After wading through this long essay, I remain disappointed at the apparent British Evangelical blindness/deafness to the facts on the ground that (1) not everyone feels that he or she is a hopeless sinner in need of God’s grace in and through Jesus in order to avoid eternal horror, (2) not everyone who committed to following the way of Jesus agrees that “the Gospel” is what Paul’s letters claim it is, and (3) no one institutionalized body of people who believe they are following the way of Christ has the authority to insist on what the way of Jesus is, either.
RE: “not everyone feels that he or she is a hopeless sinner in need of God’s grace in and through Jesus in order to avoid eternal horror, (2) not everyone who committed to following the way of Jesus agrees that “the Gospel†is what Paul’s letters claim it is . . . ”
Well of course the British Evangelicals understand that . . . which is why they emphasize conversion so nicely.
RE: “no one institutionalized body of people who believe they are following the way of Christ has the authority to insist on what the way of Jesus is, either. . . . ”
Sure they do — for those *within that institution* they do. All organizations have the authority to define their own rules and beliefs as they please.
Obviously I might proclaim myself a blonde Buddhist who just happens to not believe any of the Four Noble Truths. And no Buddhist organization can make me say otherwise either. But . . . they *can* refuse to allow me into their organization.
I should have used words more carefully in my first post above. The disappointment I mean to convey in #3 is that the tone of British Evangelicalism – especially as one hears it in C.S. Lewis and Nicky Gumbel – is “there is only one truth and we know what it is because of the way we read the Bible, and if you disagree with us then you are simply misguided and we will continue to pray for you.” Does this not seem to be an obnoxiously repellent position from the start, bound to fail as a message that would effectively “baptize all nations, etc.”? Furthermore, of course any body of aspiring followers of Christ is capable of defining itself and proclaiming its own rules for membership – but that is no guarantee that God’s authority is behind all their definitions and all their rules.
RE: “Furthermore, of course any body of aspiring followers of Christ is capable of defining itself and proclaiming its own rules for membership – but that is no guarantee that God’s authority is behind all their definitions and all their rules.”
Very true — people of various faiths may proclaim that God’s authority is behind them, as for instance, the revisionists in the COE do about their faith, and those who believe the Gospel in the COE do about their faith.
All sorts of claims may be made in the rhetorical universe and it’s up to individuals to discern which are true and which are not.
RE: “Does this not seem to be an obnoxiously repellent position from the start . . . ”
Not really — sounds like the same kind of position held by the man-made global warming guys and evolutionists and political liberals and Islamists and political conservatives and Christians and flat-earthers and all of those who hold a foundational worldview. Of course, other words should be substituted for the words “we will continue to pray for you,” depending on which foundational worldview you may have chosen — for instance, Islamics might say “and if you do not repent we will saw off your head with a blunt sword.”
But in the larger sense of things, it’s all pretty much the same thing.
People have ideas. Those ideas are mutually antithetical, one to the other, and so people must choose which ideas they will claim and affirm as the Truth, which necessarily means that those ideas which affirm opposing principles must be noted as not-Truth. Obviously, they’re not going to look over the scads of ideas, choose one, commit their lives to it, and then say “we don’t really think we’ve chosen the right foundational worldview, and what we believe isn’t really the truth, so believe as you wish.”
I am personally just fine with the atheists and Christians and evolutionists and global warming crew and political liberals loudly proclaiming that they have the Truth.
But Sarah, you forgot to address the people whose truth is that no one can say what the truth is… Surely, you recognize that this must be THE truth. And so Hery Greville proclaims, not relizing for a second that he is speaking a parodox and insisting others accept it as rational.
I’ll certainly finish reading that interesting document when time permits. Meanwhile, it is more than a little surprising to read above that someone really thinks C.S. Lewis was an Anglican evangelical. It is widely recognized that he was not an evangelical. For example:
[i]”Second, I have noticed a general tendency in American evangelical circles to claim anybody who is helpful or admirable as an evangelical of some sort. It is our equivalent of Rahner’s `anonymous Christians’ — except we have `anonymous evangelicals.’ To put it in the idiom of the English class system, many theologians are `decent sorts of chaps who, if they had only known, would have been evangelicals, don’t you know.’ [b]The great example of this reception/appropriation/transformation at American evangelical hands is C S Lewis (high church Anglican, believer in purgatory, advocate of the Devil ransom theory of atonement — these being only the three most obvious of his non-evangelical credentials)[/b].”[/i] –
the clearest of numerous such statements I encountered straightaway on googling ‘C.S. Lewis evangelical’. His writings have however been of great use as Anglican apologetic in the evangelical movement.
I have no idea who is being cited above about C.S. Lewis, but the fact remains that Lewis has indeed not only been hijacked by many American Evangelicals, but a good many evangelical Brits as well. The reason is simple, however: as much a High Church ritualist as he was in his own theological and devotional life, his persistent speaking and literary advocacy of the truths of the Creeds and the Chalcedonian God-man definition have provided fuel for evangelicalism both Protestant and Catholic, and even Orthodox.
With respect, I think this is all going rather ‘off topic’. Henry apparently doesn’t agree with the evangelical (I am tempted to say, Anglican) definition of the gospel, such as that “holy Scripture doth set out to us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved” (I’ll leave you guys to work out the source).
In that case, he will simply not be interested in the project set out in ‘Towards the Conversion of England’ and argued in my ‘essay’.
However, the basis of what I am saying equally does not presume that the evangelical understanding is either ‘pure’ Anglicanism OR ‘pure’ biblicism. (He will doubtless be aware there is considerable debate in some circles whether evangelicals have even got Paul right, let alone whether, as he puts it ‘“the Gospel†is what Paul’s letters claim it is’ (although the Church of England historically is committed to the view that it is).
The argument is rather that what defines the Church is evangelistic mission, which evangelicals hold to be the priority and which therefore ought to give them the motivation to seek to engage with the institution in such a way as to bring the agenda of the whole Church round to that mission.
This is not the same as simply making the whole church ‘evangelical’, but it would be to make the whole church evangelistic in the terms set out BY THE CHURCH ITSELF in 1945 – and largely ignored since then.
Evangelistic! Yes, John Richardson! If only the people of the Church universal would always be seen and understood to be principally evangelistic, whether through our own acts of worship, teaching, or compassion. Seven days each week of walking, as we feel called, in the way of Jesus and talking of Jesus in our own lives – that is, the power and wonder of Jesus as the Living Lord of each present moment of our lives. As potentially inspiring as canonical Scripture can be for an inquirer about Christianity, there is not much point in giving out Bibles if we who give them to inquirers (and new confirmands and new commmunicants) do not clearly live up to what Jesus through the Gospels challenges us to do.
I’m glad you showed up here. I read through your whole essay yesterday and found it very helpful, stimulating, and encouraging. But if I may start redirecting this online discussion, I’d like to ask a few questions of my own, in the hopes that you’ll take the time to answer them.
First, however, a couple specific thanks. I really appreciated your brief survey of how Evangelicalism has fared within the CoE over the last 40-50 years or so, and not least by tracking the changing nature of the four NEAC events, which I found illuminating and helpful. I also benefited from your highlighting the role of Nash and Lucas in shaping many of the leaders of the Evangelical movement in the CoE. Above all, if I understand you correctly, I welcome your emphasis, similar to Peter Adam’s essay on “[i]Only Halfly Reformed,[/i]” on seeking to transform the whole CoE and the nation by working “[i]from below[/i]” rather than concentrating futilely on reforming the church and nation “[i]from above,[/i];” while at the same time not abandoning hope of fully using whatever opportunities God may give for exploiting the possibilities that come from having evangelicals appointed to bishoprics or leading university posts I heartily agree with that sensible two-pronged strategy that still focuses primarily on change from below.
So here are my three or four initial questions:
[b]1. How would you characterize the essential difference(s) between the “conservative” and the “open” wings of the Evangelical movement among English Anglicans?[/b] Is there a simple litmus test for separating the two camps? Please be as specific as you can.
BTW, that’s not a loaded question; I’m genuinely curious. For example, I’ve long suspected that besides the more obvious differences on where people fall on the conservative to moderate to liberal spectrum theologically, there are also crucial differences on how strictly people would enforce orthodoxy, i.e., where they fall on the strictness to leniency spectrum.
[b]2. How would you define what it means to be an “evangelical” Anglican anyway?[/b] Again, please be as precise as you feel free to be, at least with regard to the British context/CoE. In particular, I’m wondering where the boundaries lie with regard to attitudes toward modern biblical scholarship and toward Catholicism, whether in its Roman, Eastern, or Anglican varieties.
For example, can good old Charlie Moule, or Richard Bauckham, or Andrew Lincoln be safely included in the “Evangelical” camp of Anglican NT scholars, even though none of them were (or are) inerrantists, although the latter two published volumes in the broadly evangelical Word Biblical Commentary series.
