Holiness and Mission , livre ebook

Hymns Ancient & Modern - Morna D. Hooker

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

78 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

This book explores what mission and discipleship meant for some of the earliest Christian communities. It is based on the Hugh Price Hughes Lectures in the West London Mission.

Informations

Publié par	Hymns Ancient & Modern
Date de parution	23 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9780334047636
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0033€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Holiness and Mission
Holiness and Mission
Learning from the Early Church about Mission in the City
Morna Hooker and Frances Young
© Morna Hooker and Frances Young 2010 Appendix © Roger Cotterrell 2010
Published in 2010 by SCM Press Editorial office 13–17 Long Lane, London, EC1A 9PN, UK
SCM Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd (a registered charity) 13 A Hellesdon Park Road Norwich NR6 5DR, UK www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk
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, SCM Press.
Except where otherwise indicated, Bible quotations are either the authors’ own translation or are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Other scripture quotations are the authors’ own translations.
The Authors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Authors of this Work
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978-0-334-04381-2
Originated by The Manila Typesetting Company Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, SN14 6LH
Contents
Preface
Introduction
1 Be Holy as I am Holy
Morna Hooker
2 The Challenge of the City
Morna Hooker
3 Being Holy in the Cities of the Roman Empire
Frances Young
4 The Challenge of Establishment – Did a Christian Empire Help or Hinder?
Frances Young
5 Reflections for Today’s Church
Morna Hooker and Frances Young
Appendix: Voices in the City (Roger Cotterrell)
Index of Subjects and Names
Index of Scriptural References
Preface
It is our hope that those people presently exercised about mission and the spread of the Christian gospel in our post-Christian society will find these studies of scripture and the early Church pertinent to their thinking. Although the main chapters focus on biblical and historical material, the final chapter makes some attempt to draw out conclusions for the Church today; but the work is offered in the spirit of provoking reflection on potential parallels rather than offering ready-made answers. Insofar as we have any expertise, it lies in providing insight into the early history and the fundamental texts of the Christian faith, but in selecting the material we have been influenced by an awareness of the contemporary context within which the Church now needs to pursue its calling to participate in God’s mission.
In particular we focus on mission in the city. This is because the book began life as the Hugh Price Hughes lectures in 2010, delivered at Hinde Street Methodist Church in London during Lent, the context being the celebration of 250 years of Methodism in the West End and 200 years on the present site. The subject of ‘mission’ and in particular ‘mission in the city’ commended itself because Hinde Street is now the headquarters of the West London Mission Circuit, inheriting the work of notable leaders such as Hugh Price Hughes and Donald Soper at Kingsway Hall. We are pleased that the enthusiastic response to the lectures led Roger Cotterrell (a member of Hinde Street Church, Anniversary Professor of Legal Theory at Queen Mary University of London and a Fellow of the British Academy) to compile an appendix gathering together diverse voices from the audience, who spoke out of the experience of trying to live as Christians in the urban environment. However, the theological and practical issues we discuss are hopefully of far wider relevance.
Yet that original context is important, not least because it was the invitation to the two of us from Hinde Street which occasioned our first, much appreciated opportunity to collaborate with one another. We have enjoyed working together, and we hope that our readers will discern something of the interest generated by this project.
Morna Hooker and Frances Young April 2010
Introduction
In his book, on Cities and People , the architectural historian Mark Girouard begins by referring to big cities as romantic places ‘in the sense in which William Morris used the word: “By romantic I mean looking as if something was going on”’. 1 He goes on to write about the way in which the roar and throb of a great city can be exciting or frightening. ‘The rumble seems to become the inhuman sound of a mill which is remorselessly chewing up human beings.’ But getting to know a city dissolves this ‘impersonality’, as one ‘begins to distinguish the endless elements of which it is made up, different societies, different groups, different races, different religions, different family nexuses . . . all of which are constantly overlapping and interacting’. It is access to some of these groups and their interactions which ‘makes human life endurable or enjoyable’, he suggests.
City contexts of that kind were the locations in which Christianity spread, and what holds together the chapters of this book is a search for the kind of thing it has meant to embody the gospel and engage in mission in such places. In the first two chapters, Morna Hooker mines the biblical material for insight into the fundamental call and commission of the apostles, focusing first on the charge to ‘Be holy as I am holy’, what this implied for Israel and how it informed the apostolic mission to follow Jesus in doing the words and works of God. She then explores the adverse image of the city found in much of the biblical material, cities often figuring as places of oppression and injustice, and shows how Jesus and his followers presented a challenge to cities like Jerusalem and Rome. Yet in Acts these cities are identified as strategic centres, and cities facilitated the spread of the gospel. Rome appears as a force for good, as well as being the evil Babylon of the book of Revelation; and the climax of the Bible is in fact a vision of the New Jerusalem. The call is to embody the gospel whatever the cost, and being holy involves not just separation from the world or individual salvation but active presence engaging with the world’s needs and problems. This is to imitate Emmanuel, God with us.
Chapters 3 and 4 , by Frances Young, present some findings from historical research into the way Christianity actually spread in about the first five centuries of its existence – in the earliest period, before it had any official status and when it was subject to sporadic persecution and functioned as a somewhat anomalous minority group in the cities of the Roman Empire, and after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, when the Church found itself patronized by state power and increasingly had to adapt to fulfil the functions in society expected of a religion. Her presentation of the history implies some potential parallels with the Church’s current ambiguous position in post-Christian urban societies, hints at the possibility that when Constantine identified God’s mission with his mission and the attempt was made to Christianize society as a whole some of the most fundamental aspects of the Christian gospel were compromised, and suggests implicitly that we might do better to learn how to embody the gospel in city environments from the Church of the pre-Constantinian period. Within the context of Roman cities, Christian groups looked most like a school presenting a new kind of philosophy, but people seem to have been attracted by belonging to a community, by support offered, both material and spiritual, and by the lived ethic of love, love of neighbour, stranger and even enemy. This would suggest that it is through belonging to open, overlapping networks that people can both discover and begin to embody the gospel in the ‘rumble’ and ‘impersonality’ of the soulless city.
So what about preaching the gospel? The legacy of the eighteenth-century Evangelical movement, together with the missionary expansion of the nineteenth century, means that mission is most often associated with evangelizing and conversion, with bringing people to faith and teaching them the truth. Many would feel that what is needed is a renewed sense of the apostolic commission to proclaim the Good News, especially in the context of the West, where Christianity seems to be on the retreat, routed by the forces of secularization and pluralism. But renewal and reformation often emerge from a return to origins and fundamental principles. In the final chapter, each of the contributors presents some reflections on the implications of the earlier chapters for mission today, briefly considering models and methods of mission, together with issues about truth questions, dogma and doctrine, proselytizing and other faiths. Such themes are taken up also in the Appendix, where contributions from the original audience are given voice. Inevitably only the surface is scratched, but there is common ground in the insistence that it is only by knowing God’s love through hearing the gospel, and experiencing it through participation in loving communities, that people can be empowered to embody that love in lives lived for the sake for others.
Note
1 . Mark Girouard, Cities and People , London: Guild Publishing, 1985, p. v.
1
Be Holy as I am Holy
MORNA HOOKER
You may perhaps have been puzzled by the title of this book, and found yourself