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Reviewed by Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, and Jean Halligan Vandergrift, a ThD student in Practical Theology at the Boston University School of Theology. Evangelism After Christendom by Bryan Stone Hill: A dear friend, a superannuated preacher and weathered good man, remembers deciding to join our annual conference, fifty years ago, because he entered the gathering as they sang, beautifully, verses of ‘Peace, perfect peace.’ It was not the action but the beautiful, hymnic habits of the church, there, which embraced him. It was the music not the words. Bryan Stone’s rigorous, challenging new argument for a post-liberal evangelism heralds the crucial centrality of ecclesiology. The practice of evangelism, is the practice of faith, particularly understood. “The argument of this book is that the prevailing model of practical reasoning employed to a great extent by contemporary evangelism is inadequate to the Christian faith, ecclesiologically bankrupt, morally vacuous, and tyrannized by a means-end causality that is eschatologically hopeless insofar as it externalizes means from the end”(p52). In the course of defending this claim, Stone will argue, compellingly, that evangelism’s first concern ought to be the actual lived habits of the very church which invites the world around to consider its habituated gospel: “Christian witness in the shape of ‘ordinary nonconformity’ is…the central and defining logic of evangelism” (314). Being not doing, music not words, are the focus of this book. Because the book is clearly structured, and its argument is periodically summarized and re-introduced, one is able to offer a brief overview, a bird’s eye view of Stone’s own look at evangelism. Evangelism After Christendom, as the author repeatedly affirms, is an extended meditation upon the writing of John Howard Yoder. Other partners in reflection include the following familiar surnames: MacIntyre, Willimon, Hauerwas, Abraham, Outler, Lohfink, Ogden, Segundo, Brueggemann, Haight, Lindbeck, Newbigin, Guttierez, Barth, Hutter, Long, Volf, Lischer, Tanner. Other than Yoder, Hauerwas and Lindbeck are the most influential. Countervailing arguments are presented, and critiqued (Bultmann, Hybels et.al., James Adams). In conversation with these partners, Stone steadily mounts his argument. Evangelism should be understood as a ‘practice’, particularly understood (in the light of Macintyre). This practice depends upon careful rehearsal of the story of the people of God (Israel, Jesus, the Church). The story needs freeing from two competing, opposing stories (Constantine and the Enlightenment). Such liberation occurs in the life of the ecclesia (with special attention to its being, spirit dependence, and context). Liturgical, bodily, eschatological, and ‘heterological’ formation, in particular, constitute the ‘eucharistic economics’ of the church. Presence, patience, courage and humility are the habituated virtues required of the ecclesiological evangelism here envisaged. Oscar Romero and a church for street people exemplify these virtues. Stone’s book is a great asset, and an important reading, especially for pastors. You may disagree with his uniformly ‘Christ against culture’ perspective. You may judge that he finally does not get around Bultmann. You may feel that he is too positive about the church and too negative about the world. You may not share his pacifism. You may not fully concur with his agreements with Yoder. You may find that he mistakenly minimizes the role of preaching. You may think that he romanticizes poverty. Your experience may suggest that Constantinian and Enlightenment shadows still do shade our Christian existence, and not entirely in bad ways. You may wonder whether salvation is, simply, ‘a distinct form of social existence’(188). Still, Stone’s book is one you should read, especially for its rigorous advancement of these and other points on which you may not agree. Walk with him. He is a trustworthy guide, with a destination to share with you: “A common denominator of any Christian evangelistic strategies has been their basic distrust of the Holy Spirit to work through the simplicity of Christian obedience, lived out in daily practices, habits and gestures.” (227). Vandergrift: In Evangelism After Christendom, Bryan Stone aims to uncover the beauty of evangelism to our longing eyes. This is a worthy enterprise for all Christians: laypeople, pastors, and academics alike. To do so requires not only challenging prevailing understandings of evangelism, but also dismantling much that passes for it. Stone is up to the task. Through his well written and nuanced argument, he has succeeded in painting a much more sublime vision, beginning with this definition of evangelism: “to announce peace and to bear faithful, public, and embodied witness to God’s reign in [our] unique context (10).” Stone deftly deconstructs modes of evangelism that are preoccupied with making or producing converts as well as the rival narratives (Constantinianism and Modernity) that fuel them. These storylines cannot compare to the Bible’s: God raising up a people to embody God’s Shalom. This narrative gives the reader power to question all the cultural assumptions that bleed into our congregations and to choose to live (evangelize) authentically. He effectively dismantles a singularly propositional approach to evangelism, replacing it with that of a holistic practice. Stone underlines that conversion is more than cognitive decision and emphasizes that the means of evangelism ought to be not only oriented to the end of the peaceable reign, but we should see the internal goods of that end in its practice. This end/means criterion is extremely valuable for us as practitioners. An alluring, virtuous “Christian witness to the gospel is inseparable from the form of life in which the gospel is embodied (317).” Stone argues compellingly that evangelism is ecclesial. One E word needs the other. The church is the authentic evangelizing community. This ecclesiological evangelism breaks out of the individualistic paradigm of the Enlightenment era, reminding us that there is a community practicing evangelism and that faith leads to and ushers from community. I think such a framework pushes us to take church and evangelism more seriously. It also challenges the church to become completely nonviolent and to practice peace on the way to God’s Shalom. What a prophetic witness this is in status quo congregations, especially in a time of war! Stone’s stance is a good call to us, as well, to practice baptism and table in truly alternative, radical, Reign of God ways. His “eucharistic economics” deserves even more attention and practical unpacking than he gives. While logically consistent, I found Stone’s dichotomies between being and doing and between living and speaking overdrawn. Understandably, he wants to lift up the art and influence of simply being in our overly productive culture and to shy away from modernity’s inordinate dependence upon words, our cultural fascination with a preacher’s charisma, and our own tendency to focus on effective skills in preaching. But, in my view, he does not flesh out sufficiently the roles of creative action in the world and proclamation in a full-bodied practice of evangelism. Indeed, one of the prevailing weaknesses with the Church as it is now, particularly in declining and struggling congregations in the U.S. context, is the reluctance and inability of ordinary Christians to tell the basic story of faith, much less to put into words how it has become their own life-giving story. How do we as teachers, pastors, and fellow travelers help them? Preaching and word work seem absolutely critical for an ecclesiological evangelism. Moreover, good preaching is not only beautiful words, but also embodied Word. This cannot but be a gift to evangelism. A recurring theme, even the lead actor, in Stone’s treatment of evangelism is the Holy Spirit. She constitutes the public of the church, teaches the virtues, and empowers witness. It is good that he reminds us that we who would be faithful, cannot be, but for her graceful movement in creation
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