[b]3. Above all perhaps, is being Puritan, Reformed, or even just Protestant an essential element in being a true Anglican Evangelical?[/b]
Let me get personal and illustrate what I mean by using myself as an example. I am proud of being an alumnus of Wheaton College, and I continue gladly to identify myself as an evangelical because I am a gospel-based, gospel-centered, gospel-driven Christian with a passion for evangelism, discipleship, and fostering radical conversion to Jesus Christ (very much in the tradition of the Wesley brothers and Whitefield that way). However, I freely admit that I wouldn’t be allowed to teach at Wheaton since I’m not an inerrantist anymore, and I’m also probably way too catholic for such an unabashedly Protestant place as Wheaton (where a much-loved philosophy prof was fired a few years ago for converting to Roman Catholicism).
Let’s get more specific yet by comparing me to J. I. Packer and +Tom Wright. With my extensive blogging record at Stand Firm, t’s no secret that I’m actually somewhat more liberal than +Tom Wright on some scholarly matters (such as the authorship and dating of some NT letters attributed to Paul such as Col. and Eph.), and more conservative than him on others (a very mixed reaction to his championing of the “New” Perspective on Paul). Of course, I’m quite far to the left of James Packer.
But despite that, I suspect that I’m actually STRICTER than either of those great men on the strictness to laxity spectrum when it comes to enforcing orthodoxy. That is, while I’d draw the line farther to the left than they would on the conservative to liberal spectrum, I would be inclined to ENFORCE that line significantly more strictly, and if necessary, more harshly, than they would. On that score, my gut instincts are much closer to those of his holiness, Joseph Ratzinger, than his grace, Rowan Williams. That may also be due to the fact that I’m an American and not a Brit!
But the biggest difference between me and +Wright and Packer is on the Protestant to Catholic specturm. There the difference between me and Wright is quite consistent; I’m always, without fail, more catholic than he is. And as an ex-Presbyterian from the Anglo-Catholic Diocese of Albany and as someone who is distinctly anti-Puritan theologically, I am of course even farther apart from the noble James Packer (whom I continue to admire and read with profit), I’m just as committed to recovering the lost authority of Scripture as they are, but I utterly reject the Protestant principle of [i]sola scriptura[/i], so dear to Sydney Anglicans and many other evangelical Anglicans. Nonetheless, I continue to promote what I love to call “3-D Christianity,”: evangelical, catholic, and charismatic.
Finally, (pardon the excessive length but your essay is also quite long),
[b]4. How does your appeal for making the most of the evangelistic opportunities afforded by the continuing (though dwindling) number of English people who come to the CoE for life passage rituals (infant baptism, marriage, burial) relate to the more restrictive reform efforts of evangelicals like former bishop Colin Buchanan?[/b]
You seem to be wanting to avoid taking a rigoristic line that might alienate large numbers of outsiders, which is understandable, but I tend to think such a policy is obsolete and misguided in a post-Christendom society. I find so-called “indiscriminate” baptism (which I prefer to call promiscuous baptism) an absolutely intolerable scandal and an utter abomination, and here again, I would tend toward a much stricter approach to guarding the sacramental integrity of the Church than most evangelicals would (whether in America or England or anywhere else).
I’m sorry for posting such a long series of questions and comments, but I hope this will perhaps take the thread in a more serious direction, more worthy of the kind of care and thoughtness that you, John, put into your fine essay.
P.S. I meant “thoughtfulness” there at the end. Maybe this thread is dead now, but just in case the Ugley Vicar (or Sarah, etc.) is just slow in replying, let me clarify that 4th and last point.
To me, the money quote in the 1945 CoE report with which Richardson begins is the italicized line about the really daunting challenge of converting England being that even the Church is full of “half-converted” people. Such commendable frankness and transparency in official church documents is all too rare.
My point is that while the description of many CoE folk as “half-converted” may have been appropriate in 1945, I strongly suspect that the proportion might have to be revised downward significantly today. Perhaps we might have to say they are only 1/4 converted, or some such thing. OTOH, perhaps now that even pretending to be a nominal Christian is less common today in the CoE than it was in 1945, maybe the tiny minority of regular church-goers in the CoE really are more than “half-converted.” But what about the vast penumbra of merely formal members of the CoE who almost never darken the doors of a church? Should we call them maybe 1/10th converted??
What I’m getting at is that any strategy to seek the conversion of all England, or even the whole CoE, must come to grips with agreeing on an assessment of the current state of things. Are the vast majority of folks within the CoE to be regarded and treated as “[i]lapsed Christians[/i]” who need to be recalled to their former faith and practice (as F. D Maurice contended back in the mid-1800s), or are they really merely [b]baptized heathens[/b], who never were real Christians in the first place? As an American, I won’t presume to know the answer to that, although I strongly suspect that for many millions of English people (just as for many Americans, and not least a great many in TEC) the latter description is the most apt one. Which calls for a strategy focused not on better “pastoral” care to win back the “lapsed,” but rather any successful strategy that would really transform the whole Church and nation must be unabashedly evangelistic.
Anyone out there want to discuss that?
David Handy+
Unashamedly sectarian (in the best sense)
One: I appreciate your questions to John (The Ugley Vicar). He has published an
informative document with a heartfelt desire for conversion of the CofE and of England.
And I too would like to understand more about the Evangelical presence in the CofE in
distinction from the non-Evangelicals.
Two: I appreciate your digging into the question of where we are as Christians. Lapsed
Christians vs. baptized heathens? The strategy for today re conversion in the Church and in
the culture does seem to depend on what the problem is.
In terms of the big picture, I look to Bp. Allison’s comments and the challenge today of Secularism
as a religion which dominates Western media, politics and institutions and which has infected many Churches. A problem which threatens both Western civilization and many Western Churches.
Are we in a time which needs new strategies and new alliances?
I’m very glad to see you commenting again. Out of self-interest, I hope that your renewed
activity will continue for awhile.
Sorry to be a bit slow coming back. One thing I would just add is that the essay arose out of conference, so there is ongoing thinking about these things and further developments hopefully will follow.
Also, on the issue of reform from above or below, ultimately these are not exclusive, but above is, in my view, most to be desired. Maybe I’ll come back to that later.
On David’s questions.
1. The current ‘litmus test’ to tell open from conservative evangelicals is women’s ordination – simple as that, really. It gets a bit more complicated, so a ‘New Wine’ charismatic might be pro having women as bishops but conservative on other matters, but in non-charismatic evangelical circles women’s ordination is pretty much the test. Shame, but there it is.
2. I’ve set out what I think ought to be the theological definition of evangelical in the essay: Christ’s death for sin as the content of the gospel, our faith as the necessary and sufficient response to the gospel. However, when it comes to the situation on the ground a lot of it has to do with inchoate cultural things, background, inclinations etc. In short, it is very confused! This is one of the reasons why I think calling people back to actually evangelizing would be a help – it would sort some of the wheat from the chaff. As to individuals, I would again say look at their praxis evangelistically as well as there expressed theology. In England, though, inerrancy is not a rallying point as such.
3. “Is being Puritan, Reformed, or even just Protestant an essential element in being a true Anglican Evangelical?” Personally I would say that the first one is not essential, as Puritanism was clearly a movement within a broader Anglicanism. However, being Protestant is definitely to be on the ‘Reformation trajectory’ of historic Anglicanism (it is hard, as far as I can see, to take the Prayer Book and Articles seriously and say these are not ‘Protestant’ affirmations). Therefore Anglicanism is essentially ‘Reformed’, though not identical with the Continental Reformed churches (we have our own view of the Church-state relationship in particular, though it is generally misunderstood, even by Anglicans).
The Anglican approach to authority in the Church, and the role of Scripture, is clearly set out in the Thirty-nine Articles. I doubt that a member of the Church of Rome could faithfully assent to these, but they do not (as far as I can see) require a ‘Chicago Inerrantist’ approach to Scripture either. I can’t remember who it was, but one early post-Reformation bishop observed in a dialogue with someone who required stricter definitions that the Articles were deliberately as minimalist as possible so that they included as many as possible whilst still setting necessary boundaries. The problem, as I have observed in the essay, is that they form almost no part of contemporary Anglican theological dialogue today.
4. On the issue of ‘life rituals’, while they keep coming we should keep using them. I used to be ‘full on’ with Colin Buchanan (who was my lecturer in college) in exercising baptismal discipline. I’ve now swung 180 degrees. I would happily follow a more strict approach, but it has to come from the ‘top down’. Otherwise, the local ‘strict’ church is just seen as mean when the neighbouring Anglican church will welcome all-comers. It just doesn’t work, and I have seen that time after time. The whole church has to come to a mind on this and not leave individual clergy in the firing line.
Theologically, I think that the Federal Vision people seem to regard the baptized as lapsed Christians from the off. The ‘catholics’ – at least in Anglicanism – seem to want to regard them as fully regenerate from that point onwards. The Anglican view (which I think is the Reformed view) is to treat them as fully Christian but to require faith that goes hand-in-hand with baptism, without which they never were Christian.
Hope this helps. There is some interest being shown here in the proposals in the essay. I hope it will help ‘waken the sleeping giant’ that is the evangelical movement.
John Richardson’s comment on the difference between Conservative and Open evangelicals is seductive in its clarity, but I am afraid somewhat simplistic. A nuanced understanding, which is very widely respected and quoted can be found here: http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/news/2003/20030930watercourses.cfm?doc=2
Evangelicals in England are all rejoicing in the recent appointments of Justin Welby as +Durham and Tim Dakin as +Winchester. Both will hold seats in the House of Lords giving them a prominent role in the leadership of the national church.
