The feasting of Christmas and Epiphany may be over but behold! – arriving in bookshops and online is a feast of thought, research and story from the community of people who have in recent years enabled the genesis of new churches.

New Churches: A Theology by Will Foulger and Joshua Cockayne (eds)

A number of teachers on CMS pioneer courses as well as contributors to the Anvil journal have provided chapters, along with practitioners and thinkers from across the church.

They serve up a tasty banquet of 12-page reads reflecting a diverse range of approaches to starting and thinking about starting new churches.

Topics cover, for example, Anglo-Catholic church-planting (does it happen?!), church planting as a craft based on medieval guilds, an exploration of church planting hints in Romans 16, and community organising as a resource for church planting. Plus Thomas Aquinas on asking for help!

Is your appetite whet yet?

The editors offer a thoughtful introduction as to why such a book is needed. They suggest that the doers – those who get on with the business of starting new things – and the reflectors – those who are wary of ‘jettisoning the task of real, slow, deep theological reflection’ on any area of practice may need a conversation with each other if new churches are to arise faithfully (if at all).

The introduction addresses some of the binaries that have grown up around the conversation: theory and practice; old churches and new; pioneering and church planting.

The book takes a non-partisan stance, speaking generously of pioneers and planters, recognising their different instincts, suggesting that pioneering has a particular part to play in enabling the church to remember that mission is about the slow, patient and emerging work of God in real people’s lives among those who will never come to any of ‘our’ churches.

It was a joy to me to see how many of the CMS pioneer community had peppered (or salted) the book with some compelling themes to a wider readership.

Paul Bradbury writes about small, simple, slow communities; James Butler about contextualised mission spirituality and the agency of the Holy Spirit; Paul Adekunle offers an ecclesiology drawn from the overlaps between Yoruba culture and Christian ethics; Cathy Ross directs our attention to the edges and to the place of surprise in mission work; I (Tina Hodgett) write about co-creating churches playfully.

There is much to savour, digest, find nourishment from. It’s pricey at £30 but I hope your resourceful networking may enable a copy is shortly delivered to your door. Bon appetit!

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Richard McCallum, Evangelical Christian Responses to Islam: A Contemporary Overview (London: Bloomsbury, 2024)

reviewed by Tom Wilson, Leicester

This is an invaluable resource for academics and students who are seeking to understand evangelical Christian responses to Islam. It is divided into three parts. First, McCallum builds on the work of Habermas, Fraser and others to argue for an “Evangelical micro-public sphere”, one of many “that together form a global network of spheres making up broader transnational macro-public spheres” (p. 15). McCallum establishes the nature of the evangelical micro public sphere on Islam, documenting the issues, participants and texts that are discussed. In the second chapter of part one he explores typologies of encounter, outlining the breadth of what it means to be evangelical and how those who identify in this way respond to Islam.

Part two dives into the issues of: Allah, Muhammad, Qur’an and Hadith, Sharia, Islamisation, persecution, violence and Israel–Palestine. Various evangelical responses to each issue are set out clearly and the subtleties and nuances of the differences between them are explained. At the end of each chapter is a helpful one- or two-page discussion, where McCallum draws together the threads of the argument and poses questions and challenges for the reader. The chapters range broadly across the globe. White men from the US and UK do dominate but other voices are present. A real strength of this book is that McCallum has gone beyond the “usual suspects” to ensure a genuine plurality of voices are heard. The final chapter outlines the range of different answers that evangelical writers give to the question “What is Islam?” The answers given are a religion, a heresy, a political ideology, a conspiracy, the enemy, demonic, an essence, diverse, Muslims and a social construct.

In part three McCallum explores how evangelical Christians talk to and with Muslims, as well as methodologies for evangelism and conversion, friendship and dialogue, and apologetics and polemics. As in part two, a wide range of strategies, approaches and global contexts are discussed. McCallum does not shy away from the difficult issues, raising the question of the ethics of any outreach or evangelism for example. The final chapter discusses types of evangelical response to Islam. As with any typology, it presents a series of theoretical constructs that may not map to real life but are nevertheless useful for opening up conversation.

In his conclusion McCallum recapitulates his argument to date and draws together the threads of his discussion, including issues such as convert care, geographical difference, race, gender, sexual orientation, and climate and environment. He sets out for the directions of future activity including the importance of education, research, hospitality and humility. He ends by suggesting Christianity is at a crossroads both in terms of what it means to be Christian and what it means for Christians to engage with Islam.

