Tag Archives: John S. Conway

Review of Dyron Daughrity, The Changing World of Christianity

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010

Review of Dyron Daughrity, The Changing World of Christianity (New York, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010), 290 pp. ISBN 978-14331-0452-7.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Dyron Daughrity teaches World Christianity at Pepperdine University in southern California. He rightly believes that such a course should now be taught from a global perspective and no longer with the earlier emphases on Europe or North America. Today there are far more Christians in Africa than in Western Europe or North America. The region of Latin America and the Caribbean is easily the most Christianized part of the world. These facts represent a changing of the guard. So this new text book reflects these new positions and stresses not only the geographical spread of Christianity, but also the fact that it is the most global, most diverse and perhaps the most influential religion in history. Such a comprehensive survey in the space of less than three hundred pages requires not only a skilful absorption of secondary sources, but also an ecumenical and eirenic disposition and an ability to adopt a judicious balance between the various components of such a study. It is good to say that Daughrity admirably displays these characteristics. While there is no complete bibliography, each chapter has extensive footnotes for the sources used, as well as questions appended for analysis which are designed to prompt further discussion. Despite some passages which call for greater precision and depth, Daughrity’s lucid style makes for easy undergraduate reading.

Daughrity’s approach is geographical, dividing the world into eight regions, but beginning with the historical evolution from the Middle East and ending in Oceania, suitably for the world’s largest faith. Following the lead of such current scholars as Lammin Sanneh and Philip Jenkins, Daughrity traces the shift in numbers from the northern hemisphere to the south, when he sees the tipping point as occurring around 1980. The reception of the Christian message as brought by earlier northern missionaries made all the difference, and demography will maintain the momentum. While he warns that religious growth is uncontrollable and unpredictable, he is clearly optimistic for the future of Christianity, especially in its more free-flowing Pentecostal forms.

His survey of each region begins with a general description of the political and social background, followed by a section on the background of Christianity in this area. He then moves to an examination of present-day Christianity, followed by a short piece on each country. This allows him to make interesting and sometimes provocative comparisons. For instance, he suggests that the present weakness of Christianity in the Middle East can be traced back to the divisions in Christian ranks at the time of the Muslim conquests. The solidarity of Islam and its tighter control over its adherents has prevented any Christian resurgence. By contrast, the defeat of Muslim forces in Spain in the late Middle Ages can be attributed to the solidarity – fanaticism? – shown by the Catholics of that region. He even suggests that, had Ferdinand and Isabella failed, then the whole exploration of the New World might well have been undertaken by Muslims.

In Eastern Europe, Daughrity of course welcomes the overthrow of Communist rule with its attendant persecution of the churches, but suggests that in Russia, the residue of the Soviet oppression of faith is like a cultural mist which does not evaporate instantaneously. In Hungary, however, the overthrow of Communist rule has revived freedom of religion and made that country a leading example of religious pluralism.

Turning to Western Europe, Daughrity explores the reasons why this region, which was Christianity’s heartland for so many centuries, is presently experiencing a period of increased scepticism and secularism. Europe for so long provided the leadership corps, widened the theological and scholarly horizons and mobilized the missionary forces which carried Christianity to all corners of the globe. But in recent decades a widespread disillusionment with “organized religion” has been notable. In part, the political changes of the last two centuries have almost everywhere broken the ties between Church and State which were increasingly seen as barriers to individual freedom, or to some at least a hindrance to spiritual growth. Furthermore the rapid changes in immigration and demographic patterns have led to a pluralisation of religious allegiances in Europe. Many people now fear that Islam may become the predominant religion in twenty-first century Europe. The “De-Christianization of Europe” is already being discussed. At the same time, the two major wars of the last century undoubtedly challenged all authority patterns. Dietrich Bonhoeffer provocatively argued in favour of a religionless Christianity, one where Christian social ethics would be practised without the burden of authority or doctrine. Daughrity supports the view taken by Grace Davie that Western Europeans are in a phase of “believing but not belonging”. When humanitarian movements strikingly follow Christianity’s prophetic voice, one could argue that, in this sense, Christianity is being reinvented.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, despite the brutal even genocidal manner of Christianity’s introduction five centuries ago, this region nevertheless now encompasses the heartland of Christianity. Paradoxically, this legacy imposed by the European conquerors is now vibrant and indigenized. But it still contains overtones of injustice, especially towards the original native peoples. Predominantly Catholic,Latin America nevertheless has seen an explosive growth of Protestantism, especially Pentecostalism. This community has the advantage of a much more flexible church polity and is free from the regrettable burden of Catholic history.

In his account of Christianity inNorth America, Daughrity lays stress on the darker side of the impact on native peoples and the long support for slavery. Nevertheless, its ethos is very different from that found inEurope. The absence of any politically dominant state church led to an amazing plurality of Christian endeavours, particularly in revivals, which have continued to the present. This resilient tradition, he hopes, will be enough to counter the corrupting influence of acquisitive capitalism.

