The benefits of smallness

(This is a thought I have offered in conversation to various friends, several of whom seem to have found it helpful and/or convincing. One day I might see if there is actually any evidence to support it, and write a proper paper. For now, it belongs here…) British evangelical institutions seem less ready to separate themselves from each other than their American counterparts, either through internal splits, or through the formation of factions separated by mutual condemnation. Several of my American friends have observed this, and questioned whether there might be a reason. I would love to say that our version of the tradition is more mature or irenic, or better understands the primary gospel demand to maintain the bond of peace, but I fear that none of this is true. Rather, we are just smaller. The point is a rather obvious organisational one: to take an example, my denomination, the Baptist Union of Scotland, can only just support one theological college (‘seminary’ in American terms). So the college needs to be hospitable to charismatic and non-charismatic spiritualities, to ‘conservative’ and ‘open’ evangelicals, and so on. Our leaders, who have generally come through the college, have lived, worshipped, and worked with a variety of people and a variety of traditions. If we were bigger, we might have two colleges, and the potential would be there for the colleges to define themselves against each other on this or that issue, and so denominational leaders might be able to view those on the other side of the divide as ‘the other,’ unknown, feared, and demonised. Of course, other evangelical traditions in Britain are bigger, but a more complex version of the same point holds: the movement as a whole is simply not big enough to permit significant separation, except in isolated and extreme cases. If we are to function beyond our own local fellowship, British evangelicals end up all working together at some level. It happens I find myself on one side of various current debates within British evangelicalism; it also happens that, in every case, there are leaders on the other side who I know well – some I studied with, some I have taught, some I have worked with on this or that committee or conference. Given the size of our movement, this is just inevitable. I suspect that it is because of this, and not because of any different – let alone ‘better’ – moral stance, that we find it easier to disagree without denouncing than our sisters and brothers across the Atlantic. If this happens to be right, does it make any difference? I think of an old friend of mine, someone whose wisdom I value and respect, who in a former role made it a part of his business to get young evangelical leaders together every so often. We needed an excuse, of course – a topic to discuss, or a speaker to listen to, but the real agenda was to build relationships, to make sure that, when they emerged into national leadership, these folk had once or twice eaten quiche together. It’s a long-term investment, but a work like this will, I believe, produce better, more gospel-shaped, disagreements in public ten or twenty years down the...

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‘the fuel for mission’s flame’?

I was on a website recently (no url, to protect the guilty…); in the corner was a counter, which purported to tell the visitor how many people had died and gone to hell since s/he arrived, with a brief homily underneath suggesting that active participation in evangelism would be an appropriate response. The crowning glory of this particular piece of crassness was the fact that whichever cheap/free html counter the website owner had borrowed counted to one decimal place. When I left, apparently, 153.7 people had been irretrievably damned during my visit. This came back to mind as I drove my daughters to school and nursery this morning. Matt Redman’s Facedown was in the car CD player, and I listened to the penultimate track: Let worship be the fuel for mission’s flame We’re going with a passion for your name We’re going for we care about your praise – Send us out. Let worship be the heart of mission’s aim To see the nations recognise your fame Till every tribe and tongue voices your praise – Send us out. What is the proper motivation for mission/evangelism? The website with which I began suggests concern for the lost; this (in less crass forms) has a noble history, not least in Evangelical spirituality: Frank Houghton’s ‘Facing a task unfinished’ for instance: Where other lords beside Thee Hold there unhindered sway Where forces that defied Thee Defy Thee still today With none to heed their crying For life and love and light Unnumbered souls are dying And pass into the night. Matt Redman’s song offers an alternative vision, where the motivation for missional engagement is not the fate of the lost but the glory of God. This is hardly less ‘conservative’ (if such labels worry you) – Jonathan Edwards would have agreed; so, I seem to recall, would John Piper. (In fact, probably a view of mission as serving God’s glory is the mark of the consistent Calvinist, and the other a more Arminian take.) Which is right? 2Cor 5:6-21 is interesting in this context. Just reading vv.10-11 might seem to offer support for a ‘evangelise them because they’re going to hell’ position, but the wider passage seems much more focused on the vision expressed in the Redman song: ‘we make it our aim to please him’ is the controlling thought. So what? Well, two things perhaps. If this is right, then one of the standard evangelical justifications for a traditional doctrine of hell, that it is important as a motivation for mission, is removed. Second, on this understanding our motivation for evangelism would be less about the results and more about faithfulness to a calling, which feels right to me. Love for God simply comes before love for neighbour,...

