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Singapore, the , and . This time I wish to ask a unpreparedWesternchurchesmightin thefuture affect yours few leaders, who will have been briefed a little and who in a similar way, and if so, are you willing to consider means are prepared to be pestered, the following: of resisting such an effect if and when it comes? 5. If the problem of declining Western churches and the 1.To whatextentis yourchurchawareof culturalchanges possible threatened decline of your church are intimately in your at the deepest presuppositionallevel? related because of an increasingly common , would 2. Is it possible that the traditional assumptions, axioms, you share in an ecumenical movement to investigate the and beliefs of your society are being gradually supplanted by issues involved and to make proposals for a joint mission to those of the modern and postmodern West? culture, should one be started? 3. Are you aware of the rapid decline of the traditional If the journey is made and the questions asked, more jour­ churchesof theWestand, if so, do you agree that a majorfactor neys might follow and (who knows?) proposals may be madefor in that decline is the European of the new missions-missions to -initiated, funded, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? and sustained by the old "mission fields" now become the "new 4. Is it possible that the cultural impact that has affected West" and the new "sending churches."

Encounters with "Culture"

Wilbert R. Shenk

he relationship of Christian to culture is a lively The faithful community is given no license to believe that its T concern today. By virtue of its role in extending the faith future will be secured by any power other than the power God worldwide over the past two centuries, the modern mission demonstrated in the crucified and resurrected Messiah. Already movement helped thrust the issue before the entire church. The in the the reader has been amply warned against appropriationof the Gospelby an ever-growingvarietyof peoples putting confidence in a religiocultural synthesis based on politi­ has reinforced the conviction that every people has the right to cal power as a way of guaranteeing fidelity to God. On the hear, embrace, and live out the faith in its own cultural idiom. contrary, the prophets preach about an unconventional order Perforce this puts before us with new urgency what the proper that inverts all human expectations, one based on a reordering of relationship is between faith and culture. It is being raised with life in to God's will (Ier. 31:31-33). particular insistence with regard to Christian faith and modern For the sake of semantic and historical accuracy, we should or Western culture, for this is the only culture historically to be distinguish between "Christian culture" and "." described as Christian culture. Yet today it is clear that Christian The latter is the correct designation for the synthesis forged by faith continues to lose authority in whathas beenits heartland for Emperor Constantine and his successors from 313 C.E. on, by more than fifteen hundred years. which Christianity gained recognition as the religion of state, It is salutary to recall that long before these signs of eroding with the church functioning as the religious guardian. influence were patently evident, there were those who ques­ Christendom, or the corpus christianum,thereby became indistin­ tioned the aptness and utility of claiming that Western culture guishable from society. Citizenship in society was synonymous was Christian. Since the Protestant it has been with membershipin the church, andbaptismwas a religiopolitical accepted thata tributary of minority dissent has established itself . It is quite another matter to judge the extent to which this over against the ecclesiastical precisely at this point. religiocultural amalgam is truly Christian and can be deemed a Such dissenters were typically stigmatized as being sectarians. faithful instrument of the reign of God in the world. But there has also been significant dissent within the established In his widely read book The Unfinished Task: Stephen Neill or mainstream churches, directed at the fundamental issue of the took up the question of "Christian culture" as part of an agenda nature of the church in relation to the world. This witness has as yet unfinished. The crucial question is the criteria by which we typically been rebutted and squelched. can determine when a culture is Christianized. It is instructive to note the cautions and qualifications Neill invokes. He begins A Christian Culture? with the assertion that we can speak of a culture as Christian only when the has penetrated into the personal and social People speak rather easily of "Christian" culture as though its subconsciousness of a people, so that it influences humanbehav­ meaning is self-evident. It is