The Church of England and Islam:

Hospitality and Embassy - Theologies of Religion in Process

4. Generous Love – 2008 and Beyond

by Richard Sudworth

Part IV of IV (see parts I, II, III)

The final point of analysis for this study will be the 2008 report, Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the call to dialogue, issued by the Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns (NIFCON), discussed at the Lambeth Conference 2008 and brought to and commended by General Synod in January, 2009.¹ Archbishop Rowan Williams comments, in his foreword, on the strategic context of Vatican II for Generous Love, while noting that “the situation has moved on, both in theology and in practical relations between communities”². This makes the document an important indicator of Anglican theologies behind some of the changes we have observed since TTID and The Way of Dialogue. Within this foreword and in the subtitle to Generous Love, there is already an express commitment to both “the truth of the Gospel and the call to dialogue”; “that double conviction that we must regard dialogue as an imperative from Our Lord, yet must also witness consistently to the unique gift we have been given in Christ.”³

The document is explicitly theological rather than practical, seeking to present a Christian basis for the theology of religions in the way that TTID sought to do in 1984. What is immediately apparent, though, is the Trinitarian language of the theology. It “begins with God” and the “mystery of his being” that “through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth the One God has made known his triune reality as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”⁴ In echoes of the perichoresis theology more familiar to Eastern Orthodox spirituality, the work of God in the world and across cultures and religions is set in the “boundless life and perfect love which abide forever in the heart of the Trinity” and “are sent out into the world in a mission of renewal and restoration in which we are called to share.”⁵ Where TTID was accused of using the Holy Spirit as an unbiblical, freewheeling motif for discerning truth in other religious traditions, Generous Love articulates a pneumatology that repeatedly references back to the Father God and the revelation of that fatherhood in Jesus, the Son of God.

It is revealing that Lucinda Mosher’s analysis of the 1988 Lambeth Conference includes observations on reports written by Rowan Williams in parallel to but separate to the interfaith reports: “Communion with God and the Life of the Christ” and “Christ and Culture” together with an introduction to the concept of the report of the Communion as a whole. Mosher observes that his reports are “replete” with “Eastern Orthodox theological flavour” in talk of us being caught up into a “great pattern of relation” in the Trinitarian revelation.⁶ This language finds resonance in section 8 of Generous Love, on “sending and abiding” where it is affirmed that “our relationships with people of different faiths must be grounded theologically in our understanding of the reality of the God who is Trinity. Father, Son and Spirit abide in one another in a life which is “a dynamic, eternal and unending movement of self-giving.””⁷ This latter reference is extracted from The Church of the Triune God – The Cyprus Agreed Statement of the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue (ACC, 2006), II.5. It seems more than coincidental that the “characteristic idioms”⁸ of Rowan Williams’ Orthodox Trinitarianism observed at the Lambeth Conference of 1988 are apparent in this strategic statement of Anglican interfaith theology while he is Archbishop of Canterbury. Where the concept of the trinity is mentioned merely as one area of disagreement between Christian and Muslims in The Way of Dialogue and is a potential source for explaining the activities of God within other religious traditions in TTID, the trinity provides the whole shape for Christian relationship with the other and infuses all aspects of Generous Love.

Generous Love offers a brief perspective on what is distinctively Anglican for a Trinitarian engagement with other faiths, recognising the plurality in unity characteristic of the roots of Anglicanism underpinning the affirmation of God’s work in the world but also a Christian unity that avoids sectarianism.⁹ This makes for a commitment to local context and an attention to the particularities of time in the light of God’s unfolding providence.¹⁰

The significance of scripture is reaffirmed as crucial to Anglican method, the practice of “scriptural reasoning” particularly noted as an example in this regard¹¹ and the “Building Bridges” programme of Christian-Muslim scriptural reflection implicitly endorsed as a necessary endeavour. Though Generous Love is a theology of “inter-faith relations”¹² and makes no attempt to evaluate particular religious traditions, the specificity of Christian-Jewish relations is underlined with The Way of Dialogue’s reminder that we must “reject any view of Judaism which sees it as a living fossil, simply superseded by Christianity”.¹³

