The Rev. Jesse Zink began his new post as director of the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide on 1st September 2015.

“I am so pleased to begin working at a place which has played such an important role in my own research and life in Cambridge,” he said. “There is an exciting energy around the study of world Christianity and mission right now in both the University and the Cambridge Theological Federation. The Centre is well placed to be part of this flourishing of research and teaching about a set of issues that are central to the future of the church.”

Dr. Emma Wild-Wood, the previous director, has been seconded to the Faculty of Divinity in Cambridge University for two years as lecturer in world Christianities. She will continue her teaching in African Christianity as well as her research about religious encounter in colonial Uganda and Congo through critical biography of African evangelists.

The Rev. Zink is an Anglican priest ordained in the Episcopal Church in the United States. He trained for ordination at Yale Divinity School and recently completed a Ph.D. at Cambridge on the growth of Christianity in southern Sudan during the civil war in the 1980s and 1990s.

Prior to ordination, he served as a missionary in the Mthatha, South Africa, an experience he chronicled in his book, ‘Grace at the Garbage Dump: Making Sense of Mission in the 21st Century.’ He has travelled widely in the world church, with a particular focus on seminaries, theological colleges, and clergy education. His second book, ‘Backpacking through the Anglican Communion: a Search for Unity’ draws on these travels to offer snapshots of Anglican life at the grassroots level around the world and argue that in an age of globalization, the unity of Christians is part of our witness to the world.

“It’s clear that to be a Christian in the 21st century is to be part of a global body of Christ,” Zink said. “My research and writing has tried to help us reflect on how we arrived in the situation we are in and how we move forward in mission as one body in the midst of all our glorious diversity.”

The Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide is entering its second year in new purpose-designed premises that house its extensive library and archive.

The Centre also runs the Intercultural Encounter program, which funds students and others to take part of the life of the church around the world.

“Programs like the Encounter were vital to my own formation as a priest and helped introduce me to the life of other Christians around the world,” Zink said. “They are key to the future of the world church.”

The CCCW welcomes enquiries from researchers and students from around the world.

Collected Pamphlets of the Reverend Richard Minter

The Reverend Richard Arthur Minter, who died aged 91 in 1997 after half a century as Vicar of the Cambridgeshire parish of Stow-cum-Quy, was a well-known figure in Anglican circles in the Cambridge area.  After so long a clerical innings that is hardly surprising.  Less known is his life-long interest in the church in Jamaica where he served as rector of Claremont, St Ann’s Parish, between 1938 and 1945.

Following his death his research collections were presented to the Centre by his daughters.  They include his thesis, ‘The Comparative Importance of Influences Hostile to the Slave Trade within and without the Established Church in the West Indies before 1783’ that he wrote for his B.D.(1955). A long-held interest in the downtrodden, from the moral dilemma slavery presented to the 17^th-18^th century clergy to and refugee issues in modern times is also demonstrated by a small group of papers from the 1930s that include the pamphlet by Professor G.C. Baravelli, The Last Stronghold of Slavery – What Abyssinia is.  The title may suggest something written out of humanitarian concern but conceals something rather different, as its real purpose is as an apology for the Italian military intervention by Mussolini’s regime in Abyssinia then taking place and which so exposed the impotence of the League of Nations.

Minter’s interest evidently broadened in later life to the history of the Jamaican church generally, as the collection includes correspondence, replies to enquiries, and other notes and articles on Jamaican churches and clergy 1969-83 as well as drafts of the book eventually privately-published in 1990 as Episcopacy without Episcopate: The Church of England in Jamaica before 1824.

Particularly useful for researchers without an airline season ticket to Montego Bay are the collection of local church histories, often written in response to commemorative events, such as the 75^th Anniversary of St Cyprian’s, Highgate St Mary, known as “The Banana Church”.  This incorporates an earlier detailed history from 1921 by Canon Samuel Swaby, so it takes us back more than the average church history would be expected to do, and it includes an acknowledgement to Minter for his assistance. The collection also has some formal documents of the Jamaican church, enough to understand its organisation in modern times.  But the collection confined to the Anglicanism, as it contains a substantial account of the Congregational Church in Jamaica, Mission to Jamaica [1947] that valuably includes a directory of Congregational churches and ministers with details of their pastorates since 1834.

For a full list of the Minter Papers email the Archivist.