Evangelical Christian Responses to Islam is a meticulously researched and lucidly written book. Not just the discussion, but also the lists of references, make this a go-to resource for all students of Christian responses to Islam in particular, and mission studies in general. Since it is currently only available as an academic hardback, sales may be limited for the moment to libraries, but once the more affordable paperback edition is out, I would urge anyone with serious interest in Christian-Muslim relations to buy a copy of this book.

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Elizabeth Phillips, Apocalyptic Theopolitics (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022)

reviewed by Wing Yin Li, PhD student in Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary

Apocalyptic Theopolitics is a selective collection of academic essays and sermons by Elizabeth Phillips, the public engagement fellow for the Woolf Institute in Cambridge. This book comprises 14 chapters organised into four major parts. Each part encompasses the author’s scholarly analysis of specific subject matters, alongside corresponding sermon(s) delivered on various occasions. Within this slim volume lies a dense yet profound exploration of the intersection between eschatology, Christian ethics and political theology.

In part I, Phillips offers a compact survey of the notions of eschatology and the apocalyptic in Scripture, Augustine, Aquinas, early liberation theologies, millennialism and postmillennialism. While acknowledging the value of the historical turn in Reinhold Niebuhr’s eschatology, Phillips argues that the shift away from the apocalyptic is a misguided one. Despite the dangerous employment of apocalyptic rhetoric and ideology in some sociopolitical movements, Christian Zionism for example, such usage bears “no direct relationship to the overarching contents and functions of apocalyptic texts, nor necessitate[s] any connection whatsoever with them” (p. 19). Therefore, to reject the apocalyptic as dangerous because of some erroneous use of the apocalyptic is a syllogistic fallacy. One of the central objectives of this book is to reclaim the value of the apocalyptic, drawn from the apocalyptic texts, as a normative resource for political theology. In this section, the author also critiques the existing conceptual, disciplinary and methodological separation between theology and the political and between theological ethics and social ethics. Engaging with the political theology of M. Shawn Copeland, Phillips contends that the theological engagement of discourses outside the ethical (problem-solving) frame can help broaden our political considerations, which are deeply ethical in the sense that they have a direct influence on our concrete political praxis.

In part II, the author presents her ethnographic study of Christian Zionism, which she conducted in an American congregation in 2007. According to her observation, eschatology plays a key role in shaping the theopolitical imagination of this congregation, where eschatological language is often invoked at worship, prayer meetings and other church events to express a hope of militant victory of Israel as a nation-state. However, contrary to the common assumption that Zionism is offering support to Israel simply for the sake of hastening the second coming of Christ, Phillips discovers that this congregation exhibits a more complex understanding of divine revelation and eschatology. To these Christian Zionists, the militant victory of Israel, as promised by God to Abraham in Gen. 12 and prophesised by Ezekiel to the dry bones (Ezek. 37:3), is a sure reality that will be fulfilled in the near future. This military success, including not only the establishment and expansion of the state of Israel but also the failure and fatality of Israel’s “enemies”, is not a means through which Christ shall return but the ends itself that occurs at the second coming of Christ, a time when the sovereignty of God is revealed to the world. Their political activism in funding Israeli settlement and war in the land of Palestine is, therefore, understood by the community as a participation in carrying out God’s ultimate will for humanity and all creation. As Phillips rightly points out, this literal interpretation of biblical texts as predictions to be fulfilled through nationalist militarism, disregarding “Scripture’s own critiques of militarism, nationalism, violence, and injustice,” is highly problematic (p. 72). Notably, the grave consequences yielded by such dangerous theology is now tragically unravelled in the genocide taking place in Gaza against the Palestinians.

In part III, Phillips compares Christian Zionism and its dispensationalist eschatology with the theology of John Howard Yoder, whose eschatology and view of a political Jesus rest not on the militant triumph but on the very suffering of the Lamb slain by the imperial regime. Concurring with Yoder’s analysis of the deconstructing function of the apocalyptic, Phillips argues that definitive forms of the apocalyptic should manifest in 1) deconstruction – disclosing the possibility of a different reality, 2) proclamation – proclaiming the sovereignty of God against oppressive power and 3) empowerment – enabling the community of faith to speak truth to power. In this section, she discusses the doctrines of “The Two” with a creative approach to put Yoder as an interlocutor with Augustine, examining the boundary between the sacred and secular, public and private, church and world, and church and state. Regardless of the numerous insights present in Yoder’s academic contributions, Phillips makes note of Yoder’s sexual misconducts and discusses the complicated legacy left by Yoder in shaping Anabaptist theopolitics in the twentieth century.

