Episcopal appointments - from subtle exclusion to overt discrimination

Since 1993 I have chosen to belong to a church that ordains women priests, and before I retire it is likely I will belong to one that consecrates women bishops. Yet this is a practice that I believe to be mistaken, so why am I still here?

One answer is that I am committed to the Church — not to the official ‘fine tuning’ of its theology. I have often argued that the Church of England is exactly what it says on the tin: the Church of England. It is not demarcated from the Church anywhere else by anything other than geography, and therefor it ought not to be defined by anything other than what the ‘Church universal’ accepts as essential.

Now I know this is a ‘pipe dream’ at innumerable levels. But when I read Scripture I see a similar picture. One of my favourite bits of the Bible is the book of Revelation, and in the seven letters to the churches in chapters 2-3 we find ourselves in very familiar territory. There is division, there is heresy, there is immorality, there are false apostles, there is lack of love, there is indifference. It’s just like home, really! And yet each letter is addressed “to the church in ...”, and each concludes with a promise “to him who overcomes” — and I take it that part of what is to be ‘overcome’ is precisely the situation in some of those churches.

So although I have been tempted to give up on the Church of England, I feel that on principle I ought not to.

Another reason I have stayed, however, is that when the Church of England decided it would ordain women priests, it also decided that the decision was not absolute. Instead, the phrase that was coined was ‘a period of reception’, meaning that it would go ahead with a move that seemed right to the majority of its decision-making body, but without prejudice to whether this was right or not. (Incidentally, this makes further nonsense of the 1975 ‘decision’ that there were no “fundamental” theological objections to the ordination of women. If that was what the Synod really believed, it would have acted accordingly.)

What this means, however, is that every woman who has been ordained in the Church of England has done so knowing that not everyone else accepts this should (or could) have happened. Now that is tough, but there are other denominations they could have joined which would not have presented them with the same problem. Only a day or so ago, I was yet again invited to leave the Church of England by someone who thinks I should go (actually, he tends to do this quite a lot!). But why should the boot not be on the other foot? So I stay knowing that everyone knows we are a ‘mixed economy’ denomination on this issue.

And then thirdly I stay — or at least I stayed — because I and others like me were assured of fair treatment. Unfortunately, it is on this third point that problems have developed and are getting worse.

We hear a lot about equality today, and there is a widespread insistence that people are treated ‘equally’ at every possible opportunity.

In 1993, as the ordination of women to the priesthood was brought in, the Church of England similarly committed itself to treat those on both sides of the debate equally. Thus the Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod (which is still in force) stated as its first principle that,

There will be no discrimination against candidates either for ordination or for appointment to senior office in the Church of England on the grounds of their views about the ordination of women to the priesthood.

Unfortunately, that commitment was never upheld, and has now effectively been overturned.

Thus in 2001, just eight years on from the original legislation, the Perry Report on episcopal appointments noted that of the thirty-one diocesan bishops appointed between 1993 and 2000, twenty-seven ordained women and two were already diocesan bishops elsewhere. Only two new bishops did not ordain women, and these were both appointed before 1995 (2:28).

More recently, in 2007 the General Synod report ‘Talent and Calling’ (GS 1650), which looked at the appointments of suffragan bishops, cathedral deans, archdeacons and residentiary canons, made the following observations:

4.6.1 While the proportion of women on the Preferment List and among those holding senior appointments is lower than the proportion of full-time stipendiary clergy who are women, we are pleased to note that action is being taken to address this.

“Quite right, too,” we may respond. But then the report added this:

4.6.2 The proportion of minority ethnic, conservative evangelical and traditional catholic candidates on the Preferment List and among those holding senior appointments would appear to be even lower.

At least regarding conservative evangelicals, that is something of an understatement. It is true that traditionalist Catholics continue to be appointed as both suffragan and (occasionally) diocesan bishops. However, the last Evangelical appointment was in — well, can you guess?

In the past year, however, the discrimination has changed from being subtle (indeed not necessarily proven) to overt. In 2010, the Diocese of Salisbury, as part of the process of looking for a new diocesan bishop, published, as it is required to, a ‘Statement of Needs’. This, however, included the following:

The Bishop will have to be prepared to ordain men and women without discrimination ... and to envisage in due time a female episcopal colleague. (Section 20)

It doesn’t take much of a legal mind to realize that this rides roughshod over the requirement of the Act of Synod that there shall be “no discrimination ... on the grounds of ... views about the ordination of women to the priesthood.”

So what happened in the Vacancy in See Committee to bring about this situation? Did no one spot that this was, in fact, contrary to the Act of Synod? Or did no one care? Discrete enquiries suggest there was some awareness of potential difficulties in this area, but the statement itself was presumably not challenged.

But then should it not have been picked up by the Crown Nominations Commission? After all, this includes some fine minds, well aware of what is legal or not — to say nothing of the two Archbishops. Did they not see a problem? Well, of course the workings of the CNC are strictly confidential (at least in theory), so you can ask (I did), but don’t expect long answers.

What seems clear is that the Salisbury members of the CNC went into the selection process having been given a mandate that contradicted an Act of Synod, which is supposed to represent the ‘mind of the Church of England’. And given that the diocese was not asked to rewrite the Statement and publicly invite a new round of submissions of possible candidates, presumably either the other members of the CNC did not spot the problem, or they spotted it but did not feel it made any material difference.

Meanwhile, we have had two new appointments of Provincial Episcopal visitors, though how long their services will be required is anybody’s guess. Despite belated lobbying from the evangelical constituency, however, both of them are traditionalist Anglo-Catholics.

So when will the next Conservative Evangelical be appointed as a bishop in the Church of England. I don’t know. But the last one — and the way things are going he might actually turn out to be the last one — was in 1997, fourteen years ago.

John Richardson

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Women's ordination and the other elephant

In all the recent debates in the Church of England about women’s ordination (in which I include those going back to the eighties and nineties), there have been not one, but two elephants in the living room.

The first elephant, gradually acknowledged and initially given space, has been the indecisive attitude of the church. Women’s ordination was sold to the Synod and to the wider Church on the basis of an accommodation. Women would be ordained, but the ordination of women would involve a further process of reception. What lay behind this was a hope on the part of some that there would always be a place for opponents, and on the part of others that opposition would die out as time went on.

Now that (thanks, in part, to some judicious gerrymandering of the bench of bishops) numbers favour the ‘pro’ side, we are seeing signs of the ‘end game’ on this initial compromise.

However, as we look at the options resulting from shooting the first elephant, we must now confront the second, which is that the Church of England embraces two entirely different concepts of the ordained ministry.

At the risk of oversimplification, one of these basically assumes that the pattern of having bishops (who run, or help run, dioceses), priests (who minister more locally, celebrate the sacraments, preach and pastor), and deacons (who are probationary priests), represents the way the church long has been and forever should be. The other takes the view that these same orders are, in the form in which they are found in the Anglican Church, essentially man-made, and therefore dispensable. They may sometimes serve the Church well — they are of its bene esse (its ‘well being’) — but they are not, in their present form, of the esse (the ‘very being’).

