DanSheffield

Egyptian Pentecostalism - a new book

Not long ago I mentioned that an article of mine, from more than a decade ago, was included in a new edited volume on Canadian Pentecostalism. That was great. My article explores the story of Herbert E Randall and the connection between the "radical holiness" Holiness Movement Church, birthed in the Ottawa Valley, and the emergence of Pentecostalism in Canada at the beginning of the 20th century.

Another book has been published (Brill, 2023) that details the emergence of Pentecostalism in Egypt, around the same time period, also influenced by the same Herbert Randall and the Holiness Movement Church, from Canada. I'm only commenting on it now, cuz Amazon had a sale, so I could finally afford it :)

Egyptian Pentecostalism: When Cyclones of Divine Power Invaded the Ancient Land, written by Tharwat Maher Nagib. This book represents an edited, print version of his doctoral dissertation.  Tharwat is an Egyptian Pentecostal pastor who traces the influence of Western missionaries entering Egypt in the 1800s in a time of great social upheaval within the country. Part of this is an indigenous movement of Coptic Orthodox background Christians who are also seeking after "something more." Tharwat makes extensive use of insights and references from my Randall article (all properly cited, of course) to build a missing link in the narrative of how Pentecostalism emerged in Egypt in the early 1900s. 

I have to say that the book represents all that I might have hoped would emerge from the work that I did to tell Randall's story. Which was a project inititated (at least in my mind) after living in Assiout, Egypt (1988-89), where Randall also ministered.

 

 

Reading through 2024

This past year has been a continued electic selection of books. 

The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence. A fascinating story of a time and place most of us have little knowledge of. The massacre in Amritsar in 1919, widely regarded as the catalyst for the Indian indepence movement, and the determination of a strange fellow who assassinates the British colonial governor who was responsible - decades later.

On a side note, Anita Anand, the author of The Patient Assassin, together with William Dalrymple, are co-hosts of a prolific history pod-cast, Empire, which has kept me captive most of this past year. If I have read less books than I should have this year, it is because I have been immersed in the stories of empire, from around the globe, throughout the millenia. Highly recommended!

Improvising Church: Scripture as the Source of Harmony, Rhythm, and Soul. Mark Glanville, originally from Australia, is associate professor of pastoral theology and OT scholar at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada - and a jazz musician. This was an intriguing book. He uses the image of jazz improvisation that riffs off certain fundamentals. If we have the basics down, you can go anywhere with your creativity. Without the basics, it's just noise. His voice has special resonance to the Canadian context. And he quotes a lot of Newbigin - can't go wrong there.

Walking Together on the Jesus Road: Intercultural Discipling. Evelyn and Richard Hibbert were missionaries in Turkey and Bulgaria with WEC, the same ministry organization that I started out with 40 years ago; now are educators at the Sydney MBC in Australia. Required reading for a course I taught at Tyndale Seminary in May '24. Well-written integration of intercultural development concepts and practices with evangelism and disciple-making principles and practice. Wish I had this book 40 years ago.

A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders. Mark Sayers is another Australian pastoral voice with things to say for our times here in Canada. A reading assignment from the network of pastors I engage with regularly.

Leadership Toolkit for Asians. Jane Hyun is a colleague I work with regularly in the area of intercultural capacity development. Her book published this year has proven to be an empowerment resource for Asians seeking to navigate the business world, but leveraging their own unique cultural strengths into the equation. Excellent resource for those of us who don't have Asian heritage as well.

Preaching Romans: Four Perspectives, edited by Scot McKnight and Joe Modica. Very helpful resource giving insight into Reformation, New Perspective, Apocalyptic and Participationist perspectives. Both hermeneutical lenses, as well as actual sermons on texts, by noted scholars and preachers.

Life Together. Yes, I read Bonhoeffer again this summer, as I led book club discussions with a small group in our congregation. Reading a chapter, discussing, then practicing the practices he says are at the heart of life together. Apparently life together has a lot to do with letting the Spirit of Jesus speak in our midst. :) 

The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage and Justice. War journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, tells a well-researched story of the female Kurdish military units fighting in the early stages of the Syrian War (2014-2018). Kurdish self-governance is their desire within the geographical spaces inhabited by the Kurdish people in Syria. I'm interested to see how this plays out now with Assad gone from power and one of the many factions taking the reins.

Into the Heart of Romans. You can't go wrong with N T Wright talking about Paul and Romans. He takes a deep dive into Romans 8 as a fulcrum point in the letter, filtering what comes before Ch 8 while setting up what follows. Yes, reading a lot of Romans stuff this year. So far it's just fleshing out my various sermon series, not a stand alone yet. Although in 2023 I preached through Romans 12-16, following Scot McKnight's thought around preaching Romans backwards -- knowing where Paul lands may help us understand what he's trying to say all along (we often get bogged down in the first half and then skip through all the practical outcomes - perhaps the real point of what he was trying to get at all along).

