Christianity Rediscovered

When I worked as manager of OC Books in Dunedin, I frequently sold copies of Christianity Rediscovered, by Vincent Donovan. However, it's only in these holidays that I've finally got round to reading it (!)

In my opinion, it's a book every minister should read (as well as every Christian who isn't an ordained minister!). It's written from a Catholic viewpoint - Donovan was a Spiritan priest (that is, a member of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost Fathers) - so it needs to be read with this in mind. Nevertheless, his views on the Church establishment are applicable to most denominations.

Donovan was a missionary to the Masai people in Africa from 1955 to 1973. As a result of his work amongst them he changed his views on what being a missionary meant, on what the priesthood is or should be, and on the way in which culture affects mission work- and whether Christianity is 'different' within each individual culture.

He was successful in his work, but his work wasn't always appreciated by those in authority, and not everything he established has been maintained over the years since his departure from Africa. Nevertheless the book that he wrote as a result of his work has had a huge impact on missionary thinking ever since - though hasn't as often been followed through in practice.

This, along with the even earlier book by Roland Allen: Missionary Methods - St Paul's or Ours? (which influenced Donovan) should be on every Christian's shelves, especially on the shelves of those in 'official' ministry.

Vincent Donovan on idols

A missionary facing an alien pagan culture, to be an efficient instrument of the gospel, has to have the courage to cast off the idols of the tribe, of the tribe he came from. There are many idols, but two which, I believe, particularly mesmerize the Western church, are individualism on the one hand, and love of organization on the other.

We consistently tend to interpret Christianity either from the individual or organisational viewpoint. The love of organization and power structures have led to our ideas of lord bishops and pontiff popes and national associations of the right and of the left and (especially since Vatican II) a plethora of meetings and chapters and synods and councils and committees. Individualism has its obsessions also: individual responsibility, individual morality, individual vocation to the priesthood, self-fulfilment, individual holiness and salvation. Individualism on one side, and organization on the other, with little room for community in between.

Without paying lip service to the idea, how seriously do we consider the possibility that Christianity is essentially directed neither to the individual nor to the organization but to the community?

Vincent Donovan in Christianity Rediscovered, page 73 (SCM Press 2001)