The
Wild Gospel –
Bringing truth to life,
Bishop
Saunders Davies said of this book: “I could not put it down until I had
finished it”, and I can understand why.
It is a well-written, lively account of the propagation of the gospel and
the development of the Church from its beginnings to the present day and beyond.
It is also thoroughly grounded in scripture, supported by an impressive
bibliography and illustrated with copious notes, which makes it an
inspirational, thought-provoking source both for study and action.
In addition, its publication serendipitously coincided with the launch of
ReSource, of which Alison is an Associate.
Alison
started her higher education by gaining a first in modern languages at
Cambridge, before going on to study
Dante’s Divine Comedy, which makes it odd that she should repeat the
common mistake of mistranslating that famous phrase "Lasciate
ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate", as “Abandon hope, all ye who enter
here”, when it should be “Abandon all hope,..”.
Then, following the death of a dear Christian friend and mentor, she
started to study the Bible and saw her quest for God and truth in the light of
Dante’s journey through the infernal regions to paradise.
Part
One of the book deals with the ministry of Jesus and his impact on the culture
of the people in those days. Alison
shows how it was Jesus’ claim to a unique intimacy with God, his Father, in
a world where even to mention the name of God was forbidden, that caused the
most consternation. But then
everything Jesus did and said conflicted with the way things were normally done. Yet he did not try to change the culture, and apart from
telling stories to the crowds he dealt almost exclusively with individuals.
Alison makes her points using a number of healings and parables and on
page 90 makes another uncharacteristic slip - it wasn’t a robber who lay in
the road between Jerusalem and Jericho but a man who had been set upon by
robbers.
Part
Two, called What works and what doesn’t, gives us an erudite, potted
history of the transmission of the gospel from the Roman Empire through the Dark
Ages, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation and the Enlightenment to the 20th
Century. On the way Alison notes
the repeated eruptions of the Holy Spirit and the development of international
missionary work.
We
go on to an assessment of our Western culture and in Alison’s eyes, from a
Christian point of view, it compares unfavourably with that of sub-Saharan
Africa. She gives a perceptive
analysis of the rise and establishment of postmodernism, the culture which
pervades much of our country and with which the Church has to contend.
And she draws an interesting parallel between our times and 6th
Century BC, when Jeremiah was berating the Israelites for their immoral, godless
life-style in a land of prosperity. Jeremiah
was right then and he would be right were he able to reappear today.
Subsequently,
after the fall of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon, Isaiah gave the people a
vision of how life could be if they returned to God.
Our culture today, steeped as it is in immorality, pornography, crime and
avarice is teetering on the brink of economic collapse.
The Church needs to be the prophet to the wider world, and express the
gospel in the language of the postmodernist culture. Alison explains how this can be done in Part Three.
Alison
is no stranger to the Holy Spirit. She
first experienced his overwhelming power in the seclusion of her kitchen. And she saw the power of prayer transform her seriously
injured husband from an almost lifeless wreck to a healthy man with a very
slight limp. She has seen many
individual lives changed for the better through prayer ministry, which requires
a willingness to bare our souls to God, that is, being completely open to
the Holy Spirit. She sees this as
being perfectly compatible with postmodernism because it is more aware of the
invisible dimension of life, as compared with modernism.
Prayer
ministry can bring physical healing, and also healing of the soul, when burdens
like fear, anxiety and guilt are removed. And
then there is what she calls spiritual healing which can amount to deliverance
or exorcism, which the Church believes should be left to the experts.
But Alison has no qualms about it.
And
now the way forward is through charismatic renewal.
Over the last 50 years or so we have become more receptive to the Holy
Spirit in the West, and many people have experienced personal renewal and
transformation as they have received his blessing.
As these people have prayed for others the ripples have spread over the
surface and renewal has come to whole churches.
All the signs are that the renewal is beginning
to spread further and affect those communities in which they are set.
And we are given numerous examples of where openness to the Holy Spirit
has been accompanied by massive church growth in places like Buenos Aires,
Willow Creek, Illinois and Yonggi-Cho’s million member church in Seoul.
This
book will be an inspiration to all those who want to see their locality pushed
into the kingdom of God. Every
place, be it village or town or whatever, is different and needs a different
strategy. The only constant and
indispensable elements are prayer and the Holy Spirit.
Brian
Newsom