an ambiguous notion. The New ior instinctively. To warn against an easy formulaic use of this Testament gives us no framework for thinking in these terms. dictum, Neill avers that such a synthesis between Christian faith There the emerging messianic community seeking to be faithful and culture has happened but rarely. Only twice in the past two to the reign of God revealed in the Messiah continually thousand years has sucha union taken place at all. Neill describes encounters the other kingdom, which is not submitted to God's these two instances briefly. will. The whole of the is shaped by this reality. In the fifth century Augustine wrote his great work City of God, which was to shape Christian thought for the next thousand Wilbert R. Shenk,a contributingeditor, is Director of the Mission Training years. Augustine represented the high water mark of the first Center, Associated Mennonite Biblical , Elkhart, Indiana. He served synthesis, which began to break apart almost immediately there­ as a missionary in Indonesia, 1955-1959, and was a mission administrator, after. Then in the fifteenth century the Italian poet led in 1963-1990. He is editorof Mission Focus: Annual Review. forging for the second time sucha synthesisbetweenChristianity

8 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH and culture. Again, this achievement came at the end of a long and students-as being guilty of gluttony, avarice, luxury, sen­ buildup and was followed by disintegration. With sucha paucity suality, drunkenness, and pride. As he reached the climax of his of historical cases at hand, Neill does not advance his case with argument, he posed several rhetorical questions: "Where does any self-confidence. this [Scriptural] Christianity now exist? With what propriety can He then turns to the question: How "Christian" was En­ we term any a Christian country, which does not answer this gland, one of the leading powers in later Christendom? Neill description?" Wesley exhorted his audience: "Why, then, let us argues that at most one can speak of a "near synthesis" in two confess we have never yet seen a Christian country upon earth.'? brief periods. The first of these occurred during the second half Retribution came swiftly. The vice-chancellor of Queen Elizabeth's reign in the sixteenth century, when there immediately sent for Wesley's sermon notes, a signal that his was a rapid diffusion of the among the English people. A sermon was being officially reviewed. Wesley had breached all second near-union happened during the Victorian Age, when etiquette. Never again would he be invited to preach at Oxford. the impact of the Evangelical Revival was felt in many ways, When Wesley was born in 1703, the nation was in crisis. including the spread of education among the masses, so that Britain was still in the aftermath of its civil war. The feudal most villages and towns had primary schools with the Bible as system, at the heart of which was the intertwining of church and the basis of education. Church attendance was at a peak, and state, was crumbling. The Enlightenment dynamic was permeat­ people were hearing the Bible read regularly. It is noteworthy ing all areas of human existence, unsettling established ways that in both of these instances the Bible was the active agent in and encouraging people to pursue new ones. Eighteenth­ bringing Christian influence to bear on the wider culture. century society was undergoing many changes, and the culture The rapid decline of religious influence in English culture was in upheaval. The was gaining force, can be linked to the rise of a new generation of writers and and as the century wore on, the privileged few would enjoy novelists-including George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Arnold unprecedented prosperity while the masses sank ever deeper Bennett, and -who were either ignorant of the into poverty. Bible and the or hostile to it. Recently it has The Church of 's Convocation, the official assembly been observed that British high school students who today where affairs of church were dealt with, had long been sus­ understand Milton and Dante are not the direct descendents of pended. The church was quite unprepared to respond to the the Anglo-Saxons but the sons and daughters of recent Muslim changing situation with its pressing new pastoral needs. The immigrants. Religious language and symbols out of monotheis­ hierarchy refused to adjust the outdated system to accommodate tic faith traditions continue to function in their of itself to the pastoral challenge of the thousands of people who discourse. were drawn to the growing urban centers. A leitmotiv running through the modern period is the ­ Wesley deliberately directed his ministry to the masses ruptcy of Christendom as an expression of Christian reality. It beyond thepaleof thechurch,fully conscious thatthechurchhad neither the will