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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For England and St George

As my contribution to St George’s Day, I’ve copied out my old school song —the first time I’ve done so since having to write it out three times by hand in a class detention (for us being noisy) back in the early ‘60s. (Not having your school hymnbook in morning assembly was also a punishable offence, which meant most of us carried the hymnbook in our blazer pockets for our entire school career. I still have mine.)

I have a lot of affection for this song, written by James Edward Geoffrey DeMontmorency (a former Quain Professor of Comparative Law), because it establishes what I think is the basic principle of citizenship, namely ownership of a story (something which I explored here early last year). It is the same thing which drives so many people to take an interest in genealogy — who we think we are is affected by the story of which we feel ourselves to be a part.

This, however, is why I cannot accept the underlying political philosophy of the British National Party, who regard citizenship as essentially an ethnic concept. It is a fundamental biblical principle that citizenship of God’s people is open to anyone who will ‘own the story’. Ruth is characteristic of this (and is, of course, a profound challenge to the concept of exclusivity even on the basis of God’s judgement):

“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” (Ru 1:15-16)

According to Deuteronomy 23:3, no Moabite could become part of Israel, yet Ruth was a Moabitess (Ru 1:4). And in case anyone should think the exclusion was itself restricted, in the days of Nehemiah it was still taken to apply to mixed marriages (Neh 13:1). Whatever else this may mean, it surely is a word to those who would draw tight ethnic boundaries around social identity.

The same is true of the Passover regulations regarding non-Israelites, “An alien living among you who wants to celebrate the Lord’s Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land.” (Ex 12:48) The key to joining in the Passover is simply identification with the Lord’s Covenant people. And of course the Passover was itself celebrated as the recapitulation of a story:

In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed every firstborn in Egypt, both man and animal. This is why I sacrifice to the Lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons.’ And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand. (Ex 13:14-16)

(I wonder, incidentally, whether the Passover is not a significant challenge to those who would deny the penal element of Christ “our Passover” dying on the cross.) The Passover feast made, and makes, every Jew part of the story. But it is not initially restricted to ‘born Jews’, provided the person wishes to embrace the Covenant.

But this is why I cannot accept the idea of a ‘multi-cultural’ nation which has been foisted on us in this country for the last half-century. If a country is to be more than a dormitory — a place where people sleep and work, but to which they feel no sense of belonging — then it must require of its citizens an awareness of and identity with the communal story. And what better way to do that than in song? So here it is, in all its glory — the John Roan School Song:

Here’s to old John Roan, who lived and worked and died
In the mighty days of Cromwell, of Milton, and of Blake*;
We were born in days of passion, we were reared in days of pride,
That gave the sea to England with continents beside;
Is there nothing we can give her for our Founder’s sake?
Ourselves we give to England till John Roan shall wake.
Here’s to old John Road, sing him loud, sing him low,
He it was who placed us on the road that we shall go.

Here in Greenwich once walked England’s deathless dead,
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, here made their music sweet;
Drake and Blake and Nelson in Greenwich broke their bread,
Flamstead, Halley, Airey, the ranging star flocks led;
While Wolfe still dreams among us beside the roaring street,
Of the broad realms of Canada he laid at England’s feet,
Then to old John Roan, sing him loud, sing him fair,
He it was who made us, sing him sweet for his care.

Here’s to those that come hereafter, the lads we shall not see,
The men of generations who will have new foes to fight;
We look forever forward, seaward, landward free;
Yea, in the air and in the depths, wherever men should be,
Our Greenwich men are lighting new beacons in the night,
John Roan’s men, the Roan boys, are building up the light.
Here’s to old John Road, sing him loud, sing him clear.
Sing him round the continents, sing him through the year.

* John Roan died in 1644, Oliver Cromwell in 1658 and John Milton in 1674. William Blake, however, died in 1857, making him an unlikely candidate. I presume this is therefore a reference to Robert Blake, 17^th century Parliamentarian and naval hero, who was laid in state in the Great Hall of the Queen’s House at Greenwich, following his death at sea in 1657, see also the second verse. Revd John Richardson
23 April 2009

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A superb evangelistic resource

Some weeks ago an Australian friend of mine sent me a copy of The Christ Files, a DVD set based on the book of the same name by Dr John Dickson.

I must admit to having left it to one side (not least because of the wedding), but in an idle moment yesterday stuck it in my computer DVD player.

