{"id":2833,"date":"2021-09-21T13:40:08","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T12:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/utusheffield.org.uk\/?page_id=2833"},"modified":"2021-09-21T15:20:04","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21T14:20:04","slug":"utublog","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/utusheffield.org.uk\/utublog\/","title":{"rendered":"UTU Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOK REVIEW\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Dear England: Finding Hope, Taking Heart and Changing the World<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

by Stephen Cottrell[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

For those who enjoyed Rowan Williams\u2019s Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief<\/em>,[2]<\/a> you will find much to like about this offering from Stephen Cottrell, the newly appointed Archbishop of York. As with Rowan\u2019s book, Stephen\u2019s has been written by a liberal Anglo-Catholic to convey something of what it means to be an orthodox Christian to those who may know little about the Christian faith but are curious to know more. It was never going to be an easy task; yet he pulls it off with aplomb, in part due to the accessibility of his prose style and the ease with which he handles anecdotal recollections.<\/p>\n

For Stephen, Christian faith is about finding hope, often in a world where there is little evidence of it and \u2013 for some \u2013 little apparent justification for it. He ascribes these feelings of negativity about any sense of ultimate purpose to one\u2019s life as \u2013 in part \u2013 symptomatic of the choice culture in which we now live: \u2018a choice culture, where the choice extends to all realms of life\u2026 For most of us, there is simply no such thing as an absolute truth: you have your truth, I have mine.\u2019 Not only does this \u2018postmodern\u2019, cultural relativism have intellectual limitations for Stephen; it can also be psychologically retarding to those who seek a more solid moral foundation on which to call, and who yearn for a deeper \u2013 more intellectually nuanced \u2013 take on the meaning of life and how to live it, that the Christian tradition offers.<\/p>\n

Being a Christian is also about taking heart in the conviction that Christianity offers a way of engaging with the world that is solidly rooted in God\u2019s purpose. This is embodied in Stephen\u2019s affirmation: \u2018we don\u2019t know anything about God that we don\u2019t see in Jesus\u2026 [Hence] Jesus is the lens through which we see God.\u2019 His theology is thus unambiguously orthodox in that Jesus is the lens through which we see God because, as he puts it, \u2018Jesus is <\/i>God.\u2019<\/p>\n

Being a Christian, for Stephen, is also about changing the world, and his indebtedness to the emphasis that liberal Anglo-Catholicism places on incarnational theology as a route to advancing social justice is apparent, though not explicitly stated. At a time when any notion of the common good is being questioned by some Anglo-Catholic theologians as being inconsistent with a pluralist vision of society,[3]<\/a> Stephen embraces it: ‘My own good can only be secured by securing the common good of all.\u2019 In this regard \u2013 as well as in others \u2013 it is clear that he has been influenced by Roman Catholic Social Teaching (he has been a member of the Anglican Society of Catholic Priests for many years) to which he makes reference in the closing chapter, sharing a common understanding with Roman Catholics of the importance of the dignity of labour, the universal distribution of goods, and of solidarity \u2013that is, \u2018reminding us that we belong to one another irrespective of ethnicity, language, religion, education or status.<\/p>\n

At a time when theology is often seen as inaccessible to laypeople owing to the impenetrable style in which it is often written, Stephen, in this book, shows that it needn\u2019t be that way. He covers an enormous amount of ground in a modest number of words that convey the essence of his orthodox Christian faith in ways that are fully accessible and comprehensible. As with Rowan Williams, his is a faith perspective from within the Affirming Catholicism grouping that is deeply held and admirably informed. If he can demonstrate the same accessible writing skills that he shows in this book when composing his sermons for York Minster, he might just make a not inconsiderable contribution to stemming the tide of disaffiliation and reduced observance that has plagued the Church of England since the early 1960s!<\/p>\n

Joe Forde<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Dear England: Finding Hope, Taking Heart and Changing the World by Stephen Cottrell, (London: Hodder& Stoughton, 2021).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> R. Williams, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2007).<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> M. Chapman, \u2018Pluralism, Welfare and the \u2018Common Good: Three Varieties of Christian Socialism\u2019, Political Theology, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2000, pp. 33-56.<\/p>\n\n

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BOOK REVIEW \u00a0Dear England: Finding Hope, Taking Heart and Changing the World by Stephen Cottrell[1] For those who enjoyed Rowan Williams\u2019s Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief,[2] you will find much to like about this offering from Stephen Cottrell, the newly appointed Archbishop of York. As with Rowan\u2019s\u2026<\/p>\n

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