Bader-Saye, Scott.
Grand Rapids, Brazos Press,  2007.
ISBN 978-1-58743-192-0

Here we have an accessible theological text that every minister in placement should read. No, revise that! In these days of the oft-repeated refrains to do with lay leadership and ministry ‘agents’ [an extremely unusual and problematic term] Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear should be required reading. Our Synod is soon to meet and rather than debate report after report, I reckon we could better use the time by reading this book together and engage with the questions Bader-Saye sets at the end of every chapter. Of course, we will not do this – but, if we did, we would be a livelier, more vibrant, generous and courageous church! Maybe key boards and councils could use it as a study book for the year, acquire some necessary direction, and learn to deal with the much-diagnosed lack of trust so often found in the church.

The text itself belongs inside a very good series entitled ‘The Christian Practice of Everyday Life’. I like the look of its companion volumes.  I have purchased a couple of others already: Eric Jacobsen, Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith and Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers. There others do with ‘good eating’ the technological society, reclaiming the body, the faithful use of medicine, living the Sabbath and wrestling with Jesus’ call to non-violence in an evil world.

I had never heard of Bader-Saye before but Following Jesus has attracted a significant cast of back-page supporters: Walter Brueggemann, Stanley Hauerwas, L. Gregory Jones and Sam Wells. This is a good company: they all spoke highly of both Bader-Saye and his book for its ‘courage’, ‘practical wisdom’, ‘timely and provocative nature’, and its ‘hopeful and hope-filled’ reading of the pervasive fear that can grip and contemporary cultures. I have to confess: I bought the book due to these endorsements. One week later I found myself drawing upon Bader-Saye’s reading of discipleship in a climate of fear to complete an article I was writing at the time on alienated neighbours and the Cronulla race riots – for Christ’s sake.

Bader-Saye is writing out of mainstream America. His point of departure for the case he makes about contemporary culture is not, as one might expect, the extremes of terror, 9/11 and violent upheaval. That plays a part but it is not his overriding concern. Bader-Saye is listening into the signals contemporary culture gives off.  He has paid careful attention to the marketing ploys of a consumer society and how advertising, insurance and the media play upon our fears and anxieties. The first pregnancy of his wife alerted him to how fear begins with the prospect of child birth and will subsequently attend the parenting of children. He notes those television infotainment shows – like Today Tonight – which discover how yet another thing can damage us or kill us in the most random of manners and, in the process, build a sub-culture of fear and apprehension.

The church is not exempt. Its proclamation can often exploit fear – and indeed can sometimes market fear. Bader-Saye refers to the ‘shirt evangelism’ he has discovered in the United States where websites sell awesome ‘Fear God’ T-shirts. Some examples are cited: ‘He Ain’t Coming Back to Preach – Fear God!’, featuring a line-drawn image of a man on horseback brandishing a sword, ’It’s a Dreadful Thing to Fall into the Hands of the Living God: Repent or Perish’. The website boasts: ‘The Fear God line of shirts contains bold scriptural truths. You won’t be able to wear one of these shirts without telling someone about Jesus!’

Bader-Saye is not wanting to say that fear is a vice or an evil. There is, of course, a healthy or ‘right fear’. It can indeed be seen as having its origins in love [and the prospect of loss]. The biblical tradition reckons the fear of God to be the beginning of wisdom. We are repeatedly bade ‘do not be afraid’. What Bader-Saye is more concerned about is ‘disordered’ or ‘excessive’ fear and how it create a particular kind of cultural climate. There is need to put ‘fear in its place’.  And so Bader-Saye sets about the task of describing its anatomy. What is fear? How is it ‘made up’? What is the difference between ‘right’ and ‘disordered’ fear?

For the sake of this discussion Bader-Saye takes us into a fascinating journey which includes classical theologians, cultural comments, politics and the occasional parable taken from Star Wars. Bader-Saye is interdisciplinary at critical points: he draws upon the sociology of fear done by Frank Furedi and the work on that much over-hyped, double-edged concept, ‘community’. What we have here is good theology made contextual and accessible and immediate. Every chapter ends with an engaging set of questions which could be the source of a helpful group discussion which allows participants to talk about the nature and types of fear, but, doing so, in a context which allows for the possibility of an appropriate sometimes costly, path of discipleship.

Bader-Saye is thus at pains to describe the anatomy of fear and consider its moral consequences. Drawing upon Aquinas he suggests that there are two common options. Faced with a disordered or excessive fear we are likely to ‘attack or contract’ in a spirit of self-preservation: ‘we dig ourselves in’. This tendency to contract can be hidden away in a raft of familiar sayings like ‘saving up for a rainy day’. ‘Aquinas describes how we ‘extend ourselves into fewer things’.   Safety and security, all of a sudden, become the aspirational values. The ‘shadow virtues’ of fear are identified as suspicion and pre-emption which is seen as ‘doing unto others before they do unto you’!] Bader-Saye wonders how this kind of emotive and moral outlook compares with the classical Christian conviction that the end of life is to glorify God and seek friendship with God.

 Aquinas reckons we can end up fearing what we should not and fearing as we should not. These options are fed by and feed into the contemporary ‘epidemic of loneliness and alienation’. The road to complicity is short. Individuals, communities and churches can quickly be tempted into ways of self-preservation and protection.

Bader-Saye’s description of fear is extremely helpful but it is not an end in itself. The description of a culture of fear is predicated on the notion of following Jesus. Fore this connection to be made Bader-Saye does not move too quickly – an all too common problem. There are stages along the way. The first step has been to give words to fear – in other words, to go through this naming exercise. So much of fear’s power relies upon it being consigned to a ‘wordless darkness’; it seeks out ‘your weakest spot’ but does so in a way that is not named. The virtue which Bader-Saye effectively uses then as a bridge, a middle axiom, is courage. Bader-Saye defines courage as ‘the capacity to do what is right and good in the face of fear’.

The link which is made between courage and following Jesus happens through reference to the doctrine of providence. Bader-Saye is deeply conscious of how poorly providence can fare in today’s world. It can seem old-fashioned, anachronistic. The management and media cultures in which we find ourselves do not leave much room for providence.

The way in which Bader-Saye comes at providence is through what he calls a narrative lens. The intention is to establish a ‘pattern recognition’ between the stories of Scripture and personal narratives?  How do we find patterns in the pieces? Can we see through texts that resonate with who we are / should be a pattern of how God has worked in the past? The underlying assumption is that this model ‘figures’ how God works in the present. Through such a figurative reading of narrative  providence assumes a character. It lies beyond security and an insurance style of faith. It embraces vulnerability. Bader-Saye argues that providence makes possible courage, hope and patience. It enables the faithful individual and community to be bound to stories which offer up the prospect of hospitality. The capacity to appreciate difference and welcome the stranger represents an alternative to fear and suspicion.

It is not too difficult then to make a connection between hospitality and Jesus. Bader-Saye will extend the link to include peacemaking and generosity. It would, of course, be possible to promote a different understanding of Jesus – perhaps one which is more apocalyptic. Bader-Saye has made a hermeneutical choice. And that is the point. Bader-Saye is intent on mapping an understanding of Christ for a time of fear. He is doing so for the sake of discipleship and following. Bader-Saye has devised a way of engaging with fear with a focus on following Jesus but which is also aided and supported by a collection of doctrines,

 This is a very good book. It is timely. It could serve as the basis for a series of sermons. And those sermons could be accompanied by study groups making use of the questions  at the end of each chapter. As a matter of fact a whole synod could benefit from such study rather than spending x hours on assorted papers.

Clive Pearson,
United Theological College.

Rev. Clive Pearson is the Principal of United Theological College, North Parramatta, where he has been lecturing since 1997.  He is the editor of ‘Faith in a Hyphen: Cross-cultural Theologies DownUnder’, ’30 Years: Korean Ministry in Australia’ , ‘Ian Breward, Letters and Tributes’ and is on the editorial board for the ’International Journal of Public Theology’, ‘Cross-Culture: A Journal of Theology and Ministerial Practice, and Political Theology.

Yet the idea that the Church should have anything to do with political debate has come under serious question in those societies that are secularist liberal.  Of course, the democratic state must be secular, for, being the business of all citizens, it cannot privilege any one point of view, especially in a pluralist and multi-faith community.  As with so much connected with our political institutions, the discussion begins in America, where the doctrine of the ‘separation of church and state’ received its first institutional expression.  The term was made famous by Thomas Jefferson, who was responding to the Baptist Association in Danbury, Connecticut, concerned about their freedom to worship.  It had previously been theorized by sometime Baptist, Roger Williams, the Founder of Rhode Island, and given firmer philosophical underpinnings by the devout English political theorist, John Locke, in his Letter Concerning Toleration of 1688.  (For Locke’s place as the cornerstone of human equality based on the providence of God, see Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke and Equality. Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought, Cambridge, 2002.)  The original doctrine of separation had nothing to do with secularist liberalism, but was entirely based on the free expression of the worship of God.  The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States prohibits Congress from making any law ‘respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’.  Yet political liberalism has veered in a different direction where, Locke notwithstanding, all reliance on the providence of a (non-existent) God is held to be irrational.  This was not the position of the American Founders.  In his influential Religion in Public Life. A Dilemma for Democracy, Washington, 1996, Ronald Thiemann explains how James Madison, the chief drafter of the Constitution and a fierce champion of the ‘separation’, defended the free worship of God.  As Madison declared: ‘Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.  If this freedom is abused, it is an offense against God, not against man’ (Thiemann, p. 210).

