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 PrintableVersion Father of faitth missionsThe life and times of Anthony Norris GrovesBrethren missionsFATHER OF FAITH MISSIONS This huge volume is a comprehensive study of the life and work of Anthony Norris Groves, missionary first to Baghdad and then to India, and a man whom the author regards as an unjustly neglected, pioneering figure in the history of the missionary movement. The book is clearly based on careful research and provides fascinating insights, as the title suggests, into both the man and his times. Anthony Norris Groves was born in 1795 and his relatively brief life spanned the tumultuous years of the first half of the 19th century. He lived through, and played a key role in, the emergence of what came to be known as the Brethren movement, and familiar names like John Nelson Darby and Samuel Muller appear frequently in these pages. While still a young Christian, Groves studied the Bible intensively and published a small booklet outlining his discoveries with the title Christian Devotedness. In this he attacked the addiction to wealth and possessions which he observed among Christians, and summoned those who would be serious about following Christ to take his example and teaching with utter seriousness. This was a call to radical discipleship; to a literal obedience in renouncing the rule of Mammon and living in absolute dependence on the promises of a faithful God. Robert Dann detects here the real beginnings of faith missions and argues, perhaps debatably, that the pamphlet marked ‘a turning point in the history of Christian missions’. What is beyond dispute is that Norris Groves acted upon his own teaching and followed the call of Christ which took him first into the heart of the Muslim world and then to India. It is an extraordinary story of faith, courage, persistence against all odds, constant suffering and, on occasions, what might be judged as foolishness. We are indebted to the author for filling a considerable gap in the history of missions and leaving us with a comprehensive and well-written account of a very remarkable Christian. If this biography has a weakness it is to be found in the lack of critical distance with which the author treats his subject. Groves’s approach to the Bible, to the church and to mission might be described as ‘restoration’. We are told, for example. that he early concluded that human traditions had to be rejected ‘as though 1,800 years of Christian history had never happened’. And later, in India, he acted upon such principles in that, while he recognised as fellow-believers all who loved Christ, irrespective of denomination, his own ecclesiology was separatist and he found the true expression of the church in house meetings where a handful of people ‘broke bread together’. Subsequent history has surely taught us that, however attractive such a restorationism may appear to be, it creates serious problems of its own and is capable of producing real distortions of the gospel. We need the reminder that the apostle not only rebukes those who claim to follow Paul or Apollos, but also those who boasted that they alone followed Christ (1 Corinthians 1.12). None of this is to diminish the value of this book. Groves’s life and practice raise serious critical questions concerning the church and its mission, and we might want to discuss the problems of the ‘faith principle’ in mission in the light of subsequent history. Yet the story told here is very challenging, and we should be grateful to Robert Dann for rescuing Groves from relative obscurity and compelling us to face the challenge of his remarkable life and service. David Smith,
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