Most laypeople, I suspect, take the former view. It is how they have always seen and experienced the Church of England, and they have never bothered to look into why this is the case. So, of course, do the Anglo-Catholics clergy, though they consciously look back to the tradition of the Fathers for a justification. But to them we must add also the Liberal Catholics, who generally take a very ‘high’ view of the ministry, even whilst they might take a very sceptical view of traditional theology.

Then we have what may be popularly known as the ‘Evangelical’ view, though it can be found long before the movement of that name, in the writings of the Fathers of the English Reformation. This group places far more emphasis on the fact (generally acknowledged by Catholics both traditional and liberal), that the New Testament displays nothing exactly like the orders we know in Anglicanism. Specifically, the ‘priest’ of the New Testament church is actually a ‘presbyter-bishop’, whilst the deacon is something entirely distinct, in no way comparable to our one-year ‘priest in waiting’. As to the bishop as the ‘area leader’ of a group of non-episcopal priests, this figure is nowhere to be found.

Like most Catholics, the early members of this group were generally happy to acknowledge that the emergence of the threefold pattern known to us from later years took place in the providence of God. Unlike the Catholics, however, they were equally happy to see it disappear, should it be found to have outlived its usefulness.

Thus, Richard Hooker wrote, in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, that no “true and heavenly law can be shewed, by the evidence whereof it may of a truth appear that the Lord himself hath appointed presbyters for ever to be under the regiment of bishops” (VII v 8). Therefore, as far as he was concerned, their authority is “a sword which the Church hath power to take from them” (ibid).

In other words, the Church could manage without bishops — especially if, as he warned, “bishops forget themselves, as if none on earth had authority to touch their states” (ibid).

The same view is found in the writings of Thomas Cranmer, who asserted that, if necessary, the Church could start up from scratch, with the first bishops and priests being ordained by laypeople. And in a series of Questions and Answers Concerning the Sacraments, etc, he asserted that in earliest times the churches were not ruled by the Apostles, but simply listened to their advice:

... not for the supremity, impery [sic], or dominion that the apostles had over them to command, as their princes or masters; but as good people, ready to obey the advice of good counsellors.

Just as importantly, the Homilies (which form part of the historic Anglican ‘formularies’) also recognize an earlier time in the Church’s history when different arrangements prevailed. Thus,

Our Saviour Christ ... [forbade] his Apostles, and by them the whole clergy, all princely dominion over people and nations: and he and his holy Apostles likewise, namely, Peter and Paul, did forbid unto all ecclesiastical Ministers dominion over the church of Christ. (Sermon Against Wilful Rebellion, emphasis added)

In all this, of course, the Reformers were following the Continental Protestants, as was Cranmer in his revision of the service of Holy Communion and in the formulation of the Thirty-nine Articles.

Yet the Church of England never entirely shed its Catholic elements, and under the impulse of the nineteenth century Oxford Movement, reintroduced practices which had not merely been abandoned since the Reformation but declared illegal. Thus, by the time we reach the middle of the twentieth century, we have a Church which is a caricature model of schizophrenia — one side taking the Catholic and the other the Protestant view of the ministry, but both outwardly belonging to the same organization.

Moreover, as I have indicated, the demarcation is not clear-cut, for there are theological ‘liberals’ with decidedly ‘fundamentalist’ views of the threefold ministry (to say nothing of the absolute authority of bishops and the unchangeable nature of the church’s orders). And there are ‘evangelicals’ today whose views of priesthood or episcopal ministry (particularly their own!) are of a decidedly ‘catholic’ bent.

This would be bad enough, but it becomes even more complex when we add in the ordination of women, for then we encounter two quite different objections, for the Catholic objection centres on the nature of priesthood and its relationship with the sacraments, whilst the Protestant objection centres on the nature of ministry and its exercise in the congregation.

Between the two, the Catholic objection is actually easier to present. For the traditionalist Catholic, what matters is the embodiment of the truth in the person of the priest, and the validity of that priest’s sacramental ministry. For Catholics who oppose the ordination of women, the problem is not that a woman should not be a priest but that a priest stands as the eikon of Christ — the embodied representation of the Son of God.

What this means regarding gender is, perhaps, best summed up in the words of Newman’s hymn Praise to the Holiest in the Height:

O generous love! that he who smote
in Man for man the foe,
the double agony in Man
for man should undergo.

Behind this is the thoroughly biblical idea that Jesus is the man par excellence, in whom ‘man’ — the human race — finds redemption. It is an inclusive idea which, significantly, cannot be expressed in modern ‘inclusive’ language, because it runs entirely counter to the modern understanding of humanity. But in this view, the iconic status of Christ requires a man for its present embodiment. And without this, the validity of the priesthood, and therefore the validity of the sacraments, is negated.

Now, at the risk of losing the few internet friends I have left, I must say that this is an argument with which I disagree. But I can feel its force, and I can recognize why, for those who do hold to this view, the issue is so urgent.

For the Protestant, however, things are a bit more messy, and this is because he does not take the same view, either of priesthood or sacrament. Indeed, some Protestants, like Martin Luther, held that women could, indeed, celebrate the sacraments, just as they could proclaim God’s word. The Protestant objection to women in leadership (an objection which was advanced by Luther also), has to do with authority, not sacramental ministry or ontological ‘priesthood’.

The problem, as they experience it, is that in the Church of England, ordination generally not just recognizes ministry but confers authority. This must particularly be so in the case of the episcopate, where the bishop is not merely in authority over a particular congregation (to which the individual may or may not choose to belong), but over entire groups of clergy, who will be given no choice in the matter.

Now again, one may not agree with the argument, but it needs to be understood and recognized. And yet it also needs to be recognized that it is a quite different argument from that advanced by Catholics, and therefore it may admit of quite different solutions.

One unintended consequence of the current debate about women bishops, therefore, may well be to highlight these different views on ordination. For a century, the Church of England has managed to get by without confronting the issue. And whilst the status quo of a universally recognized ministry prevailed, it was able to muck along. Now that the options to compromise are being reduced, the willingness to overlook those differences may also be coming under pressure. And that may have its own unintended consequences.

Revd John P Richardson
21 February 2010

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Rome's offer — any takers?

The Vatican has now published the details of the ‘Personal Ordinariate’, Anglicanorum Coetibus (does that mean‘Towards a Congregation of Anglicans?’), and at first glance I must say I can’t see how this is really going to work.

The difficult features seem to be these:

I §5 The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the Ordinariate.

In other words, members of the Ordinariate will have to accept every detail of the Catechism, just as do ordinary Roman Catholics. But that being the case, why not just become a Roman Catholic?

III. ... the Ordinariate has the faculty to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and the other Sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical celebrations according to the liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, which have been approved by the Holy See ...