Thiemann’s account is a timely corrective to the widespread assumption that the Founders were somehow against religion.  The secularist liberal attitude is in part fed by a reliance on the alleged secularism of the Enlightenment, but that also is not an unmixed legacy, since key Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau and Adam Smith were avowedly religious, and this was also the age of John Wesley, Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, all devout and influential Christians.  We now have a sophisticated challenge to the idea that early modernity arose from secularist foundations in Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, Chicago, 2008.

The emergence of secularist liberalism is paralleled by the process of ‘secularization’.  The magisterial exposition of this phenomenon is Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge, Mass., 2007.  David Martin, of the London School of Economics, has written On Secularization.  Towards a Revised General Theory, Aldershot, 2005.  Recent work by the American sociologist, Peter Berger, and his associates, has insisted that American religiosity is not a sign of its ‘exceptionalism’, since most of the rest of the world, apart from Europe, is either maintaining long held religious observance or is undergoing intensive evangelization (see Peter Berger, Grace Davie and Effie Fokas, Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations, Farnham, 2008; cf. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy, New York, 1990).  On Europe, Philip Jenkins has suggested that the deep seated religious symbols of secular Europe — not least its towering cathedrals — may well come back into political prominence the more Muslim immigration demands special legislation to accommodate Islamic sensibilities (Jenkins, God’s Continent. Oxford, 2007).

Interpretation of the ‘Establishment Clause’ by the court system in America has been erratic and inconsistent.  Yet there has a risen a ‘culture of disbelief’, which has been aided and abetted by court decisions and political argument, as is demonstrated by Stephen Carter, The Culture of Disbelief.  How American Courts and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, New York, 1994.  The courts have propagated Roger Williams’s metaphor, the ‘wall of separation’, especially following a judgment by Justice Hugo Black in 1947, but in more recent times law schools in America have been almost held in thrall to the philosophy of the Harvard professor, John Rawls, who argued powerfully in Political Liberalism, New York, 1993, that public discourse should be kept free from the influence of ‘comprehensive doctrines’, mainly religious beliefs.  The idea seemed to be that if people were attached to a particular dogma, their ability to participate in free and open discussion would be cramped.  He argued for an ‘overlapping consensus’ which admitted of points of view that could be accepted as ‘reasonable’ by all participating parties. Rawls held that some such dogmas would be dangerous, since they would risk the imposition by force of narrow religious teachings that would suit neither people of different faiths nor people of no faith.  Issues like abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage are hot-ticket issues in American politics, and many secularists are aghast at the prospect of succumbing to legislation that was introduced on the authority of the Jewish and Christian Bibles.  After the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York there was an rise in sectarian feeling, and a brief surge of Christian religious fervour.  In the heat of conflicting passions, some conservative Christians, forgetting Christ’s declaration that his kingdom was not of this world, asserted that ‘God wants us to take dominion’.  It was probably an unfortunate slip of the tongue when George W. Bush announced a ‘crusade’ against terror after the attacks; at least he did not repeat the gaffe.

John Rawls’ position incurred much critical debate, not least from people defending a Christian point of view.  If contributing to an overlapping consensus meant that people should discard the beliefs that struck deepest in their personalities, that constituted their being, then their participation would mean a discarding of their essential selves.  In any case, it seemed curious that a liberal arena of free speech should be set up to exclude any particular point of view.  Earlier liberals, like the deeply Christian John Milton, and the Utilitarian John Stuart Mill, had argued that the arena of free speech would allow truth to surface and to submerge false and pernicious arguments.  According to the Princeton philosopher, Jeffrey Stout, democracy is a tradition, the product of historical evolution, and not a matter of ‘agreement’ or ‘consensus’ at any moment in time.  A Christian has no option but to accept Christ as the Truth, Karl Barth proclaimed (Stout, Democracy and Tradition, Princeton, 2004, p. 109).  Stout opposes Stanley Hauerwas’s exclusivism, which construes Christians as ‘resident aliens’ in a hostile world: if Christianity is true, then liberalism must be false (Hauerwas, A Better Hope. Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy and Postmodernity, Grand Rapids, 2000).  Stout says Christians should not be identified by what they are against.  Liberalism, of course, is scarcely beyond criticism. Timothy Jackson, in Love Disconsoled: Meditations on Christian Charity, Cambridge, 1999, sees that a community is not possible without a measure of self-scrutiny based on standards that come from outside itself.  Liberalism typically rests its confidence in the autonomous self, but Jackson argues that ‘…in the absence of standards and interests “not just our own”, we tend to be incapable of any standards all, even prudence’, quoted in Stout, p. 257.  In this, he recalls Luther’s famous asseveration that our theology is sound because it sets us outside ourselves.  The liberal pragmatist, Richard Rorty, is even more forthright than Rawls about the exclusion of all religious discourse from the realm of policy formation; in some respects his fear of the powerful conservatism of the ‘religious right’ justifies his position, but again, the exclusion of people with legitimate concerns from the democratic square is unacceptable.  Cornel West, in Democracy Matters.  Winning the Fight Against Imperialism, New York, 2004, is a fervent advocate for religious influence in politics.  He agrees with Stout that two of the most far-reaching democratic reforms — the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s  — were motivated by Christian precepts about the dignity and equality of humankind before God. 

A wariness about the influence of the Christian Right does not come from liberals and secularists alone.  Some devout Christians are staunch advocates of the separation of church and state, a principle that demands considerable sacrifice on the part of religious bodies.  Barry W. Lynn is a minister of the United Church of Christ and has been executive Director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.  His Piety & Politics. The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom, New York, 2006, expresses a fear for the integrity of Christian worship threatened by those who would impose on their whole country a ‘biblical’ faith allegedly without interpretation, when in fact the Bible is used as an ideological weapon to support their own eccentric political views.  Lynn argues against religious interference with school curricula, such as the imposition of creationist science or biology, the adoption of religious symbols in courthouses and other public places, religiously motivated censorship, and an obsession with sex that amounts to a ‘war on our private lives’.  The costs can be substantial, because holding to the separation of church and state with integrity means forgoing tax concessions and public subsidies, and the administration of public funds for religious charities — Bush’s so-called ‘faith-based initiatives’.  Above all it means avoiding all advocacy of war and violence, which includes the Religious Right’s seemingly strong approval of the death penalty.

None of this is to say that, against the biblical warrant mentioned at the outset, religion has no part to play in public life.  The ‘separation’ requires a separation from the means of coercion or of force, which in a democracy is entirely the province of the secular state.  Robert Audi pursues this theme in Religious Commitment and Secular Reason, Cambridge, 2000, where he reinforces the separation of church and state while commending religious motives for political action, provided that they are not designed to restrict anyone’s freedom.  The idea that religious bodies should physically coerce conformity with their beliefs and opinions is entirely repugnant to religions of peace, and is completely at odds with the Christian Gospel.  As we have observed, the abolition of slavery or the advances in civil rights could not have been achieved without the exertion of government power — very tragically in the case of the Civil War fought against slavery.   Is there a paradox here, for we have affirmed that both movements were inspired by religious conviction?   No, because in each case the resort to arms and the enactment of coercive legislation respectively were carried out by the secular state.  The agitation for them came from religious movements, arguing in the political arena on the basis of their religious convictions.  The process took the form of intimations from the religious to the secular — compelling messages that could not forever be ignored, but that had to be acted upon after much serious, and reasonable, debate.  The example of Christ is to stand upon one’s God-inspired convictions, even unto the cross; in Jesus’s case the clash with the powers that be was inevitable, but there was never any hint of coercion on his part; the Kingdom Not Of This World knew nothing of physical coercion.

While Christian commitment could well entail engagement with politics, there is no warrant for a Christian political party or political movement, since Christ’s love and mercy, emanating from the Kingdom not of this world, can never be confined to a partisan cause or to any particular group of people.  He grants no political privileges to people calling themselves Christians.  Parties called ‘Christian Democrats’ are a contradiction in terms, their name bordering on the blasphemous.  Something of this point of view is espoused by Glenn Tinder, whose The Political Meaning of Christianity, Baton Rouge, 1989, advocates a ‘prophetic stance’, indicating an orientation to worldly politics that offers a Christian ‘wisdom that is pertinent to political as well as personal life’.  ‘Christian principles place one in a radical — that is critical and adverse — relationship to established institutions.  The Kingdom of God is a judgment on the existing society; the immanence of the Kingdom of God symbolizes its impermanence.’ (p. 154). J. Philip Wogaman likewise appeals to the sovereignty of God to criticize current politics.  For him the Christian message enjoins the avoidance of violence and God’s preference for the poor and defenceless.  It also supplies a shield against the arrogance of executive power, and provides wise counsel to the powerful. 