The remarkable fact about Asiais that Christianity, as brought by European colonialists, has expanded rapidly now that the imperial era is finished. The successful indigenization of this originally Asian faith has seemingly been able to avoid the kind of syncretism which has weakened Christian witness elsewhere. Yet Asiais still riven by religious conflicts, especially in Muslim majority areas, and the future of Christianity remains problematic.

Africa is now second to Latin America in having the most Christians in a cultural block. Again, this growth has accelerated after decolonization. While Ethiopiacan boast of a continuous Christian adherence without European intervention since the early centuries, most of the continent’s Christians resulted from the nineteenth century missionaries’ activities, both Protestants and Catholics, of such well-known figures as David Livingstone. Today,Africa as a whole struggles to find political and social models of its own. The lack of success may perhaps be attributed to past colonialism, or to the effect of the slave trade, or to the indigenous poverty which hampers the kind of developments seen in Asia. Nevertheless, the faith thrives. Daughrity’s survey of the background of African Independent Churches is very helpful. His conclusion that Africa is suffused with religion seems well documented.

Finally there is Oceania, where a multiplicity of Christian influences has spread across the many archipelagos, making Christianity the most universally accepted and integrated cultural force. But this process is severely understudied, due to the marginalization of Christian missionary work by anthropologists who concentrated on tribal indigenous cultures. Daughrity pleads for a more balanced account of Christianity’s contribution to this fascinating and far-flung area.

One hundred years ago, Protestant missionaries were calling for the “evangelization of the world in this generation”. Daughrity claims that this goal has now been achieved in that every part of the globe has heard the call of Christ and the responses are still reverberating. Christianity, in its various and sometimes conflicting forms, affects virtually every country and society. Daughrity’s survey of the various factors involved in this world-wide process will be appreciated by students as a valuable guide for further and deeper investigation.

 

 

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Book Note: Victims of Nazism: Bonhoeffer and Jägerstätter

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 2, June 2010

Book Note: Victims of Nazism: Bonhoeffer and Jägerstätter

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Keith Clements, The SPCK Introduction to Bonhoeffer (London: SPCK, 2010), 106 pp. ISBN: 978-0-281-06086-3.

Jeffrey C. Pugh, Religionless Christianity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times (London and New York: T & T Clark International, 2008), 171 pp. ISBN: 0567032590.

Franz Jägerstätter, Letters and Writings from Prison, edited by Erna Putz, translated with commentary by Robert A. Krieg (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009), 252 pp. ISBN: 1570758263.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed on April 9th, 1945, less than a month before the Nazi regime was overthrown, for his involvement with the plot to assassinate Hitler. His tragic death, along with his provocative writings from prison, made him a significant figure in the post-1945 years, when he became Germany’s best-known theologian of recent times. The account of his life, written by his friend Eberhard Bethge, and more recently translated into English by Victoria Barnett, is probably one of the twentieth century’s outstanding biographies. But it is compendious. Hence the need for more concise introductions for newer audiences.

The English author, Keith Clements, and the American scholar, Jeffrey Pugh, have recently supplied us with the latest useful additions to this genre, following in the steps of the Australian John Moses, whose book The Reluctant Revolutionary was reviewed here last year (see Vol. XV, no. 7/8, July/August 2009). Clements, a leading figure inEurope’s ecumenical fraternity, is keen to stress the young Bonhoeffer’s early enthusiasm for the movement which eventually culminated in the World Council of Churches. In those early days, Bonhoeffer felt a strong attraction towards pacifism. His biographers have therefore had to explain why he later came to advocate the forcible overthrow of the Nazi totalitarian system and the murder of Hitler. Clements believes this was because he came to realize that his hopes for a universal Ecumenical Council proclaiming peace to the world was simply unrealistic. Pugh leaves the issue open but points to a change in orientation after 1935 with Bonhoeffer’s greater emphasis on the personal appropriation of faith through the Sermon on the Mount.

Similarly all his recent biographers have felt a need to include a chapter on Bonhoeffer and the Jews. Difficulties arise from the fact that Bonhoeffer’s most significant writing on this subject dates from early 1933, and contains a highly traditional Lutheran view of “reprobate” Judaism and the need for conversion. There are only minor utterances in later years and no references at all to Judaism in his Letters and Papers from Prison. But Moses asserts that Bonhoeffer, along with Karl Barth, led the way in repudiating Christian anti-Judaism and embraced Jews as Jews. On the other hand, Stephen Haynes (see review here Vol. XII, no. 9, September 2006) is sceptical of any claims making Bonhoeffer out to be a precursor of post-Holocaust Christian theology. Clements sits on the fence, but has to admit that such a novel stance can only be inferred, in the absence of any sustained treatment.

Clements seeks to avoid hagiography, but points out that both in his theology and in his participation in the anti-Nazi Resistance, Bonhoeffer transcended the cultural and political limitations of his generation. In his final chapter he describes how Bonhoeffer’s radical demands have continued to provoke churches and ecumenical communities to renounce their traditional attitudes. Bonhoeffer’s theology, he concludes, will continue to be relevant, because it deals so centrally with the nature of human existence.

