Living Wittily

Because I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, I Believe in Forgiveness

There are some writers on Christian life and human existence who are invariably good, and reading them just as invariably does you good. For me Timothy Radcliffe is one such writer, and I came across these words of his, quoted in Stanley Hauerwas' slim volume of sermons, A Cross Shattered Church.

"If forgiveness were forgetting then God would have to suffer the most acute amnesia, but it is God's unimaginable creativity, which takes what we have done and makes it fruitful. The medieval image of God's forgiveness was the flpowering of the cross. The cross is the ugly sign of torture. It is the sign of humanity's ability to refect love and to do what is utterly sterile. But the artists of the middle ages showed this cross flowering on Easter Sunday. The dead wood put out tendrils and flowers. Forgiveness makes the dead live and the ugly beautiful."

Whatever else we can complain about in the news just now, death and ugliness seem to dominate the headlines.

So I want to hear the counter claims of people of faith, that grace is beautiful, that forgiveness beautifies, that mercy makes life possible once again.

I want to hear love defiant enough to claim that compassion is not weakness but strength, that hope is not irresponsible optimism but responsible and determined trust that God's power is redemptive, ultimately and remorselessly redemptive.

I want to hear a faith so confident in the reconciling heart of God that every act of compassion, forgiveness, mercy and self-giving is performed as an intentional and persistent gesture of redemption, an aligning of our hearts with God, in love, purpose and determination that Creation will not die.

Why? Because we believe in resurrection, in life defying death, in love eclipsing hate, in peace persuading violence to desist, in forgiveness denying to enmity its raison d'etre, and in life. Yeds, as resurrection people we believe in life.

This I want to hear - and unless the preaching of the church takes up these vast truths of redemption and reconciliation,we trivialise the Gospel we are called to proclaim, we abandon our privileged role as ambassadors of Christ the Reconciler, and in a world so fragmented and jagged-edged from its own brokenness we will lose the right to be heard as those who bring something entirely different, hope-filled and redolent of new possibility. ASnd what we bring is Good News, crucified love blossming as resurrected hope.

Being an Ecumenical Evangelical

There was grace, generosity and humility behind this remarkable proposal adopted at the Inaugural Conference of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846. The contemporary ethos of Evangelicalism seems less gracious, less generous and less humble given the turf wars between factions who want to define Evangelicalism by defining others out.

My own ecumenical sympathies, balanced by the convictions of a Baptist identity, are able to co-exist much more fruitfully in the kind of atmosphere out of which the EA emerged. With the chronological snobbery C S Lewis memorably scorned, we look back on the earlier years of Christian tradition uninformed of the spiritual values that gave birth to our tradition, therefore much of our thinking unformed and uncorrected by that earlier generous spirit. Or so it seems to me as I browse and ponder on that Evangelical fractiousness and fragmentation that pretends to defend the truth and merely succeeds in reducing truth to the capacities of minds lacking precisely that grace, generosity and humility in which we greet each other in Christ

"That this Conference, composed of professing Christians of many different Denominations, all exercising the right of private judgment, and, through common infirmity, differing in the views they severally entertain on some points, both of Christian doctrines and ecclesiastical Polity, and gathered together from many and remote parts of the World, for the purpose of promoting Christian Union, rejoice in making their unanimous avowal of the glorious truth, that the Church of the living God, while it admits of growth, is One Church, never having lost, and being incapable of losing its essential unity. Not, therefore, to create that unity, but to confess it, is the design of their assembling together. One in reality, they desire also, as far as they may be able to attain it, to be visibly one; and thus, both to realize in themselves, and to exhibit to others, that a living and everlasting union binds all true believers together in the fellowship of the Church of Christ."

Report of the Proceedings of the Conference, London, From August 19th to September 2nd Inclusive, 1846, page 44. Quoted in One Body in Christ. The History and Significance of the Evangelical Alliance, Ian Randall and David Hillborn (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2001) page 55.

The sculpture below is by Scott Rogers, and is called "That they all may be One".