Some of Wogaman’s exposition accounts for differences in Christian approaches, particularly as between ‘mainstream liberals’ and ‘neo-Conservatives’.  These categories are not always so clear-cut.  In recent times a great deal of headway has been made by self-confessed Evangelical, Jim Wallis, who has decisively dissociated himself from the Christian Right, and has confronted their shock jock advocates with courage and resolution.  Wallis has founded the journal Sojourners, which sets out to be the embodiment of God’s preference for the poor, and challenges the state to enact more just and compassionate legislation.  Wallis is heavily engaged politically, without compromising the integrity of his Christian faith.  In three recent books he has set out his manifesto:  in God’s Politics.  How the American Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, Oxford, 2005, he launches a frontal attack on the pretensions of ‘bible-hugging’ fundamentalists to seize the political agenda.  About this book, Tim Costello says that it is addressed ‘to those who wondered how the message of Jesus ever became aligned with big business, military spending, gun ownership, tax cuts and disdain for the environment’.  Jim Wallis is much more than an author and a pastor.  He is an experienced and effective lobbyist with the powerful, an organizer of conferences and seminars, and a catalyst for petitions and letter writing campaigns, all in the cause of Christian social justice.  His The Great Awakening. Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, New York, 2008, seeks to tap into the reserves of American religiosity, particularly on the part of those surprised to find a Christian advocating social justice reforms, and to adumbrate the future of Christian reform advocacy.  In Rediscovering Values On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street.  A Moral Compass for the New Economy, Wallis takes up the challenge posed by the global financial crisis by condemning the self-centred posture of the recently failed capitalists, discarding the ‘greed is good’ ideology that preceded it, and calling for a new consensus on what is moral behaviour in a mutually caring community.

In Australia, often claimed to be the great post-Enlightenment society, we do not experience America’s widespread religious fervour, nor its intense intra-faith conflicts, at least not since the sectarian warfare between Protestants and Catholics up to the 1950s.  Perhaps as a consequence, we do not have the same outpouring of polemical religious literature that one finds in the US.  There have been a number of useful historical studies that impinge on the political.  In A Crucible of Prophets. Australians and the Question of God, Sydney, 1981, the Catholic public theologian and literary critic, Veronica Brady challenged the prevailing utilitarian characterization of Australia with a fair appraisal of its spirituality.   Roger C. Thompson, in Religion in Australia, Melbourne, 2002, explores the shaping of political attitudes through sectarian religion.  Robert D. Linder, in The Long Tragedy.  Australian Evangelical Christians and the Great War, 1914-1918, Adelaide, 2000, shows how Evangelicals were taught about war as ‘God’s instrument’, and how the Great War would be a ‘holy war’.  Likewise, Stuart Piggin’s Evangelical Christianity in Australia.  Spirit, word and world,  Melbourne, 1996, demonstrates the evangelical embrace of political liberalism in early Australia, together with the evangelicals’ work in shaping civic communities in the outback.

On matters of religion and social justice, Catholic theologians, serving under the umbrella of the famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum, are prominent.  For example, see Bruce Duncan’s The Church’s Social Teaching. From Rerum Novarum to 1931, North Blackburn, 1991, or Mark O’Connor’s contribution to Peter J. Henriot, Edward p. De Berry, Michael J. Schultheis and O’Connor, Catholic Social Teaching.  Our Best Kept Secret, North Blackburn, 1992;  or on labour rights see Tim Battin’s Full Employment. Towards a Just Society, Sydney, 1997.  On the evangelical side, see Noel Weeks (ed.), Reflected Light.  Essays in Christian Social Policy, Sydney, 2005.  The Uniting Church’s social justice directorate, UnitingJustice, maintains a prolific website which makes available pamphlets, press releases and public statements on topical justice issues in Australia, at    http://www.unitingjustice.org.au/     The volumes of Spirit of Australia.  Religion in Citizenship and National Life, first volume edited by Brian Howe and Alan Nichols, Hindmarsh, 2001; and second volume edited by Brian Howe and Philip Hughes, Hindmarsh, 2003, contain much sophisticated insight on the relation between religion and politics in Australia.  There has been some recent concern about the possible infiltration of right-wing conservative Christian ideals into Australian political life, as debated by Amanda Lohrey, in her Quarterly Esssay, Voting For Jesus/ Christianity and Politics in Australia, Melbourne, 2006, and Marion Maddox, in a book titled, with delicious irony, God Under Howard. The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics, Crows Nest, 2005.  Her earlier parliamentary fellowship led to a fruitful study of the level of engagement with religion by federal politicians: For God and Country. Religious Dynamics in Australian Federal Politics, Canberra, 2001.

Of course a brief survey such as this can scarcely do justice to the volume of work on religion and politics, which would fill many libraries.   The literature on the puritans in both Britain and America, for example, is vast, and has strong implications for the emergence of democracy in the modern world.  Denominational studies frequently discuss the impact of their traditions on political developments, and the list could go on and on.  Of enormous importance in today’s world is the interaction between the Muslim and the Christian worlds, a topic so huge as not to be even attempted.  The above review merely tries to deal with a few pertinent topics on the interface between the religious and secular worlds, and is offered as a brief indication of certain trends of argument.

Graham Maddox

Professor Dr. Graham Maddox is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts for twelve years at the University of New England, and was a member of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton in 2006-7.  He is author of ‘Australian Democracy in Theory and Practice’, ‘The Political Writings of John Wesley’ and ‘Religion and the Rise of Democracy’, a historical and political survery of the contribution of religion to the development of democracy, from ancient Israel contemporary movements in England, America and Latin America, Poland, Germany and South Africa. 

Graham is an Accredited Lay Preacher within the Armidale, Uralla and Guyra Uniting Church congregations, and a member of the Uniting Justice Reference Committee. 

 “I don’t think we need ordination at all. Anyone can do what ministers do.”, was a reflection once made to me at a Synod meeting by, perhaps unsurprisingly, a lay leader. If the meaning of ordination is somewhat misunderstood (and often dismissed as irrelevant) within the church in Australia, its place and role within public life is even more conflicted. The embedded anti-authoritarianism of the Australian psyche tends to make the general public wary of any institutional leadership, religious or secular. The overlaid piety and claims of divine mandate that come with the identity of the clergy only exacerbate this suspicion. Ordination, or at least people’s impressions of it, gets a hard time both within and without the church in Australia.

Written out of the starkly different context of Durham Cathedral with its long history and prominence in English religious and cultural life, one might think, then, that Michael Sadgrove’s 2008 work Wisdom & Ministry: The Call to Leadership, which he describes as,  “an attempt to reflect on the meaning (his italics) of ordained ministry as it is understood and experienced both by the Church and by the ordained themselves” (p3), might seem somewhat out of place for an Australian readership, lay or ordained. Occasionally, this potential disconnect is borne out as it is in the story of the person who asked Sadgrove once why he hadn’t been at his morning prayers, still a requirement of canon law in the Church of England (pp100-101), and a daily duty for parish priests. While Sadgrove realises through this encounter that the public expectation of what role priests fulfil, as interpreters of the faith for the community at large is still very alive in the consciousness of people looking on, it is hard to imagine a similar problem in Australia where the church has to constantly fight for acceptance and respect in the public square. It’s not that Sadgrove paints the ordained ministry as an easy vocation to live out in today’s world – quite the opposite –  (see ch 4, pgs 48-59, and pgs, 94-96, 125, 129 & 135), but rather that there is never any question of its right to exist within the public sphere.

Such contextual differences aside though, Sadgrove’s reflections (and that’s what they are – this is in no way a systematic work) on the meaning of ordained ministry and the place of wisdom in forming ministers are deeply theological and surely challenging and helpful to anyone who senses God’s call to this vocation and for the church at large. All candidates for ministry should read this book before they are ordained.  

In a general sense, one of Sadgrove’s greatest achievements is to overcome some of the key dichotomies that have come to influence unhelpfully reflection on ordination and show how calling to ministry in this regard is a far deeper and more cohesive reality. An obvious one is between what the minister ‘does’ and who the minister ‘is’, or perhaps whose the minister is. Rather than fall back on either side of what is an unhelpful divide, Sadgrove portrays a dialectical, integrated, and creative connection between the formation and the function of the minister within the public office of the ordained. On the contrary, in ordained ministry identity and interaction, reflection and response, personal prayer and pastoral practice, belong inherently together, a point Sadgrove makes abundantly clear throughout. He writes, “Much of this book is concerned with the inner world of the minister, because it is from there that testimony and proclamation come.” (p78), and axiomatic to his analysis is that, “…self knowledge is the basis of all true wisdom.” (p19).

