Evangelism cannot be enough for Evangelicals

Last month saw the departure of a man who, for many people, was Anglican evangelicalism. John Stott was already a venerated figure when I became a Christian at the age of 21. For me, therefore, as for many others, it is as if one of the great landmarks has disappeared.

Stott was particularly renowned, however, for making evangelicalism ‘respectable’ (or at least, a bit more respectable) in the Church of England, which he achieved via a combination of personal graciousness, intellectual calibre and an exemplary lifestyle.

It was Stott around whom the 1967 National Evangelical Anglican Congress at Keele revolved, and which committed Anglican Evangelicals to a future within the structures of the Church of England. And it was Stott again who at the 1977 NEAC gave unity and final expression to the deliberations of an increasingly diverse constituency.

Yet the place won for Evangelicals came at a price — and not only to the constituency but to the institution.

Politicians since before the days of Machiavelli have known the importance of promoting their enemies. The Elizabethan Puritan Lord Burghley reflected on the effect this had on some of his companions:

I see such worldliness in many that were otherwise affected before they came to cathedral chairs, that I fear the places alter the men. (Quoted in Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, [London: Jonathan Cape, 1967] 49)

Write large, that could be the verdict on Anglican Evangelicalism since the second world war. We have an ‘honoured’ place in the institution, but the price exacted from us is to identify ourselves as a ‘tradition’ — one amongst the many different traditions which make up the all-embracing comprehensiveness of the Church of England.

But, as I have indicated above, at least from our own perspective, this is a betrayal not only of ourselves but of everyone else. To accept this definition of ‘evangelicalism’ is to cease to be Evangelical.

Let us consider, for a moment, the meaning of the term. There have been endless books and articles written about the nature of evangelicalism. I believe it was Stott himself, however, who said that evangelicals are ‘gospel people’. And that is surely right. The word ‘evangelical’ derives from the Greek word for the ‘gospel’, which in the New Testament refers to the message from God about his Son Jesus Christ.

So an evangelical is a person with the message of God for the world. Please note — not ‘a’ message, but ‘the’ message. There is not an ‘evangelical’ message of God sitting alongside a whole selection of ‘non-evangelical’ messages, but one message, which is ‘the evangel’.

To be an evangelical, therefore, is to claim that you are in possession of God’s message to the world — not because you have cleverly worked it out before you proclaim it. You must have received the message first. But that is itself the biblical tradition: “For what I received,” wrote Paul to the Corinthians, “I passed on to you ...”

Evangelicals, then, may accept that there are different styles and emphases in the church throughout the world, different ways of presenting and of living out the gospel message, but they can never accept that there are different ‘gospels’.

This is also why Evangelicals are actually open to change. We want to make sure that we have got the message right. It is no good us saying, “This is our tradition and our version of things, and that’s what matters.” If we are wrong, we need to change. But that will not stop us being ‘evangelicals’ — it will simply (though significantly) mean that we got things wrong in the past, and now we have (hopefully!) got them right, or at least more right than previously. Evangelicalism ought, therefore, always to be self-critical.

But by the same token, this means we cannot accept as ‘traditions’ versions of supposedly Christian living or discipleship which are not ‘evangelical’. And this is not for our sakes but for the sake of the world.

In 1945, the Church of England produced a report titled Towards the Conversion of England (highlights from which are reproduced on this blog). One of the things the report recognized, however, was the need for the transformation of the Church:

... the really daunting feature of modern evangelism is not the masses of the population to be converted, but that most of the worshipping community are only half-converted. The aim of evangelism must be to appeal to all, within as well as without the Church, for that decision for Christ which shall make the state of salvation we call conversion the usual experience of the normal Christian. (Para 81)

The problem for post-war Anglican Evangelicalism is that the more it has accepted its place within the institution, the more it has forgotten the institution’s own assessment of itself delivered in the war years. Evangelism is demanded not just in our evangelical parishes to the unconverted masses, but from evangelicals towards the unconverted Church. Our message ought to be that of our Lord to the church at Ephesus: “You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” (Rev 2:4-5).

The reason for this, though, is not our own superiority, nor even the failings of those sections of the Church, but rather the needs of the lost world covered by parishes which have forgotten the ‘evangel’:

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (Rom 10:14)

Unfortunately, the Evangelical Anglican response has either been to quarantine its message within the institution, by accepting it as a ‘tradition’, or to isolate its message from the institution, by marginalization and non-involvement, focussing on its own small ‘corner of the Lord’s vineyard’. Either way, the world loses.

The true Evangelical, however, must always be working not just for the proclamation of the gospel but the transformation of the Church.

John Richardson
3 August 2011

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AEJCC, the first address

An Address to the Anglican Evangelical Junior Clergy Conference, Audley End, 11th-13th July 2011

Anglican Evangelism and Evangelical Anglicanism, 1945-2011 — the challenge we face

In some respects, the Church of England actually emerged from the Second World War in better shape than the nation itself. Nationally, there was a positive and proper sense of victory. For all the moral compromises the war had entailed, German Nazism, Japanese imperialism and Italian Fascism were nevertheless things the world was better off without.

In 1943, however, the Church Assembly had called for a commission “to survey the whole problem of modern evangelism, with special reference to the spiritual needs and prevailing intellectual outlook of the non-worshipping member of the community” and to report back with plans for “‘definite action’ to meet the spiritual needs of present-day men and women.”

That commission was duly appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and its report, Towards the Conversion of England, was published in 1945.

Although it is possible to criticize the report in some of the details, its explicit desire for ‘conversion’ would be applauded by Evangelicals, as would, in essence, its working definition of evangelism itself:

To evangelize is so to present Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Saviour, and serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His Church. (Para 1, though see Packer 1976 for a critique)

Amongst other things, the report also contained radical proposals about lay equipping and ministry deemed necessary to the ambitious campaign of outreach it envisaged.

Thus it appeared the Church was ready for the challenge of the post-war world. So what happened?

In October 1944, William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury who had inspired the commission and the report, died at Westgate-on-Sea. His replacement, Geoffrey Fisher, was a man of a very different temper, and what the Church of England actually did over the next two decades was to revise the Canons of 1604.

Although this revision was long overdue (note the date!), and indeed had commenced before the war, a reviewer of a recent biography of Fisher is surely right in describing it as “a glaring example of mistaken priorities” (Donald Gray, review of Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury 1945-1961, by David Hein, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, [2008] 59:801).

And for good measure, when the revision of the Canons was completed, the next item on the Church’s agenda was liturgical revision, which took up the seventies and eighties. Only in 1988 was there a belated attempt at something similar with the declaration at the Lambeth Conference of the ‘Decade of Evangelism’. Even then, however, the Church was already immersing itself in the issues of women’s ordination and, now, consecration.

