The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
2
Newbigin in His Time
Wilbert R. Shenk
Lesslie Newbigin came of age as the West was in the grips of deep and prolonged crisis: the Great War, 1914–1918, had devastated Europe, an ill-conceived peace settlement among European countries had become the breeding ground for messianic ideologies that were paving the way for yet another global conflict, and the world economy collapsed in 1929. During his first year at university Newbigin became a committed Christian and identified with the Student Christian Movement, which was dedicated to nurturing in its members a strong sense of Christian vocation. He learned the importance of being attentive to the issues that were defining human existence. This was an essential element of Christian discipleship. To be a Christian meant living responsibly in God’s world.
As the twentieth century progressed, Newbigin decried the way Christian faith in the West had become enfeebled, with Christians ceding control of public life to secular ideology, permitting secularism to establish itself as the authoritative plausibility structure by which women and men ordered their lives. Western Christians had acquiesced to these powerful secular forces, retreating to the margins of public life. For Newbigin this constituted a betrayal of the gospel. The central act in redemptive history—the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ—was a public act, carried out by the political and religious establishments of the day. That victory of God in Jesus Christ remains the essential claim of the gospel. Faithfulness requires that Christians never retreat from proclaiming this good news to the world. Newbigin pleaded passionately that Christians in the West recover their apostolic nerve and boldly witness to God’s gracious saving action on behalf of all people.
To understand the significance of Newbigin’s witness, I review the way he continually engaged with the changing times and thoughtfully adapted to each new situation in which he found himself. What gave his witness extraordinary power was his intelligence, gift for communication, rich experience of serving more than three decades in India and extensive travel to all continents. Lesslie Newbigin disdained fads, but he was equally concerned not to be trapped in blinkered thinking that prevents one from seeing the present as clearly and discerningly as possible. Essential to effective communication and relationship is informed understanding of the culture of the other. This was a lesson he learned in a profound way when he went to India and threw himself into learning the challenging Tamil language and studying Indian history, culture and religion so that he might be an effective Christian servant in that land. He developed a deep appreciation for Indian people and their cultures and felt indebted for the privilege he had of living and serving in that great land.
At Cambridge, Newbigin’s world was expanded. The Student Christian Movement (SCM) engaged distinguished guest speakers, including John R. Mott, J. H. Oldham, William Paton and Archbishop William Temple, who were informed and perceptive observers of the world situation and challenged students to take up their Christian responsibility in the world. He was especially drawn to J. H. Oldham, whom he held in high esteem. Oldham was endowed with prophetic ability to “discern the times.” He observed that Oldham intuited the next burning issue that would capture world attention, and he would then focus his energy on addressing that concern through research, writing, speaking, study groups and conferences. From Oldham he learned that leadership requires knowing where the frontier lies and learning to understand it. People must be equipped to witness to the reign of God in this emerging new reality.
As founding editor of the International Review of Missions,1 Oldham had effectively used the journal as a platform for addressing a series of these frontline issues. Early on he saw the importance of breaking out of the Euro-centrism that characterized Western Christianity. He solicited contributions from Asian and African church leaders. Oldham felt special urgency to address the issue of racism, and published articles by articulate international Christian leaders. He wrote a major book, Christianity and the Race Problem, published in 1924. He set the problem of modern racism in the context of more than four centuries of Western colonization of other peoples. He wrote penetrating critiques of colonialism. Oldham recognized early that Hitler’s ideology of National Socialism was insidious and would wreak havoc on the world. Always his restless energy impelled him to stay focused on the future of Christian witness and responsibility.
Throughout his life Lesslie Newbigin continued to rely on the insights and example of J. H. Oldham. He never forgot that it was Oldham who first drew attention to the looming spiritual crisis of Western Christianity.
Student Christian Movement
Upon completing his studies at Cambridge in 1931, Newbigin joined the staff of the SCM and was appointed a field secretary in Scotland. He was soon called on to help organize national student conferences and was one of two delegates the British SCM sent to a conference organized by the International Student Service, which was hosted by Germany in 1932. Delegates were drawn from various fields: politics, the academy and other professions. The crisis in Germany dominated the atmosphere. While the conference was in session President Hindenburg dissolved the German Reichstag. Among the German delegation Newbigin was most impressed by the National Socialist delegates, who showed a sense of direction. They had political momentum on their side. Indeed, their leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933.
