Lesslie Newbigin

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James Edward Lesslie Newbigin (December 8, 1909 – January 30, 1998) was a Christian theologian and bishop involved in missiology, ecumenism, and the Gospel and Our Culture Movement^[1].

Contents 1 Biography 2 Bibliography 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Biography

Born in Newcastle, Northumbria, Newbigin's schooling largely took place in Leighton Park, the Quaker public boarding school in Reading, Berkshire. He went to Queen's College, Cambridge in 1928. On qualifying, he moved on from there to Glasgow to work with the Student Christian Movement (SCM) in 1931. He returned to Cambridge in 1933 to train for the ministry at Westminster College, and in July 1936 he was ordained by the Presbytery of Edinburgh to work as a Church of Scotland missionary at the Madras Mission.^[2]

He was married to Helen Henderson a month later, and they set off for India in September 1936. In time they had one son and three daughters.

In 1947, the fledgeling Church of South India, an ecumenical group of Protestants, appointed him as one of their first bishops in the Diocese of Madurai Ramnad – a surprising career path for a presbyterian minister. In 1959 he became the General Secretary of the International Missionary Council and oversaw its integration with the World Council of Churches, to which he became Associate General Secretary. He remained in Geneva until 1965, when he returned to India as Bishop of Madras, where he stayed until he retired in 1974. He and wife Helen then made their way overland back to the UK using local buses, carrying two suitcases and a rucksack.

They then settled in Birmingham, where Newbigin became a lecturer at the Selly Oak Colleges for five years, followed by taking on the pastorate of the little United Reformed Church (URC) opposite the gates of Winson Green prison. He was Moderator of the URC between 1978 and 1979. During this time, he preached at Balmoral and continued the prolific writing career that established him as one of the most respected and significant theologians of the Twentieth Century.

He is remembered especially for the period of his life when he had returned to England from his long missionary service and travels and tried to communicate the need for the church to take the Gospel anew to the post-Christian Western culture, which he believed had unwisely accepted the notions of objectivity and neutrality developed during the Enlightenment. It was during this time that he wrote two of his most important works, Foolishness to the Greeks and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.^[3]

In his "theological/intellectual/spiritual biography" of Newbigin, theologian Geoffrey Wainwright assesses the bishop's influential writing, preaching, teaching, and church guidance, concluding that his stature and range is comparable to the "Fathers of the Church."^[4]

At Newbigin's funeral on February 7, 1998 his close friend H. Dan Beeby said, "Not too long ago, some children in Selly Oak were helped to see the world upside down when the aged bishop stood on his head! Not a single one of his many doctorates or his CBE fell out of his pockets. His episcopacy was intact."

[edit] Bibliography

Newbigin's updated autobiography is

• Unfinished Agenda, St Andrew's Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0-7152-0679-9

Other significant works include

• The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, SPCK/Eerdmans, 1978, ISBN 978-2-8254-0784-4
• The Light Has Come, Eerdmans, 1982, ISBN 978-1-871828-31-3
• The Other Side of 1984, Church House Publishing, 1983, ISBN 978-2-8254-0784-4
• Foolishness to the Greeks: Gospel and Western Culture, Eerdmans, l986, ISBN 978-0-281-04232-6
• The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, SPCK, 1989, ISBN 978-0-281-04435-1
• Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth, SPCK, 1991, ISBN 0-8028-0607-4
• Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship, SPCK, 1995, ISBN 978-0-281-04915-8
• A Word in Season: Perspectives on Christian World Missions, Saint Andrew Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-7152-0704-8
• Trinitarian Doctrine for Today's Mission, STL, 1998, ISBN 978-0-85364-797-3
• A Walk Through the Bible, Westminster John Knox Press, 2000 (reprint 2005) ISBN 9781573833578

And his lighthearted

• St Paul in Limerick Paternoster, 1998 ISBN 978-1-900507-69-1

An anthology of Newbigin's work has also been published:

• Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: a Reader, Paul Weston (ed.), Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006 ISBN 978-0802829825

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Biography at Newbigin.net
• Extensive Newbigin-only bibliography at Newbigin.net
• The Gospel & Our Culture Newbigin page and their biography page
• "A Tribute to Bishop Lesslie Newbigin" from the Anglican Communion News Service, 18 February 1998
• Obituary; The Right Rev Lesslie Newbigin, The (London) Independent, Feb 4, 1998 by H. Dan Beeby.
• Audio of lecture entitled 'Christ: Unique and Universal'
• Audio of lecture entitled 'Nihilism'