The Precarious Church

Description

What is the biggest threat facing churches today? Not enough young people? Too little mission and evangelism? Unsustainable buildings? Unappealing styles of worship? Not enough diversity? Whatever the reasons, the church today seems to exist in a state of anxiety, concerned with its self-preservation. In this bold and hopeful book, Martyn Percy argues that a being a broken church is in fact good news, as it is only through the cracks that the overwhelming abundance of God can shine through. This collection of essays and reflections considers what it means to be a precarious church. The term suggests uncertainty and peril, yet it is rooted in the Latin precatio, meaning prayer. It argues that the Church’s vocation is not to be successful or even to survive but to be precarious, liminal, unpredictable and mysterious – a place of encounter with the holy. The questions that should consume us are not, “how shall we remove the risks and alleviate our anxieties?”, but rather “how shall we live in this age of uncertainty?” Every age has had its uncertainties and this inspiring volume explores what faithfulness to each other and to God looks like in an age of anxiety.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian Church
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 19 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786225139
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Precarious Church
Redeeming the Body of Christ
Martyn Percy






© Martyn Percy 2023
First published in 2023 by the Canterbury Press Norwich
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Canterbury Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd (a registered charity)

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Many of the chapters in this book first appeared as blogs on the website of Modern Church ( https://modernchurch.org.uk/ ). The publisher is grateful to Modern Church for its permission to reproduce these, and especially to Joe Priestley for his assistance in compiling this volume.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press.
The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work
Scripture quotations are taken from the Revised New Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 2019 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd and Image, a division of Random House, Inc., and used by permission.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978 1-78622-511-5
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd



Contents
Foreword by the Revd Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
Acknowledgements
Preface: Prospects for a Precarious Church
Introduction: A Progressive Union for a Precarious Church
Part 1 Leaps and Bounds
1. The New Politics of Ecclesionomics for the Church of England
2. The Church of England’s Growth Fetish
Reflections for Part 1
Part 2 Nuts and Bolts
3. Reflecting on (Another) Governance Review Group Report
4. Authority, Administration and Control: Resisting Imposed Governance
5. Reflecting on the Governance Review Group Report
Reflections for Part 2
Part 3 The See of Faith
6. A Critical Commentary on A Consultation Document: Bishops and Their Ministry Fit for a New Context
7. The Modern Myth of Impartiality: What the BBC and the Church of England Have in Common
8. Crown, Constitution and Church: The Contemporary Crisis for English Religion
Reflections for Part 3
Part 4 Rickety Religion
9. Issues
10. Structures
11. Time and Place
12. Post-Structuralism
13. Post-Structural Values
Reflections for Part 4
Part 5 Churches and Cultural Climate-Change Denial
14. Learning from Canute
15. Money, Sex and Power
16. Forecasting and Futurescapes
Reflections for Part 5
Part 6 Respair in a Time of Tumult
17. Respair in a Time of Tumult
Reflections for Part 6
Part 7 A Beginner’s Guide to Beginning Again
18. Beyond Surviving Church
19. Plentiful Redemption
20. Coda
Reflections for Part 7

Afterword by the Right Revd Dr Peter Selby
References and Further Reading
Acknowledgements of Sources




