A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. David Ley is an Elder at Fairview Church, Vancouver.
Summons to Faith and Renewal: Christian Renewal in a Post-Christian World. Edited by Peter Williamson and Kevin Perrotta. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant Books, 1983. 167 pp.
This book comprises a set of seven essays, presented at a conference in Ann Arbor in 1982, with a substantial introduction and several appendices offering agenda for ongoing dialogue and action. The conference was convened by the Center for Pastoral Renewal, an interdenominational and interchurch group dedicated to spiritual and pastoral renewal. Not the least interesting element of the conference was an ecumenism that included Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox leaders drawn together in a joint servanthood before Christ.
Kevin Perrotta’s introduction raises the contextual challenge to the contemporary church of widespread secularism and urges a serious intellectual understanding of modernity and its relations with Christian faith. He illustrates, for example, how superficial is much of our understanding of pressures upon family life, and how constant is the tendency to personalize these assaults, rather than see them equally as structural, that is in part historical and social patterns which lie beyond individual accountability. Perrotta offers some useful but brief notes toward an understanding of modernity; clearly this is merely an introduction to a more substantial and critically important task, a task which offers opportunities as well as challenges.
In a short essay, the Catholic historian, James Hitchcock, identifies three roots of religious secularization in changing standards of sexual morality, an erosion of the doctrine of Christ, and an increasingly uninformed understanding of God. While Hitchcock’s analysis is no doubt true, one senses it has not penetrated as deeply as Perrotta’s, in seeing secularization in purely personal terms. He is critical of the contemporary “ideal of total selffulfillment” but does not consider the promotion of this ideal in particular social and historical structures. The theologian, Harold Brown, is similarly brief in his treatment of “Faith, Life, and the Spirit of the Age”, and describes problems, primarily in personal terms (again including sexual morality), rather than identifying solutions through a sharper analysis. Ralph Martin’s essay highlights the contemporary attack on Scripture as a particularly pernicious satanic assault. While one warms to Martin’s zealous defence of Christian standards, his essay also rarely reaches Perrotta’s call for an apologetic which penetrates deeper than immediate actions and responses.
Peter Williamson, Director of the Center for Pastoral Renewal, offers a different perspective as he suggests that there is not simply a problem of unbelief, but also a problem of the dilution of standards of behaviour among Christians themselves. There is in short a discordance between belief and practice; secular culture has invaded religious practice even as we fervently protect our beliefs. Particularly devastating are 1982 findings from the Christian Advertising Forum which concluded that as a consumer market there was very little evidence of a separation between Christian and non-Christian publics and that “the survey results suggest that scriptural exhortations to lead a Christ-like, Bible-based lifestyle are consistently ignored.” This is a most important essay for further study, documenting the cultural captivity of the churches, suggesting some of the causes, and concluding with a pastoral concern with the practicalities of passing on Christian life to our children in an environment of such insidious “principalities and powers”. In an equally important argument, Stephen Clark presents the necessity and the bases for ecumenical cooperation, predicted not upon diluted theology but upon an active and enthusiastic affirmation of oneness in Christ, leading to a loving common identification, even as denominational distinctions and differences continue. It is a simple, sensible, and scriptural message which is too easily neglected.
The final two essays address the issue of renewal. In a wise and insightful essay, James Packer passes far beyond the “instant fixes” all too common in North American Christian circles to a profound yet highly readable meditation on the character of renewal. This contribution should be widely read and internalized by believers and congregations committed to personal and corporate renewal. It is well complemented by Mark Kinzer’s modestly written contribution on practical and programme-oriented approaches to renewal as an expression of what we should aspire to as the normal Christian life.
There is much of value in this collection. I warmly commend it as a tool for individual and corporate Christian growth which knowledgeably addresses the spirit of the age.