If you were charged with being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? This well-rehearsed challenge begs further questions. What kind of evidence would be relevant and, with an eye to Cowdell’s theme, what might be the evidential relevance of Church affiliation and participation? These questions have been sharpened by decline in Church attendance in many parts of the world, and the increasing appeal of spirituality in one form or another as an alternative to more formal religious observance as typified by organized religion and its participatory expectations. It would now be commonplace for the defendant facing our hypothetical charge to argue that she doesn’t have to go to Church to be guilty as charged, or to demonstrate anything more than nominal affiliation. She might argue that she observes Christian moral standards, unlike many Churchgoers, prays at times and embraces Jesus as some sort of role model. But the Church just doesn’t cut it for her and she can’t understand why that matters when it comes to her claim to be a Christian – so, why Church?

In his Forward to this addition to what he describes as ‘an explosion of articles and books that agonise over the question, “Why Church?”’ (p. vii), Ian Markham, Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary, hails Scott Cawdell as one who ‘both understands the challenges and sees the way forward [which is] surprisingly traditional: to recover a sense of Christian hospitality through the Eucharist’.

This prioritization of the Eucharistic Church is a bold endeavour given, as Cowdell himself admits, we are ‘at a time when that traditional conviction has become largely inexplicable in Western culture’ (p6). His approach is to employ ‘a combination of theological and scriptural reflection along with discussion of contemporary cultural and political realities’ (ibid). His hope is that ‘it might help frustrated and disappointed ecclesial consumers to rediscover themselves as gifted and grateful participants in something more adventurous, and more comradely’ (ibid). Whether enhancing a sense of adventure and comradeship is sufficient to win people away from participation in alternative cultural, recreational and online pastimes offering similar inducements is a question hanging over the six chapters that follow Cowdell’s earnest Introduction.

First of all, a key distinction is drawn between the Church as historically ‘Hardware’ where ‘being Christian means being integrally ecclesial’, and the Church as ‘Software’ providing ‘optional resources for individual Christians’. The former is illustrated with three ‘snapshots’ referencing early Christian expansion, Christendom and today’s Global South as examples, in contrast with the Church in the West as now ‘Software’ with belonging to the Church no longer the rational choice that it represented in bygone eras, and in the Global South today. Here, Charles Taylor’s taxonomy and secularisation indicators are deployed to lay the evidential foundations for what follows.

Chapter three develops G.K. Chesterton’s assertion that ‘Christianity is not a religion; it is a Church’. Here the meat of the book is to be found. Citing Bonhoeffer’s ‘Christ existing as Church-community’, another of Cowdell’s dialectical metaphors draws on the heart-based imagery of systole and diastole to show how the inflow of abiding in Christ leads to the outflow of mission. It is this dimension of ‘abiding’ which has given way to mere ‘activism’ and various manifestations of tribalism, which the Church, as a ‘nontribal tribe’, exists to challenge. ‘Instead of Christian individuals making the Church, as followers of an individual Christ, the Church is Christ in thoroughly relational form, and from that reality the Church makes Christian individuals’ (p49). This leads to Cowdell’s key refusal ‘to separate Church from Christian faith ’ (p51). A non-attender at Church is to be adjudged innocent if charged with being a Christian, however much she may assert her guilt!

Although he seeks to forestall charges of tribalism in general, and religious tribalism in particular, those who seek to rescue faith from the institutional clutches of religion may well remain unconvinced by his advocacy for Christianity as essentially embodied in the Church as a tribe, albeit a nontribal one. Is such a treasure to be found in such an earthen vessel? In a chapter devoted to that question, he concedes that the Church is ‘ a flawed human institution’ without conceding that this might hole beneath the waterline claims for the Church as essential when it comes to Christianity being ‘as it was meant to be’.

A fine chapter on the four marks of the Church being seen more as watermarks ‘present though not always readily perceived’ goes a long way towards meeting such reservations, concluding that ‘there will always be more to the Church than its worst features might indicate’ (p108).

A final chapter movingly evokes the centripetal power of the Eucharist as Christ’s earnest desire for us to join him as those called to his supper. A survey of post-Church options, including fresh expressions, online and virtual reality options, are examined and found wanting when it comes to being truly the Church gathered around the Lord’s Table – or even Christian to any theologically sustainable degree.

This book is a welcome example of theology at its most accessible with potential to engage a wide readership and to be used for group discussion as well as personal challenge and edification. Pithy and pertinent questions are offered for consideration at the end of each chapter, plus helpful end-notes, bibliography and index.

Included in Ian Markham’s ‘explosion of articles and books’ must be Rupert Shortt’s The Eclipse of Christianity and Why it Matters (Hodder and Stoughton) 2024 and Thomas Halik’s The Afternoon of Christianity: the courage to change (University of Notre Dame Press) 2024. Both are Roman Catholics, as is Scott Cowdell after 36 years of ministry as an Anglican priest.

Just as Cowdell acknowledges that Hans Kung ‘has always seemed close to Anglican sensibility’(p102) when it comes to his ecclesiology, so much might also be said of Shortt and Halik. This raises interesting questions as to whether Anglicanism might have something crucial to contribute to Cowdell’s ‘Why Church?’ enquiry. The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies (OUP 2016) concludes with Terry M Brown’s exposition of 10 Anglican Ways arising from the need to respond creatively to five centuries of often radical ecclesiological challenges. Given the current cultural context now challenging corporate expressions of Christian believing and belonging, clearly Anglican via media principles have a part to play in articulating and effecting appropriate responses. Perhaps there may yet be another ‘Anglican Way’ which is capable of rising to the challenge of embodying Cowdell’s ‘Christianity as it was meant to be’ – and thereby re-capturing and re-creating that house with many rooms including an upper room where, though we are many, we can be one body, because we share in the one bread.