Simon, I would just point out that David asked for a “litmus test”, not a full description.
On the new appointments, we will of course rejoice in anyone appointed to the office of bishop who, as Bp Samson Mwaluda has put it, acts as the foremost evangelist-teacher in his diocese and who upholds the apostolic doctrine.
Thanks for your kind words. Maybe I will do a bit more blogging again, at least for a season, but on a much more selective basis than I used to do.
You posed the (sympathetic) question: “[i]Are we in a time which needs new strategies and new alliances?[/i]” My answer would be: YES! Absolutely.
Why? Well, for several reasons, among which Vatican II and our Post-Christendom social context are perhaps the most important. Namely, from my point of view at least, we must stop regarding RCs as inevitable foes and start regarding at least the most biblical (or even dare I say the most “evangelical”) among them as key allies. But even more important, we must come to terms with what a drastic game-changer it is that Christians are now a distinct minority group in Global North societies, and increasingly a misunderstood, maligned, and suspect minority group at that. I firmly believe that changes everything, and definitely calls for radically new strategies to foster the fulfillment of the Great Commission, by seeking not just to make converts of our various secularized nations on both sides of the Atlantic, but to make real disciples out of the converts. Nothing less will do.
Alas, ++William Temple and the select group that produced that bold report in 1945 that called the CoE to work “[i]Towards the Conversion of England[/i]” never dared to imagine anything as far-reaching and revolutionary as that. They still took for granted a Christendom mentality and context. But new wine often does demand new wineskins, as the Master warned us (Mark 2:22).
That’s why nothing less than a full-fledged New Reformation will do. (As long as it’s understood, of course, that such a New Reformation need not be one-sidedly Protestant).
Thank you for a gracious, clear, and concise reply to my four questions above (#19). I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to respond. Sadly, my response in turn is also rather slow, and perhaps less excusably, far more verbose and probably more provocative. Still, I think you’ve raised some very important issues that need and deserve far more attention than they are getting in orthodox Anglican circles.
My first attempt at a reply went over the allowed 10K characters, so I’m trying again, and breaking my response into four parts, according to the four questions I posed above. But before getting into them, I wish to make it clear that what follows is not intended in a polemical spirit, but rather in a self-differentiating way. I recognize that many T19 readers (doubtless including the Vicar of Ugley) will vigorously disagree with some of the decidedly unReformed opinions I’m about to express, but my intention at least is to shed more light than heat. After all, we would heartily agree on the absolute necessity to work tirelessly “towards the conversion of England” (and the USA); however, we would simply disagree about what that implies theologically and perhaps methodologically.
Also, if I may be so bold, I’m hoping that perhaps Sarah Hey, who contributed to this thread earlier, will note this exchange and deem it worthy of starting a thread over at SFiF, where it might provide much grist for the mill and where a lively debate just might ensue (hint, hint). Or maybe the Elves might take notice and suggest to Kendall that this thread be renamed and moved to the top again. The issues at stake are indeed profoundly important and strategically vital to the orthodox Anglican movement.
OK, installment #1 of my reply to Richardson’s #14.
In my #11 above, I asked John how he would characterize the essential difference(s) between the “conservative” and “open” wings of English Evangelicalism (in the CoE). I must admit that I’m disappointed by his frank admission that the litmus test would have to be, at least in practice, WO. I was hoping that the “conservative” wing wasn’t limited to the REFORM group, or any one “hot button” issue like women’s ordination or homosexuality.
My only comment on that sad reality, if true, is that it’s more than a “shame,” as John puts it in #14. It’s a disaster. As a minority group within Anglicanism (at least in the Global North), we evangelicals must pick our battles wisely. We just can’t afford to choose this hill to die on, or this particular little stone bridge (to use Sarah’s familiar image), since we ourselves are so divided on this issue. It’s sheer folly to make WO into a Maginot Line that our foes can outflank. We dare not make WO “the article by which the Church stands or falls” in our generation, when that would leave such evangelical leaders as +Tom Wright or +George Carey, or ++Bob Duncan or +Mark Lawrence, or ++Henry Luke Orombi, or ++Eliud Wabukala, etc., on the sideline (at best). Surely, fighting on that front won’t help foster “the conversion of England” or America.
By way of clarification, let me make my own stance explicit and my bias apparent. I myself strongly favor WO, because I’m convinced it’s in accord and compatible with the thrust of the biblical witness as a whole (despite texts like 1 Tim. 2:11 that run counter to the main trajectory that would include key passages like Acts 2:17-18). Personally, I have no problem even with women bishops (or in “headship positions”), but I do believe the ACNA (to which I belong) has made the right, prudential decision in refusing to permit women bishops, until such time as “a new consensus emerges” in Anglicanism (maybe in a century or so). However, let me hasten to add that I think it’s absolutely deplorable and abominable that the CoE is apparently about to reneg on its solemn promises to carve out a safe and honored place for the opponents of WO (whether high church or low church).
But my point here is that orthodox Anglicans need to be distianghuished by their orthodoxy, not by their stand on WO, which is tangential at best to determining orthodoxy or orthopraxis.
Thank you, John, for your candor about this sorry state of things in Anglican Evangelicalism. It makes me glad that I’m on this side of the Pond.
My 2nd question in #11 above is actually far more important to me. I asked John how he would define the all-important term “evangelical” and he replied that he thought he’d made it clear already, i.e., an Anglican evangelical held to a simple two-plank minuimalist creed: “[i]Christ’s death for sin as the content of the gospel[/i]” and secondly, “[i]our faith as the necessary and sufficient response to the gospel.[/i]” I hope it won’t seem rude or polemical for me to admit that I think such a minimalist definition is completely inadequate and unhelpfully vague. Now mind you, I’m glad he didn’t propose a quite narrow definition that might include, e.g., the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement as a [i]sine qua non[/i] for being truly evangelical or a particular understanding of how conversion takes places (such as the usual revivalist notions about it). But it seems to me that John’s simple definition doesn’t strike the right notes or tone, in that it leaves out the characteristic biblicist and conversionist emphases that (IMHO) lie at the heart of evangelicalism.
FWIW, here would be my counter-proposal. Primary point: An evangelical, whether Baptist, Anglican, Presbyterian, (or Catholic or whatever) is a [b]gospel Christian[/b]. That is, an evangelical is anyone who is truly a gospel-based, gospel-centered, gospel-driven Christian.
Of course, that begs the question of what a gospel Christian is, and what kind of gospel we’re talking about, since false gospels sadly abound. And my preference would be to relate the content of the gospel to the mighty saving acts of God celebrated in the ecumenical creeds, as summarized for instance in such early credal fragments as 1 Cor. 15:3, or as captured succinctly in eucharistic summaries like “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” There are many ways of translating the unchanging gospel into language that people with differing backgrounds and needs can hear as good news, whether the Pauline language of justification by faith apart from works, or reconciliation with God, or the Johannine language of eternal life, or the Lukan language of the forgiveness of sins, and so on.
But my main point is that the content of the gospel is set, once and for all, by the biblical witness, as interpreted by the consensual tradition of the patristic church, as evidenced in the creeds and liturgies of the early patristic era, with secondary clarifications added by the Protestant Reformers. And there is where some of my differences with John and other Reformed Anglicans start to become apparent.
Personally, I would want to add a secondary level to my above proposal that an evangelical Christian is a gospel Christian. And the two chief elements would be that, as far as I’m concerned, the heart of what is distinctive about evangelicalism (among other brands of Christianity) is its desire to stick close to the biblical witness (relegating post-biblical tradition to a decidedly subordinate and even supposedly non-essential position) and its fervent insistence on the necessity for personal conversion to be a real Christian (even if that conversion need not be seen as sudden or dramatic). That’s what I meant by the characteristic notes of biblicism and conversionism that to me are the heart of evangelicalism. Namely, an evangelical, including an Anglican evangelical, is a biblically based gospel Christian who is strongly conversion-oriented and mission-driven.
Just to make the implicit explicit, the above definiti9on very intentionally avoids associating evangelicalism with either political or cultural conservatism, contrary to the usual assumptions of most outsiders (and many insiders). And perhaps evven more important, it also every deliberately avoids any suggestion that a biblical orthodox Christian is necessarily a Reformed, or even a Protestant, Christian. IOW, I contend very vigorously that it’s perfectly possible to be both evangelical and catholic at the same time (and charismatic to boot, I’d want to add hastily).
For exasmple, I think Richardson’s minimalist definition leaves a crucial point unclear when he suggests that the second plank of the evangelical creed is that, in his words, faith is “the necessary and [b]sufficient[/b] response to the gospel.” That sounds like a nice way of rephrasing the venerable Protestant slogan, [i]sola fide[/i], but it seems inadequate to me when stated in such bald, unnuanced terms. To put it sharply, is faith alone the “sufficient” response to the gospel message apart from later good works that demonstrate that faith to be real (since faith without works is dead, as James 2 rightly insists)? Or again, is a supposedly private belief in the gospel sufficient by itself, apart from being incorporated into the Body of Christ? On both counts, I think not.