nor the imagination to go to the people. In this Wesley presents an important contrast with his fellow evange­ Stephen Neill saw signs of lists. George Whitefield and many others evangelists of the a "Christian culture" only eighteenth century chose not to challenge church structures to the extentWesley did. Theyfound their audiences largelyamong twice in the past two the rising middle class and the lesser nobility.' No other move­ thousand years. ment in the eighteenth century reached the working class as did Wesley's. Other features of John Wesley's strategy for breaking free shows up in studies of , history, , and sociol­ from the bonds of Christendom in order to reach the masses who ogy. What follows are vignettes of people from other periods were alienated from the Christian faith are worth noting. Wesley who perceived that a more fundamental question begged to be insisted on a plain, direct style of communication so as to be fully addressed. The voices we will hear are not those of Dissenters accessible to ordinary people.' In contrast to the church, which and Nonconformists, whose identity was staked on their critical refused to make structural adaptations, he organized newbeliev­ reaction to Christendom, and who could therefore be dismissed ers into cell groups or class meetings to provide spiritual nurture as sectarians. Rather, we will pay particular attention to a series and social support. Wesley quickly became an advocate for the of witnesses who saw themselves as loyal members of the estab­ working class, many letters to newspapers commenting lished church but believed that that very fealty required them to on oppressive social and economic injustices. In 1772 he wrote a inveigh against its captivity to the status quo. letter that appeared in several newspapers on the causes of unemployment and rising prices: "Why are pork and poultry John Wesley and the Working Masses and eggs so dear? Because of the monopolizing of farms, as mischievous a monopoly as was ever introduced into these On August 24, 1744, John Wesley preached at the University of kingdoms. The land which was formerly divided among ten or Oxford. On average, as a fellow of Lincoln College of the univer­ twenty little farms enabled them comfortably to provide for their sity, he was called upon to preach every three years and had a but is now generally engrossed by one great farm .... reputation for drawing larger-than-usual audiences. On this How can the price of wheat be reduced? By prohibiting for ever occasion he took as his theme "Scriptural Christianity." He had that bane of health, that destroyer of strength, of life, and of not come to tickle the ears of his auditors. Indeed, he felt com­ virtue, dietilling."" Because of Wesley's peripatetic life, he was pelled to confront a situation he deemed intolerable. undoubtedly one of the best-informed observers of life in the Drawing a sharp contrastbetween the lifestyle of University British Isles in his day. His words carried authority. of Oxford men and the life of true Christian piety as set forth in If we compare the lifework of Wesley and Whitefield, an the Scriptures, Wesley characterized his audience-both faculty important contrast emerges. Whitefield was noted for his flam­

January 1994 9 boyant style and powerful preaching, but in retrospect his ions," by which he meant and unbelief. Often enough impact must be judged more ephemeral. In failing to contest the people embraced esoteric ideas as a way of acting out their ecclesiastical structures, Whitefield showed how conventional antipathy for the church. In Winnington-Ingram and his cohorts one meets deep empathy for the people of East London, counterposed to their Wesley reached thousands own deep-seated pride of class. He argued that it was as unrea­ sonable to try to "convert" working-class people to "Church for whom the established ways" as it was to expect such people, who worked ten- to church was not an option. fourteen-hour days, six days a week, to turn out on Sunday morning to attend mass. And yet essentially he and his Anglo­ Mission offered to East London the standard church he was. His influence was felt primarily within the church. program. Wesley reached thousands for whom the established church In making his appeal to Cambridge students to join the was not an option by effectively constructing an alternative mission, Winnington-Ingram emphasized that this was a true community of social and spiritual . frontier of "new country and treading fresh ground: It is not that the Church of God has lost the great towns; it has never had Saren Kierkegaard's Attack on Christendom them."