church where I serve to read it over the summer and I'm looking forward to some positive discussions in the autumn and hopefully the beginnings of a more multi-voiced church.

Get a copy, read it, share it with your church. You will not be disappointed.

Book Review: Baptist Theology

Stephen R. Holmes, Baptist Theology (T & T Clark, 2012), 179pp

You wait for one Steve Holmes book, and then two come along. Earlier this year, Holmes published a historical study of the doctrine of the Trinity, this new book is a study of Baptist theology, in the T & T Clark Doing Theology series.

Holmes is well placed to write on Baptist theology, having studied at Spurgeon's College and been involved in a number of different Baptist conversations both internally in England and Wales and latterly in Scotland and also ecumenically with the Church of England. Holmes has also contributed to Baptist theology with particular essays on tradition, missiology, ordination, baptism, the Bible, Christology, the church meeting and ecclesiology.

In a fairly brief study of seven chapters, Holmes surveys the story of Baptist life and theology, Baptist contributions to Christian doctrine (what he calls here 'ecumenical theology'), and Baptist understandings of eccleisology, of liberty, and of mission. The first chapter tells the story of Baptist beginnings and this is one of the best introductions I've read in a while - in terms of length and readability - that is, it tells a fairly complex story with clarity and brevity. The second chapter tells the story of Baptists beginnings in North America, this is arguably even more complex, but as someone who always found it difficult to grasp all the different expressions of Baptist life in America, Holmes makes sense of the developments, drawing attention to key players and key theological choices. The third chapter picks up the story again in the UK and also now in Europe and the rest of the world. Here Holmes again gives a helpful description of how Baptist theology developed in the UK and Europe, although struggles with regard to the rest of the world (aside from Australia), which Holmes says is due in large part to the current lack of published work.

In chapter four Holmes makes the argument that there is not much that is distinctive about Baptist understandings of most Christian doctrine - Baptists agreed with thirty-five of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England. Baptist theologies of God, the work and person of Christ, of creation and eschatology and of revelation and theological method find themselves mirroring and sometimes contributing to basic content of a broad Protestant theology. Where Baptist theology is distinctive is the subject of the next two chapters on eccleisology and liberty. In the ecclesiology chapter the Baptist emphasis on believer's baptism, the local church, congregational government, interdependence and leadership are all explored here. In the final section on leadership Holmes makes a Baptist argument for the ministry of women on the basis of our practice of communal discernment in, and the authority of, the church meeting, to which we only ask that Baptists of another view take heed. The chapter of liberty introduces the reader to the important characters of Thomas Helwys, Roger Williams, Isaac Backus and their arguments for religious liberty and freedom of conscience. This is followed by a discussion of the work of the influential North American Baptist, E. Y. Mullins at the turn of the 20th century who argued for what he called 'soul competency' (the competency of each individual to relate to God), which ultimately Holmes finds unhelpful (democracy becomes an idol) and misleading (for it is only Christ makes a human competent). 

The final chapter sees Holmes focus on mission and holiness, which includes a section of the place of the child in Baptist thought. Holmes identifies the problems for Baptists not practicing infant baptism, and that as a result, the Baptist approach to children is evangelistic rather than catechetical. In an argument in a short forthcoming book on the child in Baptist thought, I have made the argument, that at the very least, the child who is attached to the church, who grows up in the church, is more akin to a member of the catechumenate, than an object of church's mission, wanting to emphasise that an ecclesial relationship is established in infant presentation. The section on holiness, which explores the Baptist language of 'walking together and watching over', is very good, and deserves to be read by every member of a Baptist church in what membership means.

In the introduction and conclusion Holmes argues that Baptist theology has two central foci: the individual believer and the local church. There is an 'intense individualism' in Baptist theology and practice, to which this reader finds more concerning than Holmes. I suspect that is because I remain closer theologically on this point to Gunton and Zizioulas, than Holmes now does. I am not qualified enough to judge this on the basis of the history of theology, but it does appear to me that to emphasise the individual in our highly individualistic culture is unhelpful and so the theology of the person found in Gunton and Zizioulas makes an important contribution today, but this may reflect that my Baptist-ness is tempered by a greater concern for catholicity. This is not to suggest that Holmes gives in to the culture of the day, because the second central foci, the local church, ensures that any individualism is balanced by the importance of the local church.  