Rarely have I been so pleasantly surprised. The Christ Files is not a mere imitation of 'religion debunking' TV specials (although it clearly sets out to put something up against them). It is a superb two disc resource.

The first disc contains the four main 'programmes': 'Gnostics and Romans', 'Jews and Christians', 'Lost Sources and Oral Traditions', 'Archaelogists and Artefacts'. The production values are superb, and these alone would give any serious inquirer (or even a brash opponent) something to think about. The great highlight of these programmes are the interviews with leading scholars:
Richard Bauckham, Marcus Bockmuehl, James Charlesworth, James Dunn, Sean Freyne, Martin Hengel, Alanna Nobbs, Adolfo Roitman, Peter Stuhlmacher, Christopher Tuckett and Tom Wright. These I found fascinating.

But then the second disc contains what people like myself really want in addition to the main programmes which is the extended interviews with these scholars.

'Evidentialist' evangelism seems to have gone out of favour in recent years - yet the world seems to have regained its interest in evidentialism, not least through people like Richard Dawkins dismissing religion in favour of 'the facts'. This DVD is a great resource to use with people who want factual reasons to believe.

You can view the promotional material, including selected clips of the interviews here.

This is Tom Wright being interviewed.

The DVD is not yet available directly in the UK as far as I am aware, but The Good Book Company are planning to stock it soon.

If I could have one to give to every house in the parish, I'd do it.

John Richardson
27 August 2008

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No (hi)story, no identity

It was at Ayer's Rock/Uluru in Australia that I realized why history matters to every school child - your story defines who you are. Forget all the guff about 'British values', being British (or Australian, or Polish) means seeing yourself as part of this story, of this place and this nation - the social unit between family and neighbourhood, on the one hand, and global community on the other.

For that exercise, history is essential, not as a matter of 'names and dates', much less as an exercise in understanding the causes of world events, but as an ongoing narrative, which began before you were born and will continue after you are gone. You don't even have to approve of it - you just have to know it is yours. Our old school song, most of which I can still remember by heart, was designed to instil just that sense of identity in young boys:

"Here's to old John Roan [the school founder], Who lived and worked and died, In the mighty days of Cromwell, of Milton and of Blake ..."

Even the fact that the word 'old' in the opening line is a term of approval speaks volumes.

It is the lack of that shared story which undergirds the problems Michael Nazir-Ali has addressed, about identity and 'no-go' areas. Contrast the 'home-grown' terrorist problem of Great Britain with the lack of that problem in other nations of the English-speaking world, then take a look at the number of buildings which fly our national flag compared with, say, those in Australia. Then check your own reactions to the suggestion that this is a problem. Do you feel a slight sense of unease? Do your thoughts go to the BNP and the desire not to 'frighten' people with 'nationalist' symbols? Now you know why we have a problem in the first place.

In the light of this, I was interested in an article from the Daily Telegraph concerning a report on teaching patriotism, not because I think patriotism can be taught, but because of what was said about the value of loving one's country:

... In a report drawn up by the Institute of Education, teachers in London's secondary schools (well, 47 of them) expressed their views about lessons in patriotism, and utterly predictable they were, too. "Waste of time," was the consensus.

Lessons in patriotism might indeed be a waste of time because patriotism, which can be defined as a sense of place, is something that is best absorbed, not taught. But some of the reasons advanced in the report were odd.

"Praising patriotism excludes non-British pupils," said one teacher, expertly missing the point that the majority of pupils in British schools are British subjects. Their parents might have come from Bangladesh, Somalia or Lithuania, but they live here by choice, and so the only thing that binds children from these different backgrounds is the English language. An understanding of the history and customs of the only country they can call home is not just desirable. For social harmony, it is essential.

Other teachers dragged in that old hobby-horse, empire, and there was even talk of "BNP-type thinking". Surely even the most self-hating liberals can now see that, by suppressing the urge to know more about one's country, and encouraging children to feel ashamed of British history, their reflexive guilt plays into the hands of parties such as the BNP.

The report builds up to an overwhelming question, posed by its author, one Michael Hand: "Are countries really appropriate objects of love?" He answers it himself. "Since all national histories are at best morally ambiguous, it's an open question whether citizens should love their countries." Read more

That high-pitched whirring noise is old John Road spinning in his grave.

Revd John P Richardson
2 February 2008

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