'Republic of Heaven': a Fulcrum Review of Jonathan Clark's book by Sarah Cawdell

Fulcrum Book Review of

Jonathan Clark, The Republic of Heaven (SPCK, 2008)

by Sarah Cawdell

Jonathan Clark is chair of affirming Catholicism UK and a member of General Synod. He has been a university chaplain and worked in theological education. He is now a parish priest, Rector of Stoke Newington, Hackney, London.

The Republic of Heaven: a Catholic-Anglican Future is a hopeful book. Previous readers of my ramblings will know that I value hope highly. I try to live out of my becoming, not just what I have been, looking forward to the day when transformation from glory to glory has become visible on the outside. So I am bound to be attracted to a book that starts with resurrection hope. Not a nostalgic hope for return but hope for transformation.

He has a sense of humour too and laughs with the tradition and his own practices of it. Some people who have moved beyond evangelicalism write with a bitterness about the past, but Jonathan can appreciate the continuities, and the benefits of his history, without being triumphalist about the present. He has explored various traditions of the expressions of Christianity, and travelling through them has found in this his ‘place of resurrection’ as the Celts would say.

I appreciated his rough guide to the foundation and struggles of Anglican Catholicism. It filled in history for me, but historians among you might find this section thin. Jonathan takes the political and justice matters of the kingdom of God seriously as well as the churchy aspects of worship and priesthood, which provides a good broad and balanced overview of the tradition. I was encouraged by his thought that “Priests are called to open the way so that all can walk in it. If they block the doorway instead there is no use for them (us, me).” (page 31)

Jonathan addresses the questions of the Catholic tradition in the light of postmodernity, interacting with Derrida and other philosophers of the age, and in the spirit of the tradition putting one alongside the other even where they are not agreeable partners; but above all he links his writings, and his theology with his story, unashamedly, even provocatively. In tracing his developments in theology through his story he lends his own authenticity to this text, and invites others to explore further in their own journeying, and telling of their story, and their theology. He recognises that it is in the sharing of our stories that the story of Jesus is made known most richly, and is appealing to those who would walk within that same Way in their own journeying.

The Revd Sarah Cawdell is the Continuing Ministerial Training Officer in the Diocese of Herefordshire

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