Pugh equally deplores hagiography on the matter of Bonhoeffer’s legacy in more recent American political controversies. But he also draws parallels, and much of his book seeks to warn his countrymen of the dangers of capitulation to or complicity with the military and political goals of their governing structures of power. The German churches’ attitudes in the 1930s, he asserts, constituted one of Western Christianity’s greatest failures. Bonhoeffer’s prophetic witness and resistance are therefore still significant for us today.

Pugh’s chief emphasis is on Bonhoeffer’s more radical theological challenges as found in his prison letters from the last months of his life. His critique of the religious subculture of his day is one which Pugh seeks to correlate not only to today’s politically obedient churches but also to the current secular states and their ideologies of power. In a world come of age, he asks, where can the individual find guidelines for his own or his community’s behaviour? How can Christianity and Scripture be interpreted in a non-religious sense? We have, he suggests, to respond first to the sufferings created by those who so ruthlessly wield power in the world. The answer lies not in any theology of power, but in the theology of the cross, in “watching with Christ inGethsemane”.

For Pugh, identification with the suffering and oppressed peoples of the world justifies, both for Bonhoeffer and for us, the need to confront the powers of domination, after so many centuries when the church has so often allowed itself to be compromised. In a world come of age, Christians urgently need to find a new relationship to the power structures so often bent on destructive paths. This is the heart of Pugh’s message, and he sees Bonhoeffer as his mentor in this process. Religionless Christianity bars us from allegiance to any particular church structure or political order, but instead calls us to the discipline of peace and reconciliation so that we may witness to God’s reconciling and healing.

Franz Jägerstätter was executed on August 9, 1943 for refusing to serve in a combatant unit of the Nazi Wehrmacht. He was a largely self-taught peasant farmer, living in a small village on the western border ofAustria, and a very devout Catholic. Since Nazi Germany had no tolerance for conscientious objectors, his refusal to serve led to his imprisonment, transfer to Berlin, court-martial, and finally to the guillotine. But sixty years later, in 2007, his resolute witness was recognized by theVatican which approved his beatification in an impressive ceremony attended by his 94-year old widow and descendants. To mark this occasion, an edition of his surviving letters and writings was published, which has been skilfully edited and translated by Robert Krieg, and now made available to the English-speaking audience by the publishing arm of the Maryknoll Fathers inNew YorkState.

Krieg’s useful edition and commentary clearly owes a debt to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. By a remarkable coincidence, both men were held in Tegel prison inBerlin during several months from May to August 1943, though there is no record that they actually met.

Jägerstätter’s heroic resistance was first known to the wider world some forty-five years ago when an American pacifist professor, Gordon Zahn, discovered his story in the Austrian church archives, and published his seminal account In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964). Zahn’s book contained long extracts from the surviving letters and testimony. But the present work is more comprehensive, is chronologically arranged, and includes numerous letters to the prisoner from his wife. The picture however remains the same. So does the unresolved enigma of why this peasant farmer should have resolved to adopt this dedicated and costly stance. He was one of only a handful of Catholic conscientious objectors who suffered the same fate. He was not politically engaged, as was Bonhoeffer, nor does he seem to have had contacts with any anti-war or anti-Nazi groups. His was very much a lone decision. The suggestion remains unproven that he had been influenced by Jehovah’s Witnesses, of whom some two hundred were executed during these years for refusing to take up arms or join the army.

What comes through in his letters is his absolute confidence in his Catholic beliefs, strengthened by an intimate knowledge of the Bible. All the more notable is therefore his unwillingness to agree to any compromise, despite the earnest pleas not only of his family and friends, but also of his priest and bishop. His reflections on “What Every Christian Should Know” and his “Last Thoughts” are moving testimonies of faith, conveying both his passion and his pain, but also his stubborn determination not to take the military oath of obedience to his Führer because the call of Christ came first.

Zahn’s book appeared at the time of the Second Vatican Council where Jägerstätter’s intransigent and unwavering stand received much acclaim. The respectful acknowledgement of his sacrifice may have assisted in bringing about changes in Catholic attitudes towards the morality of war. Subsequent history has reinforced the recognition that Christians have a duty to resist evil even at the cost of their lives. And it is notable that the twentieth century has brought forth more Christian martyrs than ever before. Jägerstätter’s witness is therefore both a voice from the past and a call for similar obedience in the future.

 

 

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Review Article: The Death of Christian Britain Reconsidered

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Review Article: The Death of Christian Britain Reconsidered.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, Understanding secularisation 1800-2000, 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 2009. IBSN 13: 978-0-415-74134-3.

Jane Garnett et al., eds., Redefining Christian Britain: Post-1945 Perspectives. London: SCM Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-334-04092-7.

Keith Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. The Christian Church 1900-2000. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-826371-5.