In part IV, Phillips engages with the work of Herbert McCabe, Anathea Portier-Young and Judith Herman to explore the element of hope as a theological virtue in the apocalyptic. She argues that an apocalyptic imagination and praxis that “emphasizes the integration of the political, linguistic, narrative, and bodily essence of our human nature and morality” (p. 149) can not only provide comfort to a people who are undergoing great suffering but also empower them to reclaim their agency and resist the domination and hegemony of the oppressive powers with a counter narrative grounded in God’s providence and sovereignty. The Eucharist, the author proposes, is one of such apocalyptic practices that allow the participants to see “how the depth of catastrophic human oppression is met and overcome by what Herbert McCabe called the ‘revolutionary depth’ of our future in God and how it impinges on our present life” (p. 156). While Phillips asserts that the Eucharist is not a “moral magic… [that can] make us more moral and make social ills disappear” (p.157), it does make one wonder if the apocalyptic hope expressed through this Christian liturgy might resonate with those outside the Christian community who are experiencing suffering.

Apocalyptic Theopolitics is a rich and timely read that provides invaluable and constructive insights into the apocalyptic and its relation to political theology. It is particularly relevant amidst the ongoing genocide carried out by the Israeli–US coalition with a Zionistic tone. While this book warns us of the perilous use of apocalyptic eschatology in Christian Zionism, it advocates for a reimagined apocalyptic that takes roots in the textual–historical analyses of the apocalyptic texts and centres in its function of unveiling the oppressive narratives in the world. Bringing together intellectual depth and pastoral and homiletic wisdom, this volume stands as a visionary resource for scholars, church leaders and Christians wrestling with the apocalyptic literature in the Bible and seeking to embody their faith in response to the contemporary sociopolitical complexities and challenges.

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Olivia Jackson, Uncertain: A collective Memoir of Deconstructing Faith (London: SCM, 2023)

reviewed by James Butler, CMS

This book is a detailed account of the stories of “deconstruction” of faith. Like the author of the book, I’m not so keen on the language of deconstruction, but it does seem to be the term most commonly used to describe the increasingly common and widespread experience. Broadly stated, this is a process of finding an increasing dissonance between what they have been taught and encouraged to believe in church, and their experience of life and the world. For some this is a crisis, for others a gradual process. The book describes this as “intentional examination of one’s core faith and beliefs, leading to a profound change in, or even loss of, that faith” (p xvi). Jackson wrote the book based on 400 people completing a questionnaire with a further 140 follow-up interviews with people across from around the world.

The book is split into three parts. The first part has 19 short chapters telling the stories of people’s experiences of the churches they were part of and the broadly evangelical faith they were encouraged to embrace. The second part has six longer chapters which go into more depth about people’s experience of broadly evangelical teaching and doctrine that they have found harmful, difficult and have “deconstructed”. Part three contains three chapters and looks at where people have gone next. For some this has meant finding freedom in leaving the Christian faith behind. For others they have found God in different places, traditions and religions.

The book is written as more of a memoir, reporting people’s experience and the ways in which they have made sense of it, rather than trying to draw out any larger theological learning. Although, early on, Jackson is careful to state that she knows people have positive experiences of evangelicalism (some would challenge her broad definition of evangelicalism), she does, in places, end up talking in generalities and a few times makes sweeping statements about “the church”. The book is definitely at its strongest when sharing people’s accounts and telling their stories. 

Approaching this as someone interested in how faith is lived, how church and mission are changing, and the theological wisdom that is emerging from such experiences, I would love to have dived more deeply into the theology emerging. If this had been a practical theology text, the accounts shared would have given ample opportunities to explore the nature of God, salvation, church and the work of the Spirit that people were discovering. This is where I often found thoughts going; however, they are not in this book. It seemed to me it was primarily written for people going through similar experiences, and Jackson’s commentary often opened up these kinds of reflection. This meant that there were a number of times when the discussion felt a little heavy-handed and a little more precision might have helped the points to land more clearly, but these criticisms are perhaps to miss the point of the book. Jackson is giving a raw account of the experience of deconstruction, and is more focused on telling the story than analysing it.

I’m sure that those who have experienced something similar will find comfort in being able to hear similar stories, and discover their experience is shared. There is no judgement and there is wisdom here about ways ahead. This book is also a gift to churches and church leaders if they are willing to listen. For some the tone will be too harsh and difficult to hear. There will be a tendency to be defensive, or to distance themselves from the accounts of harmful teaching. However, I think that for those who are willing to pause and listen, it is a gift, telling the stories of people who found their faith no longer fitted with their experience; people who had been committed to church and to God, yet in the process of deconstruction ended up feeling abused, or no longer able to stay in church. It shows how things that might have been intended for good have been warped and misshapen, and it brings into the light ways of leading and being which have always been toxic and need to be named as such. I would encourage people to listen carefully to these stories, not because they are “right” necessarily, but because they are a witness to, and against, churches and leaders which deserve to be taken seriously. 

