More than 30 years ago, back in the good old days of the secular sixties, I was sitting
on a college lawn in Durham, England, thinking about what I should do to prepare for my
final doctrine exam the next day. I had two books. One was Quicke’s "Doctrines of the
creed". It was reputed to be the magic book for the course – read it, and you passed.
It was written by the predecessor of the then head of the theology department.

The other book was Colin Morris’s "Include me out", and I decided to read
that instead. I passed.

Here’s an extract from his book:

"That phrase ‘Revolutionary Christianity’ is fashionable. But what it describes is
more often a way of talking than a way of walking. It is revolution at the level of
argument rather than of action. We take daring liberties with the Christianity of the
Creeds and the traditional ideas about God. We go into the fray, armed to rend an Altizer
or Woolwich apart or defend them to the death. We sup the heady wine of controversy and
nail our colours to the mast – mixing our metaphors in our excitement! The Church, we cry,
is in ferment. She has bestirred herself our of her defensive positions and is on the
march! And so she is – on the march to the nearest bookshop or theological lecture room or
avant garde church to expose herself to the latest hail of verbal and paper missiles.

"This is not revolution. It has more in common with the frenzied scratching of a
dog to rid itself of fleas than an epic march on the Bastille or the Winter Palace.
Revolutionary Christianity is so uncomplicated in comparison that it is almost
embarrassing to have to put it into words. It is simply doing costly things for Jesus’
sake.

"For the life of me I cannot see why a world which has rejected the God of
traditional theology should find Woolwich’s or Tillich’s ‘God beyond God’ any more
interesting. For this is really exchanging the theological word game for the word game of
the philosophers, and both are intellectual pastimes whose devotees are probably less
numerous than Times crossword fans though drawn from the same corners of our society. The
judgement upon us is not that we have failed to bring our theology into line with the best
modern thought, though that may be true, but that we do not act to the limit of the
theology we already have."

Looking at it again, I wonder how much has changed in the thirty years since that was
written!

Keep well,

Steve Hayes

E-mail:

WWW: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/steve.htm

… Theology: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/philtheo.htm