Foreword
by the Revd Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
I first met Martyn Percy when he arrived as the new Chaplain of Christ’s College Cambridge, where I was an undergraduate just beginning to tentatively explore questions of faith. I couldn’t have been more fortunate in having Martyn as a mentor and conversation partner in those crucial years. Faith, it turned out, didn’t mean having to leave your intellectual questions at the church door. Martyn and the college chapel community helped introduce me to a faith that not only could tolerate the full weight of academic questioning from the full range of disciplines studied in any modern university, but embraced such questioning and conversation, dancing joyfully with it.
More recently, I have worked with Martyn as a trustee of Modern Church. Modern Church was founded back in the nineteenth century, when the question of the day was very much how modern academic and scientific enquiry could be compatible with a faithful, biblically based Christianity. The presenting issue then was evolution, rather than today’s issues of gender, but the debates ran on familiar lines. Modern Church exists to support and promote the view that faith can and should be unafraid of dialogue with, and open to insights from, other disciplines. This was the common view in the early church, which developed its theology in conversation with Greek philosophy, and in the medieval church, which saw no distinction between theology and other fields of enquiry. Paradoxically, then, given its name, Modern Church invites us to rediscover our roots in a Christian worldview that believes that the study of the natural world – meaning everything that is – is, in itself, the study of God.
This, to me, is the real strength of Martyn’s work. It is rare to read the work of a modern theologian which draws on such a wide range of references and interlocutors – from theology, but also from history, philosophy, sociology and the sciences. The chapters in this book were mostly first written for and published on the Modern Church blog, and as such they express strong, provocative views on the immediate issues of the day. With any collection of this sort, we lose something in seeing these chapters outside of the immediate context of the other opinion pieces being written at the time. But what we gain in collecting them together in this way is a body of work in which we see Martyn consistently moving beyond the specific circumstances that sparked each chapter, inviting us to think more broadly about the issues raised.
Martyn is one of only a handful of our contemporary theologians and scholars whose impact and reputation has escaped the academy and who is nationally and internationally known. His work has been the subject of a symposium in the USA, and is now a book.1 In discussing his work in that book, Linda Woodhead says:
We need the theologian who is well-versed in the tradition but can connect with the Church as it really is. Percy is a ‘contextual theologian’ or even, perhaps, a ‘practical theologian’. With the contextual theologians, Percy believes that context is both important as theological ideas emerge (so even with the Trinity at Nicaea) and for the application of theological ideas in different situations. One of the most striking areas of originality in Martyn’s work is his method. He is a latter-day essayist – unusual amongst contemporary academics, but part of a classic tradition. The medium is perfect for his message: the two are inseparable. Martyn does theology, sociology and anthropology not from the vantage point of the preacher in the pulpit or the academic in the ivory tower, but from within the communities of practice he is addressing ‒ church, society and academy.
Being situated within a community of practice – rather than safely distant from it – and asking challenging questions about it is inevitably a precarious place to be. The Gospel of Luke reminds us that when Jesus gave a challenging talk, he was not only chased out of town but narrowly escaped being thrown off a cliff (Luke 4.29).
The Bible is full of stories of people and nations being called out of a place of comfort and stability, into a precarious existence dependent entirely on God. Precarious-ness does not sound inviting. It does not sound safe. But it may well be what we are called to.
Years ago, soon after becoming a Christian, I took ice skating lessons for a year. I was never very good at it. But one thing that I learned struck me as immensely important for my faith, and it has stayed with me over the years. And that is that you can’t skate well by trying to keep balanced, with your feet planted firmly down on the ice. You need to deliberately tip yourself off-balance, onto one of the two edges of the blade, and move. That’s been a guiding metaphor for me throughout this journey of faith, and I hear Martyn’s call for us to embrace precarious-ness in that context. We need to let go of our clinging onto to the comforts of stability, the comforts of the way things were, and be willing to move as the Spirit breathes, trusting ourselves entirely to our dependence on God’s grace. ‘Don’t cling to me’, the risen Jesus said to Mary Magdalene (John 20.17). It’s a startling call to let go of even the most precious elements of our what we’ve experienced in our faith so far, in order to be free to move where God is calling us to go in the future.
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
Acting Archdeacon of Liverpool
Note
1 Ian Markham and Joshua Daniels, eds, 2018, Reasonable Radical? Reading the Writings of Martyn Percy , Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications/Wipf & Stock.




Acknowledgements
This volume – a follow-up to The Humble Church: Renewing the Body of Christ – has to begin with huge thanks to Christine Smith at Canterbury Press for her wise counsel, encouragement and support. It is a pleasure to work with such a gifted publisher who is also a kind, discerning and creative interlocutor. I am full of gratitude for Christine’s oversight, skills and gifts.
The personal context for this volume has emerged out of trials and tribulations over the past five years, and I must thank all those who have been so kind, caring and supportive towards me and my wife Emma. In the course of this lengthy ordeal – which at times has felt gruelling – I can only say that we have felt sustained by prayer and love like never before. This