BOOKS : recent and recommended

NEW BOOKS
John Bunyan (compiler), SEARCHING FOR LIBERTY : SEEKING FOR TRUTH -
a miscellany published for the 75th Anniversary of the Memorialists - a significant minority of the clergy of the Diocese of Sydney who in 1938 sent a Memorial to Archbishop Mowll seeking greater
fairness and liberality within the Diocese - sadly not with any satisfactory outcome. This book
includes 75 little known hymns, old - re-discovered or revised, and new, with brief notes on the hymns, plus some of translations of Icelandic hymns by Charles Venn Pilcher, Bishop Coadjutor of Sydney in 1938, plus some Australian national hymns and songs, 32 autumnal poems by JB, chapters on Alternative Sydney Anglicans, and The Memorialists and their Parishes, and autobiographical material : A Broad Church and a Liberal Faith, Women and Men of Influence, Books of Influence, and thoughts about the way ahead.   $A15 plus postage from PO Box N109, Campbelltown North, 2560, Australia (bunyanj@tpg.com.au).

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Earlier recommendations

Frank Schaeffer, PATIENCE WITH GOD : Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism) - by the son of the once well-known Evangelical, Francis Schaeffer. This is a much more personal book than the title might suggest, a rather delightful work by one who is now a member of the Orthodox Church in Boston but very liberal in his outlook, with no time for either atheistic or evangelical fundamentalism. (His account of the shrine established by the son of Billy Graham is sad yet very funny.)

Ian Bradley, GRACE, OPENNESS AND DIVERSITY : Reclaiming Liberal Theology
The author, now at the University of St Andrews, has written many books e.g. on hymns, Britain, the monarchy, and celtic studies, and has now produced this feisty defence of liberal religion in general and liberal Christianity in particular (though this reader would not agree with his - in this book - rather superficial and generalised support for abortion, euthanasia, and "mercy killing". In other areas, such as worship, and on society, he is commendably conservative.

George Prochnik, IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE : Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise
In a world where noise so often dominates, even in church worship itself, this is a very solid, comprensive, and salutory defence of the value of quietness and silence. "Be still, and know that I am God". (Psalm 46)

This web-site January, 2011

This small web-site simply seeks to provide some information, comment, and alternative views on some matters relating to the Church of Australia and especially the Diocese of Sydney. After a period of recess, it is hoped to resume posting early in 2011. The site is not intended for conversation or blogging but Mr Bunyan can be easily contacted -

"Colenso Corner", PO Box N109, Campbelltown North, NSW 2560, Australia
bunyanj@tpg.com.au (or else john.bunyan@swsahs.nsw.gov.au ) .

Happy days.

Ex-Muslim, atheist, woman - & Christianity

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written another book, Nomad, reviewed in the London Telegraph on the
1st June 2010. She is in great danger because of her rejection of Islam. However, although now an atheist, the reviewer notes that she is convinced Christianity is superior to Islam, because it has learnt how to exist in plural societies and because it centres on love (at its best - this commentor would have to add) rather than anger and fear. She criticises Western feminists who will not write about female circumcision, honour killing and the sale of brides because of a wish to blame Western colonialism for all ills.

She recommends that the Churches should come together to counter radical Muslim dawa (mission) with a great push of their own to bring Christianity to immigrants.

A major work, CHRISTIANITY ALONGSIDE ISLAM, has just been published by Sydney-born BISHOP JOHN WILSON, for 22 years an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Melbourne. The Foreword is by Dr Peter Riddell, Professorial Dean of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Other Faiths, Bible College of Victoria and Australian College of Theology. On a vitally important subject, I recommend it highly.

Some recommended web-sites : 22nd May, 2010

In addition to official Anglican sites, Anglicans Online is perhaps the best known,
with a new edition each Monday afternoon (eastern Australia).
with lots of new and an enormous number of links to all kinds of resources,
including Thinking Anglicans, up-dated regularly during the week.

The (US) Anglican Digest is rather more conservative, providing balance, and it is now available, freely it seems, on line at anglicandigest.org but anyone using it at all frequently should really pay something for it - and there are facilities for that.

Bargian Books : Campbelltown NSW January 2011

At "Colenso Corner", 7 Richard Avenue, Campbelltown, NSW, some thousands of books are on sale, some new, many near new, others good second-hand, many rare. The price of all hardbacks is $A10, and all paperbacks $A5. Proceeds go to assist the blind through the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children at North Parramatta or the Fred Hollows Foundation.