But this could hardly include the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (certainly not with its rubrics!). One is left wondering which books will be approved and if there will be enough left to give an Anglican identity to what remains.

The fundamental question which must be asked is why anyone who wanted to be adopted into the Ordinariate would not, on these conditions, simply go the whole way. Answers on a postcard, please ...

John Richardson

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The new Bishop of Peterborough said what?

Yesterday’s news that the Venerable Donald Allister had been appointed the next Bishop of Peterborough initially came as a pleasant surprise in the midst of all the doom and gloom.

Donald is well-known in Conservative Evangelical circles — indeed he used to be chairman of the Council of Church Society.

I therefore found myself somewhat baffled by what Donald is quoted as saying in a press-release on the Diocese of Peterborough website:

“I’m happy to be described as an evangelical if that is understood as someone who prioritises evangelism and the Bible,” he explains. “But liberals and catholics can do evangelism and read the Bible as well!”

Whoah! When he says “liberals and catholics can do evangelism and read the Bible as well”, does he really mean (as implied by the word ‘but’) that the evangelical understanding of evangelism and Bible reading is essentially the same as the catholic and the liberal understanding of evangelism and Bible reading? If ever a statement called for an apostolic, “By no means!” (Rom 6:2), it is that one.

Surely evangelical and liberal Anglicans, in particular, have quite different views of the Bible as God’s word, and they have quite different attitudes to, and understandings of, the human condition and God’s response to it in Christ?

Donald seems to be saying there is nothing special about these evangelical ‘priorities’ — evangelicals ‘do evangelism and read the Bible’, and catholics ‘do evangelism and read the Bible’, and liberals ‘do evangelism and read the Bible’. But surely the point is that they do them differently? Otherwise, we might as well add, “and Jehovah’s witnesses ‘do evangelism and read the Bible’”.

It is all rather puzzling —and worrying.

John Richardson
6 November 2009

But now see here for what else the Bishop has said:

The Bishop of Peterborough Said What Else?

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Evangelicals and Catholics working together —where now, after October 20th?

(Yesterday was a nightmare, not least because I drove to Manchester and back to deliver this talk to the local branch of Forward in Faith. Thanks to delays, it took me 5 hours to get there. However, I gather it was well received, so here it is.)

Introduction

Until very recently, I took the view that in the present difficulties facing the Church of England, evangelicals and catholics could and should simply work together. Part of my work involved editing New Directions, and that was our strapline on the front page.

I now think circumstances demand that evangelical and catholic Anglicans both look at themselves carefully, and that any questions of cooperation can only be addressed in the light of that self-examination.

Let me explain what I mean.

The evangelical identity crisis

The first issue that brought this home to me was the evangelical identity crisis. This is something I have been trying to address for some time, but it is nothing new. On the contrary, evangelicals have a long-running problem over their identity.

As long ago as 1971, Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote a book titled, What is an Evangelical? John Stott addressed the same issue in 1977, as did Mark Thompson as recently as 1995 in a book titled Saving the Heart? subtitled, What is an evangelical?

However, in recent years the evangelical identity has become even more diffuse, even within Anglicanism. Do you mean Conservative, Open, Liberal, Charismatic, New Wine, Emergent or what?

When the Bishop of Durham is prepared to describe a book on penal substitution authored by members of one our most conservative evangelical theological colleges, as ‘hopelessly un-biblical’, and yet expects to be received as an evangelical by evangelicals generally, you know you’ve got a problem. If someone introduces themselves to me as an evangelical, I no longer say ‘Great’, I think, ‘What sort’?

The catholic identity crisis

But then we come to October 20^th and the Pope’s offer to Anglican catholics. The significance of this still has to be assessed, but I think it says something about Rome’s view of Anglicanism.

To me, it suggests that the period of formal ecumenical discussion is over for the foreseeable future.

It also suggests that Rome views Anglicanism as desperately weakened —and it is a weakness which Rome is not particularly bothered by.

It should also hearten Anglo-Catholics, because it clearly implies that Rome does take them very seriously indeed.

But at the same time, it raises a difficulty, because it confronts Catholic Anglicans as never before, and in a way that has never before been available, with the need to decide whether to go or stay.

The implications for both

In the light of these two apparently unrelated issues —the evangelical identity crisis and the offer of the Personal Ordinariate — evangelicals and catholics need to take a look at themselves, and I think both need to admit that for a long time they have not taken their church very seriously.

Indeed, I would go further and say that by our attitudes and actions we have exacerbated the problems which we blame for our lack of seriousness.

By calling ourselves ‘evangelicals’ or ‘catholics’, for example, we show that we regard our core identity as lying elsewhere than in the Church of England.

At the same time, though, we have colluded with the public perception that the Church of England doesn’t really stand for anything.

We have distanced ourselves from the ‘Derek Nimmo’ image of Anglicanism, by distancing ourselves from the ‘middle ground’, but we have left that middle ground open for others to occupy.

The offer of the Personal Ordinariate more directly impinges on catholics, but evangelicals face the same question. If we are to stay in the Church of England, we have got to start taking it more seriously before we can consider how we work together.

For evangelicals

Amongst evangelicals, it is surprising, even to me, how many of them have almost no awareness or experience of their own theological and liturgical heritage. And the more Conservative the Evangelical, the more this is true.

One reason is that those who do have a regard for this heritage are often regarded as —and indeed sometimes are —dusty and fuddy-duddy.

As one recent correspondent put it to me, people would rather join Reform than Church Society because they believe that in the end Reform would choose the Bible, whereas Church Society would choose the BCP and the Thirty-nine Articles.

Yet as a constituency, they seem to be remarkably unaware of how vulnerable this makes them. You may not be aware, but Oak Hill College, which was painstakingly improved through the work of David Petersen as its principal during the 1990s, was recently deeply affected by a theological fad brought in from Presbyterianism in the United States, known as the Federal Vision Movement.

I cannot go into great detail, but what struck me about this, though, was that the real damage was being done not by the Federal Vision advocates, but by supposed Anglican Evangelicals who had a completely un-Anglican baptismal theology.

When someone says at a baptism service, as I was quoted, “We’re not doing anything here, just making the baby wet,” they have ceased to be recognizably Anglican. But worse than that (because that is not the worst thing one can do), they have left the door open to exotic views of baptism which, as Oak Hill has found, can readily divide evangelicals who think that the Bible alone is a sufficient rallying point.

Evangelical Anglicanism, and I would say especially Conservative Evangelical Anglicanism in this country, has no idea how theologically thin and weak it is. Our great failing is that we do not do systematic theology. And the great shame is that Anglicanism provides just the sort of systematic theology we need.

For catholics

When it comes to Anglican catholics, however, the picture is not much better. Bishop John Broadhurst said at the recent FiF Conference that the Anglican experiment is over. What perhaps needs to be acknowledged is that the Anglo-Catholic experiment is over —by which I mean the idea of sitting over against the denomination of which you are a part.