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Jose Mario Francisco SJ and Jayeel Cornelio, People’s Christianity: Theological Sense and Sociological Significance, (New York: Paulist Press, 2022) 

reviewed by Tom Wilson, Leicester

This interesting read from two Catholic scholars is a useful addition to the library of any theological or Bible college. The main stimulus for writing comes from Pope Francis’ exhortation that pastors must “smell the sheep”, that is, they must get up close and personal, discovering how Christians actually live out their faith. 

Part one, “smelling the sheep,” is divided into two chapters. Chapter one discusses the authenticity of the popular. That is, that lived religion is still an authentic experience of Christianity, even if it contains elements that religious authorities disapprove of. The authors are at pains to point out that there is no hard and fast distinction between institutional and lived religion, but rather a continuum, for institutional religion is practiced by people. They also outline their four key themes: worship, liberation, agency in tradition and the ability of the faithful to discern the things of God (p. 19). Chapter two explores the diversity of lived Christianity, which begs the question are there “correct” and “incorrect” expressions of faith, and if so, how are they distinguished? Another key point is that lived religion is primarily communal. The authors argue for four elements of lived Christianity: authenticity, the location of the sacred, the presence and meditation of sacred power, and practical rationality (p. 34). 

Part two concentrates on reading between the lines, discussing lived Christianity as worship and promotion of liberation. The chapter on worship begins with a discussion of the Vatican’s “Directory on popular piety and the liturgy,” a strategic document which seeks to control and regulate lived Christianity. In the authors’ view, it does so with limited success. The chapter also explores the controversy over Chinese rituals related to veneration of ancestors. It discusses whether these are compatible with Christianity. The chapter on liberation concerns two streams of thought: the Spanish-language writings, primarily from South America, and the specifically Argentinian theology of the people. The interrelation of these two streams is explored and the question of who exactly performs liberation theology is discussed. 

Part three is devoted to “sensing the people’s faith,” combining theological reflections with ethnographic interpretations of observed lived religion. Chapter five gives the theoretical framework, arguing that lived Christianity has always had a place within Christian tradition because it is the manifestation of divine self-disclosure. The faithful are actively working out the nature and purpose of this revelation. Chapter six then gives a practical outworking through discussion of devotion to Mary across different times and places. The authors argue this demonstrates the Holy Spirit disclosing the nature of God to the faithful. Chapter seven rounds off the discussion through an exploration of sensus fidei, referring both to the sense for the faith and the sense of the faith. The authors concentrate on a 2014 document, Sensus Fidei in the life of the church. This is a liminal and marginal activity, where those who live faith on the edge have much to contribute. 

Part four focuses on “journeying with the sheep.” Chapter eight draws together theology and sociology, arguing for symbiosis not dissonance. The authors’ shift to “living religion,” is particularly interesting, as is their argument that sociology is a form of theology because everyone operates from a worldview. Their exploration of pastoral sociology and public theology are both very stimulating. The final chapter draws the threads together, arguing for dynamism and creativity as we all travel together. They conclude that the people of God need courage, but also to love and serve on another, to imbue the Christian life with hope. 

People’s Christianity is an engaging read. The book was more technical and academic than I was expecting but it was, for me personally, an easy read.  

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Ash Barker, No Wastelands: How to Grow Seedbeds of Shalom in Your Neighbourhood, (Birmingham: Seedbeds Communications, 2023)

reviewed by Jonny Baker, CMS

Ash and Anj Barker have done several cycles of a decade or more living in urban neighbourhoods where there are multiple issues of deprivation. The latest is Winson Green in Birmingham. I have taken groups of pioneer students to visit them over the last seven years and they always come away challenged and inspired. The reason is simple – they are living out the gospel in their neighbourhood in ways that are bringing visible change, visible good. Ash’s word for that is shalom – life flourishing in a place.

In No Wastelands Ash distils the wisdom of that experience, practice and theology into one accessible volume. It’s a mix of inspiring stories, gritty honesty, practical ideas, advice and frameworks, spiritual practices, theology and missiology. It combines into an amazing handbook to guide anyone wanting to follow in this direction.

The book is structured in five sections around the notion of seedbeds – beating the weeds, sowing seeds of shalom, the soil we need, sustainable roots and branches ready for fruit, and work with the seasons. Each chapter has some questions for reflection and each section has some suggestions for practices to try. This creates a good frame for the book. It is rich and deep and runs to 400 pages. There is a lot here.

