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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2025
This article takes the form of an extended review of the recently published book (In-tensional: A Way Forward for the Church, 2024) co-authored by the Most Reverend Justin Duckworth, Archbishop Tikanga Pākehā of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, and ordained Baptist minister, Alan Jamieson. Engaging directly with the book, the article seeks to reflect critically upon the ecclesiology proffered. The essay argues that not only is the historical and theoretical basis of the ‘in-tensional centre-edge’ model proposed by the authors questionable, but its employment is potentially problematic for the unity and faithfulness of the Church. While engaging with a specific text and a particular context – the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand – the analysis also offers a case study that should be of interest to a broader audience. The ‘centre-edge’ model and an emphasis upon ‘growth’, ‘entrepreneurial leadership’ and ‘innovation’ within the proposed ecclesiology are phenomena observable more widely within the Anglican Communion and other ‘mainstream’ western Church traditions. These emphases, I contend, are illustrative of both the zeitgeist of late modernity and an absence of a theologically robust ecclesiology.
1 These adjectives, ‘idolatrous’, ‘compromised’, ‘flabby’ and ‘insipid’, are repeated throughout the book (×11, ×13, ×6 and ×6, respectively, excluding other cognate terms) and contrast with the repeated adjectives used to describe the edge-church: ‘radical’, ‘prophetic’, ‘apostolic’, ‘whole-of-life commitment’ and ‘white-hot faith’ (a term I will return to later). Here, I suggest that the use of a thesaurus by the authors would have aided readability. The pejorative (and, in the case of the edge-church, laudatory) tone of these repeated phrases signals the authors’ ecclesiological positioning and/or preference.
2 The Anglican Church in the Province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia consists of three tikanga but is one Church. Does the Archbishop’s characterization concern only tikanga Pākehā or all three tikanga?
3 The numerical growth of neo-Pentecostal mega-churches provides a counter to the author’s contention that the church is ‘dying’ (though recognizing that this begs the critical question whether life is measured by numbers or depth of faith and faithfulness). See Warner, L. ‘Going big: Mega-churches in the Midst of Declining Christianity in the West’. In The Decline of Established Christianity in the Western World: Interpretations and Responses (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 175–85; James Wellman, Katie Corcoran and Kate Stockly, High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America (Oxford University Press, 2020). Being from low-Church evangelical backgrounds, the authors of the book may also be unaware of the significant numbers of evangelicals converting to High-Church Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. See Douglas M. Beaumont and Francis Beckwith, Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016). The Academic Parish of Prague based at the Roman Catholic St Salvator Church in the highly secularized Czech Republic, led by the Roman Catholic priest-sociologist-theologian Tomáš Halík, is but one example of flourishing ‘centre-churches’ in the west.
4 While historically this may have been the case with some Church attendees, I would suggest this is unlikely to be the case in Aotearoa New Zealand today. Only ten-fifteen per cent of New Zealanders regularly attend churches, but the levels of involvement and commitment of this sizeable minority are high. See McDonald, B., Lineham, P., Mai, B., Owen, S., Scott, M., Taylor, L., Galt, M. and Brookes, N., Insights from the 2023 Church Life Survey New Zealand (October 2023), https://clsnz.cra.org.nz/image/CLSNZ_Booklet.pdf (accessed 2 September 2024).
5 The implicit devaluation of the elderly here, and its correlation, the adulation of youth, is a theme I will return to later.
6 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). Andrew Root’s trilogy, which uses Taylor’s thesis as the basis for reflecting upon how contemporary ‘secular’ context shapes understanding and practices of Christian faith formation, pastoring and congregational life, provides such analysis. Andrew Root, Faith Formation in a Secular Age (Ministry: Responding to the Church’s Obsession with Youthfulness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017); The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019); The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time Against the Speed of Modern Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021). Tomáš Halík is less pessimistic and sees the postmodern post-secular age as a purifying process that offers the opportunity for the ‘transformation of the Christian faith’. Tomáš Halík, The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change, trans. Gerald Turner (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2024), p. 41.
