Lesslie Newbigin

Bishop Lesslie Newbigin in 1996

James Edward Lesslie Newbigin (December 8, 1909 – January 30, 1998) who chaired the North of England Shipowners Federation in 1922..

Biography

Newbigin was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumbria. His father was owner and manager of a shipping company who chaired the North of England Ship Owners Federation in 1922. His mother was of Scottish ancestry and both parents were committed Presbyterians. His father was also a pacifist and chose to send Lesslie to a Quaker boarding school where he would not be required to emter the military cadets. Newbigin attended Leighton Park in Reading, Berkshire. He was attracted by Quaker concern for those on the margins of society but was not deeply religious at this period in his life. He went to on matriculate te at Queens' College, Cambridge in 1928. He soon became involved in the Student Christian Movement. Attending many meetings, he heard such people as William Temple and John Raleigh Mott speak. Both were pioneers of the ecumenical movement. Archbishop Temple was alsoOn 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.

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.

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."

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."

Bibliography

Autobiography

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

Major works

• A South India Diary, SCM, 1951 (revised 1960)
• The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church, SCM, 1953 (reprinted Paternoster, 1998, ISBN 978-0-85364-935-9)
• Sin and Salvation, 1956, SCM
• Trinitarian Doctrine for Today's Mission, Edinburgh House Press, 1963, (reprinted Paternoster, 1998, ISBN 978-0-85364-797-3)
• Honest Religion for Secular Man, SCM, 1966
• The Finality of Christ, SCM, 1969
• The Good Shepherd, Faith Press, 1977
• 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, World Council of Churches, 1983, ISBN 978-2-8254-0784-4
• Foolishness to the Greeks: Gospel and Western Culture, Eerdmans/SPCK, l986, ISBN 978-0-281-04232-6
• The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, SPCK/Eerdmans/WCC, 1989, ISBN 978-0-281-04435-1
• Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth, SPCK, 1991, ISBN 0-8028-0607-4
• A Word in Season: Perspectives on Christian World Missions, edited by Eleanor Jackson, Saint Andrew Press/Eerdmans, 1994, ISBN 978-0-7152-0704-8
• Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship, SPCK, 1995, ISBN 978-0-281-04915-8
• Truth and Authority in Modernity, Gracewing Publishing, 1996, ISBN 978-1-563-38168-3
• Signs amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History, edited and introduced by Geoffrey Wainwright, Eerdmans, 2003, ISBN 978-0-802809-896

Popular works

• A Walk Through the Bible, SPCK/Westminster John Knox Press, 2000, ISBN 9781573833578
• Discovering truth in a changing world, Alpha International, 2003, ISBN 9781904074359
• Living Hope in a changing world, Alpha International, 2003, ISBN 9781904074366

Secondary literature

• Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology of Cultural Plurality, George R. Hunsberger, Eerdmans, 1998, ISBN 978-0-8028-4369-7
• Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life, Geoffrey Wainwright, Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-19-510171-5
• "As The Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You": J. E. Lesslie Newbigin's Missionary Ecclesiology, Michael W. Goheen, Boekencentrum, 2000, ISBN 978-0239-0976-3
• Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: a Reader, Paul Weston (ed.), SPCK/Eerdmans, 2006 ISBN 978-0802829825 (includes nearly 30 texts by Newbigin)
• Grasping Truth and Reality: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology of Mission to the Western World, Donald LeRoy Stults, Wipf and Stock, 2008, ISBN 13: 978-1-55635-723-7

External links

• Over 250 texts by Newbigin and 50 responses to him, in a searchable database, at Newbigin.net
• Biography at Newbigin.net
• Extensive Newbigin-only bibliography at Newbigin.net
• Newbigin Reading Room On-line texts by and on Lesslie Newbigin maintained by Donald Goertz, Tyndale Seminary
• 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'

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