andygoodliff

Renewing a Modern Denomination Now Available

The book version of my PhD is now available. Thanks to the team at Wipf & Stock for the work they've done in the publication process. Thanks also to Michael Haykin and Ron Paul for accepting it to be part of the Monographs in Baptist History series. Thanks to Steve Holmes, my supervisor, for writing the Foreword.

My one line summary is 'its a look at what Baptists got upto in the 1990s.'

This book is an exploration of the renewal of the Baptist Union of Great Britain in the 1990s, the only historic UK denomination which grew in this period. It was an exciting time, with plenty of denominational activity and engagement, both theological and institutional. The book tells this story focusing on the particular individuals involved and the wide-ranging discussions centered around mission and identity, ministry, associating, and ecumenism. It argues that there were competing visions emerging from two different streams of thought which whilst not divisive caused tension. At the end of the decade structural changes were introduced with hope for the new millennium, but the book contends that opportunities were missed for a more deeply theological renewal.  

“Baptists have been less affected by declining numbers than other British Free Churches. Goodliff’s analysis of the two main recipes for denominational renewal advocated in the 1990s helps to explain why. Commitment to mission and charismatic renewal on the one hand, and deep ecclesiological reflection on a covenantal basis for Christian unity on the other, offered contrasting solutions, but both played their part in rejuvenating a historic Free Church tradition for the twenty-first century.”
—Brian Stanley, University of Edinburgh

“It may be too soon to assess the effectiveness or otherwise of recent structural changes within the Baptist Union of Great Britain that Dr. Goodliff so carefully describes and analyzes here: though thus far they have had little visible impact on a steady decline in membership and the demise of a distinctive sense of identity. What is here presented is the regrettable phenomenon of two groupings talking past rather than engaging critically with each other.”
—John E. Colwell, Spurgeon’s College, London

“This is a welcome study of Baptist life in a period of significant change at the end of the twentieth century. Goodliff’s work is marked by careful analysis and offers important insights. It will be of great benefit to all involved in Baptist life who want to understand and learn from this period. In addition, those engaged in wider pan-denominational reflection will find this account valuable.”
—Ian Randall, Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide

“Goodliff’s Renewing a Modern Denomination is not merely a chronicle of significant recent developments in the life of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, but an absorbing account of the often fraught and sometimes fruitful tension between missiological and theological renewal movements within the denomination. A careful work of historical and theological scholarship by a rising pastor-theologian who has already done much to advance the forms of ecclesial renewal explored in this book.”
—Steven R. Harmon, Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity

 

An Interrupted Christmas: A Sermon

I wonder when was the last time you were interrupted? It might have been someone cutting across you as you were speaking. It might have been a happening that interrupted the way you thought your day was going to go. It was almost definitely the way you thought your Christmas was going to go. The emergence of the virus has interrupted nearly the whole of this year.

The Christmas story is a story of interruptions. We begin with Mary. Mary’s busy at home, and is interrupted by an angel, to tell her that her life is going to be interrupted by God and a pregnancy. We turn to Joseph. He’s excited to be getting married, then everything gets interrupted by news that Mary is pregnant, but before he can end things, his dreams get interrupted by an angel again, telling him to hold fast to the marriage. Having barely got to grips with the pregnancy and the marriage, both Mary and Joseph lives get interrupted by Caesar and his census, and a journey they now have to make to Bethlehem. Once at Bethlehem, the baby is born, and then as they are dealing with these first few hours, they get interrupted by uninvited visitors in the shape of some shepherds — these shepherds have themselves been interrupted on their cold night by angels (again!) who have turned up to tell them the news of this birth. Some time later another interruption comes in the form of a visit of magi, whose lives had been interrupted by a star, and then by Herod. Following the visit of these eastern travellers, Mary and Joseph and the baby find their stay in Bethlehem comes to an abrupt end through the violent intentions of Herod, and they have to flee all the way to Egypt to kept the child safe.

God is one who likes to interrupt, to interrupt the world, to interrupt our lives, with his grace, with his unrelenting love. And at the same time the world — in the nativity story represented by Casear and Herod — like to make their own interruptions, interruptions of power and violence, interruptions of demand and dominance. In the middle of all of this are Mary and Joseph, and a baby. In the middle of this are you and me.