The variety of Anglican experiences especially with Islam is mentioned, from the stories of Lambeth 1998 to NIFCON consultations on “mission and dialogue” in Bangalore, India (2003) and on “faith and citizenship” in Kaduna, Nigeria (2007). There is no attempt to foreclose the nature of the Christian encounter with other faiths, and specifically with Islam, nor to give particular emphasis on one practice at the expense of the other, save to encourage a dynamic “presence and engagement”. The “two poles” of this presence and engagement utilise two of the most persistent themes for Anglican encounters with other faiths, and originating in the theology of the great missionary scholar of Islam, Bishop Kenneth Cragg: embassy and hospitality, and reaffirmed as we have seen by Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali. The combined “going out” and “welcoming in” are seen from within the Trinitarian dynamic around which the Eucharist is both symbol and source of that self-giving love.¹⁴ There seems to be a very clear break from the casting of the Church as host that is apparent in earlier documents and the hospitality metaphor recast so that the Church actually has a responsibility as both host and guest. Thus, “the giving and receiving of hospitality is a most powerful sign that those who were strangers are reconciled to one another as friends.”¹⁵ For Generous Love, the Church also has to learn to be a guest, understanding that the real host of our shared space is Christ the Lord. There are echoes here of the theology of religions articulated by the Jesuit scholar Michael Barnes, who espouses a dialogical theology, or comparative theology, that reflects from within tradition in the experience of the encounter with the other. Thus, Michael Barnes can say, in the spirit of Generous Love, “The mediation which Christians practise is motivated by the Spirit of love, in imitation of God’s own action of welcome and hospitality towards all people… To put it another way, God is himself both host and guest”.¹⁶

Clare Amos hints at this dual track of Christian hospitality in her reflections on Generous Love, A Common Word and Rowan Williams’ sharia law speech. For her, the ongoing establishment of the Church of England presupposes at least some identification with the role of “host”, akin to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ picture of the “country-house” model of religious diversity.¹⁷ Yet, there are also times when the Church of England is called upon to act generously and give away privilege, as epitomised by Rowan Williams’ sharia law speech. Arguably this analysis still gives insufficient attention to the Church as a genuine “guest”; where the power and privilege may well be located elsewhere. In some very real senses, the Church, too, is residing in a country-house and beholden to an “other”. What Generous Love suggests is a Christian understanding of inter-faith relations where the Church is simultaneously both host and guest. Within this dynamic, God is the only host¹⁸, as Barnes notes, and Kenneth Cragg’s vision of Christian hospitality recalled: a vision that encompasses the embassy of Christ, to “decide by the Gospel as the people of the Gospel must”.¹⁹

In what must be a reference to some of the Christian experiences of Islamic majority, reciprocity in interfaith relations globally is asserted but generous love patterned in love for enemies that does not seek retaliation. A clear statement of identification with the suffering church is offered too in the imperative to solidarity and support of “Christians who have to witness to their faith in difficult circumstances”²⁰.

Generous Love is a remarkable document that provides a Trinitarian rationale in support of an ongoing shift in formal Anglican approaches to other faiths and to Islam, in particular. There is an attempt to cast that in an Anglican distinctive that embraces diversity in unity, is contextual and rooted in scripture. This diversity models an approach to other faiths based on embassy and hospitality, affirming the breadth of mission in dialogue and evangelism. The Church is both to be host and guest in this economy: receiving, learning and being challenged, as well as reaching out, proclaiming and challenging in turn.