!' In Winnington-Ingram one meets heroic compassion and pastoral concern. Few can match Kierkegaard for his impassioned critique of East London attracted missions from both Anglo-Catholic Christendom, especially in his from the last two years and evangelical Anglicans. An impressive outpouring of people of his life, 1854-55.6 Like Wesley in England, Kierkegaard was and other resources continued for more than 100 years. Those thoroughly offended by the hypocrisy of the hierarchy of the who have evaluated it, however, judge it to have been a remark­ Danish state church, the mechanical routine of church religion, able failure. This missionary effort failed precisely whereWesley and the subservience of the church to culture. He decried "this prodigious castle in the air: Christian states, kingdoms, lands; this playing with millions of who reciprocally recog­ nize one another in their mediocrity, yet are all of thembelievers Winnington-Ingram said .... Christianity simply does not exist .... The sort of men who that the church had not lost now live cannot stand anything so strong as the Christianity of the great towns; it never the New Testament." Kierkegaard insisted that "Christendom" rested on two lies: it domesticated Christianity to worldliness, had them. and then it interpreted the absence of all persecution of the faith as . "The fact is," he said, "that there is nothing to had succeeded. It never successfully engaged and responded to persecute."7 Kierkegaard's legacy is thatof a powerful if solitary the class barrier. Themissions continued sending in "gentlemen" voice that turned the spotlight on the state of the church of and "ladies" whose goal it was, like that of Henry Higgins, to Christendom. In his own time he had little impact on the church. transform all the Eliza Doolittles of East London into proper A. F. Winnington-Ingram: Mission to East London English ladies and gentlemen." During term of 1895, Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram, Emergence of the Working Class head of the Oxford House in East London, delivered six lectures on pastoral theology in the Divinity School, Cambridge Univer­ The foregoing summary of the mission experience in East Lon­ sity. His presentations included an appeal on behalf of the don is betterunderstood if set within a widerframe of reference." Anglo-Catholic Mission to East London, a work that dated from A Europeanworkingclass withits ownidentitywas fully formed 1856. by the end of the nineteenth century. Religion played an uncer­ Winnington-Ingram, subsequentlybishop of London, 1901­ tain role in working-class life. In some areas religion was an 39, was not a profound thinker, but with a 's passion he important part of identity, but more typically the working-class described conditions in East London at the end of the nineteenth ethos was at odds with church, state, and employer. In other century. East London left the observer with the overwhelming words, theworking-classethoswasa mechanismfor copingwith impression of overcrowding. It was reported that housing was the powers of the larger society. in such short supply that typically a worker, his wife, and The city was the scene of overt "dechristianization." But we severalchildrenhad to make do witha singleroom. A four-room will be misled if we treat the process as a simple, straightforward house would be occupied by four families, who had to share development; in fact, it consisted of several strands. Several cooking and toilet facilities." For the church this meant that models are required if we are to understand the varieties of were too large to allow for adequate pastoral care. dechristianization. One model describes groups that were not Besides the masses of working-class people, other classes inhab­ Christian in their traditional villages and who remained outside ited East London, and the sense of class divisions ran deep. the church after moving to the city. A second group consisted of This had direct implications for the church. Winnington­ working-class people who in the city were increasingly alienated Ingram was well aware that "mixed up with this class feeling, from their traditional moorings in the church. Some of these there is the feeling against the church ... the Church is largely people moved into the political left-wing. Third, the French looked on still as the Church of the higher class, and as being Revolution of 1789 directly encouraged working people to em­ always conservative."lo This left the church effectively brace democratic and egalitarian ideals. These ideals were more marginalized from the masses. Winnington-Ingram reported easily joined to humanist philosophy than to the traditional that city dwellers were a "hotbed of all kinds of curious opin­ church. Secularism had particular appeal in this circumstance. In