In a similar vein, and this is perhaps the most telling and destructive dualism that has come to bear on the church’s life in the last half century, Sadgrove quashes the tendency to affirm any intentional separation of the public and private lives of the minister. Using the very pertinent example of King David, he says, “…what we are in our personal lives and relationships is inextricably linked to what we are in our public lives and leadership roles. It is a fallacy to imagine that it doesn’t matter what we do or are in private provided our ministry is un-affected.” (p65). The obvious corollary is that our ministry is never un-affected by ‘what we do or are in private’. For the modern church, so often displaying a lack of wisdom by blithely embracing such dualisms, this is a salient point (see also Sadgrove’s critical concern over any separation between liturgy and mission, p99).

It is through this lens of wisdom, then, that Sadgrove sees the deepest meaning in the Christian life and in ordained ministry, and, it may be said, the greatest potential for formation, insight, and powerful presentation of the gospel message. For him, wisdom is discovered, displayed, and developed, at the intersection of the various aspects that come together in ordination – the calling and purpose of God, the life of the individual (public and private), the public witness of the church, and the leadership of God’s people – yet it is also that which determines the efficacy and power of the ongoing Christian witness as these things continue to intersect in pastoral ministry. “How to present the hope of the gospel honestly, intelligently, attractively in our time”, he writes, “calls for wisdom of the deepest kind.” (p25), where wisdom is seen, “in the Hebrew sense of having insight into the way things are and where God is to be found in them…” (p25).

While Sadgrove presses home the need for individual clergy to seek, acquire, and nurture wisdom throughout their pastoral ministry, he perhaps could have made more of the need for a collective wisdom, an ecclesial wisdom, which the church must also develop in relation to the place of ordination within its life and witness. Rightly understood as a gracious gift of God (2 Tim. 1:6), ordination is as such given both to the individual who is called by the Holy Spirit to the vocation of servant leadership, and to the community who will choose, affirm, and set apart, those who will fulfil this particular calling.

The gravity of what is being affirmed and enacted in ordination has too often been taken lightly or even caricatured within the church, especially in the Australian context. Ordaining men and women to represent the Triune God to God’s people and vice-versa, to carry their burdens and walk with them in suffering, to shepherd  spiritually and protect them, to preside at the sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism, to preach the good news of Jesus Christ from the scriptures, to interpret and sift through the traditions of the church, to guide them in prayer and peacemaking, to bury and marry them, and to engage the gospel in the public context, is no small thing. The church’s very identity is at stake, for as Sadgrove makes plain, “…the leadership of any organization sets its tone, articulates its vision, inculcates its values.” (p6).

The weight of this calling so regularly lost on sceptics who look on ordination with indifference or even scorn could often not seem heavier to those who actually bear this yoke. Further, as William Willimon has pointed out, even communities which consciously eschew ordination will still have within them those who exercise many of the functions of spiritual leadership (see William Willimon, (2002), Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, Abingdon, Nashville, p49). Sadgrove might have missed an opportunity to open up a richer discussion of the role of wisdom for the collective people of God in reflecting on the place of ordination and how discernment is exercised in selecting and forming ministers.

There can be no debate, though, about the insightfulness of much of what Sadgrove has to say. Even his calling the church back to the place and importance of wisdom for its life and witness makes this book worth reading. Those already engaged in ordained ministry within the Uniting Church and elsewhere and those preparing for it will find Wisdom & Ministry: The Call to Leadership particularly powerful. The hope is that, in addition, a wider readership might also help the UCA reclaim ordination as a vital part of its ecclesiology; at the very least to commit itself to the ongoing task of becoming wise in the ways of God as a people of faith.

Rev Michael Earl
Wesley Mission, Sydney

Rev. Michael Earl is a member of the Ministry team at Wesley Mission in Sydney, responsible for the Wesley Chapel in the City Congregation.  Michael is also a gifted musician and writer, co-writing the theme song for the 2009 12th Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, ‘Holy Spirit Rain’ with Rev. Phil Newton.

(Download the full, referenced review here)

Introduction
My recently completed PhD thesis in ecotheology  reinforces a trend to cross-disciplinary research. As the very term “eco-theology”, ecological theology, indicates, this discipline forms part of a renewed discussion between theology and science. In my thesis, an ecotheological reading of how humans have affected the Murray-Darling Basin’s waterways, a number of the “natural” sciences, “human” sciences and history, inform several sub-disciplines within theology and biblical studies.

Accordingly, the thesis’ bibliographical “catchment area” is itself large, and the bibliography kept growing after I had completed the initial drafts of the literature review chapter. That chapter was itself not uncontroversial among my markers. Having realised that I could not comprehensively review the literature in each of the disciplines and stay within the word limit I adopted an approach that Paul Santmire calls “probes” , looking in some detail at vital contributions to each of the particular disciplines relevant to my thesis. Although this was not the traditional approach to a literature review I felt it was a practical solution to a consequence of engaging in cross-disciplinary research, and that it was appropriate to the thesis’ methodology. For the whole thesis turned on appraising whether the argument presented in one short journal article made sense in a particular geographical area.

That journal article is The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis , by American medieval historian Lynn White Jnr.  In this paper I shall stay almost entirely with White’s crucial article and the books and articles, related to ecotheology, that I discussed in my thesis’ literature review chapter. That leaves out, through lack of space, the science of chapter 3, the insights on Aboriginal people of chapter four, the history of European colonization of chapters 5 and 6, the field study and the qualitative research methodology of chapter 7, the theological “heavy lifting” of chapters 8 and 10, and the biblical studies of chapter 9. Perhaps they can be for another occasion. Having outlined my chapter structure, and before going into detail about White’s article and some of the other key books and journal articles I should really let you know what my thesis was about!

Abstract
The thesis’ title is “Release the river! An ecotheological reading of how the Murray-Darling Basin’s human inhabitants have affected its waterways.” Not simply a theological reading, it is an ecotheological reading of a case study in human ecology that explores whether the argument advanced by Lynn White in his article is supported by the effects humans have had on the waterways of Australia’s Murray Darling Basin. One of the progenitors of the modern environmental movement, and an irritating voice who stimulated the modern discipline of ecotheology, White claimed that Christianity, as it has developed in the West, has formed the worldview responsible for the ecological crisis afflicting the world today. After reading ecotheologically the Aboriginal societies and the development of European settler society that supplanted them in the Murray-Darling Basin in regard to spirituality, worldview and the ways in which each has affected the Basin’s waterways; and having conducted a field study that explored how participants connected with a number of Uniting Church congregations around the Basin relate their Christian faith with the environments in which they live, I conclude that this ecotheological case study supports White’s “ecological complaint” against western Christianity.

The rich ecotheological resources of the Bible and Christian theology invite the question of how this complaint can be sustained. I argue that in western theology God’s transcendence dominates God’s immanence, allowing the Bible’s and Christian theology’s high view of humankind to be distorted into an anthropocentrism inimical to the rest of creation. The world-wide ecological crisis provides the Church with an impetus to restore an integrated understanding of the Trinitarian God who is both transcendent and immanent, and of the Gospel which is theocentric, biocentric and enriched by the insight that “God’s kingdom is creation healed” , rather than anthropocentrically focused upon some form of human salvation.  Starting from the exhortation “Release the river!” in the thesis’ title I outline an “ecotheology of rivers” that, centering on the biblical motif of “the river of the water of life” and Jesus’ invitation at Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, to drink from Him, argues that a proper understanding and acceptance of the Holy Spirit helps humans to experience God immanently and to release to God the many things that we, in our desire for control over creation, have dammed.

Methodology
The state the Basin’s waterways is a prominent Australian example of what  Lynn White termed “ecologic crisis”. White famously took the western form of Christianity to task for “bearing a huge burden of guilt” for this crisis. His paper has had a profound impact on ecological awareness and discussion and his identification of the roots of ecological crisis as being theological in nature stimulated the emergence of the discipline of ecotheology. Reprinted in numerous volumes, treated with deference by many in the ecological movement from the 1970s onward, but greeted with criticism and even derision by a number of scholars and church writers, it nevertheless calls to mind for the Lutheran pastor and theologian Paul Santmire “the influence of Martin Luther’s ’95 Theses” , and continues to be cited in ecological and ecotheological circles to this day.

My thesis’ methodology is to assess whether the claims Lynn White made in The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis hold true in the Basin. White’s thesis, written at a high level of generality, provides a “generative framework”, an “ideal type” of which Max Weber has written:
 “The more sharply and precisely the ideal type has been constructed,
 thus the more abstract and unrealistic in this sense it is, the better it is able to  perform its functions in formulating terminology, classifications, and hypotheses. In  working out a concrete causal of individual events, the procedure of the historian is  essentially the same.”

Weber’s theory of “ideal types” has, therefore, provided the methodological and theoretical grounding for my approach. By arguing at a global level of generality, or at least at that of the whole of western civilization, White provided Weber’s ‘ideal type” against which the specific and local case study could be appraised. I evaluated White’s claims in the local, or at least regional context of the Murray-Darling Basin which was settled by Europeans during the time period crucial to White’s argument. My thesis does not an attempt to prove that “White was right”. Rather, the purpose of this case study in contextual theology is to provide material for further biblical and ecotheological reflection in the final two chapters.

