The Thirty-nine Articles and the Church

(Ed: In an effort to keep the ball rolling on the subject of Anglicanism as a theological system, I thought I'd reprint the following, which was a talk given to an evening meeting of our own congregations a couple of years ago.)

Introduction 

That the Thirty-nine Articles were designed to benefit both the church and the state by settling religious disputes is evident from the Royal Declaration of 1562:

Being by God’s Ordinance, according to Our just Title, Defender of the Faith, and Supreme Governour of the Church, within these Our Dominions, We hold it most agreeable to this Our Kingly Office, and our own religious Zeal, to conserve and maintain the church committed to Our Charge, in Unity of true Religion, and in the Bond of Peace; and not to suffer unnecessary Disputations, Altercations, or Questions to be raised, which may nourish Faction both in the Church and Commonwealth.

That is the Anglican ideal, based on the model of church and state conceived at the English Reformation. There are to be no disputations, altercations and questions. Instead there is to be unity and the bond of peace, in state and in church.

The nature of the Church

But what is the Church? Article XIX tells us:

THE visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.

Notice first, the reference to the visible Church, as distinct from the invisible Church. The invisible Church is the company of faithful believers known only to Christ. And indeed the Westminster Confession of 1647 began its definition of the Church there:

The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect ... [emphasis added]

But of course the membership of the invisible Church is known only to God, and the Articles leave that aside, concentrating only on the visible. And what is visible is the preaching of the Word of God and the ministering of the Sacraments according to Christ’s commands. Where you have those, you have the Church.

Church and diocese

But here we hit a modern political issue. In his book The Anglican Understanding of the Church, Paul Avis, who is a very influential writer in these matters, denies that Article 19 means that the local congregation is the fundamental unit of the Church.

He argues from the fact that the Latin version of this article refers to a coetus fidelium — an assembly of the faithful — which he says refers to “a national church made up of dioceses” (p77). He concludes,

The ‘local church’ in Anglican ecclesiology denotes ... the community of word and sacrament gathered, governed and led by the bishop. For Anglican ecclesiology , the ‘congregation’ in the strict sense is the diocese. (Avis op cit)

Not unnaturally, this conclusion has made Avis very popular amongst bishops, but whilst Avis is right in saying that the Article has a wider view than the local congregation, he is, I would argue, wrong to say it is the diocese.

Particular and national churches

The reason I believe he is wrong is because the Articles themselves don’t think of the Church in this way. The critical Article is 37, Of the Civil Magistrates, which says this:

THE King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other his Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain ...

The administrative boundary of the Church, within which its spiritual affairs are ordered, is not the diocese under the bishop, or even the province under the archbishop, but the nation, under the King, under God. Then, just as the civil administration is broken down into smaller units, so is the church’s administration broken down into dioceses and parishes. As Thomas Cranmer himself wrote,

The ministers of God’s word under his majesty be the bishops, parsons, vicars, and such other priests as be appointed by his highness to that ministration: as for example, the bishop of Canterbury, the bishop of Duresme, the bishop of Winchester, the parson of Winwick, &c. All the said officers and ministers, as well of the one sort as of the other, be appointed, assigned, and elected in every place, by the laws and orders of kings and princes. (‘Questions and Answers Concerning the Sacraments and the Appointment and Power of Bishops and Priests’ in Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, Ed J E B Cox [Cambridge: The Parker Society, 1846, reproduced by Regent College Publishing], 116, emphasis added)

Insofar as the word ‘local’ means ‘belonging to a particular place’, the smallest place the Church of England recognizes where the Word of God is preached and the Sacraments administered to the people of that place is thus the parish, not the diocese. In fact the Word of God is never preached to the people of a diocese, nor are the sacraments ministered ‘diocesanly’.

The understanding of the ‘particular’ Church as essentially national is seen in the second part of Article 19, which refers to Churches where, it would be presumed, the pure Word of God is not preached and the Sacraments not duly administered:

As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.

The same thing is also reflected in Article 34, Of the Traditions of the Church. This explicitly recognizes that because of the variations in customs according to time and place

Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, ceremonies or rites of the Church ...

According to the Articles, therefore, it is the national boundary which defines the organizational boundary of the Church.

Erastianism

And this is because the Articles work from a very specific understanding of society. According to the thinking behind the Articles, as shown in Article 37 Of the Civil Magistrates, authority in society devolves from God to the monarch and then to the other instruments of government. Indeed, this understanding, at its application, might arguably be seen as the Church of England’s unique contribution to the Reformation.

In essence, it is Romans 13:1 applied to the maximum: “The authorities that exist have been established by God.” Paul Avis calls it an Erastian paradigm, on the basis, as he puts it, that “it gives the state a rôle in spiritual oversight.” But Erastianism is generally thought of as a secular state controlling the Church, and that is not at all what the Articles have in mind. What they envisage is a godly Prince (Article 37) controlling both state and Church for the promotion of godly, Christian, living.

Without a doubt the arrangement between Church and State in England has become Erastian, and (almost) without a doubt the Church of England will eventually be disestablished. But we must not accuse the Articles of something they don’t in fact contain.

Authority

However, the relationship between Church and monarch envisaged by the Articles has massive implications for authority within the Church, which is the subject of Articles 20 and 21.

Article 20, Of the Authority of the Church, says first of all that the Church “hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies”. But remember, this would apply on to a ‘particular or national Church’. It is not an individual power — that is denied in Article 34, because, in a godly state, the individual does not have such authority. That can come only from the monarch. So, according to that Article, if the individual does presume to “break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church” it not only offends the order of the Church, it challenges “the authority of the Magistrate”.

Authority in the congregation

And remember, again, according to Article 37, the authority of the magistrate is the monarch’s authority. However, the same principle applies to authority within the Church. The authority of the Church’s officers also derives from the monarch, as we can see in Article 23 Of Ministering in the Congregation.

This takes some unpacking. First, it says,

IT is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of publick preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same.

Notice, first of all, what this doesn’t say. It doesn’t say “Only priests have the power to celebrate communion.” The important word here is ‘lawful’ — it may be possible, but it is not lawful to preach and administer the Sacraments unless you have been lawfully called.

But who are we to recognize as lawfully called? The second part of the Article gives this answer:

And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have publick authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.

The lawfully called are those who have been called and sent by people who have been given public authority to call and send.

But who are they? The Articles do not say the bishops. In fact, the words bishop, priest and deacon are remarkably rare in the Articles and entirely absent here, where we might expect to see them.

The simplest and most obvious thing for Article 23 to have said would have been,

It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching or ministering the sacraments in the congregation, before he be ordained a deacon or priest by a bishop.