The Centre’s Intercultural Encounter Coordinator, Amy Ross, attended the Lausanne Creation Care and the Gospel Conference for East and Central Africa held at Brackenhurst Conference Centre, near Nairobi, Kenya, 17-21 May 2015: Creation Care in Africa: Theology, Practice and Intercultural Dialogue.

This conference was one of a series of events in the Lausanne Creation Care Network’s global creation care campaign. Emerging from the Lausanne Global Consultation on Creation Care and the Gospel held in Jamaica in November 2012, each of these conferences is designed to help participants develop creation care movements in their own countries (click here to Learn more about the global campaign and read The Jamaica Call to Action, an important document that came out of the Jamaica Consultation).

Amy shares: “Highlights from the programme included fantastic case studies of creation care as holistic mission both in the main plenary sessions and in breakout groups.”

Topics covered in the breakout sessions were as diverse as ‘Urban Waste Management in Rwanda’ (delivered by a knowledgeable Rwandan vicar), ‘Farming God’s Way’ and ‘Indigenous Forestry’ by Care for Creation Kenya, and ‘Tools for Political Advocacy in Africa’ by Dr Jesse Mugambi from the University of Nairobi. Main sessions also included practical creation care case studies, such as A Rocha Kenya’s ASSETS forest protection and ecotourism scheme, which funds high school students’ education, and a project on bio-sand filters being delivered in Kampala by A Rocha Uganda.

Delegates came from South Sudan, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, and even Madagascar. Key speakers addressed creation care from different angles, for example theological, scientific, practical and economic. Different perspectives were delivered by the following contributors, alongside many others who were equally as noteworthy:

• Dr. Zac Niringiye (Assistant Bishop in Kampala Diocese, Uganda; on the importance of political advocacy in addressing environmental issues)
• Dennis Tongoi (International Director of CMS Africa; on the necessity for worldviews that motivate and empower communities)
• Prof. Eric Aseka (International Leadership University, Kenya; on sustainable economics)
• Dr. Stella Simiyu (Plant scientist for the international Convention on Biological Diversity; gave a scientific overview of the impact of environmental degradation in East and Central Africa)
• Prof. Jesse Mugambi (Dept. of Philosophy & Religious Studies, University of Nairobi; on conflict, climate and environment)

There was a general feeling that creation care as an issue had been neglected within evangelical church teaching in the region, up until this point in time. However, a number of Bible colleges and seminaries of various denominations were represented at the conference (Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Anglican, AOG, independent etc) and delegates voiced a strong desire to develop curriculum for training theological students, church leaders and material for adult Bible Studies, as well as Sunday school groups.

Comparing creation care priorities in East and Central Africa with the concerns of Western churches and theologians revealed some significant differences and similarities. From the African perspective:

• There seemed to be a stronger focus on how environmental protection and economic development are mutually compatible, compared to in the West where we are asked to restrict our consumption for the sake of our global neighbours, even when we don’t see the impact. This leads to different explorations of ideas of ‘suffering’ or ‘sacrifice’. See below for further reflections on this issue.
• Climate change denial was less relevant as a problem that needed to be overcome in churches/seminaries/society. Unlike in the West, the impact of climate change seems to be too obvious to be questioned (many local examples were described by conference speakers).
• Less evidence of concern about ‘deep ecology’ (i.e. humans on par with all creation) compared with Western ecotheology, which must carefully address this approach because it is seen to threaten Biblical human superiority over the rest of creation. There was simply more emphasis on simply affirming the role of human beings as God- appointed agents of good stewardship.
• Dealing with witchcraft. Specifically, learning how to ‘tease out’ good creation care practices from traditional spiritualities that have often been rejected historically, in their entirety, following the adoption of Christianity.
• The need to explore whether Africa is ‘cursed’ by God, relating to acknowledgment of the relationship between environmental degradation and poverty vs. the African capacity to overcome problems through better environmental management following the adoption of an empowering Christian worldview.
• Corruption of leaders, which was blamed as a large part of the problem.
• The historical proximity of dependence on the land through subsistence farming, which can mobilise current adult generations in Africa who still have relevant memories of this compared to the increasingly urbanised and disconnected new generation.
• The importance of Christians as peace-builders in the context of increasing environmental conflict (especially important when natural resources must be shared across national boundaries that were enforced by external colonial powers, without taking into account traditional tribal boundaries that had more closely mirrored natural resource zones). This highlights the power of the global Church to provide vital opportunities for safe and loving dialogue.