Review
Because White’s article is so seminal for ecotheology and so central to my methodology I shall review it and the academic community’s polarized response to it in some detail. This, I think, is as good a way as any into the discipline of ecotheology. The issues raised by White have, for example, been raised once more in James Cameron’s hugely successful film Avatar.

“All forms of life modify their contexts”, wrote White and, “ever since man became a numerous species he has affected his environment notably.”

That word “affected” is vital to my purpose, forming the past participle of the verb in my thesis’ title. White’s premise is that humans, like all other species, affect their contexts but, in contrast to, say, coral polyps, whose effects he describes as “spectacular and benign”, up until the last third of the twentieth century the effects that humans have had on their ecological contexts have been spectacularly deleterious.

White attributes the huge increases in “man-induced changes” to ecology to the “marriage between science and technology” about four (now five) generations ago in Western Europe and North America. He dates the widespread acceptance of this “Baconian creed” whereby scientific knowledge means technological power over nature to about 1850, and rates its acceptance as a normal pattern of action as

 “the greatest event in human history since the invention of agriculture, and perhaps  in nonhuman terrestrial history as well.”

This is because

 “the impact of our race upon the environment has so increased in force that it has  increased in essence.”

Through science and technology humans can now completely change the ecology of the planet.

 “…surely no creature other than man has ever managed to foul its nest in such  short order,” White remarked.

Addressing the question of what to do about this crisis White suggested that we

 “begin by looking in some historical depth at the presuppositions that underlie  modern technology and science.”

His first point was that these fused, quite suddenly, towards the middle of the 19th century, a development

 “surely related to the slightly prior and contemporary democratic revolutions which,  by reducing social barriers, tended to assert a functional unity of brain and hand.”

White wondered whether

 “a democratised world can survive its own implications,”

and concluded that

 “presumably we cannot unless we rethink our axioms.”
Next White pointed out that although both endeavours have taken much from all over the world, in their present form modern science and technology are both distinctively occidental, and that the West has led in these areas for longer than is generally thought. White put a tentative date of as early as 800 CE on the beginnings of the West’s use of technology in industry, and argued that the distinctive Western tradition of science began in the late 11th century

 “with a massive movement of translation of Arabic and Greek scientific works into  Latin.”

Since the roots of Western dominance in both technology and science are therefore medieval White examined

 “fundamental medieval assumptions and developments.”

He argued that the development, in northern Europe, of the heavy plough suitable for the heavy soils of the region meant that

 “distribution of land was based no longer on the needs of a family but…on the  capacity of a power machine to till the earth.”

Man’s relation to the soil was profoundly changed from being “part of nature” to “the exploiter of nature.” He detected the same exploitive attitude to nature in Frankish calendars from before 830 CE, signalling that

 “Man and nature are two things, and man is master.”
At this point White made the connection with religion:

 “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves  in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs  about our nature and destiny – that is, by religion.”

Like the word ecology, coined only in 1866, “human ecology” is a recent concept. It is “an emergent science of relationships between people and the natural environment” which investigates how “humans change and are affected by their environment”.   The link between humans and the environment was not obvious to many steeped in the tradition of Western Scientific Experimental Method. Under the influence of Descartes’ Meditations

 “reality came to be viewed as a strictly mechanical realm whose laws of operation  could only be expressed in mathematical analysis. A clear distinction had been  made between the mechanical and human worlds.” 

As if it were not enough, in the 1960s when the natural sciences still reigned supreme in the western mindset, to invoke the new human science of human ecology, White boldly linked it with religion. In so doing he laid a foundation for another emergent discipline – ecotheology.

The western scientific tradition that resulted in the Enlightenment and was epitomised by scholars such as Descartes and Francis Bacon succeeded so thoroughly in separating westerners’ perceptions of religion and science that White pointed to eastern culture to support his argument. That human ecology was very influenced by religion was evident to westerners when they viewed overtly religious eastern cultures such as India or Ceylon, but is

 “equally true of ourselves and of our medieval ancestors.”

Having demonstrated from his field of expertise in medieval history that medieval Europeans had an exploitative attitude towards nature White argued that this had its roots in our forbears’ religion:

 “The victory of Christianity over paganism was the greatest psychic revolution in the  history of our culture.”

White began to justify this large claim by observing that although many feel that the scientific and technological age in which we live is post-Christian,

 “to my eye the substance [of our thinking and language] often remains amazingly  akin to that of the past.”

Specifically, our

 “implicit faith in perpetual progress…was unknown either to Greco-Roman antiquity  or to the Orient”,

but

 “rooted in, and…indefensible apart from…Judeo-Christian teleology”.

If atheistic Marxism, which White regarded as a Judeo-Christian heresy, shares both this teleology and the commitment to progress through science and technology it is not surprising that westerners who regard themselves as post-Christian or non-Christian westerners do the same. Although some have objected that other cultures have shared Christianity’s linear teleology White was simply trying to explain the causes of the worldview responsible for the development of the modern science and technology that are causing the ecological damage.

What did Christianity tell people about their relations with the environment, that is, about human ecology? White pointed out that as well as

 “a concept of time as nonrepetitive and linear”

it inherited from Judaism

 “a striking story of creation”.

White neglected to mention that the Bible contains several creation accounts and he conflated the first two of them, but his point remains that,

 “…although man’s body is made of clay, he is not simply part of nature: he is made  in God’s image. Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most  anthropocentric religion the world has seen.”

Now he explained his previous sweeping statement about Christianity’s victory over paganism:

 “By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a  mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects…Man’s effective monopoly on  spirit in this world was confirmed, and the old inhibitions to the exploitation of nature  crumbled.”

Next, White further summarized the contrast between Eastern and Western Christianity:

 “Eastern theology has been intellectualist. Western theology has been voluntarist.  The Greek saint contemplates; the Western saint acts. The implications of  Christianity for the conquest of nature would emerge more easily in the Western  atmosphere.”

Even the Western doctrine of creation became a means of creation’s harm, according to White. Natural theology has always proceeded from the premise that

 “since God had made nature, nature must also reveal the divine mentality…In the  early Church, and always in the Greek East, nature was conceived primarily as a  symbolic system through which God speaks to men…”

So, for example, the industrious ant became a sermon for sluggards, rising flames symbols of the soul’s aspirations. However, from the early 13th century onwards in the West natural theology ceased to be a decoding of the physical symbols of God’s communication with man. Instead it became an effort to understand God’s mind by discovering how God’s creation operates. From the 13th century to Newton and Leibniz every major scientist explained his motivations in religious terms. Not until the late 18th century was the hypothesis of God considered unnecessary by many scientists.

 “Modern Western science,” concluded White, “was cast in a matrix of Christian  theology.”

Therefore, that because of the conjunction of science and technology

 “Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt”

for the ecological crisis. Baldly and controversially he stated that,

 “We shall continue to have a worsening ecological crisis until we reject the Christian  axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.”

He doubted
 “that disastrous ecologic backlash can be avoided simply by applying to our  problems more science and technology”,

for these very activities

 “have grown out of Christian attitudes toward man’s relation to nature which are  almost universally held not only by Christians and neo-Christians but also by those  who fondly regard themselves as post-Christians.”
White described these attitudes of the species-selfishness called “anthropocentrism” in two ways:
 
 “Despite Copernicus, all the cosmos rotates around our little globe”,

and

 “Despite Darwin, we are not, in our hearts, part of the natural process. We are  superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim.”

Therefore,
 
 “more science and technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic  crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one.”
While sympathetic to the beatniks who have explored Zen Buddhism White doubted that religion’s ability to counteract western anthropocentrism precisely because it is not itself western in origin. Whether or not we are aware of it westerners are all the inheritors of two millennia of Christian theology that has profoundly formed our worldview. Accordingly, White advocated finding ecologically-friendly resources within the Christian framework. He suggested that the reader ponder

 “the greatest radical in Christian history since Christ: Saint Francis of Assisi”,

and proposed Francis as a patron saint for ecologists.
The key to understanding Francis

 “is his belief in the virtue of humility – not merely for the individual but for man as a  species.”

Building on this quality of humility Francis sought to

 “…depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all  God’s creatures. With [Francis] the ant is no longer simply a homily for the lazy,  flames a sign of the thrust of the soul toward union with God; now they are Brother  Ant and Sister Fire, praising the Creator in their own ways as Brother Man does in  his.”

Although White admitted that St Francis failed in his quest to democratise creation he proposed him as the patron saint of ecologists. For White the Franciscan sense of the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature may point to a better direction than humankind’s hegemony. Fundamentally, White argues that

 “since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be  essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.”

Responses
White’s paper caused, to use a technical term, “quite a kerfuffel”! In the minds of many it came to represent, inaccurately, for this had been raised prior to White, the so-called “ecological complaint” against Christianity.  Consequently, many defenders of the faith saw him as something of a betrayer while some opposed to Christianity used his paper to further their agendas.

