July 2011 Book Reviews by Revd Canon John Thomson, Director of Ministry

July 2011 Book Reviews by Revd Canon John Thomson, Director of Ministry

Nigel Rooms, The Faith of the English: Integrating Christ and Culture (London: SPCK, 2011) & Pete Ward, God’s Behaving Badly: Media, Religion and Celebrity Culture (London: SCM, 2011)

Nigel Rooms, The Faith of the English: Integrating Christ and Culture (London: SPCK, 2011)

One of the benefits of living for a number of years outside one’s own culture is becoming more aware of its peculiarities and character. Nigel Rooms, Director of Ministry and Mission in the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham, spent most of the 1990’s in Tanzania developing Theological Education by Extension (TEE). In so doing he became very aware of the way indigeneous African cultures and the Christian faith engaged with each other. Returning to England he has been wrestling with the same challenges in his own culture and this short book is the fruit of his reflections. Rooms is an advocate of contextual or inculturation models of mission and theological reflection. He does not believe in abstract cultures or an abstract Gospel. Inculturation, a phrase made popular in this country through Mission Shaped Church (CHP, 2003), is about engagement and transformation, about seeing how the Gospel can be translated into particular cultures. Indeed Christianity’s universalism is evident in its capacity to be translated into any culture. The global and the local therefore are held in a critical conversation.

So what might the faith of the English look like? Rooms recognises that Englishness is ambiguous, attracting the advocacy of both the English Defence League and the Archbishop of York. Yet drawing upon the work of the anthropologist, Kate Fox, he argues that certain commonalities and characteristics can be observed across all standard divisions, such as social dis-ease, humour, moderation, hypocrisy, empiricism, eeyorishness, class consciousness, fair play, courtesy and modesty. These are particularly evident in the variety of historical forms of his foundational English story, Robin Hood. From this, Rooms argues, a mission strategy for the English can be distilled, which begins with these characteristics as table talking points which can open up faith in a nuanced and conversational way. It also offers him a template for a parish course on integrating Englishness and Christianity.

Is Rooms persuasive? In the main yes. As someone who has also viewed England from the outside the cultural distinctiveness of the English is noticeable. Baseball caps and jeans don’t really hide Englishness anymore than they hide Xhosa culture. However there is a slight reserve in me about culture as holy ground, since the German Christians and Afrikaaner nationalists claimed this and it led to a terrible blindness which Karl Barth and Desmond Tutu had to challenge. Rooms is aware of the need for a careful and critical conversation. The question is what will enable this to be a critical Christian conversation? I would argue that Rooms needs a more emphatic ecclesiology… a view that the Church in its richest and catholic sense, embodies and tells the definitive story of God which positions and critiques any particular culture and trains disciples to be able to converse with their own cultures in an appropriately discriminating way. But why don’t you see what you think?

Pete Ward, God’s Behaving Badly: Media, Religion and Celebrity Culture (London: SCM, 2011)

Pete Ward’s latest book opens up one of the dominant areas of late modern culture, celebrity. A collusion between the entertainment industries and the media, this obsession with being in the public eye at any cost has infected nearly all forms of life, whether Big Brother or Tiger Woods. Yet in all of this Ward sees fascinating insights which reflect traditionally religious themes, even though he characterizes celebrity as a proto-religion rather than religion proper. What is clear, however, is that celebrity culture is not secular in the modernist sense. Rather there is a sacralisation of the self, a re-emergence of polytheism and the exploration of a variety of expressions of the good life. Elements of worship (narcissim) and of idolatry are present, along with notions of sin, repentance, restoration and eternal life, but often these are ironic and irreverent rather than wholesome, evaluated by the last judgement of popular opinion and eternally recorded on web site servers. This is about celetoid identity, a constructed celebrity in the service of capitalist money making and consumerism. Yet in and through this important themes are being explored, says Ward, such as home and family, the body, worthwhile living and the second chance.

As I read his work I could not help wondering how the rich and remarkable story of Jesus and Israel had been substituted by so many for the thin celetoid stories of Hello Magazine or Heat. Yet perhaps their very irony is an acknowledgement of their parasitic relationship with this core and often hidden foundational story. As with Rooms, Ward invites us to see the culture around us as an opportunity for conversation rather than something to be avoided. Interestingly Ward raises questions for Rooms as celebrity culture threatens many of the common characteristics of Englishness that Rooms identifies. The question then is not only, can the Christian story be embodied and shared in a sufficiently persuasive way to subvert celebrity obsession, but can Englishness survive what is essentially an American driven agenda, even if some of its roots can be seen in ancient Greek and Roman paganism?

Why not borrow them from the Resources Centre?