Similarities between ecotheology in Africa and the West included:

• A call to ecumenism, the need to work together across denominational boundaries because the physical nature of the problems is so large.
• The need to re-affirm the link between spiritual and bodily practices (overcoming an entrenched theology of dualism, inherited from the Greek tradition, which encourages Christian to focus attention on abstract ‘spiritual’ matters to the neglect of discipline and holiness in everyday physical tasks).
• This is linked to a prevalent belief that Christians shouldn’t engage in politics, but conference speakers identified the importance of church leadership in political advocacy to address creation care issues.
• Eschatology – the importance of an understanding of the awaited re-newed heavens and re-newed earth, and consideration of what the values of the Kingdom of God look like today.
• Many of the same key Biblical texts were used to explore ecotheology (e.g. Romans 8, Colossians 1, Genesis, the Noah story) and some of the same (Western) theologians were informing the talks e.g. N.T. Wright was cited by a number of the African scholars and Dave Bookless and Ed Brown, LCCN representatives at the conference, framed many of the issues.
• Repentance for neglect of creation care in the past.
• Evidence of the danger of putting the onus on humans alone to solve the environmental crisis, which happens when theologians react to the traditional position of leaving all responsibility to God e.g. last devotional speaker on Thurs morning interpreted Romans 8 as saying that creation is waiting for humans to redeem it by their own effort (rather than in partnership with Christ).

It became obvious during the conference that there are very deep theological questions stemming from the economic disparity between Africa and the West, as well as the impact this has on increasing competition for global environmental resources. This highlighted the vital role of international communication between Christians, particularly to address conflict stemming from the ‘them and us’ attitude that preserves the ‘right’ of people to consume local resources at global cost. It requires courage and sacrifice to really address these issues, but if we can do so as the global Church we will be in a position to assist the rest of the world struggling with these increasingly pertinent questions.

For example, the question came from a young Congolese man “Why should we suffer for the sake of others far away?”, in reference to limitations placed on the consumption of natural resources through protection of threatened state forests.

These forests play a vital role in absorbing global carbon emissions, but can also lead to women not being able to harvest woodfuel for cooking. From a different perspective one may consider Europeans responding to African asylum seekers and economic migrants arriving en masse in Italy, where some people ask themselves the same question

“Why should we suffer share our limited jobs and resources for the sake of others from far away?”

Climate change affects every person on the planet because natural resources must be shared on a global scale. Just as the work of Christian ecotheologians in the UK involves helping people to understand why they should ‘suffer’ (i.e. sometimes denying themselves things they take for granted) for the sake of others ‘far away’, so too must theologians and leaders in the global South explore what these issues mean in their own communities. Here we can follow the example of Christ, who suffered the most for the sake of others ‘far away’. The challenge is in the dialogue and exposure of levels of suffering. Is it a question of having the ‘rights’ to access resources or having the ‘responsibility’ of caring for and preserving them?

Towards the end of the conference it was exciting to see each national group develop goals for application of the knowledge they had gained during the week. These goals fell into three main categories: Personal, e.g. many delegates were church leaders who committed to speaking on creation care regularly in church services and leading by example with their actions; Organisational, e.g. seminary lecturers would develop courses on eco-theology and mission organisations would include creation care as part of their missional activity; and National, e.g. many planned to organise conferences at the national level to pass on what they had learned to their counterparts within their own country.

We are now considering ways that CCCW can respond to the challenges set at the conference and incorporate care for creation more consciously into our work and daily practice.

Thanks to Andrea Ebley/Care of Creation Inc. for providing these photographs.

The library collection at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide is in the process of a significant expansion, thanks to a donation from a well-known mission library.

Earlier this year, the library received over 1300 books from the collection at St. Augustine’s College, the former missionary college of the Anglican Communion in Canterbury. The St. Augustine’s College Foundation was looking for a new home for parts of its collection and thought of the CCCW library as an excellent, active research library that would benefit from the donation.

“Probably two-thirds of this collection is new to us,” says Ruth MacLean, CCCW’s Librarian. “This donation fills in gaps in our collection we wouldn’t otherwise be able to fill.”

It is not a simple matter to integrate such a large donation. Ruth has been organizing volunteers who have been organizing books, checking for duplicates, and preparing them to be catalogued. That final step, of ensuring that each book is correctly added to Cambridge University’s electronic library system is most intensive, but also the most important. By being searchable in the catalogue, the books will be available to students and researchers from across the university.