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know. I listen regularly to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History, but this is the first book of his that I have read. I'm kind of iconoclastic that way. He writes like his podcasts unfold, one onion layer at a time, building to get you to the centre and then realize the myth at the centre of the story is false. This book is a huge cautionary tale about ever trusting what anybody says - we all create stories to suit our needs at any given point in time. But we can't build a society on patent distrust of every person we meet. So grace, discernment and forgiveness is required, to re-establish trust. He only gets to that point on the last page, however (that's a Malcolm thing), after one detailed public news story after another that he just deconstructs to the point you want to just throw up your hands. Great way to finish 2024.

I also read about the same number of novels, short story collections, etc. that I'm not going to comment on. Mostly historical fiction, some mysteries.

 

Beyond Multiculturalism and The Canadian Pentecostal Experience

Those may seem like quite different topics - but, yes, I have a chapter in each of these recently published, edited publications.

More than a decade ago I researched and wrote an academic article on the early life and ministry of Herbert E Randall, a Canadian Holiness Movement Church missionary to Egypt at the turn of the 20th century (1899-1906). In that article I recorded Randall's spiritual shift from the Holiness tradition to the Pentecostal tradition via his Holy Spirit encounter at the Hebden Mission in Toronto, one of the birthplaces of Canadian Pentecostalism. Randall served as an early ministry colleague of the founding fathers/mothers of Canadian Pentecostalism (1907-1911) and then returned to Egypt as a Pentecostal missionary (1912-1938). 

The article has gone on to have a life of it's own, particularly amongst Canadian and Egyptian Pentecostal scholars, as a kind of origin story. I feel quite honoured to have this article included as a slightly edited chapter ("From Holiness Church to Pentecostal Mission: Transitions Among Early Canadian Pentecostals") in this new volume from Brill Publications, The Canadian Pentecostal Experience, edited by Linda Ambrose and Michael Wilkinson.

 

The second book recently published is Beyond Multiculturalism: Intentional Intercultural Churches as an Expression of the Kingdom. This is an edited volume of papers (editors: Charles Cook, Lorajoy Tira-Dimangondayao, Lauren Umbach) presented in 2021 at the JaffrayAng Symposium hosted by Ambrose University in Calgary. I had the opportunity to present a keynote paper: "Multicultural Churches as Counter-Narrative in Pluralist Canada," which is included as Ch. 2. This article focuses on the need to develop theology and praxis for telling a different story about who we are as communal agents of the kingdom of God -- who has removed the dividing wall between our differences. Using Newbigin's language of churches as sign and foretaste of the kingdom, only if we can live out the reality of reconciliation across those differences.

 

Response to the "narrative of decline"

There's a narrative that many churches in Canada are hearing on a consistent basis – we are in decline. Earlier this year I presented a paper at the Wesley Studies Symposium, sponsored by Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, ON. Here are  few excerpts...

Last year, James Emory White commented on a Canadian report from Alpha Canada and Flourishing Congregations Institute. White is a former president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary. He says, “The church is in decline because we are turned inward instead of outward. Our hearts are not breaking for what breaks the heart of God, which is people facing a Christ-less eternity. And sadly, only a simple “invite” is all that is often needed: “Come and see, come and hear, come and explore.”

The antidote that I hear in much of this narrative of decline, is that “we need to do something.” WE need to DO something. White says we just need to “invite people.” We need to turn outward instead of inward. Others say we just need to pray more. Or just modify our orthodox theology. And then our congregations will be thriving again, people will love us again, we will be relevant again. And then we will return to the place of privilege/influence in Canadian society (if that were ever true). But is that really the goal?

“We are becoming a secular society. The church is in decline, we are losing our voice in the public space, and we must do something about it.” That is the word of caution and concern that we are hearing.

That’s the backdrop, now let me take you on a brief journey of reflection. More than 40 years ago, Malcolm Muggeridge, British journalist and social analyst, delivered a lecture at the U of Waterloo. The lecture was published as The End of Christendom. He was describing social circumstances that were contributing to the decline of Christendom in western society. I remember reading at the time, this statement: “in these circumstances why should anyone expect Christendom to go on forever, or see in its impending collapse a cosmic catastrophe?” Coupled with this pessimistic reflection, he offered this optimistic word, “amidst the shambles of a fallen Christendom, I feel a renewed confidence in the light of the Christian revelation with which it first began.”