There has been a push in mission circles, inspired by Sam Wells, to focus on “with” in the last few years, i.e. to see mission as with a community rather than something done to or for them. Ash pushes this on a step, suggesting that transformation really happens when it is “by” local people. Ash’s passion for enabling innovative leaders and changemakers from inside those neighbourhoods shines through so that community transformation is led by them. That’s the thing that has grabbed me personally the most. This is drawn from Ash’s experience and nous about community development and organising, which is refreshing and I think could help a lot more ministers and pioneers.

The church (I can certainly say this for the Church of England anyway) has not found it easy to inculturate the gospel in neighbourhoods with people experiencing poverty. But there seems to be a renewed concern and stirring and hopefully investment in this direction. The book is perhaps timely in the UK. It is ideal for anyone who is ministering or senses a call to work in neighbourhoods with people experiencing poverty. It should inspire you, but also be a handbook that will get very worn at the edges. I will be coming back to this again and again and passing it on to others.

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Stanley H. Skreslet, Constructing Mission History: Missionary Initiative and Indigenous Agency in the Making of World Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2023)

reviewed by Steve Taylor, Director AngelWings Ltd, Aotearoa New Zealand

Missionaries. Are they saints of God? Or agents of colonisation? Stanley Skreslet begins Constructing Mission History with two common understandings of mission history. One places foreign missionaries at the heart of the story as heroes of God’s expanding empire. A second understanding emphasises the colonial aspect of modern missions, implicating missionaries as agents of empire in the destruction of cultures.

Uneasy with the way that both understandings centre on the missionary, Skreslet outlines a third approach. Constructing Mission History argues that speech-act theory offers a fresh account of mission history that respects indigenous agency and the complexity of interactions across cultures. 

Speech-act theory, developed by J.L. Austin and J.R. Searle, treats language as an action. It analyses what is said (locution), as well as the intentions (illocution) of those who communicate and the consequences (perlocution) of what is communicated. Applying speech-act theory to mission allows Skreslet to recognise multiple sources of agency. He looks for surprises, including unanticipated consequences and how political, social and economic forces shape the entangling of cultures.

Having introduced speech-act theory, Skreslet develops the implications over seven chapters. Three chapters explore illocutionary intentions. Missionary motivations are grouped in chapters on salvation, knowledge-sharing and benevolence. Of particular interest is how Skreslet works with Aquinas’ writing on charity and sketches a Catholic missiology of social concern. A question for further research is whether these historic motivations will provide adequate resources for the contemporary challenges of climate change and global injustice. 

Four chapters explore perlocution, the performance of mission in history. A chapter on power encounters explores the political forces within which missionary activity is always unavoidably entangled. A chapter titled “Constructing Christianopolis” analyses the nature and shape of intentional Christian communities in America, Africa and Asia. A chapter on vernacular Christianities charts the impact of translating not only Scripture but also art, artefacts and architecture. A chapter on subversive witnessing considers how missionaries and indigenous communities creatively drew on Christianity to resist imperialism. Of topical interest is a close reading of the Christianities that emerged in the United States as enslaved people exercised agency as they responded to Christ.

Constructing Mission History offers significant resources for church leaders, mission partners and those interested in fresh expressions, pioneering and cross-cultural ministry. First, it affirms the value of archives and the potential of archival research to uncover ethnographic data that can be illuminated by multiple academic fields, including material cultures, the sociology of religion and the history of science and medicine. Indeed, the book is of value for the footnotes alone.

Second, locating mission as action provides ways for the past to enrich the future. In Aotearoa New Zealand, a Māori proverb, “Ka mua, ka muri”, affirms the wisdom of looking back to move forward. Constructing Mission History provides new ways to look back and, in so doing, offers wisdom to those sharing in God’s unfolding mission. What can those who pioneer in fresh expressions learn from historic mission performance patterns in areas like the vernacularisation of Christianity, particularly when the most dynamic outputs emerge not from those sent but from those embedded in local cultures? How will the church today respond to what Skreslet calls the “uneven impacts” of mission in which external cultural shifts are more influential than the work of individuals? These questions demonstrate the possibilities emerging from Skreslet’s argument that mission is a verb, a set of past performances able to inform those willing to act forward. 

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Luke Bretherton, A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live Well, (Cambridge: CUP, 2023)

reviewed by James Butler, CMS

Luke Bretherton is on top form in this book. While the idea of a primer might lead you to expect a shorter volume, don’t let the fact it runs to over 350 pages put you off. It does get a bit technical in places, but the vision it paints for ethics and human flourishing is bold and persuasive. I found myself very much drawn to the account, and agreeing with so much of what is written. Rather than beginning with exploring different approaches, Bretherton carefully articulates a particular approach to Christian ethics and living well, albeit one that draws on a wealth of different accounts, sources and approaches.