7 Subsequently rebranded as Anglican Movement, https://anglicanmovement.nz. This rebranding process and the jettisoning of the word ‘church’ are present in many other contexts. See, for example, Madeleine Davis, ‘New churches are dropping the word “church”, report finds,’ in Church Times, 13 August 2024, https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2024/16-august/news/uk/new-churches-are-dropping-the-word-church-report-finds (accessed 30 August 2024).
8 Roger Finke and Patricia Wittberg, ‘Organizational Revival from within: Explaining Revivalism and Reform in the Roman Catholic Church’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39, no. 2 (2000): 154–70. The other key theoretical text in the background is Ralph D. Winter, ‘The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission’, Missiology 2, no. 1 (1974), pp. 121–39.
9 Finke and Wittberg, p. 154.
10 Finke and Wittberg, p. 166.
11 Finke and Wittberg, p. 166.
12 Finke and Wittberg, p. 154.
13 The romanticized view of religious orders offered also ignores that while they have undoubtedly been communities of prayer, scholarship and faithfulness during their history, they have also been experienced as communities of confinement, coercion and brutality. One may consider here a single example: the experience of St John of the Cross during his eight-month imprisonment in the Carmelite monastery in Toledo in 1577–78.
14 Even Urban Vision, promoted throughout the book, the previously self-described neo-monastic order, now retitled as ‘an apostolic order of Te Hāhi Mihinare, the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia’, is just over two decades old.
15 And ‘market openings’ (160), ‘organizational growth by marketing their faith’(160), ‘developing new techniques for marketing the faith’ (166).
16 In the UK context, there has been a strong emphasis on ‘new things’ and ‘innovation’ in the two decades since the release of Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context (London: Church House Publishing, 2004). This report and the emphasis on a ‘mixed economy’ (now termed ‘mixed ecology’) have faced significant theological critique. See Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, For the Parish: A Critique of Fresh Expressions (London: SCM Press, 2010). For a more recent report, noting the lack of ‘theological rationale behind the starting of new things’, see New Things: A theological investigation into the work of starting new churches across 11 dioceses in the Church of England. https://ccx.org.uk/3d-flip-book/new-things/ (accessed 22 September 2024).
17 Archbishop Justin self-identifies himself as ‘an apostolic leader’, while Alan is ‘the stereotypical teacher-pastor leader’ (32).
18 On how our modern age is habituated to the illusion of ‘managerial effectiveness’ and the belief that successful management techniques can control social outcomes, see Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), pp. 102–04. For a reflection that locates the ‘neo-monastic movement’ – another ‘renewal’ movement that seems to have come and gone – within this broader socio-cultural milieu, fascinated with growth, techniques and controlled outcomes, see Andrew Shepherd, ‘Living Faithfully in a Neoliberal Age?: From Market Rationality to Neo-Monasticism’, in Kingdom Come: Reflections in Honor of Jonathan R. Wilson, ed. Jason Byassee, Jeremy Kidwell and Jonathan and Leah Wilson-Hartgrove (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022), pp. 44–52.
19 For instance: ‘We are convinced that by allowing the prophetic and apostolic edge-dwellers to function more healthily alongside the life of our churches, we will see renewal’. ‘It’s the pattern of church history. It’s the way God has always brought renewal to his people’ (34, 35; my emphasis).
20 Constantine did not make Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire – he merely removed it from a blacklist of outlawed religions. It was the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, issued by Emperor Theodosius I nearly six decades later, which affirmed Nicene Christianity as orthodox and made it as the state religion of the Roman Empire. For a response to the Constantinian-Fall thesis, see Peter J. Leithart, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010).
21 Any reading of Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus and other Church Fathers, persecuted and exiled for their refutation of the form of Arian Christianity promoted within the Roman Empire throughout the fourth century, would disabuse the authors of these false notions.
