Unity, Cultural Diversity & Mission: Reflections on a Celebration and a book.# 143. 16/01/2024
Out of Many, One People.
Welcome, and warmest greetings for 2024. Originally this week’s blog was going to be two separate pieces, but as I am wanting to send out other blogs, and because of their related content and questions, I have combined them in a way which I hope is mutually illuminating.
Unity, Cultural Diversity & Mission: Reflections on a Celebration and a book.
‘I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me’ (John 17:23).
Jesus’ prayer for the unity of his disciples as a pre-condition for the world’s discovery of the loving graciousness of God seems further away than ever, not least as growing cultural diversity appears to lead to increasing denominational fragmentation. This blog looks at two very different approaches as to how the varied and beautiful fragments of Christ’s body might be regathered into a loving, united multi-cultural body:
* the ‘One People Commission’ (OPC) of the Evangelical Alliance’s 10th Anniversary Celebration on 8thDecember;
* the book ‘The Mission and Ministry of the Church in England: History, Challenge and Prospect’ by Michael Nazir-Ali.
1. The One People Commission Celebration.
!t was a joy to attend this event at London City Mission headquarters just before Christmas. Many thanks to the head of the OPC, Rev Dr Israel Olofinjana and his staff for organising the occasion.
For me, it gave rise to the following observations:
1. Rejoice.
It was great to meet with so many believers from so many different backgrounds. I remember fifty years ago when meetings of the ‘Evangelical Race Relations Group’ drew a few carloads of people of mixed ethnicity/gender/churchmanship to Birmingham (loyally supported by the then general secretary of the EA, Gordon Landreth). Since then the ethnic diversity of the church in Britain has blossomed to become much wider and richer, more united, more theologically aware, and more confident. There was a real sense of momentum, and of recognition of the way diversity can both enrich our walk with God and enhance our witness to the world.
As a bonus, the food was delicious and well-organised, and provided the opportunity for a much-needed part of such events – the opportunity to net-work, meet old friends and make new ones. Perhaps name badges next time?
2. Testimony.
Evangelicalism lives or dies by the degree to which the Lord is calling people out of darkness into his glorious light. It was heart-warming to hear Rani Joshi’s testimony on her becoming head of South Asian Concern, simply because it was so personal and different. Her conversion wasn’t planned by anyone, simply uniquely the work of God’s Spirit. The reality of God working deeply and surprisingly in our lives – the sharing of testimony – must always be central to our shared identity from multiple backgrounds. I warmed too to Rani’s emphasis on ‘normalising’ brown Christianity. It’s slowly happening, it needs to be more widely known, prayed for, encouraged and expected.
3. Awards.
Having the ‘Joel Edwards Award of Unity’ is a great idea, and a great tribute to a great man. (His son’s emotion in presenting the awards said as much about Joel’s greatness as a dozen eulogies). Innovation is one of the great gifts that ethnic diversity generates and it was good to honour Pastor Agu Irukwu and Krish Kandiah for their creativity and leadership.
4. What do we say to the world?
Paradoxically Krish’s absence in Palestine was a benefit – it highlighted the increasingly significant role that minority ethnic Christians are playing in our society at official levels. It was good that at several points the importance of a united witness to our society was raised. The ethnic diversity of the church in Britain has been a seriously unused part of our apologetic armoury. Bishop Wilton Powell raised the importance of addressing our context and generously paid tribute to the work of Wilberforce or Lord Shaftesbury two centuries earlier. By a neat coincidence on the same day as the Celebration, Melanie Phillips in The Times paid a similar tribute to the nineteenth century ‘evangelical Christians . . . transformative social reforms. . . They promoted human dignity. They never wrote anyone off’. At a time of widespread disillusionment there is great potential in the hope and vigour that can be generated by ethnically united, socially involved Christian witness.
5. Different emphases.
There is always a temptation in inter-cultural church meetings to whoop up our shared belonging together in Christ, without giving sober attention to the reality that our churches are too often still divided on ethnic and cultural lines. So I valued Preethy Kurian’s contribution in the Intercultural Church Resource Video of the different virtues and qualities that different Christian ethnicities can bring to our life together, and which we need to learn from each other. Inspirational but ultimately empty platitudes will get us nowhere, there needs to be the challenge of actually encountering and working through cultural differences if we are to exhibit the ‘manifold [or multi-coloured] wisdom of God’.