I was particularly taken with the close listening encouraged in Part I, which offered an integrated account of listening to creaturely life, Scripture, strangers, cries for liberation and ancestors. The chapter on Scripture is particularly helpful, reflecting on how to take the Bible seriously as the word of God and as an authority for faith, without having to subscribe to a doctrine of inerrancy or literalist readings of the Bible. In fact Bretherton suggests that to do this is actually a less faithful engagement with Scripture. Listening to this variety of voices enables the world to be described well and provides a good starting point to discerning and judging well. This is where Part II comes in, looking at acting well and exploring moral agency. This is a more technical section, and some will feel it is rather dense in its writing, but its brilliance is in the way it is able to draw from a multitude of sources without getting bogged down or side-tracked. Many will want more on each of the topics dealt with in Part II, but with each chapter ending with suggested readings there are plenty of opportunities to explore these themes further. Many of them are also explored in more depth in Bretherton’s other works, particularly Christ and the Common Life. 

Part III, entitled “living well with others”, seeks to draw out some of the fruit of the process so far, to explore the common life. Bretherton is clear that ethics is not just about individual action, but about living life together, and for this reason in the last three chapters he looks at social, economic and political life. Again, there is much here which is rich, informative and based in a wealth of wisdom and experience. However, I couldn’t help feel that it remained a somewhat big picture. Perhaps this is the nature of ethics needing to take place in a context, and be worked out in a particular place with particular people, but at times I felt that the church he talked about felt a bit distant from gritty everyday life. I think there might have been ways to draw more clearly on the kinds of voices Bretherton drew attention to in Part I to land it more clearly in everyday life. The chapters seemed to move towards the church being a contrast community and I wondered whether a clearer sense of church as people scattered through the world and engaging in the messiness of life, work, relationships and politics could feature more centrally in the account. That said, overall I found it compelling, speaking both to the ways in which I think about the Christian life and the way I live as a Christian.

I also think it is a rich text for thinking about mission and pioneering. While Bretherton’s lens is Christian ethics, his vision for living well through attentive listening, moral formation and exploring a common life is a rich source of inspiration for missiology and for pioneering. I think the invitation, and indeed challenge, to make the connection to living well and the common life is one that is underexplored in missiology. As Christians our approaches to economics and politics can often be too simplistic and end up maintaining the status quo rather than engaging in complex ways to challenge and change. For this reason, I think pioneers and mission workers will benefit greatly from following Bretherton’s thinking and challenge, particularly given the clear starting point of attentive listening. 

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Mekdes Haddis, A Just Mission: Laying Down Power and Embracing Mutuality, (Downers Grove: IVP, 2022)

reviewed by Cathy Ross, CMS

Mekdes Haddis is Ethiopian and has been living in the USA since she went there to study at college. She now lives with her family in South Carolina. Her book really is about what the title states and is a searing critique of Western missions. Her goal is to move mission from a transactional relationship to one of relational mutuality that is engaged with by everyone in the global church, not just Westerners. 

She offers a powerful judgement on white Saviourism, which she sees as a great threat to the gospel. She debunks the idea of Africa as the “white man’s graveyard”, a 19th century concept but still quoted as recently as 2017. She counters this with a powerful rewriting of this narrative, “Colonialism is known at the ‘black man’s graveyard.’ After white people stepped foot on the beautiful continent of Africa, death and desolation followed” (p 25). She demonstrates how often mission has been harmful and destructive in the way it has been carried out from the West to the rest. She claims that our faith must be divorced from imperialism, that we must stop creating dependency and become genuine disciples. She links this discipleship beautifully to the necessity of seeing how God has already revealed Godself in local cultures and that this is the beginning of a journey towards mutuality and serving together.

Perhaps her most hard-hitting chapter is her analysis of short-term mission. She claims that estimates put two million people on short term mission trips every year and spend about four billion dollars – the same as Haiti’s budget for the country! She challenges the very premise of short-term mission and believes that it benefits the goers much more than the receivers. She wonders why so many people are willing to travel on these trips overseas but are strangely reluctant to get involved with people from some of these countries who are just down the road. There may well be immigrant communities from those countries and yet no effort is made to learn from them before visiting those same countries. She offers some helpful questions and concludes with some best practice suggestions to ensure best practice in short-term mission.

