For the Parish: A Critique of Fresh Expressions [Paperback]

This book is at once both brilliant, but also flawed, and I ended up being very irritated by it. But first, some background.

In 2004, the "Mission-shaped Church" report (henceforth MSC) was unleashed on the Church of England. Its drive was essentially that the Christian 'product' needs to be liberated from the shackles of the institutional church, because that church was parish-based and (the report argues) parishes don't mean anything to people. We need a new way of being church, a mission shaped one.
In this book, Davison and Milbank argue that you cannot divorce the form of the Church from the 'content' of being a Christian community: the Church isn't something Christians need to be 'liberated from': it is what enables Christianity to be possible. It is part of Christ's plan: it is the key to the kingdom. Furthermore, if you look on the ground, parishes and local churches still do mean a lot: one shouldn't want to get rid of them, even were MSC's argument true.

The book then is a clearcut attack on MSC and its influence. To Davison and Milbank, MSC lacks any kind of theological basis, is skewed by middle class concerns, does not understand the nature of church, and is deeply flawed, possibly even heretical. Their tone is somewhere between passionate and vitriolic.

For the first chapter, it seems to me that their argument is a powerful one: backed up brilliantly with reference to George Lindbeck from the theological academy and Wittgenstein from philosphy, their argument of the essential link between the form of the church and its very meaning is extremely strong. (And throughout the book, their range of theological reference is impressive.) For this, then, they deserve rich praise.

Unfortunately, the book never hits these heights again: it descends into a rambling, eccentric homage to a notion of the Church in England that probably has never existed and certainly does not exist now.

From reading Davison and Milbank, you'd think things were fine and dandy, that the populace was thronging into churches and just needed a bit of impulse to be encouraged along the way. And for those that don't enter a church, the fact that churches are open spaces, where they are always welcome to come, allied to a fuzzy concept of 'mediation' (never systematically explained) by the priest/ the church/ the congregation?, means that the Church is still doing its job.

At least, Mission Shaped Church recognised that there are an awful lot of people, close to the majority of the country, whose lives are utterly untouched by the Church of England. I don't like that truth, but it is the truth as it currently stands, and yet somehow Davison and Milbank want to deny it.

This means they come up with myopic statements: for example "anyone can walk into a church building if they wish to do so" (on p163) is true only on a technicality. Very many (most?) parish churches (for perfectly good reasons) are only open very rarely, usually around the time of a service. One may lament this, but it's still a fact. So people can't just walk into church buildings.

Or in a chapter on sacred time and space, they say that "every parish has the shaping of liturgical time in its own hands, with at least one bell for the incumbent to ring before morning and evening prayer as required by Canon Law."p 180. It's true that canon law requires it, but it's also true (as they must know) that this canon is essentially ignored by 98% of the Church of England.
Again, if they want to lament this, fine, but they seem to assume that their vision is connected with the true lie of the land, when it isn't. Even taking up this particular issue, you can't say that under the parochial system, the ringing of church bells has been a success. But they seem to think that parishes are the key to the future of bell-ringing (which in turn will lead to thronging churches)... It jsut doesn't make sense.

Time and again, they make statements that don't ring true to real parish life (at least my understanding of it).

Gradually, the book ceases to be a defence of the parish and rather turns into an attack on life in modern capitalist Britain. Amongst the villains are Tesco Metro/ Sainsbury's Local (p151), bankers (p128), swingers ("a middle class pursuit"), and people who use Powerpoint in churches (p174).
Amongst their heroes are change bell ringers, and English country dancers.

Moreover, viz one of their key accusations against Fresh Expressions, that they are segregationist, I don't actually see that parishes are much better. Given that parishes are linked to location, location, location and therefore systematically linked to house prices, parishes are inherently divided according to income. How many working class people go to the parish church in Wimbledon or Woldingham for example? What of a parish church in Brixton where only 4 of 180 congregation members are white? How diverse is that?
True, parishes are good at cutting past the age divide, but I would argue that parishes often preserve class and ethnic divides very nicely, precisely because they are linked directly to geography. And even where the populace is mixed (as in Brixton), that isn't always reflected in the parish church.

Much of what these authors love isn't, to my mind, connected with parishes, but rather to do with a particular sense of spirituality. Pilgrimage, for example, which they approve of, has nothing to do with Fresh Expressions or parishes, it's just how you encourage people to come to God.
They don't seem to have worked out what in their book is parish related and what isn't.