That summer Newbigin went on holiday in Europe. While worshiping in an Austrian church on a Sunday morning, the service was suddenly interrupted by the drumbeat call “Heil, Hitler! Heil, Hitler!” as a company of “Brownshirts” marched by. He was immediately overwhelmed with a sense of the idolatrous character of what he had just heard. For the rest of his life he was haunted by his failure to discern the nature of this movement at the conference in Germany in 1932. Ever after he would be skeptical when he heard a social or political movement acclaimed as “God at work in the world.”2
One of SCM’s important initiatives was to bring together students of diverse backgrounds. In January 1933 the SCM hosted the Edinburgh Quadrennial. Several thousand students from some fifty countries were challenged to give themselves to Christian world mission. Remarkably, this conference gave priority to the crisis of Christendom. The rise of Communism generated considerable discussion. But Oldham addressed the convention on the way the philosophy of the Enlightenment had set Europe on a path away from the Christian faith. Newbigin does not record his own reaction to Oldham but reports that the next day the Scotsman carried letters condemning what Oldham had said.3 It would be another fifty years before Europeans were willing to acknowledge that their culture was steadily being reclaimed by paganism; Europe was indeed a mission field.4 Through SCM, Newbigin got acquainted with students from Africa and Asia who were studying in Great Britain, some of whom became lifelong friends. Among these students were future leaders such as (Sir) Francis Akanu Ibiam,5 physician and distinguished Christian leader who became governor of the Nigerian Eastern Region upon independence in 1960. These friends made him aware of the irrepressible aspirations among these peoples to free themselves from the control of a colonial power. Justice demanded that colonialism be ended.
India
The summer of 1936 Lesslie Newbigin completed his theological studies at Westminster Theological College, Cambridge; was ordained by the Church of Scotland for missionary service; married Helen Henderson, an SCM staff colleague; and together they sailed for India. Never one to squander time, Newbigin used the four-week voyage from Liverpool to Madras to complete the writing of a book, Christian Freedom in the Modern World.6 This was the twenty-five-year-old Newbigin’s reply to John Macmurray, an influential philosopher and Christian writer whose book Freedom in the Modern World he had found to be theologically inadequate because Macmurray seemed to posit that true human freedom was possible independent of the atoning work of Jesus Christ.7
Already while traveling on the S.S. City of Cairo the Newbigins encountered the contempt with which fellow Europeans held the peoples of the Middle East and India. Their sense of disquiet would only grow. Upon arrival at Madras on October 22, they were taken by car to the rural town of Singleput and the large missionary bungalow that was to be their home while they studied Tamil. The adjustment was not easy. They were shocked by what they “saw of the relations between missionaries and their Indian colleagues,” he recalled.8 They observed that the majority of their missionary colleagues seemed to be quite content with the status quo. Some firmly resisted any attempt to dismantle the colonial mission structures that had been in place for decades. These missionaries seemed frozen in time. In his diary Newbigin wrote:
I must say I couldn’t help being horrified by the sort of relation that seems to exist between the missionaries and the people. It seems so utterly remote from the New Testament. There seems to be no question of getting alongside them and sharing their troubles and helping them spiritually. . . . We drive up like lords in a car, soaking everybody else with mud on the way, and then carry on a sort of inspection. . . . They all sort of stand at attention and say “Sir.” It’s awful. . . . But one thing is as sure as death: surely they won’t stand this sort of thing from the white man much longer.9
Fortunately, Newbigin soon discovered he was not alone. Among other recently arrived missionary colleagues he found those who shared his deep disquiet. Charles W. Ranson, who had come to India several years earlier and became a close friend, was similarly disturbed by the colonialist attitude of disdain for the Indian people.10 During this time Newbigin also discovered the writings of Roland Allen. Years later he recalled, “I retain vivid memories of my own reading of Allen’s work, when I was beginning missionary service in India.”11 Allen delivered a devastating critique of the modern mission establishment, stirring plenty of resentment among the old mission guard. Consequently, many mission leaders and missionaries dismissed Allen as idealistic and unfair. Late in life Newbigin would say: “Allen’s ideas are sound. I know because I’ve tried them and they work!”12
IMC Tambaram Assembly 1938
Because the Newbigins were forced to return to Great Britain in 1937 for medical treatment following a serious traffic accident that left Lesslie with a complicated fracture of his left leg, he did not attend the 1938 International Missionary Council (IMC) Assembly at Tambaram, near Madras.