I found her emphasis on discipleship as being filled with the Holy Spirit to witness and being prepared to suffer a helpful corrective to much of our institutionalised mission engagement. This is a theme that keeps recurring and is something that the West can learn from the Majority World church – a focus on the infilling of the Spirit, an expectation that discipleship may incur suffering and hardship, and the importance of prayer. She reminds us that there are disenfranchised people all around us and that mission can happen at home.

This is a book that is not afraid to face the tough issues – race, justice, money, power, the danger of dogmatic theology and how these issues have distorted the practice of mission in the hands of the West. I heartily recommend this book – it is not easy reading for anyone but it unmasks so much of our hubris around mission: the vested interests, where the power lies, the focus on money, metrics and strategies and especially how we in the West have so often made mission into a transaction rather than a relationship of mutuality, imbued with the Holy Spirit, and lived out in a discipleship that calls us to a life of witness and suffering.

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Afua Kuma, The Surprising African Jesus, (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2022)

reviewed by Rosie Hopley, CMS MA student

The Surprising African Jesus is an illuminating read, and a book I am grateful to have encountered. The purpose of the book is to bring to light the lost prayers and praises of Afua Kuma (1908–87), a rural and illiterate Ghanaian woman (p. 1), reputedly from a royal lineage (p. 4–5). Through the dogged translation work by Jon P Kirby and transcription by Joseph Kwake, the reader is immersed in a world where we see Jesus being given wondrous praise through the inspired prayers of Afua Kuma, a theologian whose work is oral, contextual and deeply embedded in its African grassroots (p. 1).

The Surprising African Jesus is well worth reading, especially if you are interested in cross-cultural ministry and want to learn from a woman enthralled by the majesty of Jesus. Afua Kuma’s prayers and praises kept drawing me back to the wonder of Jesus, who he is and how he is deeply committed to making himself known. She is a pioneering African theologian whose work deserves a wider reading. Kuma’s language is vibrant as she intercedes for those who go to Jesus. She does not shy away from the visceral, pointing to the all sufficiency of the blood of Jesus: “I want to find shelter in him – to bathe in the blood of Jesus and be saved by his sacred blood” (p. 111).

For anyone who wants to understand the importance of local theology emerging from people in their own tongue, customs and culture (in this case Twi, spoken in Ghana), this book is a good primer. It will give you valuable insights, an understanding into many of the local mores and customs, so ably illuminated with the footnotes and glossary terms.

Another reason this book should be read by scholars, mission partners and students is that it is a reminder of the treasures that God places in the most unassuming of vessels. Of royal blood but “not raised in a chief’s court” (p. 4), Afua Kuma employs the language of royalty, using this to glorify Jesus. Speaking in the Twi language, her words point heavenward to God and hark back to Scripture, as these prayers illustrate (p. 76, p. 78):

“Jesus listens with patient ears,
He judges not us but our deeds.
Go and tell him all of your cares…

“But he has tied his cloth to mine
and lifted the weight off my chest.
These things weighed heavily on me.
I have carried them on my back.
But he has tied his cloth to mine
And has taken them off my back.”

This is a wonderful echo of 1 Peter 5:7 “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” and illustrative of so much of Afua Kuma’s oral works.

If you are interested in reading the words of an oral theologian, deftly captured in this translated and transcribed work, I would commend this book to you. Afua Kuma’s words bring Christology to life, and are an important contribution to the African recording of praise, prayer and contextual theology. They also bring a welcome and expanded global sense of God’s missio Dei, since Afua Kuma’s prayers and praises paint a vivid picture of Jesus who speaks to, cares for and deeply loves his African children. Read it and be empowered and strengthened!

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Lisa Spriggens and Tim Meadowcraft, Eds., Practicing Faith: Theology and Social Vocation in Conversation, (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2022)

reviewed by Rosie Hopley, CMS MA student

Practicing Faith: Theology and Social Vocation in Conversation is a deep and rich read. This is a book composed of thirteen essays tackling topics including friendship, trauma and holding hope, hatred expressed in the Psalms, food in sacred spaces, compassion, hospitality, guesting and hosting, risk and vulnerability, grief and loss, among several other wide ranging conversations within the context of theology and vocation.

The collection of essays and response articles arose from a conference, Whakawhiti Korero, held in 2018, which brought together thinkers and practitioners of differing areas of scholarship. Lisa Spriggens and Tim Meadowcraft, the text’s editors, continued the discourse and the book “reflects a slice of that conversation” (p. xviii). What is contained in each chapter reflects the conference’s original intent, as expressed in Māori, that the time spent together, ideas and conversations facilitated a “speaking together” (p. xvii).