Reading John Shelton Reed’s Glorious Battle, subtitled, ‘The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism’, one thing that struck me was that there was something rather enjoyable about being the ‘bad boys’ in the then-Church of England.

Perhaps most importantly, it must be acknowledged that Anglo-Catholics of the time paid scant attention to their bishops, even whilst upholding the importance of episcopacy.

Reed writes of an English Church Union speaker who asked rhetorically, “When will the clergy obey their Bishops?”, answering his own question thus: “My lords, when the Bishops obey the Church.” (145)

But as Reed points out,

... for an English churchman, determining when episcopal opinions were unepiscopal required something that looked very much like private judgement. (146)

And, of course, private judgement was something which Newman went on later to attack as the very bane of Protestantism.

Regard for the fundamentals

The truth is that Anglo-Catholics have had a good deal less regard for the fundamentals of their own church than they have had for the fundamentals of the Church of Rome.

Of course, that does not prove they are wrong to do so, but the Pope’s offer of an open door does raise the question of how seriously that difference should be taken. And as I have indicated, if catholic Anglicans decide not to take up that offer, they cannot simply going on being what they have become, which is effectively an exile group in their own denomination.

I am rather reminded of a story told by a friend of mine who was for some time a supporter of a dissident Romanian group. Just after Ceauşescu was killed, this group held a meeting in London. My friend could not help noticing the difference between the rejoicing in Romania and the gloom in London —gloom because this group had lost their raison d’etre.

Catholic Anglicans may be facing just that moment themselves. If there is no reason to be embattled, what reason is there to be Anglican?

Questions we must face

And so I want to pose a number of questions which I think both catholics and evangelicals must face, and the first is this: do we believe that the Church of England is what it says on the tin?

For evangelicals, the question is whether we believe the Church of England even exists. Do we believe there can be a manifestation of the body of Christ at a level that transcends the purely local?

And this does mean we need to ask whether we believe in the office of ‘bishop’ —do we believe in an ‘oversight’ which is not only congregational?

Actually, though I won’t go into the details here, there is a possible Anglican argument for a more congregational arrangement should other things change.

For catholics, the question must be, at very least, whether the Church of England is right about some things which Rome has got wrong. One of my good Anglo-catholic friends says, for example, he believes Rome is wrong when it demands belief in certain dogmas which he says may or may not be true.

If that is so, then, like him, you may feel you have good reason for not going over to Rome, no matter how generous the offer. If, however, you feel there is no significant area in which Rome is wrong, whereas there are some areas in which Anglicanism is indeed wrong, then I think the logic of that position is clear.

Then again, I think both evangelicals and catholics need to ask what they make of the core theological documents of Anglicanism which remain enshrined in law.

Newman took a very post-modern view, that interpretation was the key, not the author’s intention. That, I think, is open to the same challenge as the whole of post-modernism, and I think Newman eventually realized that.

But what about evangelicals, who believe that their commitment to Scripture equally allows them to be revisionist on some of the controverted issues dealt with in the Articles. There are many evangelicals today who would be much more comfortable with the Arminianism of Methodism than the Calvinism of Articles X and XVII.

There is not time here to go through a whole list, but I do not believe catholics or evangelicals can afford to go on being ‘Anglican-lite’. Events are now confronting us with the need to choose.

Working together

The good news in all this is that evangelicals and catholics do have a good deal in common, and that, relative to many in the Church of England nationally and the Anglican communion internationally, they are conservative and orthodox in many essential areas.

The breadth of churchmanship in the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is one illustration of this.

However, in our own context, there is a need for reappraisal of their own position by catholics and evangelicals alike.

Currently, both groups look on the Church of England as essentially a structural entity, whilst they regard themselves as theological entities. Alongside Charismatic and Liberals, they regard themselves as members of the Church of England organizationally, but differing from, and sometimes overlapping with, one another theologically.

For evangelicals, however, this theological identity is increasingly hard to sustain. For Anglican catholics the identity is challenged by the offer from Rome.

The Anglican identity

What I am suggesting is that both groups need to recognize that Anglicanism can validly claim to be a theological entity. And that being the case they could begin to regard themselves as much more defined by outward forms of expression, and much less by theological divergences.

In fact, the theological identity of Anglicanism ought to be the rationale for evangelicals belonging to the Church of England in the first place.

We do not need to worry about whether there is a ‘trans-local’ church comparable to the local church made visible in the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments.

What binds us together as evangelicals at the trans-local level is (or ought to be) the recognition of a shared core doctrine. At the same time, however, we ought to acknowledge that this doctrine is not ours to define —it is a ‘given’ of the Church of England.

Catholics similarly need to come to terms with the ‘given’ theology of the Church of England. It is no longer enough simply to disagree with it, or diverge from it, even on grounds of conscience.

No ‘middle ground’

Before I conclude, however, I must clear up one easy misconception. I am not arguing that we all need to agree on a ‘middle ground’, as distinct from our own supposed ‘extremes’.

This is not a suggestion that the essence of Anglicanism is a balance between Protestant and Catholic, Liberal and Orthodox, Charismatic, contemplative, activist and so on.

Emphatically I am not saying that a true Anglican is a person who takes a moderate view of everything. Equally emphatically, I am not saying that theological ‘inclusivism’ is the Anglican way.

All of that is, I believe, a false view, which at various times has dominated the Church, but at no time has been true to the spirit of Anglicanism.

Moreover, where such a view is taken, it is not just that the gospel suffers, but that so does individual liberty. I’d like to quote the words of John Woodhouse, now principal of Moore Theological College:

Parallel denominations provide for liberty of conscience. The alternative to parallel denominations is one denomination which could only be maintained by persecution ... To allow freedom of conscience on certain matters requires parallel associations. These are not necessarily the most important matters, but they are the matters in which disagreement makes practical co-operation of some kind unworkable. (Unity that Helps & Unity that Hinders, p. 45)

Whatever else it is, the Church of England is a undoubtedly a denomination. Its usefulness as such depends on whether it is held together on the basis of matters over which Christians may validly disagree, but which are essential in terms of practical cooperation.

But if all that holds the denomination together is its structures, then. as Woodhouse identifies, it will only hold together through persecution. That persecution may be subtle or unsubtle, but it will involve applying rules and regulations, the giving and withholding of support and favours, the promotion of some individuals and the denial of promotion to others, all on the basis of loyalty to the institutional, rather than the theological, ethos  —in fact, just what we see in the CofE.

By contrast, where there is unity in essentials, there is fellowship in the gospel, just as I am sure you enjoy here.

The Church of England has a theological identity. It is established in its formularies and in its historical development. Above all, it is established in its commitment to test all things by Scripture. Surely none of us can object to that. The question we face is how we come to terms with it, and how we come to terms with the disregard of these principles by so many in our church today.