Ten years ago, Callum Brown, who is Professor of Religious and Cultural History at Glasgow’s second university, Strathclyde, published his controversial book The Death of Christian Britain. It has now been republished in a second edition, with an additional chapter taking issue with some of Brown’s critics. This is not an ecclesiastical history. It has little to do with the churches as institutions or their theologies. Rather it is an impressionistic exposition about what Brown calls the Christian discourse amongst the British population in the period from 1800 to the present. He seeks to show that for the first 150 years, this discourse, particularly as seen in the writings and preaching of the evangelical sections of the various churches, provided an identity, a mental structure, and a moral code of behaviour for the majority of the population. This generally-held discourse, he believes, is what made Britain a Christian country. But this is no longer the case. “The culture of Christianity has gone in the Britain of the new millennium. Britain is showing the world how religion as it has known it can die.”

The impact of these challenging views was only made more strident by his claim that this ‘death’ could be precisely dated to the 1960s, i.e. had already happened, and by his assertion that the principal cause lay in the decision-making of young women. Their abandonment of the habits and thought-forms of their mothers and grandmothers, who had for so long sustained both the moral forms and the institutional life of the churches, was the key factor. In the remarkably short period of the 1960s all this was to be eroded. It was a sudden and drastic process which Brown described as the de-pietisation of femininity and the de-feminisation of piety.

These provocative assertions were part of his sub-title’s Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000. But secularisation is both a complex as well as an emotive term. There have been at least two rival and opposed assessments. On the one hand, almost all church-goers including the professional clergy and their supporters, have deplored the loss of faith, the decline in church attendance, the erosion of social and personal values, and the abandonment of the so-called Christian identity of the nation. These developments were often associated with the growth or urbanisation and modernisation so that the myth of ‘the unholy city’ with its dark satanic mills could be contrasted with the simple purity of rural life centred around the parish church or chapel on the village green.

On the other side, the champions of secularisation saw this as a revolutionary advance into the modern age, when the individual is liberated from superstition or the shackles of clericalism. Secularisation is a salute to reason, to intellect and to progress. By the mid-twentieth century, virtually all British intellectuals subscribed to this ideology. Yet it took the impetus of a social revolution in the 1960s, which freed British popular culture from what Brown believes was the misery of a restrictive Christian discourse, often backed by the state. For at least a century this discourse had governed all aspects of self-identity and expression, community-regulated leisure and domestic life. Its repressive features, in the name of adherence of Christian morality, had imposed great suffering on minorities and miscreants, such as homosexuals. It had strictly limited the range of opportunities especially for women. It was the rejection of these bulwarks of Christian piety, so Brown believes, which so rapidly led to the death of this kind of Christian culture in Britain.

Brown’s critics were quick to attack him for his reductionism and for his mono-causal explanation for the demise of the Christian discourse. But it is noteworthy that Brown also took issue with much of the methodology employed by many sociologists of religion. Particularly he disputed the widespread teleological theory whereby religious decline was seen as the inevitable and linear obverse of the rise of rationality and science. Brown disputed this time line by pointing to the undeniable revival of religious life in Britain in the immediate post-1945 years. So too he challenged the views taken by many left-wing social scientists who drew their analysis from Marxist theory. According to this paradigm, Christianity’s hold was largely class-based, and would and should disappear once the class struggle was overcome and modernisation ensued. But the subsequent discrediting of Marxism and its theories of modernisation now requires now requires new coherent explanations for the apparent changes in Britain’s religious adherence.

Redefining Christian Britain. Post-1945 Perspectives is the product of an Oxford conference whose contributors sought to escape from the ideologically-based theories or the sociologically-based statistics of the proponents of secularisation. Instead they sought to stress Christianity’s continuing influence on culture through literature, art and architecture. As well, they found Christian moral ideas as forming the background for many economic developments, as well as in protest movements. Above all they seek to claim the continued relevance of Christian values in Britain’s national identity. Christian Britain is not dead, they assert. There is no corpse in the Library. Rather, these essays contain countless examples of how Christianity has continued to infuse public culture, though the authors admit that the cultural strength of religion must be separated from its institutional strength or decline. By rejecting any teleological approach, they argue for a wide variety of positive adjustments in British religious life, pointing particularly to the number of sub-cultures brought in by recent immigrants.

There is considerable mention of “transformations” in the chapters of this book. Many of the contributors rightly point out that the 1960s were indeed years of change and challenge in Britain. The national identity, and with it the many religious associations it held, were transformed in more ways than allowed by Callum Brown. The loss of empire, the spectre of nuclear annihilation, the awareness of world poverty, and the wholly new relationship with Europe, all posed questions which included a religious dimension. Above all, these were years in which religious certainty faded, to be replaced by a far more questioning discourse. It was not surprising that Bishop John Robinson’s Honest to God should prove to be the best-selling theological work of the century. The abandonment of the ideal of authority, and the disappearance of a deferential society, both clearly affected the position of the clergy. So too the rise in the general standards of education meant that many more individuals than before claimed an independence of mind which no longer looked for paternalistic guidance from the churches or their ministers. There was in fact a process of spiritual fragmentation when the institutional church, with its rituals and dogmas, no longer received automatic assent. This development proved to be far more corrosive of belief patterns than the alleged impetus of women’s sexual liberation.