6. Worship.
The worship was an extended session of fairly new (I don’t think I recognised any of them) worship songs, led by the worship group from London City Mission, who graciously hosted the event. For the majority of people present this seemed to be an inspiring and uplifting time, but personally I was bored and couldn’t wait for the singing to finish! I recognise this is partly cultural preference (but then my culture ought also to be expressed in the worship) but I do think there is stronger justification for diversifying the worship in an evangelical context. Strongly repetitive songs with a narrow range of words can lift hearts in adoration, but their simplicity is also a weakness – do they fail to bring into our worship both the complexities and contradictions of life, and especially the rich resources of theology and spirituality that over the centuries Christians have developed to live with those challenges.
7. So who are the ‘one people’?
Was it, in fact, the anniversary of the ‘One People Pentecostal Commission’. I recognise that a very large portion of ‘majority world’ Christians in Britain are Pentecostal, but part of the enormous potential of the OPC is to bring into warm and trusting dialogue Pentecostal and more traditional Christians, since not only do both have so much to learn from the other but that our future flourishing is unlikely without each other. Therefore to assume, as I thought, the event’s worship implied, that Pentecostalism is the default spirituality and worship for all Christians is to fail to address the diversity that our ‘one peoplehood’ gathers into one.
In our understandable desire to counter past prejudices or dismissals - which the Evangelical Alliance humbly acknowledged on the day - there can consequently be a reluctance to recognise the reality of cultural/spiritual/theological differences between evangelicals, let alone in the wider church. Worship simply focusses such broader differences:
* How far can it be responsibly creating expectations of dramatically supernatural interventions from God?
* Ought it to be providing intense expressions of joy, or the weekly rehearsal of the foundations of our walk with God?
* Is the focus on the worship leader up front or is it the people together repeating or singing the well-tried truths of our faith?
Drawing on his wide inter-church experience, Hugh Osgood asked ‘Is Kindness Killing the Church?’ in Premier magazine (12/04/23): ‘Underlying our differences are big questions around the nature of God, the nature of the Gospel, the nature of the Church, the authority of scripture, and the nature of the relationship between Church and society. For too long we have politely agreed to disagree on such things. Perhaps we should now agree to continue to work on our disagreements by listening, speaking and listening again. We have the unity of the Spirit to undergird us, and although we may not reach the full unity of faith this side of heaven, we will be further on in our journey towards spiritual maturity. Our efforts towards ensuring that the truth we speak in love is ultimately the truth in all of its uncompromising fullness will not go unrewarded’.
An anniversary Celebration is not the time to answer such questions, but any meeting together is bound to raise them. I think our cross-cultural unity is now sufficiently seasoned to allow serious discussion of our differences, and which presents a mammoth but crucial agenda for the One People Commission.
2. ‘The Mission and Ministry of the Church in England’ by Michael Nazir-Ali.
Monsignor Michael Nair-Ali was Bishop of Rochester, and before that Bishop of Raiwind in Pakistan. In between he was General Secretary of the Church Mission Society. He is now a member of the Ordinariate, a Roman Catholic body - ‘a way of being Catholic which maintains all that is of value in the Anglican tradition’ (p 5). This might suggest that his book is situated quite some way from the gathering of Christians from Protestant, Pentecostal and diasporic churches at the ‘One People Commission’ of the Evangelical Alliance’s 10th Anniversary Celebration that I reflected on last week. In fact, I believe they both address a serious common concern – the unity, common fellowship and united witness of Christians from very varied cultural backgrounds. They are approaching a common challenge from very different pathways, and so have much to learn from and share with each other, as Nazir-Ali writes on page 1: ‘Churches and Christians can also learn from the experience – the successes and the failures – of fellow Christians from other parts of the world and other periods of history’. His book is about the ‘mission and ministry’ of the Church in (not of) England, and thus ecumenical. Given the broad scope of its subtitle, ‘History, Challenge and Prospect’ it sets itself a big agenda for 132 pages of text. How then does the book address this vast task which it shares with the One People Commission?
Mission.
Nazir-Ali in no way renounces his evangelical past. He has a chapter on ‘Why Evangelize and What is Evangelism Anyway?’ He emphasises concern for growth, and discusses how best to plant new churches. He sees the importance and productiveness of preaching, twice referring to the fact that John Wesley preached over 40,000 sermons. Independent, fervently evangelistic itinerant mission bodies such as Operation Mobilisation or Youth With a Mission are warmly commended. (Nazir-Ali uses the word ‘peregrination’ for them). The Future of the Church in England as he envisages it, presumably under papal headship, would have evangelistic mission front and centre in its life. The present state of our society requires no less.