The Transformative Authority of the Bible

One of the finest spiritual writers in the Evangelical tradition is only read today in edited versions. Like the Puritans, Andrew Murray's writing could be 'prolix', and like a certain washing machine advert of some years ago, he could go on and on and on. But Andrew Murray (if you Google the name you're likely to encounter a tennis player!) was a profoundly influential teacher in the Holiness tradition in South Africa and in England through the Keswick movement. His commentary on Hebrews, The Holiest of All, was very warmly reviewed by no less than James Denney who didn't call geese swans. What Denney liked was the thoughtful application of evangelical truth to Christian sanctification and behaviour, and the centrality of Christ in all Murray's writings.

Murray wrote one of the best accounts of an Evangelical appropriation of the Bible. Rather than argue for the authority of the text as artefact, he pleaded for a use of the Bible that depended on openness to God and a receptiveness of heart to the transforming work of the Word of Scripture. Here's what he says:

God's Word only works its true blessing when the truth it brings to us has stirred the inner life, and reproduced itself in resolve, trust, love or adoration. When the heart has received the Word through the mind and has had its spiritual powers called out and exercised on it, the Word is no longer void, but it has done that whereunto God has sent it. It has become part of our life, and strengthened us for new purpose and effort.

Andrew Murray, The Inner Chamber and the Inner Life, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1950), 72

Truth that transforms, a Word that is living, dynamic and provocative of response, words through which God speaks now, that is the Word enfleshed, embodied, lived, obeyed - and that is the authority of Scripture that matters most - it authors our lives.  

(Learning slowly how to use my new camera. The photo was taken in the Aberdeen Botanic Gardens)

When Comment is Superfluous 2: The Fruit of the Spirit.

 

"Other elements of the fruit of the Spirit have also a strong experiential or emotional dimension, particularly...joy and peace. It should be noted, however, that Paul would not have thought of either of these in individualistic terms: joy was characteristically for Paul a shared experience strengthening bonds of community (e.g. Rom 15.32; 2Cor 8.2; Phil 2.19-30; Philemon 7); and in Jewish thought peace was not reducible to a personal tranquility but included all that makes for social well-being and harmonious relationships."

The Theology of Galatians, J D G Dunn, (Cambridge, CUP 1993) p.112

I allow myself in this series of posts, one unsuperfluous comment -

given the heavy dependence of Evangelical spirituality on the writings and theology of Paul,

and in the light of Evangelicalism's characteristic individualism in the narratives of Evangelical experience,

such corrective exegesis might broaden, deepen and renew the Evangelical vision of discipleship

as intentionally following after Jesus in the community that is the Body of Christ,

that Body given to God in praise and prayer and worship,

and offered in service to the world to embody and express the Love of God,

by actively working towards the renewing of creation,

the redeeming of loss, and the reconciliation of all things

in the power of the Living Christ.

Long sentence for one comment I know. Important point though.

The Amazing Ubiquity and Ambiguity of "Amazing Grace"

The hymn Amazing Grace is amazingly ubiquitous. I've no idea how many renderings of it there are. But without straining a single mental muscle I can list the following which I've heard at least once, and one or two of them countless times

The Pipes and Drums and Military band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards

Judy Collins

Jessye Norman

The Blind Brothers of Alabama

Elvis

Susan Boyle

Paul Potts

Aretha Franklin

Mahalia Jackson

But the most spectacularly over the top rendering I've ever heard is on the Lesley Garrett CD Amazing Grace. By over the top I mean no criticism whatsoever. For once a full orchestra, a soprano showing off, and creative choreography does justice to a song written out of appalling human abuse, and yet which celebrates a faith in which the gift of God is the power of love to restore and renew human brokenness, to break down dividing walls of hostility, to begin the work of the reconciliation of all things in Christ.

I know no better portrayal of John Newton's lifelong sorrow for his own actions than Albert Finnie's anguished and sympathetic portrayal in the DVD of the recent film. The sorrow and anger of the converted slaver, the inability to erase the past, the felt insufficiency of personal forgiveness from God to complete the circle of reconciliation, until there is forgiveness from those who have been wronged, and until the wrong itself is abolished, highlights a crucial theological and pastoral insight. Forgiveness by God can never exclude the necessity of that kind of repentance that brings us to those we have wronged to state the wrong, to confess our sins against them, to say we are sorry, to ask what would heal or help restore a relationship so damaged, and to give ourselves to the abolition of such patterns of behaviour as caused the wrong in the first place.