Conclusion

The Lambeth Conference 1988 endorsement of The Way of Dialogue still provides the most formal Anglican pronouncement on the nature of Islam to the Christian faith. Following the lead of Vatican II, the Abrahamic roots of Christianity, Judaism and Islam are integral to a proper understanding of relations between the three faiths. However, the accompanying theological resource of The Way of Dialogue seems to push the Anglican position further than Vatican II went in its emphasis on the shared possibilities with Islam and the relegation of proclamation. It must be noted that Nostra aetate was also accompanied in Vatican II by Lumen Gentium, a statement about the unique status of the Church in the world, Gaudium et Spes, on the relationship of the Church to the world, and Ad Gentes, on the mission of the Church to the world. Bearing in mind the strategic impact of Vatican II on inter-religious dialogue globally, the controversy created by The Way of Dialogue suggests the uniting potential for doctrinal unity on interfaith issues when theological considerations of dialogue and proclamation are not splintered apart.²¹

A telling element of the processes and discussions of TTID, The Way of Dialogue and subsequent Lambeth discussions of interfaith concern has been the contribution of the diversity of Anglican experience globally. The Church of England has been obliged to listen to the realities of Christian-Muslim encounter elsewhere in addressing its theology and been encouraged to reflect on contexts of more longstanding precedent. It is perhaps beside the point whether the earlier emphasis on the need for dialogue and assumption of Christian majority and dominance in the British context ever reflected the reality or not. However, the Presence and Engagement report underlines the breadth of Anglican encounters with Islam within England now and their fragility and vulnerability in many instances. This is not to say that the efforts towards dialogue are to be relaxed or that the spectre of racism has disappeared. Rather, the nature of the encounter between Christians and Muslims seems to be recognisably more as equals; the “great other”, to both faiths, the ideology of secular liberalism that would reduce the potency of all religious discourse in public life. The developments of the Christian-Muslim Forum and many of the activities of the Presence and Engagement project also suggest that the Church of England’s growing sensitivity to global Anglican concerns are increasingly being informed by those from other Christian traditions, too in the fashioning of reflections on the Christian-Muslim encounter.

Generous Love seems to be a landmark in interfaith theology for the Church of England, recognising the mutualities of relationship between faiths. It is unapologetically “Christian” in its Trinitarianism and does not endeavour to provide the new schema for interfaith relations which was hinted at in the provisionality of TTID and The Way of Dialogue. In coming back to the original question of what an understanding of Islam may be to the Church of England, arguably the most unequivocal answer would be one of silence. There are efforts in both Christian and Muslim traditions to work to a theological rapprochement that can reconfigure the respective faiths to a common core.²² Generous Love would seem to confirm a more recent pattern of Anglican thinking and practice that allows the Christian tradition to shape positive relations with faith others through difference. The originating stories of Abraham within the Bible and the Qur’an evidently provide an ongoing resource and obligation in relationship between Christians and Muslims. Whether the Church of England can say more than this without excluding the convictions of many Anglicans and presenting impediments to relations with other faiths is unclear. Indeed, as Kenneth Cragg would remind us, our silence on a definitive assessment of Islam is properly demanded by the Gospel: “Our sense there that God is love does indeed meet our deepest human yearning but, so doing, most surely vindicates the divine supremacy. That double conviction is the significance of Christ.”²³ The very centrality of Christ and his vulnerable suffering appeals to the transcendence of a God who is beyond the closure of our religious systems. Furthermore, any utilisation of the Abrahamic motif cannot be made without reference to the vital relationship of the Christian faith to the Jewish faith, as underlined by Archbishop Rowan Williams in his response to A Common Word.²⁴ As Rowan Williams says, attention to scripture, as Anglicans, will be a significant part of the process of theological reflection on the encounter with Islam for “we are speaking enough of a common language”²⁵ (my italics). Thus, scriptural reasoning and the Building Bridges project epitomise essential Anglican endeavours for Christian-Muslim relations and provide ongoing resources to the Church.