This is an excellent book. Holmes writes with a broad audience in mind and many parts of the book give an important account of Baptist thought, both for the Baptist Christian and for ecumenical friends, who find Baptists a somewhat strange bunch. I have said elsewhere that Baptist theology is currently flourishing - now we just need to get Baptist churches to take some time to be nourished and challenged by it! The book will surely feature on all Baptist college reading lists, to be read alongside Fiddes' Tracks and Traces and Wright's Free Church, Free State.

Book Review: Tradition and the Baptist Academy

Roger A. Ward and Philip E. Thompson (eds.), Tradition and the Baptist Academy (Paternoster, 2011), xviii + 225pp (with thanks to Paternoster for a review copy)

This is the thirty-first volume in the excellent Studies in Baptist History and Thought Series. This important Baptist series is still alive. This latest volume is a set of essays arising from the 2006 conference of Young Scholars in the Baptist Academy, which is based in the United States and where the scholars who participate do not always seem that young! As its title suggests, the topic of the book is that thorny question (for Baptists anyway) of the role and place of tradition - Philip Thompson comments that 'Baptists have made 'a tradition of rejecting tradition (p.58)! The popular Baptist claim to sola scriptura means historically Baptists have appeared either to have been not that sure about tradition or not that bothered. Mark Medley makes the comment in a footnote that from a study of leading American Baptist theologians, past and present, only two - Grenz and McClendon - 'offer constructive theological reflection on tradition' (p.67n.3). He also makes the comment in a previous essay that his theological education spent as little as five minutes on tradition! (p.48n.7) Here it would be interesting to do a comparison with the British and European experience, which I would contend has not been as suspicious or as indifferent to the place and role of tradition (a recent example study would be Stephen Holmes' Listening to the Past, Paternoster, 2001). This set of essays is focused on offering an argument of why tradition is vital to Baptist churches and theology and the claim that Baptists are part of the historic catholic tradition - that while the early Baptists separated ecclesiologically, they did not, in large part, separate theologically. 

After a 'Preface' by Paul Fiddes, which sets the book partly in the contecxt of the recent BWA-Roman Catholic theological conversations (which we await with interest for the published report) and an 'Introduction' by the editors Ward and Thompson (which feels it could have done with some editing - it refers to a paper by Curtis Freeman, not included in the book), we are offered four good papers by leading North American Baptist theologians. Barry Harvey claims Baptists have 'been caught up in alien disciplinary regimes' that have failed to form us as 'citizens of God's pilgrim city in the way of the cross' (pp.8-9). The answer says Harvey is for Baptists to learn again that we are dissenting Catholics: 'fellow travellers with a host of sisters and brothers in a communal way of life' (p.20) and to escape what he calls the 'authorial void', that is, the stress on the individual and soul competency as made each person an authority unto themselves. He wants to encourage Baptists to see how much they have learn from the the catholic tradition and also what they have to offer other communions (p.27).

E. Glenn Hinson, a Baptist historian (and a former student at Regent's Park College) makes the same argument with Harvey that Baptists need to see themselves as part of a larger Christian tradition and have contribution to make. This is followed by exploring how this might happen in Baptist academies. I think a lot of this is directed at the Southern Baptists. From a UK perspective, there is no where near the suspicision of the wider church. We may not always like the way the Church of England sometimes throws its weight around, but there is denying that many Baptists feel a loss with Rowan Williams retiring at the end of the year.

Philip Thompson explores the relationship between memory and tradition and its impact on Baptist identity. (One conversation partner is Charles Pinches' A Gathering of Memories: Family, Nation and Church, which from this and Hauerwas mentioning it in his recent War and the American Difference, I've ordered). The chapter should be seen as building on his earlier work which explored the 'myth of changelessness' in Recycling the Past or Researching History? In this present chapter, Thompson distinguishes between two ways of considering history. While the first way might be characterised by the present controlling the past, where history becomes fictitious, sentimental - 'creates a world its writers wish for but doesn't exist' (p.61), the second way is more 'genuninely critical', its treats the past as strange and other at the same time as being part of our story (p.63). It is the latter he favours, following Rowan Williams, claim that this is 'good history' compared to the former which is 'bad history'.