I begin here, however, in order to point out that, with good leadership, it is possible even for the Church of England to get its priorities right. But the sad truth is that we have generally had bad leadership. And that is why we are here — to consider the future leadership of the Church.

Had things gone differently, of course, then evangelical Anglicans might have found themselves playing a lead rôle in the life of the Church. As it was, they found themselves as a minority within an organization whose outward style was predominantly Anglo-Catholic and whose underlying theology was increasingly liberal.

Evangelicals were tolerated, but not taken very seriously. Nevertheless, evangelical ministry continued with vigour.

In the parishes, the Church Pastoral Aid Society provided a ‘cradle to college’ structure of youth activities — CYFA — which were definitive of evangelical pastoral ministry. CPAS also published a widely-used ‘family service’, which for many Evangelicals was the backbone of their Sunday morning gatherings.

In the universities, the Inter-Varsity Fellowship ensured that Christian Unions were effective instruments of reaching the ‘brightest and best’ with the gospel. Evangelical groups and churches were especially strong in Oxford and Cambridge.

Christian belief was also part of the public discourse. On the radio and in print, C S Lewis in particular, but others as well, ensured the continuation of a lively dialogue about faith. And in 1954 the first visit of the American evangelist Billy Graham, whilst highly controversial because of the nature of his message, brought thousands into the churches and scores, if not hundreds, into full-time ministry.

Up to the 1960s, baptisms, confirmations and vocations all remained at high levels — indeed they had somewhat increased in the post-war years. ‘Belief in God’ was naturally assumed to mean ‘belief in Christianity’, religious instruction in schools was instruction in the Christian religion, and thus most people had at least some familiarity with biblical events and Christian doctrine, through this as well as through occasional attendance at Church and via the general ‘osmosis’ of popular ideas, language and images.

Nevertheless, Anglican Evangelicals were uncertain about their place and rôle in the Church of England, particularly in the face of the advance of Liberalism.

In 1963, the Bishop of Woolwich, John Robinson, published a small paperback, Honest to God, which exploded like a bombshell in both church and nation. Essentially, it was a popular summary of the kind of theology being advanced by the German giants Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer — men whose work dominated the theological scene well into the seventies, and was standard fare in universities and many theological colleges. What it suggested from a layman’s perspective, however, was that many in the hierarchy of the Church of England did not believe what they seemed to be telling ordinary people they ought to believe.

Honest to God thus triggered something of a national crisis of faith. At the same time, ideas like ‘situational ethics’ were challenging intellectual notions of traditional morality, with the suggestion that the only ethic was one of ‘love’, to be applied according to the particular context. And it must not be forgotten that this was an era of general social upheaval, as the austerity of the post-war years gave way to the ‘rock and roll’ fifties and then the ‘swinging’ sixties.

At the same time, and partly in reaction to Catholic and Liberal influences, Anglican Evangelicalism was somewhat austere and institutionalized. For most services, Evangelical clergy wore cassock, surplice, scarf and hood. Other than the CPAS material, services were entirely from the Book of Common Prayer and almost entirely led by the minister. The Bible was the Authorized Version, the hymnbook Ancient and Modern, and lay participation minimal.

Moreover, many Anglican Evangelicals felt themselves estranged from their parent Church. And indeed there were voices suggesting they should leave the denomination, or at least be less committed to it than to a wider evangelical fraternity.

In the face of all this, therefore, a National Evangelical Anglican Congress was convened at Keele University in 1967, to consider the future for Anglican Evangelicals.

This was a watershed, and determined the shape of the movement over the next three decades. The conference was not without its own internal difficulties. Nevertheless, the outcome was a clear and determined commitment to remain within the Church of England and to work positively with its structures. And in fact, in the next ten years, Anglican Evangelicalism flourished as the hard work of the previous two decades bore fruit.

Evangelical churches and para-church organizations continued to grow. Evangelical ordinands (all men at this stage and mostly in their twenties) represented an increasing proportion of the whole, and their colleges, especially St John’s Nottingham, were at the forefront of innovation in new styles of outreach and spiritual expression. Evangelical methods, such as the housegroup (which was still something of a novelty), gained in acceptability, and the future looked increasingly bright for Evangelicalism.

Meanwhile, the Charismatic Movement was developing from being virtually a ‘secret society’ in the sixties to mainstream in the mid-seventies, not least because of the ministry of David Watson at St Michael le Belfrey, York. Despite the theological divisions this had involved (the founder of the Fountain Trust, Michael Harper, who was then curate at All Soul’s Langham Place, left because of John Stott’s discomfort with his Charismatic leanings) it brought a much-needed freshness in music, liturgy and other expressions of church life.

The second NEAC, at Nottingham University in 1977, gave voice to all these influences and more. Evangelicalism, it seemed, had come of age — indeed, it was now a radical, cutting-edge, force to be reckoned with. NEAC 2 was attended by some 2,000 delegates. In preparation, no fewer than three books were published, each containing several essays on topics including not only the expected staples of evangelism and theology but economics, politics, international development and so on. At the end a joint statement was published which represented a new benchmark of evangelical orthodoxy, signalling an interest not just in traditional ‘spiritual’ matters, but the whole of life.

John Stott himself was at the forefront of encouraging a new understanding of Evangelicalism, where traditional evangelism and social engagement went hand-in-hand. But if controversy arose, he was always there to give a magisterial ‘ruling’ or admonition and to prevent disagreements leading into fragmentation.

So what went wrong? I must caution that what follows is a very personal reflection. Nevertheless, I would identify the following influences.

First, the Charismatic Movement created amongst evangelicals a secondary identity based on shared experience rather than theology. In the 1960s and 70s, “Do you think you are baptized in the Spirit?” was a live question in evangelical circles. And depending on which way you answered determined, to a large extent, where and with whom you felt most comfortable.

Thus in 1979, the first Spring Harvest took place, embracing theologically Charismatic styles and speakers, and the following year saw the beginnings of the New Wine network. Evangelicals who were also Charismatics now had somewhere to go for distinctive fellowship with their ‘own kind’.

Meanwhile, those Evangelicals who had most enthusiastically embraced ‘social action’ became increasingly caught up with that agenda and rather less committed to the theological style and message of traditional Evangelicalism.

In effect (though I think this suggestion would still be resisted by those who took this route) these Evangelicals became rather less committed to what an earlier generation would have recognized as evangelism. Certainly the definition given in Towards the Conversion of England would have been regarded by them as somewhat lacking.