There were indeed, as Mark Chapman points out, many churchmen who welcomed a transformation of their spirituality, and who looked for more relevant forms of Christian witness, stripped of the Victorian trappings of religion. Some were to welcome the abandonment of dogmatic theologizing, and were to cultivate a vaguer religion of love and service of fellow men and women. But others still recognized the need to maintain the importance of the transcendent in both personal and public life. They were to argue that the churches should continue to have a prophetic and critical role over against all idealistic political or social proposals. If the churches limited themselves to being agents of social reform, they would have lost a dimension of incomparable worth. Transformation should be achieved without sacrificing the essence of the Judaeo-Christian heritage. And institutional diminution was not necessarily a pointer to social relevance. In the view of these authors, the wishful thinking of doomsayers, predicting religious and moral decline, has to be challenged. Little evidence exists that the national standards of personal morality have declined, even when the churches’ previous emphasis on puritan-style sexual ethics has been overtaken. Instead, newer issues such as nuclear armaments, climate change, or world poverty are clearly able to arouse strong moral reactions, derived certainly from Christian roots. The discursive Christianity of the British nation still continues in a variety of different ways. A transformed view of the sacred, and an ardent desire for genuine spiritual experience, still persists, even if bearing little resemblance to the master-narrative of former years. The authors’ conclusion is that Christianity in Britain has been better able to respond to changed circumstances than grand narratives of decline or death have allowed. The picture they uncover is one of innovation and exploration not of atrophy or paralysis. In short they believe that Christian Britain is not dead but that it will continue to be reshaped and redefined in the years ahead.

How Christianity interacted with broader social and political movements in the twentieth century is the focus of Keith Robbins’ magisterial study of the Christian Church in the four countries which form part of the British Isles. Robbins is a distinguished scholar of church history, and a former university president. He is very much aware that England,Scotland,Wales and Ireland all have a long history of dialogue between Christianity and its surrounding culture. The varieties and the peculiarities of this relationship lie at the heart of his book. Christianity has been embedded in Britain for over sixteen hundred years, during which it has been shaped by numerous, frequently conflicting impulses. The dialectic between past and present has produced radically different situations and seemingly incompatible belief-systems. Yet Robbins seeks to write transnationally and transdenominationally since he believes he can see the unity in this diversity.

This is no ordinary textbook. The reader should be warned not to expect any systematic delivery of names, dates, places or statistics. Instead, it is a large-scale portrait, or rather a series of large-scale portraits in chronological order, bringing in aspects from each of the national church settings. Robbins paints with a variety of multi-coloured brush strokes, each drawn from his immense fund of knowledge and reading. His style is allusive, following in the footsteps of G.M. Young and Owen Chadwick. Readers are therefore expected to have considerable knowledge already in order to appreciate his nicely-pointed comments.

Robbins naturally takes issue with Callum Brown`s over-simplistic assessment. Rather, he believes, the churches have always lived in an ambiguous and often awkward symbiosis with their environment. The issue is how this relationship can be fully described given the complexity of the churches’ institutional life and the variety of ways in which the different sections of the population both contribute to and are drawn from the church communities. A ‘typical’ church, he believes, is elusive, but he seeks to integrate, in a comprehensive and ecumenical whole, the various strands, both from within and outside, as well as from above and below.

His task has been complicated by the fact that most church histories have been written from the perspective of one or other denomination to confirm their legitimacy and authority, and to impugn the claims of others. Robbins seeks to rise above this fray and adopts an even-handed ecumenism. He is ready to understand, though not necessarily to endorse, those viewpoints which he sees as narrowing down the Christian message because of a particular theological or social slant. All have, he believes, to be accommodated as part of Christian Britain, even when discordantly opposed to each other, as for example in twentieth-century Ireland. So his volume is irenic and suitably comprehensive, and his wide-ranging sympathies can open new horizons of insight.

For the first half of the century, the question of how the churches related to concepts of Britain’s national identity and to its military and political fortunes was a constant preoccupation. In England the established church had little debate about where its duty lay, but increasingly more about the ethical values such nationalism propagated. In Ireland, the Catholic faith had no such priority. It saw itself as the church of the victimized population, creating barriers against unwanted and alien onslaughts. But both sides saw their stance as upholding their Christian witness. The bitter divisions in doctrine and practice which had accrued since the Reformation still prevented unity. But increasingly all churches faced parallel challenges confronting what came to be known as the tide of secularisation.

Yet in 1914 all the churches in England,Wales and Scotland, and in some parts of Ireland, especially the north, enthusiastically backed the war effort including its appeal to nationalism, militarism, even jingoism. Only a tiny handful saw pacifism as the true Christian discipleship. But the subsequent mass slaughter on the battlefields thereafter was to cause a major and irreversible crisis in the credibility of the Christian witness and to lead to long-lasting disillusionment with its institutions and personnel – and not only in Britain. To many observers, myself included, this post-war disenchantment marked the onset of the death of Christian Britain.

