[Bishop Tom] Wright has deep family roots in the Durham area, which from the 14th to the mid-19th century was ruled by the prince-bishops; in medieval times they had the right to mint their own coins and raise armies. Today’s incumbent may not have wanted to fight this last battle, but there are plenty for which he is ready. One, in particular, will have evangelicals itching to draw swords. “The massive denial of reality by the cheap and cheerful universalism of western liberalism has a lot to answer for,” he thunders in his new book. “The nihilism to which secularism has given birth leaves many with no reason for living.” The bishop would like to see nothing less than an end to the Enlightenment split between religion and politics.
“There is a Christian view of politics,” he says after lunch at a fish restaurant by the coast, “and whether or not the government knows it, it has a God-given duty to bring wise order and to facilitate human flourishing.” The Church does not just have a right to comment on whether ministers are failing in their divine task, he argues. “To try to shut us up, to say, ‘You keep off the patch'” is “totalitarian”. So, no apologies for his Easter Sunday sermon on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, in which he criticised the government for “pushing through, hard and fast, legislation that comes from a militantly atheist and secularist lobby” whose aims are a “1984-style world” where “we create our own utopia by our own efforts, particularly our science and technology”.
“Using what is in effect live human tissue for experimental purposes is not a frontier we think people ought to cross,” he says, “and we’re going to go on saying that. The more of these moral frontiers a government crosses, the more it owes to citizens to make a space for conscience, not just in voting but in how scientists and doctors carry this work out. To think that the Church should not be involved in politics is to say: ‘Here are some areas of crucial concern for human flourishing, but the Church is not allowed to address these matters of public debate.’ I think that’s ridiculous.”
Does anyone have any idea what +Wright is thinking about how to deal with TEC and the faithful remnant within her? It is obvious that he doesn’t cherish the thought of schism. Lambeth is approaching; is there something in the works that will provide us with hope for the future?
I’m continually surprised and impressed by the breadth of Kendall’s reading.
Alas, dbaird (#1), +Wright was one of the key figures in drafting the Windsor Report and he has spoken out strongly against GAFCon and for attending Lambeth and allowing the Windsor Process time to work (including the new proposed Covenant). And I think +Wright’s personal friendship with ++Rowan Williams misleads him to trust the weak and ineffective ABoC too much.
With regard to this article, it’s a fine introduction to the man and some of his characteristic ideas and concerns. +Tom Wright is a very fine NT scholar, a good theologian and an excellent communicator with the general public (Christian and non-Christian). But I often disagree with his politics, and especially his church politics, i.e., especially his naive view of the usefulness of the Windsor Report he helped to create.
But I’d be delighted if we had anyone like him in America. Alas, we don’t (among TEC bishops anyway). But +Wright is one of the most influential figures in the AC today, and someone everywhere should know about. I welcome this rather long sketch of a leading evangelical in the C of E. I think it’s fair in how it characterizes him. If we only had a dozen more bishops like him, the future would look a whole lot brighter than it does for Anglicanism.
David Handy+
David Handy+,
You write:
[blockquote]But I’d be delighted if we had anyone like him in America. Alas, we don’t (among TEC bishops anyway). But +Wright is one of the most influential figures in the AC today, and someone everywhere should know about….If we only had a dozen more bishops like him, the future would look a whole lot brighter than it does for Anglicanism.[/blockquote]
And that makes me think: why don’t we have more like him? I wonder – how might we help to foster bishops, priests, laity like NTW? I’ve thought before how good it would be to have another Chesterton, or C.S. Lewis, or Augustine in our day. Does anyone have any serious and constructive thoughts about what we as Christians might do to find and foster people like this?
As a teacher, I am constantly moved by the hope that one of my students will make a difference in her generation, in ways I myself may not.
Lord Jesus Christ, move us from hopes and wishes to faithful action. Grant us wisdom not only to use our own gifts well but also to help others fan their sparks into flame for the glory of your holy name. Amen.
Laocoon (#4) wrote: “I wonder – how might we help to foster bishops, priests, laity like NTW?” The answer to this question is long. Look at the process that a postulant has to submit to. Discernment in the local church, making and keeping a good impression on the local bishop and standing committee. There are all the psychological and other testing procedures. Basically those who will make it through this process to become a priest are formed (or are already) in the mold of the bishop. There is little room for one to get through the process if one is in disagreement with the bishop. Then there is getting through the seminary with all the enculturation into the liberal and post-modernism theology and thought. I guess basically I am saying that the church is getting the priests and bishops that an earlier generation of bishops formed in their ideological mold; like begets like.
Is the Church of England different in this respect. To me, it seems that it is, somewhat, in that there are still bishops who understand that they are protectors and teachers of the Apostolic tradition.
So, Laocoon, how do we get priests and ultimately bishops here in the US like +Wright? We, the laity have to tell our bishops that we want this person to be ordained, even though you don’t like the postulant’s theology. We also have to force them to allow them to study at other seminaries, colleges, and universities. We have to help these students financially so that they are not in financial fear of their bishop because of the necessity of having to pay off huge student loans. We have to pray, work, and sacrifice to help such young people get into the ranks of the clergy. We have to allow these young priests the time to pursue their academic studies and pursuits. And we have to make our voices heard when bishops are elected. My point is that bishops pick postulants who mirror their theologies and Weltanschauung. As others elsewhere have said more elegantly than I have here, we in TEC are reaping the whirlwind of previous generations of liberal bishops.
dbaird – thanks for your reply. As a college prof who teaches a good deal of that “post-modernism,” I’m neither very troubled by (much of) it nor convinced it need be more antithetical to orthodox Christian faith than the modernism that preceded it. Each carries its own idolatries, to be sure.