Given such human misery inflicted by the slave trade, and a Gospel of utter surprising love, and the tragedy of human history that can never be reversed, more is required in the singing of Amazing Grace than anodyne and safe renderings that are musically competent, even brilliant. I'm not even sure that the hymn is best sung as a congregational praise song, unless there is an awareness not only of its provenance, but of the complicity of Christianity in human trafficking, and an open knowledge that such trade was providing the economic sub-structure of an empire that still shapes contemporary attitudes to the worlds and cultures of other people. Something needs to jolt us awake to what is being sung, and to our capacity to be blind, culpably and callously blind to the suffering of others, often enough only because it is culturally approved and economically convenient.

The track in the Garrett version begins with African voices singing Alleluia but in rhythms reminiscent of the workforce, the clanking of irons is heard here and throughout the first sections, and the first bars introduce the wistful sound of wind instruments rising in aspiration and longing before the first words are sung. The slow build of the song towards the climax begins with solo voice, then the rhythm and clicking of African percussion, before a soprano descant and then the choral voices offer a supportive base for soprano pyrotechnics which are not the least out of place - there is a soaring hopefulness and triumph that simply defies the inhumanity out of which this hymn emerged.

Amazing Grace is one of the few hymns that needs more than one rendering to come anywhere near doing justice to the ambivalence of its provenance and the intensity of the personal experience of conversion out of which it came. For quite other reasons the version by the Blind Boys of Alabama is equally compelling - arranged and sung to the tune House of the Rising Sun. It too explores the ambiguities and certainties of a hymn which it seems is popular well beyond the evangelical circles out of which it came and within which it still resonates in personal experiences of God. And it does so within the musical idiom of African American people, for whom the words touch deep into their personal and social history. How there can be congruence between a hymn written by a converted slave trader, and the great, great, great, great grandchildren of people stolen from their home of land and family, is one of the mysteries of that grace that is sung about in this hymn. Maybe there is no congruence in grace - it doesn't fit with our human standards of guilt, just deserts, cruelty, inhumane thoughtlessness - it contradicts and seeks to transform them.

I reckon a whole seminar could be built around exploring the text and sub text of this hymn, based on the way people have sung it, and hear it. A time of learning when we are honest and open to the ambiguities out of which this anthem of grace came, which emerged from such tragic times. yes, and which is sung in times still tragic, with our own sins of oppression, and perhaps our own blindness to our complicity in the structures of sin that condemn countless millions to the slaveries that are essential to globalised markets on the current models.

Does anyone else know renderings of Amazing Grace that you have found are as richly textured in musical and spiritual reach? Just decided I'd like to do such a seminar or retreat evening.

Conformitas Christi......

L Gregory Jones writes theological ethics. In his approach, the credibility of any theological assertion has to be established through the Christian practices such theologising engenders. Theology to be real has to be embodied, not only in the individual, but in the community that takes the name of Christ. What is believed is most authentically expressed not in words and articulation, but in practice and performance of a life shaped by Christ.

Here's a couple of paragraphs from Transformed Judgment. Toward a Trinitarian Account of the Moral Life (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2008) that have had me thinking again about the how, and why and what of following after Christ. The painting by Caravaggio is a favourite - the young Jesus inviting middle aged Peter and Andrew to follow him.

What is needed is a way of speaking of the prior action of God, namely the saving life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which also calls forth an account of the shape human activity is to take in response. Such an emphasis is found by recovering the relationship between being conformed to Christ and being called to imitate - or as I think is preferable language, to pattern one's life in - Christ. God befriends humanity in Jesus Christ, and in that gracious action, which originates in God alone, humanity is conformed to Christ independently of particular characters, virtues and actions. Grace is the fundamental orientation of Christian life. The context of this conformitas Christi is discovered in the salvation wrought by Christ; it is a salvation revealed throughout the context of his life, deathn and resurrection.