That is what happens in practice, so why is the language of Article 23 so convoluted? The answer is that we are talking about the authority of the Church, not the nature of the ministry. And at the back of this is actually the Lutheran, which was simply this:

Concerning ecclesiastical orders they teach that no man should publicly in the church teach or administer the sacraments unless he be rightly called. (The Augsburg Confession)

But of course for Luther, the local congregation could rightly call someone to the public office of teaching and administering the sacraments. Moreover, for Luther every Christian was able to do this by merit of being a Christian. The issue was only how someone might rightly be authorised to do it publicly, in the congregation.

The Anglican Articles started life at a time when the Church of England and the Lutheran churches were in negotiations to see if they could reach an agreement. And even after these negotiations broke down some features of Lutheran theology were allowed to remain, and this is one of them. Public ministry in the congregation is allowed to the person who is properly called. In England people who do the calling are the bishops. But who gives them not just the ecclesiastical office but the public authority to do this? The answer is, the monarch. It is the monarch who has the power to confer public authority on the bishops lawfully to call and send ministers into the Lord’s vineyard, because all public authority comes from the monarch.

We see this in the Homily against Rebellion which says this:

[Christ] and his holy Apostles likewise ... did forbid unto all Ecclesiastical ministers, dominion over the Church of Christ.

The important word there is dominion. According to the homily, Christ refused dominion over the Church. When the people came to make him king he fled because his kingdom was not of this world.

By contrast, though, God has,

... constituted, ordained, and set earthly Princes over particular Kingdoms and Dominions in earth ...

So dominion belongs to the monarch. But the monarch may delegate lawful authority to the officers of the Church, just as he does to the magistrate. And so the bishop, as the King’s officer, is given power to call and send ministers. But it is a limited power — limited by the fact that it depends on the monarch for its lawful authority in the public realm.

General Councils

This limitation of authority, though, is most spectacularly seen in Article 21, Of the Authority of General Councils, where it says this:

General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes.

The reference to General Councils is those councils of the Church whose deliberations can be seen as binding on the whole Church, not just the particular or national church.

But the thinking behind the Article is very cautious about this, not least because such Councils can’t be guaranteed to get it right, as the second part of the Article says. So the authority of General Councils of the Church was limited in two ways. They couldn’t prescribe anything contrary to Scripture, and they couldn’t meet without the approval of the godly Princes, because those Princes had the responsibility for governing the national Churches under them.

The function of the Church 

So what can the Church do in its own right? The answer is, proclaim the Word of God, guard the faith and administer the Sacraments.

To do this Article 24 says the language used in the congregation should be one that the people understand. (Incidentally, contra Avis, the clear understanding here, when it talks about "public prayer in the Church", is that the Ecclesia is actually where people physically gather to hear God’s Word, to pray and to receive the Sacraments.)

It is allowed in Article 32 that bishops, priests and deacons may marry as they judge it will better serve to godliness.

Article 33 lays down that the Church may excommunicate people until they are received back by someone with appropriate authority.

Article 35 gives approval to the Homilies, which provided ready-made teaching material for those that couldn’t prepare their own.

Article 36 recognizes that the forms of consecration and ordination found in the Ordinal from the time of Edward VI are effective and lawful. The duties of a minister are laid out in that Ordinal. The details of Christian living are to be worked out in the day-to-day life of the Church. It remains only to remind ourselves that the Church, according to the articles, is made visible where there is true preaching and administration of the sacraments.

That is not only where the Church is, but that is where the Church is most visibly.

John P Richardson
31 October 2009

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Chelmsford Diocesean Evangelical Association Meeting Nov 7th

Aff Cath, or Anglican?

The recent press release by Affirming Catholicism and the Society of Catholic Priests regarding the Vatican’s offer of a Personal Ordinariate for Anglicans provides an illustration of what is implied by my suggestion that we should be more positive about the theological foundations and coherence of the Church of England.

Amongst other things, the statement contains the following:

We are actively working to see women ordained to the episcopate and hold that this is entirely consistent with the teaching of the church and the historic nature of our orders. [Emphasis added]

What is not said is that this is “entirely consistent with Scripture”, and this raises a question about the sufficiency of this statement within the framework of the Church of England. For the absence of this phrase, whilst it may simply be an oversight, must in the context nevertheless be set alongside the twentieth of the Thirty-nine Articles, which states that, “it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written.” And this, of course, is precisely the controverted issue when it comes to the ordination and consecration of women.

Now the point is not that the Church of England generally, or Affirming Catholicism particularly, have got it wrong. Rather, it is that a loyalty to its own foundational principles requires that the Church of England must act in ways consistent with Scripture and must never set this aside. Otherwise, it fails to be faithful to its own principles and is therefore open to challenge.

Significantly in this regard, Affirming Catholicism defines Anglican ‘loyalty’ as, “public recognition of and obedience to the decisions made by due canonical process by the Province to which one belongs.” Ultimately, however, the principles of the Church of England require that this can only be extended to matters where the Church has authority, such as regarding “Rites or Ceremonies” (Article XX). The individual must not “openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church which be not repugnant to the Word of God” (Article XXIV). Yet a faithful member of the Church of England could not be required to agree to something which was ‘repugnant to the Word of God’ —not without the Church acting contrary to its own principles.

This itself raises thorny issues related to conscience and the decision-making processes of the Church. We may note, indeed, that the first ordinations of women in the United States were, by Affirming Catholicism’s definition, acts of disloyalty, since they went against the canons of PECUSA at the time. They were declared “invalid” and charges were brought against the bishops involved. It may be wondered, therefore, whether Affirming Catholicism really means what it says on this issue or whether it does not itself recognize some higher loyalty than to decisions made by canonical processes.

This is not, however, to argue for an individual free-for-all. The point is that we must ask of Affirming Catholicism, or anyone else, “Is this consistent with Scripture? Can you show us your working and your reasoning on this?”

Of course, this entails openness on the part of all. If ordaining women is Scriptural, then so be it —all Anglicans should accept it, whatever the traditions of our Church may be. But the principle must be maintained. It is not enough for truly loyal Anglicans that ‘the Church teaches so’, much less that ‘the rules say so’ —even when it comes to the teaching and the rules of their own Church. Our foundational formularies demand more, and to insist on this is to be a loyal member of the Church of England.

John Richardson
29 October 2009

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Goodbye Evangelicalism, hello Church of England?

Recently this blog has addressed two issues which, at first glance, may seem to be unrelated. One is the state of Evangelicalism. The other is the significance of the Vatican’s recent manoeuvres vis à vis the Anglican Communion. As far as Evangelical Anglicans are concerned, however, these issues are much more closely connected than might appear.

On the one hand, the divisions within Evangelicalism raise the question of exactly what is an ‘Evangelical’. On the other hand, the Vatican’s offer may, as a Guardian editorial observes, leave Evangelicals isolated within the Church of England, since, unlike the Anglo-Catholics, they have “nowhere to go”. Certainly one scenario being envisaged is that this development will purge at least some of the ‘bigots’ from the Church, leaving the ‘unbigoted’ majority free to introduce women bishops and, ultimately, to embrace same-sex relationships.

