Book Review of Christianity and Pluralism, Ron Dart and J. I. Packer, Lexham Press, 2019; 70 pages.
Wayne Northey: This brief missive offers much to consider and chew on.
In this reviewer’s experience, there is none so fundamentalist as one who has grown to reject what once was held near and dear. (Not of course, that such rejection automatically predisposes one to fundamentalism.) I have lived for decades with not a few in my extended family. Dart writes again in the new Preface:
It is not very liberal of a liberal not to critique liberalism. But many liberals seem unable to question their blind spots—such is the nature of ideology. They signal openness to the legitimate nature of alternate readings of timely and timeless issues, yet they are actually closed to such. (p. ix)
Though one must feel for those genuinely harmed or worse by religious fundamentalists—or any kind of such. A sordid business. Dart ends the Preface with this sentence:
Pluralism and syncretism can be as exclusivist as any of the positions they rail against as being exclusive.(p. ix)
I reflect in part on my experience of this within our extended family on my website post, Easter Song.
Chapter 1 begins with a review of Ingham’s book by Dart. Ron welcomes the issues raised by Ingham, which of course in the twenty-first century are pressing on any faith tradition new or old the world over. There are ten points Dart adduces, hoping that “these questions will nudge the issues raised in Mansions of the Spirit to a deeper level and enrich the meaning of dialogue.” (p. 2)
Irenic throughout, Ron concludes on a personal note:
As someone who has been taught and nurtured by the radical Anglo-Catholics, I find that Mansions of the Spirit lacks a rigorous mystical theology, a radical politics, and a high Christology-ecclesiology. I think, without such a full vision of what Christianity has been, is, and ever shall be, inter-faith dialogue will lack a certain depth and challenging honesty. (p. 8)
Before Christmas I was at a gathering of mainly Anglicans to celebrate a vicar’s birthday. In conversation with a former rector attending St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Abbotsford, as we began chatting he mentioned that Church. I asked for clarification as to which he meant, since there had been a Church split several years ago over in part the direction Bishop Ingham had taken the diocese. The sharp retort was that there is only one real Anglican Church in Abbotsford by that name; that he didn’t know “whatever else” the other was. In that I joined Sons of the Holy Cross, a men’s Order through induction by that “whatever-else” Church of which Ron Dart is a member, I felt taken aback. I of course know of no back story to his comments. But I know the Anglican Tradition (and that Church) enough to know it has charitably housed not a few disparate expressions of faith over 2,000 plus years, of which the “whatever-else” Church is as authentically Anglican as any other. In my experience, fundamentalists of whatever stripe seem lacking in embrace of charitable dialogue. The former rector in that brief encounter seemed not interested in such dialogue . . . thus adding one more fundamentalist instance to my experience.
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