The Church of England and Islam:
Hospitality and Embassy - Theologies of Religion in Process
1. Pre-Lambeth 1988
by Richard Sudworth
Part I of IV (see parts II, III, IV)
On October 13th 2007, an unprecedented range of Muslim scholars and leaders issued the document A Common Word between Us and You1 to representatives of Christian traditions throughout the world, proposing a basis for dialogue between Muslims and Christians. The “common word” is a direct reference to sura 3:64 of the Qur’an which calls upon the “People of the Book” to worship of the one God. The traditional Muslim challenge to Christian Trinitarianism is implicit in this call to good relations between the faiths.2 For the authors of this document, the “foundational principles” of both faiths are “love of the One God, and love of the neighbour”.3
A Common Word throws into sharp relief the significance of what our own Christian understanding of Islam is. What are, indeed, Christian foundations for good relations with Muslims and how are the confluent and divergent histories of our respective faiths understood theologically from within the Christian tradition? Subsequent to its publication, the website has hosted reflections from Christian leaders and theologians, conferences have been convened and dialogue processes begun.4 The Church of England, serving a populace living with the reality of a post-secular society, and pivotal in an Anglican Communion that represents communities in some of the most sensitive locations for Christian-Muslim relations, cannot avoid the question of Islam in its midst. Indeed, statements about Islam from senior Anglican leaders, Archbishop Rowan Williams and Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, have arguably drawn more media attention and created more controversy than any corresponding pastoral sermons in recent years.5 Whether posed formally by A Common Word, or informally by the presence of a mosque opposite a church or a majority-Muslim church school, what does the Church of England think Islam is and on what basis are relations to be founded? As Jacques Waardenburg has said, “The first issue is simply that of identity: who are the Christians and the Muslims about whose relations we speak?”6
Though the interface between Islam and Christianity may seem to inform so much of the contemporary discourse on religions, Anglican assessments of Islam can be traced back to the origins of the English Reformation. The Church of England Prayer Books of 1549, 1552 and 1662 all contain, in the rite for Good Friday, the prayer: “Have mercy on all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics”.7 In the context of the broader Reformation across Europe, the “Turks” were a peculiar class of infidel representing a goad to Christendom to avert God’s judgment poised against a corrupt and errant Catholic Church.8 As the Church of England embarked on a more substantive encounter with Islam into the missionary era of the nineteenth century, the role of the Turk as “enemy” was recast into the drama of British imperialism. Thus, the Anglican apologist and colonial civil servant William Muir could write in his bestselling account of the faith of Islam, The Life of Mahomet (1858-61): “the sword of Mahomet, and the Coran are the most fatal enemies of Civilization,
Alongside the pejorative judgments and clear discontinuity with Islam expressed in the Book of Common Prayer, there is another more sympathetic stream that is evocative of fascination and curiosity. Within Anglicanism, there is evidence of a persistent stream of inquiry into Islam and the orient, typified in the early initiatives by Archbishop William Laud to establish a chair in Arabic Studies at Oxford University. Through Laud’s personal commitment to knowledge of Islam and the Islamic world, Edward Pococke (1604-1691), chaplain at Aleppo, was appointed the founding lecturer in Arabic at Oxford University, translated the Book of Common Prayer into Arabic (1672) and wrote a history of the Arab world, Specimen Historiae Arabum (1650), which remained the authoritative text for a hundred and fifty years or more.11 The Anglican clergyman Charles Forster (1787-1871) continued in the vein of an open inquiry into the nature of Islam, offering a more irenic counterpoint to Muir’s characterization of Islam as inherently destructive to civilisation. His Mahometanism Unveiled (1829) caused considerable controversy by questioning the premise of Islam’s violence, recognising that “Islam is a spiritual religion” and “distortion and prejudice obscured facts in common understanding of Islam.”12
For many commentators, the Western Christian assessment of Islam, typified by the English Anglicans up to the Victorian age, was “a blend of patronizing disdain and romanticization of the Orient and the Levant.”13 Islam was essentially still “over there” in terms of the perception of the Church of England until the second half of the twentieth century. However, we shall see that the work of a number of Anglican missionaries has contributed to a vital and creative reflection on the nature of Islam and its relationship to the Christian faith.