If this scenario is correct, then the prospects within the Church of England for the Evangelicalism of our forebears is bleak. Open Evangelicals, virtually by definition, favour the ordination of women and will welcome the consecration of women bishops. But as a ‘party’ they are defined less by their adherence to traditional Evangelical doctrines than their sitting light to them.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Evangelical response has been to close ranks and, at the same time, to look for help in the form of overseas links, such as those forged in the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. Some even hope that such support would extend to episcopal oversight. Should it be offered and accepted, however, this would not merely isolate Conservative Evangelicals within the Church of England but might effectively remove them from it.

One is mindful of the lines from Sir Henry Newbolt’s poem:

The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

The situation seems beyond desperate. Our Evangelical unity is gone. Rome, which was for so long the antithesis of English Christianity, is offering English Christians a home. Have we not reached the time warned of by Bishop JC Ryle?

... so long as the Church of England sticks firmly to the Bible, the Articles, and the principles of the Protestant Reformation, so long I advise you strongly to stick to the church. When the Articles are thrown overboard, and the old flag is hauled down, then, and not until then, it will be time for you and me to launch the boats and quit the wreck. (Needs of the Times, in Holiness)

Maybe. But perhaps in Ryle’s warning lies the key to our problem. I may be quite mistaken, but desperate times call for desperate measures —and these seem to be desperate times. In the light of this, therefore, I want to suggest the abandoning of the Anglican Evangelical project and the consideration of an alternative.

By this ‘project’, I mean the notion that there is a primary thing called ‘evangelicalism’ which unites Evangelical Anglicans within their denomination and with others across denominational divides. That, I believe, is an understanding which no longer serves us well.

Crucially, as I have argued elsewhere, the notion of ‘Evangelical’ is too broad to be helpful when we move much beyond the shared goal of ‘seeing people become Christians’. When John Piper and Tom Wright can both rightly be regarded as Evangelicals, there is clearly a limit to the usefulness of the term ‘Evangelical’ as the basis for an identity. That is surely why we have seen the emergence of labels such as ‘Open’ and ‘Conservative’. If it ever was, it is no longer enough to be ‘merely’ Evangelical.

This is not to say that evangelicalism is an illusory concept, or that Evangelicals have nothing in common, but it is to say that evangelicalism is an insufficient basis for unity.

Furthermore, there have been two negative effects within the Church of England itself of this adopting of an ‘Evangelical’ identity. First, it has allowed Evangelicals to be isolated within the Church —indeed, they have encouraged this isolation themselves. Secondly, it has allowed the idea to take hold that the identity of the Church of England is properly broader than the ideas represented by this ‘Evangelicalism’. By buying into the Evangelical project, Anglican Evangelicals have actually encouraged the idea that the Church of England can define itself in non-evangelical ways.

At this point, however, it might easily be assumed that I am about to suggest the Church of England should be made evangelical. After all, many Evangelicals today say that they represent the ‘true Church of England’.

That is not, however, what I have in mind.

Historically, the Church of England was once exactly what it says on the tin: ‘the Church of England’. Anglo-Catholics often point out that the Church of England did not come into being at the Reformation. Rather, it was the Church in these isles before and after that event. When the term first began to be used, the only special thing about the ‘Church of England’ was its being in England (hence the Book of Common Prayer generally prints England with italics). Being a ‘particular or national’ church automatically allowed certain variations of outward practice. Variations of belief, however, were positively discouraged.

This contrasts radically with the Church of England today, even though it is often asserted that the ‘genius’ of Anglicanism lies in its comprehensiveness. The modern Church assumes a plurality of beliefs, even within its own ranks. But the broader this comprehensiveness becomes, the less the institution is able to take theology seriously.

What is taken seriously at the institutional level are the structures and regulations of the institution itself. As John Owen once complained, the typical bishop seems “zealous for the discipline and so negligent of the doctrine of the church.” And in case anyone should think this is simply a problem for some bishops, I would point out that the Clergy Disciplinary Measure, passed in 2003, does not cover any matters relating to doctrine, ritual or ceremonial. These were supposed to be the subject of a further Measure, but six years down the track it shows no signs of appearing.

Again, the lack of theological seriousness is seen in the training provided to Anglican ordinands. A key principle is that candidates for ministry in the Church of England should not be too theological ‘narrow’. The courses thus encourage ‘exploration’, but rarely seem designed to inculcate truth. Above all, perhaps, there seems to be almost no emphasis on the idea that there are received Anglican theological understandings. (How many ordinands have even read the Articles of Religion?) The justification for this is that ordinands are being trained for ministry in the Church of England as a whole, not one section of it, but the presumption is that this means being able to cope with theological variety. Yet such variety is possible in theological matters only to the extent that it is assumed not to matter very much.

It is within this framework that Anglican Evangelicalism as we now know it has taken shape. Hence Evangelicals today regard the institution as at best a place where their views must take their seat alongside other, non-evangelical, views and at worst as a lost cause.

In recent decades, this has increasingly impinged on Evangelicalism itself. In many areas, the old Diocesan Evangelical Fellowships are virtually defunct, as members look to other networks or to the structures of the institution for support. Some meet with like-minded groups, such as New Wine or Reform, though these themselves represent divergent theological views. Others, however, are happy to rely on official groupings, such as the Deanery Chapter for clergy, untroubled by the fact that their own theology may well be in a minority, or in formal conflict with the theology of many other Chapter members.

In the face of this, the natural response of traditionalist Evangelicals has been to withdraw both physically and mentally from the Church of England. The more they have done this, however, the worse —oddly enough —the problem has become. The answer advocated by most is increasingly to formalize this distancing from the institution. The answer I am advocating is that we reverse the process entirely.

 I remember once listening to George Carey, before he became Archbishop of Canterbury, describe himself as a Christian first, an Anglican second, and an Evangelical third. At the time I was distinctly unimpressed. I now want to suggest he was right, albeit for the wrong reasons. I now want to suggest that those who currently think of themselves as ‘Evangelical Anglicans’ should see themselves as Christians first, Church of England second, and Evangelicals only as a distant and carefully nuanced third.

How can I, as a hitherto-dedicated Conservative Evangelical, make such a suggestion?

The first reason is that, at the time of the Reformation, the Church of England committed itself to the principle that Scripture is its final authority in matters of faith. The formularies of the Church of England (to which incidentally it is bound by the law of the land), declare that the Scriptures are sufficient for salvation (Article 6), and that whilst the Church itself has “authority in Controversies of Faith” it cannot “ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written”. It is this commitment, above all, which makes me glad to be a member of that body which bears the name ‘the Church of England’.

In his magnum opus, Bishop Stephen Neill wrote that the theological essence of Anglicanism is this:

Show us anything clearly set forth in Holy Scripture that we do not teach and we will teach it. Show us anything in our teaching or practice is clearly contrary to Holy Scripture, and we will abandon it. (Anglicanism, Pelican Books, 1965, p 417)

Yet, as some will point out, this is exactly what Evangelicals would claim for themselves. Why not, then, go on being Evangelicals within Anglicanism?