But thirdly, Evangelicals generally were not well-equipped theologically. Indeed, in the more traditionalist circles, theology was regarded as being almost incompatible with, and certainly hardly necessary to, evangelical spirituality and ministry. One manifestation of this, for example, was that Evangelical ordinands from the big churches were encouraged to go to the Oxbridge theological colleges, not to study theology, but to engage in student ministry.

Many of the key Evangelical leaders at this stage had come through the system of Iwerne camps, started by E J Nash and ‘Bash’ was notoriously opposed to theological training and methodology. As a result, however, traditional evangelical preaching and teaching tended to be somewhat simplistic and was unable to address in depth the questions being posed about spirituality and society, both from within and without the movement.

By the mid 1980s, therefore, Anglican Evangelicalism was no longer enamoured with the traditions of just two decades earlier. When the third NEAC took place, at Caister in 1988, there was a new mood in the gathering and a new style on the platform. Even the name had been changed, from ‘Congress’ to ‘Celebration’.

This is what Colin Day, then executive officer of the Church of England Evangelical Council, wrote at the time:

... NEAC 3 ... is not a simple progression [from NEACs 1 and 2]. ‘Celebration’ reminds us that there is a new spirit of worship and confidence in the Christian world today.

Worship, always something which Anglicans have felt strongly about, is to assume a much more prominent place [...]. There will be worship in the evening Celebration and in a variety of optional morning groups. Fellowship in small groups will centre on Bible study resourced by Rev Dr John Stott ... in the morning [...].

There will be no Congress Statement. It isn’t that sort of event. The statement that will be made will be one written in the hearts and minds of those who attend, and who will return to church and community to be read by those among whom they live. It will be a bold attempt to extricate the gospel from cerebral captivity, without falling into the trap of anti-intellectualism, or worse that brand of spiritual sensuality which is increasingly common today. (‘NEAC 3: the celebration’, Third Way, June 1987, 6)

Even the list of key speakers is revealing with hindsight: Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward, Preb John Gladwin, later the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Christina Baxter, later principal of St John’s Nottingham, and Rev Dr Vinay Samuel, who at that time was chiefly known for his involvement in development work in the Third World.

Notice, though, the declared contrast between the past “cerebral captivity” of the gospel and the new “spirit of worship and confidence”. Evangelicalism had not merely ‘come of age’ but was moving on.

Many in the Evangelical Anglican constituency were therefore increasingly uncomfortable with the direction being taken by the movement, and in the mid-1980s, under the leadership of Dick Lucas, the Evangelical Ministry Assembly and the Proclamation Trust struck out in a different direction.

The Proclamation Trust aimed unashamedly, and in its own mind principally, at a recovery of preaching. Nevertheless, this inevitably entailed a recovery of theology, and so the speakers invited to address the EMA were often men of theological acumen as well as skilled communicators.

Notably, however, most of them came from abroad — it seemed that in the UK they were in short supply. Many were from America but some, and in the end the most influential, were from the Diocese of Sydney in Australia.

Two key English Evangelicals made some revealing comments about the impact of just one of these visitors, John Chapman, who then headed the Department of Evangelism in the Diocese of Sydney. First, Jonathan Fletcher speaking about ‘Chappo’s’ early influence:

We didn’t need to be encouraged in evangelism —we’ve always been flat out at that. We needed to be rescued for reformed theology.

And Dick Lucas similarly said,

When he first came to us he did a series on God and his sovereignty, and so on. I remember then being amazed at the theological nous of this man. After all, he’d come across to do evangelism and we weren’t used to travelling evangelists quite like this! (Chappo: For the Sake of the Gospel, p202)

Although these Australians sometimes gave the impression that Evangelicalism was just as much embattled in Sydney as elsewhere, nothing could have been further from the truth. Rather, in Sydney, Anglican structures and evangelical theology had reached a happy synthesis in a way far beyond the experience, or even the grasp, of most Englishmen.

The result of this synthesis, however, was to have increasingly influence on the English Evangelical Anglican scene, not least when David Peterson, previously on the staff at Moore College in Sydney, became principal of Oak Hill Theological College in 1996.

By that stage, Oak Hill was the most conservative of the theological colleges, but was in a seriously weakened position. Indeed in 1993 it had been threatened with closure by a Church commission which was seeking to reduce the number of theological colleges.

On the one hand, therefore, Peterson had to fight for Oak Hill’s survival. At the same time, however, and symptomatic of the attitude amongst conservative Evangelicals, he had to fight to get the big churches to send their ordinands to him for theological training, rather than to Oxford or Cambridge to do student work.

Since the mid-1980s, then, traditionalist Anglican Evangelicalism began its own revival. At the same time, however, other Evangelicals were moving in a direction consciously away from the traditionalist camp. The result was an increasing sense of division, which came to a head over the ordination of women to the priesthood in 1993. In response to this, one group of Evangelicals set up ‘Reform’, whose avowed aim was the conversion of England, but whose raison d’être was to bring together those who disagreed with the introduction of women priests.

Around this time, however, the term ‘Open Evangelical’ began to be used by those who wanted to distinguish themselves from the older, traditionalist, approach. In the current words of the website of Ridley Hall college, Cambridge, ‘open’ in this sense means being attentive to “the questions and the insights of” the world, recognizing “God’s work in other Christian traditions” and other countries, playing a “full part” within the Church of England and listening for God to say “new things through the Bible and His Spirit”.

In the place of the ‘Evangelicalism’ of the 1950s, therefore, we now had varieties and nuances of Evangelicalism.

In the years following 1993, however, the leadership of various Evangelical bodies — notably the Church of England Evangelical Council — began to fall into the hands of those now labelled as ‘Conservative’ Evangelicals. Partly this was the result of the latter being deliberately organized. Partly it was the result of other Evangelicals abandoning the old bodies and structures.

As a result, the fourth National Evangelical Anglican Congress, at Blackpool in 2003, was dominated by Conservatives at the planning stage. This, however, led to yet more acrimonious arguments and splits, culminating in the founding behind the scenes and launch at the Congress itself of ‘Fulcrum’, a body avowedly for Open Evangelicals and consciously opposed to the Conservatives. Since then, moreover, events at home and abroad have led to a multiplication of other groupings such as Anglican Mainstream, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and, most recently, the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE).

Meanwhile, the Church of England itself continued the steady decline which had set in at the end of the 1960s. Outwardly, it was less overtly hostile to Evangelicals, and indeed numbers of them found preferment as Archdeacons, Cathedral Deans and even Bishops. However, the ethos of the institution remained a soft Liberal-Catholicism — middle-of-the-road in theology and fond of ecclesiastical drapery.

Moreover, the Evangelicals appointed to senior office tended to be those from the ‘Open’ end of the spectrum. Conservative Evangelicals, which now meant those opposed to the ordination of women, were much less appreciated, and it is notable that the last such Conservative Evangelical episcopal appointment was in 1997.