In the light of Jesus friendship, the Christian's vocation, in response to God's prior action in Christ conforming humanity to his righteousness, is to pattern her life in Jesus Christ through discipleship.A person is called and enabled to pattern her life in Jesus Christ because God in Christ has patterned human life into God's life in order to save humanity. Such practices as baptism, eucharist, forgiveness-reconciliation and "performing" the Scriptures are indispensable practices, whereby people learn to become disciples, whereby people learn to be frinds of God and to befriend and be befriended by others. Through such practices, people are aenabled to acquire the habits and skills reflective of the pattern discovered in Jesus Christ." (pages 110-11)

That's about as attractive and complete an account of following after Christ as I've read for a long while. Conformitas Christi. Wouldn't mind a T-shirt with that on it -

Conformitas Christi!

Evangelical disenchantment and disenchanted evangelicals.

One school of thought suggests that conversion and subsequent religious activity under the Methodist and Finneyan revivals helped empower women in such areas as public speaking, fundraising, and organisational leadership. Hempton is sceptical. The claim that "evangelical religion through its disruptive piety opened a small but expandable crack in the wall of male power and control", is a tidy theory with too many untidy loose ends.

More liberal groups like the Quakers, Universalists and Unitarians produced many of the women leaders in various abolitionist and emancipationist movements. Hempton points out that relatively few American feminist leaders came from the Evangelical stable, and most of those who did, eventually distanced themselves from it. Early conversion experience, and revivalist affiliations, for some of these women raised as many questions as they answered. Two key areas of intellectual discontent quickly emerged; biblical hermeneutics and evangelical dogma. By 1836 Sarah Grimke was arguing forcefully that any plain reading of the Bible will convince any reasonable mind informed by Christian conviction, that slavery was an abomination to the God who is 'in a peculiar manner the God of the poor and the needy, the despised and the oppressed.'

The open letter Sarah wrote was overtly critical of clergy who condoned slavery either by exegetical underpinning or by expedient silence. This and further letters begin to show a loss of confidence in the Bible as the primary arsenal of male power, and consequently her loss of confidence in any mainline denomination, for none upheld " the Scripture doctrine of the perfect equality of man and woman, which is the fundamental principle of my argument in favour of the ministry of women". (page97) The result of such a theological position was alienation from groups that upheld traditional biblical views - prominent amongst them those sponsored by Evangelicalism. In the minds of feminist activists still prepared to found their views on the Bible, abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women were key areas requiring political activism, the social persuasion of protest and debate, and a much more rigorously critical biblical hermeneutic.

"Love to God manifested by love to his creatures." That was a fundamental and sufficient theology for Sarah Grimke. It wasn't long before opposition to oppression fused with concentration on love as theologically definitive, raised serious questions over key evangelical doctrines founded on penal substitution, human sinfulness and hell. In reaction to such theology, leading Christian feminists adopted an increasingly rationalist and universalist position. Elisabeth Cady Stanton was the philosopher and intellectual engine of much mid- 19th century American feminism. Weighed down by the whole panoply of evangelical dogma, "these gloomy superstitions", these "fears of the unknown and unknowable", she found her way to light and truth by "rational ideas based on scientific facts".

There is something deeply significant, which evangelicals today need to think through with some self-reflective and self-critical candour, that these women, protesting against social and institutional oppression, believed they could trace in evangelical dogma and in evangelical biblical interpretations, ideas on which such oppressive attitudes were uncritically founded. Though 20th Century South African Apartheid or Segregation in the American south may seem extreme cases, they do show that abuses of the biblical text to warrant oppression is too well documented in history to be seriously denied. Alongside that of course, goes the honourable record of people like Wesley, Newton, Wilberforce and a host of other evangelical abolitionists whose contribution was decisive and rooted in a securely biblical theology of humanity.