10 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH t Asb ury Seminary, we view the whole A world as a mission field-from New York to New Delhi. That's why we 've devel­ oped the only graduate school of mission which teaches missiological strategy for North America and , as we ll as the "Two ­ Thirds" world. rf,l Our innovative facu lty instruct from experience, not just theory. Students are Degree Programs: M .A. and Th.M. in trained to creatively engage all with the World Mission and ; Doctor of gospeL including their own. fA) At Asbury, you'll Missiology and Doctor of Ministry. learn to see beyond borders, over obstacles and past prejudice to touch the total person and entire A SBURY communities with the greatness of . !},.1 So if THEOLOGICAL you're passionate about reaching the world-and SEMINARY 204 N. Lexingto n Ave. • Wil more, KY 40390 -11Q9 your neighbor-prepare for service at Asbury. 1-800-2-ASBURY or 606-8 58-358 1 all three cases, the city provided little, if any, incentive to the who transcends culture but meets us in our cultures. Barth's later working class to consider the church. passionate opposition to German National Socialism and his Wherethe dechristianizationprocesswasan importantforce, sensitivity to the demonic dimensions of modern culture can be the church remained largely unadapted to the urban milieu. As fully understood only in light of his personal encounter with the emerging political ideologies emphasized class, it became in­ bankruptcy of Christendom. creasingly difficult to bridge class differences in the church. This further weakened the church's credibility in modern society. Cardinal Suhard and Mission to Modern Culture As the twentieth centurybegan, a new sense of crisis marked Western culture. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche When Emmanuel Suhard became archbishop of Rheims in 1930, gave a particularly gloomy prognosis and propounded the phi­ he observed the social and spiritual conditions of the proletarian losophy of nihilism." I only compounded the disillu­ class with alarm.'? He concluded that the church must respond to sionment over the failure of the doctrine of unlimited ­ two overriding issues: (1) the challenge of modern thought to ary progress. Because the church of Christendom was so deeply faith, and (2) the social and spiritual poverty that pervaded the implicated in modern culture, few loyalists saw any alternative lives of peasants and workers. Suhard resolutely rejected the except to stay aboard the sinking ship. There were a few vision­ view that European culture was Christian. He believed that the aries, however, who are worth paying attention to. masses were largely outside the church, but he recognized that thetraditionalmethodsonwhichthechurchhad longrelied were Walter Hobhouse's Call for a Missionary discredited precisely with these people. He commissioned sur­ One of the most remarkable treatises on church and world in the veys that showed plainly that contained regions thatwere early twentieth century is that by Walter Hobhouse, TheChurch totally unchurched and resistant to the church, although the and the World in Idea and History,IS which he delivered as the adjoining province or region mightbe a stronghold of traditional Bampton Lectures for 1909 in Oxford. Hobhouse left no doubt Catholic religion. He learned that behind these contrasts lay that he considered the present crisis in the church to be the direct important historical developments. Regions resistant to Christi­ result of the fundamental compromise the church had entered anitywere often those thathadbeenforcibly Christianized. In the into, beginning with the conversion of Constantine. Hobhouse modern era they had reasserted their true colors. Their resistance offered an elaborate analysis of the historical outworking of this was rooted in deep resentments over these ancient happenings in which they had been victimized by church and state. WhenSuhardwasmadecardinalarchbishopof Parisin 1940, Walter Hobhouse argued he immediately turned his attention to the spiritual and social conditions of the great metropolitan area. He was shocked by the the missionary character is evident dechristianization of the metropolis. In 1942 Suhard normative for the church. founded the Mission de France with the intention of training missionaries for service in France. He encouraged Abbe Godin to get on with what eventually became the worker-priest move­ primalcompromiseand proposed thatreform of thechurchmust ment. Godin was coauthor of the controversial book France, a begin with repentance of this ancient error, combined with a Mission Land? (1943), which put forward a vision, shared by recovery of the original missionary character of the church. Cardinal Suhard, for primary evangelization of France. Hobhouse argued that the missionary character is normative for Suhard of course could not found such a mission without the church. approval from the Vatican. And the Vatican was not happy with In important ways this was a more constructive, if less these initiatives and later would throttle the worker-priest move­ forceful, "Attack on Christendom" than that of Kierkegaard. But ment. To have endorsed them would have