For the Church of England, the process of negotiating the plurality of British life in the last thirty years seems to have begun to bring fresh realisations of what is essentially distinctive about the Christian faith moving from an earlier emphasis on the obligation to what is shared with the faith of Islam. Thus the motifs of hospitality and embassy, with the evocation of both dialogue and proclamation, have been reasserted in continuity with a distinguished tradition of scholarly Anglican missionary encounter with Islam. This posits the Church as both host and guest in a truly relational dialectic with Muslims. Perhaps the gift of Anglicanism to the Christian-Muslim encounter is the inclusivity of these motifs: whether one encounters a friend, a partner, a competitor or an enemy is not foreclosed. Rather, a predisposition to generous, forgiving inclusion, framed around scriptural reflection, is what is called for. A very Anglican attention to our time and context suggests that the principles of hospitality and embassy might be utterly appropriate for our post 9-11 world. The task then remains, if the Church of England is keen to assert difference as well as commonality with Islam, to develop a political theology whereby Christians and Muslims can overcome their differences in pursuit of the common good.

Footnotes

¹ Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the call to dialogue: a report from the Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns: an Anglican theology of inter faith relations, (London: Anglican Consultative Council, 2008)

² Generous Love, from the foreword by Rowan Williams, p. v

³ Generous Love, from the foreword by Rowan Williams, p. v

⁴ Generous Love, p. 1

⁵ Generous Love, p. 1

⁶ Mosher, L.“Christ and People of Other Faiths” and “Jews, Christians and Muslims: The Way of Dialogue,” the Statements on Interfaith Relations of The Anglican Communion prepared by The Dogmatic & Pastoral Concerns Section, Lambeth Conference 1988, unpublished thesis for the General Theological Seminary, New York, 1997, p. 6

⁷ Generous Love, p. 15

⁸ Mosher, L.“Christ and People of Other Faiths”, p. 6

⁹ Generous Love, pp. 3-4

¹⁰ a creative analogy is made here between the theology of the Church of England and English common law “with its appeal to precedents at the same time as its openness to new applications in new cases”, Generous Love, footnote 10., p. 17

¹¹ the key text referenced is A Handbook for Scriptural Reasoning, edited by Ford, D. F. & Pecknold, C. C., (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)

¹² Clare Amos advisedly draws attention to the report’s subtitle: “An Anglican Theology of Inter Faith Relations” in distinguishing it from a study of the “theology of religions”, Amos, C. “For the Common Good: The Church of England, Christian-Muslim Relations and A Common Word”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Volume 20, No. 2, (April 2009): 183-196, p. 183

¹³ Generous Love, quoted on p. 5

¹⁴ Generous Love, pp. 13-14

¹⁵ Generous Love, p. 13

¹⁶ Barnes SJ, M. Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), p. 192

¹⁷ Sacks, J. The Home We Build Together, (London: Continuum, 2007). Sacks offers three models for religious diversity. The “hotel” would be the picture best suited to multiculturalism, where groups are present in one place but do not interact and have little attachment to the common place of residence. The “country-house” assumes one dominant culture that welcomes and includes the “guests” or strangers. For Sacks, the “home we build together” presents the best and most suitable aspiration for Britain’s contemporary situation.

¹⁸ Christopher Lamb, speaking of Kenneth Cragg: “The language of hospitality is always in his mind: “Are we not ourselves the guests of God in Christ?””, Lamb, C. “Kenneth Cragg’s Understanding of Christian Mission to Islam.” In, A Faithful Presence: essays for Kenneth Cragg, edited by David Thomas with Clare Amos, (London: Melisende, 2003), p. 124

¹⁹ Cragg, K. Muhammad and the Christian: A Question of Response, (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 1984), p. 139

²⁰ Generous Love, p. 10

²¹ subsequent developments within the Roman Catholic Church confirm the conviction that both dialogue and proclamation are to be addressed. See the 1991 Vatican document, Dialogue and Proclamation, discussed with reference to Christian-Muslim relations by Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald in ““Dialogue and Proclamation”: A Reading in the Perspective of Christian-Muslim Relations”. In, In Many and Diverse Ways, In Honor of Jacques Dupuis, edited by Kendall, D. & O’Collins, G. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2003)