But Robbins rightly points out that the churches were too closely integrated into their host societies to be able to develop alternative theologies or practices. The clergy particularly could not escape the role of being public cheerleaders for the war effort. But the price was fateful. During the Second World War, most church leaders were more cautious. Bishop George Bell urged the government to ensure that the war was waged in a Christian fashion on behalf of the Universal Christian Church, and not just for the advance of national interests. The Pope, in the impartiality of the Vatican, upheld the cause of peace, despite being under relentless pressure to join one side or the other. No German church leader ever opposed the regime or its wars of racial annihilation. Attempts to justify such events as Auschwitz or Hiroshima merely discredited those who tried. Such horrendous crimes only revealed the Christians’ impotence and their creeds’ irrelevance.

But, as both Brown and Robbins show, in the post-1945 period, the desire to rebuild Britain on the basis of Christian family values brought about a revival in many denominations. The more critical questions were subdued or postponed. The churches existed in a widespread state of cognitive dissonance. Only in the 1960s did these issues become insistent. Many younger people, of both sexes, then found they could no longer support the supposedly hypocritical and compromised churches, which should be left to die out. Secular scepticism was more honest.

There was, however, one part of the British Isles, in the last half of the century, where Christianity and the churches were of crucial significance, though hardly in any laudatory sense. Robbins’ treatment of the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland is brief but succinct. Undeniably, the situation in Ulster reinforced his main contentions. The province’s deep-seated religious factions and rivalries were inextricably interwoven in the political and social fabric. The conflicting religious traditions were not just a propagandistic cover for more vital economic or political struggles. Rather the intensely-held folk memories of each side’s religious traditions gave the conflict its enduring and intractable quality. Cromwell mattered.

Even more significantly the conflict continued even though the church leaders on both sides came to deplore the violence and bloodshed. But they were not heard. The clergy’s authority was one of the casualties of this un-Christian fratricidal strife.

All this was part of a wider process. In the latter part of the century authority figures in both church and state were rejected. As prosperity grew, so did the notion of self-help spirituality. Britain became a market-place for competing yet negotiating moralities. Many church leaders recognized that they had been improperly coercive in the past. And while the Pope still called for obedience in matters of personal, especially sexual, morality, he increasingly called in vain and could no longer seen as the voice of Christendom.

The final years of the century were therefore years of institutional and ethical unsettlement. Questions were increasingly posed about the identity and viability of churches, but not severely enough to overthrow the historical divisions embedded since the Reformation. The failure of church unity plans meant that the churches remained rooted, for better or for worse, in their cultural inheritances. And their discordant voices meant that they lost more of their moral authority, along with their disappearing membership. Britons became much more pluralistic in their religious views and spiritual searching.

Thus Robbins finds himself at least in partial agreement with the more guarded of Callum Brown’s assessments. “This was a period which witnessed the increasing marginalisation of religion from British public life, intellectualism and popular culture.” And yet, a wide survey conducted at the turn of the century found that 77% of the population reported themselves as having a religious affiliation, the majority of whom declared they were Christians. This was perhaps based on a diffuse understanding of what Christianity meant and entailed.. But it could indicate that the notion of the death of Christian Britain had been overstated. Christianity could still be regarded as a significant contributor to national life, even if its institutional expressions were fragile. The secular state cannot be regarded, in Robbins’ view, as the desirable terminal conclusion of two thousand years of Christian presence on Britain’s soil. The pluralistic spiritual patterns which currently prevail may yet hold out other possibilities.

 

 

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Review of Raymond Cohen, Saving the Holy Sepulchre

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Review of Raymond Cohen, Saving the Holy Sepulchre. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 0195189663.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The most venerated church in Christendom is surely the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, or as it is sometimes known, the Church of the Resurrection. Christian pilgrims have been coming to this shrine for over seventeen hundred years. It was near this spot that the Roman Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, in the early years of the fourth century is reputed to have identified the hill of Calvary where Jesus was crucified. Not far away she also believed she could locate the site of His burial in the tomb, and hence the site of His Resurrection. Unfortunately both were located under a second century Roman temple dedicated to Venus. But with imperial backing, this heathen building was cleared away, and an impressive Christian basilica began to be built. From its floor, steps led to a crypt and then down to a chapel where St Helena is said to have discovered the relics of the True Cross. The chapel survives to this day.

The original Byzantine structure was replaced centuries later by an even more magnificent cathedral built when the Crusaders conquered the land. This brought under one roof – actually a huge dome – the various shrines such as the rock of Calvary, the tomb or Edicule, and numerous chapels around the ambulatory, or processional corridor around the apse, But inevitably, age and climate took their toll, as did the constant wear and tear of so many thousands of pilgrims. In 1808 a devastating fire did heavy damage, and in 1927 an unprecedented earthquake in Jerusalem alerted the authorities to the fact that repairs were urgently needed.