It would also still be recognisably Anglican. He refers with warmth to Cranmer’s liturgical gifts, and that sacramental and liturgical worship can be especially attractive to those of other world faith backgrounds (p 131). (Might this be the case now with Iranian converts?) In a fairly short book he devotes a whole page to expounding the Confession in the Prayer Book Communion Service, in what I assume to be a (fully justified) counter to the widespread thinness across the Protestant/Pentecostal spectrum on confession of sin in public worship.
He affirms the central importance of the local congregation: ‘the so-called Benedict option – that is, the emergence of local communities where spiritual, moral and intellectual life can not only survive but even flourish and from which the surrounding culture can be renewed’ (p 43). He welcomes the Anglican commitment, enshrined in the parish system, to be a presence in every community, whilst recognising that too often it leads to compromise with the attitudes of the local community in which it is integrated (p 39). Overall, however, his teaching about local church ministry comes across as rather bland generalisations rather than fully worked through encounter.
Culture.
His Muslim heritage roots in Pakistan and from having worked in international missions, gives depth to his very usable definition of culture as an ‘attribute of human societies which enables them to adapt to their environment and to adapt their environment to themselves, to discern social and personal meaning and existence, and to express worldviews and values which enable human beings to live together’ (p 61). He affirms missionary adaptations in a range of global historical contexts, for example lightly structured incarnational ministry with mobile tribal groups (p 31), because, as Cranmer once put it: ‘in men’s ordinances it often chanceth diversely in diverse countries’ (p 16).
He is acute to the reality that: ‘in practise, however, Anglicans have often been in thrall to ‘Englishness’, regardless of the cultural and geographical contexts in which they find themselves’ (p 69). But whilst he recognises that missionaries ‘paternalism and attitudes to race may make us uncomfortable today’, he gives insufficient attention to several very uncomfortable issues – there is no mention of SPG’s involvement in slavery in the Caribbean, or of the mishandling by CMS of Bishop Adjai Crowther in Nigeria.
Unity.
The book ends with a chapter on ‘The Ordinariate: A Way to Unity’. A little like with Cardinal Newman’s move to Roman Catholicism two centuries earlier, Nazir-Ali is presenting his apologia! It centres around the essential importance of catholic order preserving unity. The 1920 Lambeth Conference encyclical that ‘what questions touch the life of all . . . must be decided on by all’ (p 85) has not been maintained.
Nazir-Ali is not explicit here but clearly in his sights has been the acceptance of the Episcopal Church in the United States, then followed elsewhere, to performing gay ‘marriages’ against the will of the majority of the Anglican Communion, therefore abandoning any central teaching authority. (One might speculate that such compromise with the local culture may invite the phrase ‘reverse syncretism’: whereas once the threat of syncretism was that the church in newly evangelised areas would fail to be loyal to the commonly shared faith, now it is the churches of the old Christendom who are compromising with their cultures.
A situation has then developed that ‘because of notions of the radical autonomy of the Provinces, Important aspects of such teaching have either not been received or have been openly flouted, leading to division, without any adequate way of resolving the problem and healing the division’ (p 101). By contrast the Ordinariate, despite its strong Anglican flavour, offers a unity of faith which can ‘develop in ways that are both distinctive and in harmony with the teaching and practice of the church down the ages and across the world’ (p 126).
Putting Celebration and book together.
Both are motivated by the prayer of Jesus that began this article. Both are evangelistically minded, committed to being biblical, fully involved in a multi-cultural church and world. But surely Jesus’ words that we be ‘completely one’ ought to make us uncomfortable. Yet equally the prospect of uniting a catholic, orthodox, episcopally led church, with the plethora of mushrooming leader-focussed and independent small denominations or congregations so that together they become one church, sharing a common faith, co-ordinated structure and mutual accountability seem like a far off dream. But that is what Jesus calls us to pray for.
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Drawing on Scripture: ‘And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?’ (Matt 5:47). Do I warmly greet Christians whose expression of faith is so different from mine?
Thanks John for this... I'm pretty much in agreement with everything you say and have shared the link on my Facebook feed.