BEWARE OF IDLE THOUGHTS ABOUT IDOLATORY

I was fascinated to find the above Christmas shrine set up in one of the rooms at Norwich Central Baptist Church. Let me first say that this idealised kitschy display doesn't do a great deal for me. However, there is, in my opinion, much latitude in how people can express their faith; this kind of reification of cherished religious scenes is only human.

Now, here's an interesting hypothetical: Imagine  NCBC becoming an archaeological site many years into the future. Imagine that the archaeologists have come to the conclusion that the site of NCBC was a place of "ritualistic" significance. If with this conclusion in front of them our archaeologists dig up the above statuettes (which by then are likely to have lost their relation to one another) they might conclude that they have in their hands the deities worshipped at NCBC; a very  natural and understandable conclusion, but it's wrong, of course. 

History may be far less straightforward than archaeology (and even documents) can tell. These figurines are, in fact, not idols but symbols representing cherished ideas about God. The lesson is this: When interpreting the signals we receive from history, the data can be ambiguous and we must be careful how we interpret those signals. 

When Michael Ward in his book Planet Narnia talks about the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten's attitude to the "Sun God" (or the "Aten") we find that we cannot accuse Akhenaten of Sun Worship, any more than NCBC could be accused of worshipping porcelain deities. As Ward says:

The Solar monotheism of the Hymn to the Sun seems better, in one way, Lewis argues, than the primitive Judaism we find in the early books of the Old Testament, but it does not follow that 'Akhenatenism' would have been a better  first step in the history of divine revelation. Akhenaten was astonishingly advanced; he did not identify God with the Sun in a strictly heliolatrous way but understood the visible disc as a divine manifestation. This early Egyptian religion, 'a simple, enlightened, reasonable Monotheism,' looks much more like developed Christianity, from one perspective, than those first documents of Judaism in which Yahweh appears to be little more than a peculiar tribal deity.

Our archaeologists would probably be a bit puzzled by the presence of a porcelain baby. If they are so far into the future that our times have become merged with the societies of the agricultural revolution as a whole they might think that this figure has sacrificial significance. In the sense they are likely to picture this sacrifice taking place this would be wrong, of course; but it is ironic that in another sense they would be close to a shocking truth!

BISHOP TO KINGHORN*

Offering the right hand of fellowship: The Bishop of Norwich

The above is a picture of the Rev Mark Tall, minster of NCBC and Transforming Norwich Chairman, talking to the Rt. Rev Graham James Bishop of Norwich at a recent leaders meeting where the Bishop was guest speaker. Coming shortly after Norwich Baptists celebrated their 344 week this picture is both significant and ironic. After all, it was the Bishop’s church that gave Norwich Baptists the number 344; viz: 2013 – 344 = 1669, the date when the Church of England listed Norwich Baptists as one of several outlawed fractious Christian sects! How things change!  Reading the associated Network Norwich and Norfolk article the talk is now all about unity. Not that I'm complaining! Although it has been a very instructive study I have perhaps spent too much time researching the crank religionist fringe: Jehovah’s’ Witnesses, The Witness Lee Brotherhood, Answers in Genesis, Potters House, Metropolitan Tabernacle, various restorationist groups and fundagelicalism in general. All these groups have a concept of unity that involves a strict separation from the “heretical” mainstream in favour of a fervent adoption of their proprietary and quirky opinions. In comparison the linked to article on NN&N is a breath of fresh air! This is the Open Gospel at work!

* Joseph Kinghorn was a formative figure in NCBC history.

GEORGE WHITE

Baptists having fun on the forecourt of George White School

Last week Norwich's Baptists celebrated 344 years of their presence in the city. Strictly speaking their history goes further back than 344 years: 2013 - 344 = 1669, where 1669 is simply the date that England's state church registered the outlawed Baptists as a subversive congregation in Norwich.  These Baptists had been around for some years prior to 1669 and had in fact emerged out of Congregationalists who practised child baptism.