been to admit that no one was listening, and Hobhouse's witness seems to have had Europe was indeed not Christian. On Suhard's deathbed in May no impact on his own or the wider Christian 1949, he received from Pius XIIprovisional approval of the consti­ movement. tution of Mission de France. Suhard had challenged the central Karl Barth's Conversion from Culture Christianity assumptions of Christendom; the Vatican dampened this initia­ tive. In 1909 the young Karl Barth completed his theological studies at A footnote to this episodemaybe added. In 1948,JesuitP. Ivo Bern, and he became pasteur suffragant under Adolf Keller in Zeiger, inspired by the Godin-Daniel book, proposed that Ger­ Geneva, in the very church in which had held forth. man Catholics adopt the slogan "Germany a missionland." But Barth quickly noticed that hardly anyone attended . He German Catholics declined, arguing that Germany could not be often preached to no more than a dozen parishoners. One day compared with France." Barth visited a sick, elderly man in the . When Barth asked But not all Germans in the period after World War II agreed him to which church he belonged, the man responded resent­ with this assessment. At the 1956 Special Synod of the Evangeli­ fully: "Pastor, I've always been an honest man. I've never been to cal Church in Germany, Superintendent Guenter Jacob said: church, and I've never been in trouble with the police."16Barth "Alert minds characterize the Christian situation in Europe to­ recognized instantly that this man was representative of vast day in this way: that the end of the Constantinian age has arrived numbers of people in that society. When he became pastor at .... The Constantinian alliance marked the betrayal of the Safenwil in 1911, Barth found the same basic pattern of scant genuine style of the Church of Jesus Christ, which according to attendance at worship services and disinterestin churchreligion. the view of the New Testament is to be in this world a course of In this context Barth was forced to reconsider the "culture Chris­ from the contradiction and resistance of the world. tianity" represented by the liberal theology in which he had been After the end of illusions about the Constantinian era, and in trained and to struggle to recover an experience with the God return to the early Christian witness, we have no right to appeal

12 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH to the state for privileges and monopoly in support of the vitality and renewal of the church. We do not have an adequate Gospel."19 This remained a minority viewpoint, however. assessment of what this has meant in the past, but we are aware A range of issues begs to be explored. Certainly one of the of the steady decline in biblical literacy in the present generation. most important is that of evangelism in modern culture. In It will be a special challenge to learn what the possibilities are for Stephen Neill's study referred to earlier, he makes an important a recovery of Scripture in a media-dominated culture. But it observation. Evangelists such as D. L. Moody, R. A. Torrey, and clearly is an issue we cannot ignore." others could assume their audiences had a certain amount of Fundamental change happens in a context of profound background in theChristianfaith. Theirmaintaskwas to awaken cultural and socioeconomic crisis. The Reformation in the six­ personal response and lead people to make a commitment. But it teenth century took place in a time of profound crisis. John is impossible to operate on such an assumption today. Neill uses Wesley's time was marked by crisis. Kierkegaard's Europe was the Billy Graham as his example. He is careful to give still quaking from the challenge of the French Revolution. The Graham full credit and expresses his appreciation for Graham's twentieth century has been a period of sustained, multidimen­ ministry. He notes that the vast majority of those who attend his sional crisis. crusadesandrespond havesomeconnectionwiththechurchand Crisis occurs when the convictional center is gone. In the already. But Neill argues that Graham's message and words of W. B.Yeats, a culture is in crisis when"the centrecannot method cannot be the answer for reaching the masses of people hold." If the source of coherence and legitimation is weakening who have no personal acquaintance with the church or things and disappearing, the whole culture falls into disarray. Christian. In this sense the church in the modern world is facing One manifestation of this crisis for the church is the progres­ a situation for which there is no historical precedent. sive marginalization of the church over the past three centuries. In otherwords,as theworldviewthat defines modernculturehas Summary Observations been modified and religion/church has been pushed to the periphery, the church has lost its bearings. The overwhelming Running