22 Again, this is full of errors. Anthony spent the vast majority of his life as an eremite/hermit, and his motivation for heading to the desert was neither due to the ‘deep pain or angst’ regarding the ‘lifestyle’ of the church or broader society, nor was it to establish a ‘breakaway movement’ (42). Anthony’s motivation, as with all the early Desert monastics, was to wholeheartedly seek Jesus Christ! H. Ellershaw, Life of Antony, Select Writings of Athanasius, Library of Nicene and post Nicene Fathers II.4 (New York 1924, repr. 1957), pp. 195–221.
23 Alarming here is the flattening out of the depth and diversity of monasticism and religious orders throughout western Church history: the differences between early monasticism in North Africa, post-Benedictine monasticism in Europe, the emergence of mendicant orders in the mediaeval period and contemporary monasticism. Evident too is the failure to appreciate the differing charisms of respective religious orders: contemplative prayer (Benedictine, Cistercian, Carthusian, Trappist, Carmelite), mission and education (Jesuits), scholarship (Dominicans) and social ministry and mercy (Franciscans). For introductions to this depth, differences and diversity, see Bernard McGinn, John Meyendorff and Jean Leclercq, eds., Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century., vol. 16, World Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1997), chapters 5 & 9; Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974); C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (London: Longman, 1989).
24 On how tradition is integral to the renewal that stemmed from Vatican II, see Matthew L Lamb and Matthew Levering, eds., Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). On the critical contribution of the ressourcement movement in the first half of the twentieth century – a movement led by theologians that sought a return to biblical, patristic and liturgical sources as the means for renewal of the Church – in preparing the ground for the reforms of Vatican II, see Gabriel Flynn, ‘Theological Renewal in the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, in The Cambridge Companion to Vatican II, ed. Richard R. Gaillardetz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 19–40.
25 Niall O’Brien, Revolution from the Heart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Robert L. Youngblood, Marcos Against the Church: Economic Development and Political Repression in the Philippines (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019).
26 Jörg Swoboda, The Revolution of the Candles: Christians in the Revolution of the German Democratic Republic, ed. Richard V. Pierard, trans. Edwin P. Arnold (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996).
27 One of striking aspects of the charismatic movement in the west was its impact across Christian traditions – Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. See John G. Maiden, Age of the Spirit: Charismatic Renewal, the Anglo-World, and Global Christianity, 1945–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). In the United Kingdom, what our authors would regard as centre-church leaders – parish vicars/congregational ministers, principals of theological colleges – were, much to their own surprise, renewed by the charismatic movement. For an attempt to reflect theologically upon this, see Tom Smail, Andrew Walker and Nigel Wright, Charismatic Renewal: The Search for a Theology (London: SPCK, 1995). For the origins and impact of the charismatic movement within churches in Aotearoa New Zealand, see Brett Knowles, Transforming Pentecostalism: The Changing Face of New Zealand Pentecostalism, 1920–2010 (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2014).
28 Iain, McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusion, and the Unmaking of the World (vol. 1), pp. 409–410.
29 Perhaps the best known use of the term is by US black feminist scholar and social activist, bell hooks. The construct, understood as ‘centre-peripheries’, has also been widely employed within international development and international relations theory. See the influential article by Johan Galtung, ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism,’ Journal of Peace Research 8, no. 2 (1971), pp. 81–117.
30 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970).
31 World Christianity, embracing the disciplines of anthropology, communication studies, critical theory, history, post-colonial studies, sociology and theology, seeks to explore both how Christianity has become a global phenomenon and the nature and shape of this phenomenon. In contrast to Eurocentric approaches, which have tended to view non-western forms of Christianity as aberrations of the norm, World Christianity seeks to give equal attention to ‘under-represented and marginalized communities of faith… attention being paid to Asian, African, and Latin American experiences; the experience of marginalized communities within the North Atlantic world; and the experiences of women throughout the world’. Dale T. Irvin, ‘World Christianity: An Introduction’, Journal of World Christianity 1, no. 1 (2008): pp. 1–26 (1–2) (my emphasis).
32 For example, Michael Krause, Narry F. Santos and Robert Cousins, eds., From the Margins to the Centre: The Diaspora Effect: A Collection of Essays to Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Tyndale Intercultural Ministry Centre (Toronto: Tyndale Academic Press, 2018).