Finally, for people who completely slag off MSC's authors for not knowing any theology, they have their own reading gaps. Not to refer to "Mission Shaped Parish" .Mission-shaped Parish: Traditional Church in a Changing World seems bizarre in a book praising the parish and attacking Mission Shaped Church. That book, by the way, is a much more coherent view of why parishes are really worthwhile.

Davison and Milbank have written one brilliant chapter, and followed it with a completely bizarre book that reads to me like a homage to National Heritage England and the Church's place within that. Neither of the authors, ironically, actually works as a parish priest. It shows.

For the Parish offers a forceful critique of the Anglican report Mission-Shaped Church and the subsequent `Fresh Expressions' movement, but characterised a tendency to misrepresent those with whom the authors disagree.

Davison and Milbank's argument, in brief, is that in abandoning Anglican parochial structures and authorised liturgies, Mission-Shaped Church unwittingly advocates a consumer approach to religion, based on homogenous social groups, and the elevation of individual choice. Against this, Davison and Milbank argue for a renewed confidence in the Anglican parochial system, the importance of place and mediation, and the restoration of a range of liturgical and extra-liturgical practices to rebuild an authentic Christian imaginary.

Those tired and fed-up of Fresh Expressions in the Church of England, and who suspect the movement of dangerous (not to say heretical !) evangelical and liberal tendencies, will welcome this book. And even those sympathetic to Fresh Expressions will find valuable insights and observations throughout, and much food for thought. But the critique the authors offer is unbalanced and one-sided.

For example, whilst the authors criticise the homogenous unit principle that underlies some of Mission-Shaped Church, they fail to recognise the extent to which so many parish churches similarly cater for fairly homogenous social groups. If Fresh Expressions are (as Davison and Milbank claim, without evidence) largely middle class and bourgeois in character, is the same not also true of the typical Anglican parish church ? Indeed, one would have thought that it is precisely the failure of the parish system to be genuinely inclusive that has spawned the Fresh Expressions movement, in a desire to reach those the parish system has failed.

And whilst the authors are keen to suggest that the move away from the geographically defined parish represent a dangerous break with classical Anglicanism, they fail to reckon with the long history of chaplaincy and sector ministry within Anglicanism, which similarly cater for non-geographically defined (and rather homogenous) communities and institutions. If chaplaincy has always been recognised as a legitimate element of Anglican practice, as part of a `mixed economy' alongside the parochial system, might one not argue that Fresh Expressions simply represent an extension of this existing principle ?

For all that they criticise the theological inadequacies of `Fresh Expressions writers', Davison and Milbank's own philosophical and theological sources could also be wider. Much of their critique derives from Wittgenstein (and from him, Lindbeck), and represents a fairly narrowly conceived Anglo-Catholicism, mediated via Radical Orthodoxy. But they show little broader awareness of contemporary theological work on mission, whether Protestant or Catholic in origin (one thinks of Catholic theologians such as Luzbetak, Bevans, Schroeder, Legrand, Sannah, Schreiter, Oborji, and Shorter, for example, of whom Davison and Milbank appear, to use their own phrase, `blissfully unaware').

And this is unfortunate because greater familiarity with contemporary missiology would have allowed a better analysis of the issues that concern Davison and Milbank. In their discussion on the relationship between form and content, for example, engagement with the substantial literature in the world church on gospel and culture, adaptation, indigenisation, contextualisation and inculturation would have allowed a considerably more nuanced and eirenic account than the one offered here.

Or again, for instance, whilst Davison and Milbank are critical of the way in which church and kingdom are related in Mission-Shaped Church, they seem unaware that the report largely echoes the way in which this relationship is dealt with elsewhere in contemporary thinking on mission, and not only by evangelicals. Consider, for example, the papal encyclical Redemptoris Missio, in which John Paul II, following Paul VI before him, notes that the church `is not an end unto herself, since she is ordered towards the Kingdom of God of which she is the seed, sign and instrument': language that is repeated almost verbatim by Mission-Shaped Church, and which Davison and Milbank regard as protestant novelty.

Above all, there is a lack of care and graciousness in For the Parish that repeatedly jars. Footnotes and references suggest little real engagement with Fresh Expressions in either theory or practice, beyond the Mission-Shaped Church report itself, one or two other works, and the odd website. As a result the authors have a tendency to offer a stereotype or caricature of what they imagine `Fresh Expressions writers' think and believe, without references or substantiation, and then to knock down the straw man they have set up. Had the authors thought to engage, for instance, with the substantial material on Fresh Expressions that comes out on a regular basis from the Sheffield Centre, or even simply to read more of the (easily available) literature published directly by Church House, they could have offered a much more balanced account.

