Sumner, George R. 1955-

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Sumner, George R. 1955-

PERSONAL:

Born 1955; married; wife's name Stephanie (a psychotherapist); children: two. Education: Harvard University, B.A.; Yale University, M.Div, Ph.D. Hobbies and other interests: Playing squash.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Wycliffe College, 5 Hoskin Ave., Toronto, Ontario M5S 1H7, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, educator, editor, and Episcopal priest. Wycliffe College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, principal and Helliwell Professor of World Mission; St. Paul's Anglican Church, Toronto, honorary assistant. Worked as a missionary teacher in Tanzania, a pastor on a native reserve, and a small-town parish priest.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Ephraim Radner) Reclaiming Faith: Essays on Orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church and the Baltimore Declaration, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 1993.

(Editor, with Ephraim Radner) The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age, Morehouse Publishing (Harrisburg, PA), 1998.

The First and the Last: The Claim of Jesus Christ and the Claims of Other Religious Traditions, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 2004.

(With Jeffrey P. Greenman) Unwearied Praises: Exploring Christian Faith through Classic Hymns, Clements Publishing (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer and editor George R. Sumner is an Episcopal priest who serves as the principal of Wycliffe College, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is also the university's Helliwell Professor of World Mission. Sumner frequently travels and preaches on behalf of the school, noted a biographer on the Wycliffe College Web site. He is involved in the education of both beginning and advanced students, teaching introductory classes on the basic principles of theological inquiry and serving as a faculty advisor to third-year students in the master of divinity (M.Div) program. Sumner comes from an academic background in systematic theology, and conducts research in areas such as "theology of missions, inter-religious dialogue, Anglicanism, and the theology of ordination," reported the Web site biographer.

Sumner is coeditor of a pair of books with Wycliffe College colleague Ephraim Radner. Reclaiming Faith: Essays on Orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church and theBaltimore Declaration contains a series of essays written in response to the Baltimore Declaration, a 1991 statement by six prominent Episcopal priests that challenged changes made to age-old concepts and interpretations of holy scripture in the name of "inclusivity and pluralism." Topics include the nature of the Holy Trinity; the contents of the scriptural canon and how it contains everything necessary for salvation; the revelations made through the death and resurrection of Christ, and more. Contributors to the book grapple with questions such as the nature of Christian identity and belief, and the existence of a right belief, and the historical expressions of such belief. David Hoffman, writing in Touchstone, stated: "This book is certainly worth a read, and could play an important role in furthering a discussion which is so vital to all our churches."

The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age, also edited by Sumner and Radner, collects works by Anglican scholars and theologians in response to the research of a group of biblical and religious authorities called the "Jesus Seminar," and to the type of historical and literary criticism of Anglican belief that the group introduces. In response to that type of criticism, the "authors here collected present in extraordinarily vigorous and convincing terms an alternative practice that is both more faithful to the scriptures and better suited to the witness and common life of the churches themselves," observed Philip Turner in the Anglican Theological Review. Turner concluded: "This is an exciting and important book that runs against the grain of current ‘orthodoxies’ and for that very reason deserves careful consideration by the whole Church."

In The First and the Last: The Claim of Jesus Christ and the Claims of Other Religious Traditions, Sumner "considers the reality of religious pluralism," noted Jan A.B. Jongeneel in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research. Sumner concentrates on the concept of "final primacy" which looks at how non-Christian religions and their individual claims of truth relate to Christ, the grace of Christ, and the general themes of Christianity. He looks at how the concepts of final primacy apply in five general areas of theology: modern theology, salvation economy, mission theology, Indian Christian theology, and inculturation theologies. He further works to go beyond what Jongeneel referred to as the "unsatisfying contemporary framework in the theology of religions." For Sumner, exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism are not three distinct approaches or models of Christian theology, but are instead "three necessary dimensions of Christian life," Jongeneel observed. "Generally a good marker of current issues, terminology, and authors, this is an important study of Christian claims concerning others, not others' claims for themselves," commented Peter Slater in a Theological Studies review. Jongeneel concluded, "This book is an excellent tool to be used in graduate courses and outside academia."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Anglican Theological Review, fall, 1999, Philip Turner, review of The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age.

Christian Century, August 10, 1994, Julia Gatta, review of Reclaiming Faith: Essays on Orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church and the Baltimore Declaration.

International Bulletin of Missionary Research, July 1, 2005, Jan A.B. Jongeneel, review of The First and the Last: The Claim of Jesus Christ and the Claims of Other Religious Traditions, p. 164.

Theological Studies, June, 2006, Peter Slater, review of The First and the Last, p. 463.

Theology Today, January, 2006, Schubert M. Ogden, review of The First and the Last, p. 568.

Touchstone, May, 1995, David Hoffman, review of Reclaiming Faith.