During his years as IMC’s general secretary (which ended in 1927; William Patton succeeded him that year), Oldham had emphasized three priorities that the Christian movement faced worldwide: indigenous agency, racism, and secularization. While Oldham had raised consciousness of the importance of these issues, World War I and the turmoil of the post-war years distracted the mission agencies from taking constructive action. Meanwhile, the independence movements in the European-held colonies in Asia and Africa had grown steadily in strength. By the late 1930s Dutch mission agencies were taking steps in the Dutch East Indies (that is, Indonesia) to grant mission-founded churches their independence and transfer programs and leadership responsibilities to the Indonesians. Respected scholars and churchmen like Hendrik Kraemer and J. H. Bavinck had been lobbying for more than a decade for this action. But in India things were stalled.
A priority issue addressed at the Tambaram Assembly was the training of leaders for the growing churches in Asia and Africa. Not only had training facilities not been given the attention required, they also needed to consider thoroughly the type of training that was appropriate for churches in African and Asian cultures. Until then it had been assumed the Western model of theological education was standard. Models appropriate to the churches of Asia and Africa had not been envisaged. But in a vigorous statement the IMC Study Committee called for the development of training programs suited to the needs and culture of each church. Yet in spite of the solid work that went into the background documents and the quality of the debate at the assembly, implementation would be deferred until the 1950s.
Upon their return to India in 1939 the Newbigin family moved to Kanchipuram, regarded as one of the seven most holy cities in India and a center of Hindu studies. He comments cryptically in his autobiography on what they found upon arrival: “There was a vast amount of learning to be done.”13 One can only be impressed with the multiple means Newbigin used to refine his knowledge of Tamil, to meet a wide range of local people and to establish relations with community leaders. In addition, he was invited by members of the Ramakrishna mission to come to their monastery for weekly study of Hindu and Christian scriptures: one week they would study a passage from the Svetasvatara Upanishad and the next week from the Gospel of John. This opened up to Newbigin the world of Hindu thought in a way few Westerners ever experience. He also established lasting friendships with the monks of the monastery and worked to break down the social barriers that had kept the missionaries separated from their fellow Christians in the local church community. For example, by traveling on foot or bicycle one was much more likely to stop and chat with people whom you met on a footpath. He did this as much as possible.
Training for Ministry in India
By the early 1940s Newbigin had developed a critique of modern missions that informed his response to a range of issues, including training for ministry. His assignment as a missionary included relating to rural villages where most people were not yet literate, poverty was endemic and opportunity for advancement was limited. But he observed that these village Christians were quite capable of sharing their faith, were faithful in stewardship, and participated regularly in worship. He was convinced that these humble Christians had resources that were being overlooked or discounted when criteria from the West were employed to test their maturity and potential contribution. His critique can be summarized in terms of five observations, which are both descriptive and prescriptive: (1) To accurately gauge ecclesial reality one must go to the local church. (2) This reality is most accurately displayed in the rural areas. (3) A local Christian congregation has the resources essential to nurture growth in discipleship, witness and service of its members. (4) Each congregation must be allowed to grow from within its own environment; this insures it will be owned and supported by its members. (5) Training for ministry must start in the vernacular language. Each of these points can be elaborated at great length; taken together they formed a grid to be used in evaluating the work being done.
In 1942 the British signaled that they were preparing to grant India its national sovereignty within five years (that is, 1947). Most mission agencies had made no preparation for such a step in relation to the churches to which they related. This was not because Indian Christians had not been pleading for a new relationship in which they would assume full leadership of their churches, with missionaries playing supporting roles. For many missionaries, it seemed their only concern was how to preserve their positions into the future. Newbigin retorted with the truism if democracy is good for the British, it is good for the Indians too.14
Meanwhile the National Christian Council of India, Burma and Ceylon decided to take up the 1938 IMC recommendation on theological training for ministry. Early in these discussions it was decided that a vernacular, medium-high level theological training school in each of the main languages used in India must be a priority. In 1942 Newbigin was asked to chair the committee that would develop such a school in the Tamil-speaking area. Nearly thirty years later the Tamilnadu Theological Seminary in Madurai was opened. The NCC also authorized an empirically based survey of ministerial training in all their constituent churches during 1943–1944. Charles W. Ranson directed the study and wrote the report, The Christian Minister in India: His Vocation and Training. Though much praised and widely read, its main recommendations were not implemented.