But perhaps most tellingly, although I’d agree with Protestant-minded Anglican evangelicals that we are saved by faith apart from works of the law (ala Romans and Galatians), I would roundly deny that we are saved by faith alone apart from the sacraments. In accordance with the 39 Articles (and Article 9 of the Augsburg Confession of our Lutheran kindred too), I would insist very strongly that faithful, believing reception of the sacraments and participation in the common life of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is generally necessary to salvation (contrary to much Reformed and Protestant thought).
But that leads into my 3rd question and my next post…
David Handy+
proudly evangelical, but not necessarily “conservative” or Protestant
I deliberately placed on four questions in an ascending order of interest to me personally, though my interests may well differ from those of other readers. So we come to my third question. As I put it earlier, “Above all, is being Puritan, or Reformed, or even Protesstaant an essential element in being a true Anglican evangelical?”
And here, John seemed to say, well, being Puritan isn’t, and it’s not necessarily true that you have to be Reformed either, at least not in the specific Calvinist, or Continental Reformed way. But he did appear to say that it’s necessary to be a Protestant to be a real evangelical, ar at least a real Anglican evangelical.
And that I would earnestly and heartily deny. Once again, my aim is not so much polemical or to pronounce the last word in a highly contentious area (despite how provocatively I’m phrassing things), so much as my aim is to elicit clarification of the issues at stake. So let me adopt a self-differentiating posture. Although other readers are naturally free to disagree (and I expect many will), I would argue (very strenuously too) that it is NOT necessary to be Protestant, much less Reformed, and certainly not a Puritan, to be a true Anglican evangelical. Now yes, I freely concede that historically, evangelical Anglicans have been strongly and unashamedly Protestant, and much of evangelical Anglicanism in the last 150 years has defined itself in fervent opposition to the Tractarian/Oxford/Anglo-Catholic movement. Yes, there is absolutely no doubt that the 39 Articles of Religion are thoroughly and unabashedly Protestant. So are the two Books of Homilies, and so is the traditional Ordinal. Now the BCP is perhaps a bit more ambigous, but once again, I would concede that there is really no doubt that the historic prayerbooks, from 1549 to 1662 or even 1928 are fundamentally Protestant, although they continue to retain certain vestiges of Catholic sacramentalism (not least in the very clear and emphatic affirmation of baptismal regeneration).
But that doesn’t settle the all-important issue of how much normative status the Reformation formularies retain today. Now as a member of the ACNA I did sign the Jerusalem Declaration, which of course includes an affirmation that those historic formularies are more than merely “historical documents.” But that exact authority remians very much in dispute, at least when you pass from broad principles to the specific details of the 1571 Articles or the 1662 BCP. Just how much are we in fact bound by them??
Here, I would want to point to the counterbalancing weight of the famous Lambeth Quadrilateral, which strike quite a different note and tone that is far more compatible with Catholic values and principles. It’s no secret that the four planks or sides of the Quadrilateral are far closer theologically (as well as chronologically) to the norms of the Christianity of the ancient catholic fathers than to the standard themes of the Protestant reformers. In essence, the canon of Holy Scripture, the early creeds, the shape of the sacramental liturgies, and not least the episcopal polity of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church are all products of the patristic era. All four were essentially settle in their main outlines by the end of the second century, but the point is that all four of them go BEYOND the Scriptures (although not contrary to them of course) and all four are BINDING. Not simply as permissible ootions that are compatible with the Scriptural witness, but as mandatory aspects of being a part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. They are NOT matters of adiaphora (as many Protestants vainly suppose).
I submit that despite the stress on the historic formularies in the GAFCON Jerusalem Statement, the Lambeth Quadrileral is actually a more important formulary in spelling out what it means to be Anglican. Numerous Lambeth Conferences have reaffirmed the continuing normative status of the Quadrilateral in a way that they pointedly have NOT done with the 39 Aritcles, whose normative status is far more dubious.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not anti-Protestant, the way some Anglo-Catholics are. Rather, I’m the sort of evangelical who is not anti-Catholic, and the kind of catholic-minded Anglican who isn’t anti-evangelical. Now I freely grant that not only was Richard Hooker fundamentally a Protestant Anglican, albeit not in the same Puritan mold as ++Grindal or William Perkins etc.; so were the Caroline Divines like Lancelot Andrewes, John Cosin, John Pearson, Henry Hammond, Jeremy Taylor, and so on (even including ++William Laud, that most zealously anti-Puritan Anglican of all). The pre-Tractarian High Church wing didn’t disdain the label Protestant the way the later Oxford Movement leaders unfortunately did (and many of their later Anglo-Catholic successsors were even worse in that regard). But Anglicanism post 1833 is, for better or worse, simply without question very different from that which was universal before 1833. Many evangelicals would say it’s clearly for the worse. On the contrary, I’d say it’s very much for the better, as we’ve been able to recover increasing amounts of the Catholic inheritance that were needlessly thrown out with the dirty bathwater at the time of the Reformation (or perhaps, it really was a temporary necessity in response to the extreme problems of medieval Catholicism).
Maybe it would help to speak more personally here, and admit my bias openly. As veteran readers of T19 and SFiF know all too well, I’m an ex-Presbyterian denominationally, and ex-Reformed theologically. When I left my Presbyterian upbringing behind, I didn’t disrupt my relational network severely just to become another J. I. Packer or John Stott sort of Anglican (noble as those great men of God are). No, I also left Calvinism behind, even in its most moderate form.
But I freely concede that this past life experience of a wrenching, traumatic shift in my theology leaves me vulnerable to the usual tendency of religious converts to exaggerate the flaws and negative aspects of the tradition they left behind to join another that they deem better or more suitable for them. As we all know, there is no one so negative about something as an ex-something. And I frankly admit that therefore I may tend to be excessively hard on the Reformed tradition within Anglicanism, since I abandoned it to revel in the glories of Anglo-Catholicism. Indeed, for those who can understand what I mean by it, I am unafraid to confess that I’m an ex-Protestant to boot (without however being anti-Protestant, just opposed to any one-sided emphasis on the Proestant face of Anglicanism).
But here is where it’s vital to understand what I mean by my ardent claim to be a “3-D” Anglican: evangelical, catholic, and charismatic. For contrary to the majority of Anglicans who take it for granted that Anglicans are intrinsically and forever necessarily Protestant (as the Refoirmation formularies and John Richardson would seem to suggest), I would contend that, properly understood, Anglicanism is NOT merely a liturgical variety of Protestantism, or a uniquely English brand of Reformed Christianity in particular, but rather Anglicanism is a Protestant-Catholic hybrid that is, in many ways, BOTH Protestant and Catholic, and in some other ways, perhaps even more importantly NEITHER one or the other but a whole third kind of Christianity altogether. However, unlike Newman in his Anglican period, I would NOT try to account for that hybrid nature of Anglicanism by using the familiar analogy of the Via Media, as if we were futilely trying to navigate a middle course between the two camps, the Scylla of Catholicism and the Charybdis of Protestantism. No, I would make a very different claim myself, i.e., that at its best, Anglicanism is a unique blend of the complementary Protestant and Catholic DIMENSIONS of Christianity, and that those two dimensions (along with the third one, the Pentecostal or charismatic dimension) operate on different PLANES, and hence aren’t mutually exclusive after all. Yes, they intersect and at times can therefore collide, but they collide like cars driven by unwary drivers at the intersections where perpendicular roads meet, not like cars that hit head-on when traveling the opposite direction on the same highway.
Of course, that argument opens up a whole Pandora’s box of theological complications that perhaps belong on another thread. In any case, I’m not arguing for that perhaps eccentric view here so much as merely asserting it, in order to clarify what I mean by arguing that, contrary to what is so often supposed, it is NOT necessary to be Protestant, or merely or one-sidedly Protestant, in order to be a true Anglican evangelical. Rather, you can be genuinely evangelical and authentically catholic at the same time, but in a very different way than John Jewel and the English Reformers would have thought, but which the Caoline Divines would at least have begun to appreciate.
OK, at last the 4th and final installment of my response to John Richardson’s #14 and his original essay.
My fourth question in my #11 above had to do with the Ugley Vicar’s espousal of a non-rigoristic approach to what he termed “occasional serices” such as infant baptism, weddings, and burials, i.e., the three familiar rites of passage that the CoE has historically provided for the whole population. As I understand it, (please correct me if I’m wrong) all English citizens (and perhaps inhabitants) are guaranteed access to those church services by law, although at least in the case of marriage, no vicar is obligated to conduct the wedding of any particular couple.
I must admit that it is in regard to baptismal discipline that I found John Richardson’s essay to be the most disappointing, and I see his clarification above to be the most dissatisfying and even disturbing at that point. For I find the usual CoE practice of so-called “indiscriminate” infant baptism –(which I prefer to call, scathingly, promiscuous baptism), i.e., baptism on demand even in the case of clearly non-practicing parents– I find this common practice to be absolutely abhorrent and utterly intolerable. It is a scandal of the worst sort and a horrific abuse that ought to have been ended long ago, but that is something which a state church finds exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, even when the vast majority of the population no longer even pretends to be good Christians.