The answer lies in the fact that evangelicalism no longer has —if it ever had —a unifying theology. The Church of England, however, has at its core precisely that, for it is still (by the grace of God!) tied to the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal and the Thirty-nine Articles. It is bound to these by law, and it is rooted in them historically via the Reformation itself.

Contrary to what might be assumed from Neill’s quote above, therefore, the Church of England is not a Church which operates by ‘Scripture alone’ in the sense that it gives people the Bible and nothing else to represent its core beliefs. Rather, there are many points of potential theological controversy where the formularies of the Church of England take a settled view —on infant baptism, for example, or on the nature of bread and wine at Communion.

The Church of England has therefore set itself under the authority of Scripture, but via its formularies it also offers at certain critical points an interpretation of Scripture. And this allows it to be a dynamic, rather than a static body. In particular, it does not require us to be committed to the formularies as if they were infallible and beyond criticism.

We may compare this with the way that most Christians still use the Apostolic and Nicene Creeds. There are indeed those who are willing to question even these, but there are far more who regard them as, in some sense, having settled certain theological disputes, if not beyond question, at least in a way that means questioners must acknowledge they are departing from certain historical ‘norms’.

Those who know their Thirty-nine Articles, however, will know that the (three) Creeds, “ought thoroughly to be received and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture.”

Initially, however, the same was clearly felt to be true of the Articles and the Prayer Book. They were not ‘Scripture’, but they were to be received as being ‘Scriptural’. That being the case, therefore, whilst people may wish to disagree with them, they should only do so on the grounds that a better Scriptural case can be made for an alternative point of view. And in the meantime, it should be acknowledged that what the objector says is in disagreement with where the Church of England officially stands.

Such an approach, then, would not commit anyone to ‘believing in’ the formularies. They remain, like the Creeds, a human effort to express divine truth. But it would be to acknowledge that there are standards from which we should start, and from which we should only depart after careful consideration and consultation, and with clear Scriptural justification.

Within this understanding of the Church of England, I am these days rather more ready to call myself ‘Anglican’ than ‘Evangelical’.

Revd John P Richardson
27 October 2009

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Can secular society cope intellectually?

Two recent newspaper articles raise the interesting question of whether modern secularism can really cope with intellectual challenges.

The first, by Antonia Senior in The Times, is titled, ‘A flawed philosophy that bolsters the BNP’. The philosophy to which she refers is what she calls ‘moral relativisim’:

Truth, and moral worth, are entirely relative to a culture or society. I think bacon is divine; you are a vegetarian; he thinks pig meat is an affront to God. Each of these positions is true, because truth is in the eye of the believer.

This viewpoint she describes, with some justification, as “ incoherent, logically flawed and utterly tired.” And in case anyone should think she is exaggerating, she quotes Germaine Greer on the issue of female circumcision:

Germaine Greer famously accused the critics of circumcision as launching attacks on “the cultural identity” of the circumcised. “One man’s beautification is another man’s mutilation,” she said.

By contrast, she herself believes,

It’s impossible to be a cultural relativist when faced with daily examples of other cultures getting it wrong. There is no validity in any view of right or wrong expressed by the Taleban. There is no truth in any cultural creed that treats women as inferior, let alone those that mutilate them. There is no cultural excuse for child abuse disguised as exorcism.

And doubtless there are many who would agree with her. However, she continues,

Relativism is in retreat, but there is no coherent moral framework taking its place. It helped us move from the certainties of the imperial age into a more tolerant era, but it’s almost impossible to work out what comes next.

The difficulty, as she acknowledges, is that,

The only way to decide if a proposition is true or not, or if an action is right or wrong, is to test it and debate it. This takes more rigour than a lazy assumption that all views are truth and rightness is relative. It’s also tricky if you are an atheist, as so many of us are.

But such rigorous analysis is needed. Otherwise, “paralysed by our inherited relativism, fearful of seeming racist and adrift in a Godless world, we fall silent just when we should be debating and talking.” And then, “Into this silence strides Nick Griffin”.

It is Nick Griffin who also prompts an article by Matthew Parris, again in The Times, who claims that he has only twice been moved to tears by our political life. The first occasion was when Clause 28 of the Local Government Act was passed by the House of Lords. The second was when surveying what the national press had to say about Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. What he saw in the papers was,

... an entire national intelligentsia, in a time of relative peace and stability, unthreatened by any serious challenge to the values they hold dear, and in the face of no more than a gnat of a man leading no more than a rag-tag party with no more than a dishcloth of a manifesto, flinch — seriously flinch — in its commitment to free speech.

By contrast, he asked,

Was there nobody to restate, with the relaxed confidence that philosophical certitude should bring, the only available position for a modern British liberal: that this is a free country in which a range of highly diverse opinions may be held and, if held, published, subject to the law? Full stop. Yes, full stop; for heaven’s sake, full stop.

But of course the answer is no —we do not have this ‘relaxed confidence’ amongst the intelligentsia, and we especially do not have it amongst those in charge of our institutions of government and mass communication. And the reason for this, I would suggest, is twofold.

The first is that they are products of an educational system which did not teach them to think. It especially did not teach them to think about positions which disagreed with the popular morality of their educators. I remember once in my early years as a University Chaplain, some time in the 1980s, having a conversation with a lecturer about his students’ essays on the subject of abortion.

“What do you teach them about the arguments against abortion?” I asked him.

His answer was, “I would never dream of teaching them the arguments against abortion.”

Clearly he felt this was morally justified. But educationally, of course, it is disastrous. But it is also disastrous tactically, for if we do not know the arguments against our position, how will we cope when we come against someone who does? My suspicion is that at least some of the nervousness about allowing Nick Griffin on television was not that he is a palpable fool but that he might turn out not to be. And judging by Tom Sutcliffe’s report in The Independent (despite its headline), that proved partially to be the case:

The challenge for the panellists was to pry this limpet of strategic blandness from the rock and expose the unsightly muscle beneath – something achieved with only variable success.

The test will be whether Mr Griffin is invited back so that his opponents can finish the job.

But the other reason why our intelligentsia lack confidence is that, thanks to recent government policy, they have come to rely on force, not on argument. Why bother presenting a case when you can just ban someone from speaking, or blockade the arena where they would appear, or —best of all —pass a law which will make it illegal for them to speak in these terms at all.

The justification for this is that we are ‘safeguarding’ society. But the reality is that we are doing nothing of the kind. On the contrary, as Parris writes, there is an argument that,

... free speech will strengthen and sharpen the critical faculties of the whole citizenry, producing a society less susceptible to herd mentality.

Unfortunately, a citizenry susceptible to a herd mentality is not only what we are dangerously close to having, it is what our social and educational policies and practices of the last several decades have tended to produce. We are a society that, like the Question Time audience, cheers and boos to the cues in which it has been coached. And woe betide the person who truly stands out, or goes against the crowd. But sometimes one gets the feeling we are just being set up for the next stage, whatever that might be.