At this time the editor of the International Review of Missions requested Newbigin to write an article on the position of the missionary in the Indian church. It was published as “The Ordained Foreign Missionary in the Indian Church.”15 He developed his argument by describing how the role of the missionary had evolved over time. Typically, the missionary began as an evangelist in a rural village. As churches were established, the missionary became the pastor, and Indians were deployed as Bible women and evangelists. Subsequently, the mission established institutions and the missionary became the administrator. The missionary guided the entire development process, thus insuring that the missionary retained control. The power structure of the typical mission formed a pyramid, with the administrator—holding the purse strings—at the top. Even in cases where the mission had assigned responsibility to an Indian to serve as pastor, for example, it was understood that the mission retained effective control through its treasurer. Predictably, Newbigin’s article stirred considerable controversy, especially in India.
If this pattern were to be fundamentally changed, as surely it must, Newbigin argued, the missionary had to give up all administrative positions, thus making way for Indians to assume these responsibilities. Naturally, this raised the question, what would be left for the missionary to do? Newbigin’s prescription was a strong tonic. First, the missionary required a reorientation that started with deep change. Second, a new “spirituality” had to be developed based on a willingness to accept whatever assignment the church saw fit to give a missionary. Third, the missionary should be present as a servant of the church. To demonstrate the seriousness of his proposal, Newbigin and two Church of Scotland missionary colleagues placed themselves under the administrative authority of the Indian church, rather than the mission. In the process they gave up their rights as missionaries. A flurry of correspondence between these missionaries and the home office ensued.16 The Church of Scotland Mission Office was caught off guard.
Church Union
Lesslie Newbigin was propelled to international prominence because of the role he played in the founding of the Church of South India (CSI) in 1947. Negotiations had started in 1918 when the South India United Church (SIUC), the Wesleyan Methodist Church and the Anglican Church agreed to explore the possibility of uniting to form a single church. The SIUC itself was formed in 1908 when Presbyterian and Congregational churches formed a federation. The Church in South India process had been slow and stalled repeatedly. In 1943 Newbigin was elected convener of the SIUC committee responsible for church union and took an active role from that point on in CSI negotiations. He made a strategic contribution in getting agreement from all three parties to the final basis for the union.
A main sticking point had been Anglican insistence on apostolic succession, which would have required that pastors ordained in SIUC and Methodist Churches be reconsecrated at the hands of an Anglican bishop. Newbigin himself rejected this solution. He was finally able to finesse the situation so that Anglicans agreed—some reluctantly—that the ordinations of all pastors of the uniting churches would be recognized and that in the future the bishop would officiate at all consecrations.17
In the spring of 1947 Newbigin was relieved of other furlough duties in order to devote himself to the writing of The Reunion of the Church.18 This book was an exposition of the Basis of Union of the Church in South India and an exploration of the unity and continuity of the church. This unprecedented union brought together episcopal and non-episcopal bodies in a polity that respected the traditions of the uniting bodies, and yet allowed for the formation of the Church of South India.
The Church of South India was inaugurated September 27, 1947. Six Anglican bishops were commissioned as bishops in the Church of South India, and they, in turn, consecrated another nine men as bishops to lead the dioceses of the new church. Newbigin was among the new class of bishops and, at age thirty-seven, the youngest of the sixteen CSI bishops.19 He was assigned to lead the southernmost diocese, Madura and Ramnad.
From that point on Newbigin was present at most major international ecumenical events sponsored by the Protestant and Orthodox churches through the 1980s. He was given a leave from the Church of South India from 1959 to 1964 to oversee the merger of the International Missionary Council into the World Council of Churches and then to serve as director of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the WCC for four years following the merger.