What, then, is the present situation and possible future for Evangelical Anglicanism generally?

Firstly, whereas in the 1950s Evangelicals were a readily-identified group, there is no longer any such thing as ‘mere evangelical’. Today, if you call yourself an Evangelical, people in the know will immediately ask, “What sort of Evangelical are you?”

Thus, secondly, Evangelical organizations in the Church of England face serious problems in trying to hold together diverse, and even mutually hostile, versions of Evangelicalism.

Thirdly, the more consciously conservative Evangelicals are increasingly uncertain of their place in the Church of England. This is not only because of their anxieties over women bishops but also because of their own growing emphasis on church planting, which is often resisted by the institution or by the parish in which a church plant takes place.

Fourthly, the younger generation of Evangelicals generally have a very tentative understanding of the Church of England. The more ‘open’ Evangelicals seem to have little experience of or feel for past tradition. The more ‘conservative’ seem to have little commitment to the institution. Both, one suspects, are hardly aware that the Church of England has such a thing as its own doctrine — not helped, I would suggest, by the cavalier attitude of the hierarchy and the casual indifference to these things on the part of many local clergy.

Fifthly, the Anglican Evangelical leaders of the fifties and sixties are dying out, and the next generation down — my own — has not thrown up any significant replacements. There is no one like John Stott to whom Evangelicals can look to hold them together and no one who seems able to tell them what to do. There is no sense of direction or coherence in terms of strategy.

Sixthly, society itself is increasingly hostile to Christian belief — certainly in its more conservative forms. And above all, the issue of homosexuality threatens not only to divide the Church even more but to exclude traditionalist Christians from full participation in society at many significant levels.

And yet — the Church of England is still viable. It still has thousands of minister and hundreds of thousands of members. Its parishes cover the entire nation and in some areas, particularly in the countryside, it is the only remaining visible Christian present.

It is worth fighting for! More than that, it could still be an instrument for ‘the conversion of England’. Our problem is not — at least not primarily — our structures. In many parts of the world, such as Australia or Sub-Saharan Africa, the same structures are enabling Church growth and driving forward evangelism.

Our problem is, as much as anything, a problem of leadership — local and national. And the need to address this is not so that Evangelicalism may thrive but so that people — locally and nationally — will hear the gospel.

In 1945 the Church of England acknowledged this challenge:

In England the Church has to present the Christian Gospel to multitudes in every section of society who believe in nothing; who have lost a whole dimension (the spiritual dimension) of life; and for whom life has no ultimate meaning. [...] But the Church is ill-equipped for its unparalleled task and opportunity. The laity complain of a lack of creative leadership among all ranks of the clergy. The spiritual resources of the worshipping community are at a low ebb. Above all, the Church has become confused and uncertain in the proclamation of its message, and its life has ceased to reflect clearly the truth of the Gospel. It is for the Church, in this day of God, by a rededication of itself to its Lord, to receive from Him that baptism of Holy Ghost and of fire which will empower it to sound the call and give the awaited lead. (Para 33)

The fact that this could have been written yesterday represents the tragedy of the last 66 years, when the Church of England has focussed its energies on almost anything except this task. But whilst we can rightly recognized the failure of the Church, we must also acknowledge the failure of Evangelicals, of all people, to hold the Church to its true calling.

It is not enough to say that Evangelicalism has improved its position in the institution — least of all when Evangelicals are so divided amongst themselves. The truth is that well-placed Evangelicals have not deliberately and strategically used their influence to equip the Church as a whole for the particular task of evangelism which might lead to ‘the conversion of England’.

Nor is it enough to hope that Evangelicals will somehow and vaguely influence the Church towards somehow and unconsciously converting the nation, without confronting the uncertainties about its message and the inadequacies in its manner of life recognized as already existing in the 1940s.

Evangelicals ought to be at the forefront of evangelism. It is only a ministry which seeks conversions that deserves the label ‘evangelical’. But they ought also to be aiming at nothing less than making the Church of England itself ‘evangelical’. If we are content to thrive in our small corner whilst the national Church remains indifferent to the task of evangelism, we truly care neither for our own beliefs nor for the people of our nation as a whole. In the words of Christ to the Church at Sardis, it is time to “Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die” (Rev 3:2).

And yet we must ask, “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor 2:16). The Keele generation was absorbed by the institution. The Nottingham generation was defeated by the dilution of its own theology. The Caister generation is probably still in a worship session somewhere. And the Blackpool generation was split by factions. It would be surprising if the next generation faired any better. But the Lord’s promise is to the one who has an ear and to the one who overcomes.

Let us then endeavour, now and in the coming months, to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

John Richardson 

11 July 2011

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Is this Anglican Evangelicalism?

I know it's an old chestnut, but it has come up again in another context, and — perhaps precisely because it is such a chestnut — it is worth trying to get it right. This is therefore the 'definition so far', with a special emphasis on Anglican evangelicalism. Comments are invited in the spirit of clarification.

Evangelicalism has at heart the proclamation to all:

1. That the fundamental problem with the world is the sin that separates us from God.

2. That sinners are personally under God's wrath and face Christ's judgement (Rev 6:15-17).

3. That out of God's great love, Christ died to reconcile us to God and God to us (Article II).

4. That sin is dealt with entirely, and only, by the death of Christ on the cross, whereby he bore the punishment for our sins (Isa 53:6) and overcame the powers of evil, delivering us from wrath and preparing us for the coming Kingdom.

5. That a right relationship with God (salvation) is found only, but entirely and immediately, through faithful trust in his word to us that [we are] sinners are reconciled to God by the death of his Son.

6. That ultimately all the blessings of God, and in the first instance his Holy Spirit (Gal 3:14), are given to those who, believing this gospel message, are born again.

7. That Scripture is the vehicle in which God's word of the gospel is presented and preserved, and through which it is proclaimed as God's living word to every generation (1 Cor 15:3,4; Gal 3:8; 1 Tim 4:13, cf also, for Anglicans, the Prayer Book Ordinal admonition to those about to be ordained priest).

As an Anglican, I would also want to add that baptism is the tangible sign of these truths and of God's promises, so that those who believe ought to receive baptism, in obedience to Christ, as an outward assurance of the gospel, and those who are baptized ought to believe what the sign of baptism displays to them (Article XXVII).

NB this is NOT intended to be a complete definition of Christianity, but rather of those understandings and emphases that mark out evangelical Christianity. (It is quite another debate whether other forms of 'Christianity' are thereby true or false.)

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Evangelicalism - not division but dilution?

I'm taking a break from the blog until the end of the month (OK it’s like giving up nicotine, but I’ll try).