John Richardson
24 October 2009

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The 'indigenous people' of Chelmsford

One of the (many) things that people seem not to like about Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, is his use of the term ‘indigenous people’ to describe the white population of the UK. Thus the BBC report on his appearance on Question Time describes how,

... those he described as the “indigenous people” felt shut out in their own country. “We are the aborigines here,” he said.

I was thus somewhat amused to read the following in the ‘Statement of Needs’ produced to help the Diocese of Chelmsford in its search for a new bishop:

There have been significant areas of church growth in some of the most multi-cultural parts of the Diocese and in our more rural parts we have seen the ageing of the indigenous people and this is particularly so within the Church.

Not only, it seems, am I a member of Griffin’s indigenous people, but the Church of England has to rub my nose in the fact that I am getting old!

John Richardson

(Exits left, Morris dancing awkwardly)

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The Papal Bull in the Anglican China Shop

The headline Ruth Gledhill chose to describe yesterday’s breaking news was ‘Rome parks tanks on Rowan’s lawn’. The phrase is both eye-catching and apt. Nevertheless, I have adopted a headline of my own, first because Apostolic Constitutions are, apparently, issued in the form of a Papal Bull and, secondly, because the approach from Rome is to be made to Anglicans globally, not just —as some of the newspapers seem to be assuming —to those in England.

But what exactly is on offer, why is it being offered and what does it mean for the future?

The first question is difficult to answer, quite simply because what has been announced is the preparation of an Apostolic Constitution, not the Constitution itself. Furthermore, the structure of what will be on offer is something unfamiliar to most Anglicans, namely a ‘personal ordinariate’.

An ‘ordinariate’ is presided over by an ‘ordinary’ —someone who has ecclesial jurisdiction. The bishop of an Anglican diocese is thus the ‘ordinary’. However, in the newly-proposed body, the ordinary will not necessarily be a bishop. The proposed Ordinariates will be ‘personal’, in the sense that they will not be defined by persons, not geographical areas. The parallel suggested on the Vatican’s own website is with a Military Ordinariate which cares for members of the armed forces and their dependents. However, these particular Ordinariates will be formed in consultation with the local Conference of Bishops, so they will be set up wherever there is demand in a particular area.

It is clear that in some sense these Ordinariates will have an Anglican element —not least in their being made up of former Anglicans. Nevertheless, insofar as the Vatican website itself uses the word ‘former’, there is going to be some discontinuity with their present identity. However, what is envisaged is evidently not the same as Anglicans simply ‘becoming Roman Catholics’. Perhaps the most significant element is that married Anglican priests will be able to be ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church (though they will not be able to become bishops). Everyone in the Ordinariate will thus be in full communion with Rome, and the liturgies they use will be subject to approval by the presiding Conference of Bishops, but they will not be entirely subject to Roman discipline and will thus in some respects remain distinct.

That is as much as I have been able to glean, and given that we still await the Apostolic Constitution itself, that is perhaps as far as it is wise to go. What, however, might it all mean?

I was talking earlier on the phone to an Anglo-Catholic friend (who, incidentally, knew several days ago that this was coming) and his opinion was that in the immediate short-term this was of ‘atomic bomb’ proportions, but that the really important question in England was how Forward-in-Faith and others would react in the long term.

Significantly, he did not foresee immediate large-scale defections. Indeed, he observed that there are many Anglo-Catholics who, like himself, view Rome as simply wrong on some points, for example in insisting that certain beliefs (including papal infallibility) are salvation issues. In this and other ways they regard themselves as authentically Anglican members of the Catholic church, in no need of ‘reception’ into Rome’s branch of the same (although very happy to recognize Rome as special).

There is also the vexed question of money. It was quite one thing, as he put it, to ‘take the money and run’ back in the early nineties, when clergy who left the Church of England over the ordination of women received a reasonable compensation package. It would be quite another thing for them to leave now when the Roman Catholic church in this country is in no position to offer them either posts or funding. Of course there is nothing to stop a congregation funding its own minister, but that is, as the Australians say, ‘a big ask’.

Nevertheless, we both agreed that the nature and timing of this announcement is highly important. First, in his view, it is an indication that Rome’s patience with Canterbury has run out. The ecumenical discussions of recent decades have been conducted with the hope that something was achievable through official negotiating channels. One result of this was that ‘private’ approaches to Rome were politely rejected. The recent actions of Anglican bishops, and the decisions of the English General Synod, however, have suggested that Anglicans are saying one thing but doing another. Consequently, Rome has decided it is time to listen to and deal with individuals rather than the institution.

Secondly, we both feel this speaks volumes about Rome’s attitude towards Anglicanism, where it is no longer felt necessary to keep Anglican ‘officialdom’ onside. Despite references on both sides to ecumenical negotiations, the Apostolic Constitution is not the result of a ‘deal’ but rather is an offer which the Church of England literally cannot refuse. And as in the culture from which that phrase comes, the maker of the offer by that action indicates a sense of strength with relation to the one to whom it is made. In other words, Rome must feel it has nothing to lose and a lot to gain from this.

Personally, I likened it to the Argentinian landings on South Georgia which preceded the Falklands War. From a military point of view, the landings were an irrelevance, and in a similar way, I doubt that numerically the Apostolic Constitution will have much impact on global Anglicanism. But as an indication of the Argentinian view of the balance of power in the South Atlantic, the invasion of South Georgia was crucial. In the same way, Rome now clearly feels it can act unilaterally to invite existing Anglicans en masse back into the fold — and the fact that this can be done at a press conference alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury on English soil surely signals that in the eyes of Rome, Anglican fortunes are approaching their nadir.

In this respect, Ruth Gledhill’s comment is entirely right. This is, indeed, a tank on Rowan’s lawn. And the sheer fact that it is sitting there is enough. The big question now is not so much how many Anglicans will leave, as how Anglicanism will regard itself. It will be very difficult to continue with the notion that it is a ‘world player’ of which Rome must take note. Rome has taken note, and its verdict is clear: the door is open, you’re welcome any time.

Andrew Brown in the Guardian is probably over-stating things when he says this is the end of the Anglican Communion, but it is clearly the end of Anglicanism’s previous relationship with Rome —first as an enemy, then as a cautious, but mutual, friend. From now on, Anglicanism vis à vis Rome is a leaking balloon.

What, finally, of the Evangelical response? Reform has issued a press release which says, rightly in my view, that, “It is illusory to pretend that this development is an outcome of ecumenical dialogue.” Rather, it suggests that this “illustrates the difficulties the C of E faces.”

However, I suspect that the release is over-optimistic when it asserts that, “Anglicans concerned about protecting the basic Christian faith need not go to Rome, because we now have the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA (UK)) which holds together those who want to stop the orthodox faith being eroded.”