Lesslie Newbigin as Bishop
Newbigin had played a strategic role in bringing together three church bodies, two of which had non-episcopal polities. The third, the Anglican Church, was committed to the traditional concept of apostolic succession, which Newbigin rejected on theological and historical grounds, and because he knew there was no way union could be achieved if this view of episcopacy was retained.20 He had embraced a view that recognized the value of the “historic episcopate” and episcopacy as a suitable way of governing the church. But he was at great pains to redefine the role of the bishop long associated with hierarchical church government. In the final stage of negotiations toward union, Newbigin wrote to a group who remained concerned that acceptance of episcopacy would result in a church led by bishops who were primarily church bureaucrats. To allay these fears he asserted:
I agree that the ultimate control should rest with the Diocesan Council [which the bishop chaired]. But I am very anxious to emphasize at the outset that I do not regard the Bishop as therefore mainly an administrator. You will remember that the Scheme is very clear about the function of a bishop: he is to be a pastor, an evangelist, a teacher of the faith, and a leader in worship. I am holding to that definition with both hands!21
In all discussions of the nature of episcopacy thereafter, he would reiterate and elaborate this vision. But more important was the way in which he attempted to follow this model in his own ministry. Immediately upon leaving Madras to take up his work as bishop, he made it his first priority to “get into personal touch with the congregations,” of which there were some 550. Many congregations were isolated and rural. But he knew “the union will mean nothing unless there can be personal contact. . . . It must be clear from the outset that a bishop is primarily a pastor, not a bureaucrat.”22 During the following years he spent on average three days per week visiting congregations. No matter how distant or humble, he went to them: evangelizing, catechizing, baptizing, helping resolve disputes, encouraging the local pastor and leading in worship. As much as possible he traveled on foot, by bicycle, bullock cart and bus. His charming little book That All May Be One: A South India Diary is a series of vignettes of these visits to congregations during the first three years of his service as bishop of Madura and Ramnad.23
The Household of God
In November 1952 Newbigin delivered the Kerr Lectures at Trinity College, Glasgow. It was natural that he would address some aspect of ecclesiology given the role he had played in the formation of the CSI. The focus here is not the way he treated the topic, although the published lectures were widely read, discussed and studied on all continents.24 Rather, we want to note how, in 1952, he situated the problem of ecclesiology historically. He began with an examination of the doctrine of the church in the light of three developments: (1) the ending of historical Christendom, (2) the impact of the modern missionary movement outside of Europe and North America, and (3) the emergence of the ecumenical movement in the twentieth century, which was a direct outgrowth of the missionary movement. For the rest of his life he would emphasize the indissoluble relationship between mission and unity.
Dissolution of Christendom. The corpus Christianum in Europe had been forged over a period of a thousand years so that Christianity became the folk religion of the continent. Sixteenth-century Reformation theologies took this for granted. This was not a missionary situation. The people and culture of Europe were asserted to be “Christian.” Over the past four centuries this religio-cultural synthesis had broken down. But this process did not happen suddenly. The first European-sponsored missions sent to other continents mistakenly attempted to transplant “Christendom” wholesale in those cultures. This proved to be wholly ineffective. The “Christendom” was deeply European and inflexible, and it required that the new church be separated from its indigenous culture and grafted into the culture of Christendom. This, of course, impaired its ability to evangelize. “Eventually, it was recognized that a new kind of line had now to be drawn, a line dividing the Church from the world without separating the Christian community from the local culture.”25 This was but a precursor of what was also taking place in the West. In old Christendom, that is, Europe, the scope of the church’s authority and influence was steadily shrinking. It was becoming laughable to claim that the church had authority in the wider culture. Instead, the church had to learn to think of itself vis-à-vis culture, a body distinct from culture but dynamically related to it. Consequently, it was urgently necessary to rethink the nature of the church in light of its changing context. Traditional ecclesiologies were of little value in the new situation around the world.
Not only was the place of the church in culture being drastically redefined; the way personhood was understood was also being radically altered. The traditional view of the person as an interdependent member of the group had given way to the autonomous self. The nature of modern industrial society, the breakdown of the old social structures and webs of relationship—all these forces were redefining the meaning of the human. An atomized society had increasing difficulty relating to what we call the body of Christ. If it was to have a future, the church had to reclaim its self-understanding as a body distinct from society as a whole.
The missionary movement beyond Europe and North America. The majority of people who heard Newbigin’s initial lecture had little capacity to understand existentially what he was saying about the importance of the Christian mission for reforming their understanding of ecclesiology. Yet increasing numbers of Westerners were now Christian in name only; many were embarrassed by the foreign mission movement of the past 150 years. Increasingly, the institutions responsible for the academy, economy and public life were completely secular. Christians were allowed to work within these agencies so long as they kept their faith commitment private. The churches were expected to care for their own affairs and not interfere in public life. Even within the churches the experience of deep fellowship and solidarity had increasingly been supplanted by the cultural emphasis on the individual.