Another Christian feminist, Frances Willard, moved from evangelical Methodism, to collaborative evangelistic activity with D L Moody, and then disenchantment set in. Her interests were more in social reform, particularly temperance and women's suffrage, and her theology morphed into a faith more inclusively catholic, less biblicist and more speculative even at times dabbling in esoteric spirituality. But again what inexorably drew her away from more evangelical principles, what disenchanted her, was what she saw as the inherently patriarchal and hierarchical exclusiveness of evangelical male clergy. This was coupled with a perceived anti-intellectualism and cultural suspicion pervading and constraining evangelical thought and practice seeking to be "in the world but not of the world." Each of these women, in different degrees, saw such attitudes as both informing and distorting Evangelical hermeneutics, so that patriarchy and the suppression of women's leadership and ministry, were inextricably linked to biblical authority understood in male terms, implemented to male advantage, and based on an almost total monopoly of male biblical scholarship.  A closed shop of biblical knowledge, (and indeed of formal advanced education), they believed, secured male dominated control of ecclesial power

The importance of such research into the individual experiences and personal stories of those who, over two centuries, chose to make an exit from the evangelical big story is self-recommending. But after reading it I'm left with a hard to shake off depression, an inner repentance at the incapacity of many expressions of evangelicalism, historic and contemporary, to respond creatively and live adaptively with difference, able to welcome and learn from valid questions.

Failure to focus on the Gospel as the commanding invitation to follow Jesus in radical love, to join with Jesus in liberating protest, to be ministers of reconciliation through costly peacemaking, to live with open armed welcome that transcends our constructed divisions whether of gender, doctrine or view of the Bible; and instead to indulge in an eager pursuit of self-defeating and corrosive arguments over doctrine, or hard edged definitions of the Gospel whose goal is to claim exclusive possession of truth, while also disenfranchising those who dare to differ. These are amongst the failures that led to evangelical disenchantment, and therefore disenchanted evangelicals making their exit left.

And yes, there is another side to this story - but that gets told in plenty of other books, from responsible history and theological reflection all the way through to unabashed propaganda. For now, evangelicals who read this book with requisite humility, will hear important voices of protest and insider critique, that requires attention and honest self-appraisal - and the criterion of that critique in my view must be the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the extent of our faithfulness in following after Jesus.  

"here's tae us, wha's like us" - Is there a Scottish spirituality?

 
An area of increasing interest for me is the way a spiritual tradition grows out of its native soil, and takes on the characteristics of its environment. The question of what is distinctive, even unique, in a spiritual tradition depends on the particularities of context - historical, political, cultural, religious - perhaps even geographical.

The term "Scottish piety" (not sure about the continuing usefulness of the ubiquitous descriptor "spirituality") needs some clarifying.
Is there a uniquely Scottish stream of Christian faith as it has been experienced, thought and lived? If so what gives Scottish piety its distinctive flavour?
What in the Scottish context, over centuries, shaped and gave specific Scottish content to Christianity in Scotland, as through processes of revolution and evolution, it developed and changed?

And what is meant by piety? In Scotland, amongst other things the impact of religious experience, doctrinal developments and doctrinal fixity, the role of the Kirk in discipline, worship, liturgy and community and people's experience of all of these. But also the relation of people to Bible, prayer, preaching and the hard to measure extent that such piety and faith exerted on and influenced daily life.

All of this - but even then, "Scottish piety" remains unsatisfactory as a catch-all. For Scotland itself has a religious history and representation as varied as its own georgraphical landscape - Prebyterian and Catholic, Episcopal and Dissenting, Highland and Lowland, West and East - and in all this variety a gift of fractiousness that made fragmentation inevitable, bringing both blessing and loss.

The research part of my current sabbatical is focusing on how to explore all this in a way that will help Scottish Christians to 'look to the rock from which we are hewn". Such an exercise involves a long ponder about what in our tradition, our way of following Christ, is of lasting significance and value, what can be appropriated and what now needs to be relinquished, in order to clarify what faithful following of Christ means in contemporary Scotland. If context is decisive in how a tradition is formed, it is also decisive in how that tradition changes, adapts and stays healthy. Quite straightforward really - not!

