Over the next couple of weeks, I want to reflect on a question that I've been wrestling with for some time: What does it mean to study and write history for the church? That is, what do those of us who are both practising historians and practising Christians have to offer the church through our skills and training? I'm going to reflect on my own experiences as both historian and pew-sitter, but I'd also love to hear what others think - whether as historians, churchgoers, ministers, theologians or misc! What do you think historians have to offer the church?
I have deliberately chosen the title 'history for the church' for this series, because this is how I want to imagine my role as a Christian and historian: whatever the subject of my research, whatever the primary audience for my findings, in some sense I want to be orientated to serving the community of faith. This is something of a change for me. I write history that is directly concerned with the place of Christianity in past changes. But my approach to that subject is broadly 'secular' - that is, I don't seek to directly identify divine involvement in that process of change. In fact, I have been quite resistant to 'church history', which in my experience has often been history controlled by current theological and denominational agendas, to the detriment of any serious engagement with the complexities of the past. One example in evangelical circles is the tendency to portray the politically conservative anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce as some kind of left-wing progressive, which prematurely shuts down any thoughtful analysis of the distinctive strengths and weaknesses of the evangelical tradition of social involvement. Wilberforce, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King and Bono blur together as roughly equivalent figures!
In the next couple of weeks, therefore, I hope to think about some more constructive models for the church in engaging with historical questions. I want to consider 'history for the church' both at a broad, theoretical level - what is the role of history in the community of faith? - and at a very practical level - what role can historians play as members of the local and scattered church? These are big questions, and I don't promise to arrive at any comprehensive conclusions - but I hope you'll join in the ponderings!
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2 comments:
Great intro Jo - I am really looking forward to this. I think Wilberforce is an apt example of a christian poster-boy who is often removed from his context.
Did you know that its the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in March? At our church, some people are suggesting we do something to celebrate the role of evangelicals in bringing the abolition about. I wonder, though, what we should say about the christians who actively opposed the abolition??
You are absolutely right that we (ie christians) need to avoid using history to push a present theological / doctrinal agenda. I think good historians (who are also christians) can really serve the church by teaching and modeling the benefits of examinging our own subjectivity / historical-locatedness.
Thanks, Meredith - I'd certainly appreciate your thoughts. The Wilberforce thing is a bit odd - I think he represents a very safe model of social activism for evangelicals precisely because of his social conservatism. In his book 'Bury the Chains', Adam Hochschild demonstrates fairly convincingly that the early historians of the abolition movement (especially Wilberforce's son) wrote that history in a way that largely ignored the role of Thomas Clarkson who was in fact a more significant figure than Wilberforce - but less theologically acceptable to the evangelicals.
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