Theological wisdom, British style

Christian Century, April 5, 2000 by David F. Ford

SOME YEARS AGO when I encountered theologian George Lindbeck of Yale Divinity School, he asked me about the Gifford Lectures which had been written by my doctoral supervisor, Donald MacKinnon. At the time, Lindbeck was planning a course on MacKinnon. Within a year or so theologian David Tracy of Chicago gave a paper in which MacKinnon was one of the featured theologians. When asked what current theology he found most interesting, Tracy replied, "British."

For Yale and Chicago both to be interested in theology in Britain was something. Other signs of serious American interest involve academic posts: Sarah Coakley moved from Oxford to Harvard, John Milbank has recently left Cambridge for the University of Virginia, and there have been other such moves. More and more U.S. theologians have been coming to meetings of the Society for the Study of Theology, the main British forum for academic theology, and more and more British theologians have been regular participants in the American Academy of Religion. More AAR sessions have been on British theologians than previously, and a recent addition to that gathering, the Society for Scriptural Reasoning (which brings together Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers), is a joint American-British initiative.

Journals such as Modern Theology are transatlantic, and major monograph series, textbooks and works of reference by British-based publishers such as Cambridge University Press, Blackwell and Oxford University Press have both British and U.S. authors. Postgraduate students cross the Atlantic in both directions in increasing numbers, and e-mail and Web sites have spawned more collaborative projects and networks.

U.S. interest in British theology has peaked at a time when continental European theology seems rather lackluster in comparison with 25 years ago. The shared English language helps the exchange; but the old adage that Britain and the U.S. are "divided by a common language" is also worth remembering. Theology in Britain is in many respects very different from that in the U.S., and its distinctiveness is one of the reasons for the U.S. interest.

Two events in late 1999 are a good place to start in appreciating the special context of theology in the United Kingdom. The first was a request from the British government asking all departments of theology and religious studies to produce a "benchmarking statement" for their field. The purpose was to define the field, describe the knowledge, methods and skills to be learned, and state the levels of achievement needed to qualify for a degree. Though the exercise itself was understandably controversial, the striking thing was the level of consensus that emerged. Benchmarking became a stimulus to articulate what might the called the "British paradigm" in theology and religious studies.

The British paradigm might be best described in contrast to the German and U.S. models. In Germany, most theology is state-funded, Christian and denominational, sometimes with separate Protestant and Catholic faculties in the same university. Religious studies also exist in Germany, but they are rarely integrated with denominational theology.

In the U.S., the church-state divide discourages state-funded institutions from offering theology, so they usually have religious studies departments, which often take a negative attitude toward theology. On the other hand, hundreds of institutions (usually affiliated with one or more religious communities) offer theology, and sometimes these institutions unite theology with religious studies. But the bias of the system is against the two getting together.

In Britain, by contrast, the trend has been to integrate theology and religious studies, to the extent of questioning the legitimacy of the dichotomy. The wisdom behind this stance might be summed up in the following seven propositions.

1) The historical reasons for developing a "neutral" religious studies program as opposed to dominant "confessional" theology (seen as a threat to academic freedom) have largely disappeared in British universities.

2) There is no disputing the need of religious communities (and not only Christian ones) for institutions, which may be universities, where their theology (or whatever they name their thought and teaching) can be worked out, but such confessional theology does not exhaust the field. Universities are obvious settings where those who pursue theological questions in various ways (in identification with particular traditions; in dialogues across traditions, cultures and disciplines; in dialogue with academics and students of many faith traditions and none) can flourish together. Perhaps the most striking thing about British theology in American eyes is the prevalence of this sort of theology, which is not confined to church institutions and is carried on in a wide variety of universities.

3) Religious studies arbitrarily (or ideologically) limits itself if it forbids the asking and answering of theological questions about, for example, the truth and reality of God within a particular tradition, and the ethical and other implications of that reality. Unless religious studies rules out in advance the possibility of answering such questions in "orthodox" ways, and excludes making critical and constructive contributions to current debates about them, then it must be open to the presence of theology in universities.