A
brave new world for 21st-century Christians?
by John Kater
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Beyond Colonial Anglicanism
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Horizons of Mission |
At first glance, these two books stand apart by their differences. Horizons of Mission, written by a single author, a parish rector in Massachusetts, clearly addresses a North American audience. Beyond Colonial Anglicanism is edited by two scholars -- one a white male American priest, the other a Chinese female lay theologian. Its 15 authors, and the concerns they address, are global in perspective. Yet these books deserve to be reviewed -- and perhaps read -- together, since both offer significant resources for those who wonder about what it means to be committed Anglican Christians in the 21st century.
Beyond Colonial Anglicanism, which originated in a consultation on "Anglicanism in a Post-Colonial World" held at the Episcopal Divinity School in 1998, also bears the clear effects of the tendentious discussions of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, held a few months later. Essays in the first of the book's three sections examine the nature of contemporary Anglicanism in the light of its ever-increasing diversity as well as the obvious effects of its long alliance with colonialism and imperialism. Part two surveys some selected "Challenges of the Present World," including reconciliation after violence, the environmental crisis, debt relief, issues of human sexuality and urbanization. The third section, "Visions for the Future Church," contains six chapters rethinking some of the implications of an Anglicanism which is truly global and post-colonial.
As with any such undertaking, the quality of the essays varies widely, though there is not a single one from which I did not profit. Some are reminders of things we have already known for a long time, but need constantly to have called to our attention. In this category I would include the chapter on "Debt Relief" by John Hammock of Tufts University and Anuradha Harinarayan of Save-the-Children USA. Others, like the essay on "Global Urbanization" by Laurie Green, Bishop of Bradwell, England, while based on realities of which many of us are already aware, approach them from fresh perspectives.
The most exciting contributions of Beyond Colonial Anglicanism are those essays that open genuinely new paths toward the future of Anglicanism by bringing the tradition as it was received into creative dialogue with aspects of culture and religion to create a "new thing." In my opinion, the three essays that are the most noteworthy successes in this regard, and to which I will return again and again, are Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndugane's "Scripture: What Is At Issue in Anglicanism Today?", Jenny Plane Te Paa's "Leadership Formation for a New World: An Emergent Indigenous Anglican Theological College," and Bishop Simon Chiwanga's "Beyond the Monarch/Chief: Reconsidering Episcopacy in Africa."
Most, perhaps all, of the authors of this book are what some call "bridge people," able to move with varying degrees of freedom between the culture in which they were raised and others with which they are also familiar. Perhaps the future of post-colonial Anglicanism will depend heavily on the contributions of such "bridge people." In this respect, Beyond Colonial Anglicanism offers significant resources for moving beyond the disappointment, anger and, yes, racism revealed at the 1998 Lambeth Conference. Certainly as an Episcopalian born, raised and living and working in the U.S., I found its agenda and perspective a congenial one. But as someone who also lived for a number of years outside the U.S., I am aware of other voices, other realities that make up post-colonial Anglicanism that are not heard in this country.
Ian Douglas acknowledges that some of those voices are painful for American Episcopalians to hear, and indeed, many would not be willing to enter into conversation with those represented in this book. But I would like to hear Kenyan Esther Mombo's nuanced feminism and Ugandan Francis Mutatiina's work on African concepts of family in dialogue with the perspectives of First-World authors. I would like to hear African, Asian and Latin American critiques of the individualism that distorts our North American approach to Christian faith. And I would be most encouraged to hear Christians from the older churches rethinking their approach to matters of faith because of what they have learned from Anglicans in other parts of the world. That, I think, would be the surest sign that we are truly moving into a post-colonial Anglicanism, a vision that remains today more a promise and a challenge than a reality.
Titus Presler's book, Horizons of Mission, is just such an enterprise. It reflects the author's many years of living and working as a Christian in settings on the other side of the world from his current parish in Cambridge, Mass. It represents a vigorous attempt to define the nature of Christian mission and to suggest some guidelines for how it is done, with awareness of the diversity of Christian experience and in an atmosphere of mutual respect, both for other churches and other religious traditions. The book is haunted by the memories of mission badly conceived and badly done, both in the past and in the present, but Presler does not allow the worst to overshadow or negate the possibility of better.
Like some of the authors in Beyond Colonial Anglicanism, Presler considers that the church's mission is not an end in itself, but rather is meant to serve God's mission of bringing into being a new creation. Such a perspective shifts the thrust of his book from a narrow focus on "making people Christian" to the much wider, more ecumenical and global perspective of "respond[ing] to God's call to move beyond who we are and engage someone who is different from ourselves."
Presler argues that the heart of mission is witness to what we have known of God; for Christians, that means witnessing to what we have known of God in Christ. Respect, witness and invitation, not judgment or coercion, lie at the heart of mission as Presler understands it. In this regard, he cites the 1998 Lambeth Conference affirmation that "Christians want to make Christ known and give others the opportunity of following him."
Not everyone will be satisfied with Presler's approach to mission. But for those of us who wrestle with the meaning of mission in a multi-cultural world, who ask questions and seek a way forward, his honesty and experience and the wisdom he draws from it offer enormous resources.
John L. Kater is Professor of Ministry Development and Director of the Center for Anglican Learning and Life at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif.
