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Evangelical concernsRediscovering the Christian mind on issues facing the Church todayExercise your hamburger!EVANGELICAL CONCERNS - REDISCOVERING THE CHRISTIAN MIND ON ISSUES FACING THE CHURCH TODAY Never judge a book by its cover. This one shows what appears to be a McDonald's hamburger left in the rack the day be-fore yesterday. However, it turns out to be a human brain, and if you read this book you will exercise yours to considerable profit. The volume comprises 14 essays, most of which first appeared in the Anglican theological journal Churchman. But if this puts anyone off, bear in mind that the author is about as un-Anglican as an Anglican gets. The chapters cover a wide range of subjects, including the Christian view of death, evangelicals and socio-political involvement in the 20th century, and the relationship between suffering and the sovereignty of God. The chapter lengths vary enormously, from six pages (not a lot for 'Justifying Justification') to 30 pages ('The Priority of Jesus: A Look at the Place of Jesus's Teaching and Example in Christian Ethics'). The subjects tackled are of immense significance to every Christian but this is not, alas, bedtime reading for the average churchgoer. The level of writing is at the popular end of academic. If you lap up Francis Schaeffer, Os Guiness and David Wells, you will enjoy this - and find yourself agreeing with most of it. Some readers will home in on Chapter 3: 'Conflicts in Science and Faith: Ministers Beware'. Creationists should also beware, but the areas in which the author advises caution are well considered and deserve close attention. I was naturally drawn to the chapters entitled 'Content, Context and Culture: Proclaiming the Gospel Today' and 'Towards an Evangelical View of the Church'. In the first of these, the vital question of contextualisation is introduced. How do we ensure the gospel is communicated without compromise in a particular cultural setting? How can we tell when our own views and practices are more culturally than biblically determined? Christian ministers who still believe they can safely ignore such matters will gain a fresh perspective here. Those from a Free Church tradition will be somewhat bemused by the chapter on the nature of the church. The basic conclusions Melvin Tinker arrives at are good, biblical, and, one is tempted to add, obvious. But his attempts to make them fit within the structures of Anglican episcopacy seem, at least to this reviewer, to be both tortuous and unnecessary. The chapter ends with a note on true and false ecumenism, which is much more straightforward - and takes the line one might expect from the present chairman of Essentially Evangelical. Jonathan Stephen, Reading© Evangelicals Now - March 2002 |