In exploring the Church of England’s understanding of Islam, I am seeking a theology of interfaith relations that seems to be authoritative for the context of Christian-Muslim relations in England whilst drawing from the Anglican tradition as a whole. In doing so, there is a recognition of the inclusive nature of Anglican theology, the adiaphora characteristic of the roots of Anglican self-identity supremely articulated by Richard Hooker in the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Joan Lockwood-O’Donovan summarises Hooker’s contribution, the “theological architect of the Church of England”, as “a masterly account of the interaction of such judgments of divinely revealed truths and commands, rational principles of right, justice and equity, the universal and local traditions of the church, and particular exigencies of time and place.”`14 Thus, scripture, reason, and tradition15 need to be brought to bear in expressing the Church of England’s understanding of Islam; an understanding that will be especially attentive to context whilst sensitive to the global identities of a Communion of Anglicanism that is itself in encounter with a faith of universal aspiration. As Michael Ipgrave points out in his description of Anglican approaches to inter-faith relations, Lambeth Conferences are significant expressions of Church thinking for the Anglican Communion globally whilst lacking the definitive status of, say, Roman Catholic conciliar decrees.16 For this series of articles, then, I will be analysing a number of Lambeth Conference resolutions alongside formal statements and initiatives local to the Church of England.
Lambeth Conferences Pre-1988
The Lambeth Conference of 1897 published an Encyclical Letter that sought to settle a policy for inter-faith relations and provides an early positing of the priority of the triumvirate of Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations:
“In preaching His Gospel to the world we have to deal with one great religious body, which holds the truth in part not in its fullness, the Jews; with another which holds fragments of the truth embedded in a mass of falsehood, the Mohammedans; and with various races which hold inherited beliefs ranging down to the merest fetichism.”17
In this short statement one sees the framing of interfaith relations in the context of mission (“His Gospel”) and an evident tension in seeking out that which is truthful in other religious traditions whilst holding fast to the Gospel “lest that good, such as it is” become a “substitute for the Gospel”. At a time when the bulk of Anglican encounters with Muslims would be in the context of parishes and bishoprics established from missionary stations, the prior motive of evangelism seems to be paramount, tempered by the commitment to truth in the affirmation of what is consonant in other traditions. Within this schema, Islam offers something more than “merest fetichism”, but as embodying elements of truth, obscured by lies; Judaism as incomplete truths.
It is over seventy years before Islam is addressed again during a Lambeth Conference. In that intervening period, two world wars and the steady dismantling of the British Empire witness a growing attention to ecumenical endeavours. The first World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, 1910, marked what David Bosch sees as the “all-time highwater mark in Western missionary enthusiasm, the zenith of the optimistic and pragmatist approach to missions.”18 Bosch notes the harnessing of Enlightenment progress thinking in the resources available to world evangelization, as described in Edinburgh, that provided a symbiosis between Christian missionary endeavours and the colonial project.19 The carnage of two World Wars and, for the British, a steady dismantling of empire, began to undermine the optimism in the fruits of “secular science” that was so evident at Edinburgh 1910.20 Importantly for the Church of England, though, Temple Gairdner, Church Missionary Society missionary and Arabicist, was entrusted with presenting to Edinburgh 1910 on the nature of Islam and reporting back to the Church on the proceedings.21 For all the naïve optimism and combative overtones that are replete in the language of Edinburgh 1910, there are some remarkable statements that anticipate the work of Kenneth Cragg and inform so much of subsequent Anglican thinking. Islam was deemed a “living faith” “intense, more intimate and more comprehensive than sight”.22 As Vinoth Ramachandra points out, “The Report dares to ask: “Have we in our modern theology and religion sufficiently recognised what Islam stands for – the unity and the sovereignty of God?””23 From the heart of the missionary enterprise, and exemplified by Temple Gairdner, then, is an assessment of Islam that strives to see beyond the polemical, to encounter Islam in its genuine otherness, but with respect, and in Gairdner’s language, love.