Unfortunately, despite the basilica being so venerated, or more probably because of it, the various church communities who, over the centuries, had claimed the right to worship in the building, had never been able to agree with each other as to how this historic building should be maintained or repaired. These quarrels had been so intense that in 1757 the Turkish Sultan who ruled Jerusalem as part of the Ottoman Empire had imposed a law stating that none of the communities was to be allowed to change anything in the structure or in its furnishings and decoration. This Status Quo edict, as it was called, was enforced rigorously, so that all attempts by one or other community to undertake repairs were prohibited. The result was benign neglect, so that by the end of the nineteenth century, many observers were predicting that the building would soon collapse. But luckily in the twentieth century, it was saved, as is excellently and informatively described in a recently-published book by Raymond Cohen.

The obstacles were enormous. In the first place, over the past hundred years,Jerusalem has come under the control of four competing and incompatible political regimes. Each had its own ideas as to how to deal with the Christian Holy Places, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in particular. The four centuries of Turkish rule came to end in 1917 when the Protestant British General Allen by rode into Jerusalem, and raised great fears amongst the Catholics and the Orthodox that the heresies of the Reformation would be imposed on them. In fact the British instead established Palestine as a Mandate of the League of Nations, and were sedulously careful to uphold the now ancient Status Quo settlement. But in 1948, Jerusalem’s Old City was occupied by the Jordanian army, and for nineteen years an international boundary ran along its battlements, only a few yards from the sacred precincts of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1967, during the Six Days’ War, Israeli forces succeeded in evicting the Jordanians, luckily without any serious damage to historic monuments. Israel immediately announced its determination to protect the Holy Places and to make them open to all comers. The possibility of an international outcry at the time, and later the desire to encourage Christian tourists, has led successive Israeli governments to adopt a strict hands-off policy. But in contrast to the Jordanians, they see no reason to become involved with the fractious problems of the Holy Sepulchre’s repairs.

The initiative was therefore left to the Christian communities themselves. But it took a great many years before the age-old suspicions and rivalries could be overcome between the six groups who all claimed the right to worship in the Holy Sepulchre. The principal actors have been the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, the Latin or Roman Catholic custodians of the sanctuary also with their own Patriarch, and the Armenian Church, asserting that it was the oldest continuous community. Lesser, but often noisy, claims were maintained by the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Copts and the Abyssinians. Over the centuries each of these had sought to obtain ownership, or at least use, of particular portions of the basilica, or had established rights to use parts of the building for its processions and services, even where ownership was disputed. Since there were hardly any surviving written records, in effect the 18th century Status Quo arrangement froze matters indissolubly.

Any suggestion by one community that repairs should be undertaken was often fiercely contested – sometimes for years. Each community also suspected that, with any changes, their age-long rights might be eroded. Naturally each demanded, for reasons of prestige, that it should appoint its own chief architect. Getting these men to agree proved extremely arduous and led to many delays.

In any case there was strong disagreement as to what they were undertaking. The French Catholics sought to restore as much as possible of the mediaeval masterpiece. The Armenians, on the other hand, wanted a reconstruction in a more modern style, which could include Armenian paintings and frescoes. Compromise was exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, even when agreement on each detail was reached, it all had to be approved by the respective ecclesiastical patriarchs, who in turn had to ensure support from their homelands.

But finally, over the past fifty years, compromise agreements were reached on the need for urgent and constructive repairs on the now dilapidated basilica. Little by little, the unsightly mass of wooden scaffolding which had blocked out the great dome for decades, was removed. The interior regained its ancient splendour, and the dome was decorated anew with an ecumenical, if abstract, design. Largely due to the unprecedented co-operation of the local church leaders, the architects were encouraged to recruit skilled masons who could handle the delicate tasks of restoring the brickwork, the stone surrounds, the pilasters, and the paintings. Their work had to be carried out, of course, while below in the main body of the church, the daily services, processions and pilgrimages were conducted without ever ceasing. The result was that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been in real danger of collapse, was saved for posterity.

This remarkable rescue effort has now been skilfully described in Raymond Cohen’s book, using as many of the surviving records as could be found, as well as his personal knowledge of the site and his many visits to see how the rebuilding project was progressing.

Of course, as Cohen points out, this great achievement cannot be taken as evidence of any desire for closer Christian unity. Inter-church reconciliation is not on the agenda in Jerusalem. The weight of history and theological controversy still dominate ecumenical relations. These age-long conflicts have not been resolved. But, for this magnificent restoration project, co-operation and compromise prevailed and the adversaries came together in a common cause. Had they not done so, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would today be a ruin. But now, it stands, as it has done for so many centuries, as the most venerable and sought-after pilgrimage site in all Christendom. We should indeed be grateful for the blessings bestowed on us by this unexpected and momentous restoration, and also thank Raymond Cohen for his perceptive record of how this achievement was finally brought about.

