THIS book, the fruits of a Dean’s Scholarship at Virginia Seminary held by the Australian priest and theologian Scott Cowdell, is an excellent astringent against current despair of a Church of England apparently obsessed by the prospect of decline and exhortations to completely reimagine “Church”.
But it does not ignore the hard facts of abundant religiosity without Church. Why do intelligent young people engage in serious discussion about life, ethics, and faith without carrying this over to Sunday-by-Sunday eucharistic worship?
Cowdell first goes back to the Early Church. Its radical inclusiveness attracted people: women, slaves, the sick, the widows. Then, he turns to post-Augustinian Christian civilisation. Cowdell is here refreshingly not anti-Christendom. He shows how the parish churches of Europe generated community and a sense of belonging, and that the seasonal pattern of sacramental rituals gave meaning to life and generated community. He is not nostalgic, but also argues how this pattern was changed at the Reformation and later the Enlightenment to an individual-centred Christianity.
He also looks at the Church of the global South, especially the Pentecostal tradition (quoting David Martin) and churches that also include traditional African or Caribbean customs. He refuses to treat these traditions as primitive or simplistic and considers that their critique of secular liberalism requires understanding.
Cowdell then moves on to the problem that the Church is no longer “needed” and so becomes a “niche service provider in the religious sector”: uninterest in the issue, not disbelief. Religion becomes an aspect of private consumerism and a hobby. He expounds Charles Taylor, the Canadian historian of ideas, extensively. Compare this with another recent study by Hans Joas (Books, 24 January), who similarly follows Taylor and Martin. Cowdell also analyses the move at the Reformation to “immediate personal access to God”, in which individual believing preceded belonging. He counters this by no less an authority than Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Cowdell speaks of that which comes into the Church from Christ and that which the Church gives out. He passionately argues that the Church is essential to Christianity. Christ is the Vine, and we are the branches. But the two are a whole and cannot be severed. The Church is Christ in relational form. In a culture of tribalistic politics, he argues for the Church as the radically Non-tribal Tribe. This is on the basis not of Enlightenment tolerance, which soon becomes indifference, but of Ephesians (2) inclusiveness. This invites a sharp critique of the social media as an “engine of obsession and rivalry”.
Cowdell obviously devotes a chapter to “Treasure in Earthen Vessels”. Despite all the terrible recent history of the Church, we have to start with the “actual”, sinful Church, not an idealised invisible Church, which leads only to puritanical sectarianism. St Augustine of Hippo is expounded on the corpus permixtum (the Church containing saints and sinners).
He works through the “marks” of the Church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Helpfully, he prefers to call these “watermarks”. They are there, but sometimes hardly visible. Moltmann and Stephen Pickard are his resources, as well as Pope Francis. On “apostolicity”, Cowdell is particularly interesting in his sympathetic exposition of the significance of the Porvoo Agreement, which he understands better than many in the C of E. Ultimately, he yearns for a “high-bandwidth” catholicity. At the conclusion, he argues passionately for “real” church rather than an online, virtual substitute, or lay-led non-sacramental home groups. Alison Millbank is cited on the importance of the parish church. A real eucharist in a real community is where Christ meets us in the assembled members of his Body, and in word and sacrament.
This book would make an excellent Lent study: there are group questions after each chapter. But it could also give serious theological encouragement to beleaguered parish clergy who feel that the Church is abandoning the local eucharistic community. So, perhaps church leaders, too?
The Rt Revd Christopher Hill is a former Bishop of Guildford.
Why Church?: Christianity as it was meant to be
Scott Cowdell
Church Publishing Inc £14.99
(978-1-64065-736-6)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49