The final paper of the four is by Mark Medley (a version can also be found in the journal Pro Ecclesia). After describing tradition as it has been understood by two Catholic theologians, Terrence Tilley and John Thiel, Medley makes his own contribution to the practice of tradition, by arguing for the foundational skills of stewardship, interrogation and invention, which are all required if engagement with, and living out of, the Christian tradition is to be done well. Stewardship is about tradtion being received with 'charity and cherishing its wisdom' (p.83), interrogation asks questions of the tradition and calls us 'to think again about the consensus of the tradition' (p.84) - Medley gives the example of interrogating the Baptist claim to soul competency and indepedence. The last skill, invention, perhaps appears incompatible with the practice of tradition, but Medley argues that if tradition is to be kept alive it must also engage invention - in constructive theology - of course the other skills are necessary here to correct unfaithful inventions. Medley pulls the three skills together around the idea of improvisation, borrowed from the work of Sam Wells.

The later essays explore transubstantiation, a theology of beauty, the Barmen declaration, the work of A. T. Robinson, the Regula Fidei and preaching and Baptist baptismal theology.

This is a strong collection of essays. There are some minor editoral niggles, which probably are the result of the book taking a long time from the original conference to publication. It certainly contributes to the wider renewed interest in tradition from Baptists (see the work of Holmes mentioned above, Steven Harmon, D. H. Williams and others) and provides a positive view of tradition not just as that which is handed down, but that which is alive, that which is inevitable (however we strong we disavow it) and that which when engaged with keeps faithful in the present and to the names Baptist', 'catholic' and 'Christian',

Book Review: Learning To Speak Christian | War and the American Difference

Stanley Hauerwas, Learning To Speak Christian (SCM, 2011 published in the United States as Working With Words, Cascade, 2011)

Stanley Hauerwas, War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity (Brazos, 2011 / SPCK, 2012)

At nearly 72, Stanley Hauerwas is still writing and writing a lot. There are thirty-three essays in these two latest books.

Hauerwas suggests Learning To Speak Christian is a 'kitchen sink' type book, meaning it is a collection of essays, sermons and other bits, rather than a sustained chapter by chapter argument developing (so in that regard like lots of his books!). Hauerwas sees the connections between the essays to be around seeing 'theology as work and work with words'. The book is divided into three sections Learning Christian: To See and To Speak; The Language of Love: From Death to Life; and Habits of Speech Exemplified: Some Teachers. As with every Hauerwas book there is much to enjoy and much to be challenged by. Two chapters stand out for me: the address 'Speaking Christian' is wonderful exploration of the task of ministry as teaching people to speak Christian. The chapter 'Why did Jesus have to die?' originated as a lecture to young people on the gospel and makes helpful (and challenging) reading for those engaged in youth ministry of some kind or another.

War and the American Difference is a book, which offers some of Hauerwas' most developed discussion of war and violence, especially in the context of America. The first section demonstrates how closely war is embedded in American history, experience and identity. The second section includes his appeal (co-written with Enda McDonagh) and reflections to abolish war, a discussion of sacrifice in the context of war, and essays on C. S. Lewis and Martin Luther King. The final section explores the role of the church in terms of justice (comparing Daniel Bell and Nicholas Wolterstoff), Pentecost as a language of peace (engaging with Jonathan Sacks and Herbert McCabe - I heard Hauerwas deliver this Amensty International 2008 lecture in Oxford - much easier to follow on paper than at the time!), the common good, the future of parish ministry (be interesting to offer some Baptist reflections on this) and mission (this paper includes a response to Nathan Kerr's criticisms of Hauerwas' ecclesiology).  

The book hangs together much better than Learning to Speak Christian, which makes it an easier and more satisfying read - like Hauerwas' collections of essays on The State of the University. He takes the reader on a journey around a common theme approaching it from different angles. I think this may well become one of Hauerwas' important books. Hauerwas certainly seems to be moving towards an ecclesiology more in engagement than in separation, that is, I wonder if he is now exploring more, as Yoder did, what it means for the church to be for the nations and not just against the nations (the title of his 1985 book). The oft-made claim of sectarianism just won't stick now (not that I think it ever really did).  Hauerwas' friends and students I think ground his work in the everyday life of being church (Sam Wells is the exemplar of this) in ways that answer the question of what does this look like.

I think everyone should read Hauerwas and both these new books give examples of why.