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‘Biblical’ family life

(I was preaching in our university chapel yesterday, where we didn’t make much of the celebration of Mothering Sunday, but the fact that it was that day prompted me to finish off this post, which I have had sitting around in draft since mid-January.) I read something today – it doesn’t matter what; it was a denominational statement from overseas, and so not very relevant – that made a fairly familiar gesture demanding support for ‘Biblical’ patterns of family life which, in this case, included support for the vocation of motherhood and a resistance to cultural pressures that encouraged mothers to go out to work, an encouragement not to limit numbers of children borne within the nuclear family, and a claim that, within the nuclear family, there was a proper leadership to be exercised by the husband and accepted by the wife. Now, any or all of these points may be good ethical advice (although allow me to express some serious doubts…). Any or all of them may even be demanded by the gospel (although allow me to express some profound disagreements…). But to describe them as ‘Biblical’ is clearly ridiculous, and probably sinister. Why ‘ridiculous’? Well, between them, they assume a normative situation of a nuclear family (i.e., a cohabiting unit of mother and father with their birth-children, and nobody else) which has easy access to safe and reliable contraception and which is economically productive only away from the home. A family living in this situation cannot possibly be living according to ‘Biblical’ patterns, simply because every facet of the situation highlighted in the previous sentence is a modern Western reality, unknown to the Bible (and indeed to much of history since, and to much of the world today). Why ‘sinister’? Well, the document I was reading was a contribution to a debate over church discipline; by invoking the rhetorical device of describing these unhappy and unpleasant ideas as ‘Biblical’ a move was being made to remove mission support and ecclesial legitimacy from honest and faithful people.  ‘Sinister’ does not seem too strong. Unfortunately, this rhetorical device is becoming common, and is in danger of gaining a spurious legitimacy on the basis of nothing but repetition. There have, it is true, been attempts to argue for it rather than simply assert it, but none has been remotely credible. The classic, still apparently taken seriously by some people, was a collection of essays entitled Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, a book so poor that when I first encountered a chapter of it as a pdf I concluded that it was a cleverly-constructed spoof – surely no-one could have published arguments that bad?! Unfortunately, much of the book has a veneer of plausibility, since a basic knowledge of Greek and Hebrew is necessary to spot the more glaring errors. In case any reader who lacks Biblical languages is minded to take it seriously, however, let me give one example of just how astonishingly poor, and misleading, the arguments in the book generally are. Considering Junia, ‘outstanding amongst the apostles’ in Rom 16:7: the editors  face the standard question: is Junia a woman, or is it ‘Junias’, an otherwise-unknown male name? Their answer goes like this (pp. 72-3 of my edition): ‘We did a complete search of all the Greek writings from Homer (b.c. ninth century?) into the fifth century a.d. [using the TLG] … The result of our computer search is this: Besides the one instance in Romans 16:7 there were three others [these are described]. So there is no way to be dogmatic about what the form of the name signifies. It could be feminine, or it could be masculine. Certainly no one should claim that Junia was a common woman’s name in the Greek speaking world, since there are only these three known examples….’ Presumably everyone has spotted the basic error here already, but just to spell it out: Junia was an inhabitant of Rome, not Athens. In Rome, they spoke Latin, not Greek. The evidence presented is about as interesting as saying that early modern Spanish literature contains very few men named Hans. More directly, no-one is claiming ‘that Junia was a common woman’s name in the Greek speaking world’; most of the recent commentators on Romans claim that it was a common Latin name, citing such standard sources as CIL, Solin, and Lampe, which show upwards of 250 uses, compared to no attestations at all for the masculine ‘Junias’. It is difficult to know what to make of this. The ignoring of standard, and widely published, evidence, and the presentation of spurious but perhaps convincing-sounding arguments instead, could convey an unfortunate...

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Curtis Freeman on prophetic women in C17th Baptist life