The reality is that FCA UK is neither as widespread nor as coherent as this might suggest, and in any case the Apostolic Constitution will prove a considerable distraction to at least some of those whom FCA UK has sought to embrace. At least a proportion of these will ask why one should look to doubtful support from overseas Anglican bishops when one can join a community within England backed by the not-inconsiderable might of Rome.

Whatever else happens, this has undoubtedly sown confusion in the ranks. Of course, I have been arguing for years that Reform-type Evangelical Anglicans should seek episcopal oversight under the provisions of the Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod 1993, and thereby create the pressure for an Evangelical ‘flying bishop’ (or three), with the aim of getting for themselves what the Anglo-Catholics have enjoyed for a decade and a half. But that would be too obvious!

Perhaps I may close with another military analogy. It is a generally acknowledged fact that a successful internal insurgency in any country requires a powerful outside backer. The IRA had the Americans and the Libyans. The Vietcong had North Korea, China and Russia. The Iraqi insurgents had Syria and Iran, and so on. The Apostolic Constitution may therefore have precisely the opposite effect to what some people imagine —rather than encouraging defections, it may encourage Anglo-Catholic internal ‘insurgency’ in the Church of England. But if that is the case, the Conservative Evangelicals are left high and dry. They have no friend in Rome, and they have few friends amongst their own bishops. Of course, they may feel they have enough of a friend in Jesus, and in soteriological terms that is true. But in ecclesio-political terms it may only be enough to sustain them as an isolated and beleaguered minority.

John Richardson
21 October 2009

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Richard Bewes: The ‘bad’ and ‘good’ news of 50 years!

Ed: I've just received this article. Although it is linked to Richard Bewes's website, I can't find it there, but it is so good, I'm posting it in full here.


 Such a lot of to-ing and fro-ing these days between conservatives, charismatics, ‘open’ and reformed evangelicals! On October 14th 2009 I was listening to Fulcrum’s Stephen Kuhrt at the residential conference of the Church of England Evangelical Council (at which I was present - as a former CEEC Chairman). I found myself wandering down Memory Lane. For it was fifty years back - September 1959 that old man Chavasse ordained me in Rochester Cathedral.  

Why, Stephen Kuhrt is still a babe - ordained in 2003!  Yet I could no more have given a talk on his level to CEEC at that stage than have driven the BRM racing car. 

Do you know, life was altogether more simple when I was ordained! The evangelical intake in September 1959  numbered about seven percent of the total. Who were we? What were we? Nothing, in the minds of the wider church. It was Backs to the Wall for us despised evangelicals. Charismatic evangelicals? They were a non-breed. Reformed evangelicals? Forget it. If I had a label at all it was Evangelical. That was enough – and it ought to be enough today!  True, in those early days there was a group who called themselves Liberal Evangelicals, who had problems over Bible infallibility and penal substitutionary atonement. But with Stott around they were a dying breed. And then there was Billy! Our numbers and our confidence grew.

It was really in 1962 – with Honest to God – that true battle began. Even so - in that still comparatively stable era morally - it would have been completely unthinkable that the Richard Baxter-style dismissal of 1685 could have repeated itself at Kidderminster, as it did in 2002 with a brave colleague, Charles Raven, whom I admire for his stance against his bishop’s blatant defiance of the Lambeth 1998 resolution on homosexuality. Charles, though banished from St John’s Kidderminster under threat of police arrest, has never renounced his anglicanism, and - for his consistent placing of Faith and Truth above Order – has, to my mind, every God-given right to continue speaking to us as an anglican evangelical.

As do faithful sisters and brothers across the Atlantic who, in these last momentous years, find themselves out of their rectories, the objects of lawsuits, their congregations frequently locked out of their own churches, through the wilful blindness of a number of their bishops - fundamentalist in their liberal overthrow of creedal and moral orthodoxy.

This is why GAFCON had to happen, and so did the ensuing Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. As an American bishop said to me in Jerusalem (who is still in TEC), “Half of my diocese urge me to lead the charge out of TEC and into a safer and purer haven. The other half plead with me not to leave them. I say to them all, ‘We are in the thick of a storm – but Jesus is with us in the boat. If we keep our eyes upon Jesus, He will show us what to do. But if we have our eyes on the storm, it will destroy us.’”  This bishop – and others like him – were weeping with relief and gratitude at GAFCON as the reading- out of the Jerusalem Declaration came to its close. The rest of us were on our feet.

Was it uncalled for that Stephen Kuhrt has expressed words of concern for the future, in regard to the formation of FCAUK?  Not at all.  We should always stay humbly on the watch; errors of judgment can overtake even the best of Christian leaders. Not for nothing was the Collect for Whit Sunday included in the Book of Common Prayer, with its plea for ‘a right judgment in all things.’  A reliable judgment is pretty much the top priority for every bishop, for every leader. Never mind the brain power! You can be a brilliant person – but still possess an uncanny ability to get decision after decision wrong.

Ultimately it’s the degree of hold that the Scriptures have upon the Church that determines its future course.  The last fifty years – while undoubtedly featuring a remarkable rise in Evangelical academic learning – have also witnessed a decrease in Biblical confidence generally. At college during the ‘fifties, many of us members of the Christian Union would carry pocket Bibles as a matter of course. Today, you can give a well-publicised Bible study at a public gathering – with nobody holding a Bible at all. Asked, “Do you believe in the authority and inspiration of this Book?” the answer will invariably be “Oh yes.”  But actions prove that the confidence has waned.

A massive issue – as raised by Andy Symes during question time at the CEEC conference – related to that of theological attitudes to divine Revelation – and hermeneutics.  Today in popular thinking it will cheerfully be maintained by liberals and modernists, “Oh, I certainly believe in the authority of the Bible, and in the Creeds. I said so at my ordination!  Of course my interpretation may be different from yours.” Then the fallacy begins to gain a hold that you can take any text of Scripture – and that there are as many interpretations that can be placed upon it as there are interpreters. This mindset has taken over.

Destructive? Very – and also highly degrading to the Bible writers. If I write an email to my friend, and say, “I’ll see you at the courts next Wednesday,” there is one meaning, and one meaning only that I intend by my message. And if my friend has done his research on me properly, he will know that I am referring to the tennis courts – not the law courts!  I would feel highly insulted if he were to place on my words an alternative interpretation.  There can only be one basic meaning to a passage of Scripture, and it is the task of the Bible student and scholar to discover what the intention was in the mind of the writer.  Then we have clarity – and a message that is unequivocally from heaven!

True, there are, as Stephen Kuhrt and our friends at Fulcrum point out, a number of different theological strands that - it is maintained - we evangelicals should be ‘open’ to.

Actually, we should not be too surprised at the different ‘tribes’ that have opened up in evangelical life. Colin Buchanan forecast such a development. “As our numbers grow,” he said at an earlier NEAC, “we shall find that we will become more diffuse – and somewhat fluffier at the edges.”

