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Susan Lucas (ed.). 2020.

God’s Church in The World: The Gift of 
Catholic Mission.

Norwich: Canterbury Press.

isbn: 978-17-8622-240-4

Reviewed by Luke Larner
University of Roehampton 
lukelarner@hotmail.co.uk

Anglican polity and mission remain heated topics if arguments on social 
media and articles in the press are anything to go by, sometimes reaching 
fever pitch among the adherents and opponents of movements such as “Fresh 
Expressions of Church” and “Save the Parish”. A book seeking to elucidate a dis-
tinctly Catholic missiology for the twenty-first century seems, therefore, highly 
relevant. This book’s chapters are largely drawn from a 2018 conference result-
ing from the “improbable” collaboration between representatives of Forward in 
Faith and Anglican Catholic Future (p. ix).

That the book is seeking to engage these ongoing debates is made clear 
in that by the second page of the introduction, it has already critiqued Mission 
Shaped Church (2004), a publication criticized by many prominent voices from 

mailto:lukelarner@hotmail.co.uk


E c c l e s i a l  F u t u r e s :  Vo l u m e  3 ,  I s s u e  1

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the Catholic wing of the Church of England. The book seeks to argue for a dis-
tinctively Catholic understanding of mission “in a language in which Catholics 
of all ‘tribes’ in the Church of England would feel at home” (p. x). The book does 
offer useful perspectives on mission, particularly the final chapter, “Catholic 
Mission in Historical Perspective”, which traces the history and identifies some 
useful core principles. I would, however, argue that the book does not reach 
the potential of its proposal to represent mission from “the breadth of Catholic 
integrities in the Church of England today” (as the back cover claims).

Organized into a clear structure, the book offers chapters on a variety of 
important aspects of mission from a Catholic Anglican perspective, including 
prayer (Ch.1), the Trinity (Ch.2), the Sacraments (Ch.6), Social Justice (Ch.7) 
and more. These chapters give practical perspectives on mission through 
exploring the history, theology and practice of the Catholic movement in the 
Church of England. Largely argued succinctly and clearly, the book offers a use-
ful introduction to mission in this tradition. Contributions and conversations 
from either side of the big “divide” over the ordination of women weave well 
together and don’t feel forced.

The book’s greatest weakness, I would argue, is its claimed breadth of 
“Catholic integrities”. Simply representing both those for/against the ordina-
tion of women is just not enough. An example of this is that the authors are 
all exclusively white, and are all clergy (with the exception of one professed 
religious contributing to Ch.4). This seems highly problematic given the diverse 
make up of Catholic Anglicans, especially for a book entitled “God’s Church in 
the World”. A second major issue related to the first, is that there is absolutely 
no engagement with the relationship between Christian mission and the ongo-
ing legacy of racism and colonialism. This lack of breadth and engagement is 
highlighted through some particularly problematic passages which fail to intel-
ligently engage missiology in the diverse, postmodern and multi-faith context 
of twenty-first-century Britain. References to “tough black boys from estates” 
(p. 63) and “harder to reach estates and people groups” (p. 109) feel decidedly 
distasteful in a book written by elite-educated white people. Indeed, the general 
tone of the book seems to fail to engage with a twenty-first-century English 
context where the Church must learn to accept a very different place in society 
and national life. I would suggest, therefore, that this leaves room for further 
published work on Catholic mission in the Anglican tradition which engages a 
broader and more critical perspective.




