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Longing for God’s future
David Stancliffe admires a gentle and humane campaigner for justice
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| Hope for the Future: People who made a difference Alan Webster
SPCK £12.99 (978-0-281-06000-9) Church Times Bookshop £11.70 PEOPLE reveal most about them-selves when they forget their public persona and write about their passions. So it was a good move for Alan Webster’s family to work with him at the end of his life to draw together a number of pieces, mostly from the “Credo” column of The Times, and his many obituaries in The Guardian or The Independent. The result is a series of colourful vignettes, grouped under six themes, about the people and ideas that made, in Alan’s judgement, a difference to how we practised the faith in the second half of the 20th century. Under Leaders and the Church, Leslie Hunter and Robert Runcie rub shoulders with Mikhail Gorbachev; under World Peace, Justice and Toleration, a “Credo” piece, “Politicians as peacemakers”, has an obituary of Gonville ffrench-Beytagh as a companion. Under Opening Up the Church, Julian of Norwich and Florence Tim Oi Li sit next to “Constructive disagreement” and “Can cathedrals share the sorrows and joys of their cities?”; under The Church in Action, a series of portraits — Launcelot Fleming, Edward Patey, John Tinsley, Joan Ramsey, and others — claim attention. Enriching Human Life has a reflection on a stay in hospital, and a paper for the BMJ on Sir Thomas Browne; under Children and Young People we find “God backs the poor”, and “Why the kids are all right”. An epilogue has three “Credo” pieces — “The journey towards understanding”, “Everyday resurrections”, and “Love is at the heart of human life”. These short pieces — some 56 of them, with a foreword by Owen Chadwick, and David Edwards’s obituary of Alan in The Independent at the end — reveal the people and the movements dearest to Alan Webster’s heart. It was a generous heart; for, though a great campaigner for the coming liberty of all God’s people, he was a humane and gentle combatant who loved even those with whom he disagreed. A curacy in Sheffield, an incum-bency in Barnard Castle, two theo-logical colleges, and two cathedrals were his eclectic milieu; and these pieces reveal both the discernment of gifts which he must have learnt from the years in theological education, and the passion for God’s future which he must have wrestled with constantly as Dean, first of Norwich, and then of St Paul’s — great institutions dominated by their pasts. At times his impatience with the ecclesiastical establishment breaks out, as in his obituary of Alan Ecclestone, or with the Church’s limited vision in “God backs the poor”. But what shines out is his love for all God’s people. Not a page goes by without revealing some intriguing detail that brings a person to life, whether it’s an archbishop or a grandson. Here, revealed in his enthusiasms, is a portrait of a true Anglican: rooted in the love of people, campaigning for justice, longing for God’s future. Dr Stancliffe is Bishop of Salisbury. To order this book, email the details to Church Times Bookshop (please mention "Church Times Bookshop price") |