A subsidiary interest is the way Scottish Baptist communities have emerged, developed, declined and yet continue to feature within the Scottish ecclesial landscape. Again, the focus of my personal interest is the way Scottish Baptists have experienced, thought and lived out their way of following Christ. The suggestion there is such a disctinctive thing as "Scottish Baptist piety" might be even more contentious. And for that very reason even more interesting, as a route to self-understanding and renewal for communities sharing in the experience of decline, and badly needing to recover confidence in a Gospel which never promised us a rose garden - or an assured place at any table, political or religious, other than the one where bread is broken and broken hearts are healed.

Anyway, that's what I'm about these days.

"The Catholic Spirit", John Bunyan and Post Denominationalism

"Christians are like the several flowers in a garden, that have upon each of them the dew of heaven, which being shaken by the wind, they let fall their dew at each other's roots, whereby they are jointly nourished and become nourishers of one another."

(John Bunyan, Christian Behaviour, quoted in Bunyan the Christian, Gordon Wakefield, Collins, 1992).

Gordon Wakefield was a lifelong Methodist, and passionate ecumenist. He had no hesitation in affirming the valid and rich diversity of the Christian tradition, while holding with careful intent to his own Methodist convictions. Like John Wesley, he exemplified a devout eclecticism, and urged amongst different Christian communities the nurture of 'a Catholic Spirit'. Reading yet again Wesley's great sermon on this theme was one of the diversions of my time at St Deiniol's. The anti-ecumenical stance of some contemporary evangelicals is deeply embedded in some strands of the Evangelical tradition - but it is also challenged by others, including the Wesleys, John Newton, Charles Simeon, and if we include the Puritans then Thomas Goodwin and of course Alexander Whyte. Indeed Whyte defined Evangelical spirituality as Christ-centred and hospitable hearted - a balance that both encourages and enables fellowship, avoids small minded and exclusive claims, and maintains the place of Christ without displacing others.

The text for Wesley's sermon comes from Second Kings, "And when he was departed thence, he lighted on Jehonadab the son of Rechab coming to meet him, and he saluted him, and said to him, Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart? And Jehonadab answered: It is. If it be, give me thine hand." 2 Kings 10:15.

Now we might have some exegetical hesitations about the use of such a text as a justification for the Catholic spirit, and ecumenical engagement. But right hearts and extended hands does seem to suggest a willingness not to see 'the other' as a threat, or one who must think as I think. There's something grudging about giving someone the benefit of the doubt - why not give them the benefit of our goodwill that is willing to take risks? One of the consequences of celebrating, lamenting or simply conceding the onset of  "post-denominationalism" is an impatience with difference, a nervousness about what is distinctive in how various groups of Christians have understood the call of Christ upon their lives. Diversity need not be competitive, exclusive, negative; it can be co-operative, inclusive and positive - and not in any way that need minimise the call of Christ to each of us to be faithful in following Him in the way He has called us to be. Indeed John Bunyan, who knew in his own experience the consequences of offending the rampant rightness of those who used power, exclusion and coercion in their efforts to standardise Christian behaviour and practice, makes exactly this point in Pilgrim's Progress.

"Behold the flowers are divers in Stature, in Quality, and Colour and Smell and Virtue, and some are better than some: Also where the gardener hath set them, there they stand, and quarrel not with one another."
(Quoted in Wakefield, page 67)

I am deeply, probably now indelibly dyed as a Baptist Christian, for whom "our Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour is the sole and absolute Authority in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures....". The Baptist tradition, with its radical and separatist history, has much to offer the Church of Christ, much to teach and much to live up to as a stream in the Christian tradition. But we also have much to receive from the Church of Christ, much to learn, and much to discover and value in what others have experienced and come to know of the fullness and richness of Christ. Here are three verses of a longer hymn from Charles Wesley - they say so much........

Weary of all this wordy strife,
These notions, forms, and modes, and names,
To Thee, the way, the Truth, the Life,
Whose love my simple heart inflames,
Divinely taught, at last I fly,
With Thee and Thine to live and die.

Forth from the midst of Babel brought,
Parties and sects I cast behind;
Enlarged my heart, and free my thought,
Where'er the latent truth I find
The latent truth with joy to own,
And bow to Jesus' name alone.