However, to keep the interest alive, I want to mention a thought in relation to my earlier post on Evangelical unity, prompted by an e-mail someone sent me.

I’ll quote him in full:

In the late 19th century, Catholics were a rather small and persecuted group, although there were certainly differences over tactics and minor points, they were united in the essentials. Between the wars and immediately afterwards, as it was the most successful thing going in the church, it attracted, er, fellow-travellers. Until the 1950s and 1960s, if you saw a priest wearing vestments and reserving the Blessed Sacrament, that meant [a] certain view and certain teaching. As time has gone on, things have got diluted, Eucharistic vestments are worn by people who think they look nice but do not believe in the doctrine that goes with their use, and Affirming Catholicism has split off, not to mention other groupings..

When Evangelicals were united in the 60s and 70s, they were a powerful force, but when the movement grew and attracted fellow-travellers ………

I remember much the same happening to the Charismatic Movement. In the ’60s and early ’70s, it was a fringe movement with distinctive doctrines which you had to accept in order to belong. By the late ’70s we were all ‘Charismatics’. At the same time, the ‘second blessing’ doctrine and the virtual requirement of speaking in tongues had been toned down.

Alpha threatens no-one (well, almost no-one) and the Alpha ‘movement’ is mainstream. But the theologians now willing to associate with it include Rowan and Jane Williams and Jürgen Moltmann — people I suspect wouldn’t be insisting (as the Alpha course material does) that being filled with the Spirit is distinct from being a Christian who merely ‘has’ the Spirit. Hence Alpha charismatic theology has diluted and will dilute further — watch the St Mellitus* space.

Perhaps the reality is that as Evangelicalism became more acceptable, so more people were willing to self-identify with the movement who would not previously have done so, but whose theology was not that of the earlier, rigorous, Evangelicals.

Thus what took place amongst Evangelicals was not division but dilution.

Discuss (and I’ll try not to join in).

John Richardson
19 July 2010

*  Several key values mark out the training offered at St Mellitus: UNITY IN DIVERSITY: We work with all kinds of Christians and denominations within a generous orthodoxy, drawing on the great tradition of Christian theology through the centuries.

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When Evangelicals were united

In amongst researching something else today, I came across an online copy of Third Way from 1979.

The past is indeed another country, as they say. Thus several of the articles and many of the letters in the correspondence columns were taken up with the issue of trade unions, strikes and wage claims.

In an even more unfamiliar twist, the Nationwide Festival of Light was holding an evening rally at All Souls, Langham Place, looking at “What does the Bible say to the International Year of the Child?” (speakers Harry Sutton, Eddie Stride, Raymond Johnston and Bob Holman).

There is also an article by one John Gladwin (with a very fetching ’70s haircut) questioning the morality of granting an 8.8% pay rise to workers in the public sector — on the basis that it is possibly too small, not too big!

In another article, Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for West Lothian, writes of the forthcoming devolution vote: “We in the Labour Vote No Campaign contend that the proposal for a ‘Yes’ vote for the Scotland Act comes four-square in the category of false prophecy.”

What most strikes me, however, is the co-existence of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ evangelical strands alongside one another. Of course, the emphasis is on politics and social action, but that was Third Way’s subject-matter. But the theological discourse is conducted in a language which the Evangelical constituency held in common.

The same search also took me to Randle Manwaring’s From Controversy to Coexistence: Evangelicals in the Church of England, 1914-1980, written in 1985, when the Evangelical constituency was still just about holding together, and Manwaring could write of “the decay of the old liberalism”.

If I am being nostalgic, I would argue that is not necessarily a bad thing. The Church of England prays constantly that we may be ‘united in the truth’. Perhaps back then we were also united in our ignorance. We knew next to nothing about the ‘new perspective’ on Paul, or that we could divide over our views on women’s ordination. On the contrary, the Nottingham Statement had declared as ‘the’ Evangelical Anglican position that,

Leadership in the church should be plural and mixed, ultimate responsibility normally singular and male.

Were we wrong on other matters as well as this? Obviously, many Evangelicals today would say ‘yes’. Yet I think my question to the constituency would be whether the gospel as we are preaching it today is the gospel as it was preached by the generation that produced the evangelical leaders of the ’70s and ’80s — many of whom were converted through the Billy Graham crusades at Harringay and Wembley. Manwaring writes,

... there can be little doubt that the work of Billy Graham had lasting effects throughout Anglicanism, its benefits by far outweighing its disadvantages. (112)

To put it another way, would the ‘you’ you are today be interested in, and capable of, being instrumental in the conversion experienced by the ‘you’ you were when you became a Christian? I very much hope the answer is yes, but I very much fear that the answer for my own generation is often no.

Certainly the ‘new perspective’ is much more important in this regard than women’s ordination, on which even relative conservatives take different views. But I hazard a guess that our disunity in other areas reflects our confusion at a more fundamental level. The shared good news that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to die for our sins, so that whosever trusts in him should not be judged eternally by that same God, but have eternal life, seems to have given way in some areas to the assertion that ‘God loves and therefore anything which seems to be ‘loving’ is of God’.

Of course God loves, but as Don Carson has pointed out, the love of God is a difficult doctrine to handle correctly. I must agree with him when he says,

I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God—to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity.

Evangelicals can, in the end, be united only by the evangel — the gospel they proclaim. And that gospel itself depends on who the God is revealed in Christ. Carson quotes Marsha G Witten:

The relatively weak notion of God’s fearsome capabilities regarding judgment is underscored by an almost complete lack of discursive construction of anxiety around one’s future state.

 Our generation of Evangelicals is indeed anxious about many things, and urges that anxiety — along with the possible palliatives — on others. But there is little anxiety about eternity. And that may be our downfall.

John Richardson
18 July 2010

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Launch of the Chelmsford Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans

Today I attended quite a satisfactory meeting to mark the morphing of Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream into the Chelmsford Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

There were about forty clergy and laity in attendance, with apologies from half-a-dozen or more, and we were addressed by the Revd Paul Perkin who has had a key part to play in GAFCON and the emergence of FCA globally. The meeting was chaired by Revd Paul Harcourt from All Saints, Woodford Wells, who has been chairing CAM for some years.

What pleased and impressed me about the meeting was that there was no ‘grand-standing’ — there will be no ‘statements’. Rather, there was just a quiet hope that what has happened in TEC and Canada, and seems to be threatening even in other parts of the UK, will not happen here.

This, however, will be difficult, given that the cathedrals and their associated chairs, the training courses, some of the colleges and much else besides seem to be dominated by theological liberalism, even whilst lip-service is paid at the top of the institution to theological ‘inclusivism’.

