To the Nations for the Earth: A Missional Spirituality
by Charles Fensham
(Clement Academic)
His book is subtitled A Missional Spirituality and this has been an important focus for Knox College professor Rev. Dr. Charles Fensham. It was also the title of an article he published in the Record’s December 2011 issue. In that article he wrote: “Our identity and spirituality grows out of our call to a journey of mission with creation. … Together, people and creation stand under God’s dual call which sets them free.” His latest book explores that journey, in the form of worship, as we seek our identity in God.
The Record asked Rev. Dr. John – Peter Smit to engage Fensham in conversation about this book.
You can find a video version of this conversation at the bottom of this article.
John – Peter Smit: I’m fascinated by the title of the book. Every time I pick it up and look at it again I think it should be “To the Nations of the Earth” and not, To the Nations for the Earth.
Charles Fensham: This past week I watched George Strombolopoulos interviewing Jean Chrétien and he asked him about the tar sands in Alberta. And Jean Chrétien said, in his John Chrétien kind of way, well, God put it in the earth and so we have to take it out. And that sort of attitude that we as human beings have the right just because things are there to take them and destroy them or basically use them for our own benefit without thinking of the long – term consequences is something I’m concerned with.
To the Nations for the Earth tries to say that we need to take our responsibility for God’s biosphere. Because we’re not better than anything else in creation. We have the power to destroy. And therefore we may need to take the responsibility to look after it.
Smit: In the book there’s a sense of urgency, too, that we’re soiling our own nest.
Fensham: The United Nations’ panel on climate change concluded last year that it’s 98 per cent sure, that’s about as sure as you can be scientifically about something like this, that humans are making the biggest contribution to climate change and are continuing to make it worse.
So we know this and yet we don’t, as Presbyterians, we don’t seem to take it very seriously. There are churches that are starting to do things but it’s almost like we feel hopeless about it. I’m not saying this as a judgment. It’s more like there’s a sense of this is just too much to face. It’s too much to handle and we don’t even know where to start.
So that sense of disempowerment is something I hope we can address by understanding what our spirituality is and what we are called to as individuals and as communities.
Smit: One of the things that I very much appreciated about the book is that it’s not really an environmentalist book. It’s a discipleship book. It’s a missional book.
Fensham: I don’t think we need to make the case that we are responsible for ecological change. The case has been made. Most people understand and know that. So why aren’t we doing something about it, is my question. And I think the heart of the response lies in our discipleship and our spiritual imagination that calls us to imagine a better and different world.
Smit: And it may in fact be that it’s our discipleship in general that’s lacking; what does it mean to be Christ’s hands, Christ’s heart, Christ’s eyes and ears in the world?
Fensham: The book is shaped around the traditional structure of worship. I felt that it was important to root our understanding of spirituality in the structure of traditional Christian worship because all theology, at least theology that is faith seeking to understand the love of God, has to arise out of worship and praise of God.
That’s why I start classes with prayer. For me, theology has to arise out of prayer, out of the worship and praise of God. And God is not the object that we study. We are God’s objects. And we are to hear and listen. So I use the worship structure for that reason and the book is broken down in chapters based on the structure with a little bit of variation.
The book starts with a prelude like you would have before a service of worship starts. Then it has a call, a chapter on call which parallels the idea of call to worship, prayer of approach. And then it has a chapter on listening. And often in our traditional reformed worship, we listen to the word of God. So
I reflect on how spirituality and listening go together, listening to God, listening to one another.
Smit: Well, thank you. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your book. And thanks for your friendship.
Fensham: Thank you for the interview.