Modern Christian missions had been directed to peoples and cultures where previously there had been no Christian presence. Among these were lands of other great religious traditions that generally did not welcome attempts by Christians to establish churches in their midst. Those individuals who heard the gospel message and embraced it were usually cut off from their birth family and community. From the early days of the mission movement, the missionaries realized that the church had to become an alternative community in solidarity with these people who, as Christians, were cast out of their indigenous cultural homes. This placed the question of ecclesiology front and center. It was urgent, and it had to be practical as well as theological. In this situation the church had to provide for its members the social support and discipline that are taken for granted in the natural community.
In spite of official and cultural sanctions, Christians in these lands were finding ways of living out their faith and witnessing to Jesus Christ. The West needed to learn from the experience of these new churches in non-Christian cultures the meaning of ekklesia. Being a Christian in a non-Christian context called for recovery of a biblical ecclesiology.
The ecumenical movement. The ecumenical movement was born from the modern missionary movement beyond historical Christendom. Early on, missionaries became aware that Christian disunity was a scandal. The sight of multiple varieties of Christians coming to Asia or Africa, vying with one another for territory and adherents was disgraceful. It was not surprising that missionaries were leading advocates of Christian unity. However, that originally oikoumenē referred to the whole inhabited world into which the church was sent to announce the gospel was overlooked. Newbigin cautioned, “There is a real danger at the present time of a false sort of ecumenism, an attempt to find consolation amid the wreckage of the old Christendom in the vision of a new and wider Christendom, yet without the acceptance of the hard demands of missionary obedience.”26 The integrity of the church’s witness depends on the church demonstrating that it actually lives this new life in Christ. Disunity is a counter-witness. Newbigin was under no illusion as to the difficulty of realizing this unity in the present age, but he refused to accept the status quo. The Lord of the Church desires “that all may be one.” We must strive to honor Christ’s prayer.
The main premise. Newbigin draws this introductory discussion to a conclusion: “The Church is the pilgrim people of God. It is on the move—hastening to the ends of the earth to beseech all men to be reconciled to God, and hastening to the end of time to meet its Lord who will gather all into one.”27 The church ought to be understood as a dynamic organism, not a staid institution. Structures and forms should always be understood as temporary. When they do not facilitate missionary faithfulness, they must be abandoned or reformed in light of the new situation toward which the church is inexorably moving. Only in this way will the church continue to engage each culture where it is located as the instrument of God’s mission.
Interlude
Newbigin’s years of service with the International Missionary Council—implementing its merger with the World Council of Churches, and then as the first director of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism—had not been entirely satisfactory. In January 1965 the CSI called Lesslie Newbigin to return to India to serve as bishop of the Madras diocese. He welcomed the call to return to India and take up duties in this dynamic metropolis and found this fulfilling. Then in 1974, at age sixty-five, he retired as bishop, having served the CSI in that role for twenty-seven years. The Newbigins returned to Great Britain, and in September they settled in Birmingham where he would lecture on theology of mission at Selly Oak Colleges the next five years. They became active in the United Reformed Church.28
Returning to Great Britain after a long absence required considerable adjustment. The visible erosion of “Christian Britain” was widely evident. The palpable loss of hope on the part of younger people was deeply disturbing. What was to be the future of Christian faith in Europe? This was the nagging question. Newbigin seemed to have accepted that historical Christendom was finished and there was little value in discussing it further.29 But he remained deeply concerned about the future of the church.
Unfinished Agenda
In his seventy-second year Lesslie Newbigin completed writing his autobiography, presciently titled Unfinished Agenda. A decade later a new edition of the autobiography was released with a twenty-page postscript. There Newbigin remarks, “When I finished the writing of the preceding chapters in 1982, I had no idea that there were still ten years ahead which would turn me in a new direction and present new tasks.”30
In early 1981 the latest report on the state of the churches in Great Britain was published. Faced with the dispirited findings of the continuing decline of the churches in Great Britain, various people urged that something be done to address the situation. Meeting in July, the executive committee of the British Council of Churches (BCC) considered, and approved, a proposal to convene a large national conference in 1984 on the theme of the gospel and culture.31 It was quickly apparent this action did not meet with the approval of a number of people, including some who were not present at the meeting but heard about the BCC action. This included Lesslie Newbigin. The opponents reminded the Council that this was by no means the first time such a national meeting had been held for this purpose. Most notably, the 1943 Assembly of the Church of England called for appointment of a commission “to survey the whole problem of modern evangelism with special reference to the spiritual needs and prevailing intellectual outlook of the non-worshipping members of the community, and to report on the organization and methods by which such needs can most effectively be met.”32 Addressing the first meeting of this special commission the following autumn, Archbishop William Temple emphasized two points: (1) “The message of the church is the eternal gospel,” and (2) “The first need in evangelism is for a strengthening and quickening of spiritual life within the church.” The report issued in 1945 was widely acclaimed but resulted in no action to reverse the decline.