Here is another area (one of a few, but see installment #1) where I’m very happy to be a North Americasn Anglican, rather than living on the English side of the Atlantic, as the pressures to give in to baptism on demand by non-believing parents (or grandparents!) are undoubtedly much less here in the USA. And here again, I’ll resort to the mode of personal testimony, in order to clarify my position and my reasons for holding it.
One of the main things that drove me from the Reformed camp theologically and into the catholic wing of Anglicanism was my disgust with the usual way that Reformed Christians defend infant baptism, i.e., through the appeal to the (fallacious) notion that the children of believing Christian parents are automatically included in the covenant and thus appropriately marked with the New Covenant seal of baptism, just as Jewish male children were marked by the Old Covenant seal of circumcision. I hold that commonly-held notion to be both spurious and downright repugnant to Scripture, properly understood (in the strong condeming sense of Article 20 of the 39). Rather, I asssert, along with Tertullian (about AD 200), the fundamental principle that “[i]Christians are made, not born.[/i]” Or as the great Pentecostal leader David du Plessis winsomely put it, “[i]God has no grandchildren[/i]” (only children, because he wants to be every Christian’s father, not grandfather or greatgrandfather).
Now of course, that doesn’t mean that I am opposed in principle to infant baptism. My own tow children were baptized as infants and I’ve baptized countless infants of believing couples over the 25 years of my ordained ministry. But I can testify that I’ve made it a matter of principle always and invariably, as far as I can remember without a single exception, to insist in my sermon beforehand, that we are baptizing little Joe or Susie today, NOT because he or she is already a Christian by virtue of her birth to Christian parents, but solely because through the sacrament of Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit supernaturally and sacramentally gives him or her new birth and God the Father adopts the child then and there as his own. To restate the matter even more bluntly, while I continue to uphold the practice of infant baptism, as appropriate in at least some cases where there are two clearly strong, practicing Christians as parents, I utterly reject and repudiate the usual evangelical reasoning that futilely seeks to justify the practice of infant baptism on the false and unevangelical basis of Reformed covenant theology (at least in the usual Continental form pf Reformed theology, where Zurich and Geneva were fully in accord in their militant opposition to Anabaptism).
I won’t go any further here at the moment. Readers of SFiF with good memories will recall that I’m writing a lengthy tome (estimated to run 300+ pages, and cluttered with footnotes on almost every page) that I hope to publish next year. It’s tentatively titled, [b]Christians Are Made, Not Born[/b]: [i]Restoring the Integrity of Christian Initiation in a Post-Christendom Society[/i]. And the heart of the book is a fervent appeal for a drastic overhaul of our inherited practices of Christian initiation, not least by recovering the ancient catechumenate, including using it for the children of Christian parents, whose sacramental initiation would be deferred until they came to the point of embracing the Christian faith and life for themselves.
On this point, I’m prepared to press forward with a New Reformation, almost “without tarrying for any.” Now I grant, along with John Richardson, that such drastic overhauls to baptismal discipline are best handled as reforms legitimated (if not mandated) “from above.” But I strongly suspect that in this area, such radical change is going to have to come at first “from below.” I must admit that of all the many CoE study or position papers on Christian Initiation that were released from the 1940s to the 1970s (at least six major studies), the absolte worst of the lot was the abominable Ely Report of 1971. I hate it. I can’t stand it. It’s putrid, disgusting stuff the reading of which almost makes me vomit.
IOW, I don’t think +Colin Buchanan went nearly far enough. John Richardson has adopted a 180 degree turn and reversed his earlier support for Buchanan’s famous campaign to promote a more rigorous (and spiritually healthy) policy of baptismal discipline. I take exactly the opposite position, and would go much farther than +Buchanan in wanting to phase out infant baptism altogether (albeit gradually, over several generations), even with two model Christian parents. Not because infant baptism is inherently unbiblical (I’m no crypto-Baptist), or has always been wrong (it made sense in medieval Christendom Europe), but because our strange and increasingly hostile post-Christendom social context has rendered it obsolete and counter-productive, and very spiritually unsafe. And in that sense, I sincerely claim to be more evangelical than ever, not less.
#23 Hello Rev Handy – good to see you commenting again, with your usual economy of words…just kidding!
If I may just take up one issue, I can understand with your Wheaton background your concern about infant baptism, but if I may just make three points which are in part historical and particular to the CofE and its development:
1. We consider baptism [and indeed the right to it] to be particular to the welfare of the infant, rather than the parents. Moreover notwithstanding anything about the parents and their beliefs, often the Godparents chosen will include hopefully those who will indeed take their promises about the upbringing and education of the child in the Christian faith very seriously.
2. The established Church of England has by law had granted to its vicars, the cure of all souls within the parish. This dates back to the time when all members of the parish were expected to be members of the church and expected to turn up to church regularly – indeed could be sanctioned if they did not. The converse of this is that anyone within the territory of the parish is entitled to ask the church, and unless there is substantial reason with evidence why they should not, has the right to be baptised, married and buried by the church.
3. Before the early part of the 20th Century the rates of infant and child mortality were massive, and hence the absolute urgency [for the child’s soul as it was then thought] to baptise infants promptly. They did not have the luxury of the assumption we take for granted that we will survive childhood.
So as we see it baptism is not a scandal for the children. Indeed submission of their children for baptism may indeed be, even by parents not themselves regular churchgoers, in some sense an openness to the possibility of the power of the Holy Spirit to act in the lives of their children and perhaps even themselves, and by the time the process has been completed, who knows how the Spirit may have moved? We take people at their word, and if they say they are prepared to promise to undertake certain actions as parents and godparents, we welcome them to do just that.
David, I wrote a reply and it seems to have disappeared into cyberspace! Forgive me for not being able to replicate it in full.
Four quick responses.
1. I went for the ‘litmus test’ idea – OE and CE can quickly and simply be distinguished, like acid and alkali, on the women’s issue. A full analysis would be more complicated, of course. This doesn’t mean that all CEs see women’s ordination as the last ditch or the hill to die on.
2. My definition is 3 plank, not 2: Christ’s death, faith as a necessary response, faith as a sufficient response. Personally, I think that summarizes the ‘reformation issue’. The other things – bible, works, etc – flow out of the ‘core gospel’ of 1 Cor 15:1-3: Christ died for our sins ‘kata tas graphas’ (according to the Scriptures).
3. I think the Lambeth Quadrilateral is a Trojan Horse. All English clergy have to make a declaration of assent to the articles, BCP and Ordinal, which are also identified in the Canons as containing the doctrines of the Church of England. The Lambeth Quadrilateral may be popular, but it is not a required understanding. What I have urged in my essay is a functional use of the formularies in our theological formation.
4. As Pageantmaster has observed, in England we are in a particular cultural context. The law requires and society expects, certain things from Anglican clergy. It is all very well disliking it, but you actually have to ask, “What am I going to do?” And I would add as a proper supplementary, “What am I prepared to tell my bishop I am going to do?” You cannot refuse the baptism of a child – not least, I suspect, because as you observe, there is a lingering conviction that baptism gives them a spiritual ‘leg up’ (whatever ‘regenerate’ means in relation to ‘this child’).
Sorry I can’t go into greater length. I’d already done that, and I have to get on.
Thanks for the encouragement to keep posting. I’m glad you noticed this thread, buried as deep as it now is. And I freely concede that I’m been all too verbose here, as is my wont (alas).
I also appreciate your comments helping remind us all of the historical and cultural context of the CoE. I recognize that as an American who has never lived in the UK, I probably can’t understand the peculiar, honored, central place of the CoE for the English epople, even in this highly secularized age. But if you’ll pardon me, I don’t see how your points really diminish the force of my complaints about indiscriminate, promiscuous baptism above. To me, sacramental promiscuity is just as bad as sexual promiscuity.
The famous and highly influential 1982 WCC document [b]Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry[/b] (or BEM), the most significant ecumenical agreement of all time on those highly disputed doctrines and practices, pressed for the historic paedobaptist churches to take seriously the scandal of “indiscriminate” infant baptism and work to end that terrible abuse. The 1988 Lambeth Conference of Bishops partly admitted the fact of such abuse in Anglicanism, but sadly almost nothing has been done to end that intolerable misuse of a dominical sacrament. And my loathing for the 1971 Ely Report is largely due to its blatant attempt to support the status quo and uphold the traditional CoE practice of baptism on demand (with almost no strings attached) on the assumption that England is still “a Christian society” (SIC!).
Now to be fair and ecumenically even-handed, if anything, I regard two other official church statements of similar paedobaptist groups to be even worse, if possible. I’m referring to the 1955 Report of an elite group of Scottish Presbyterians (led by the great T. F. Torrance) that attempted to defend the doctrine and practice of infant baptism against the attacks on it by Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, two leading Continental CAlvinists who rocked the Reformed world by their radical questioning of the formerly unquestionable sacred cow of infant baptism. That Church of Scotland report has the dubious distinction of being the absolute worst official church document in support of infant baptism ever published (IMHO). Only slightly better but still abominable, is the 1980 [i]Instruction on Infant Baptism[/i] released by the Roman Curia (Holy Office) that slammed the door shut on the questioning of the normativity of infant baptism by some prominent, respected Catholic theologians (among them my esteemed liturgy prof at Yale Divinity School, Aidan Kavanagh, OSB, author of [b]The Shape of Baptism[/b]). Alas, all three official documents (Ch of Scotland, CoE, RC) reflect a knee-jerk, automatic reflex of instinctive defense of a practice long held sacrosanct.
