Abstract
In this rather dense and repetitive read—a useful warning that all PhD theses benefit from good editing before submission for publication as books—Ensign-George offers a ‘constructive theological understanding of denomination, showing its role as an intermediary structure between congregation and church.’ Writing largely for the North American market, though with some passing references to the European scene, Ensign-George states that ‘Protestantism is haunted by an enduring, unresolved theological problem: [it] has failed to produce careful, deep-going, theological reflection on denomination itself—as a way of gathering together to be the church.’ Ensign-George wonders if there is a legitimate place for ‘denomination as an ecclesial structure within the unity of the Church?’ Is it true to say that this lack of understanding and assessments leaves Protestants, ‘without sharp ideas—conceptual tools—for evaluating what is happening in denominations’? Ensign-George’s efforts to gain perspective on this lack what would have been a useful comparison with Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, equally denominational, with their own internal divisions of opinion and interpretation. The claim that experienced ecumenists comment this is a time of, ‘ecumenical winter’ lacks sufficient evidence, and is innocent of substantiation from the North American, European and British contemporary experience. Denominations in every form seem particularly adept in contemporary times to prove effective partners in ecumenical dialogue. Is it the case, citing H. Richard Niebuhr, that, ‘the church has been a betrayal of Christianity across its entire history’? Or is ecumenical dialogue only to be considered effective when it manifests in uniformity of polity rather than unity of purpose?
Ensign-George’s assertion that, ‘denomination is a particular pattern of committed relationships with a set of congregations…at root theological—built around shared agreement about certain matters of Christian belief and practice’, is surely a definition which applies equally across all parts of the Christian Church. Are we therefore to see denomination as good or bad? Ensign-George posits that denomination makes the universal church a, ‘habitable dwelling for us, beings who are finite and creaturely’, whilst the Church remains ‘universal in scope and telos’; and ‘Denominations exists because the Christian faith can faithfully be lived in more than one way…Denominations exist…when they serve as a means by which congregations live into the affirmation that they belong to a Church that is much larger, a Church that is one.’
Ensign-George states that the Church is not, ‘simply an aggregate of all the denominations and other ecclesial structures, heaped together.’ Rather, beyond ecclesial structures, the Church is about relationships between these bodies, individual and corporate. Denominations are interpretations of part of the Universal Church, but not the entire Universal Church. This might have been more usefully explored. Unity is something that is fluid, not static; forming, and reforming.
Ensign-George looks to a Church that is denominational in expression, and Universal in relationship, and that unity does not require uniformity. St Paul arguably arrived more concisely at the same conclusion in 1 Corinthians 12.