andygoodliff

Reconciling Rites: Essays in Honour of Myra Blyth

Really pleased to announce the publication of Reconciling Rites, a set of essays honouring the contribution Myra Blyth has made to Baptist life and thought. Myra retires this summer as Chaplain and Tutorial Fellow in Theology and Ecumenical Studies at Regent's Park College, where she started in 2004, having previously been Deputy General Secretary of the Baptist Union and an Executive Director of the World Council of Churches.

We presented the book to her this evening, via Robert (her husband) over zoom following her last chapel service.

The book seeks to take an important theme in Myra's life and thought — reconciliation — and explore it both in terms of church worship (preaching, baptism eucharist, reading the Bible, prayer, liturgy) and life (spirituality, charity, friendship) and in the world of sport. Those contributing to the book are friends, colleagues and former students: Paul Fiddes, Rob Ellis, Paul Goodliff, Sian Murray-Williams, Helen Dare, Matthew Mills, Keith Clements, Deborah Rooke, Michael Taylor and my co-editors Beth Allison-Glenny and Anthony Clarke. The foreword is written by June Osborne, Bishop of Llandaff, Church in Wales.

Its available via Amazon.

 

Reading Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology 1

36 (from US, Canada, UK, Netherlands and Ukraine) joined the first session looking at Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology, starting with volume 1: Ethics and its first's chapter: 'How Theology Matters'. Some are season McClendon readers and some of us are reading him (properly) for the first time.

Responses were given by Andy Goodliff, Beth Newman and Curtis Freeman.

Some good conversation in the zoom chat, which spilled over into the conversation, around the importance of McClendon's listening tour of (American) Baptists institutions ahead of writing the first volume (which probably shaped his account of the Baptist vision); the reception history of McClendon in America, Europe and UK; the meaning of 'this is that' and 'then is now' (McClendon's claim for a baptistic hermeneutical principle) and a brief possible commonality between McClendon and Ephraim Radner on figural readings of scripture.

We will gathering on zoom again on 14 July to look at Ethics, chapter 2: 'What Sort of Ethics?' (The first two chapters are crucial to understanding McClendon's project) and then again on 19 August to look at Ethics, Part 1: Embodies Witness (ch.3-5).

For an invite contact me at andrew [dot] goodliff [at] regents [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk

 

Mentioned in the session:

James McClendon, Biography as Theology (Trinity)

James McClendon and James Smith, Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism (2nd Ed; Trinity)

James McClendon, The Collected Works of James McClendon (3. Vol) edited by Andrew Ryan Newson and Andrew Wright (Baylor)

Curtis Freeman, 'Introduction: A Theology for Radical Believers and Other Baptists', which can found at the beginning of in the Baylor 2012 editions of McClendon's Systematic Theology

Amy L. Chilton and Steven Harmon, Sources of Light: Resources for Baptist Churches Practicing Theology (Mercer)

Matthew Emerson et al, Baptists and the Christian Tradition: Toward an Evangelical Baptist Catholicity (B & H)

Sources of Light: Resources for Baptist Churches Practicing Theology

Sources of Light: Resources for Baptist Churches Practicing Theology edited by Amy L. Chilton and Steven R. Harmon (Mercer, 2020)

If Baptists do any theology, they tend to it a local level and see the Holy Spirit as illuminating what is needed to faithful be the church today. This is where Harmon and Chilton begin. I say 'if', because I am not altogether certain that Baptists in English congregations consciously do theology and tend to fall back to the question pragmatically of whatever works — this might include a theology but not one that perhaps bears much sustained reflection. (In the USA my sense there is a practice of what we might call adult Sunday School.) Sources of Light should be seen then as a call to more conscious theological engagement not just with the Bible, but with a plethora of wider sources/voices that take seriously listening to context and to history. It seeks to make more concrete an argument Harmon made in his earlier work Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future. It is an argument in a slightly different form that has been made by Stephen Holmes in his Listening to the Past.    

Chilton and Harmon as editors have put together a wide-ranging set of chapters that take account of contextual theology: liberation, black, hispanic, asian, feminist, womanist, LGBTQ, immigrant, disability, and more. This is a call to move beyond just engaging with a white middle class Western theology that dominates both academy and church, to a much more diverse set of voices that can speak into the context of our congregations and also broaden horizons of understanding and experience. The second half the book is more historical and argues that we see sources of light in ancient confessions, Reformation confessions, Baptists confessions, as well those of pre-reformation women, the Catholic magisterium, liturgies, saints and ecumenical documents, both multilateral and bilateral. The chapters are different in style, some are an introduction to a particular source, others seek to make a particular argument. There is perhaps a sense of being overwhelmed by 23 different sources (and there are others that might have been included), but it is a demonstration of just how wide-ranging the practice of theology has become. 

The book is an invitation to ministers/pastors and others with theological education to enable congregations, and perhaps also wider associations, unions and alliances to discover and receive all the sources of light God has given the church to enable it to be the church. This begins with ministers themselves engaging with perhaps a wider range of sources as they prepare sermons and offer teaching. It asks us how diverse are our mini-libraries. It also asks colleges and institutions preparing those for ministry what range of sources do students engage with. No longer can some of these sources be seen as optional, as one person tweeted last week: 'Black Church Studies and Black Liberation Theology should no longer be treated as electives in any theological curriculum anywhere. We need church leaders who are as fluent in James Cone as they are in St. Augustine.' And this is reflected in Mikael Broadway's chapter, arguably the most personal, in which he gives an account of his waking up to his whiteness. To comment on one other chapter, I might also highlight in particular Myles Werntz chapter 'Light for Navigating Moral Disagreement' which might be particularly helpful to Baptists as they continue to find a way through the differing responses to sexuality. He highlights three strands which focus on conversion, contemplation and the corporate.

Sources of Light is the kind of book to give to every minister as they embark on ministry, when they are given a Bible, they are also given a copy with the charge that they should always read the Bible with other sources that will help illuminate the Word. The book might be a reminder of all the sources they have listened to or not yet listened to. It might also be an interesting exercise if a copy of the book was given to every local Baptist church to see what interest it might generate, perhaps leading to the question, why did no one tell us that theology was this engaging? Our Baptist ecclesiology, local in emphasis, always has the temptation to listen to a small set of sources, Chilton and Harmon make the case for a more committed activity of listening, which might include listening more carefully to voices already present (but perhaps marginalised), but also to voices from the wider communion of saints. I hope Baptists receive the invitation.