Over against this, however, we see an unlikely, but undoubtedly sincere, alliance between evangelical, catholic and charismatic Anglicans who find in one another something they can all refer to as ‘orthodoxy’, even whilst distinctions — and indeed tensions — remain, for example over the consecration of women as bishops.

Even so, in our discussion group we were reminded how divided evangelical Anglicans in particular have become, and how their effectiveness has suffered as a result. I mentioned how, in 1977, the Anglican world seemed to be at the evangelical’s feet. John Stott, Michael Green and David Watson were all in their prime, Riding Lights were revolutionizing the presentation of the gospel inside and outside church, and we had more under-30 year-old candidates studying at St John’s Nottingham than there are now clergy of that age in the entire Church of England.

Thirty years on, many ‘evangelicals’ will hardly talk to one another, and for many of my generation the enthusiasm for, and understanding of the gospel, we held back then has almost entirely disappeared. (John Gladwin, for example, was a contributor to the pre-conference discussion papers, but his evangelical commitment certainly ‘mellowed’ with time.) The ‘empire’ fought back, and we have become quietly institutionalized.

Oddly enough, therefore, one of the encouraging features of the day for me was the sense that we don’t really know what to do and we aren’t sure where we are going. Perhaps this will create the dependence on God that we surely need.

 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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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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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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Evangelism and baptism (again)

I want to pick up on my suggestion that there is something not right about evangelical evangelizing with this lengthy quote from Jens Christensen’s The Practical Approach to Muslims:

38. [...] The work of the Church should be like a fire thrown upon the earth. Then every fire department the devil has in that area would be put to quench it. Then, and only then would our Lord’s warning ring in our ears: ‘He who denies Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father’.

[...]

40. Now in our Utopian dream Church, which is the Church of our faith as opposed to the Church of our experience, the personal witness of the believer is like all else: inside the context of the Church, the Corpus Christi. There, in the Church, the very first and fundamental witness is baptism. Please don’t misunderstand this. Baptism is NOT the witness of the individual that he now has faith in Christ. If it were it could never be a Sacrament, and it could have no more value than that which is put into it by each individual. Baptism, considered as a witness, is the testimony of the Church to an act of God. Baptism proclaims to the world that God has a pact with mankind, mediated through the body of Christ, the Church. Baptism is a witness to the fact that God claims His own, and that in each particular baptism, God has claimed this very person being baptised. In this connection it is immaterial whether the recipient of baptism is two months or eighty years old; baptism is still a witness to the fact of God’s pact with mankind, in the Church.

41. Experience in all countries where Christianity is not the accepted religion goes to show that people seem to be aware of the fact that it is baptism that makes the real difference to a man’s standing in the community.

Now notice that when Christensen says that God’s pact with mankind is “mediated through the body of Christ, the Church”, he is not ‘institutionalizing’ or ‘clericalizing’ the work of the gospel. He is not saying that only the clergy, or ecclesiastically sanctioned individuals or groups, may spread the gospel. He is certainly not saying that provided we baptize people, the gospel has been spread!

However, in speaking of baptism, he puts “the personal witness of the believer ... inside the context of the Church”.

By contrast, evangelicals are sometimes actually encouraged to leave any consideration of the church out of their evangelism. Thus, in student ministry we were repeatedly told that “the Christian Union is not a church”. True, the Christian Union existed for the purposes of fellowship and evangelism —but it was not a church. No wonder, then, if those evangelized through the initiative of the Christian Union saw ‘gospel’ and ‘church’ as two different things. ‘Gospel’ was the thing by which you became a Christian and was the focus of fellowship and life in the Christian Union, ‘church’ was the (comparatively dull and hidebound) organization you joined after becoming a Christian.

In the same way, for many people baptism is what you do after becoming a Christian, to show you’ve come to faith —and even, in some cases, to qualify you for membership of the local church ‘club’.

This, I would suggest however, is not what we see in the Bible. There, the Apostle Peter can speak of the ark coming through the flood, and then write, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you ...” (1 Pet 3:21). New Testament baptism is not a testimony to an earlier event —becoming a Christian —it is the embodiment of the event.

Of course this does not justify an ex opera view of baptism, as 1 Corinthians 10:1-5 makes clear:

For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, ² and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, ³ and all ate the same spiritual food, ⁴ and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. ⁵ Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

Like any saving ordinance in Scripture, baptism which does not meet with faith (cf the Law in Heb 4:2) will not save anyone. This is why I have suggested that baptism needs to be seen as an act of faith (not a sign of faith). Baptism holds out to us the gospel: if we will die with Christ, if we will be buried with Christ, if we will rise to new life with Christ, then we shall be saved. When we are baptized, we take hold of the gospel by faith.

I think something like this is the way that we should present baptism in our evangelism —by telling people that Christ died for their sins and was raised from the dead, and that by faith in him we are baptized into his death and raised with him to newness of life.

That might also help us address a situation the Apostles would surely have found incredible, namely that there are tens of millions of people in this country (and more being produced every week) who are baptized but who live as if they had no awareness of the gospel. To these people we must say, “You are baptized, yet you live as if God meant little or nothing to you. It is time to repent of your unbaptized ways.”

In this respect, I think the Federal Vision Movement is right —in that we cannot speak to the baptized unbeliever in the same terms as we should speak to the unbaptized unbeliever. To the former we can speak more as Paul did to the Athenians at the Areopagus, reassuring them that ‘the times of ignorance God overlooked’ (Acts 17:30). To the latter we must say, “Someone somewhere decided that you should receive something very precious —God’s promise of salvation. It is surely time for you to decide now for yourself whether to accept this or reject it.”

At the same time, though, those of us who are happy ‘paedobaptists’ should nevertheless be questioning our present policy of a baptismal ‘free for all’, wherein promises are made on behalf of children too young to speak for themselves which those making these promises neither understand themselves, nor intend that the children should be made to keep. That is also an evangelistic problem area!

Revd John P Richardson
9 September 2009

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The future for evangelicalism

(This is a reworking of the previous piece I did as my 'third' Ireland talk, which I wasn't entirely happy about. I'm still not wholly thrilled, but I have to get a plane in a couple of hours! Those who read the other might scroll down to 'No desire for division'.)

The future for Evangelicalism

Introduction

What, then, do we need to be doing to strengthen evangelicalism, and where does the future lie for evangelicalism as a movement and for evangelicals within a denomination like the Church of Ireland?

One of the things impressed on me by my old friend Canon Harry Sutton was that evangelicalism needs to be a theological movement. And so if we are to strengthen evangelicalism, we need to start from our theology, and specifically —as we are evangelicals —our theology of evangelism.