Muggeridge then suggests where his renewed confidence comes from – the thriving of Christian faith and community in locations where it has been most repressed -- in his historical context (1978), the underground church in Communist Russia. His conclusions: “let us then, as Christians, rejoice that we see around us on every hand the decay of the institutions and instruments of power… For it is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming… it’s then that Christ’s hand reaches out sure and firm.”

Muggeridge was describing the impact of modernity upon inherited forms of Christian expression, suggesting that decline might not be a bad thing.

 

In a recent article in Faith Today, Canadian church consultants, Chris Bosch and Lon Wong commented, “There are megatrends, like the decline of Christianity in Canada, that a local church can’t do anything about, … Just as death is a natural part of human life, it is part of life for churches. Churches have come and gone in different regions of the world, but that doesn’t mean the faith is irrelevant or all is lost.” They go on to say, “A healthy church can benefit from asking questions about why it exists.”

Not what should we do, or how should we do it, but why do we exist? Why does this “called-out” community of Christian believers exist? That’s a question I reflect on fairly frequently. Not out of a sense of despair regarding the future, but to continually adjust my focus, when things are getting blurred by this narrative of concern or that strategic planning exercise.

Charles Taylor talks about the importance of social imaginary, or the articulation of a story, a narrative, that shapes who we are and where we want to go, what we are trying to bring about.

If I was continually reflecting on the narrative of decline, that would probably lead to despair. If I was continually reflecting on the narrative of “we have got to do something!”, that could very easily lead to burnout.

In Matthew 11:20-24, Jesus laments (denounces) the towns that were unresponsive to his ministry, including Capernaum where he had invested significant time. He carries on in verses 25-30, “I praise you Father… because you have hidden these things from the learned and the wise and revealed them to little children.” He concludes with, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’”

I hear a narrative in this passage. “All my energy invested there had limited results. The Father reveals to whom he chooses to reveal, and these (disciples) are the ones he gave me. Come to me and I will give you rest. If you work with me, the work is easy and the burden is light.” That’s an alternative narrative to, -- “you’re not being effective, so speed up and do something.”

So here’s my alternative Wesleyan narrative. It’s not a formula, but a story I tell myself that centres my call to ministry in these times.

We are living in challenging times, as a minority people, in a society from which God seems to be absent, and most people are fine with that. My task as a spiritual leader is to equip, to prepare, the congregation that I serve for their daily, ministry interface within this set of circumstances in which we find ourselves. To aid our daily ministry,

1. we need to experience the living, resurrected Christ as present in our lives; that we are being healed and made whole as we surrender our lives, increasingly, to the renovating work of the Spirit;
2. we need to experience the encouraging, Spirit-directed promptings of our brothers and sisters in Christ as life-giving, as necessary, something we can’t do without;
3. we need to experience opportunities for engaging with, perhaps serving, those who are different from ourselves (age, gender, education, language, culture, economic position, life-stage), because Christ will meet us in those encounters, in ways we cannot imagine.

In short, we exist to affirm that the living God is not absent from our society, and that truth impacts how we live our lives. As we do this, we bear faithful witness.

Cormac McCarthy's Little Fire

Keep a little fire burning.

However small,

However hidden.

 

Cormac McCarthy (American novelist who died last week; June 13/23)

 

I was really impacted by the visual imagery and storyline of The Road, the 2009 movie version of Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name.

 

In this short music video I sing Patty Griffin's song Little Fire, with images from the movie. (I'm not satisfied with my guitar playing, just so you know)

This imagery fits my picture of the role of Christian community in the midst of our post-Christendom, secular age. I've thought about this theme a lot more than my sparse words here.

There's more to the story

Some excellent reflections here in this video clip from Doctors Without Borders. 

This is such an important issue for international charitable organizations. The difference between the marketing story and the real story. Us/Them, Here/There, is no longer sustainable. 

This was one of my great disillusionments over my 20+ years of global charitable engagement. To raise funds for international development work, you had to tell a story that appealed to the donors - what their interests were - not the reality, the concerns, the perspectives, of the people we walked with, worked with. But this was also the space where I listened to, and learned from, the stories of friends and colleagues whose worldviews and perspectives were profoundly different from my own. 

 

Identity: self-constructed? socially-constructed?

With a surplus of identity options out there these days, there is a strong populist, cultural assumption that identity is self-constructed. That is, that our identity is self-chosen. We "find" ourselves and tell a story about how we discovered ourselves. We live out, or perform that identity. And performance requires affirmation or recognition, which then, of course, reinforces (or not...) our self-chosen identity. And recognition is essential to achieving the hypergood of happiness. Recognition is important in the moment, because happiness is happenstance. And so one follows the path of continued affirmation.

