Evangelical Identity And Contemporary Culture A Congregational Study In Innovation

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 31 (2009) 105-160

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Matthew Guest, Evangelical Identity and Contemporary Culture: A Congregational Study in Innovation, Studies in Evangelical History and Thought, (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2007). xxvi + 263 pp.

T is is a book that started life as a doctoral dissertation and was then broadened and amended for publication. The text concludes with an appendix on research methods and an extensive bibliography and index. It is a study of one of the foremost Anglican charismatic congregations in Britain and, as such, exempliﬁ es changes to the charismatic and Anglican scene over about forty years. The congregation is in York not far from the Minster, in a building that, before the ministry of David Watson, was practically empty. The congrega- tion had dwindled and the future looked bleak. Watson, a Cambridge-educated tongues- speaking Anglican evangelist at the forefront of the charismatic movement, came to St Michael’s in 1965, began his work and, within a year, had seen oﬀ erings and attendance rise. The congregation was actually at ﬁrst located at St Cuthbert’s but then, in 1973, relocated to St Michael’s, and, by 1976, recorded 806 Easter communicants. T roughout the 1970s the congregation diversiﬁ ed, making use of home groups, a theatre company, a Christian café, as well as releasing lay ministry into drama and music. In 1984 Watson died of cancer.

Leadership was taken over by Graham Cray (later an Anglican Bishop) who was a more consensual leader than Watson and more willing to adapt the church to the demands of postmodernity. Youth work, evangelism, pastoral counselling, and social responsibility, as well as engagement with cultural development outside the church including psychology and psychotherapy, were brought to the fore. After Cray, David White was appointed in 1993 from a strongly evangelical tradition and his ministry was more directive and author- itative, and he incorporated Alpha into the church’s program. White welcomed the Toronto blessing into St Michael’s and there is some evidence that there were conﬂ icts between the vicar and his congregation over issues of authority. After White left in 1999, Roger Simpson took over and his ministry can be interpreted as returning to Watson and Cray’s earlier emphases.

Alongside the continuing congregational meetings and the home meetings was an alter- native worship group, Visions, that was deliberately experimental, postmodern, and self- reﬂ exive. Visions was much smaller than the main congregation and served as an overﬂ ow or laboratory for evangelical engagements with popular culture. Guest, through a series of interviews or conversations with more than a hundred congregational members as well as extensive ﬁ eld study and numerous visits to various kinds of meetings, paints a lively and informed portrait of the shifting contours of the church. He is concerned with the chang- ing face of evangelicalism while appreciating that there has to be a project of resistance in any evangelical culture. Yet, questioning the reasons given by Peter Berger for the growth of conservative churches by virtue of their strong boundaries, he argues that St Michael’s, despite its evangelical pedigree, is actually liberalised in many of its beliefs while oﬀ ering space for subjectivity through the expression of charismatic gifts. He deals convincingly with the paradox of a religious community that retains its unity by celebrating diﬀ erence through the maintenance of a controlled public discourse.

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 31 (2009) 105-160

This is an excellent book which shows how congregational studies can illuminate general — even generational — trends or be used to substantiate or question theoretical accounts of the relationship between church and culture. Guest highlights the presence of mediating structures, whether these are networks or other conduits of evangelical cultural encapsula- tion, that interpose themselves between the congregation and the raw materials of the pres- ent age. In all this he makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of today’s Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

Reviewed by William K. Kay

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