Education Quote by Roland Allen

Allen is pushing back against the missionary reflex to turn faith into a syllabus. His “profound belief” in the Sacraments isn’t sentimental; it’s tactical and theological. He’s arguing that baptism and communion are not merely symbols to be decoded by clergy or catechisms, but practices that do formative work on their own. The Sacraments “teach the teachable” not by dumping information into new converts, but by shaping perception through repetition, community, and embodied ritual. In other words: the meaning isn’t fully grasped before participation; participation is part of the grasping.

The subtext is a critique of paternalism. “All that we think we know” carries a pointed suspicion toward Western, educated certainty - the assumption that converts must be brought up to speed with the intellectual scaffolding of the sending church. Allen implies that this rush to explain can become a form of control: it keeps authority in the hands of the expert and treats newcomers as empty vessels rather than agents capable of spiritual learning.

Contextually, Allen wrote in an era when Protestant missions often imported not just Christianity but a whole cultural regime: doctrines, liturgies, moral codes, even European social norms. His insistence on “no hurry” is a rebuke to that colonial tempo, the impatience to standardize and supervise. He’s betting on the Spirit working through shared practices, and he’s making a practical ecclesial point: if the Sacraments can carry divine pedagogy, the church can risk trust - in converts, in local communities, and in the slow intelligence of worship.