The Rt. Rev. Kings is the first-ever mission theologian in the Anglican Communion

Graham Kings is an evangelical Anglican of the centrist variety—in favor of women in ministry, against blessing same-sex relationships, but unwilling to let a split in the church be forced upon him over that point. And above all, Kings is passionate for a mission-driven church.

Kings grew up in a family that only nominally belonged to the church. From ages 7 to 12, he sang in the church choir. “I knew God existed, but I had no idea you could have a personal relationship with him,” he says. After high school, he went into the army for one year, during which he felt miles away from God. Oxford was his next stop, to read law. There he got to know some committed Christians. “I started reading the Gospels again, and the Jesus I met in the Gospels matched the Jesus I saw in the lives of those Christians.”

Someone asked Kings to come to an outreach service and there, on Sunday evening, January 20, 1974, he committed his life to the Lord. The next Wednesday, he met his future wife, and that Friday, he attended a missionary prayer group of Operation Mobilization. It was not just your average week!

In 1980, Kings heard on the radio the story of Jean Waddell, a British missionary who had been held hostage in Iran for several months after the revolution of the ayatollahs. Inspired by her courage, but even more by her will to forgive, Kings volunteered for her sending organization, the Church Mission Society. After his curacy in London, he and his wife felt called to work overseas in mission.

“Those years in Kenya changed me completely,” Kings says. “I was a Barthian in theology. ‘Religion’ was a dirty word. God’s revelation came from an entirely different world, from above, and would turn all things upside down. In Africa, I encountered theologians who would build upon what was already there. When the gospel enters a certain culture, it confirms some aspects of that culture, transforms some, and challenges others.”

In July 2015, Kings gave up his bishopric, of Sherborne in Dorset, and was appointed the first-ever Mission Theologian of the Anglican Communion. This research post is a partnership between the Archbishop of Canterbury, Durham University, and the Church Mission Society. “It’s a partnership to find and publish new voices,” Kings adds.

He has set up theology seminars in Bangalore, Nairobi, and Buenos Aires. The idea is to offer developing world theologians three-month sabbaticals to develop research theses into chapters of books. They will work, expense-free, at colleges in Oxbridge, Durham, or Virginia. “It’s to give them the space to write,” Kings explains. A series of books will be published over seven years on various aspects of theology such as the church, Christ, and atonement.

“The center of gravity of world Christianity has shifted toward the south. We need to hear those voices in the church,” says Kings, 61. “I hope that we can bring the vitality of theology from Africa, Asia, and Latin America into the Western church.”

What is “new” about theology from Africa, Asia, and Latin America is that it often arises from a context of poverty and persecution. Because of that different context, theologians from those areas read the Bible in a different light and find things that had previously been overlooked. This is reminiscent of Paul, who describes to the Galatians how the church was flooded with Christians from among the Gentiles. They were full of the Spirit, but they were not circumcised. That caused Paul to revisit the Old Testament, where he discovered that Abraham had already been justified before he was circumcised. We are accepted by God through faith, not through works of the law. “Those new voices from Africa, Asia, and Latin America are doing the same as the early Gentile Christians: causing controversy, renewing theology, and changing the shape of the church,” Kings says.

He predicts that the Anglican Church will be reshaped by the life of poverty experienced by those in the developing world, now the heart (in terms of growth) of world Christianity. “The center of Christianity has shifted from the north to the south of the world,” he said. “That echoes the shift of early Christianity from a Jewish to a Hellenistic culture. The church in the north can learn from the church in the south about the spiritual depths involved in surviving persecution.”

With all the controversy in the Anglican Communion family over the last years, Kings is in a “realistically hopeful” mood. He expects a lot from Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, who took over from Rowan Williams in 2013. “Most of the leadership of the English church now consists of people who are theologically orthodox and mission-driven,” Kings says.

“I am not optimistic. That is a human trait. Hope is from God, rooted in suffering and in scripture. Romans 15, verse 13, has become a key text for me: ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.’”

If you would like to learn more about Graham Kings and his missions work, please visit Mission Theology. On the site you can explore pictures, artwork, articles, and poetry.

Sources: www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/articles/interview-with-graham-kings-dutch-perspectives/, 2015; www.missiontheologyanglican.org/, 2015; and www.dur.ac.uk/.