33 Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME), Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes, (WCC: 2013), https://oikoumene.org/sites/default/files/Document/Together_towards_Life.pdf, par. 107.
34 To such questions, the authors may respond that they are not using the construct ‘centre-edge’ about geographical/structural realities but rather regarding the spirituality/ways of being of these different components of the Church. If this is the case, why would one utilize a structuralist organizational model in the first place?!
35 ‘Centre-church and edge-dwellers often don’t hear each other well. The lived realities and key voices that shape their world views are fundamentally different…’ (96). Really? One would hope that as fellow-Christians, the key voice they would be seeking to hear, together, through listening to scripture, tradition, reason and experience, would be that of Christ.
36 Here, there appears a glaring contradiction. Throughout the book, we are told how out of touch the centre-church is to cultural realities. Yet, now, we are informed that this same centre-church is also recognized, seen as credible and trusted to host and participate in the most critical moments of human life – birth, education, marriage, ageing, death! The fact that the Church within Aotearoa New Zealand, even while diminishing in size and social status, is still largely viewed favourably is borne out in recent research. See the Faith and Belief Survey commissioned and published by the Wilberforce Foundation in November 2023. https://faithandbeliefstudynz.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/wilberforce-comprehensive-report-2023-1.pdf, esp. pp. 53–55 (accessed 2 September 2024). This incongruence continues when the authors categorically state that despite the ‘credibility, inherited tradition and institutional strength’ the centre-church possesses, it would be inappropriate of the centre-church to leave the space defined for it and offer any of its torturously gained wisdom to those on the edge. The ‘initial season’ of an edge ministry, we are informed, ‘is not the time for central-church engagement, nor for deep theological reflection, or developing best practice’ (75). Considering the recent damming findings of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care in New Zealand, generally, and particularly regarding Church institutions, this cavalier attitude towards concerns over best practice is particularly worrisome. Failure to implement best practice or have a clear sense of one’s foundational theological commitments from the start only leads to major problems in the future. See https://www.abuseincare.org.nz/. The fallout created by failings of so-called edge-ministries inevitably gets cleaned up by the centre-church.
37 Duckworth and Jamieson note that ‘pride is prevailing and challenging attitude that cannot be left unchecked’ (81).
38 For example, the tension that exists between Paul and Barnabas in Acts 15:36–41.
39 My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this striking metaphor.
40 For a helpful engagement with the contemporary western Church’s problematic obsession with youthfulness, see Root, Faith Formation in a Secular Age: Responding to the Church’s Obsession with Youthfulness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).
41 Repeatedly in the Scriptures, the Church is instructed to value the teachings and traditions of elders, of those who have gone before. The Apostle Paul explicitly states that there is nothing innovative to his ministry that he simply passes on what he has received (1 Cor 15:1–11, esp. v 1–3). Aristotle’s comments on the relationship between practical wisdom and experience here are also apposite: “Young people can become mathematicians and geometers and wise in things of that sort; but they do not appear to become people of practical wisdom. The reason is that practical wisdom is of the particular, which becomes graspable through experience, but a young person is not experienced. For a quantity of time is required for experience.” (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, Chapter 8).
42 Roland Howard, The Rise and Fall of the Nine O’Clock Service: A Cult within the Church? (London: Mowbray, 1996). See note 36 regarding my concerns on the seemingly laissez-faire disposition towards practices that would guard against the ‘burning’ of people.
43 Māori are the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa.
44 Mark Michael, ‘Discipleship Call Aims to Awaken Nominal Anglicans’, The Living Church, 22 August 2022, https://livingchurch.org/news/news-anglican-communion/discipleship-call-aims-to-awaken-nominal-anglicans/ (accessed 30 August 2024).
45 Recent figures obtained from New Zealand church historian, Peter Lineham, indicate that the rate of decline – numerically – within the Wellington diocese, matches that of the Christchurch and Auckland dioceses.
46 Tom Wuest, ‘Fire of Love’ from the album, Unless the Seed Falls, 2006. [https://tomwuest.bandcamp.com/track/fire-of-love]