Now of course I’m well aware that Anglicanism has long held that any trace of Anabaptist radicalism/”enthusiasm” is to be utterly rejected (Article 27 of the 39; the rubrics of the historic BCPs, etc.). But my contention is that those historic formularies are totally dependent on the assumption that the CoE is a really the church of the whole nation, which I think it clearly ceased to be long ago. The traditional Anglican attitude is totally predicated upon the premise of a Christendom marriage between Church and state (or at least English culture) that seems, to this outsider, to have ended in [i]de facto[/i] divorce, even if it’s not yet [i]de jure[/i]. Here again, as I’ve said above, our strange, scary new post-Christendom social context literally changes everything, and renders our old inherited practices obsolete and counter-productive.
I won’t try to respond further to your welcome post #24. But if you’re interested, we could pursue that whole complex nest of issues privately. Again, as an American, I admit that I’m probably far from being qualified to judge what’s pastorally or culturally appropriate on your side of the Pond.
Thanks for replying, and for once again doing so concisely and non-polemically. It’s perfectly understandable that you didn’t have time (or perhaps even any interest) in engaging in further dialogue. And if you want to bow out completely at this point, that’s fine with me. Despite the extreme length of my series of posts above, I wasn’t really trying to start a vigorous, full-fledged debate on this thread about all the very complex issues I raised. Rather, I was trying to clarify the crucial issues at stake, and to suggest some ways of reframing or refocussing them.
But just in case you only ran out of time (and not out of patience), let me respond (alas, not as concisely as you did) to your brief reply in #25.
1. Yes, you did just what I asked for in providing us with a clear litmus test, and you yourself indicated some dissatisfaction with WO as that acid test. I have no complaint with your answer that way; rather, I find the selection of that particular divisive issue by so many English Anglican Evangelicals to be very regrettable. Thanks again for your candor and clarity.
2. Thanks for clarifying that your summary of the evangelical essentials is really a 3-plank affair, and not just two. But my basic complaint still stands: I don’t find your suggested definition of what being evangelical means to be very precise or helpful. However others may.
3. As for the relative value of using the customary standard of the Articles, 1662 BCP and the Ordinal as the main norm of doctrine and discipline in the CoE/Anglicanism versus the Lambeth Quadrilateral, I freely grant that my proposal must have seemed peculiar (or worse, since your image of the Quadrilateral as a “Trojan Horse” carries some ominous implications). I’m well aware of how Canon A5 requires that all CoE clergy “assent” to the familiar historic trio you highlighted, but I’m also well aware that the assent called for is actually widely understood to be quite general in nature, and thus is actually far from holding all clergy bound to all the details of those classic standards.
In the ACNA, we clergy also must give our “assent” to those same venerable three standards of doctrine and discipline, but our oath of conformity is very carefully nuanced, so that what we actually promise is that we hold those traditional standards to express the “[b]fundamental principles[/b]” of Anglican theology and practice, with the understanding that this means a general assent to those broad principles and not agreement with every specific detail mentioned in them. That of course is how the Anglo-Catholic wing of the ACNA is able to take that oath and sign the Jerusalem Declaration, when those historic formularies are of course FAR more (one-sidedly) Protestant than most of us like.
Once again, for better or worse, Anglicanism today is NOT what it was before 1833 and the outbreak of the Catholic Revival within the AC. It’s perfectly understandable that you, and many other low church Anglicans, would find the widespread acceptance of so much Catholic tradition within Anglicanism since then to be regrettable or even reprehensible (definitely “for the worse), whereas it’s equally natural that other orthodox Anglicans from the opposite end of the churchmanship spectrum would evaluate that change far more positively. But whether you think Anglicanism is better off or worse off since 1833, which is highly debatable, what is undeniable is that Anglicanism has changed, and has changed drastically, so that it is no longer true that Anglicanism is like a wholly-owned subsidiary of Protestantism.
Again, I confess that my life experience as an ex-Reformed, ex-Protestant (but still 3-D) sort of Anglican may make me unduly biased (as converts often are) against the Reformed tradition that has often dominated Anglicanism since the Reformation. Perhaps it might help clarify things, however, if I add here that I’m not the sort of Anglo-Catholic who wants to banish Sydney-style, ultra-Protestant Reformed Christianity from Anglicanism. I freely concede that even the 17th century Caroline Divines (whom I find so much more congenial than the English Reformers) saw Anglicanism as both Catholic and REFORMED (not merely Catholic and Protestant, but specifically even if rather moderately Reformed). Furthermore, I willingly concede that Reformed theology will always have a central place within Anglicanism. This is true not least because as the 21st century unfolds, the rapid growth of Anglicanism in the Global South is mainly taking place in areas evangelized by the low church CMS and not by the high church SPG. So that we can safely expect that Anglicanism in the future will be even more likely to be dominated by Protestant or even Reformed assumptions than in the past and present. All I’m trying to say is the fairly modest claim that Reformed theology shouldn’t have a monopoly on what it means to genuinely evangelical, much less to be authentically Anglican.
4. Finally, about baptismal discipline, “rigoristic” or otherwise, I think I’m well aware of the general, painful dilemma facing CoE priests who are inclined to be even half as rigoristic as I would tend to be myself. Suffice to say here that one of my greatest heroes is the great Anglican missiologist Roland Allen. I think he is a splendid representative of what I mean by “3-D Christianity”: evangelical, catholic, and charismatic. Next year, 2012, is the centenary of the publication of his highly influential masterpiece on mission strategy, [b]Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?[/b]. Roland Allen was a career missionary: first in China, then in Africa, or perhaps I should say, first of all in “darkest England” before going to China. But in 1907, Roland Allen resigned his cure in England, because he felt himself unable in good conscience to baptize all children in the geographical parish on demand. That in fact, is one of the reasons why I hold him in such honor, that he had that kind of integrity.
FWIW, I see Allen as being “3-D” in his:
(1) clear evangelical passion for fostering radical conversion and world mission and in his deeply biblical outlook;
(2) in his firm, unshakeable devotion to catholic order and sacramental theology (he was a missionary of the SPG, not the CMS),
(3) and not least because Roland Allen was thoroughly charismatic in his remarkable trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to do miracles long before the advent of the charismatic renewal movement.
But this all gets back to the central issue of what is the best strategy for working “towards the conversion of England” and the CoE itself. Or as I phrased it above, a key issue is this:
How are we to regard the vast numbers of English people who almost never attend worship in the CoE but may have been baptized in infancy and perhaps are even listed on the parish Electoral Roll?? Are we to think of them as “lapsed Christians?” Or as I provocatively put it earlier, are they really “baptized heathens?” Or are they perhaps better thought of as something like unwitting [i]catechumens[/i], who are on the periphery of the Church and maybe at least potentially can be seen as being on their way into its fellowship, but who made a long detour along the way and got lost? Or perhaps do some people fall in each of those three broad categories, so that no “[i]one size fits all[/i]” strategy will work? (FWIW, I suspect that last option, “all the above,” is most likely)is.
But as in the medical field, what treatment plan we come up with depends very largely on our diagnosis of what the problem really is. What evangelistic and disciple-making strategy we decide on in seeking the conversion of our nations and our churches necessarily depends to a very large degree on how we diagnose the spiritual state of our churches, and the vast number of almost entirely nominal members included in them. Are they “half-converted” as the 1945 report frankly admitted, or are matters today even worse, so that we’d have to say that many of the nominal people who think of themselves as Christians (or at least as “CoE” or “Episcopal”) aren’t really Christians at all, but instead are maybe only 1/4th converted, or 1/8th, or some such thing? My hunch is that, on both sides of the Atlantic, the 1945 estimate of “half-converted” is, alas, very often far too optimistic. But I’d be glad to hear that those of you on the other side of the Pond see things as more promising than that.
#26 Fr Handy
Many thanks for the background. I think this is one of those areas where the Continental/American reformed outlook comes up against the traditional Anglican and perhaps Catholic viewpoint.
I suppose over here the view was ‘why wouldn’t you have your children baptised?’ rather than ‘why would you have them baptised?’ We are not Baptists who take a rather different view.
Not so long ago it would have been thought rather scandalous not to have your children baptised, and considerable suasion would have been applied to the parents, including perhaps by the church.
Nowadays fewer and fewer children are being baptised, or indeed have any contact with the Church. I think we need to encourage people back rather than throw any discouragement in their path, which I fear the more Continental/American approach would do i.e. setting exams for people to pass before they can cross our doors. If you are not used to it, church can be intimidating enough as it is for those who have no familiarity with it and who may want to ‘do the right thing’ for their children, even if it wasn’t done for them.