How do therapists and practitioners integrate their own faith with their vocational work? Set in five themes exploring wellbeing, formation, hospitality, therapy and theology, the writers follow a format of conversations between social vocation and theology. This book sets out to offer multiple examples from the writers’ own practice, and thoughtful, reflective discussion. Engagement with Scripture weaves through each section, helping the reader to anchor ideas and practice, and their own reflections, with the work of scholars, historians, social scientists and other academics. Examples of scriptural examination and reflections included Jonathan Rivett Robinson’s engagement with Mark 7, and the possible use of humour when Jesus met the Syrophonecian woman (p. 129), Richard Neville’s exploration of the incidence of emotions through the Psalms (pp. 224–226) and Sarah Penwarden’s explorations of lament, depths and range of grief and reflections on Holy Saturday.

I particularly enjoyed the response after each section, as each essay is briefly responded to, engaged with, and critiqued.

A highlight was Ryan Lang’s chapter “A Song in the Night: A reflection on Singing in Scripture and Social Vocation”. If this were the only essay, with the corresponding response from Jonathan Rivett Robinson, it would be worth the purchase of the book, although the other essays are excellent too. What resonated for me as a reader is how Lang succeeded in fusing our understanding of singing with the mission of Jesus, how song was prevalent after the Israelites were delivered from slavery, and the relevance of our own song. Lang explores singing in suffering and brings useful insight to those who grapple with how to sing in the midst of the darkest of night, in the midst of trials. Lang brings a compelling argument, and encouragement too.

This is a book that will be helpful for practitioners, theologians and students, indeed anyone seeking to further their understanding of practical theology. In particular, counsellors seeking growth, church leaders exploring the importance of friendship in their own spiritual flourishing, counsellors working with survivors of sexual violence and those working with aged care would do well to pay attention to this book.

For anyone who wants to think about how theology and social vocation can be intertwined, enrich one another (p. 250) and be integrated (p. 253) I would recommend exploring this text. Students and scholars will find thought provoking essays, and the response pieces after each section bring an added dimension and are especially helpful as examples of generous, humble scholarly engagement.

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René Padilla, What is Integral Mission? (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2021)

reviewed by James Butler, Church Mission Society

René Padilla, who died in 2022, has been one of the key voices encouraging an understanding of mission as holistic or integral. Misión integral, as it is called in Spanish, was first introduced to Western mission through the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974. Padilla and his Latin American evangelical colleagues pushed their American and European counterparts to move beyond a binary of evangelism or social justice to see them as a whole. Integral is the word for wholemeal in Spanish and just as wholemeal flour or wholemeal rice is not described as being made up of two things, but whole, so they encouraged Christians to embrace evangelism and social justice not as two things which needed to be brought together, but as a single whole.

This book was originally published in Spanish in 2006 and has been translated into English to encourage greater engagement with integral mission. The book is clearly aimed at a church audience, encouraging conversation around mission themes. It is split up into 19 short chapters taking a short reflection from Padilla’s writings and bringing them together with a poem, quote or reflection and a series of questions encouraging further exploration, often through Bible study. This meant it was a far more introductory account to integral mission than I was hoping for. Rather than going deeper into the theological and missiological themes, it takes a more practice-focused approach, exploring a range of issues and topics from the perspective of integral mission. It is aimed at evangelical groups, offering challenges to ingrained understandings of mission, and assumes readers will be confident at engaging with biblical texts in groups.

There were some real gems within the pages of the book. I particularly liked the chapters on the political nature of prayer (Chapter 9), the challenge to Christians to recognise structural injustice (Chapter 10) and the relationship between integral mission and economic justice (Chapter 14). However, at times it felt a little repetitive, a result of bringing together a series of articles rather than a book was written as one. There were parts that felt a little clumsy in the current climate, particularly the way Padilla talks about racial justice and colonialism. While his account and the challenges he makes may be helpfully stretching and challenging for those who have not thought about these things before, for those who have some sense of Black theology and postcolonial theology some of the phrasing might feel slightly awkward. Similarly I’m not sure his discussion of persuasion rather than coercion in evangelism really gets to the heart of the problem of mission’s ties to colonialism. Those things said, I think this is a good book for beginning to think about integral mission, its history and the implications for mission, church and discipleship. Padilla seemed to move easily from talking about individuals, to communities and to churches demonstrating his more holistic approach to the world.

Overall I can recommend this book to those who have not really explored integral mission, particularly for groups who want to reflect together. It is not all that I was hoping for in terms of my own exploration of integral mission, but I will certainly recommend it to those wanting to think and act more holistically in mission. It provides a fine starting point for engaging with Padilla’s work and his legacy of integral mission.

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