Missionary Presence in Interreligious Encounters and Relationships

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. K. Mugambi
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
African Religion ◽  
Great Transition ◽  
General Secretary ◽  
The Church ◽  
Determining Factor

This paper explores the notion of personal missionary presence as the determining factor in interreligious encounters and relationships. The attitude and conduct of a missionary in relationship with potential and actual converts greatly influences their response to that missionary's teachings. In turn, the converts’ overall understanding (or misunderstanding) of the missionary's faith is shaped by the conduct of the missionary. To illustrate this proposition, the article discusses the vocation of Max Warren (1904–77), one of the most influential British missiologists of the twentieth century. Warren, a son of British missionaries, was brought up for the first eight years of his life in India, where his parents lived in the service of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS). He studied at Cambridge University and later served as a missionary under the CMS in Nigeria (1927–8). After many years as Vicar in Winchester and Cambridge, he was appointed General Secretary of the CMS (1942–63). These two decades were a period of great transition when the British Empire was dismantled, with former colonies and protectorates becoming sovereign nations. The Church of England was closely linked with the British Empire, and it was difficult for British missionaries to distance themselves from it. Warren struggled with the challenge of proclaiming the Christian faith while keeping a ‘critical distance’ from the Empire he served. He initiated the ‘Christian Presence’ series of books published by the SCM Press between 1959 and 1966, focusing on African Religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Secularism and Shinto. The books were authored by Europeans and intended for European readership. This paper concludes that effective dialogue across religious and cultural traditions is possible only when the parties involved have mutual respect and reciprocal treatment between each other. Such conditions have not prevailed, owing to Western missionary patronage and condescension towards peoples of other faiths and cultures.

Anglican Emigrant Chaplaincy in the British Empire and Beyond,c.1840–1900

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 314-327
Author(s):  
Rowan Strong
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Church

In the 1840s the Church of England, through the agency of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), established an official chaplaincy to emigrants leaving from British ports. The chaplaincy lasted throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. It was revitalized in the 1880s under the direction of the SPCK in response to a surge in emigration from Britain to the colonies. This article examines the imperial attitudes of Anglicans involved in this chaplaincy network, focusing on those of the 1880s and 1890s, the period of high imperialism in Britain. It compares these late nineteenth-century outlooks with those of Anglicans in the emigrant chaplaincy of the 1840s, in order to discern changes and continuities in Anglican imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain. It finds that, in contrast to the imperialist attitudes prevalent in Britain during the late nineteenth century, Anglicans in this chaplaincy network focused more on the ecclesiastical and pastoral dimensions of their work. Indeed, pro-imperial attitudes, though present, were remarkably scarce. It was the Church much more than the empire which mattered to these Anglicans, notwithstanding their direct involvement with the British empire.

scholarly journals Stanley Keith Runcorn. 19 November 1922 – 5 December 1995

2002 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 391-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.W. Collinson
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Electrical Engineering ◽  
Sunday School ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The Church ◽  
Sunday Evening

Stanley Keith Runcorn was born in 1922 in Southport, Lancashire, the son of a monumentalmason of staunch Congregationalist persuasion. He was educated at the King George VGrammar School, where his strongest subjects were history and mathematics. When in thesixth form his headmaster persuaded him to take science subjects, and he was subsequentlyawarded a State Scholarship to study at Cambridge University. At an early age his father hadtaken him to a small local observatory, encouraging his interest in astronomy. On the sportingside, in spite of his later interest in rugby he refused to play the game at school and insteadconcentrated on swimming. Under his captaincy his house regularly won the swimming trophy. Runcorn showed an early interest in religious and cultural matters, which was to stay with him throughout his life. He attended a Methodist Sunday school and for some time provided a Sunday evening service for his sister and grandmother while his parents attended church. He read extensively and went to London on his own, visiting museums and architectural landmarks. Later, while at Cambridge, he developed a love of music. In 1940 he entered Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge to read electrical engineering. After graduating in 1943 he commenced research at the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE), remaining there until the end of the war. During his time at the RRE he was confirmed into the Church of England.

Choice and Action: William Ames's Concept of the Mind's Operation in Moral Decisions

1987 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Courter Boughton
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Educational Authority ◽  
The Church ◽  
Will Of God

When William Ames (1576–1633) chose not to wear a surplice while preaching at a Cambridge University chapel, he embodied the Reformation spirit of defiance toward the symbols of ecclesiastical and educational authority. This action and subsequent signs of dissent within the Church of England earned Ames a life of exile in the Netherlands. Yet in serving as a professor at the Universities of Leiden and Franeker, the Puritan scholar perfected methods of instruction that would establish him as an authority among those similarly committed to learning the revealed will of God and investigating the structure and operation of the human mind.

Church Building and Architecture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis P. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Church Building ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Church

Contrary to popular perceptions, the long eighteenth century was a period of significant church building and the architecture of the Church of England in this era played a critical role in religious vitality and theological formation. While certainly not to the expansive scale of Victorian church construction, the period was an era of significant building, in London, but also across the whole of the British Empire. Anglican churches in this era were marked not so much by stylistic questions as by programmatic concerns. The era produced the auditory church, designed to accommodate better the hearing of the sermon and the increasing importance of music in worship. There were also changes to communion practice that implicated the design of architecture. Finally, some few Anglicans considered the theological implications of historical inspiration but many more considered the role of sensibility and emotion in worship and in architecture as one of worship’s agents.

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