For myself, I think that over these past decades – like it or not -  I have indeed been well-exposed to the different theological emphases in the church. I may have been critical of certain aspects of the Charismatic movement, but there are plenty of sides to it that have been beneficial to my soul and my ministry.  And then, I have had to look at the liberals; there was no other option, for they have been so vocal.  Without doubt, my exposure to their claims – from Hewlett Thompson Johnson the ‘The Red Dean’ of Canterbury, through J.A.T. Robinson, Don Cupitt (my own Dean at Emmanuel College Cambridge), David Jenkins, Gene Robinson and the rest – has helped me to sharpen up my own operation.

And our own operation needs to be kept razor sharp, if it is to make any lasting contribution to the general scene.  Years back, while I was CEEC chairman, we invited Nick Page of Radio 2 to interview on video David Hope, former Bishop of London. The video was played at one of our larger conferences. At one point, Nick put the question, “Bishop, would you agree that anglican evangelicals would do well to take into their account and thinking the findings and emphases of the various other viewpoints within the Church; Catholic, Liberal and so on?”

The bishop’s reply was interesting. “Not at all,” he remonstrated. “Right now you evangelicals are not nearly evangelical enough. You seem, if anything, to be departing from your earlier roots. What has happened to your doctrines – and to your preaching of them? And why are you slipping from your Quiet Times?  What has happened to your prayer meetings and to your former great missionary drive? We need you to be faithful to your own true evangelical  identity if you are to have a hope of challenging and building the rest of us in the church!”

My long-time next-door neighbour John Stott puts it in a different way. Every generation of Gospel men and women, he insists, has to go through the same operation repeatedly – namely to fight afresh all over again for the unchanging apostolic truths that remain the platform for the church, in every age and crisis that it inevitably faces; we cannot opt out.

Well, they had to fight – and die in flames – for the mighty truth of Justification that swept Europe 450 years ago.  A new solemnity and awed confidence in the death of Jesus was to be evoked by the words at Holy Communion, that the Lord had made, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.   Christians saw afresh that in an historic moment of ‘propitiation’ God had intercepted his own judgment; that the Cross actually did something - not only to our sins - but to God Himself in the ‘satisfaction’ and averting of His holy wrath – why, to hold onto these convictions is to be truly anglican in our belief.

Wherever there has been a great historical movement of the Spirit in the awakening of thousands of people, the hymn books are a dead give-away. Hymn after hymn on the Cross, on the miracle of forgiveness, on the gift of resurrection life in Christ, on discipleship and service, on the missionary imperative, on the final Eschaton! 

It is no bad thing to have Stephen Kuhrt’s hesitations and concerns about FCAUK - and about us all - put on paper.  We must believe that if they do nothing else, they should harden our resolve that we are indeed staying, not quitting, and that we have every right to stay - on centre ground! Meanwhile, however, we must reach out in support of the increasing numbers of  anglican pastors internationally who – in one way or another – have been obliged and even forced to leave their anglican home, and yet are firm in their convictions that We are still anglican. FCAUK will – and must – through a faithful and generous network of Gospel churches, continue to assist that to happen, God being our helper.

RICHARD BEWES
WEBSITE: www.richardbewes.com 

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Great Success for CABC 9

The ninth Chelmsford Anglican Bible Conference today was, I'm glad to say, a great success. Over 230 people came to the Central Baptist Church, Chelmsford, to hear Paul Perkin speaking on the Servant Songs from Isaiah.

The day began with a welcome from the Bishop of Barking, the Rt Revd David Hawkins, pictured right with his wife. David  welcomed the delegates and affirmed the aim of CABC, to put biblical teaching at the heart of the Diocese of Chelmsford.

Prayer and Praise times were led by Chris Taylor and a team from St Peter's Harold Wood.

This was the largest attendance at CABC since it was launched at the Cathedral nine years ago. The reason for moving to the Baptist Centre, however, was quite simply the ease of the venue, which offers great facilities at a reasonable price!

My personal thanks go to Carolan Casey and all those who helped to make the day run smoothly. We must now look forward to CABC 10 - the last one planned in the present series - when we are welcoming Don Carson to teach on John's Gospel.


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Burying the Bad News – a Response to Stephen Kuhrt, by Charles Raven

Revd Charles Raven, at the slightly unfortunately name SPREAD website, has a useful critique of Revd Stephen Kuhrt's comments about FCA UK made to the CEEC this week. Stephen accused the FCA of 'airbrushing out' good news about the Church of England. My own feeling, which is picked up by Charles in his article, is that Stephen's side have been equally adept at burying the bad news - or perhaps more accurately, burying their collective head in the sand whenever bad news hoves into view.

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Going down: the 'inexorable' decline of rural churchgoing?

One of the things I am doing at the moment is chairing the Saffron Walden Deanery Church Growth Task Group - a bit of a mouthful, but it was set up in the context of establishing our 'Deanery Vision' to come up with practical suggestions as to how to increase Sunday church attendance.

In general, it has been a positive exercise, but in preparation for this week's Synod meeting, I sought to update the initial figures we started with when establishing our 'base line' for growth. These were derived from the annual 'Statistics for Mission' submitted by each congregation. Previously I had the figures for what is called 'Normal Sunday Attendance', for the years 2001-2006. I have since been able to add the figures for 2008 (as yet, I've not got hold of the 2007 figures).

My reaction when I saw the apparent decline was to go back and double check the figures for 2006. Sadly, they turned out to be correct.

As a caveat, I have to point out that these figures do not include every congregation, and therefore are not an 'absolute' total for the whole Deanery. There are also variations in the ways that congregations establish and submit these figures, which means that they are difficult to compare between different churches. However, I have assumed they will remain reasonably consistent within the same congregation over the (relatively) short span of eight years.

The graph does not make happy viewing! I did suggest that we might be turning a corner, if it turns out that 2007 was actually lower than 2008, but I suspect this is unlikely. The truth is, we are quite possibly seeing a predictable sharp decline due to the bias towards the 65+ age group in our congregations. Intriguingly, the biggest losses have actually been amongst the biggest congregations -but there is no obvious reason why this might be so.

I am not saying from this 'we're all doomed'. I am saying the church in our area could be in real trouble very shortly - not least because declining membership results in declining income. And trouble here spells trouble for the rest of the diocese since, because we are rated as a 'rich' area, our parish shares are proportionately higher than in other parts of the diocese, which therefore rely, to some extent, on giving from areas like our own. If we cannot meet our payments, we are not the only ones to suffer.

The Diocese of Chelmsford has just told us that it has to lose 47 stipendiary clergy by 2016 - one of whom will be from our area. As things are going, we will soon have just four conglomerations of parishes (either that, or, as someone else cynically put it at the Synod, there will be just one big Parish of Essex). The smallest will be ourselves with three, and the largest Saffron Walden itself, with over a dozen. These will be run by maybe no more than half-a-dozen stipendiary clergy and probably the same number of non-stipendiaries.

