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John J. Vincent

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki



John J. Vincent is a Christian theologian and author in the field of Radical Christianity. As a Methodist minister he has worked in inner city churches, especially in Sheffield, England. As a theologian he created an inner city seminary for the study of Jesus in the urban context and wrote on the subject. As President of the Methodist Conference he was involved in controversy when he challenged the Christian basis of Margaret Thatcher's policies.[1][2]

Personal life

Born 29 December 1929, son of the late David Vincent and Ethel Beatrice Vincent, (née Gadd). Married 1958 Grace Johnston Stafford, daughter of the late Rev Wilfred Stafford, of Bangor, Co. Down. Two sons and one daughter. Educated at Manchester Grammar School. Sergeant in the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1948–1949. Richmond College (Methodist) 1951–1954. Bachelor of Divinity, London University, 1954. Master of Sacred Theology, Drew University, USA, 1955. Doctor of Theology, Basel University, Switzerland, 1960.

Career

He was ordained into the ministry of The Methodist Church in 1956. His 1960 doctorate at Basel with Oscar Cullmann and Karl Barth, on ‘Discipleship in Mark’, convinced him that discipleship meant a radical lifetime project.[3] He declined offers of university professorships and became a city missioner.[4] He has lectured internationally and published in theological journals ever since. In Rochdale in 1967 he founded The Ashram Community. In Sheffield in 1971 he established, in partnership with a number of local inner city churches and Christian projects, the Sheffield Inner City Ecumenical Mission. Convinced that the context in which theological study is undertaken determines much of what is learned, in Sheffield in 1973 he set up the www.utusheffield.org.uk (UTU), of which he continued as Director until 1997. At UTU he trained and re-trained hundreds of ministers, community workers and young graduates at his ‘Seminary of the Streets’ in two large Edwardian houses in the multi-racial inner-city in Sheffield.

He was elected President of the Methodist Conference for 1989–90.[5][6]

Scholarship on Mark and Discipleship

Vincent’s doctoral thesis, Discipleship in Mark, is one of the seminal works of radical Christianity. Incisive in its textual analysis, it directly relates the analysis to the project of individual discipleship in today’s Christian life. It forms the basis for a radical understanding of the life of Jesus that can underpin a modern theology that demands a personal involvement in the life of the poor. Throughout his life Vincent has continued to write and lecture on Mark and discipleship and the application of the gospel to the life of the city. Since 1997 he has been a regular contributor to the “Use and Influence” Seminar of the annual British New Testament Conference, and has pioneered the concept of “Practice Interpretation”. He edits the annual volume of essays developed at the July Institute of Socio-Biblical Studies at UTU. The method is introduced in his 2006 SPCK Publication “Mark: Gospel of Action”. Louise Lawrence describes Vincent's outlook as "a correlation between text and context born in action".[7] Chris Shannahan compares Vincent's inner-city mission work with the liberation theology movement of Latin America; "Vincent argues that what is happening in Britain today is very like what happened in the earliest years of liberation theology in South America."[8]

Ministry in an urban context

His first appointment was in Wythenshawe (1956–62)[9]. In 1962 he was offered university professorships in the USA, but chose instead to work in an inner city church.[10] In 1962 he was appointed to Rochdale (1962–69).[11][12]. He spent a year as Visiting Professor at Boston University and New York Theological Seminary (1969). Then in 1979, as a Methodist Minister, he accepted the discipline of stationing to a circuit in inner city Sheffield, when the Methodist Church had refused to accept his proposals to create the Urban Theology Unit as a new programme of ministerial training in an urban context.[13] In Sheffield he helped several small Christian groups to establish themselves as a distinct ecumenical ‘mission’ group; the Sheffield Inner City Ecumenical Mission. Within this mission group he worked with local people to create an environment in which a radical approach to the gospels could form the basis for the lives of the organizations and their members. In 1967 he founded The Ashram Community, which continues to operate as a radical formulation of Christian incarnation in various Community Houses and Projects in inner city Sheffield and elsewhere. In 1995 Vincent worked with the leaders of an old Victorian church in Burngreave Sheffield, to sell it for housing and with the proceeds purchase a disused public house in the middle of the housing estate.[14] In 1987, as part of Ashram, with his wife Grace, he co-founded ‘New Roots’, a shop in the student area of Sheffield, with a focus on food justice and Christian action. He established the Eucharist Congregation in the 1970s where a diverse group of individuals disaffected with traditional churches could meet over a meal and a eucharistic rite to share and explore their faith. In 2001 he founded a similar congregation in the Burngreave Ashram shop. In this base in the poorest part of Sheffield throughout his retirement he has created and continues to support a Christian base which reached out to the other faiths in the area, for sharing, study, worship and mutual understanding and support, including a Multi-faith Chapel and library, lodgings for asylum seekers and an ecumenical Café Church.