Conclusion

Where, in conclusion, do I think this leaves us? When I asked an Anglo-Catholic friend a few days ago how he rated the Vatican’s announcement on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), his answer was ‘on a par with an atomic bomb’.

Although he was quick to affirm that we would need to see the offer itself, and see how people reacted to that, he clearly felt it was highly significant. And I share his view that it has indeed changed the landscape.

The challenge of the hour, as I see it, is for us to recover the vision of being theological Anglicans. Some of us will find we cannot do that —I think that is as true for some evangelicals as it is for some catholics. If that is so, then we must face the facts honestly and courageously.

But many —hopefully most —of us will discover that being a member of the Church of England is what we want. If that is the case, then we do not need to ask what we have in common — we will discover what we have in common.

Our challenge will be, having these things in common, and truly being members of the Church of England, we call our church back to its proper theological roots and to its true mission.

John Richardson

3 November 2009

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Further reflections on the FCA launch

Correction: It has been pointed out to me that it is not correct to say, as I have below, that "the platform and presentations did not feature any ordained women". In fact, the gospel was read by an ordained ( priest) woman, the Rev Erin Clifford, Associate Minister at St Michael's Chester Square, and one of those offering prayer was Rev Carrie Sandom ( a deacon), now based in London. This doubtless will not satisfy some people, but it does put things in a (slightly) different perspective from what my comments may have suggested.

On the second evening after the ‘Longest Day’ (the July 6^th launch of FCA UK, which, as I’ve said before, was a bit over-packed), I find myself reflecting that the Church of England may be in even worse trouble than I imagined last night —and that was bad enough.

The reasons for this lie in three reactions to the day I am picking up —two of them simply disappointing, and one of them more challenging.

The first reaction is the not-unexpected, but still sad to behold, visceral dislike from those who have been hostile to GAFCON and were inevitably therefore going to look askance at FCA. These I would generally characterize as ‘liberals’ from all wings of the Church, as well as most wings of the media. Since their opprobrium was inevitable, however, one tends to greet it with the sense that if these are the people one has upset, one has probably done at least something right. Nevertheless, it is still sad.

More disappointing, though, is the response of some who were there as supporters, yet who didn’t feel their ‘side’ was sufficiently represented.

Personally, the lack of ‘balance’ is something I have already noted —and it was not just a matter of breadth of churchmanship. However, this was a launch, not a last word, and on other days the swings may compensate for the roundabouts. More importantly, FCA is attempting to bring together groupings within the Church of England which have a past history of open conflict, yet without compromising or ‘fudging’ their integrity. (In this, I would argue, it is being more bold than anything attempted by ‘Open’ Evangelicalism.)

If this is to become a reality, all of us are going to have to swallow some things which we find unpalatable, and there will be times when ‘our’ point of view takes second place. For me, one such moment was seeing rows of ciboria, neatly labelled as containing so many ‘hosts’, waiting for the end-of-launch communion. The Protestant in me still finds such manifestations of ‘Catholic’ spirituality slightly uncomfortable —but hey, that’s life. Or at least, it will be life if FCA as presently conceived is to succeed.

By the same token, however, I made sure I wore my dog-collar to London (not something which Conservative Evangelical clergy are generally inclined to do), specifically because I wanted to take seriously the sensibilities of Anglo-Catholic clergy who would be there and whom I might meet.

The third reaction, however, is more serious because it is the most challenging. It concerns the ordination of women, but not necessarily in the way people might think.

It has been observed, both by supporters and opponents of FCA, that the platform and presentations did not feature any ordained women [but see correction above], and that, indeed, several known individuals and organizations opposed to the ordination of women were in evidence.

The latter cannot be helped. The truth is that FCA, and GAFCON before it, is attempting to embrace both viewpoints. That being the case, those opposed to the ordination of women will (inevitably) be welcomed, seen and heard. This is not, after all, the House of Bishops or the General Synod!

However, the more challenging reaction is from those on the Anglo-Catholic side who have complained about the very fact that FCA is trying to treat this as a ‘second-order’ issue —one, that is to say, on which Christian brethren can agree to disagree.

Indeed it is rather ironic that at this point Traditionalist Anglo-Catholic and Liberal ‘others’ share the same point of view —in the eyes of both, women’s ordination is a first-order issue, standing in the way of full cooperation with those who think otherwise.

It may, therefore, be the case that FCA cannot finally work, not because it contains those who accept and those who disagree with women’s ordination, but because it cannot contain both those who view this as a first-order issue and those who do not.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that, for Conservative Evangelicals like myself, ordination itself is not a first-order issue. Indeed, I once remarked, slightly tongue in cheek, that this was why I could happily sit down with Anglo-Catholics who have a view of priesthood and sacrament which I regard as somewhat beyond the Pale of true Anglicanism. It is because I don’t think ordination is worth that big a fight that I don’t think someone’s (in my view) extreme position on ordination is similarly worth a major falling out —not when I find myself agreeing with them on so many other things. To illustrate it from another angle, I have previously enjoyed Christian fellowship with Seventh-Day Adventists whose views of the Sabbath are, I think, quite misguided, because I found them to be co-believers in Christ and co-belligerents for the gospel in a very tough situation.

By the same token, however, I can also accept ministry —including sacramental ministry —from an ordained woman, even though I might have serious reservations about women’s ordination generally and women’s consecration specifically. In this respect, it is genuinely, for me, a second-order issue.

However, I have considerable difficulty with those for whom the acceptance of women’s ordination is a first-order issue, especially when the worthiness or otherwise of any enterprise or event is judged by whether or not the women on the platform or the organizing committee were ordained women. To me, this is to elevate ordination to the point where you are not at the ‘pinnacle’ of spiritual development unless you have been endowed with that ‘quality’. Frankly, it smacks of the old concept of priestly ‘character’. Someone who insists at this point that I must see things their way is making a demand with which I simply cannot comply.

And so I find myself surveying the Church of England on this second post-FCA evening with rather less confidence (even) than I had last night. If the FCA cannot work because we are too defensive about our own positions, that will be bad enough. If it turns out that women’s ordination has become a first-order issue on both wings of the Church —the Traditionalist and the Liberal —then those of us who are presently ‘in the middle’ may well wonder if the institution can truly embrace a diversity of views. The only other alternative, I suppose, is that we must adopt the same position ourselves, whichever may be the side on which we come down.

Revd John Richardson
7 July 2009

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Harmony with Belial? Can Conservative Evangelicals and Traditional Anglo-Catholics really work together?

An Address to the Annual Meeting of the Lincoln branch of Forward in Faith, 1 November 2008

Introduction
In 2 Corinthians 6:14-16, the Apostle Paul asked some searching questions of believers who wanted to take their new-found freedom in Christ too far:

For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? ¹⁵ What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?

Right now, a lot of people are asking the same question about any possible cooperation between Conservative Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics over the issues of women bishops and, to a lesser but still significant extent, same-sex relationships and their effect on the global Anglican Communion.

