Evangelical 'Momentum' within the Church of England

D. M. Lloyd-Jones, 1966

In an article in the Church Times, Angela Tilby issued a wake-up call to the Church of England. Apparently, 'Momentum' is infiltrating Anglicanism. Not that kind of 'Momentum'. She wasn't worried that the good old CofE was going to be taken over by an influx of Marxtist-Lenninists brandishing the Morning Star and singing 'Oh, Jeremy Corbyn', rather than 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'. Maybe she wouldn't have minded that too much. 

No, the worrying thing is that people who actually believe the Bible and possibly even a good chunk of the 39 Articles of Religion are in danger of  imposing themselves upon the Church of England. Whatever next? As Tilby says, "It just seems wrong to insist that only those who claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus are real Christians, and that their priority should be about converting others." Crazy, like. You wouldn't find the great theologians of the Church spouting such nonsense; Athanasius, Augustine, and such. Let alone John Calvin and the Reformer Bishops of the Church of England; Latimer and Ridley. Pesky Evangelicals. 

It may even be that, "what was once a well-tolerated but distinctive ideology of faith has become the accepted norm." It was no doubt very kind of non-Evangelicals to be so tolerant towards people who preach the gospel, but heaven forfend that their 'ideology' should become the norm. Evangelicals should know their place and content themselves with being a 'wing' of the Church alongside the other wings, rather than trying to take the place over. It's not as if the other 'wings' would ever try and do that. 

The thought of an Evangelical 'Momentum' sweeping through the CofE, making it do evangelism and stuff, is giving Angela Tilby an anxiety attack. Her response illustrates rather perfectly the problem that faces Evangelical Anglicans. They must stay in their Evangelical box, keep paying into the coffers and stop trying to remake the Church in their own image. But can Evangelicals content themselves with being a well tolerated 'wing' of a Church that has more 'wings' than KFC has of the chicken variety? The Liberal 'wing', Anglo-Catholic, Nondescript Mainstream, LGBT+ inclusive, and so on. 

The thing that puts the Evangel into Evangelicals is the gospel of salvation by faith alone, through grace alone in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. The preaching of this message is what constitutes the church as "a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance"  (Article XIX). Those who do not preach this message or sit under its proclamation are not the church in any meaningful sense of the word. Evangelicals who remain in theologically mixed denominations like the CofE must therefore either work to reform them, or leave. 

Angela Tilby laments, "Nowhere in today’s report is there any theological reflection on the nature of the current church decline." But any theological reflection must begin with God, take his self-revelation in Holy Scripture seriously and deal with the questions, 'What is a Christian?' and 'What is the Church?'. Michael Sadgrove Tweeted an appreciation of Tilby's article in which he said, '@churchofengland⁩ is not a network of gathered evangelising churches.' But that's exactly the problem. The church of the New Testament was a network of gathered evangelising churches. Read Acts.

Tilby casts the aspersion that Evangelicals are only interested in 'saving souls', and have little time for social justice. Who does she think led the campaign to abolish slavery, or agitated for better working conditions for ordinary men and women? The tradition of William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury lives on among contemporary Evangelicals who work in disadvantaged communities. They run debt counselling services, organise food banks, serve as school governors, and help in countless other ways.

That said, Evangelicals might have something to learn from the Tilby's piece. At least in her perception they are theological lightweights and ecclesiological pragmatists. They talk in business-speak, “envision, equip, and enable . . .”. This is unfortunate. Evangelical Anglicanism has produced some very fine theologians such as J. I Packer and John Stott. Packer and Stott sought to root Evangelicalism in the great theological tradition of Puritanism, the Reformers and the Church Fathers. Alpha Course Evangelicals would do well to return to the 'Old Paths' to add theological weight to the movement. Yet even here, Packer and Stott were more comfortable than they should have been with Evangelicalism being regarded as a  'well-tolerated ideology' within the broader Anglican set-up. 