This is all fine, if our chosen identity is validated by the people around us. It helps with the closed loop. But when our chosen self is not validated, the seeds are sown for the birth of ressentiment, a narrative of injury. A new story we begin to tell about how our quest for finding our true self has been thwarted by someone, or something.

This assumption, however, is a cultural misconception of how identity is formed. Identity is not solely an internal decision born from a self-enclosed feel. But identity is never self-enclosed; it is always formed through some kind of conversation. Identity is more "socially constructed" than self-constructed. That social construction is significantly impacted through our family of origin (for good or ill), by the cultural context within which our family is situated in our formative years, and then progressively by teachers, friends, literature, media, habits, rituals. No identity is discovered in a vacuum. All identities come out of some kind of exchange, with various conversation partners, yes, including our own internal selves. (Joyce Bellous and I wrestle with this notion in our book, Conversations that Change Us, where we tie these ideas to the constrasting opinions of Piaget and Vygotsky.)

When we buffer ourselves from other conversation partners, communities of discourse, and rest on our own sense of self, creating a hidden closed spin, we also buffer ourselves from transcendence. We mock the necessity to move outside ourselves to know ourselves. ("Nobody else can tell me who I am") Until... we are not validated, or recognized, and ressentiment emerges. We find it "safer" to spin things closed, because this gives us control. We concede that the self cannot/should not ever lose itself in "something more." Charles Taylor calls this "the eclipse of grace." In this hidden closed spin, "transformation" via transcendence becomes something to fear, because transformation reorders the self, over against its own volition, but never without its own full participation.

All identities come out of some kind of exchange. The very necessity of this exchange opens up the possibility that discovering an identity can give us ourselves, by taking us outside of ourselves.

This is the profound claim of the gospel, and it's why the Christian faith claims such a deep identity in Christ -- 'I know longer live, but Christ lives in me.' There is such an exchange at the heart of the Christian life that our identity becomes Jesus. We may lose control of our own story, and that is troubling for the populist views of our times.

The above represents my reflections on and co-opting Andrew Root's language in his book The End of Youth Ministry? -- that is obviously so much more than a book about youth ministry. This is a little synopsis of my engagement with education philosophy, social construction theory, culture formation and discipleship through a Wesleyan lens, over the past 30 years, and how it relates to several highly relevant 'hot topics.' 

There are two narratives in Scripture that echo these thoughts. The story of the rich young ruler and his identity search that preferred the closed spin loop. The story of Saul/Paul and his closed spin loop that was blown apart by the emergence of the transcendent, with which he then fully participated for his ongoing transformation.

 

a halfway house

"the church could become a kind of halfway house between the comforts of private life and the challenges of diversity -- but only if it can stay open to strangeness and help us experience our differences within the context of a common faith."

Parker Palmer, The Company of Strangers

Reading from the other's perspective

This is the time of year when people compile lists of books read in the past year (I've done that) or their intended reading list (that's always a bit deceptive -- like other new year's resolutions -- good intentions, etc.). But for this year I thought I would highlight the books I've read from authors who were substantially formed by a worldview, culture, identity, experience, that is different from my own. There's one qualifier -- these books were read in English, which may not have been the first language of the author, or have been translated from the original language the author wrote in. So that's a thing. 

I've been reading books written by authors from outside my cultural framework for many years. When we lived in Egypt in the late 80s, I read a lot of Naguib Mahfouz' books; in South Africa in the 90s, Es'kia Mphahlele,  Rian Malan, and Mamphela Ramphele (among many others).

In 2020 about 1/3 of my reading was from "other" authors. 

• Maya Jasanoff (The Dawn Watch)
• Brenda Salter McNeil (A Credible Witness and Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0)
• Tomson Highway (Kiss of the Fur Queen)
• Orhan Pamuk (Snow)
• Soong-Chan Rah (Prophetic Lament)

 

 

John Wesley on embracing neighbours and strangers

John Wesley said this almost 300 years ago. Seems relevant for our current cultural moment...

 

A genuine Christian “is full of love to his neighbour.”

 

"This is: universal love, not confined to one sect or party, not restrained to those who agree with him in opinions, or in outward modes of worship, or to those who are allied to him by blood or recommended by nearness of place. Neither does he love those only that love him, or that are endeared to him by intimacy of acquaintance…

 

It soars above all these scanty bounds, embracing neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies; yea, not only the good and gentle but also the froward, the evil and unthankful. For he loves every soul that God has made, every child of man, of whatever place or nation."

 

(from his pamphlet/essay "A Plain Account of Genuine Christianity.")

 

my thoughts on how this essay engages with our life in a multicultural context can be found here.