Norwich's contemporary Baptists finished their celebration week with a "Fun Day" at a local school - see the photo above. This school, as an outcome of purely fortuitous circumstances, was none other than the George White Juniors. George White was another of NCBC's (and Norwich's) illustrious patriarchs; a philanthropic businessman and liberal MP. You can read about him here:

http://www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/whos-who/george-white.htm 

Very appropriate then that NCBC and its fellow Baptist churches should finish their celebration week here!  Given the venue of the "Fun day" the lesson that cried out to be noticed last Saturday is how things have changed! In 1669 the Baptists were a marginal and persecuted group. By George White's time they walked the corridors of power and influence. However, One Hundred and One years since the death of White in 1912 we find that once again the Baptists are a fairly marginal group. But this time they are just one marginal group amongst many other marginal groups in an eclectic society, a society that now has to live with diversity rather than respond to it with fear and persecution - unless it wants to tear itself apart.

My guess is that in the confident heady days of George White there would have be less need to have a week of the sometimes spirited rallying of the Baptist troops that we saw in last week's 344 celebrations. Marginalisation can, if we are not careful, create pressures that encourage tribalisation. But as we learn from the book of Jonah the most unlikely tribes can turn to God, even if they don't turn to us and we may have little to do with it!

Like a Godfather George White presided silently over the last hours of Norwich's Baptists 344 celebrations and no-one remarked on  the irony!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NORWICH CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH.

In the November of 2013 NCBC hosted the UK-2013 conference of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission. The following historical resume accompanied the publicity for the conference. This article below was written for missionaries attending the conference, a conference I helped to organise. 

Norwich Central Baptist Church is among the oldest Baptist churches in England. It dates itself from 1669 when its congregation appears on a record commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury. This record was compiled to help keep an eye on Christian congregations that were not part of the state church, the Church of England. Under the reign of the Stuart Kings the state was suspicious of non-conforming congregations and outlawed them. However, freedom of worship for non-conformists was granted shortly after 1688 when the Catholic slanting Stuart monarchy was deposed, and the constitutional monarchy of William of Orange instituted.  After the 1688 revolution NCBC’s congregation met freely in various locations one of them being the East Granary (pictured above). This building was once part of the Cloister of St. Andrews Hall and today is used by the Norwich University of the Arts. Eventually the congregation settled at the current venue in 1744 where they have been ever since. The church came to be called "St Mary's Baptist Church" (SMBC) because of its location on St Mary's plane.

The plaque on NCBC commemorating the presence
of those early Baptists at the East Granary. 

The plaque on the East Granary commemorating
 the presence of those early Baptists. 

After the repeal of the Test Act in 1823 (an act barring non-conformists from civic office) the way was clear for non-conformists to take up public appointment. The progressive ethos at SMBC favoured their involvement in liberal politics and business. Subsequently its congregation has included members of parliament, mayors, sheriffs and notable business grandees. Their contribution to public, civic and industrial life has been memorialized in city street and school names.

The industrial revolution started not long after 1744 and runs in parallel with the rise in the status and influence of SMBC. Throughout the nineteenth century the effects of the industrial revolution increasingly took hold of the country, radically changing the conditions of life and bringing about a world unprecedented since history began. Baptists, such as we find at SMBC, were in the thick of these changes and its members became increasingly respected and well placed in society. They were progressive and whiggish in their outlook. In 1781 their pastor Rees Davies denounced the war against the American revolutionaries. In 1831 the anti-slavery campaigner William Knibb preached at the church. Simon Wilkin, a member of one of SMBC’s high-status families, edited the first complete edition of the works of Norwich polymath Sir Thomas Browne. Liberal MP and industrialist Sir Jeremiah James Colman and his family attended the church.  The Baptist Sir Samuel Morton Peto, a businessman who pioneered the world’s first railway networks, was a friend of Rev. William Brock pastor of SMBC from 1833 to 1849 and attended the church when he was in Norwich. Philanthropic businessman and Liberal MP Sir George White was also a member of the Church and one of its Sunday school superintendents. 

A maker of the modern world: Samuel Morto-peto
centre stage at Norwich Railway station. 