Serious questions need to be faced by Evangelicals within the theologically mixed denominations, 

Are we content, as evangelicals, to go on being nothing but an evangelical wing, making our protests, exerting our influence, hoping that we can gradually infiltrate so that others may come to see the wrongness of their ideas and the correctness of ours? Are we content to go on doing that? (Knowing the Times, D. M. Lloyd-Jones, Banner of Truth Trust, 1989, p. 251). 

Martyn Lloyd-Jones issued that challenge in 1966 in his address under the auspices of the Evangelical Alliance, Evangelical Unity: An Appeal. What the preacher said still resonates today. If the gospel defines what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be the church, the church must be evangelical, or it is no church at all. On that basis, we cannot be content with being an 'evangelical wing'. Why remain in alliance with people who deny that being a Christian means having a personal relationship with Jesus? 

Angela Tilby clearly believes that Evangelicals are the problem in the CofE. This depite the fact that Evangelical churches tend to be the ones that are growing in a context of general decline. She in effect says to them (echoing the words of king Ahab to the prophet Elijah), "Is it you, troubler of Israel?" To which Elijah famously replied, "I have not troubled Israel, but you...because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord." (1 Kings 18:17-18). Quite. 

Lloyd-Jones called upon Evangelicals to come together to bear united witness to the gospel. It is clear that their presence in the CofE is not welcome by Angela Tilby and other leading figures in the CofE. To them you are little better than what 'Momentum' ideological extremists are to the Labour Party. Why stay where you are not welcome? Come out and come together with all who proclaim the gospel of Jesus. 

Anglican Primates' conference: the church militant or muddled?

There's nothing that draws the attention of the media to church-related matters so much as stories involving splits and sex. A story featuring both factors in one is the religious affairs correspondents' equivalent of the Holy Grail. As ever, our dear old Church of England is happy to oblige. This week Justin Welby has convened an Anglican Primates' meeting at Canterbury with the hope of holding the fractured communion together. The issue that threatens to divide global Anglicanism is, of course, homosexuality. 

Cue calls issued by the Liberal wing for the church to repent over its treatment of gays. While Evangelicals warn, "Everywhere we see the danger of Christians committed to a gospel without salvation, reconciliation without repentance, a Saviour without a cross and a Lord without a word." 

This being the Church of England with its habit of muddling through crisis after crisis, conciliatory voices are hoping that the grand assemblage of Primates will find some way of agreeing to disagree. Apparently, church needs both the Liberals with their 'love for people' thing and the Evangelicals with their 'love for doctrine' thing. 

After all, writes David Ilson, Dean of St. Paul's, "The Church is not a body defined by rules and dogmas, but a fellowship of diverse people joined together by faithfulness to following Jesus Christ." OK, but it is pretty hard to know what faithfulness to following Jesus Christ looks like without at least a smidgen of agreed dogma concerning his identity and the purpose of his work. If there is no doctrinal agreement on who Jesus is and what he came to do, there can be no grounds for meaningful fellowship. Is Jesus the Son of God incarnate who came to save the world from sin? Or was he a very nice, spiritual sort of fellow who taught a kindly message of inclusion and tolerance? 

Faithfulness to following the 'Evangelical Jesus' will look quite different to following your 'Liberal Jesus'. The question of which is the authentic Christ of the New Testament brings us back to doctrinal matters and we can't go there because 'doctrine divides', and the main thing is to hold the CofE together come what may. That's the case even though its various 'wings' fundamentally disagree on what constitutes the gospel, consequently what constitutes a Christian, and what therefore constitutes the church. 

Not being an Anglican I don't have a dog in this particular fight. The nearest I've got to any primates lately was spotting an elderly silverback gorilla when visiting Longleat Safari Park. But this story does raise some interesting questions. Even for a Baptist. The first is, what on earth are Evangelicals still doing in the CofE, and is there anything that would prompt them to break with Canterbury en masse?