Teaching on urban mission

In the Urban Theology Unit (UTU), now called the Urban Theology Union, he drew together a diverse team of urban practitioners, including: Rev Ed Kessler, an American priest working in the Durham Coalfield; Roy Crowder, an Oxford graduate working in inner-city political and community action; Rev Dr. Ian Duffield, an Anglican priest working in Sheffield housing estates, and Rev Dr. Noel Irwin, the Director of UTU from 2013. Men and women who were in training for the ministry, or considering such a vocation, took a residential year course in urban theology at UTU or studied part-time. Their curriculum included the study of the gospels, interpretation of the gospels in an urban context, gospel action in community, and methods of being the church in the community.[15] Students lived in the homes of members of the local congregations, or in community houses where local community action was central to the common lives of the residents. All the major denominations participated in using this programme for some of their candidates until the strains of declining numbers of ministerial students caused the denominations to close most of their colleges.

Direct political involvement

In 1989 he caused controversy when on his appointment to President of the Methodist Church he challenged the Christian roots of Margaret Thatcher's policies. Conservative Members of Parliament and others criticized him in the press.[16] and an all-party meeting in the House of Commons was convened to discuss the issue.[17] The Methodist Conference had requested that Margaret Thatcher met with the President but this was refused and consequently "An Open Letter to the Prime Minister" was delivered to 10 Downing Street.[18] He was the Chair of the North West Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament[19] He was a member of the Theological Commission of the Prague Peace Conference. He was the founding chair of the Alliance of Radical Methodists, whose early driver was opposition within the Methodist Church to apartheid in South Africa, and who disrupted the 1972 Methodist Conference in that campaign. He was a council member of COSPEC, Christian Organizations for Social, Political and Economic Change. In 1981 he inaugurated the "Two Nations – One Gospel" campaign, which led to the establishment of the Methodist Church fund for "Mission alongside the poor" which continues.[20] In 1986 he opposed the privatization of the Trustee Savings Bank, and with others took that campaign to the High Court and the House of Lords. He was a member of the Partnership Board in the inner city redevelopment of Burngreave, under the New Deal for Communities. In 1987 he inaugurated the Methodist Conference "Rich and Poor in the Church" policy.[21] During his year as Methodist President, 1989–90, he gave six all-party lectures at the House of Commons, and in 1992 he delivered a Petition of Distress to the Queen and to the Prime Minister. In 1997 he co-chaired the Methodist report ‘The Cities’, which produced wide debate. From 2008 to 2009 he served as Chaplain to the Lord Mayor of Sheffield.

Biographical data

  • Methodist Minister, 1956 to date. Stationed in: Wythenshawe, Manchester and Salford Mission, 1956–1962; Rochdale Mission (Superintendent), 1962–1969; Sheffield Inner City Ecumenical Mission, (Superintendent), 1969–1997 (continuing).
  • Member; Theological Commission of the Prague Peace Conference 1960–1968.
  • Elected to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, the professional body of New Testament scholars, 1961.
  • Founder and Leader of The Ashram Community, 1967 continuing.
  • Director, Urban Theology Unit, Sheffield, 1969–97. Director Emeritus from 1997.
  • Visiting Professor of Theology: Boston University, 1969–70, New York Theological Seminary, 1969–70., Drew University, 1977.[22]
  • Adjunct Professor of Theology: New York Theological Seminary, 1977–1988.[23]
  • Joint Founder of Alliance of Radical Methodists, 1970–1976.
  • Council, Christian Organizations for Social, Political and Economic Change, 1981–1991.
  • Executive, Association of Centres of Adult Theological Education, 1984–1990.
  • Urban Mission Training Association, 1982–1990.
  • Trustee Savings Bank Depositors’ Association (also litigant in High Court and House of Lords, TSB vs Vincent, 1986).
  • Joint Co-ordinator, British Liberation Theology Institute, 1990-.
  • Co-Chair, Urban Theologians International, 1993–2000.
  • Honorary Lecturer in Biblical Studies: Sheffield University 1990–2008.
  • Supervisor, doctoral programme in Contextual, Urban and Liberation Theologies; Sheffield University, 1993–2008.
  • Joint Editor of the British Liberation Theology Series, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2013.
  • Honorary Lecturer in Theology and doctoral supervisor; Birmingham University, 2003.
  • President, of The Methodist Conference, 1989–1990.
  • From 2002, with Marcus Borg, Patron of the Sheffield St Mark’s Centre for Radical Christianity.
  • Fellow, St Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden, 2003.
  • Centenary Achievement Award, Sheffield University, 2005.
  • Chaplain to the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, 2008–9.