GAFCON and Anglican unity
This question has been highlighted by the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem this year, the issuing of the GAFCON statement and Jerusalem Declaration and the ongoing establishment of a worldwide Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

On the one hand, GAFCON unarguably brought together Anglicans from across the world who considered themselves to be united with one another — a unity subsequently expressed in a form of words drawn up from scratch by the conference participants during their few days together.

On the other hand, there were observably divergent styles of churchmanship present at GAFCON, ranging from ultra-high African to ultra-low Sydney.

Thus one commentator to an Evangelical forum called this a “toe-curling compromise”, and predicted confidently that“GAFCON will implode” as Anglo-Catholics are squeezed out by the Conservative Evangelicals.

Sydney and lay presidency
And as if in fulfilment of this prediction, news came last week that the Sydney Diocesan Synod had affirmed its support for lay and diaconal administration — what we would call celebration — of the Lord’s Supper.

Significantly, the same motion requested the Diocesan Secretary to send a copy of The Lord’s Supper in Human Hands, a collection of essays by some of Sydney’s leading theologians, to all bishops who attended GAFCON.

On the Thinking Anglicans Liberal website, spleen has been vented in generous doses over this announcement. Yet on the Stand Firm website, which represents American orthodoxy, many of the responses have been the same — some even calling for Sydney to be disciplined alongside errant north Americans.

Thus in both the Liberal and orthodox camps, voices are asking the same question, “What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?”

Bringing it back home
Was the unity experienced at GAFCON a genuine koinonia, or the spiritual equivalent of a holiday romance — a Shirley Valentine moment for unhappy bishops?

This raises serious questions about the talk of co-belligerency with Anglo-Catholics which was being tentatively voiced at this year’s Reform Conference in London. Would moves to unite our forces in this country over the issue of women bishops be anything more than a cynical ‘flag of convenience’?

It is my conviction that genuine unity may, just, be possible, but that it will require genuine openness and genuine change if Conservative Evangelicals and Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics are to work together. In the rest of this talk, I want to explore what that might mean.

Personal background
Can a Conservative Evangelical, then, feel any sympathy for or make any conciliatory gestures towards Anglo-Catholicism? At this point, a bit of personal background is relevant.

My own upbringing was orthodox Anglo-Catholic. And although my home church of St Luke’s Charlton has since shifted in a decidedly Liberal direction, I was brought up by people who, when they said the Creeds, believed what they were saying, without reserve or compromise.

My conversion to Christianity took place at the beginning of my final year at University, through the influence of the Christian Union, but I never felt the need to reject my early upbringing, which taught me much of what I needed to know.

Subsequently, my Christian path led through the Charismatic movement in the seventies and eighties and finally settled as Conservative Evangelical in the mid eighties.

And the seal was put on all this when I was able to spend a year at Moore Theological College in 1993, studying for a post-graduate diploma in theology. This not only gave me a much deeper (and, incidentally, broader) theological education but gave me first hand experience of Sydney Anglicanism.

Challenges to (my) Protestantism
And there I might have stayed, proudly and happily Protestant, but for two developments. The first was getting involved on the editorial board of New Directions in the mid 1990s, following my return from Australia.

There I found true spiritual friends, in the persons of Sarah and Robbie Low, Francis Gardom Arthur Middleton, Geoffrey Kirk, Andy Hawes, and others since then — not merely convenient co-belligerents, but people of shared conviction, even though their Anglo-Catholicism was often at odds with my own Evangelicalism.

The other, more recent, development is the growing gap between Conservative Evangelicals and those now calling themselves ‘Open Evangelicals’.

The cynic in me wants to say that Open Evangelicalism is defined by being open to anything except Conservative Evangelicalism.

In my experience, Open Evangelicals are willing to entertain, and often to side with, doctrinal and practical positions quite opposed to what was once the agreed Evangelical heritage: penal substitution, the sanctity of marriage, the wrongness of divorce, the headship of the husband, women in leadership, and even same-sex relationships.

In many cases, Open Evangelicals have also been quite hostile to GAFCON, and could certainly not be said to have wished this coalition well.

Hyper-Protestantism
To this Conservative, then, the new Open Evangelicalism looks and feels like old Liberalism. But reading Alister McGrath’s historical survey, Protestantism: Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, I have now become convinced something more is involved.

Conservative Evangelicals are, indeed, Protestants. Open Evangelicals, however, are not, as they characterize themselves, more towards the centre of the Christian tradition. On the contrary, Open Evangelicals are, in fact, hyper-Protestants — the true heirs of the Radical Reformation.

Why do I say this? Because for the Open Evangelical the final arbiter in spiritual matters is private judgement. And as McGrath points out, it is this which is the truly ‘dangerous idea’ of Protestantism.

It is private judgement, ultimately, which leads to the constant divisions which have beset the offshoots of the churches which separated from Rome in the 16^th century.

By contrast, Conservative Evangelicals are self-consciously recipients of a tradition. The ‘Fathers’ of that tradition may be Luther and Calvin, or more recently Stott and Packer, but even these are standing within an older tradition, which includes not just the Reformation formularies but the historic Creeds.

It is this, I think, which explains why Conservative and Open Evangelicals experience so much mutual antipathy, whereas the Conservative may be much more at ease in the company of traditionalist Catholics.

Though the conclusions reached by the latter may be very different, the rules by which they are derived are very similar. By contrast, the Open Evangelical is felt not only to have arrived at different conclusions but to have a fundamentally different approach.

A new tradition?
To recognize this, however, is to acknowledge a general weakness within the Protestant tradition. As McGrath observes, Protestantism claims to acknowledge the authority of the Bible, but who is to decide what the Bible means?

Are not all biblical interpretations, in the end, opinions, and are not formularies simply those opinions that have the sanction of the denomination or the state?

And is not the Open Evangelical doing what the Conservative fails to do, namely bring every assumption to the bar of Scripture — even our cherished traditions?

The Challenge to Anglo-Catholicism
It may seem that Anglo-Catholics are in a much better position. But before they begin to feel too smug, they must also face up to some searching questions, the most obvious of which is, “Was the Reformation, simply a mistake?”

More specifically, how does the Anglican Catholic live within a Protestant church? And in case anyone should dispute the last suggestion, let me quote John Henry Newman before he became Cardinal Newman:

... it is notorious that the Articles were drawn up by Protestants and intended for the establishment of Protestantism; accordingly that is an evasion of their meaning to give them any other than a Protestant drift, possible as it may be to do so grammatically, or in each separate part.

Anglo-Catholicism must recognize that it is not Roman Catholicism if it is to find common ground with Evangelical Anglicanism. And it must also acknowledge its own historically cavalier attitude to authority within the Anglican church.

