A Practical Theology of Church and World: Ecclesiology and Social Vision in 20Th Century Scotland

1 A Practical Theology of Church and World: Ecclesiology and Social Vision in 20th Century Scotland Douglas C Gay A Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2006 1 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 CHAPTER ONE: The Epistemological, Ethical and Political Priority of the Church/ The Post-Christendom Ecclesiology of Stanley Hauerwas 8 CHAPTER TWO: The Witness of the Baillie Commission 61 CHAPTER THREE: Ian Fraser and Scottish Churches House 135 CHAPTER FOUR: Duncan Forrester and the Centre for Theology and Public Issues 1978-2000 194 CHAPTER FIVE: Post-Christendom Church? Post-Secular Scotland? 264 CONCLUSION 312 Bibliography 319 2 Abstract The strong emphasis on ecclesiology in the work of Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank and others associated with ‘the new ecclesiology’1 brings theological challenges to the contemporary move to recast practical theology’s attention to church and society as ‘public theology’. A historical reading of three key examples of practice in the tradition of twentieth century Scottish reformed-ecumenical reflection on ‘church and society’ displays a rich seam of reflection on ecclesiology, with some significant affinities to ‘the new ecclesiology’. The work of Stanley Hauerwas is used to develop a critical reading of the practices of theology and the theologies of (church and world) practice embedded in each example. This leads to the claim that ‘the new ecclesiology’ offers practical theology a way of articulating the church-world relationship and expressing the social, political and cultural witness of Christianity within Scotland which is to be preferred to the rubric of ‘public theology’. Its appeal for practical theology in the face of church decline and the marginalisation of theological discourse within liberal culture lies not in a temptation towards the comforts of “sectarianism”, but in its confession of the “ironic” character of the politics of Jesus and the reign of God. Its promise for practical theology lies in its claim to offer a narrative display of how theology as “church pragmatics” can mediate a fruitful social, political and cultural imagining of the world Scotland is and the world it is called to be. Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed by myself and that it is my own work. Douglas C Gay 1 The term “new ecclesiology” is applied to different groups of theologians by recent commentators e.g. Nicholas Healy in his 2003 article “Practices and the New Ecclesiology: Misplaced Concreteness” (IJST Vol 5, No 3, Nov 2003) mentions George Lindbeck, Robert Jenson, Stanley Hauerwas, Kathryn Tanner, Greg Jones & Bruce Marshall “and many others”. I would argue that the work of John Howard Yoder, James McLendon, John Milbank and more recently Miroslav Volf and Reinhard Hütter also belong within a first list of the names of those writing in English who are re-focussing theological attention on the practices of the ‘concrete church’ and on the ‘public’ character of ecclesiology. 3 Introduction Questions of the nature, scope and methodology of practical theology remain highly contested.2 While very few voices will now seek to characterise it solely in terms of an older ‘clerical paradigm’3, considerable differences remain between those who wish to emphasise its character as an ecclesial discipline and those who prefer to emphasise its character as ‘public theology’.4 Problems of definition are accentuated by the various critical debates which overlap within the field: oppositions between liberal and conservative theological positions, liberal and conservative political positions, liberation and systematic methodological approaches have been further ‘scrambled’ by debates about postmodernism.5 The extent of this methodological and orientational flux means that all work in practical theology involves critical judgments and choices about the questions at stake. Self- evidently, these arise out of critical reflection on past theological practice, although they may opt to mediate contemporary critical discussions and therefore focus on the very recent past. In this discussion, I take a longer view with a critical account of theological practice which ranges from the 1930s to the 1990s. This ‘historical’ approach, while vulnerable to the familiar charge of ‘finding what you look for’, aims to illuminate contemporary debates about method and orientation by mapping a ‘local’ (Scottish) tradition within global practical theology and by paying close and critical attention to that tradition. My reading of the work of Stanley Hauerwas is placed at the beginning of the thesis to make clear that it is functioning as a provisional hermeneutic for the historical account which follows. However, the intention has been to create a mutually critical dialogue in which the three studies of Scottish theological practice also point up weaknesses and omissions in Hauerwas’ theological project. The final chapter draws together my conclusions about the 2 On contemporary currents in Practical Theology see Woodward & Pattison ed. 2000; Heitink 1999 with series intro by Browning, Farley et al.; Ballard, P. & Pritchard, J. 1996 3 see e.g. Edward Farley’s essay in Browning 1983 4 These are best understood as “emphases” and, as will be seen in Chapter Five below, are not necessarily mutually exclusive terms. 