White’s ecotheological heritage
This did have the positive effect of stimulating Christians to re-examine (or perhaps examine for the first time!) the ecological credentials of the Faith. The body of ecotheological literature is now so vast that I have, true to the methodology I employed in my thesis, preferred to treat White’s contribution in detail rather than examining, inadequately, a number of responses to it. Camden Theological Library has a growing, easily-accessed ecotheological corpus. However, Santmire’s The Travail of Nature,  supplemented by his Nature Reborn,  still serve as a good ecotheological introduction for theologians. Barry Leal’s The Environment and Christian Faith  and Through Ecological Eyes, written by an Australian out of our local context, are good primers designed to be read by laypeople.

To those, fewer in number these days,  who still consider ecotheology to be peripheral to the real concerns of the Gospel I recommend Jürgen Moltmann’s God in Creation.  Moltmann wonderfully identifies the God who is Trinity as the God who is in Creation. A number of other scholars have also worked at locating ecotheology within theology. Ecofeminists such as Sallie McFague  and Val Plumwood,  Norman Habel  and others named and opposed the Platonic dualities that underlie so much of our western worldview. For them the duality of humans over nature is of a piece with the duality of men over women, heaven over earth, white over black and so on.

Ecotheology, and my thesis, are also part of a move to contextual theology of which the Taiwanese theologian Shoki Coe was an instigator.  More recently Stephan Bevans,  Charles Kraft  and Daniel Migliore  have all written helpfully on this, while Clive Pearson,  Neil Darragh  and others have contributed Australasian perspectives.

Lastly, in the literature review chapter, I sampled 3 monographs from other disciplines that were helpful. Historians Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory  and Paul Sinclair’s The Murray: A River and its People , and lexicologist Jay Mary Arthur’s The Default Country  all contributed important insights for an ecotheological reading of a regional Australian context.
That leaves unmentioned about 400 monographs, journal articles, websites, interactive CDs, CD-ROMs, DVDs, posters and, vitally, a cartoon,  a scene from a film  and a poem.  I hope, however, that I’ve given you a good appetiser. Enjoy!

Bibliography

““Striking the Rock” Alfred Deakin as Moses, the Deliverer.” Melbourne
Melbourne Punch, 1886.
Arthur, J.M. The Default Country: A Lexical Cartography of Twentieth-Century
Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2003.
Bevans, Stephen B. Models of Contextual Theology. Edited by C.PP.S. Robert J.
Schreiter. 2 ed, Faith and Cultures Series. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis
Books, 2002.
Coe, Shoki. Contextualizing Theology. Edited by Anderson and Stransky. 2 ed,
Mission Trends. Broadway, N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1976.
Darragh, Neil. “Adjusting to the Newcomer: Theology and Ecotheology ” Pacifica
13, no. 2 (2000): 160 – 80.
Habel, Norman C. Readings from the Perspective of Earth, ed. Norman C. Habel, 1 ed.,
5 vols., vol. 1, The Earth Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000).
Kraft., Charles H. Kraft with Marguerite G. Christianity in Culture: A Study in
Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross Cultural Perspective. Revised 25th
anniversary ed. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2005.
Jackson, Peter. “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.” In The Lord of the
Rings, edited by Peter Jackson, 179 minutes. New Zealand: New Line
Cinema, 2002.
Küng, Hans. On Being a Christian. Translated by Edward Quinn. 1 ed. London:
William Collins, 1977.
Leal, Barry Robert. The Environment and Christian Faith: An Introduction to Ecotheology.
Strathfield, NSW: St Paul’s, 2004.
———. Through Ecological Eyes: Reflections on Christianity’s Environmental
Credentials. Strathfield, NSW: St Pauls Publications, 2006.
McFague, Sallie. “An Earthly Theological Agenda.” The Christian Century 108, no.
1 (1991)
Masters, Frank. “The Pioneers.” In Arno Bay and District 1883 – 1983, edited by
Janice Clements, 258. Arno Bay: Arno Bay Centenary Committee, 1982.
Migliore, Daniel L. Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian
Theology. 2 ed. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004.
Moltmann, Jürgen God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of
God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.
Pearson, Clive. “Towards an Australian Ecotheology ” Uniting Church Studies 4,
no. 1 (1998): 12-27
Plumwood, Val. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. Edited
by Andrew Brennan, Environmental Philosophies. London: Routledge, 2002
Reichardt, David C. Release the river! An ecotheological reading of how the Murray-Darling Basin’s human inhabitants have affected its waterways. PhD Thesis, Charles Sturt University, 2009
Santmire, H. Paul. The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of
Christian Theology. 1 ed. 1 vols. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985
———. Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian
Theology. 1st ed, Theology and the Sciences. Minneapolis: Augsburg
Fortress, 2000.
Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. London: Fontana Press, 1996.
Sinclair, Paul. The Murray: A River and Its People. Carlton South, Vic.: Melbourne
University Press, 2001.
Weber, Mark Max Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, trans. J.C.B. Mohr, 2 vols. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978)
White, Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155, no. 3767
(1967): 1203 – 07.

 Rev Dr David Reichardt completed his doctoral thesis “Release the River!  An ecotheological reading of how the Murray-Darling Basin’s human inhabitants have affected its waterways” through the Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre (PaCT) in 2009.  He serves as the Presbytery Minister for the Parramatta Nepean Presbytery and is involved in presenting the WaterLines Project to Greater Western Sydney.

We have an overview of the work completed by David Reichardt in his groundbreaking research thesis “Release the river! An ecotheological reading of how the Murray-Darling Basin’s human inhabitants have affected its waterways.” David guides us through a small sample of the resources that have guided his research.

Graham Maddox explores the sometimes problematic relationships between the Church and politics and the role that Christians and the Church have, do and should play in the political sphere.

e-Theo is an online book review service, written especially with time-starved pastors, chaplains,  ministers and other ministry workers, lay and ordained, in mind.  e-Theo looks at a range of titles – contemporary and classic - anything that can enhance, develop and nurture people who minister, their ministry and their environments.

In this first issue of e-Theo, Clive Pearson tackles Missiology, Michael Earl looks into Preaching and Worship leading, Ben Myers finds the similarities between Dr. Barth and Dr. Seuss, and Sef Carroll shares some of the resources she has found helpful in her research in Interfaith Relations.

e-Theo will be published on this website three times a year.  If you have a particular book that you would like to see reviewed, or if you would like to contribute a review, please feel free to contact us through the Camden Theological Library.

e-Theo is a joint project between the Camden Theological Library, the School of Continuing Education and United Theological College.

Enjoy!

Here’s a couple of nice little books (Thing One and Thing Two), both just released from WJKP. In our first book, Robert Short offers an entertaining reading of Dr Seuss’s stories as Christian “parables.” I adore Dr Seuss – I’m always begging my kids to let me read more Dr Seuss, instead of those bland and banal Disney books that clutter their shelves. So I enjoyed this book’s playful engagement with Dr Seuss’s stories.

Admittedly, Robert Short’s analysis is not a very nuanced one; and it’s a shame he neglects both Dr Seuss’s sharp political edge and his extraordinary aesthetics (first and foremost, these books are great because they’re works of true poetry).

Ultimately, Dr Seuss’s writing can’t be turned into neat theological “parables” (although many of them are certainly political parables). So I can’t help cringing a little when Short tells me that Christ = the Cat, or that Christ’s body and blood = green eggs and ham, or indeed that Sam-I-am represents the name of God! (I’ll let you in on a secret: he’s called “Sam-I-am” because it rhymes with “eggs-and-ham”…) But all this can be taken in good fun, and Short is clearly enjoying himself with bucketloads of playful exaggeration.

In any case, there are some nice insights along the way – for example, in the chapter on I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, Short remarks: “The difference is that Christian faith has an infinitely greater appreciation of trouble than the world does” (p. 51). An excellent point!

And Short is right to observe that Dr Seuss’s stories possess a “profundity-in-simplicity” which allows them to make a real impact. These stories, he remarks, are deceptive in their simplicity. “Charming, childlike little tales suddenly become meaningful…. They sneak up on us. They become Trojan horses or sugar-coated medicine. They are the wise Cat in the otherwise empty hat” (p. 66).

On a somewhat more serious note, our second book brings together fifty of Karl Barth’s prayers, written for before and after his sermons. In the foreword (these prayers were originally published in German in 1962), Barth explains his growing discomfort with the traditional liturgical prayers, since they remained too disconnected from the language and content of his sermons. “For a while,” he says, “I sought help by replacing the petitions of the order of liturgy not with extemporaneous prayers (I have never dared to risk such a thing), but with freely bringing together biblical passages from the Psalms.” Only in his later years did he begin to write his own prayers as part of his sermon preparation. The resulting prayers are stirring, colloquial, often profound, and always blissfully concise – as Barth remarks in the foreword, “the spice for all parts of all spiritual and theological sayings should consist in brevity!”

