This is an important first book by a political theologian and ethicist working within the context of the Church of England. It sets out to criticise a mode of thinking about the ethical and political formation of Christians that the author considers to have won the day in recent anglophone circles (including the Church of England). It offers a reparative alternative that draws upon the particular strengths (and, in an odd way, also the particular weaknesses) of England’s established church. It is not a flawless work, but it is a wonderfully provocative one that bears careful reading. It also makes particularly rich use of recent Anglican scholarship, earthing these discussions within that context without being unduly parochial.
Leith begins by criticising what she calls the ‘dominant account’ of thinking about Christians’ ethical and political formation. This account focuses on the church (she, not insignificantly, never capitalises this word), and particularly its embodied liturgical practices, as the dominant site for the Christian’s formation as an ethical and political agent. This ecclesial formation is a ‘counter-formation’ to the world; the movement is very much from a church in possession of a secure narrative and formational practices, towards a world in need of receiving them. The thought of Stanley Hauerwas and, behind him, Alasdair MacIntyre animates this account, but the particular Anglican interlocutors Leith uses as exemplars are Graham Ward and Sam Wells. She worries that this strain of theology has too optimistic an account of the church and its practices, and too pessimistic an account of the formative gifts the world may offer the church in return. Drawing particularly upon Rowan Williams, Ben Quash and Daniel Hardy, she argues for a view of formation wherein we can doubt the perspicuity of our desires and the immaculacy of our practices within the church (those who’ve read Lauren Winner’s criticisms of Christian practices will note echoes here), while being ready to receive the challenging gifts we may find in the world where the Spirit is at work.
One way to read Leith’s programme is as a retrieval of a certain Protestant edge to Anglican ecclesiology, that the church itself and its practices are in constant need of reformation – but it is not only the words of scripture but also the challenges of the world (as the field of the Spirit’s action) that offer the impetus for that reform. Without this impetus, the church is prone to a self-satisfied malformation in its life and members. She is particularly interested in the historical malformations of the Church of England and the way it has buttressed class inequities and colonial and racial hierarchies – and that these deformations are more a feature than a bug within our history. It is the challenges to these systems that have come thick and fast from outside the church, as well as from the church’s less heard peripheries, that might lead, for instance, to a new penitence and formation for faithful Anglicans. These are the Spirit’s disruptive gifts.
The book’s final third is essentially a plea for civic and political engagement by CofE Christians, not as Hauerwasian resident aliens but as ensconced members of their society and civil polity. It is also a plea not to attempt that engagement by seeking to own the political ground with inflated claims of theological and ecclesial primacy (Milbank and ‘Radical Orthodoxy’ are in part in Leith’s sights here), but to proceed with patience and receptivity to surprise and challenge (drawing upon thinkers such as Romand Coles in the ‘Radical Democracy’ tradition). A significant interlocutor in this last section is the non-Anglican Dietrich Bonhoeffer (although the reading on offer is one influenced by Rowan Williams). In some ways, this is a frustrating part of Leith’s book. The passage through Bonhoeffer is compressed, as if there is an additional inchoate project here in need of expansion. But, there is an important takeaway. What Leith finds so allusive in Bonhoeffer is his refusal of a type of purity and safety. The venture into politics is one that involves inevitable compromises and an embrace of provisionality. We are a long way from an asymmetrical movement from church to world, with the former the secure hope of the latter.
The book concludes with an exploration of the particular temptations and gifts the CofE offers to an England experiencing the pull of a regressive and nostalgic nationalism, to which its established church sometimes contributes. Leith finds in her church’s own struggles and perplexities with its history and current divisions the potential for a set of hesitant gifts it might have for the country it serves. But these gifts can only be given by a church willing to refuse the sorts of false security her book critiques and to embrace an openness to the Spirit in the world and the church’s own peripheries. The virtues of this book are many. Its vices are those common to first monographs (including this reviewer’s own) that try and do a little too much. They are forgivable, and anyone thinking about the Church of England’s place in the world would benefit from reading Leith’s work.