The books include works on the Bible, theological, liturgical, and historical books, prayer and hymn books, and several hundred mostly Christian biographies, as well as secular works.

One can arrange to visit the sale by contacting the Revd Dr John Bunyan - bunyanj@tpg.com.au , phone (02) 46.272.586, PO Box N109, Campbelltown North, 2560.

Kneeling again for prayer ?

STANDING for prayer is one ancient and pre-medieval posture, found in the Orthodox Church, and in the BCP still the posture of the priest except for penitential prayers, the General Confessions, and the Prayer of Humble Access. It can be seen as the posture of the forgiven son or daughter of God, offering thanksgiving. And it certainly has Scriptural warrant - e.g.

Genesis 24.13, 1 Chronicles 23.27,30, Nehemiah 9.5, S.Luke 18.13 (the prayer of the publican), and S.Mark 11.25 (Jesus saying, "...when ye stand praying, forgive").

However, some are not able to stand on the one spot for any length of the time (because of labyrinthitis and ear problems, arthritis, or spurs on the feet, etc) and if "the weak go to the wall", and sit, that may make them feel excluded. Even in "modern" rites, it is suggested, everyone should kneel at least for Confession and Absolution, and be encouraged to kneel, if possible, for a time of prayer after receiving the Sacrament.

KNEELING is both an outward expression of reverence and penitence and an encouragement to reverence, and kneeling for prayer has been the Church of England's practice for about one thousand years. (Of course, for some, it is not possible because of infirmity, and on certain occasions such as a House Communion, people may well sit around
a Table, standing if desired for the Gospel and for the Consecration.) Until comparatively recent times, kneeling for prayer was widely observed in all the Protestant Churches both in public Divine Service and for private prayer (although with people being seated to receive Communion in the Church of Scotland and other Calvinist churches).

Kneeling to receive the Communion has been required by our own Church since 1552. This rule aroused Puritan opposition, and just before the 1552 Prayer Book was printed, the "Black Rubric" was inserted at the end of the Communion in many but not all copies, without the authority of Parliament or Convocation, stating that kneeling for Communion signifies "the humble and gratefull acknowledgying of the benefites of Chryst, geuen unto the woorthye receyuer". The present, official 1662 form of this rubric emphasises that kneeling to receive Communion does not imply adoration of "any corporal Presence" of Christ's natural flesh and blood, the "Sacramental Bread and Wine" remaining "still in their very natural substances", any adoration of them being idolatry.

Bishop Donald Robinson makes the point that kneeling for prayer generally is indeed
a "principle" of the Book of Common Prayer.

Certainly it has STRONG SCRIPTURAL WARRANT : e.g.

1. When Solomon finished prayer ... he arose from before the altar. 1 Kings 8.54
2. At the evening sacrifice ... I fell upon my knees. Ezra 9.5
3. O come, let us worship and fall down (ie bow down), and kneel before the Lord our Maker. Psalm 95 - the Venite - appointed to be said or sung every day in the Book of Common Prayer, the reference here indeed being to prostration (similar to that of the Muslims ? - their practice copied like some others from Christians )
4. Daniel kneeled ... three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks. Daniel 6.10
5. Peter ... kneeled down, and prayed. Acts 9.40
6. We kneeled down on the shore and prayed. Acts 21.5,
and the best example of all, that of our Lord :
7. JESUS was withdrawn from them ... and KNEELED DOWN AND PRAYED.
S.Luke 22.41.

ENCOURAGING STATISTICS : England & Ireland

In 2009, seven men were ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church in the whole of the United Kingdom. In the Church of England alone, 574 were ordained (of whom 274 were women). - from "A haven from crisis : Disillusioned (Roman) Catholics can find solace in a church that combines tradition and modernity" by Colin Slee in the London Guardian, 8th May, 2010

In the Church of Ireland, 10% of the clergy in the Diocese of Dublin (including the Dean of one of its two Cathedral, Christ Church) are former Roman Catholics. Dublin Diocese has just one vacancy among its 60 parishes ! Even the Diocese with the most vacancies, Clogher, there are 7 out of 32 parishes.

In 2009, 10% of the ordinands in the Church of Ireland were reported to be former Roman Catholics. In the latest figures noted (in the Church of Ireland Gazette, 21st May, 2010), there were 29 ordinands training for the Church of Ireland, plus 27 in the preliminary "Foundation Course" (up from 19 in 2009). That does not mean the Church has no problems but it remains a Church that provides much to encourage other Anglicans, not least in having moderates very much in the majority.

