Date: September 18, 2024
The Seniors and the Middlers will remember Dr. Scott Cowdell and his wife Lisa. Scott was a Dean’s Scholar. He lived with us for three months or so. He was a fun interlocutor for many, ready to discuss this or that question in some detail over lunch or in 1823. The fruits of his time with us have now materialized. His book Why Church? is available from Church Publishing. His project was simple: why do we bother with Church? And how do advocates for Church keep Church going? He tends to the view that simplistic answers are not sufficient: the praise band and the extra service do not get to the heart of the problem. Instead he argues that we need to recover a sense of Christian hospitality through the Eucharist. He grapples in detail with the “spiritual but not religious” mood of our time. He acknowledges a Eucharistic approach cannot be synonymous with Church being a prejudiced or boring place. This approach remains the way forward because it is the Eucharist that tells the story of the faith that Christians inhabit. If Christianity is to continue, then it will only be recognizable in the future provided we continue to inhabit this story through the Eucharist.
I enjoyed writing the foreword; I also enjoyed reading the book. VTS was an indispensable partner in making this book appear. I encourage you to buy the book. It really is good.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and the President of The General Theological Seminary