I passionately believe we could overcome the challenges this brings, but we need to be allowed three things: first, the authority to start our own initiatives, using lay people to lead services and to preach and teach; secondly, the ability to raise and disburse funds locally; thirdly, the ability to recruit and deploy locally our own church workers (whether lay or ordained).

So long as we remain tied to a central authority which insists on controlling local strategy, we will continue to be frustrated in our hopes and efforts.

John Richardson

15 October 2009

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What hope for Evangelicalism?

For the last forty-eight hours, with a brief break for a Deanery Synod meeting, I’ve been at the High Leigh Conference Centre in Hertfordshire, first for the Reform annual conference and then for the residential meeting of the Church of England Evangelical Council.

As I said at the Synod last night, I have reached that stage where the words of Psalm 27:35 apply, “I was young and now I am old.” (This was especially borne in on me when looking at the twenty or thirty theological students who turned up for the Reform meeting today.) I am thus in the position to reflect on the past and the present, and right now what I am feeling is a great sorrow at the missed opportunity for our church and nation resulting from the loss of unity amongst evangelical Anglicans.

This afternoon, the CEEC organized a joint presentation by Stephen Kuhrt and Vaughan Roberts on the benefits or otherwise of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. As it happens, I found myself agreeing with much of what Stephen Kuhrt had to say —at least insofar as I felt they were cautionary words that I could readily echo.

However, in a not-always-good-tempered question time, it became increasingly clear to me —and I suspect to others —that evangelical unity is a façade, and a very poorly-preserved one at that. Of course, even thirty years ago things were not perfect, but they are at an undoubtedly low ebb, from which I wonder if they can recognizably recover.

What, then, are the problems?

First, there are serious personal hurts, caused by things which have been said and written. One person this afternoon, for example, pressed the point as to whether he was regarded as ‘unbiblical’. Now I doubt that the individual who put him in this position ever meant to imply that he was truly an ‘unbiblical’ person. Nevertheless, that was the term which had been used, publicly and forcefully, and it had clearly stung. I also know that he is by no means the only one to feel wounded in such a manner, and the response that we must expect ‘robust’ engagement in debate does not solve the problem!

Is it asking too much that Christians refrain from saying about someone what they would hesitate to say to them? Paul’s warning to the Galatians surely applies to us as a constituency: “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” In recent years, I suspect far more damage has been done to evangelicals by evangelicals that by all the Jack Spongs or Richard Dawkins’s in the world.

Secondly, there are fundamental doctrinal divisions. Topics specifically aired this afternoon included the ‘New Perspective’, penal substitution, judgement and hell, and the sufficiency of God’s grace. Doubtless others could be mentioned, but all of these touch on areas where thirty years ago there would have been almost universal evangelical agreement. One of the tragedies is that some of these issues have been worked over (and, one would have hoped, worked out) at the Reformation, but of course one of the features of ‘new’ evangelicalism is a readiness to critique the Reformation as fundamentally mistaken. Thus we are not only divided amongst ourselves but increasingly cut off from our past heritage.

Thirdly, there are simply too many issues being swept under the carpet, despite the fact that they are major causes of division. One of the most important is, it has to be said, the ordination and consecration of women. The difficulty here is not simply that totally different views are held on such a fundamental point, but that those who disagree are often held in little short of contempt. Thus, despite frequent protestations that this is a ‘second order’ issue, in terms of relationships it has become effectively ‘first order’.

Now I scarcely need to point out that thirty years ago the evangelical Anglican constituency was also largely united on this issue. We had a healthy evangelical disregard for institutional priesthood, but we regarded the apostolic teachings of St Paul and St Peter as ruling out women as overall leaders of congregations. And the problem we now experience is because the tension has not been resolved between those who still see an apostolic injunction at this point (and therefore do not trust the exegesis or, in some cases, the biblical commitment of those who disagree) and those who believe this is more than a matter of good exegesis, but is rather a matter of inherent ‘gospel’ values. This is not a disagreement, it is a gulf!

And then there is the ultimate question of the urgency of the gospel. Just what are we trying to do, and why are we trying to do it, and what should we do when, as often happens, man-made institutional structures get in the way of doing it? Evangelicals have always agreed it is a good thing when people become Christians. But there no longer seems to be the same agreement that it is a necessary and urgent thing that people should do so in order to be saved from an imminent and impending danger.

So as I sit here in the lounge at High Leigh, I think back to other evangelical gatherings, some here, some in other venues, to the old sense of unity and opportunity, and I wonder what went wrong, and what, if anything, can be done to put it right.

Revd John P Richardson
14 October 2009

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The First Chapter of Ruth

On Sunday evening I was very pleased to begin our new sermon series on Ruth. Unfortunately, I've had to step aside to let others do the next two chapters! I really would like to have done this myself as it is such a fascinating book, but meanwhile here is the first chapter for downloading. The download should open in a new window and the file is about 7mb.

Alternatively you can 'stream' it here (listen to it 'live').

John Richardson

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Help me get NT Wright

(This has got buried as a comment on this post, so I'm moving it to a post of its own in the hope that it might get a response.)

I wonder if anyone reading this bit of the blog can help me out? I haven't read a great deal of Wright first hand on this topic, but what I have read leaves me confused as to what he is saying that is genuinely new and what he is suggesting is wrong about the Reformation understanding of justification.

I have been going back over Alister McGrath's account in his Iustitia Dei - something made difficult by swathes of untranslated Latin - and the first thing I would say is that as far as I can see the mainstream Reformers conceived of the Christian's righteousness as 'declarative' in 'courtroom' terms.

Now my impression is that this is what Wright is saying - that the 'courtroom' is a key concept in Paul, and that God's 'righteousness' is the declaration that we are 'righteous' members of the covenant community. If that is the case, however, he and the Reformers are singing from very similar hymn sheets at this point. Am I right in this, or am I missing something?

Secondly, from McGrath, the mainstream Reformers distinguished between 'imputed' and 'imparted' righteousness. The righteousness of Christ, according to this view, remained an 'alien', 'external' righteousness, located in Christ, not the believer. This was contrary to Augustine, who looked for a righteousness in the believer.

Now it seems as if Wright is supposed to be saying that the mainstream Reformers believed in a kind of 'transferred' righteousness, from Christ to the believer, which according to McGrath they did not.

Yet at the same time, it seems as if Wright is saying that, according to his understanding of Paul, justification is based on something intrinsic to the believer - which looks, at first glance, like Bucer's system of 'double justification' (by Christ and by 'regeneration' - for want of a better word). In that case, it would seem Wright has, by whatever route, gone back to a 'mid-Reformation' view - rather than discovering something new.

Certainly what I'm hearing about Wright (and what I've read) doesn't look like Luther or Calvin's ordo salutis - but I'm also wondering if Wright's account of Luther and Calvin is accurate.

Can anyone enlighten?

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