John Shelton Reed, in his Glorious Battle, quotes an English Church Union speaker of the nineteenth century who asked rhetorically, “When will the clergy obey their Bishops?”, answering, “My lords, when the Bishops obey the Church.” (145)

But as Reed points out,

... for an English churchman, determining when episcopal opinions were unepiscopal required something that looked very much like private judgement. (146)

And he quotes one contemporary thus:

The nineteenth century has seen personal infallibility claimed by others besides the Bishop of Rome, and by much younger men. (ibid)

Anglo-Catholicism has existed within the Church of England by sitting very light indeed to its structures insofar as they are expressed through approved liturgies, canon laws and episcopal injunctions.

The point of saying this, however, is not to reproach Anglo-Catholicism but to confront us all with the need for honesty about past and present weaknesses which must be addressed if there is to be any chance of drawing closer in the future.

Protestantism and Gospel Freedom
With the weaknesses of both parties exposed, how might we respond? And first, what might we do about our historic hostility?

Here the Anglican Protestant, might find an unexpected challenge, and the Anglo-Catholic an unexpected ally, in the writings of Martin Luther.

Facing opposition from both the papacy and the radical reformers, this was Luther’s position on the elevation of the host during the Mass:

The pope destroys freedom in commanding outright that the sacrament is to be elevated, and would have it a statute and a law. He who refrains from keeping his law sins. The factious spirit destroys freedom in forbidding outright that the sacrament be elevated, and would have it a prohibition, a statute, and a law. He who does not act in accordance with this law sins. Here Christ is driven away by both parties. One pushes him out of the front [door], the other drives him out the rear [door]. (LW 40:128)

The issue for Martin Luther was not whether the sacrament should or should not be elevated, but on what basis we should act in regard to this practice. Was it on the basis of gospel or of law?

Protestant Anglicanism is clear that the host should not be elevated, and that there are gospel reasons for this. But, says Luther, as soon as you make it a law in the Church that the sacrament must not be elevated, you yourself depart from the gospel. Why? Because law as such is strictly antithetical to the gospel.

It might be worth reflecting on this with regard to the Evangelical response to Ritualism in the nineteenth century. Evangelicals clearly had the law on their side — Anglo-Catholics went to prison as a result. But were these legal victories triumphs for the Evangelical movement? History clearly suggests they were not.

Let me read Michael Saward’s reflections on those battles and that period:

To the rest of the church, Evangelicals were legalistic, narrow-minded, hard-faced bigots who were prepared to put their brother clergy into prison for trivial liturgical and sartorial reasons. Enormous damage was done and the final vestiges of its impact are still with us in the 1980s. ((James C Whisenant, 473-4)

Could, then, Conservative Evangelicals be persuaded to accept the outward rituals of Anglo-Catholicism within the bounds of gospel liberty. And should they? These are, I think, questions worth asking.

Protestantism, Hermeneutics and Authority
And what about private judgement? Personally, I wonder whether the doctrines of both private judgement and the perspicuity of Scripture are Protestant Shibboleths which it is time to question.

To begin with the perspicuity of Scripture, the idea that the Bible may be understood equally by everyone is not only demonstrably untrue but unscriptural. “How can I understand,” the Ethiopian eunuch said to Philip, “Unless someone explains it to me?” And why else has Christ given to the Church teachers? Indeed, why do we have that most important of all Evangelical offices, the preacher?

But if we abandon the notion of the simple perspicuity of Scripture, we must also abandon the idea of a general entitlement to private judgement. How can ‘Everyman’ be the judge of that which everyone may not have understood?

In any case, Scripture teaches us there is a tradition to be handed on by the faithful and, just as importantly, received by the disciple — the mathētēs, or learner, of Christ.

After a while, someone may indeed be in a position to judge whether the tradition has been rightly passed on to them. But private judgement is often a subtle idol which is enthroned where humility should be.

Not Councils
But if we are to doubt private judgement and the perspicuity of Scripture, what, as a Protestant, can I put in its place?

I will not say “the Church,” or even “the Councils of the Church”. The Anglican Articles tell me that Councils, even General Councils, have erred. And in case that doesn’t persuade you, let me quote Newman on the Arian controversy, this time in his Cardinal’s hat:

The body of Bishops failed in their confession of the faith. They spoke variously, one against another; there was nothing ... of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony, for nearly sixty years. There were untrustworthy Councils, unfaithful Bishops; there was weakness, fear of consequences, misguidance, delusion, hallucination, endless, hopeless, extending itself into nearly every corner of the Catholic Church. The comparatively few who remained faithful were discredited and driven into exile; the rest were either deceivers or were deceived. (On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine)

But I would suggest that it is precisely this period which points us to where an answer might lie.

Systematic Theology
The suggestion I want to make is that systematic theology provides the proper antidote to private judgement, both for the individual and for the Church.

What was it that resolved the Arian controversy? Some might say it was the authority of the Councils, others the authority of the Emperor. In the end, though, I would argue it was resolved by the persuasive power of the theology itself.

As McGrath points out, the radical reformers were prepared to question everything up to and including the doctrine of the Trinity. And we will all have experienced the difficulty many new Christians face with an idea that is scarcely read straight off the pages of Scripture.

Why, then, do the Trinitarian Creeds retain their central place within the Church? The answer is surely because, after centuries of debate, discussion and even division, this doctrine retains its explanatory power in the face of other, competing, approaches to the wide and varied witness of revelation.

A workable model
The Arian controversy shows that the Church can resolve profound questions in ways that command almost universal assent. And it can do so without appealing to a higher authority than Scripture.

What I am suggesting is that the solution to mere private judgement lies in bringing interpretation to the bar of systematic theology and that the perspicuity of Scripture will only truly be experienced when we apply the insights of systematic theology to our reading.

Unfortunately, and especially amongst modern Evangelicals, systematic theology has gained a reputation for rigidity which makes people suspicious of the whole enterprise. Buying into systematic theology is often seen as buying into a system which cannot be questioned.

I think it was Colin Gunton, however, who observed that there is a difference between a theology which aims at a system and a theology which aims at some kind of orderliness and coherence.

Systematic theology does not have produce a rigid system. On the contrary, we can learn from a comparison with the scientific method. The scientist does not require a complete explanation of everything to accept a theory as well-established. Rather, the aim is to produce an increasingly better fit between the evidence the theory.

The revolution for systematic theology would be in admitting the partial nature of what we know. The revolution for Protestantism would be in admitting that what we can claim to know has to be integrated into a much wider field of knowledge than what I, personally, happen to know at the present.

Applying the model
But there is a further aspect to this suggestion, which applies to the question of relationships between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics.

If we accept the analogy between systematic theology and the scientific method, we should also note the importance of peer review. One cannot be published in a serious scientific journal without practitioners with established credentials judging the work worthy of publication.

Would that the same were more generally true of theological writing. There are indeed peer reviewed journals, but within the world of Protestant theology generally, and certainly within the Anglican world, there is nothing like the Roman Catholic imprimatur which certifies that there is nothing here of error.

Once again, the objection has tended to be that this gives too much power to the Church — and indeed it might. But why should there not be some recognised way of at least saying that a document does, or does not, lie within the established tradition, and giving it something like a ‘health warning’?