through these vignettes is the theme-in the phrase of urge has beento make peace with the culture in order to preserve HansHoekendijk-of "morphologicalfundamentalism." Thatis a place in it. Every evidence is that this compromise is proving to say, since the sixteenth-century Reformation, the church has fatal. JohnWesley rejected the way of compromise, and the result strongly resisted adaptation to its changing environment. Espe­ was remarkable innovation that had spiritual, social, political, cially since the emergence of the Enlightenment, the church has economic, and cultural consequences. been on thedefensive and reactive. Andyet this hasbeena period Lesslie Newbigin's challenge to thechurchseems to me to be of extraordinary intellectual, technological, political, and eco­ fundamentally right." The reign of God always poses radical nomic development. The only point at which the church has questions to the plausibility structure that shapes a culture. attempted to sustain major initiative has been on the interna­ Unless the contemporary church learns to understand and chal­ tional scene through the modern mission movement. "Morpho­ lenge the reigning plausibility structure of modern secular cul­ logical fundamentalism" remains a present reality. ture, it will be engulfed by that culture and consigned to irrel­ It is noteworthy thatScripture has played a crucial role in the evance. Notes------­ 1. The Unfinished Task(London: Edinburgh House/Lutterworth Press, (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1978), chap. 32, "Babel 1957), pp. 98-102. and Bible," which ends as follows: "The religious crisis at the turn of 2. E. H. Sugden, ed., The Standard Sermons of John Wesley (London: the century produced two failures. The first, the failure of modern­ Epworth Press, 1921), 1:104-5. ism, led to a permanent decline of faith in the absolute authority of 3. Albert C. Outler, John Wesley's Sermons: An Introduction (Nashville: the churches; the second, the failure of the church to identify itself Abingdon Press, 1984), p. 27. with the social reform movement, has, on the contrary, helped it to 4. Pauline M. Webb, "Wesley the Communicator," in John Wesley: remain an important social factor to this day" (p. 493). Contemporary Perspectives, ed. John Stacey (London: Epworth, 1988), 15. TheChurchin theWorldinIdea andHistory,2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 202-11. I am grateful to Dr. Webb for sharing her essay with me. 1911). 5. Ibid:, p. 6. 16. Eberhard Busch, KarlBarth: His Lifefrom Lettersand Autobiographical

6. Seren Kierkegaard, Attack upon /I Christendom," trans. Walter Lowrie Texts (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), p. 54. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1944). 17. I am indebted in this section to a review article by Pierre Renard, 7. Ibid., pp. 277,279. "Cardinal Suhard and the New Evangelization," Lumen Vitae41, no. 8. Subsequently published under the title Workin GreatCities(London: 3 (1986): 350-54. Wells Gardner, Darton, 1896). 18. Reported by Gustave Bardy in his foreword to Menschen werden 9. For a study of these East London missions and the socioeconomic Christen: DasDrama derBekehrung indenersten[ahrhunderten (Freiburg conditions, see B. McIlhaney, A Gentleman in Every Slum: im Breisgau: Herder, 1988). I express thanks to Alan Kreider for Churchof EnglandMissions in East London, 1837-1914 (Allison Park, bringing this work to my attention. Pa.: Pickwick Publications, 1988). 19. Cited by Franklin H. Littell, "The Periodization of History," in 10. Winnington-Ingram, Work in Great Cities,p. 5. Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History, eds. F. Forrester 11. Ibid., p. 22. Church and Timothy George (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979) pp. 18-30. 12. McIlhaney, Gentleman in Every Slum, chap. 5. 20. See George A. Lindbeck, "The Church's Mission to a Postmodern 13. In this sectionIam indebtedto HughMcLeod, "The Dechristianisation Culture," in Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World, of the Working Class in Western Europe (1850-1900)," Social ed. Frederic B.Burnham (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1989), 27, nos. 2-3 (1980): 191-214. See also McLeod's Religion and thePeople pp. 37-55, for a discussion of the importance of biblical literacy to of Western Europe, 1789-1970 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981) for culture. a more comprehensive treatment. 21. See Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness totheGreeks (1986),especially chap. 14. A thoroughstudy of thiscrisis is thatby Dutch historianJan Romein, 2, and TheGospel in a PluralistSociety(1989), both published by Wm. TheWatershed ofTwo Eras-Europe in 1900, trans. Arnold ], Pomerans B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Mich.

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