Curtis Freeman of Duke has a fascinating article in the latest Baptist Quarterly, entitled ‘Visionary Women among Early Baptists’ (BQ 43 (Jan 2010), pp.260-83). He reflects on the (well established, but not well known) history of women exercising public teaching ministries amongst the radical protestants under the Commonwealth, examining particular examples from Baptist life. The sociological context is significant, of course: Curtis notes in concluding ‘[r]evolutionary forces had destabilized the centres of power and dislodged the mechanisms of social control that long had kept women in their place [sic!]. The social space that opened up enabled women, not just to think for themselves, but to speak their minds.’ (279) We might add that toleration, which inevitably brought a rapid institutionalisation to the Baptist movements, led to a reassertion of  culturally-dominant models of gender roles within Baptist churches. Curtis also notes the broader themes within Baptist, and other congregationalist, ecclesiology that created a pressure towards a counter-cultural assertion of the full moral agency of women in the seventeenth century. If obedience to a husband’s (or father’s) command was not an acceptable response to a matter of church discipline – and it seems that generally it wasn’t – then an important blow against the intellectual assumptions that shored up patriarchy had already been struck. (Curtis quotes a delightful line from Knox’s History of Enthusiasm which I had not come across before: ‘the history of enthusiasm is largely a history of female emancipation, though it is not a reassuring one.’) I would add the context of expansion and missionary activity as a driver: generally, an openness to the ministry of women and expansion go hand-in-hand in evangelical (and broader radical protestant) history. No doubt in part this is sociologically explicable: revival disrupts social control mechanisms, and creates a particular focus on the achieving of certain results (so even John Wesley, accepting the preaching ministry of Sarah Mallett because it worked…). Dare I hope that it is also an example of the leavening work of the Spirit, calling the churches away from conformity to patriarchal cultures and forward to true holiness? The General Baptists seemed to be more open to a full preaching ministry from women, on Curtis’s telling; but it was the stories of the Particular Baptists that I found most interesting.  Curtis offers five brief biographies of women who, as prophetesses or through writings, exercised a significant teaching ministry: Sarah Wight; Anna Trapnel; Jane Turner; Katherine Sutton; and Anne Wentworth. By the time these accounts are done, we find that Henry Jessey, John Spilsbury, and Hanserd Knollys had all publicly supported the ministry of one or more of the women mentioned. These are central figures and national leaders – perhaps only Keach could claim to stand above them in influence. The ministry of women was not marginal to the movement, on this evidence. An excellent article, well worth reading. (BQ is not online, unfortunately – you’ll need to find a library that takes it.) (If you are online, and have access to EEBO, have a look at the exegesis on 1 Cor. 11 offered by the Quakers Mary Cole and Priscilla Cotton from prison towards the end of their pamphlet To the Priest and People of England; it is quite...

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The objectivity of theology

This post passed largely unremarked for some while, then Shiva added a comment suggesting that if the claim that theology was necessarily built on a discipline of prayer, and submissive to exegesis, it was ‘not very objective’. This struck me as interesting enough to warrant some reflection, not least because it captures something that is a persistent worry for most of us who study theology in a university, a worry that expresses itself in two distinct directions. On the one hand, we worry that, because of its nature, theology is not a ‘proper’ university subject – not adequately wissenschaftlich. On the other, we worry that we compromise something of the true nature of theology if we conform to broader standards of what it is to be academic that are present within the university. Somehow, the word ‘objective’ captures all this quite nicely. We all recognise the notion of ‘objectivity’ implied: the scholar checks his (the idea dates from a time when the scholar was almost certainly male) own particular views at the door, presenting to the students a carefully-reasoned and unbiased account of all the differing positions on this or that subject, with a dispassionate evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each. I have several problems with such an account, but even if it holds, I am not sure that theology that is based on prayer and submitted to exegesis falls foul of it. My problems first. The first – and for me, most telling, which says something about what I care about, no doubt – is that such presentations are almost inevitably boring. I have never met a good teacher who was not profoundly passionate and opinionated, deeply invested in what she was teaching. The best teachers start to make you entertain the possibility that Mozart or Milton or Maimonides matters because, from sentence one of the class, it is vibrantly clear that they are convinced of this. I know this in my own teaching. Three times now, in three different academic contexts, I have found myself having to teach a class on ‘Modern Christology’. Two times out of three I prepared assiduously (the third was at a time of fairly major personal crisis, and I relied on the fact of the earlier preparations). I know that each class was rather poor, and I know the reason. I think modern Christology is unbearably tedious. I offered the classes in each case a wealth of knowledge – I had an interpretation of Kant’s Religion… that I believe to be both original and convincing – but no excitement. Result? They were as bored as I was. Inevitably. The good classes, and the good lectures and seminars within those classes, come from shared excitement, a conviction that this or that is worth arguing about. And that has to start with the instructor. But, let us assume some bizarre parallel universe where good teaching and interested students are not relevant considerations for a university. Should we, in this world, expect university instructors to offer a dispassionate presentation of all views with a fair consideration of the evidence for each? No. Let me, for once in my life, invoke Kant: I cannot be required to do that which is impossible to me. This old notion of ‘objectivity’ presupposed the existence of some hypothetical neutral stance, from which a privileged account of the actual value of all possible evidence may be offered. It does not, however, exist – for each of us, the evaluation of evidence and arguments is profoundly, if not entirely, determined by our own convictions and experiences. So in my own teaching I routinely disclose to my students my own convictions and assumptions, inviting them to challenge them, and assuring them that there will be no bias whatsoever in the assessment of their work (my observation is that, if anything, I routinely err on the side of generosity to those I disagree with in summative assessment, but I aim to err on no side, but to apply the written criteria scrupulously). I invite the students, armed with the necessary knowledge, to spot and discount the inevitable biases and blindspots that my own location introduces into my teaching, and rest content that, as a member of a diverse and passionate faculty, they will be exposed to other positions elsewhere. Third, and this is probably a result of the first two points, I observe that this criterion of ‘objectivity’ is not applied in university life generally. I was speaking to someone before Christmas who commented, reflecting on teaching in a university system overseas, ‘why shouldn’t I preach my lectures? The feminist literary critics and the marxist historians...

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