I want to tell you a story, or rather to read you a story from Scripture, and to ask you if you can spot the difference between this and most contemporary evangelism. Its from Acts 9:26,

“Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ This is a desert place. ²⁷ And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship ²⁸ and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. ²⁹ And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” ³⁰ So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” ³¹ And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. ³² Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. ³³ In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” ³⁴ And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” ³⁵ Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.”

Now let me pause there and ask how many of us would have done the same. My guess is, we all would have done. We would have seen it is a golden, God-given opportunity to proclaim the gospel.

But now let me ask, how many of us would then have got the response Philip got:

"And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, ‘See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?’"

Why the difference?

My guess is none of us. On the contrary, the way gospel was presented to us, the way we present the gospel to others and the way we teach others to present the gospel, would not lead anyone to ask, “What is to prevent me being baptized?”

Yet compare that with Acts 2:41, “So those who received [Peter’s] word were baptized ...”, or 8:11, “when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women,” or 9:18, “Then Paul rose and was baptized,” or 16:32-33, “And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family.”

What I want you to notice is not ‘that they were baptized’, but how baptism follows naturally from the gospel in Acts, and then to ask why it doesn’t follow naturally —in fact doesn’t even get a mention —in most contemporary evangelical evangelism.

No need for baptism?

The first reason, I would suggest, that we do not lead people to baptism is that we still live within a ‘post-Christendom’ culture where many people —perhaps even most in Ireland —are already baptized.

We therefore identify the key issue as belief, not baptism —and to a certain extent we are right. The Bible is clear, and my understanding is that Anglican doctrine since the Gorham judgement upholds, that we are not saved simply by being baptized.

On the contrary, we must take proper account of St Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:17, “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel ...”

Nevertheless, we again see here our pragmatism —most people are baptism, many don’t believe, let’s focus on belief, and not worry about baptism.

It also reveals, however, that we have not yet come to grips with the growing difference between the Church and contemporary culture. Society is no longer divided into the baptized and the unbaptized.

However, that difference is going to confront us more and more, and a sign of that difference will be fewer and fewer people getting baptized. When that happens, baptism will mark the transition from one culture to another as emphatic as the current difference between Christian and Muslim or Hindu or Jewish cultures.

No desire for division

Another reason I would suggest is that we are rightly afraid of division. We experience evangelical unity across denominational divides as a good thing —better, then, to stay away from debates which might destroy that unity.

Once again, we are revealed as pragmatists, and there is much to be said for our pragmatism.

However, we must seriously ask whether it is always justifiable. How strong is a relationship (for example with other Christians) that does not confront real disagreement?

And how helpful is an attitude which means that we ourselves don’t think through our position on a core issue because we are afraid that if it became too explicit is might disrupt our unity?

The problem with this habit of mind is that it spills over into other areas —what about the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, for example? How strong can this be if we do not confront our differences? And does it just become a flag of convenience against homosexuality?

And this is not just a question of working with Anglo-Catholics, but also Charismatics. I was very struck by an interview Nicky Gumbel recently gave for the Guardian in England where he refused to describe himself as ‘an evangelical’.

At the heart of this is the Alpha movement’s commitment to institutional belonging and ecumenical cooperation. But must this be bought at the price of deliberate doctrinal ‘fuzziness’? Can we be ‘all one in Christ’ and yet indifferent on core issues? And can any Christian organization thrive which fails to agree on something as basic to the New Testament as the outcome of evangelism?

As far as I am aware, incidentally, the Alpha Course is typically evangelical in that it doesn’t mention baptism at the point of bringing people to conversion.

No effect from baptism?
The fourth reason I would suggest, however, why our presentations of the gospel leave out baptism, is that many evangelicals are unclear what baptism does, and many of these evangelical ‘don’t knows’ are also ‘don’t really cares’.

Indeed, I have heard of Anglican clergy who have said at an infant’s baptism that ‘we are doing nothing here —just making the baby’s head wet’.

Now I have no doubt that those who take this view of baptism believe that in their daily ministry they are fulfilling the Great Commission. And yet they regard one key element of this —baptizing people —as almost an ‘optional extra’.

Once again, though, I want to emphasize the problem is not first of all in what we are doing —baptizing or not baptizing —as in what we are thinking about the gospel itself: why does our presentation of the gospel not have a New Testament outcome?

A detachment from tradition
And here I would like to consider the effect of this on the people we lead to Christ. When Paul found a funny group of disciples in Ephesus, as we read in Acts 19, and was trying to work out what was the problem, the question he put to them was, “Into what then were you baptized?” (19:3). Where do you fit? Where do you belong? How did you get here?

Now of course this is not a question about liturgy. It is not a ‘mechanistic’ question about the process of Christian induction. Rather, it looks to how they received the faith, from whom they learned it, and what they had learned.

We see this from the way that the answer, “Into John’s baptism” results in an explanation about Jesus. Nevertheless, notice, v 5: “On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

There may be interpretive disputes about what this actually meant —was it ‘by hearing this’ or ‘subsequent to hearing this’? But it is there: the gospel leads to baptism and thence incorporation into the Christian mainstream, which is to say, into the Church.

By contrast, the typical evangelical presentation of the gospel privileges the individual in relation to the Church. So Norman Warren, in telling you how to “grow strong as a Christian”, writes,

"The Bible is the Christian’s food. It is a living book and through it God will speak to you. Read it every day."

This reading is clearly, however, on your own. And on praying, he writes,

"Talk to Jesus Christ naturally as to a close friend, yet respectfully remembering who he is. Spend time alone with him every day."

Here, praying is explicitly ‘on your own’: “alone with him”. God speaks to you in the Bible, you speak to God in prayer, but essentially you do this alone. True, he adds, “never miss being with Christians in church on Sunday.” But that is point three, not point one.

And it is my suggestion that this individualization of the gospel sows the seeds for later problems for evangelicalism as a movement because it has created problems within the individual evangelical.

Correcting the problem
It is my conviction that evangelicalism needs to be strengthened in three specific areas: in understanding tradition, in developing theology and in engaging with culture. And this can and ought to apply from the point of delivery of the gospel —it ought not to be something added on afterwards.

The key to this is not baptism. The key is our understanding of the gospel. It is the gospel, not the liturgy, which saves people.

At the same time, however, we need to see that in the New Testament the call to ‘repent and be baptized’ is the same as the call to ‘repent and believe’.

Baptism is not a sign of belief but an act of believing. And as such, it is also an act of obedience to something outside and beyond ourselves which brings us immediately into a relationship with others, not least because we cannot baptize ourselves, and indeed would not naturally think of baptism as a first expression of our faith.

If we preach repentance and faith as merely inward experiences and personal decisions, we privatize the faith. Then, when the individual is confronted by the church —by the lives and beliefs of other Christians —there is a fresh challenge: “What has my faith got to do with these people?”