5 On the impact of postmodernism on practical theology see Graham in Woodward & Pattison Eds. 2000, p 108 4 outcome of this dialogue and locates them within a broader contemporary debate about theology, ecclesiology and practice. Specifically, this thesis is concerned with how Reformed-Ecumenical practical theology in Scotland gives an account of the relationship between church and world. It explores this problematic by offering a critical account of three key historical examples of theological practice in the period 1940 to 2000 and of the work of key animating figures associated with them: the Church of Scotland’s Wartime Commission On The Interpretation of God’s Will and John Baillie (1940- 45), the work of Scottish Churches House and Ian Fraser (1960-1969) and the work of the Centre For Theology and Public Issues and Duncan Forrester (1984-2000). While each of these initiatives was led by a Church of Scotland minister who believed the dominant Reformed tradition needed to be supplemented by the developing ecumenical movement, each had a different location: the first within a church, the second between churches, the third within the academy and each of them addressed a different era of modern Scottish life. All of these identifying features are significant for the work of this thesis. As a minister of the Church of Scotland and then of the United Reformed Church I wanted to map a twentieth century tradition of practical theology which was recognisable as a significant tradition within the Church of Scotland, but which also understood itself in ecumenical terms. As a lay person, then minister and then theological researcher within the academy I wanted to explore and display the scope of practical theology in relation to the rhetorical and institutional ‘domains’6 of church, academy and society. As an advocate of an approach to ecclesiology primarily associated in contemporary theology with anglo-catholic and radical reformation traditions, I wanted to trace parallels and precedents within the Scottish reformed tradition. 6 David Tracy would of course describe these as ‘publics’, a rubric which I find unhelpful because I argue that the term ‘public’ needs to undergo a theological/ecclesiological disruption and challenge. This line is developed more fully in Chapter five below. 5 In the work of American theologian Stanley Hauerwas, hailed by some as ‘prophetic’ and denounced by others as ‘sectarian’, ecclesiology and social ethics are associated in ways which appear to challenge the dominant narratives of their relation within the Reformed tradition in Scotland. Hauerwas places ecclesiology at the centre of theology and his work seeks to defend and display the claims that the church is epistemologically, axiologically (ethically) and politically prior to the world. He argues in his 2001 Gifford Lectures that as the church seeks to bear faithful witness in the world, it should learn from the discipleship of four faithful witnesses: Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, John Paul II and Dorothy Day. The ability of the church and its theologians to know the world truthfully and to act in it faithfully is dependent on ‘the church being the church’ in its knowing and acting. In my discussion of John Baillie and the Baillie Commission, I argue that we find a striking example of reformed/ecumenical ecclesiology presented as a challenge to the hermeneutical ambitions of historiography, political theory and social science and an implicit vision of an ecclesial (practical) theology as itself a primary form of each of those discourses. However, I also argue that the Baillie Commission’s reading of and prescriptions for Scottish society are seriously weakened by their inability to imagine the future of ‘Christendom’ beyond the terms of the 1929 church-state settlement. In my discussion of Ian Fraser and Scottish Churches House, I argue that we encounter a notable ecumenical attempt to perform the vision of the Baillie Commission, which challenges and supplements the location of theology within the Scottish academy/university and its character as predominantly a clerical/ministerial/academic practice by developing a new location for theology in Scotland within an ecumenical centre and a new character

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