Christianity and culture
St Peter’s Nottingham - 9th Sunday after Trinity
Sunday 5th August 2007
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23
Being comfortable
A couple of Sundays ago, some of us, from all three churches, gathered after the service to continue the discussion started earlier in the year about our mission. It was, I think, a good and open discussion with a variety of viewpoints expressed about where exactly our priorities should lie. Some people were concerned that too much emphasis was being placed upon the creation of a particular sort of open and welcoming community, or communities, and not enough thought given to active outreach. Some thought that in our desire to be open and welcoming to all, we were actually creating barriers for some, because – occasionally it has to be said – there are quite a number of rough sleepers in and around the building, and this could be quite threatening for others. Others, it has to be said, were outraged by those comments.
There is a great desire on the part of any gathering of people to be comfortable. I remember well when I first arrived here seven years ago being told very firmly ‘There is a St Peter’s way, a St Peter’s tradition’. It was difficult to tie down exactly what this way was, but I suppose what I was being told was that there was an ethos, a culture, and that, because most people attending St Peter’s did so, having made a specific choice to do so, as opposed simply to attending their parish church, it was enormously important to revere that ethos. It was and is a good ethos. I would not have considered coming here had it not been the sort of place in which I believed I too would be comfortable. The question is, though, was it, is it THE right ethos? And is the St Peter’s Way a beautifully paved and permanent fixture, or is it a rough and ready pathway that opens up, unfolds as we continue on our pilgrimage as the People of God in this place? Is it our roadway, or is it God’s?
Now, I have no doubt that we could get into a long discussion about what exactly the so-called ‘St Peter’s Way’ consists of, and perhaps after the service we shall do that in our twos and threes. But that is not what I am particularly wanting to do this morning. The question is a more general one, and it is an important one in the context of the experience of the worldwide church at the moment.
‘What is Anglicanism?’ - A recent article by the Archbishop of Uganda
Recently, the Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Revd Henry Orombi has published an article which is of great significance, although I am not sure that it has been widely reported. Archbishop Orombi is one of the leading protagonists, alongside the Archbishop of Nigeria, for the strict traditionalist line on the issues of sexuality currently haunting the Anglican Communion. In this article he draws a sharp distinction, quoting the preface to the Book of Common Prayer in his defence, between matters of doctrine and matters of discipline. He says this:
For four hundred years Anglicanism represented both the theological convictions of the English Reformation and the culture of the Christian Church in Britain. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Anglican divines gave voice to both: English Reformation theology (doctrine) and British culture (discipline). The Anglican churches around the world, however, have ended the assumption that Anglican belief and practice must be clothed in historic British culture.
He then goes on to quote some examples of what he means. Traditional moderation and reserve, for instance, at the heart of the ethos of the worship of the Book of Common Prayer, and of Anglican worship generally down the centuries, does not fit with 21st Century African Anglicanism. So does that make the dancing in the aisles by everyone in the congregation of a recent bishop’s consecration service not properly Anglican? Of course not – and I trust we would all agree, even though we know how uncomfortable we feel when we are joined by people who do worship in a very different style from us. There was nothing worse, I can tell you, in all my travels around the Communion, than to turn up in a church in the middle of Africa – or indeed anywhere else for that matter - full to overflowing and bursting with liturgical energy, to be treated, as often happened, to Hymns Ancient and Modern (mostly Ancient) and an un repeatable version of the Hallelujah Chorus. The context was wrong. So Archbishop Orombi is raising an important principle – that we must become neither dogmatic nor imperialistic about what we would call our Anglican ethos.
So what is his solution to this problem - a problem which is not unique to Anglicanism, but which does present a particular set of questions to a Communion which claims both to be worldwide and to being contextualised in local cultures, and which claims no central core of doctrinal teaching apart from that contained in scripture and the Councils of the early church?