Join'd to the hidden church unknown
In this sure bond of perfectness
Obscurely safe, I dwell alone
And glory in th' uniting grace,
To me, to each believer given,
To all Thy saints in earth and heaven.

 

Evangelicalism, the Gospel, and Hopeful Imagination in Wales

As the sidebar shows I am reading around Puritanism as a movement at once pastoral, polemical and theological. The recently published Emeregence of Evangelicalism has the subtitle, Exploring Historical Continuities. It is a collection of essays which enter into critical and appreciative conversation with David Bebbington's contention that Evangelicalism properly understood is the movement that began in the early 18th Century Awakenings, an argument supported by evidence shaped around the accompanying defining quadrilateral. Bebbington's thesis is that biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism and activism, represent a cluster of defining characteristics which indicate Evangelicalism was something new in the 18th Century, related to but not continuous with such other movements as Puritanism, Reformed Scholasticism and Continental Pietism.

The question of assurance is a central and contentious theological debate, important in Bebbington's case, where he argues that, for the 18th Century Evangelicals, the search for personal assurance of salvation came to its conclusion in the experience of conversion and regeneration which became itself evidence of salvation. The Enlightenment privileging of empirical experience as evidence rationally interpreted, can be detected in the use by Evangelicals of such words as 'I feel', and  'I know', with reference to personal spiritual encounter.

Following widespread adoption of Bebbington's quadrilateral and its accompanying corollaries, his treatment and defintion of Evangelicalism has become a standard benchmark, broadly received by historians. But there are now other voices questioning whether the discontinuity between earlier movements and Eighteenth Century Evangelicalism are as clear cut and historically certain as Bebbington argues. Several important articles have appeared in recent years, and now this collection of essays throws the debate much more widely open. The resulting statement and restatement of continuities and discontinuities gathers a fascinating, at times persuasive, at other times frustrating chorus of voices. Part of the frustruation is that several of the essays accuse Bebbington of caricaturing earlier expressions of 'evangelical' faith, but come near to caricaturing the position they critique. The fascination comes from many of the essays which undoubtedly raise important questions which require at least a re-alignment of emphases, or a redrawing of the chronology of developments and features.

The response chapter written by David Bebbington is characteristically gracious, and acknowledges the validity of some criticisms, agrees certain emphases need restating, but overall holds to the general proposal that Evangelicalism was something new in the 1730's, but with strong historical continuities with Puritanism and Pietism, that it was strongly influenced by Enlightenment categories, and that it has a remarkable capacity for reflecting and adapting to, the cultural moods of the age, whether the age of Reason, Romanticism or Modernity - and now post-modernity?. In any case, Evangelical historiography is alive and well, and is an essential source of inspiration and education for contemporary Evangelicalism which is in danger of losing continuity with its own historical precedents and values.

 This weekend I'm looking forward to being with the Baptist Union of Wales at their Annual Assembly in Carmarthen. I have the great privilege of being invited to be the keynote speaker for the Assembly on the theme 'Hopeful Imagination'. Readers of this blog will recognise the name of a blog hosted by Andy Goodliff; the phrase is from one of Walter Brueggemann's earlier books on the exilic prophets. There he introduces hopeful imagination as the faith stance of those who, with 'the God who makes all things new' on their cognitive horizons, imagine a different world into being, by giving themselves to serve the new actions and purposes of God in their generation. Here are his words from 1985:

These new actions of God were discernable and spoken precisely by these persons with their enormous prophetic imagination. These poets not only discerned the new actions of God that others did not discern, but they wrought the new actions of God by the power of their imagination, their tongues their words. New poetic imagination evoked new realities in the community.

It may be that preaching today (is it nearly a quarter of a century later?) requires this kind of proclamatory conversation, enabling the community of Christ to discern the new actions of God, and with prophetic imagination, to enter into the new work of God as agents of His kingdom, as witnesses of the Gospel of Christ and as those who confront the growing pessimism and cynicism of a culture afraid of its own dissolution. Hopeful imagination is bold enough to conceive of a different future.