Barth decided to publish these prayers in the hope that they would be used both in assembled worship and privately. The book thus arranges the fifty prayers according to the liturgical year, with some additional thematic sections (e.g. prayers for funerals). The prayers will certainly be of interest to researchers and students of Barth – but if we are to use the book as it was intended, our proper response should be to pray these prayers, to call upon God in weakness and humility and gratitude and joy. Here are a few short excerpts:

“Lord, our God, you know who we are: People with good and bad consciences; satisfied and dissatisfied, sure and unsure people; Christians out of convictions and Christians out of habit; believers, half-believers, and unbelievers. You know where we come from…. But now we all stand before you…” (p. 1).

“Lord our God, you wanted to live not only in heaven, but also with us, here on earth; not only to be high and great, but also to be small and lowly, as we are; not only to rule, but also to serve us; not only to be God in eternity, but also be born as a person, to live, and to die” (p. 11).

“None of us is a great Christian; rather, we are all very small Christians. But your grace is sufficient for us. Awaken us to the small joy and thankfulness that we are capable of, the timid faith that we bring, the incomplete obedience that we cannot refuse – to the hope in the greatness, wholeness, and completeness that you have prepared for us in the death of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and that you have promised us in his resurrection from the dead” (pp. 29-30).

Ben Myers reposted, with permission, from Faith and Theology.

 William Willimon is the Presiding Bishop of the Birmingham Area of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church (USA) and was formerly Dean of Duke University Chapel, North Carolina. A prolific writer on matters theological and ecclesial, some of his better known works include: Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, (1989, co-authored with Stanley Hauerwas), and Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, (2002). In his brief book, A Guide to Preaching and Leading Worship, (2008), Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville * London, (just over 100 pages), he sets out to provide a theologically sound, yet practical guide to ‘preaching and leading worship’ for those engaged in pastoral ministry. As the title suggests, then, his purpose and intended audience are simultaneously narrow and clear (he dedicates the book to “those who preach and lead worship in the churches of North Alabama”, though its readership will be far wider than this).

Anyone who takes the time to read A Guide to Preaching and Leading Worship, and it will not take long, will surely rate his project a qualified success. For a theologian as well as a preacher this book is remarkably simple and easy to understand, almost disarmingly so. Willimon possesses that rare quality of enhancing the theological force of his message through an economy of words, rather than reducing it, and, better still, feels no need to make copious references. Preachers and writers alike take note. No-one could possibly claim this book is too abstract or reads like a weighty academic tome. A good example comes on page 40 where he describes what a sacrament is in the Christian context: “God uses everyday things we can understand – bread, wine, water – ”, Willimon writes, “to show us a love that defies understanding.” The simplicity of such statements should remind us that complexity does not necessarily equal profundity, a lesson preachers can often be slow to accept. This book is littered with such accessible descriptions.

Willimon’s preferred pattern in A Guide to Preaching and Leading Worship is to mix the indicative and the imperative as he augments his descriptions with equally direct and practical instructions. Here he presents a constant challenge to the pastor to improve their craft and thereby the power of the gospel message they are seeking to proclaim. He takes this task very seriously and asks his readers to do the same. Those currently engaged in a sermon series on Isaiah, for instance, may wince as they read his suggested preparation regimen (pgs 54-57). 1. Read the whole book through, 2. Establish the text [in its given context], 3. Work out what the text means (with commentaries, lexicons etc), 4. Read the entire text again and listen for a second time to what it is saying, 5. Try and state the theme of the proposed sermon in one sentence, 6. Work out how it is most appropriate to shape the sermon (it will be different depending on the form of the given text – poetic, historical etc), 7. Decide how the text and its message will address your congregational context. This is all before you even start writing the sermon! One wonders how much time can be given over to pastoral visitation in an average working week with such a homiletical process to be completed.

For all its many strengths there are aspects of the book that certain readers will find frustrating. Willimon is clearly (and knowingly) coming from an ecclesial and theological position that takes a high view of the role of the pastor/minister within the weekly pattern of worship and, even prior to this, has a high view of worship itself. Those Christians coming from ecclesial traditions that sit a little lower may find some of what he has to say in this regard somewhat dogmatic and, at times, even precious. For instance, as an ordained minister, this writer would have no theological concern with lay people regularly leading the prayers of intercession in worship which Willimon lists as usually the sole purview of the pastor (p 26). Likewise, although he is at pains to stress the renewal of sacramental theology and praxis in the wider church’s life (pgs 15-16), something he rightly acknowledges is a positive development, he then proceeds to devote only one chapter to leading the sacraments in worship, while three (out of eight) are focussed on preaching. He is also a strong advocate for the Revised Common Lectionary, though fails to adequately highlight its deficiencies such as its selectiveness and avoidance of certain ‘difficult texts’ which make up large parts of the canon.

These issues notwithstanding, A Guide to Preaching and Leading Worship is a welcome addition to the landscape of practical reflection on weekly liturgical leadership. Willimon’s years of experience and significant wisdom in this area confer an authority on his words that should convince all those engaged in liturgical leadership to be guided by his thoughts and directions, that is, once they’ve finished with Isaiah!

Rev Michael Earl
Wesley Mission, Sydney

It is, of course true that mission is a vital ingredient in the Christian life. The pressing task is to consider how the term is interpreted and what are the strengths and weaknesses of its current usage. This particular task is regrettably not always pursued with sufficient rigour. Far too often there is an assumption that ‘we know what mission is’: that, it is ‘contextual’ and, because our contexts are so different from one another, there is not much point in seeking to get some coherent big picture to our thinking. And then there is the manner in which mission has become a key feature in corporate business these days. Everyone seems to want a mission statement with agreed values without always wondering whether the discourse of mission and values in the business world operate in quite the same way as these terms are understood in the church. Here we have a major problem which is often left undiagnosed. It is difficult to mount a counter case and make a request for some solid biblical and theological homework to be done. And the cost can be great.

One of the habits of this paradigm is for reports to be written on the mission-shaped church. It is now a common term. One of the best examples of such is the report commissioned by the Church of England.  It is now being used widely for the purpose of training men and women for a public ministry. There is no equivalent in the Uniting Church in Australia, even though we have been using very regularly this missional language and even inventing new patterns of ministry to resource the church.  What might be the consequences of this neglect of oversight? Why this common work is not done is a mystery especially insofar as there are individuals here and there who have the expertise and talent.

Back to England. John Hull is an Australian. He is a former editor of the British Journal of Religious Education and is the general Secretary of the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values. He is Emeritus Professor of Religious Education in Birmingham and fulfils a vocation that is absent from most, if not all, synods in this country. Hull brings to his theological response to the report an ecumenical experience which has the capacity to stave off the temptation for much mission talk to be captured by variations of denominational branding.

Hull is a sympathetic critic of the report released in 2008. Right from the outset he acknowledges that it has ‘sold well’ and was received with ‘general enthusiasm’. Hull agrees with many of the practical recommendations made. He is deeply conscious of the role the report has played in the establishment in various ventures into fresh expressions of the church. But he is a critical nevertheless. Hull cannot be otherwise. He has major reservations about some of underlying theological principles and these matters have to do with the nature of what it means to be the church, how mission is understood and how the life of faith is to be presented in a multifaith, secular, highly culturally diverse and pluralistic culture.

The report itself was based on the assumption that the Church of England depended too much on local parish churches and was essentially spatially, geographically organised. The task group which produced the report was calling for the renewal of local church life but realised the need ‘to encourage other kinds of ecclesial formation’. The parish church was reckoned to be not the only way church can be conceived. The diversity of associations – like a café church -  had previously been thought of as being ‘bridges’ into traditional church structures: now they should possess an ‘integrity in themselves’.

Hull draws upon his theological and ecumenical experience to put forward a timely and constructive critique. The initial difficulty he discerns is the occasional confusion with respect to the inter-relationship between key theological building blocks: church, mission and kingdom of God. The problem resides at times in the temptation to think of the church as having a mission and being the product of mission, rather than its being a sign of the Christian calling to mission. This is an important point. In the report Hull is critiquing some of the difficulties lie embedded in the reading of what is the vocation of the Church of England and its usage of Donald McGavran’s principles of church growth. The lack of clarity and precision evident in this report leads to a ‘limited ecclesiology’ and a ‘restricted view of mission’.

The report describes the ‘mandate’ of the church to be engaged in mission. It is called to ‘growth’. That is the ‘normative condition’ even, if and when, local parishes cannot measure up.  It is assumed that churches ‘are [indeed] created by God to grow’. The church is called to ‘reproduce’ and ‘fill the earth’. The Church of England, more particularly, exists to ‘the church for the nation’. The report does not believe this to be a claim to being the established church so much as a ‘statement of its mission purpose’. It is the Anglican calling ‘to be a church for all’. It is called to be such a church in a society which has born witness to the emergence of multiculturalism and consumerism.

