Prejudice in Religion, Can We Move Beyond It?

Prejudice in Religion. Can We Move Beyond It? Edited by Peter Cornwell. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1997 xiii++125pp$19095 (paper)

This collection's first six essays were originally given as lectures at St. James Church, Piccadilly, before being published in The Tablet in Spring 1995. Its focal question is "What is it that prevents the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England moving steadily forward [sic] to a time when both Churches will be united?" (p. xi). Thus, it explores various facets of the separation between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.

While theologians are still working to narrow the doctrinal differences, the editors are rightly convinced that the official bilateral dialogues are necessary but insufficient. In Great Britain at least, reconciliation will not be possible until the misconceptions that Anglicans and Catholics have of their past and of one another are identified, diagnosed, and dissipated. Only then will they be able to discover a new identity which is shaped not in opposition to but in relation to their fellow Christians who belong to the other church. This book is meant to facilitate that twofold process.

History plays an important role in British ecumenism and so also here. American readers will need some background in English church history to catch all the resonances and implications in, e.g., Eamon Duffy's use of contemporary Reformation historiography to question the notions of the Church of England as the true Church of the nation and of the via media; in Sheridan Gilley's re-interpretation of the Oxford Movement as founded upon incoherences that continue to bedevil the Church of England; and in Patrick Collinson's probing of the dynamics behind the slogan and cry "No Popery." Even if their analyses and conclusions are debatable, these authors show that Anglican-Catholic relations in England are far more complex and conflicted than Episcopal-Catholic relations in the United States. The recriminations, persecution, torture, and martyrdom that stain the history of both churches have engendered radically different corporate memories and manners of passing down their stories from generation to generation. This collection is evidence in favor of Jeffrey Gros's proposal that church history ought to be written ecumenically from now on.

Seven responses to the six essays were solicited to explore the applicability of lessons from the British experience to other contexts. Most valuable are Robert Runcie's and Norman Solomon's. Runcie underlines the discipline of history as both challenge and gift. While history certainly weakens absolute claims, it also manifests the "provisionality" of particular ecclesial forms that might enable us to jettison intolerance and prejudice more easily. From his Jewish, historically informed perspective, Solomon shows how difficult it is to extirpate prejudice, since it is rooted in twisted psyches, yet how necessary, since it is tantamount to idolatry.

If American readers, Episcopalians and Roman Catholics alike, can put up (once again!) with the assumption that the Anglican Communion and the Church of England are quasi-identical, they will overhear a frank and illuminating conversation that seeks ways beyond the present impasse in AnglicanRoman Catholic relations.

JON NILSON

Loyola University Chicago

Chicago, Illinois

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Winter 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved