Simon Sarmiento's journal

AM reviews Stephen Bates

Stephen Bates’s book A Church at War is the subject of a 3000 word article on “Anglican Mainstream”.

Review and Response to Bates’ Church at War
(my review, which is mentioned by AM but not linked :-( was only1800 words, and included lengthy direct quotes).

Unsurprisingly, Andrew Goddard and Chris Sugden don’t really like the book. Interestingly in their quest for errors, they make no criticisms of the pages of the book which refer either to the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (where Chris Sugden works), to Anglican Mainstream itself, or to them personally. They do however catch an error that I missed: Wycliffe Hall (where Andrew Goddard works) is not called Wycliffe House.

These apparently accurate references include, for example, this description of OCMS funding:

…The OCMS is a group based in a converted North Oxford church, whose raison d’etre is to liaise with and foster educational opportunities for developing-world Evangelicals, and it was to take an increasingly partisan and shrill stance on the homosexual issue over the coming years. It was also happy to see the ex-Christian Reconstructionist, the American millionaire Howard Ahmanson - and other wealthy Americans - give support to its projects and to place one of Ahmanson’s employees on its management team.

And this description of Anglican Mainstream’s petition:

The numbers were fairly slow in coming but jumped suddenly when archbishops from Uganda, South East Asia, the Congo, Central Africa, Kenya, the Indian Ocean and South America signed up every member of their archdioceses. [page 214, another error that I missed too, he means provinces] This suddenly produced 13 million supporters, which Mainstream blandly announced represented ‘a majority’ of the 70 million-strong Anglican Communion - shaky maths and shakier polling practice. For good measure, the petition announced that Robinson had only been endorsed by ‘a minority group’ in the American church…

But even more interestingly they make no serious attempt to deny Bates’s main thesis of a power-driven conspiracy within the CofE by Evangelicals. Indeed they provide a lovely quote for a revised dust jacket: “almost impossible to refute” :-)

Collectors of such reviews may also wish to note this one which I have failed to link to previously.

Posted by Simon Sarmiento on Saturday, 31 July 2004 at 5:58 PM GMT | TrackBack
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Categorised as: Book review