 

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Review of Emmy Barth, No Lasting Home. A Year in the Paraguayan Wilderness

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Review of Emmy Barth, No Lasting Home. A Year in the Paraguayan Wilderness. Rifton, NY: Plough Publishing House, 2009. ISBN 978-0-87486-945-3

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

In 1920 a Christian commune of pacifists was founded in Germany under the leadership of Eberhard Arnold, dedicated to the Anabaptist teachings of piety and non-violence, and repudiating the militarism and bloodshed which had so recently engulfed Europe. But this Brotherhood’s experiment aroused considerable opposition, which turned virulent under the Nazis. In 1937 the Gestapo expelled the community and forced them to flee to England.

They were helped to re-establish by the Quakers, and joined by a number of English pacifists who had obtained conscientious objector status. Nevertheless, after the outbreak of war in 1939, their situation became more difficult. The Brotherhood was convinced that part of their witness, both for German and English community members, was to remain together, living in love and harmony even when their two countries were at war. But as enemy aliens and pacifists they were no longer welcome. Curfews and travel restrictions were imposed. Debates as to whether the community should be allowed to exist were raised in Parliament. Late in 1940 they decided that they should all move again and seek refuge elsewhere. Since neither Canada nor the United States would accept them, they went instead to the only place which offered asylum, Paraguay. This short but vibrant reportage, drawn from the Brotherhood’s own records, is the story of their first year in the wilds of Latin America.

Emmy Barth, who is herself a descendant of these exiles, gives a wholly sympathetic picture of their experiences and the hardships they encountered in the harsh semi-tropical conditions of Paraguay. The Paraguayan government wanted more settlers in the remote and barren district of Chaco, and was prepared to offer the same privilege of exemption from military service, which had been extended to a group of German Mennonites who had moved to the Chaco some years earlier. In turn, the American Mennonite Central Committee offered the Brotherhood its support and some start-up costs.

But for these European refugees, trying to establish themselves as the guests of another tight-knit community, in the midsummer heat, and without any housing of their own, proved to be a real test of their faith. Worse still, they found, in these Mennonite communities, a considerable number of sympathisers with Hitler’s Germany, which was believed to have rescued Mennonites from the grip of Soviet Communism. The dark side of Nazi Germany was simply discounted by several leading members of the Chaco Mennonite community. So despite the close similarity of these communities’ origins and their Reformation faith, in fact tensions were constantly present. They were only resolved when the Brotherhood moved to a different and more pleasant part of Paraguay.

But the conditions were rigorous. Their numerous small children fell sick and several died. The men had to build their houses and meeting places from scratch, while the women were fully engaged in child care. Despite death and deprivation, however, the joy of building a new community in a new land was never entirely quenched. Through all the hardships, their faith in each other and in their witness was maintained. The numerous surviving photographs printed in this book, showing these home-made villages and their community activities, give a vivid portrait of this rural exile existence. Their main objective was the survival of the Brotherhood, and in this they succeeded. Twenty years later, when conditions improved, the Brotherhood emigrated to the United States where it still upholds its ideals today.

Emmy Barth is to be commended for her compassionate account of this short episode, which captures the courage and faithfulness of the community, and conveys something of the spirit which inspired and still inspires them.

 

 

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Article Note: Heath A. Spencer, “Kulturprotestantismus and ‘Positive Christianity’: A Case for Discontinuity”

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Article Note: Heath A. Spencer, “Kulturprotestantismus and ‘Positive Christianity’: A Case for Discontinuity.” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Heft 2/2009: 519-549.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The latest issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte commemorates a number of significant anniversaries in the life of Germany’s church and state, and is entitled  “2009 – A Year of Commemoration and Jubilee”.  The articles however cover a wider range of topics in recent European and American church history.  Only two are in English.  Most notable is the contribution of ACCH member Heath Spencer of the Department of History, University of Seattle.   His article discusses “Kulturprotestantismus and ‘Positive Christianity’: A Case for Discontinuity”.   In this essay he refutes the opinion advanced by Richard Steigmann-Gall in his book The Holy Reich, in which he claimed that German liberal Protestantism had a striking resemblance to Nazi conceptions of Christianity. Steigmann-Gall also believed that the pro-Nazi Protestants who so loudly acclaimed Hitler in 1933 derived their views from their predecessors in the ranks of liberal Protestantism. Spencer, while acknowledging that there were some overlapping similarities, shows that Steigmann-Gall downplayed the differences between these two groups.  Most liberal Protestants, for instance, were put off by the virulence of Nazi racism and appalled by the totalitarian appeal of Nazism.  They did not reject the Old Testament as a Jewish document, like the pro-Nazi “German Christians”, but saw it as a valuable source of historical knowledge. In short, liberal Protestantism contained a wide variety of opinions. Rather than these proto-Nazis inspiring or turning into pro-Nazis, the situation was much more complex.  This leads Spencer to claim that the discontinuities proved to be more significant than the similarities.

 

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