The burgeoning concern for ecumenical unity is evident in the Encyclical Letters of the Lambeth Conference of 1930 which talk of “that great human family of which God is the Father”.24 The parallel tracks of mission and unity that become embodied in the World Council of Churches are evident, too, in the call for ecumenical relations on the basis that “Every extension of this circle of visible fellowship would increase the power of the Church to witness to its Lord by its unity.”25
It is in the Lambeth Conference of 1968 that the language and imperative of dialogue becomes first apparent, though. In a decade exercised by the applied ecclesiology modelled in Vatican II, interfaith dialogue is seen not in the context of a theology of religions but in the reality of plural life, which includes atheism and Marxism. Thus, Resolution 11 encourages “positive relationship to the different religions of men (sic)” as will “call Christians not only to study other faiths in their own seriousness, but also to study unbelief in its real quality”. Resolution 12 further recommends “a renewed and vigorous implementation of the task of inter-religious dialogue already set in hand” and “commends similar assistance for dialogue with Marxists and those who profess no religious faith”.26 Michael Ipgrave assesses this shift to situate the religions within a wider diversity of belief systems as expressing the priority of dialogue with diversity rather than with an attention to a theological assessment of the realities of that diversity.27
In the Lambeth Conference of 1978, Resolution 37, there is a return to the framing of interfaith relations within the “Gospel” but this is opened out to include “the obligation to open exchange of thought and experience with people of other faiths”. There is no mention of atheistic ideologies this time, suggesting perhaps the previous 1968 Conference’s own preoccupations with the foment of the Cold War, student protests and the nascent social liberalism of that era. There is a recognition of the “vocation” of churches in, again, a broader mission of “theological interpretation, community involvement, social responsibility, and evangelization” where specific other religions predominate (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taosim, Confucianism, and Islam). No theological assessment of these faiths is attempted. However, there is a very specific mention of the need to “seek opportunities for dialogue with Judaism”, hinting at the especial obligation to remedy of Christian-Jewish relations post-Holocaust that had so charged the climate of Vatican II.
Prior to Lambeth 1988, then, there seems to be no coherent and substantive analysis of Islam by the Anglican Communion. From a predominantly missionary, and oftentimes imperialistic vantage point, Islam then begins to be seen in the context of ecumenical and dialogical relations. The challenges of atheism and secularism in a growing plural polity seem to have exercised the Anglican Communion more than Islam, per se from the 1960’s onwards. As the analysis moves into the 1980’s, it is worth noting that, given the longstanding history of coexistence and encounter between Anglican churches and Islam, the period of considered institutional reflection is remarkably brief.
Footnotes
1 A Common Word between Us and You, available from
http://www.acommonword.com/index.php?lang=en&page=option1 downloaded 14th January 2009
2 A Common Word notes that the other “People of the Book” are Jews but otherwise focuses attention on this theme with respect to the relationship between Christians and Muslims only
3http://www.acommonword.com/index.php?lang=en&page=option1 p. 1
4 See the A Common Word website for the progress of various initiatives: http://www.acommonword.com
5 see Williams, R. “Archbishop’s Lecture: Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective”, 7th February 2008, downloaded from http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575 on 24th April, 2008 for the text of what has become known as the “sharia law speech” of Archbishop Rowan Williams and Nazir-Ali, M. “Extremism flourished as UK lost Christianity”, Daily Telegraph 11th January, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1574695/Extremism-flourished-as-UK-lost-Christianity.html downloaded 17th October 2008 for Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali’s “no-go areas” article
6 Waardenburg, J. “Critical Issues in Muslim-Christian Relations: theoretical, practical, dialogical, scholarly”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Volume 8, No. 1, (1997): 9-26, p.12
7 For an analysis of the development away from this characterization of Jews in the liturgy of the Church of England Prayer Book, see Richard Harries’ After the Evil: Christianity and Judaism in the Shadow of the Holocaust, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
8 See MacCulloch, D. Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700, (London: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 53-57 & 550-555 on the significance of the threat of the “Turk” in framing the context of Reformation across Europe
9 Quoted in Ansari, H. “The Infidel Within”: Muslims in Britain since 1800, (London: Hurst & Company, 2004), p. 61
10 Ansari, H. “The Infidel Within”, p. 61
11 Khalaf, S. “Protestant Images of Islam: disparaging stereotypes reconfirmed”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Volume 8, No. 2, (1997): 211-229, p. 215
12 Bennett, C. Victorian Images of Islam, (London: Grey Seal Books, 1992), pp. 28-9
13 Khalaf, S. “Protestant Images of Islam”, p. 211