The BCC agreed that before convening a large-scale conference, more thorough preparation was required, starting with a careful and clear definition of the problem. At this point the Council turned to Lesslie Newbigin to prepare this programmatic statement. He quickly drafted a statement that was then circulated to a number of BCC leaders. They were impressed and offered their comments. Newbigin then reworked the manuscript and it was circulated to BCC members. Soon it was suggested that this programmatic statement should be fully published. The result was the small book The Other Side of 1984: Questions for the Churches.33 It quickly attracted wide attention around the world, going through multiple printings. The impact of this small book was as surprising to Newbigin as anyone. It would set the course for the rest of his life.
In view of the range of suggestions the British Council of Churches received for next steps, it appointed a task force to organize an initiative to lead the churches in responding to the present situation. Newbigin was named to this task force and drew directly on what he had learned from J. H. Oldham. Instead of the usual one- or two-day consultation, the task force recommended a six-year initiative that would be launched in 1986 and end in July 1992: The Gospel and Our Culture Programme. The goal was to enlist the participation of lay Christians active in academia, the professions, business, politics and industry, plus pastors. Several regional conferences were held to prepare for the national conference in July 1992. The goal was to create a movement that would engage a cross-section of lay Christians. Eight theme study groups were organized consisting of specialists in each area—history, science, the arts, epistemology, economics, education, health and healing, and the media—with the task of preparing an essay. These essays were compiled and edited by Hugh Montefiore as the study volume The Gospel and Contemporary Culture.34 It was used at the national conference of several hundred Christian leaders at Swanwick in July 1992.
Throughout the six years The Gospel and Our Culture Newsletter appeared regularly. Each issue featured a lead article by Newbigin, as director of the Programme. He traveled throughout the British Isles, the European continent and North America speaking at conferences and lecturing. In 1984 he gave a talk to a group of German church leaders meeting in Stuttgart titled “The Cultural Captivity of Western Christianity as a Challenge to a Missionary Church.”35 That year he also delivered the Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary.36 In these lectures he developed and elaborated ideas that were adumbrated in The Other Side. He encouraged parallel “Gospel and Our Culture” initiatives in other countries.37 In 1990 he delivered the Osterhaven Lectures at Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan. These were published as Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth.38 But the Alexander Robertson Lectures for 1988, published subsequently as The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, were the most substantial of his writings after 1983.
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
Fall term 1988 Lesslie Newbigin delivered the Alexander Robertson Lectures at Glasgow University. However, the way the lectureship was carried out was something of a surprise.39 Newbigin had been to Glasgow frequently over the years. As already noted, in November 1952 he delivered the Kerr Lectures in Trinity College, Glasgow, on the nature of the church, published as The Household of God. So when the invitation came to present the Alexander Robertson Lectures for 1988, Newbigin was confident he knew what to expect. He proceeded to prepare several lectures and went to Glasgow with the lectures already in typescript.
Professor George Newlands met the Newbigins upon their arrival at the Glasgow station. Rather matter-of-factly Newlands informed Newbigin that he would be giving the lectures as a course for some twenty first-year students in the regular academic term. Newbigin had assumed he would be lecturing to a general audience. But his years of missionary service stood him in good stead. The first rule in mission: expect the unexpected! Newbigin set about immediately reorganizing and expanding his material to fit the kind of students enrolled in the class.
When he met the class for the first time, he observed that the students ranged in age from new university graduates to men and women in their thirties who had left professional careers because of a call to Christian ministry. Newbigin soon realized that this class represented a microcosm of contemporary European culture: secularized and skeptical, distrustful of religion and disillusioned with the church, searching for meaning but unsure where to find it. It was a living laboratory of contemporary culture. Throughout the term he met with the students in small groups weekly as well as for individual tutorials. It proved to be immensely rewarding and fruitful.
Given the circumstances in which these lectures were delivered, and the creative process that Newbigin used with the class, there is no doubt that his final draft was enhanced by the results of the lively interaction between professor and students. The topics included were calculated to connect with that diverse group. The fact that The Gospel in a Pluralist Society continues to resonate and reverberate with a wide range of people, twenty-five years on, surely owes a good deal to the provenance offered by that Glasgow classroom.