Similar tendencies to caricature are apparent elsewhere in their work. Davison and Milbank reject Church Growth theory, for example, on the basis that (according to them) it proposes we should simply `find out what people want and then give it to them'. And of course, if that were genuinely what Church Growth theory proposes, Davison and Milbank would be right to dismiss it. But in fact, as a description of the work of McGravran and Wagner, Rick Warren or Bill Hybels, this summary is misleading to the point of dishonesty; and footnotes and bibliography provide no evidence that Davison and Milbank have read first-hand any Church Growth theory at all.

But For the Parish is ultimately disappointing not merely for what appears as overly hasty or inaccurate scholarship. It is disappointing also as an example of how we engage with one another as Christians. These are difficult times for those of us seeking an appropriate missionary practice in our fragmented and consumer-driven society, and Davison and Milbank rightly identify some key theological issues for discussion. But one wonders whether, as Christians, we might be able to have a conversation about them with more charity and understanding than is on show here.

I am a big believer in conversation, debate, dialogue and asking one another searching questions. I believe in theology, and I believe that every Christian should and could be a theologian (after all, faith seeking understanding is the goal of all believers, surely). Not everyone can engage with the theology of academia and history, so it is right that trained, skilled and thoughtful people employ themselves to bring these areas into our churches.

I am also aware that passionate people can at times get carried away, and missionary-hearted people in their enthusiasm and desire to see the gospel impacting on people, may emphasise some elements of the faith and theology to the downplaying of others that are no less important for a mature faith.

So the quest to examine more deeply the theological emphasises of Fresh Expressions (henceforth FX) is a worthy one, that could drive the whole Anglican church on to a more thorough and searching understanding of what church could be in the 21st century.

`For the Parish' turns out to be very unworthy of this high ideal. There are some seriously challenging and provoking issues raised, but they are undermined by the pompous and denigrating tone of the writing, with snide and derogatory remarks peppering the pages and detracting from the strength of the arguments.

The authors employ some bad practices, such as relying on scant sources (they appear to have only read the Mission-Shaped Church report itself, the Share website and two books of the Mission-Shaped... series), they seem to have not visited any FX communities, spoken to any people involved in FX or done any research into the variety and diversity of FX across the country, and they only quote from fellow-critics of the movement, such as Martyn Percy and John Hull. In these way it employs the old trick of constructing a straw-man, then destroying it and looking around to acknowledge the cheers of those who agree.

By far the worst crime, as far as I'm concerned, is that they compare the best of one tradition with the worst of the other - at times it is as if they are comparing Mother Theresa with Osama Bin Laden! Parish churches are presented as a utopia where young and old, poor and wealthy, educated and uneducated, differing theological and political views mix in ever-increasing harmony, experiencing the traditions of the church as transformative of their lives and ensuring they are united to the whole church. FX, on the other hand, are a shadowy and segregated world where bourgeois middle-class people, so shallow in their need for novelty and consumerism, are provided with feel-good experiences and have no expectations of life-transformation foisted upon them. Puh-lease.

This is not only dishonest but profoundly unhelpful in getting a handle on the real issues, and leaves the reader with the sense that they are desperate to undermine those they portray as their opponents. If the arguments are so strong, there should be no need for this.

Karen Armstrong describes how fundamentalism (religious, political or idealogical) grows out of a sense that a way of life or belief is under threat. Fundamentalists are therefore by very nature defensive, and have a dualistic need to paint people as opponents, who are wrong, misguided, naive or lacking in integrity. It is hard work having a conversation with a fundamentalist, as they look for a fight rather than a dialogue. This book bears all the hallmarks of this in its lack of generosity and benefit of the doubt.

I have been struck by many of the issues raised: FX engagement in soteriology and ecclessiology does need to be far more rigorous, particularly drawing on the catholic and orthodox traditions. Mindfulness of the dangers of the Homogenous Unit Principle need to be constantly reiterated. This book flags these things up, but not in a way that allows for constructive engagement, so I will have to go elsewhere to explore them further.

This book fails to engage with missiological concepts, such as models of contextual theology, and pulls the church away from practical theology, which to my mind prevents it from becoming anything other than ammunition in a fight. Which is truly a shame, as on the day after new Church of England attendance figures were published which show yet more decline in inherited churches (FX are not included in the figures unfortunately, so the impact they might be having is as yet unmeasured) the last thing the church needs to be doing is throwing mud.