²² see David Thomas’s assessment of this process in the work of John Hick and Mohammed Arkoun in Thomas, D. “The Past and the Future in Christian-Muslim Relations”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Volume 18, No. 1, (January 2007): 33-42. Thomas argues instead for a “respectful, agnostic, inquisitiveness”, p. 41. The plea for a creative theological convergence between Islam and Christianity is argued for by Muslim scholar Mohammed Arkoun in Arkoun, M. “New Perspectives for a Jewish-Christian-Muslim Dialogue”, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Volume 26, No. 3 (Summer 1989): 523-529

²³ Cragg, K. Muhammad and the Christian, p. 159

²⁴ Williams, R. A Common Word for the Common Good, 14th July 2008, available from http://www.acommonword.com downloaded 16th July 2008. It is instructive that Rowan Williams mentions Judaism where the original A Common Word document omitted it: “And for Christians and Muslims together addressing our scriptures in this way, it is essential also to take account of the place of the Jewish people and of the Hebrew scriptures in our encounter, since we both look to our origins in that history of divine revelation and action.” P. 16

²⁵ Williams, R. A Common Word for the Common Good, p. 2

Bibliography

Amos, C. “For the Common Good: The Church of England, Christian-Muslim Relations and A Common Word”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Volume 20, No. 2, (April 2009): 183-196

Arkoun, M. “New Perspectives for a Jewish-Christian-Muslim Dialogue”, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Volume 26, No. 3 (Summer 1989): 523-529

Barnes S.J., M. Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Cragg, K. Muhammad and the Christian: A Question of Response, (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 1984)

Fitzgerald, M.““Dialogue and Proclamation”: A Reading in the Perspective of Christian-Muslim Relations”. In, In Many and Diverse Ways, In Honor of Jacques Dupuis, edited by Kendall, D. & O’Collins, G. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2003)

Ford, D. F. & Pecknold, C. C. (eds.) A Handbook for Scriptural Reasoning (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)

Lamb, C. “Kenneth Cragg’s Understanding of Christian Mission to Islam.” In, A Faithful Presence: essays for Kenneth Cragg, edited by David Thomas with Clare Amos, (London: Melisende, 2003)

Mitchell, B. “The response of the Church of England, Islam and Muslim-Christian relations in contemporary Britain”. In, Christian Responses to Islam: Muslim-Christian Relations in the Modern World, edited by O’Mahony, A. & Loosley, E., (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008)

Mosher, L. “Christ and People of Other Faiths” and “Jews, Christians and Muslims: The Way of Dialogue,” the Statements on Interfaith Relations of The Anglican Communion prepared by The Dogmatic & Pastoral Concerns Section, Lambeth Conference 1988, unpublished thesis for the General Theological Seminary, New York, 1997

Sacks, J. The Home We Build Together, (London: Continuum, 2007)

Thomas, D. “The Past and the Future in Christian-Muslim Relations”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Volume 18, No. 1, (January 2007): 33-42

Williams, R. A Common Word for the Common Good, 14^th July 2008, available from http://www.acommonword.com downloaded 16^th July, 2008

Reports in Chronological Order:

Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the call to dialogue: a report from the Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns: an Anglican theology of inter faith relations, (London: Anglican Consultative Council, 2008)

“Jews, Christians and Muslims: The Way of Dialogue”, Appendix 6, The Truth Shall Make You Free: The Lambeth Conference 1988: The Reports, Resolutions and Pastoral Letters from the Bishops (London: Anglican Consultative Council, 1988), pp. 299-308

Towards a Theology for Inter-Faith Dialogue, (London: Anglican Consultative Council, 1986 edition)

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Richard Sudworth is a Church Mission Society mission partner, working for a confident, relational engagement with other faiths. He is also a pioneer ordinand at Queens Foundation, Birmingham and is studying part-time for a PhD in Christian-Muslim relations at Heythrop College, University of London. Richard edits and writes his blog: Distinctly Welcoming