A faith for today
A Faith To Live By Roland Ashby DLT, pb, £12.99 Take This Bread Sara Miles Canterbury, pb, £12.99 Roland Ashby is an Englishman who edits what many consider the best church newspaper in Australia. Under him, The Melbourne Anglican has carried wideranging articles on theology and spirituality as well as news of the diocese and the wider church. Over the years Ashby has conducted a number of conversations with theologians and prominent church leaders and he has now collected 25 of these in a book.
Among those interviewed are Rowan Williams (twice), Keith Ward, John Lennox, Brian McClaren, John Polkinghorne, Sam Berr y and Esther de Waal. Many of the names will be familiar to English readers but one of the most interesting conversations is with an Australian, David Tacey, who is not as well known in this country as he deserves.
Tacey, who teaches English at La Trobe University, has written a superb book, The Spirituality Revolution. He believes the secular world is ‘running on empty’ but warns that young Australians do not connect their interest in spirituality with the churches. He is aware of the danger of self-absorption and narcissism and argues that a true spirituality makes us more effective in the world. Although a practising Catholic he judges that he himself is probably not an orthodox Christian but claims his spirituality is based on a theology of the Holy Spirit. Like a number of other people in this book, he is interested in St John of the Cross.
Ashby is skilled at making statements that draw his conversation partners into interesting responses. ‘Conversations’ is a better way to describe these pieces than interviews because Ashby has his own insights to contribute. Certain themes recur: life after death, contemplation, the Resurrection, miracles, the significance of other universes.
Given the presence of so many scientists in the group selected and the challenge of the new atheists it is not surprising that there is much discussion of the issues relating to religion and science. Owen Gingerich points out that those who believe that the universe is teeming with life would seem to subscribe to the design argument because they assume the universe is friendly to life. Keith Ward quotes one of the scientists who discovered DNA commenting that its structure made him think of a ‘loving embrace’. Ward describes DNA as ‘an amazing structure’ and suggests that it is hard to think of it as random. John Lennox also draws attention to the ‘sophisticated language of DNA’ and the difficulty of explaining the origins of life.
Jim Wallis emphasises the importance of contemplation, arguing you can’t be an activist for long without being a contemplative. Brian McLaren and Rowan Williams also emphasise the importance of prayer and contemplation and both reveal their use of the Jesus Prayer.
Sexuality and issues about ordination are mercifully absent from this book. There is little about the church as an institution or its future but a good deal about prayer and Christian belief.
Sara Miles is a radical journalist, a chef, a mother and a lesbian who has written a fascinating account of her journey to Christian faith. Food was a way in and she started to receive communion before she was baptised. People sharing food, feeding each other from their own stores however meagre, is what draws us together into relationships and into communion. Christ drew Sara Miles into the church through the Eucharist.
The church in which she found a home is a remarkable Episcopalian parish of St Gregor y’s in San Francisco. This was founded by two priests, one of whom, Rick Fabian, was trained at Mirfield in the 1960s and has written extensively on liturgy. St Gregory’s has attracted a good deal of attention because of the imaginative worship it offers. Sara Miles’ contribution to the life of the congregation was to start a food pantry and her plan to extend this from week days to Sunday aroused opposition, a good example of the way in which liturgy, however progressive, can become an end in itself.
This book is radical without being strident. Sara Miles changed St Gregory’s but the parish changed her as well, teaching her that you can’t be a Christian by yourself and have to learn to work both with those you like and with those who ‘irritate the hell out of you’.
Paul Richardson