This does not mean that there is no ministry or education provided as part of the run up to a baptism – quite the reverse, and at the end of the day, it is for those involved to decide whether they can in good conscience make the renunciations of the world and the devil etc, and the promises in relation to the education and formation of the child required. Moreover for the rest of us, it gives us great pleasure to welcome the child and the parents/godparents into the church, and no doubt there is rejoicing in heaven as well.
On the 1945 report I would say that rather shockingly for such an important document, a copy cannot be found online, other than in extract form. The copyright holders would be doing everyone a great favour to make it more widely available online.
I found the same thing when I went looking for a copy of the Keele statement. It is pretty hopeless that such important and foundational documents are not available online. Imagine not being able to find a copy of the Westminster Confession or Ut Unum Sint online?
Thanks again for another cordial and respectful comment. I’m sure that you’re right that the English Reformers shouldn’t be lumped together with the Swiss Reformers on this matter, as on some others. Nor should the specifically Reformed tradition be assumed to take identical form on opposite sides of the Atlantic, just as it shouldn’t on opposite sides of the English Channel.
I suspect this thread is almost dead or inactive, so we may want to pursue this topic privately (if you care to do so, I’d enjoy that). But just in hopes that this thread has completely lapsed into a dormant state, I’ll venture a couple relatively brief comments (at least brief for me!).
+Colin Buchanan (formerly of Woolwich), at the start of his very important book on baptismal reform in the CoE ([b]Infant Baptism and the Dilemma of the Church of England[/b]) notes with some amusement that when he was first starting out as a parish priest, CoE bishops used to admonish priests at the time of their institution to a new cure to seek out the unbaptized children in the area and make sure their parents brought them in to be baptized. My, how times have changed!
One of the most significant changes adopted in the 1979 BCP here in the USA, but also one of the least noticed or commented on in the last 30 years, is the quiet, unobstrusive dropping of the initial rubric in the baptismal rite of the 1928 American BCP (which of course merely carried over a tradition found in all previous prayerbooks). That historic rubric mandated, presumably as of foremost importance since it was placed first, that priests were obligated and expected to remind their parishioners from time to time that it was urgently important and necessary that they present their children for baptism as soon as it was convenient for them to do so (certainly within a month of birth). Of course, that is wholly based on the fear (can we say, irrational phobia?) of the dire eternal consequences of children dying unbaptized. Alas, that is one of the most unfortunate legacies of the great St. Augustine, who in this matter badly misled the western Church. (Hmmm, please note: I’m not denying the doctrine of original sin, mind you, just denouncing his fatally flawed interpretation of John 3:5 as being applicable to infants and young children, which I think is nonsense).
Since I’ve been very hard on the Calvinist tradition on this thread, let me give Reformed theology some credit on this point at least. One of the minor differences between Reformed and Lutheran theology is that, contrary to Luther and the Lutheran confessions that clearly teach the necessity of baptism for salvation, even for infants and young children, the Reformed tradition has never gone along with that. In particular, Calvin specifically forbid midwives to baptize (for not just men, but ministers alone were authorized to do the rite), and he explicitly declared that it was foolish to think the infants who died unbaptized were denied entry into God’s kingdom. As you know, Pageantmast, I’m generally much closer to the Lutherans than to the Reformed on matters of sacramental theology, but this is one exception to the rule.
But when it comes to baptismal regeneration, of course, it’s a totally different story. I fully agree with the Lutherans (and Catholics) on that core doctrine, which is so emphatically taught in the BCP, and which the Reformed generally shy away from like the plague. So just in case John Richardson is merely delaying any further replies to my comments rather than having abandoned the thread completely, I’ll toss out a very provocative, even incendiary, comment here of a decidedly anti-Reformed sort.
If you have to choose between baptismal regeneration and infant baptism (a big IF indeed), I think it’s abundantly clear that you should hold to baptismal regeneration and abondon infant baptism, not vice versa, as the Reformed are inclined to do (including many evangelical Anglicans). That is, baptismal regeneration is clearly taught in the NT (John 3:5 and Titus 3:5), and was universally taught by the Fathers, from the mid 2nd century on (i.e., at least from the time of Justin Martyr). Not so infant baptism, which I think is a practice that only started in the 2nd century and didn’t become universal or mandatory until at least the 5th century.
But please note, the real issue here really isn’t whether infant baptism is valid or appropriate today, or in which cases, but rather on what grounds it is theologically justified. That is where the Ugley Vicar and I are simply living on different theological planets. I justify the practice almost solely on the basis of post-biblical tradition (I don’t think there are any real grounds for its support in the NT), i.e., on the basis of Catholic sacramental theology (that is how Christians are made, at least in one sense). And I roundly deny, in the strongest terms, what Zwingli and Calvin taught (along with, I’m sorry to say, Cranmer, Jewel, and other leading English reformers who swallowed the Reformed justification for the practice hook, line, and sinker): namely, that baptism merely is the sign and seal of a pre-existing reality, that children of Christian parents automatically belong within the covenant people, just as Jewish children did under the Old Covenant. As I said quite provocatively above, I find that Reformed teaching, so prevalent among English evangelicals, downright “repugnant” to the NT (in the language of Article 20 of the 39). It flies directly in the face of John 1:11-13, among other texts. Now I hope it’s clear that I don’t reject infant baptism itself. But I do utterly reject, denounce, and repudiate the usual Anglican evangelical defense for infant baptism, based on that Reformed covenant theology framework and the circumcision analogy. The historic practice must be defended on other grounds (which basically, are not in Scripture).
You’re free to disagree, of course, my friend. Lots of good Anglicans do. And many of them are better Christians than I am.
P.S., a correction to that last post. The important book I mentioned by +Colin Buchanan is actually entitled [b]Infant Baptism and the Gospel:[/b] [i]The Church of England’s Dilemma[/i]. I was hastily alluding to it from memory and badly garbled it. The bishop’s marvelously clear and forceful (if theologically flawed) argument was published in 1993 by Darton, Longman and Todd (about 200 pages).
Well, it appears that John Richardson may have dropped out of this thread for good, So I think I will as well.
After wading through this long essay, I remain disappointed at the apparent British Evangelical blindness/deafness to the facts on the ground that (1) not everyone feels that he or she is a hopeless sinner in need of God’s grace in and through Jesus in order to avoid eternal horror, (2) not everyone who committed to following the way of Jesus agrees that “the Gospel” is what Paul’s letters claim it is, and (3) no one institutionalized body of people who believe they are following the way of Christ has the authority to insist on what the way of Jesus is, either.
RE: “not everyone feels that he or she is a hopeless sinner in need of God’s grace in and through Jesus in order to avoid eternal horror, (2) not everyone who committed to following the way of Jesus agrees that “the Gospel†is what Paul’s letters claim it is . . . ”
Well of course the British Evangelicals understand that . . . which is why they emphasize conversion so nicely.
RE: “no one institutionalized body of people who believe they are following the way of Christ has the authority to insist on what the way of Jesus is, either. . . . ”
Sure they do — for those *within that institution* they do. All organizations have the authority to define their own rules and beliefs as they please.
Obviously I might proclaim myself a blonde Buddhist who just happens to not believe any of the Four Noble Truths. And no Buddhist organization can make me say otherwise either. But . . . they *can* refuse to allow me into their organization.
Wow Sarah–I always suspected you were really a blonde, but I would never have guessed about the Buddhist thing!
I should have used words more carefully in my first post above. The disappointment I mean to convey in #3 is that the tone of British Evangelicalism – especially as one hears it in C.S. Lewis and Nicky Gumbel – is “there is only one truth and we know what it is because of the way we read the Bible, and if you disagree with us then you are simply misguided and we will continue to pray for you.” Does this not seem to be an obnoxiously repellent position from the start, bound to fail as a message that would effectively “baptize all nations, etc.”? Furthermore, of course any body of aspiring followers of Christ is capable of defining itself and proclaiming its own rules for membership – but that is no guarantee that God’s authority is behind all their definitions and all their rules.
RE: “Furthermore, of course any body of aspiring followers of Christ is capable of defining itself and proclaiming its own rules for membership – but that is no guarantee that God’s authority is behind all their definitions and all their rules.”
Very true — people of various faiths may proclaim that God’s authority is behind them, as for instance, the revisionists in the COE do about their faith, and those who believe the Gospel in the COE do about their faith.
All sorts of claims may be made in the rhetorical universe and it’s up to individuals to discern which are true and which are not.
RE: “Does this not seem to be an obnoxiously repellent position from the start . . . ”
Not really — sounds like the same kind of position held by the man-made global warming guys and evolutionists and political liberals and Islamists and political conservatives and Christians and flat-earthers and all of those who hold a foundational worldview. Of course, other words should be substituted for the words “we will continue to pray for you,” depending on which foundational worldview you may have chosen — for instance, Islamics might say “and if you do not repent we will saw off your head with a blunt sword.”
But in the larger sense of things, it’s all pretty much the same thing.
People have ideas. Those ideas are mutually antithetical, one to the other, and so people must choose which ideas they will claim and affirm as the Truth, which necessarily means that those ideas which affirm opposing principles must be noted as not-Truth. Obviously, they’re not going to look over the scads of ideas, choose one, commit their lives to it, and then say “we don’t really think we’ve chosen the right foundational worldview, and what we believe isn’t really the truth, so believe as you wish.”