A Substitutionary Atonement ? An Evangelical View

"The doctrine of the atonement, which is at the heart of the Christian good news, is sometimes preached in terms which seem to set it apart from anything recognizable in ordinary experience ... At worst it is told as a positively immoral story - an angry God needing to be propitiated, and accepting by way of propitiation the sacrifice of an innocent victim in lieu of the guilty. This is, of course, a pernicious travesty of the Gospel, and the first step towards putting it right is, no doubt, to see that God and Christ are one in being, so that the sacrifice of Christ is a sacrifice made by God, not made to him. But over and above this, is it not vital to recognize that what is happening on the cross is not something apart from human life but is only the climactic fulfilment and perfecting of what, in its measure - its incomplete measure - happens whenever there is a reconciliation between two estranged persons ?"

- from "Preaching the Atonement", chapter 2 of Forgiveness and Reconciliation by
an Evangelical scholar, the late Revd Professor C.F.D.Moule.

I heard another Evangelical, the late Bp David Sheppard (the cricketer), preach the "Three Hours" on Good Friday one year in Chester Cathedral. He said that the doctrine of a penal substitutionary atonement had indeed brought him to Christ but yet he had come to see it as quite inadequate. Later he kindly sent me a copy of this sermon as preached subsequently in a parish church. His path has been followed by a considerable number of younger Evangelical Anglicans. (A defence of the very conservative Evangelical understanding can be found, of course, e.g. in our own Leon Morris's The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross.

Thomas F.Torrance is the subject of a new book by Paul D.Molnar, reviewed by another Evangelical, Peter Foster, Bishop of Beverley, in the Church Times of the 28th May, 2010. He notes that Torrance "believed that a false view of Christ's humanity lay behind the common mistake in Evangelical theologies of the atonement, wherein it is asserted that God is reconciled to the world, rather than that the world is reconciled to God. He regarded the idea that, in the atonement, God is reconcilised as a sub-Christian reversion to older pagan ideas of a God who needs to be appeased and placated. God is always the subject of reconciliation, not the object." "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." 2 Corinthians 5.19

This writer admits that according to Article 2, Christ died "to reconcile his Father to us" but this, he would contend, is not true and not Scriptural. Fortunately, as Dean Arthur Stanley showed, after a long campaign, the requirement of subscription to every statement in the Articles was abolished as long ago as 1865. Since then, only a general "assent" was required, "assent" never legally defined - the situation still in the Church of Australia, though the requirement further changed now in the Church of England.

The Atonement has been understood in various ways, even in the New Testament itself. Does S.Luke, for example, even have a doctrine of atonement at all if we take the "shorter" version of the Lucan story of the Last Supper as the original (my own view) ? (He omits the Marcan reference to Jesus dying to give his life as a ransom for all.) As a liberal Anglican, I myself have found most helpful the study of the various theories by Hastings Rashdall in The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology, but there are innumerable books on the subject. And certainly none of us can never fully comprehend the Mystery of our Redemption. We know only "in part" !

Archbishop calls for a broader idea of mission

At the May meeting this year of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, the Archbishop of Armagh in his presidential address said that the Church needs "a broader and deeper understanding of contemporary mission", and that "mission begins when we meet people at their point of need". He described evangelism as "the work of transformation".

"The role of the Church in good times and in bad is to stand alongside those who are finding it hardest to cope, whatever their circumstances ; to exhibit in practical and personal ways the loving concern of God for all people, but especially for the vulnerable ; and to be a beacon of hope to the living, for nothing is more spiritually, socially and physically restorative than live and hope."

"We have to shape our life and institutions at all levels to reflect these priorities. We need to be less concerned about defending the institution and more concerned about enhancing the lives of people."

His words surely apply not only to the Church of Ireland but to all Christian churches.

Archbishop Goodhew's Five Points

When Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Harry Goodhew, gave his Diocese five points of purpose that one would suggest are relevant to all Anglican Dioceses and Parishes :

OBSERVABLY GOD'S PEOPLE (to emphasise Christian character and life),
PASTORALLY EFFECTIVE (ministering and caring for the people of God),
EVANGELISTICALLY ENTERPRISING (to encourage a range of ways of reaching out to those who do not believe),
GENUINELY CARING (to express the wide range of concerns that loving others and the world that God has created might generate),
DYNAMICALLY ANGLICAN (finding ways in which we can maintain and benefit from our Anglican heritage in doctrine, liturgy, and order in a way that speaks to a world that is different in so many ways from that of the 16th and 17th centuries).