SMBC’s move into a more mainstream Christian affiliation and away from their alienated sectarian and separatist past is symbolised by their 1860 defeat of a legal case that attempted to force closed communion on the church. Subsequently SMBC assumed more and more the culture of an establishment church. The signs of this shift in culture among mainstream Baptists are evidenced by an architectural legacy that apes the architecture of the established church. The high-status members of the church almost became a kind of neo-aristocracy. They were changing, and their mission field was changing with them.

The history of SMBC covers a period that saw the formation of modern times, from the nascent English democracy of pre-Newtonian days, through the enlightenment and the growth of the New World, to the huge social, political and Weltanschauung changes driven by industrialisation. As we have seen, members of SMBC were at the forefront in the exploitation of the new mechanico-industrial paradigm that now suffused society. Latterly, however, SMBC witnessed the late twentieth century marginalisation of Christian influence and a recrudescent Christian sectarianism and separatism. 

In 2003 SMBC merged with its daughter church, Dereham Road Baptist Church to become Norwich Central Baptist Church (NCBC). Like many another church merger it was an event pressured by the decaying Western Church population. With a loss of rich Christian benefactors and influential public leaders there is a corresponding loss of confidence among contemporary churches as they face big challenges about how to respond to tensions between fundamentalist and liberal interpretations of the faith and between schismogenic tendencies and compromise.

SMBC & NCBC’s history of adaptation to prevailing conditions cuts across the idea that there is a timeless detailed blueprint for Christian community; changing conditions changes how Christians think of themselves, their culture, their practices and how they communicate the eternal truths of the Gospel to the vicissitudes of their mission field. Today, European Christians effectively find themselves as Vulnerable Missionaries in their own society, but not because they have chosen this role: Changed circumstances mean they no longer hold the reins of power or act as benefactors with overriding influence. Therefore using only their local resources and native languages Western Christians are thrown back almost entirely on the intrinsic persuasiveness of their lives and the message they bring.

Beyond the walls of the European church the general populace has become increasingly cynical, disaffected and confused about its worldview. That confusion is a legacy of both the anti-authoritarian freedoms introduced by the Reformation and the enlightenment discovery that mechanism is more predictable and comprehensible than either magic or the numinous. The post-enlightenment Westerner, now liable to question self-proclaimed authority, asks “Does it work?” rather than “Is it the will of the Spirits?”. This change of emphasis in the way the Creation was interrogated and used, eventually reaped the wealth of industrialization. 

But these changes also brought with them a loss of both social anchorage & philosophic direction. In the human context freedom brings fearsome responsibilities, difficult choices and contention; as a result some kind of escape is often devised. In one of those tempting artifices used to simplify reality, it is all too easy to draw a circle round the science of mechanism and declare that to be the sum total of reality. The ill-fitting remnant of phenomena that are not easily placed into the categories of mechanical science may be referred to as “magic”, often with pejorative & dismissive connotation. But by itself the science of mechanism is hard pressed to give satisfactory answers to questions about life's meaning or provide a religious rationale which, as is so often true in the past, has been the source of community cohesion.

Significantly, the very same question about the incommensurability of magic and mechanism is uppermost on the agenda of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission as this Alliance grapples with very fundamental questions about intercultural mission. NCBC is privileged to host the November 2013 UK conference. The Alliance’s cutting-edge ministry is very much in line with NCBC’s forward looking traditions. There are lessons here that go well beyond foreign mission fields, because it seems that in today’s secular Western societies Christians are by force of circumstances Vulnerable Missionaries.

Addendum December 2022: A Disclaimer

Although I have long accepted Jim Harries' VM thesis that cross-cultural missionaries working exclusively with local languages and local resources will have a greater chance of probing deeper into a culture than Intercultural Integrated Mission, I would nevertheless want to express my opinion that VM will never be (or never should be) an exclusive approach to Christian mission. I also find myself disagreeing with many of the embellishments that Jim adds to his account of VM, embellishments which look to be more an expression of a reactionary worldview than necessary accoutrements of VM. My divergence from Jim's worldview has become increasingly clear to me as I have read his recent book on "anti-racism".