14 Lockwood-O’Donovan, J. “The Church of England and the Anglican Communion: a timely engagement with the national church tradition?”, Scottish Journal of Theology, 57, (2004): 313-337, p. 325
15 It is beyond the scope of this study to assess the legitimacy of the Anglican triad of scripture, reason, and tradition though it is worth noting Lesslie Newbigin’s Barthian critique of the distinct nature of these sources in Newbigin, L. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, (London: SPCK, 1999), pp. 52-65. For Newbigin, there has been a split between faith and reason, dating back to Aquinas and responsible for modernity’s “classical distinction between theory and practice” which operates to the detriment of embodied, local witness, Le Roy Stults, D. Grasping Truth and Reality: Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology of Mission to the Western World, (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2009), p.131
16 Ipgrave, M. “Understanding, Affirmation, Sharing: Nostra Aetate and an Anglican Approach to Inter-Faith Relations”, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Volume 43, No. 1, (Winter 2008): 1-16, p. 2
17 “Encyclical Letter, Lambeth Conference, 1897”, The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources, edited by Evans, G. R. & Robert Wright, J., (London: SPCK, 1991), p. 360
18 Bosch, D. J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991), Transforming Mission, p. 338
19 Bosch, D. J., Transforming Mission, p. 336
20 Bosch, D. J., Transforming Mission, pp. 334-341. Bosch identifies Edinburgh 1910 as the source of the re-birthed ecumenical movement. The challenges to Enlightenment optimism of two world wars have accelerated the cause of unity that has been embodied in the dichotomy of unity and mission at the inception of the World Council of Churches in 1948, Bosch, D. J., Transforming Mission, pp. 457-461
21 Padwick, C. E., Temple Gairdner of Cairo, (London: SPCK, 1929), p. 198
22 Gairdner, T. Edinburgh 1910: An Account and Interpretation of the World Missionary Conference, (Edinburgh: Oliphant, 1910), pp 128-9
23 Ramachandra, V. The Missionary Message in Relation to Non-Christian Religions: The Edinburgh 1910 Commission IV Report and Beyond, available from
http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads/t2010paper04ramachandra.pdf p. 3, downloaded 21st July, 2009
24 “Encyclical Letter, Lambeth Conference, 1930”, The Anglican Tradition, edited by Evans, G. R. & Robert Wright, J., p. 389
25 “Encyclical Letter, Lambeth Conference, 1930”, The Anglican Tradition, edited by Evans, G. R. & Robert Wright, J., p. 391
26 for extracts of Lambeth Conference resolutions on interfaith matters to 1988 see Ingham, M. Mansions of the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World, (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1997), pp. 141-143
27 Ipgrave, M. “Understanding, Affirmation, Sharing”, p. 2
Bibliography
Ansari, H. “The Infidel Within”: Muslims in Britain since 1800, (London: Hurst & Company, 2004)
Bennett, C. Victorian Images of Islam, (London: Grey Seal Books, 1992)
Bosch, D. J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991)
Evans, G. R. & Robert Wright, J. (eds.) The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources, (London: SPCK, 1991)
Gairdner, T. Edinburgh 1910: An Account and Interpretation of the World Missionary Conference, (Edinburgh: Oliphant, 1910)
Harries, Richard. After the Evil: Christianity and Judaism in the Shadow of the Holocaust, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
Ingham, M. Mansions of the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World, (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1997)
Ipgrave, M. “Understanding, Affirmation, Sharing: Nostra Aetate and an Anglican Approach to Inter-Faith Relations”, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Volume 43, No. 1, (Winter 2008): 1-16
Khalaf, S. “Protestant Images of Islam: disparaging stereotypes reconfirmed”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Volume 8, No. 2, (1997): 211-229
Le Roy Stults, D. Grasping Truth and Reality: Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology of Mission to the Western World, (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2009)
Lockwood-O’Donovan, J. “The Church of England and the Anglican Communion: a timely engagement with the national church tradition?”, Scottish Journal of Theology, 57, (2004): 313-337
MacCulloch, D. Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700, (London: Penguin Books, 2004)
Nazir-Ali, M. “Extremism flourished as UK lost Christianity”, Daily Telegraph 11th January, 2008,
Padwick, C. E., Temple Gairdner of Cairo, (London: SPCK, 1929)
Ramachandra, V. The Missionary Message in Relation to Non-Christian Religions: The Edinburgh 1910 Commission IV Report and Beyond, available from
http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads/t2010paper04ramachandra.pdf downloaded 21st July, 2009
Waardenburg, J. “Critical Issues in Muslim-Christian Relations: theoretical, practical, dialogical, scholarly”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Volume 8, No. 1, (1997): 9-26
Williams, R. “Archbishop’s Lecture: Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective”, 7th February 2008, downloaded from http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575 on 24th April, 2008
Reports in Chronological Order:
A Common Word between Us and You, available from
http://www.acommonword.com/index.php?lang=en&page=option1
downloaded 14th January 2009
Richard Sudworth is a Church Mission Society mission partner working for a confident, relational engagement with other faiths.