The Liberal ascendancy in the 1980s didn't do it, with David Jenkins describing the bodily resurrection of Jesus as 'a conjuring trick with a bag of bones'. Womens' ordination was meant to be the tipping point, and then female Bishops. Tipping points come and go, biblical authority is flouted, historic church teachings are jettisoned, but Evangelical Anglicans don't seem to be able to to let go of Mother Anglican's apron strings. 

And now this. Will the acceptance of active homosexuals as Ministers of the Church finally tip Evangelical Anglicans over the edge? I dunno. Given the precedents, what do you reckon? Some may say that Christian teaching on sexuality isn't a core doctrinal issue anyway. In a sense that's right. What Scripture says about sex in general and same sex relationships in particular isn't up there with gospel-defining truths such as the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation of Christ, his sin-atoning death and bodily resurrection etc. Why should Evangelicals leave the CofE over a second order issue? 

Which brings us to another question, what's the relationship between church and culture when it comes to deciding what Christians should believe and do? In this case, does God as Creator have the right to order the form of our human relationships, and has he deigned to reveal that form to us? Most Christians would say, 'yes' and 'yes'. If the the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture rather than fashionable opinion is to function as the ultimate authority in the church, then it is clear that male-female marriage is only legitimate context for sexual intimacy. That's it. Period. If anything Jesus tightened things up on that point, jettisoning the Old Testament's rather lax approach to polygamy and divorce, Matthew 19:3-6. When the apostles of Christ were confronted with same sex relations in Gentile culture of their day they made it clear that such behaviour was not acceptable for Christians.

The church is called to follow the teaching of Scripture as an expression of her submission to the lordship of Christ. If he is our Lord and Head, we cannot simply ignore or reject those bits of the Bible that might be upsetting Guardian readers. In 1930's Germany the church was being pressurised to conform to the culture. By way of response the confessing church drew up the Barmen Declaration, which included the points:

8.11 Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. 

8.12 We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation.

What is at stake here is the church's loyalty to Christ's revealed will. It is not our calling to conform to the world and it's patterns of thought, but to confront the world with the challenge of the gospel. When contemporary church leaders suggest that we should listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church on the issue of same sex relations and then we hear them simply reaffirming fashionable liberal opinion on the matter, we know that they have well and truly lost the plot. In that case, apart from the clergy decked out in fancy dress and a few rituals, what's the difference between the 'church' and the world?  We have no other source of revelation besides the Word of God. And if any teaching of the Word of God is subject to sustained attack, the task of the church is not to surrender, but stand and fight. As Martin Luther put it, 

If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.

For how much longer can Evangelicals remain in the forever flinching Church of England? Less the church militant and more the church muddled. 

And yet, one final question needs to be faced. Has the church always treated people who feel same sex attraction with the respect and love that is their due as human beings made in the image of God? The call to repent referred to above is not altogether misplaced. The conservative position of Nigerian church leaders would be all the more credible if they campaigned against the demonisation and criminalisation of gay people in their own land. The cry of the church should not be, 'lock 'em up', but 'Christ came into the world to save sinners', whatever their race, gender, background or sexual orientation. That was certainly the gospel-centred approach of the apostles, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Christians wrestling with same sex attraction should be treated with great pastoral sensitivity and offered the love and support of the church. It is good to note that UK Evangelicals are now beginning to adopt a much more caring and thoughtful approach, see here. 

This is not a matter of the church needing both Liberals with their 'love for people' and Evangelicals with their 'love for doctrine' to deal with this matter in an appropriately balanced manner. Framing it like that is just an ecclesio-political way of papering over gaping wide theological chasms. Rather, the church's witness must forever be characterised by costly compassion, 'speaking the truth [however unpopular] in love [extended to all people without exception]', Ephesians 4:15. Christ our Lord demands nothing less. We'll have to wait and see to discover what the Primates have to say, and then what Evangelical Anglicans do by way of response.