And why shouldn’t such warnings be accepted with grace by the author, if there is a shared concern for the truth and for the health of the Church?

The present Bishop of Durham, for example has put forward ideas which, by his own admission, involve a radical challenge to the inherited understanding of justification going back not merely to the Reformation but to St Augustine. If true, the ‘gospel’ preached by Evangelicals is not quite the ‘gospel’ at all, even though Wright staunchly defends his own Evangelical credentials.

Given the importance he attributes to what he is saying, however, Wright’s thesis should be submitted to peer review, not in a combative and jealous spirit, as often happens, but willingly and with an openness to correction.

And the bigger the ideas, the wider and of longer duration should surely be the review process. Thus on the issue of women’s ordination, the Evangelical world is deeply divided, not only amongst Anglicans, but more generally, where Complementarians and Egalitarians publish and counter-publish with an enthusiasm that would have done Arians and Athanasians proud.

Yet with 2,000 years of history — apart from some demonstrably fringe groups — and the opinions of both Luther and Calvin against them, should not the Egalitarians, who favour women’s ordination, be seeking the widest and the most careful scrutiny of their proposals, before turning them into actions?

The Challenge consensus
For the Protestant, this would represent a real challenge to centuries of practice. It might even threaten some of our cherished projects, such as Sydney’s enthusiasm for lay celebration.

Yet there are challenges also to Catholics, and not just Catholic Anglicans. The biggest challenge is that every theological position and tradition is, in fact, open to challenge — even the accepted formularies about the Trinity.

Then there is the challenge that every tradition must be demonstrably justifiable within a coherent theological framework. We cannot simply say that a thing is right because it is received. What Newman wrote about the laity should undoubtedly be true of all:

I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold, and what they do not, who know their creed so well, that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity ... You ought to be able to bring out what you feel and what you mean, as well as to feel and mean it.’ ( J H Newman, The Present Position of Catholics in England, 1851 pp. 390-1)

Moreover, the Anglo-Catholic must face the fact that many things precious to the tradition are, in fact, at odds with the formal position of the denomination. The onus is, therefore, on the innovator to justify their position.

Above all the Anglo-Catholic must, if progress is to be made, demonstrate the coherence of his own position within Anglicanism. The systematic theology of Anglo-Catholicism at this point must include his present ecclessiology, rather than skirt round it as an inconvenient truth or a temporary aberration awaiting a better day.

Conclusion
Experience shows that the ‘farmer’ of Anglo-Catholicism and the ‘cowman’ of Conservative Evangelicalism can, indeed, be friends, and it is not unreasonable to seek to know why this is so.

I have suggested here that it comes from a shared approach to faith. I have also suggested that some of the tensions between the two groups may be addressed by accepting the existence of real weaknesses within their own position.

I am not saying that all the remaining problems can then be resolved. I am not sure they can be resolved at all. It may be that, after due consideration, we may conclude we hold irreconcilable positions.

But if that were so, I would have to hold that no Anglo-Catholic can be a Christian, or that if he is, it is despite, rather than because of, his Anglo-Catholicism. Frankly, I doubt whether that is true — or certainly that it is true at absolutely every point.

Yet as I have said, this does not suddenly make me an Open Evangelical. I am not adopting the view that every tradition may offer something which I can cherry-pick as seems fit.

If real rapprochement is to occur, then so must real change. If we remain as we are, then eventual division is inevitable. But if we seek a mere common denominator, then, paradoxically, we abandon the most important thing we have in common, which is our attitude to truth.

Perhaps, then, our hope lies in examining how we test the truth and how we respond to difference. That is not the Anglican way, but it may be a better way.

Revd John Richardson
1 November 2008

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Why Open Evangelicals are hyper-Protestants and REFORM is moving to the centre

This is a comment I have posted in a thread on the Stand Firm website, where they are discussing an earlier article on this blog. I am hoping to develop some of the ideas here in an address I am giving to a Forward in Faith gathering in Lincoln Diocese in a few days time:  

If I may add a couple of comments myself, as author of the piece, divisions within Evangelicalism are, of course, only a reflection of divisions within Protestantism generally. I have just been reading Alister McGrath’s Protestantism - Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, which is a powerful reminder of this, and it was, I think, Jim Packer who referred to the “fissiparous nature” of Evangelicalism.

As long ago as the first NEAC, at Keele University in 1967, Evangelical Anglicans were discussing their commitment to the Church of England and their ‘division’ from the wider Evangelical community.

Later (in my own time as a Christian), the divisions in the 1970s and early 80s were between ‘old guard’ and ‘new radicals’ who wanted to experiment with liturgy and explore the application of Christianity to the arts, politics and social involvement.

Unfortunately, two things happened. First, the new radicals turned out to lack Evangelical roots and drifted from a recognizably Evangelical theology. To see this in microcosm, look at the theological development of the Greenbelt Arts Festival. Secondly, the ordination of women in 1993 created a ‘fact on the ground’ which embodied theological divisions not only about biblical interpretation but ministry, gender, marriage, church, society, sexuality and, ultimately, the Holy Trinity.

What is happening now amongst Open Evangelicals is a tendency to react almost automatically against Conservative Evangelicalism, and to cheer for anyone, such as Bishop Tom Wright, who attacks it.

Two key areas are the ordination of women (and thus anything which smacks of ‘headship’ theology or subordination within the Trinity), and penal substitution, where the key argument is over the ‘penal’ aspect and the wrath of God - hell and judgement being also matters for reconsideration in the development of theology.

The latter is somewhat ironic, given Bp Wright’s clear personal endorsement of penal substitutionary theology. But his own assault on the work of Oak Hill theologians, Pierced for our Transgressions, and his endorsement of the popular theologian and pastor Steve Chalke, despite the latter’s total rejection of penal substitution (something which Wright simply misunderstands) has opened the door for a more radical stance amongst Wright’s own followers.

Ironically, therefore, I would argue that Open Evangelicals are, in fact, hyper-Protestants when compared with Reform. The approach of Reform is that there are doctrines we ought to receive - such as those expressed in the Thirty-nine Articles - as authoritative and, thus, binding interpretations of Scripture, if we are to remain within the tradition of the Church.

The most ‘open’ Open Evangelical is willing not only to question everything (as were the Radical Reformers in the sixteenth century) but, in the end, to be an extreme advocate of ‘private judgement’. For an Open Evangelical, the Faith is ultimately what “I” can believe, and thus the Opens, who claim the Evangelical Centre (pace Fulcrum) turn out not to belong [not] at the centre of the Reformation, but on its radical wing!

As evidence of this, we now see Reform beginning to consider co-belligerency with Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics, who of course lie much nearer to Rome - something which the extreme Open Evangelical would, I suspect, find very hard.

John Richardson

22 October 2008

Update: There are also responses to this in a thread on the Fulcrum website.

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