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book Reviews
Who They Were,
edited by John Taylor and Clyde Binfield, is published by the United
Reformed Church History Society and Shaun Tyas Publishing, (ISBN 978
1900289 825). It costs £19.95 and is obtainable from the
Church House
Bookshop.
The URC History
Society has published Who They Were, snapshots of leading figures of the
last century who are part of the heritage of the United Reformed Church
and Congregational Churches. The book records the lives of people
involved in politics and industry, preaching and theology, and the
changing role of women. Two who helped to shape the age mid-century were
the popular religious broadcaster the Revd Elsie Chamberlain and Prime
Minister Harold Wilson, both of Congregationalist conviction. Elsie was
among the significant minority who rejected the union in 1972, with
others forming the Congregational Federation of which she was
immediately a dominant member and an early president.
From the beginning of the century we have Charles Silvester Horne, who
liked to claim he was the first Member of Parliament in full pastoral
charge of a Congregational Church since the 1650s, father of comedian
Kenneth Horne, and the Revd Constance Coltman, the first woman to be
ordained to the Christian ministry in Britain. At the end of the century
comes Lesslie Newbigin, one of the most outstanding Christian thinkers
of the 20th century. Lesslie was a seminal theologian and a leading
worker for church unity, and was widely recognised as the foremost
missionary statesman of his generation.
Lord Reith of BBC fame also features. More expected figures are hymn
writers Caryl Micklem, Fred Kaan, Eric Routley and Brian Wren. Caryl's
uncle Nathaniel Micklem, principal of Mansfield College, P T Forsyth,
and John Huxtable are amongst a strong contingent of theologians and
biblical scholars.
It is fitting that the ecumenical contribution to our life is recorded
in the entries for Welsh Presbyterian Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Methodist
Leslie Weatherhead, and Baptist F B Meyer.
The book's editors and writers are to be congratulated for this record
of the valuable contribution to national life that some 200 members of
our comparatively small church have made.
Jean Silvan Evans
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