What you say sounds very helpful. I’ve lost confidence in getting the ear of our bishop or PB, but you’ve done something to make me if not more confident then at least more determined to try stubbornly to get their ear.
Will it work? Dunno. But then I’m never sure my teaching or my preaching work either. “Unless the Lord builds the house…” So I pray again: God, grant us godly clergy, and use us to find, instruct, prepare and support those clergy. Amen.
I largely agree with David Handy’s estimate of Tom Wright as a scholar and appreciate his work, though I think in several areas (e.g. on exile-motif in Jesus’ ministry, ‘new perspective’ on Paul) his own ideas are exaggerated (Wright covers these with rhetorical overkill) and will not stand the test of time. D. A. Carson is a pretty astute and fair critic of these flaws in Wright’s thinking. OTOH, it was good that he teamed up with Gary Habermas to defend the historicity of the Resurrection on a recent tour of England – the kind of thing that William Lane Craig has also done in that very secular country
In terms of church politics, Wright’s main role in recent years has been to be a kind of Establishment attack dog on conservative evangelicals, from which fold he came many years ago. So he denounced the proposed ‘covenant for the Church of England’, blasted a work on penal substitution from Oak Hill Seminary, rushed to defend Rowan Williams after his sharia gaffe, and denounced GafCon – which hasn’t at all deterred the Africans. All good stuff, I suppose, if you harbor ambitions to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. I think it would be better if he mended his fences with conservative evangelicals (they have the largest Anglican churches in England) and recognized that Windsor is a busted flush – precisely because Tec and now Canada and fringes of Australian and New Zealand Anglicanism have set out to subvert it.
His comments on politics are fairly standard left of center boilerplate with little profundity; he should leave genuine ruminations on political theology to Oliver O’Donovan. As for his comments that Margaret Thatcher’s politics were really ‘atheist’, that’s absurd. Thatcher was a Christian nationalist – fairly shallow but clear in her own way. Wright may also argue that the US/UK invasion of Iraq was a mistake (many would agree, though I think it will be a long time before we know the true story about WMD, Saddam’s nuclear ambitions, and what Iran is up to), but the truth is, Islam is growing apace in the UK while Christianity shrinks from any public salience. This is where he should be addressing himself. But only Michael Nazir-Ali is – and he has been threatened for it.
The Gordian (#7),
Thanks. Let me return the favor and say that I am in basic agreement with your post. For instance, I agree that as a NT expert, +Wright has swallowed too uncritically the “New Perspective on Paul” associated with his Oxford colleague E.P. Sanders, and championed by James Dunn. But it’s strking that +Wright was the only Anglican NT scholar invited to write for the prestigious New Interpreter’s Bible series (where +Wright wrote the commentary on Romans and did a fine job with it). His blockbuster books in his multi-volume NT theology, especially vols. 2 & 3, “Jesus and the Victory of God,” and “The Resurrection of the Son of God,” are major contributions to the field. Yet, unlike most academic types, he continues to write prolifically for the general public, and to lecture widely, with strong pastoral concerns. I find that highly commendable.
But his skills in interpreting the modern world or in applying his exegetical work to our world today are much more debatable and dubious. I myself wouldn’t go so far as to accuse him of harboring ambitions of becoming the next ABoC (who is in a position to know his heart? probably only God himself). But he shares the sort of “naive” approach represented by the noble ACI team, and by some in the English “Fulcrum” group. I realize that this charge of being “naive” or too much of an institutionalist in his church politics is itself a highly debatable issue.
Of course, +Wright is in good company. There are MANY outstanding orthodox Anglican leaders who continue to find it unthinkable that the AC should undergo shipwreck and self-destruct at long last. But isn’t this (April 12th now) the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic? I say: “It’s time to start thinking the unthinkable.”
David Handy+
Interesting how few of the comments above have anything to do with what NTW has written or said about the resurrection. It is a fair question to ask, where are our Tom Wrights in North American? (Or where is our Athanasius?) Nevertheless this is tangiential to the central issue of the Resurrection. Which is more significant? Where should our passion be? The fact of the Resurrection (Jesus’, and ours)? Or the Episcopal Train Wreck currently in progress?
Also interesting to read the comments on the New Statesman web page where the Wright article was posted. I was more than a little shocked at the amount of anti-Christian bigotry, or at best condescension, the Wright article prompted.
Pax,
Chuck Bradshaw
No. 7 et al – Is Penal Substitution the only acceptable version of Atonement?
#10: Nobody ever said it was. The beef is over the denial that it is PART of the NT teaching – which you will commonly hear in liberal and ‘post-evangelical’ circles (e.g. Wright’s friend Steve Chalke, as former Baptist pastor). Nobody with any understanding of the theology of OT sacrifices could deny that this is a significant element in NT teaching on the Cross – as John Stott made clear a few years ago.