Bibliography

Jesus and Discipleship

  • Secular Christ, (Abingdon Press] 1968), ISBN 7188-1387-1.[24][25]
  • Disciple and Lord: Discipleship in the Synoptic Gospels, (Academy Press, 1976).
  • Radical Jesus, (Marshall Pickering, 1986, 2nd ed. Ashram Press 2004) ISBN 0-9541241-5-4 Search this book on ..
  • Mark at Work, jointly with John D Davies, ( Bible Reading Fellowship, 1986), ISBN 0900164-68-9 Search this book on ..
  • Discipleship in the Nineties, (Methodist Publishing House], 1991), ISBN 0-946550-55-7 Search this book on ..
  • Liberation Spirituality, ed. jointly with Chris Rowland, ( Urban Theology Unit, 1999), ISBN 0-907490-07-7 Search this book on ..
  • Journey: Exploration into Discipleship, (Ashram Press, 2001), ISBN 0-9541241-0-3 Search this book on ..
  • Mark: Gospel of Action, ed., (SPCK], 2006), ISBN 978-0-281-05831-0 Search this book on ..
  • Discipleship: Pocket Radicals 1, (Ashram Press, 2007), ISBN 978-0-9559073-0-2 Search this book on ..
  • The Drama of Mark, jointly with Morna Hooker (Epworth Press, 2010), ISBN 978-0-7162-0664-4 Search this book on ..
  • Stilling the Storm, ed., ([1] Deo Publishing], 2011), ISSN 2048-0431.
  • Passions and Projects, jointly with Grace Vincent, Ashram Press 2017.

Urban Mission and Politics

Theology and Church

See also

See also

References

  1. ↑ "A Perversion of Christianity" Articles in The Times of London, 28 June 1989; The Guardian of London 26 June 1989; The Daily Telegraph of London 26 June 1989 and others
  2. ↑ High Court writ of 18 December 1985 addressed to Rev John J Vincent
  3. ↑ Secular Christ, (Lutterworth/Abingdon Press 1968), ISBN 7188-1387-1. pp 166-167
  4. ↑ "John Vincent; a pragmatic visionary", by Norwyn E Denny, The Methodist Recorder 15 June 1989
  5. ↑ Minutes of the Methodist Conference July 1988
  6. ↑ The Methodist Recorder July 1989
  7. ↑ The Word in Place, by Louise Lawrence, SPCK London 2009 p 22 ff
  8. ↑ Voices from the Borderland: Re-imagining Cross-Cultural Urban Theology in the 21st Century, Equinox London 2010 pp 101-107
  9. ↑ Minutes of the Methodist Conference July 1956ff
  10. ↑ "John Vincent; a pragmatic visionary", by Norwyn E Denny, The Methodist Recorder 15 June 1989
  11. ↑ Minutes of the Methodist Conference July 1962ff
  12. ↑ The Observer of London Colour Supplement 1967
  13. ↑ Minutes of the Methodist Conference July 1970ff
  14. ↑ The Star, Sheffield 15 November 2014
  15. ↑ Let's do Theology; Resources for Contextual Theology, by Laurie Green, SPCK London 2009 2nd ed, pp 90-92 and 122
  16. ↑ Walter Schartz in The Guardian of London 26 June 1989
  17. ↑ The Methodist Recorder 27 July 1989
  18. ↑ The Guardian of London (pictures) 7 December 1989
  19. ↑ "John Vincent; a pragmatic visionary", by Norwyn E Denny, The Methodist Recorder 15 June 1989
  20. ↑ "John Vincent; a pragmatic visionary", by Norwyn E Denny, The Methodist Recorder 15 June 1989
  21. ↑ "John Vincent; a pragmatic visionary", by Norwyn E Denny, The Methodist Recorder 15 June 1989
  22. ↑ "John Vincent; a pragmatic visionary", by Norwyn E Denny, The Methodist Recorder 15 June 1989
  23. ↑ "John Vincent; a pragmatic visionary", by Norwyn E Denny, The Methodist Recorder 15 June 1989
  24. ↑ Runyon, Theodore (December 1969). "Reviewed Work: Secular Christ by John J. Vincent". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 37 (4): 386, 388, 390. doi:10.1093/jaarel/XXXVII.4.386. JSTOR 1460777.
  25. ↑ Thiselton, Anthony (August 1969). "Secular Christ. By John J. Vincent. Lutterworth Press, 1968. 247 pp. 25s. and 18s.; Who is This Jesus?. By D. T. Niles. Lutterworth Press, 1968. 156 pp. 16s.; The Gospel According to Judas. By Philip Leon. Victor Gollancz, 1968. 288 pp. 35s". Theology. 72 (590): 373–374. doi:10.1177/0040571X6907200820.
  26. ↑ Sansbury, C. J. (September 1966). "Book Review: The Church as the Body of Christ. By Eduard Schweitzer, SPCK, 1965. 78 pp. 5s. 6d; The Anglican Synthesis. Edited by W. R. F. Browning. Peter Smith, 1965. 159 pp. 21s; Christ and Methodism. By John J. Vincent. Epworth Press, 1965. 124 pp. 8s. 6d; The Church Today and Tomorrow. By J. V. Langmead Casserley. SPCK, 1965. 114 pp. 6s". Theology. 69 (555): 422–423. doi:10.1177/0040571X6606955515.

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