And this baby is the greatest interrupter of them all, not just because that is what the arrival of children does to adults lives (!), but in this baby is the arrival of God himself. God chooses to interrupt our time, our history, our humanity, out of a desire, a love, a commitment to be with us for ever. This baby is the definitive interruption and revelation of God ever to be seen.

And Mary and Joseph, and you and me, are confronted by the question of whether we welcome the interruption of this baby in our lives, to allow who we are to be re-directed, re-ordered, re-newed in ways that mirror the God-child. This interruption of Jesus can be sudden and dramatic, but it can also be slow, hidden, giving way to a surprise. Christmas says be ready to have your lives interrupted, God is coming to unsettle the powers, to disturb our stories with the glory of heaven, with his wondrous mercy. This Christmas, the hardest perhaps we’ve ever had to face, will we be like Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and magi, and become part of Christ’s interrupting people? Announcing in word and song and action the justice and joy, the peace and presence, the love and life that is Jesus and the kingdom.

This Christmas as we continue to live within the interruption of this virus, with the interruption of growing poverty, on-going racism, and an inert response to the climate emergency, Jesus comes to us, the ever new hope for a world that turns every interruption whether from God or not, into an opportunity for truth and grace to be sown into the fabric of the world, and the beating of hearts. May our interrupted Christmas give way to the newness of God.

Glory to the God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.

Reading Jim McClendon 6 with Stanley Hauerwas

The latest McClendon Reading Group was on the final chapter of Ethics on Narrative Ethics. We were privileged to have Stanley Hauerwas join us to talk about McClendon's work and connections with his own work. The conversation look at the place of narrative, the differences between McClendon's and Robert Jenson's systematic theologies, the Baptist Vision and more.

We start next month with the second volume of McClendon's Systematic Theology on Doctrine.

 

A Prayer inspired by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

A prayer inspired by Rabbi Sacks on the news of his death:

God of Mercy and Peace
we pray
with the Persistence of Faith
for You to Heal a Fractured World.
Grow in us the grace that sees the Dignity of Difference.
Teach us that the Home we Build Together
should always embody the Politics of Hope,
should always be Celebrating Life,
and live for the Restoring of the Common Good.
In Your Holy Name
Amen.

Reading Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology 4 & 5

A small group continues to read Jim McClendon's Ethics (volume 1 of his Systematic Theology). 

Here's the videos for the last two sessions.

We will meet in November to reflect on the final chapter of Ethics and the book as a whole, before in December moving on to begin to read volume 2: Doctrine.

Reading Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology 3

The latest gathering of McClendon readers saw us engage with Part One of Ethics, which McClendon calls Embodied Witness, chapters on Body Ethics, Sarah and Jonathan Edwards and Eros: Towards an Ethic of Sexual Love.

A few folk we're saying this was the bit of Ethics they struggled with most, some skipping over, but it was interesting to read it nearly 35 years after it was first published. In the chapter on Body Ethics, McClendon turns to what he calls black religion as embodied ethics. In the first of narrative chapters he uses Sarah Edwards, wife of the theologian and pastor Jonathan as another example of an embodied love. And in chapter 5 on Eros, he explores a theology of eros against the backdrop of the myth of romantic love. There is a sense perhaps McClendon was pioneering some of where theology as a discipline has gone in the last thirty years and while there are questions to ask in terms of his presentation of black religion and female narrative, he was doing something that few others were doing at the time. 

Amy Chilton and Mike Broadway offer brief engagements with this part of the book and this is followed by comments and conversation.

 

We will continue to read and respond to McClendon and chapters 6-8 on 17th September.

Reading Jim McClendon's Systematic Theology 2

Here's the latest videos that picks up some discussion of chapter 2 of McClendon's volume on Ethics in his Systematic Theology. Curtis Freeman, Lina Toth and Julian Gotobed give some responses to the chapter in the first video. The second video picks up some wider discussion following smaller zoom breakout groups.

 

 

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.