As noted in my first blog post about 'Summer Reading' (part 2 coming soon!), I read and thoroughly enjoyed the book I am reviewing today, Eric Russell's biography of J. C. Ryle, 'That Man of Granite with the Heart of a Child', a notable English Anglican Evangelical who was the first Anglican Bishop of Liverpool. This particular biography is part of Christian Focus' 'History Makers' series; which includes biographies of a range of major Christian leaders. This book, though, with a pleasant soft-touch paperback cover and a Liverpool-reminiscent boat on the front, deals with an Anglican leader who offers a model of ministry, mission and ecumenicism for those of us inside, outside and around the Church of England and its various overseas parts.
Russell, the author, according to the back cover, was an ordained Church of England minsiter, but spent much of his career teaching teachers in Religious Studies, and had a special interest in the history of the Liverpool diocese. Given the founding nature of Ryle - the first Bishop - in that diocese, Russell is an obvious choice for the author, and his knowledge of Liverpool and its environs and populace embellish the book with depth and colour. Fortunately, however, the life of Bishop Ryle was pretty colourful!
Rather than offer a summary of the book - I really cannot emphasise enough how worth reading it is - I want to pick up on a few points that really struck me from the life of Bishop Ryle. The first is his origins; from a wealthy middle class family, as a man in England he had the world at his feet. At least, until his father, an over-kind banker, lost everything overnight. This, linked to Ryle's conversion a few years earlier, propelled the future bishop into ordination, whence he spent time in a range of parishes. Ryle is best known, certainly in some circles, for his books and tracts, and his writing ministry is enduring. But I wonder whether Anglican ordinands, incumbents, curates (and others in place-based pastoral ministry!) might benefit from reading this biography and considering his model of parish ministry, linking presence to preaching, and catechesis to care. Ryle was, by all accounts, an excellent parish priest, even after he became better known nationally.
Secondly, the way in which Ryle was staunchly evangelical in the Anglican sense, and yet did not let that cloud his ability to work with other Christians, within and without the Church of England. As ever, Ryle was criticised (particularly as a Bishop) for his friendships and relationships across party lines in the Church, but he maintained his staunch evangelical principles with vigour and integrity. Further - and some present-day evangelicals within and without the Church of England would well to learn from this (As well as the generosity Ryle embodied) - as both Priest and later as Bishop, Ryle maintained good relationships with gospel Christians in other denominations; the anecdote of him preaching whilst on holiday amongst friends in Scotland is particularly enjoyable. As a side note, for Anglican readers, Ryle's model of ministry as a Bishop is fascinating, offering an example for those that may yet one day wear a mitre, and a challenge to remain evangelical and outward-looking if that is the case.
Thirdly and finally, Ryle's was a life interspersed with suffering and happiness in unequal and bumpy measure. He married, in the end, three times, with his wives dying of various diseases which cause him great stress and expense. He was attacked from all sides over his handling - in my reading, a gracious handling - of a rogue Anglo-Catholic ritualist in Liverpool, which can be seen as a crystalisation of the various criticisms and attacked he had recieved over the years. Bishop Ryle, in his later years, was also not a well or young man, and yet sustained his ministry pretty much till the end. Russell writes sympathetically and honestly about Ryle's personal life, and his observations and reporting are filled with nuggets of wisdom for the pastor thinking about serving Christ and his Church for the long hall.
All in all, then, I can hardly recommend this enough. To my Anglican friends, if you count yourself Anglican at all and evangelical in even the loosest sense, this should be on your reading list. To my nonconformist friends, this book represents a vital piece of history, yet in such a way that we should pray for our friends in the Church of England, and learn from the best of them. To those interested in Church history and politics, this book is a fascinating insight into the way that, really, very little has changed in over a hundred years. Highly recommended.
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