REVIEWS emerging from the distinction between colony and mission. American missionaries sometimes piggy-backed on British imperial initiatives and at other times sought to extend Anglo-American cultural Christianity to areas, such as Burma, which they thought to be ‘neglected’ by the British. In a fascinating chapter on Singapore, Conroy-Krutz charts the tensions that arose between Britain, America and the indi- genous population when the creation of an exemplary settlement of American Christians created a colony within a colony. Christian imperialism offers a fresh and compelling slant on the politics of missionary activity. Joel Barlow was wrong: the early American republic did have the character of a Christian nation.
ST CROSS COLLEGE, PETER THOMPSON OXFORD
Yankee bishops. Apostles in the new republic, to . By Charles R. Henery (Studies in Episcopal and Anglican Theology, .) Pp. xxiv + incl. ills. Frankfurt–Oxford, Peter Lang, .£. JEH () ; doi:./S Charles Henery describes this study of the early Episcopal Church as ‘the first detailed collective examination of the episcopal order in the United States’. His work is richly informed by a thorough reading of consecration sermons, charges, correspondence and diaries, and reflects the conviction of Episcopalian bishops that their Church was organised upon the model of the ‘primitive Church’ and according to ‘the maxims of the apostolic age’, the first episcopate since Constantine to be free of civil entanglement. Samuel Seabury, the first bishop, was instrumental in establishing a missionary and sacramental model of the episco- pal office which endured throughout this period. Through the ministry of its first one hundred bishops, the Episcopal Church came to view the bishop (in the words of Evangelical bishop Alexander Viets Griswold) as ‘the bond of union and the mainspring of energy in his diocese’. Henery has deliberately eschewed exploring the impact that varieties of churchmanship had on understandings of episcopal ministry, restricting himself to what all held in common. If this focus on unity has a refreshing novelty, it nevertheless renders a potentially lively topic curiously bland and colourless. A reader with no background in the subject is given no clue that bishops had anything to say about the division of nation and Church during the American Civil War or that different ecclesiologies led to a major schism with the formation of the Reformed Episcopal Church in . Neither event is even mentioned. The author’s reverential, unanalytical and uncritical approach to his subjects gives this study an old-fashioned feel, reminiscent of pre-s denominational histories. The bibliography cites no secondary work from the twenty-first century, and very few since . Thus the work is innocent of any influence from the historiographical transformation of Anglican and Episcopal studies since then. The Episcopal Church exists here as if in a vacuum, isolated from any outside theological influence, whether from Britain or Canada or other denominations. Episcopalian attachment to the primitive Church and a ‘purely ecclesiastical episcopacy’ becomes a post-Revolutionary War discovery of William White rather than a theme that the Church of England had been explor- ing for a century and more. The Oxford Movement’s Tracts for the times had a
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 02 Oct 2021 at 13:02:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use. JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY profound impact on the Episcopal Church, but neither Keble nor Newman nor Pusey appears here. Henery is so convinced that the pioneer missionary and apos- tolic spirit of the episcopate characteristic of the Church in the new nation is essen- tially unaltered throughout the period of his study that he is inattentive to the change in character by its end. The ideal centralising ‘cathedral model’ which by the s appealed so strongly to bishops even in the unsettled West, with its bishop’s church, school, seminary, hospital, home for the aged, orphanage and other organised works of mercy, owed much more to the medieval than it did to the primitive Church.
NORWICH CATHEDRAL PETER DOLL
Schleiermachers Kirchengeschichte. By Simon Gerber. (Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, .) Pp. xii + . Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, . €. JEH () ; doi:./SX In the English-speaking world, Friedrich Schleiermacher (–)is renowned primarily as a theologian, the author of the Speeches on religion and The Christian faith. Yet in his lifetime he was well-regarded in many different spheres: as pastor and preacher at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche in Berlin; as an influential Rector of Berlin University; as a translator and scholar of Plato; and as a lecturer and writer on subjects from philosophical hermeneutics to the life of Jesus. This important work addresses a lesser known aspect of his work and teaching: church history. Schleiermacher’s most significant contribution to this field comes in the Brief outline of the study of theology (). Having been rather dismissive of doctrine in the first edition of the Speeches on religion (), the Brief outline offers a more nuanced account of the relationship between doctrine and faith. Christian the- ology is not the basis of that faith; rather, it expresses the faith and governance of a particular Church. Theology presses several different disciplines into service in order to further this aim, including linguistics, philosophy and ethics, but also history. Schleiermacher is convinced that Christianity cannot be cultivated in the future without an understanding of its past and present, and recommends three areas of study. The first is ‘exegetical theology’, which focuses on the determination and exegesis of the canon. Next comes ‘church history’,under- stood in a narrower sense, which may be subdivided into the history of doctrine and the history of polity; this covers the period from the foundation of the Church until the recent past. Finally, there is the present, which includes both the determination of doctrine and church governance. Thus the remit of histor- ical theology, as Schleiermacher conceives it, includes biblical studies, systematic theology and ecclesiology. Simon Gerber draws heavily on the Brief outline in the second section of his com- prehensive study, but this is to jump ahead. His careful and systematic analysis begins by setting out the extant secondary literature on this subject. The dearth of publications belies the importance of the topic, not only for church historians,
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