Jesse Zink, the Centre’s director, teaches a course in the Cambridge Theological Federation on the study of Christian mission. He was particularly pleased to find in the donation a large amount of material relating to debates over mission in the mid-twentieth century.

“These aren’t just arcane matters of history,” he said. “The term missio Dei—so important in current understandings of mission—came into widespread use in the 1950s. It’s important that we understand where it came from so we can understand how it informs our own understanding of mission as we seek to live faithfully to Christ in the 21^st century.”

The St. Augustine’s donation complements CCCW’s existing 7500 volume collection, which has particular strengths in the history, theology, and practice of Christianity in the non-western world, the study of mission, and ecumenism. Researchers are regularly welcomed from around the world.

A 1948 resolution of the Lambeth Conference commended St. Augustine’s College for being “a centre in which people from all parts of the Anglican Communion could meet each other, and in fellowship and guided discussion learn something of the life and ways of the wider Church.”

The CCCW is an ecumenical organization, not bound by a single denomination, but it sees its role in a similar spirit as St. Augustine’s did, making the donation a particularly apt addition to the collection.

The CCCW Archives – “a central part of the architecture of world Christianity.”

A glowing endorsement of the value and significance of the archive papers held at the CCCW was recently given by Derek Peterson, an expert on East African Christianity.

Peterson’s recent book Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent drew heavily on research he carried out at the Centre, as described in our current ‘Spotlight on the Archive’ feature.

The HMC are delighted to announce that Prof David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge and HMT Ex-Officio Trustee has been awarded The Coventry International Prize for Peace and Reconciliation. Prof. David Ford is Founder and Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme.

Coventry International Prize for Peace and Reconciliation

The Coventry International Prize for Peace and Reconciliation will once again to be awarded next month during a prestigious event at Coventry Cathedral.

The peace prize is an annual accolade that was relaunched in 2010 to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the Coventry Blitz. It honours initiatives, organisations, individuals or projects that have made an exemplary contribution in the areas of peace, reconciliation and campaigns for social and environmental wellbeing. This year’s prize will be presented to Prof. David Ford, Founder and Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme. After the official award ceremony, Prof. Ford will be facilitating an inter-faith conversation among his colleagues on the role of inter-faith dialogue in global peace building. The conversation will include Senior Rabbi Alexandra Wright (Jewish) at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, Dr. Aref Ali Nayed (Muslim), Founder and Director of Kalam Research & Media (KRM) and Libyan ambassador to the UAE until July this year, and Jerry White (Christian), a policy adviser on partnerships and learning in relation to post-conflict stabilisation who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for his work on banning land mines.

David Porter, Canon for reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral, said:

“I am delighted that Prof. David Ford of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme is receiving this award, in a world where misunderstanding so easily prevails between religions. We are privileged and excited to welcome such distinguished guests to the city and look forward to listening to their conversation.”

The judging panel is made up of the Lord Mayor, the Bishop of Coventry, the Dean of Coventry Cathedral, and Madeleine Atkins, Vice-Chancellor of Coventry University. Past winners of this prestigious prize include Responding to Conflict, a leading organisation in the field of conflict transformation, and Cord, who work alongside people displaced by violent conflict to rebuilding their lives and communities.

The ceremony will be held on November 14^th, 7pm at Coventry Cathedral and is open to all, no ticket required. The beautiful oak and oxidised brass award being presented on the night was designed by local artist Rachel Sutton, a Coventry University arts graduate.

Notes to editor

More information is available at www.coventrypeaceprize.org.uk

The Bishop of Sherborne, Dr Graham Kings will give two talks on Henry Martyn.

He will also be giving the annual Benson lecture at Truro Cathedral on Saturday 13 Oct 2012, 5.30pm.  The title of the lecture will be, ‘Henry Martyn: Son of Cornwall and Missionary Scholar’. http://www.trurocathedral.org.uk/

Bishop Kings will give the Cambridge sermon, at St John’s College, Cambridge on Sunday 21 Oct 2012, 6.30pm. The title of the sermon is ‘Henry Martyn: Scholar, Missionary and Translator’. http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/chapel_and_choir

Commerative Evensong for the Bicentenary of Henry Martyn at 6.30pm, Wed 17th October, St John’s College Chapel. http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/current-service-list