The end of British hegemony
It is as simple as it is problematic. Again I quote:
Uganda is second only to Nigeria as the largest Anglican province in the world, and most of our members are fiercely loyal to their global communion. But however we come to understand the current crisis in Anglicanism, this much is apparent: The younger churches of Anglican Christianity will shape what it means to be Anglican. The long season of British hegemony is over….So let us think about how the Word of God works in the worldwide Anglican Communion. We in the Church of Uganda are convinced that Scripture must be reasserted as the central authority in our communion. The basis of our commitment to Anglicanism is that it provides a wider forum for holding each other accountable to Scripture, which is the seed of faith and the foundation of the Church in Uganda.
So, in the Archbishop’s view, there are two parts to this renewal of the Anglican Way, firstly it will be shaped by the younger churches and secondly that the Bible must be reasserted as the central authority. This presupposes at least three things. Firstly, he assumes that scripture is no longer the central authority in the Communion. Secondly, that the younger churches will be far more effective at ensuring the reassertion of the Bible’s authority, and thirdly that the culture of the younger churches culture will be more authentically Anglican in the 21st century than the older churches - and for “older” read “western, liberal” and for “younger” read “those who agree with him”; and I’m sorry if that sounds unusually aggressive, but in the divisions in our communion at the moment, some younger churches are excluded or ignored by Nigeria and Uganda – Southern Africa, for instance, and Brazil and Papua New Guinea, and individual bishops and others who disagree with the majority view are expected to keep quiet and toe the line.
The Authority of Scripture(?)
Now, I could go on for a very long time about all three of those presuppositions, but I am not going to. There is a significant agenda there for us to debate, and as we approach the 2008 Lambeth Conference, assuming that anyone comes to it, it would be good for us to get engaged with it. During Lent next year, we shall have four significant visiting speakers to give Sunday evening addresses on the issues, and perhaps we could run groups during the weeks of Lent that grapple with what is being said to us. At this stage, I simply want to say this: It is well over a hundred years since questions began to be asked about the way we use the Bible. That, not sexuality, nor who is in communion with whom, nor even whether it is right for a Muslim to lead a prayer in a Christian church, is the fundamental question facing the Christian community today, and we still have not got to grips with it. Archbishop Orombi is proposing one particular way, which seems to imply going back to pre-critical times. It must be tackled or we will make no progress at all. Secondly, his assumption seems to be that the secondary, or disciplinary, tradition, or culture or ethos of Anglicanism which has been of a particular character historically – i.e. English – is per se wrong and needs to be replaced by a different sort of culture – i.e. African, and that this will then inevitably be scriptural – i.e. to divest ourselves of traditional Anglicanism will be to purify our Communion, a highly tendentious suggestion given the state of many parts of the African church.
But the issues the Archbishop raises are of fundamental importance, not just to the worldwide church but to us too as we plan for the future, and struggle together to build an effective strategy for mission. We have to be clear about the fundamentals of the faith to which we are inviting people; and we have to understand what is of secondary importance and to hang loose to that, recognizing the risk to our own comfort of doing that, but if the Gospel (whatever the Gospel is) is to blossom in Nottingham today, or in Britain or in Uganda today, we have to understand that some things will change.
Having the courage to go to a place we have never been before
Some of you will have heard of, perhaps even read, a book written nearly thirty years ago, called ‘Christianity Rediscovered’, by a Roman Catholic Missionary, Vincent Donovan. It tells of an attempt to evangelise amongst the Masai Tribe in East Africa, starting, as it were, from the very beginning and trying not to overlay the planting of the Gospel with a whole mass of cultural baggage from Rome or anywhere else. It is a fascinating, challenging story which is still on the reading list of most theological colleges and courses. In the preface to the second edition, Fr Donovan tells of the response of a young American student to the book, and how its line of thought might be used in America:
In working with young people in America, do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them to where you are, as beautiful as that place might seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have ever been before.
An unfolding path, looking ahead to the one who leads rather than looking backwards to the familiar and comfortable. A good but not very easy principle for mission. It has been uncomfortable since time immemorial, as the writer of Ecclesiastes clearly senses, and in the context of the claims and counter-claims of today’s church, a vision of unity to which we can only aspire.