Hull argues that the report is very much an Anglican project and represents a highly ‘church-centric’ view of cultural and social change. The report casually ignores other denominations in England. There is no attempt to furnish an ecumenical overview of what might be the calling of the church in a paradigm and culture that has changed dramatically. There is very little awareness of other ethnicities and other faiths. There is certainly an awareness of much social change but it is not seen in the light of any benefits such change might bring. The report does not see the Christian faith as being potentially  problematic in any sense. In the kind of world in which we now live it is arguably very important to note the shadow side of the church, how people have sometimes taken their leave on account of the trauma they have suffered or because faith has simply not seemed plausible.

Hull believes that there is a basic confusion at work in the report. It concerns how we understand mission.  The theological nature of the church is to be a ‘fruit’ and an ‘agent’ of mission. It exists to ‘serve’ and ‘participate’ in the ongoing mission of God.  The ‘flowering’ of mission is not the church but the kingdom of God. The failure to make these distinctions leads to easily into a conflation of church and mission and a well-intentioned triumphalism.

Hull is also critical of the tenor of the report in one other significant way. It harbours what he calls a ‘Deutoronomistic spirituality’. Here ‘we have allowed our culture and church to drift apart’. It has been the church’s failure to respond fast enough to the changes in society and it should bear the responsibility for this cleavage. It is a small step before the spectre of guilt raises its head. But is this a fair diagnosis? Why have other institutions also struggled? Is it not always part of the biblical narrative that the people of faith become a minority, a remnant through their faithfulness while the surrounding society pursues other gods?

Hull’s response to the report on the mission-based church is accessible; it is short and it is written to the point. It raises a number of questions which should also be addressed in the various councils of the Uniting Church.  It raises a most nagging question as to what constitutes mission in a highly pluralistic, secular and multifaith society. It presuppose that this work has not been widely done.

Clive Pearson.

The meaning and method of interfaith dialogues are varied. At its most basic level interfaith dialogue is the meeting of people of different faiths who intentionally come together to talk about their faith and to deepen their understanding of the faith of the religious other. There are different types of dialogue and each will have a different objective. Leonard Swidler identifies three main categories: the cognitive which are the academic theological type of dialogues, the spiritual in which participants engage in the practices of each other’s faith tradition such as Buddhist mediation and the practical where communities of faiths work together to tackle a particular issue or project. Women have their own methods of dialogue and engagement although this is not widely documented. The following books offer a detailed discussion on the purpose and method of interfaith dialogue:

Egnell, H. (2006). Other Voices: a study of Christian feminist approaches to religious plurality East and West Upsalla: Studia Missionalia Svecana C.

Mays, R. K. (Ed.). (2008). Interfaith dialogue at the grass roots. Philadelphia: Ecumenical Press.

O’Neill, M. (2007). Mending a torn world: women in interreligious dialogue. Maryknoll: Orbis.

Race, A., & Hedges, P. (Eds.). (2008). Christian approaches to other faiths. London: SCM Press.

Wingate, A. (2005). Celebrating difference, staying faithful: how to live in a multifatih world. London: Darton Longman & Todd.

It is also very useful to place the discussion of interfaith dialogue historically and globally. Marcus Braybrooke has to date offered a comprehensive guide (1893-1992) to global interfaith dialogue. Braybrooke, M. (1992). Pilgrimage of hope: one hundred years of global interfaith dialogue. New York: Crossroad. Bharat, S., & Bharat, J. (2007). A global guide to interfaith: reflections from around the world. Winchester: O Books, is a survey of interfaith dialogue groups and projects. This book covers the gap of interfaith relations from 1992 to post September 11^th. In addition, Forward, M. (2001). Inter-religious dialogue: a short introduction. Oxford: OneWorld, presents a theological and historical survey of interfaith dialogue drawing on his experience of the British Council of Churches and his experience of working in India. This book is helpful in that it integrates theology, history and practice of interfaith dialogue. The Quiet revolution by Peter Kirkwood, past producer of the ABC program Compass is an engaging and resourceful book for those wishing to know more about the interfaith movement and key thinkers in our current time. Kirkwood provides a good overview of interfaith relationships and dialogue post September 11^th. Kirkwood surveys the key literature, thinkers and organisations thereby making this book a key introductory text to the global interfaith movement. Kirkwood, P. (2007). The quiet revolution: the emergence of interfaith consciousness. Sydney: ABC Books.

Interfaith dialogue has not been without its critics. In seeking to move dialogue beyond being just a “talkfest” there have been a number of collaborative interfaith projects documented in the following books, which cover a number of areas such as youth, chaplaincy and education in schools. This section of books is a great resource for ministry. They highlight issues that arise in interfaith relationships and provide creative strategies and practical steps to work through them.

Engebretson, K. (2009). In your shoes: inter-faith education for Australian schools and universities. Ballan: Connor Court.

Patel, E., & Brodeur, P. (Eds.). (2006). Building the interfaith youth movement: beyond dialogue to action Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Schipani, D., & Buecket, L. D. (Eds.). (2009). Interfaith spiritual care: understandings and practice. Ontario: Pandora Press.

Torry, M., & Thorley, S. (Eds.). (2008). Together and different: Christians engaging with people of other faiths. Norwich: Canterbury Press.

In a similar vein one of the impressive set of books that only just recently arrived in the library is Sharma, A. (Ed.). (2009). The world’s religions after September 11 (Vol. 1-4). Connecticut: Preager Publishers. This four-volume set looks at interfaith relations according to the following four themes: Religion, war, and peace; Religion and human rights; the interfaith dimension and spirituality. Each theme is explored from a variety of faith perspectives  making this collection a truly collaborative interfaith project.

The risk of being practically oriented towards dialogue is that theology can easily be sidelined. Interfaith dialogue is often confused with being the same as a theology of other faiths. It is important not to fuse the two. This section of books gives an introductory overview of Christian theologies of other faiths and their relationship to interfaith dialogue. Of note is the World Council of Churches reflection on their 1979 document, Guidelines on dialogue with people of living faiths and ideologies thirty years later. Other theological issues such as the place of Christian belonging in a multifaith context, religious superiority and emerging theologies of other faiths are also explored.

Barnes, M. (2002). Theology and the dialogue of religions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cracknell, K. (2006). In good and generous faith: Christian responses to religious pluralism. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press.

Cornille, C. (Ed.). (2002). Many mansions? Multiple religious belonging and Christian identity. Maryknoll: Orbis.

Dupuis, J. (2001). Christianity and the religions: from confrontation to dialogue. New York: Orbis.

Karkainnen, V. M. (2003). An introduction to the theology of religions. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Knitter, P. F. (Ed.). (2005). The myth of religious superiority: a multifaith exploration. New York: Orbis Books.

Queiruga, A. T., Susin, L. C., & Vigil, J. M. (Eds.). (2007/1). Pluralist theology: the emerging paradigm. London: SCM Press.

WCC (2003). Ecumenical considerations for dialogue and relations with people of other religions: taking stock of 30 years of dialogue and revisiting the 1979 guidelines. Geneva: World Council of churches.

There are a number of interfaith practical resources that can be used to facilitate interfaith discussions or as a means of introducing the congregations to the topic. The Uniting Church National Assembly has put together two DVD resources with the objective of encouraging UCA congregations to develop relationships with the religious other.

ROF (2006). Getting Started: Why engage in interfaith relationships? Sydney: Uniting Church National Assembly

 ROF (2009). Neighbourhoods of difference: the Uniting Church in Australia and interfaith relations. Sydney: Uniting Church National Assembly.

 As Islam has been a constant focus of the media the two following resources are an alternative to the story of Islamic fundamentalism. Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought (2007). A common word between us and you: an open letter and call from Muslim religious leaders. Strathfield, NSW: Columban Institute. This document was signed by 138 Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals declaring that the “love of God and love of neighbour” to be the common ground between Christians and Muslims. This document has inspired many interfaith discussions. The Imam & the Pastor (2006). London: FLT Films is a powerful movie that explores the relationship between Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye in Kudana, northern Nigeria whose respective Muslim and Christian communities are torn apart by religious conflict. It is a story of forgiveness and reconciliation and a case study of grass root peace building initiatives by two communities torn apart by interreligious conflict. This DVD is a great discussion starter not only on issues relating to interfaith but also reconciliation. If you are looking for a more reflective, meditative interfaith resource then Bradley, R. (2008). Mosaic: favourite prayers and reflections from inspiring Australians. Sydney: ABC Books is a wonderful Australian resource. Mosaic has been described as “a collection of favourite prayers and reflections chosen by a broad range of Australians from different backgrounds and faiths, people who range from quiet achievers to high-profile individuals.”

In conclusion, it is only fitting to end with a couple of books that explore Australia’s religious landscape. Healey, J. (2009). Religious beliefs (Vol. 292): Spinney Press, is a great start if you are looking for an introductory overview of religious beliefs and issues in the Australian context. It interprets the findings of the 2006 census and maps emerging religious issues. It includes a section on the difference between agnostic and atheist views. For a more in depth discussion and reading of the Australian religious landscape see Bouma, G. (2006). Australian soul: religion and spirituality in the twenty first century Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bouma provides a sociological perspective on religious diversity. 

Seforosa Carroll
August 2009