Baptism, however, confronts us immediately with the reality of the church and shifts the centre of gravity from us and our faith to elsewhere, and that must be good for the development of our understanding.

What I also received
In 1 Corinthians 15:3 the Apostle Paul declares that faith in the gospel involves a chain of transference: 2For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received ..."

And it is his declared intention that this chain should be unbroken. In 2 Tim 2:2 he writes, "... what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."

Of course, we know the importance of selecting ‘faithful men’ to pass on the tradition. What we seem less quick to recognize is that we ourselves are part of that process —or should be— that we are to pass on what we have received.

Faithful teaching does not start with us! We are neither the originators nor the arbiters of what is true. We are indeed to discern what is true —but not to decide what is true, and the difference is fundamental, for it puts us in a position of learning.

The people of God
Now there is clearly a danger here of creating a false ‘Apostolic succession’. Yet that is itself forbidden by Christ: “Call no one ‘teacher’”. But it is important for us to understand that we begin the Christian life as learners.

Paul has no problems in reminding the Colossians that they first learned the gospel from Epaphras. And although Paul received the gospel from Christ, those whom Timothy selected received it from him.

Indeed, when we read the New Testament it is clear that in the Church the ‘learner-teacher’ relationship was basic to the community. God’s people were ‘disciples’ — yes, of Christ, but through those whom Christ had given to the Church as apostles and prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers.

The gospel calls us —or should call us —into a community of teaching and learning, of admonition, exhortation and edification in God’s word. That is the vision in the Old Covenant and it is the vision in the New. In Deuteronomy 6:6-9, we read,

2And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. ⁷ You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. ⁸ You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. ⁹ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

And in Colossians 3:16, we read,

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom ..."

The Christian community —the Church —is to be literally a community of learning. But that is not what we find in many evangelical circles. Rather, we find diversities of opinions, and if you’re wondering where you’ve heard that phrase before, it is in the preface to the Thirty-nine Articles in the Book of Common Prayer, which are given “for the avoidance of diversities of opinion.”

The shocking thing is how far Anglicanism has departed from this notion. Indeed, it is now an article of faith that Anglicanism exists to embrace the diversities of opinions.

But are evangelicals any better? I suggest we are not, because we have individualized belief and therefore, in the end, enthroned personal opinion about the faith. And we do this as the point of conversion.

Reestablishing our theology
One of the challenges I would present to evangelicals, then, is to present the church as a learning community within which the tradition is discerned and by which it is passed on.

John Chapman once said that if you heard a preacher or a minister say from the pulpit or platform, “I am not a theologian,” you should shout out “Boo!” And I suspect he would.

Evangelicals have got to get over their fear and suspicion of theology. I could quote at some length what men like Luther, Wesley and Spurgeon have all had to say about the need for learning in ministers of the gospel. But let me just quote Jonathan Fletcher speaking about John Chapman’s early influence in England:

"We didn’t need to be encouraged in evangelism —we’ve always been flat out at that. We needed to be rescued for reformed theology."

And here are equally telling words from Dick Lucas: “When [Chappo] first came to us he did a series on God and his sovereignty, and so on. I remember then being amazed at the theological nous of this man. After all, he’d come across to do evangelism and we weren’t used to travelling evangelists quite like this!” (Chappo, p202)

Again, we see our evangelical pragmatism. The focus of many evangelicals in the middle of the last century on evangelism rather than theology lives on, and it is not helped by our institutions, where such theology as is taught is often bad theology.

Rather than despair, however, evangelicals should begin by creating ‘communities within the community’. As monks and monasteries once preserved Western learning, so evangelicals, in societies, colleges, symposia and seminars should seek to establish and preserve the truth of ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3).

We can see, however, that we sit light to the church by the way that our evangelism leaves out the things of the church, such as baptism. It is not the cause of our problems —it is a symptom —nevertheless, attending to the symptom may lead us to both the cause the cure.

Counter-cultural engagement
And then, finally, evangelicals need to resume (for it was there in previous generations) their engagement with human culture and the development and deployment of a truly Christian culture —a culture which is developed from a gospel understanding of life, humanity and the human calling.

Too often, being an evangelical has meant abandoning notions of culture. Alternatively, we have sought to rule over the culture from a position that owes nothing to the gospel and much to traditional understandings of power.

Today, we are becoming like refugees and scavengers on our culture. We feed from the scraps of the media and television —criticizing it sometimes, but generally simply absorbing it.

We emphatically do not live as ‘the baptized’. Indeed, the world not only seeks to force unto into its mould, it has largely succeeded in overthrowing Romans 12:2 (do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind).

This was brought home to me recently by a request from the Guardian to write a short piece on how the conservative Christian attitude to homosexuality has been a defeat for them in the wider culture.

What is truly bizarre about this —and at the same time very revealing —is that the commissioning editor apparently thinks that the rest of conservative Christianity could pretty easily be absorbed by our prevailing culture.

But isn’t that true? As we engage with our non-Christian friends and colleagues, are we different from them? Are our attitudes and aspirations different from theirs? Certainly they are at the level of believing in God. But are they different in what we believe about life? Above all, are we different in the way we think: are we transformed by the renewal of our minds.

You might think it is a long stretch from here to baptism, but as I have indicated, it is not for a Jew or a Muslim. The Muslim, especially, knows that in baptism he is leaving not a religion but a world —an entire culture which permeates everything: food and shopping, sex and family life, finance and politics.

The Christian leaves what? The Christian enters what? We have hardly begun to realize the difference this ought to make.

To give just one example, I was listening on the radio yesterday to an item about troublesome youth and one of the key problems identified was lack of a father figure in many boys lives, especially.

But the premise for dealing with their problems was that, ultimately, the choices they make for themselves must be sacrosanct.

Now I would suggest that the Christian view of fatherhood rejects the notion that the choice is sacrosanct, because it introduces the idea of ‘sonship’ and obedience, exemplified in the obedience of the Son of God to God the Father.

So in this apparently small way, Christianity conflicts with one of our core cultural assumptions.

Christians need to know they are different. But more than that, they need to know they are different together, as the community, Luther called it the gemeinde, of the baptized in the Church.

Of course there are dangers in this, not least of tribalism. That is where the rôle of pastor-teachers is so important. We must ourselves challenge the culture of tribalism, which is of the world, not the gospel. We must teach and preach the faith.

But we will increasingly do it in a world which stands apart from us, and from which we must ourselves stand apart. Evangelical compromise with the culture has always been an issue. But then evangelical awareness of the community of God’s people has never been a strength.

As we become what we are meant to be, so we will be equipped to face the challenges. And in the end, both evangelicalism and evangelism will be the stronger.

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