I am personally just fine with the atheists and Christians and evolutionists and global warming crew and political liberals loudly proclaiming that they have the Truth.
But Sarah, you forgot to address the people whose truth is that no one can say what the truth is… Surely, you recognize that this must be THE truth. And so Hery Greville proclaims, not relizing for a second that he is speaking a parodox and insisting others accept it as rational.
I’ll certainly finish reading that interesting document when time permits. Meanwhile, it is more than a little surprising to read above that someone really thinks C.S. Lewis was an Anglican evangelical. It is widely recognized that he was not an evangelical. For example:
[i]”Second, I have noticed a general tendency in American evangelical circles to claim anybody who is helpful or admirable as an evangelical of some sort. It is our equivalent of Rahner’s `anonymous Christians’ — except we have `anonymous evangelicals.’ To put it in the idiom of the English class system, many theologians are `decent sorts of chaps who, if they had only known, would have been evangelicals, don’t you know.’ [b]The great example of this reception/appropriation/transformation at American evangelical hands is C S Lewis (high church Anglican, believer in purgatory, advocate of the Devil ransom theory of atonement — these being only the three most obvious of his non-evangelical credentials)[/b].”[/i] –
the clearest of numerous such statements I encountered straightaway on googling ‘C.S. Lewis evangelical’. His writings have however been of great use as Anglican apologetic in the evangelical movement.
I have no idea who is being cited above about C.S. Lewis, but the fact remains that Lewis has indeed not only been hijacked by many American Evangelicals, but a good many evangelical Brits as well. The reason is simple, however: as much a High Church ritualist as he was in his own theological and devotional life, his persistent speaking and literary advocacy of the truths of the Creeds and the Chalcedonian God-man definition have provided fuel for evangelicalism both Protestant and Catholic, and even Orthodox.
With respect, I think this is all going rather ‘off topic’. Henry apparently doesn’t agree with the evangelical (I am tempted to say, Anglican) definition of the gospel, such as that “holy Scripture doth set out to us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved” (I’ll leave you guys to work out the source).
In that case, he will simply not be interested in the project set out in ‘Towards the Conversion of England’ and argued in my ‘essay’.
However, the basis of what I am saying equally does not presume that the evangelical understanding is either ‘pure’ Anglicanism OR ‘pure’ biblicism. (He will doubtless be aware there is considerable debate in some circles whether evangelicals have even got Paul right, let alone whether, as he puts it ‘“the Gospel†is what Paul’s letters claim it is’ (although the Church of England historically is committed to the view that it is).
The argument is rather that what defines the Church is evangelistic mission, which evangelicals hold to be the priority and which therefore ought to give them the motivation to seek to engage with the institution in such a way as to bring the agenda of the whole Church round to that mission.
This is not the same as simply making the whole church ‘evangelical’, but it would be to make the whole church evangelistic in the terms set out BY THE CHURCH ITSELF in 1945 – and largely ignored since then.
Evangelistic! Yes, John Richardson! If only the people of the Church universal would always be seen and understood to be principally evangelistic, whether through our own acts of worship, teaching, or compassion. Seven days each week of walking, as we feel called, in the way of Jesus and talking of Jesus in our own lives – that is, the power and wonder of Jesus as the Living Lord of each present moment of our lives. As potentially inspiring as canonical Scripture can be for an inquirer about Christianity, there is not much point in giving out Bibles if we who give them to inquirers (and new confirmands and new commmunicants) do not clearly live up to what Jesus through the Gospels challenges us to do.
John (#9), aka the Ugley Vicar,
I’m glad you showed up here. I read through your whole essay yesterday and found it very helpful, stimulating, and encouraging. But if I may start redirecting this online discussion, I’d like to ask a few questions of my own, in the hopes that you’ll take the time to answer them.
First, however, a couple specific thanks. I really appreciated your brief survey of how Evangelicalism has fared within the CoE over the last 40-50 years or so, and not least by tracking the changing nature of the four NEAC events, which I found illuminating and helpful. I also benefited from your highlighting the role of Nash and Lucas in shaping many of the leaders of the Evangelical movement in the CoE. Above all, if I understand you correctly, I welcome your emphasis, similar to Peter Adam’s essay on “[i]Only Halfly Reformed,[/i]” on seeking to transform the whole CoE and the nation by working “[i]from below[/i]” rather than concentrating futilely on reforming the church and nation “[i]from above,[/i];” while at the same time not abandoning hope of fully using whatever opportunities God may give for exploiting the possibilities that come from having evangelicals appointed to bishoprics or leading university posts I heartily agree with that sensible two-pronged strategy that still focuses primarily on change from below.
So here are my three or four initial questions:
[b]1. How would you characterize the essential difference(s) between the “conservative” and the “open” wings of the Evangelical movement among English Anglicans?[/b] Is there a simple litmus test for separating the two camps? Please be as specific as you can.
BTW, that’s not a loaded question; I’m genuinely curious. For example, I’ve long suspected that besides the more obvious differences on where people fall on the conservative to moderate to liberal spectrum theologically, there are also crucial differences on how strictly people would enforce orthodoxy, i.e., where they fall on the strictness to leniency spectrum.
[b]2. How would you define what it means to be an “evangelical” Anglican anyway?[/b] Again, please be as precise as you feel free to be, at least with regard to the British context/CoE. In particular, I’m wondering where the boundaries lie with regard to attitudes toward modern biblical scholarship and toward Catholicism, whether in its Roman, Eastern, or Anglican varieties.
For example, can good old Charlie Moule, or Richard Bauckham, or Andrew Lincoln be safely included in the “Evangelical” camp of Anglican NT scholars, even though none of them were (or are) inerrantists, although the latter two published volumes in the broadly evangelical Word Biblical Commentary series.
[b]3. Above all perhaps, is being Puritan, Reformed, or even just Protestant an essential element in being a true Anglican Evangelical?[/b]
Let me get personal and illustrate what I mean by using myself as an example. I am proud of being an alumnus of Wheaton College, and I continue gladly to identify myself as an evangelical because I am a gospel-based, gospel-centered, gospel-driven Christian with a passion for evangelism, discipleship, and fostering radical conversion to Jesus Christ (very much in the tradition of the Wesley brothers and Whitefield that way). However, I freely admit that I wouldn’t be allowed to teach at Wheaton since I’m not an inerrantist anymore, and I’m also probably way too catholic for such an unabashedly Protestant place as Wheaton (where a much-loved philosophy prof was fired a few years ago for converting to Roman Catholicism).
Let’s get more specific yet by comparing me to J. I. Packer and +Tom Wright. With my extensive blogging record at Stand Firm, t’s no secret that I’m actually somewhat more liberal than +Tom Wright on some scholarly matters (such as the authorship and dating of some NT letters attributed to Paul such as Col. and Eph.), and more conservative than him on others (a very mixed reaction to his championing of the “New” Perspective on Paul). Of course, I’m quite far to the left of James Packer.
But despite that, I suspect that I’m actually STRICTER than either of those great men on the strictness to laxity spectrum when it comes to enforcing orthodoxy. That is, while I’d draw the line farther to the left than they would on the conservative to liberal spectrum, I would be inclined to ENFORCE that line significantly more strictly, and if necessary, more harshly, than they would. On that score, my gut instincts are much closer to those of his holiness, Joseph Ratzinger, than his grace, Rowan Williams. That may also be due to the fact that I’m an American and not a Brit!
But the biggest difference between me and +Wright and Packer is on the Protestant to Catholic specturm. There the difference between me and Wright is quite consistent; I’m always, without fail, more catholic than he is. And as an ex-Presbyterian from the Anglo-Catholic Diocese of Albany and as someone who is distinctly anti-Puritan theologically, I am of course even farther apart from the noble James Packer (whom I continue to admire and read with profit), I’m just as committed to recovering the lost authority of Scripture as they are, but I utterly reject the Protestant principle of [i]sola scriptura[/i], so dear to Sydney Anglicans and many other evangelical Anglicans. Nonetheless, I continue to promote what I love to call “3-D Christianity,”: evangelical, catholic, and charismatic.
Finally, (pardon the excessive length but your essay is also quite long),
[b]4. How does your appeal for making the most of the evangelistic opportunities afforded by the continuing (though dwindling) number of English people who come to the CoE for life passage rituals (infant baptism, marriage, burial) relate to the more restrictive reform efforts of evangelicals like former bishop Colin Buchanan?[/b]
You seem to be wanting to avoid taking a rigoristic line that might alienate large numbers of outsiders, which is understandable, but I tend to think such a policy is obsolete and misguided in a post-Christendom society. I find so-called “indiscriminate” baptism (which I prefer to call promiscuous baptism) an absolutely intolerable scandal and an utter abomination, and here again, I would tend toward a much stricter approach to guarding the sacramental integrity of the Church than most evangelicals would (whether in America or England or anywhere else).
I’m sorry for posting such a long series of questions and comments, but I hope this will perhaps take the thread in a more serious direction, more worthy of the kind of care and thoughtness that you, John, put into your fine essay.
David Handy+
3-D Christian
P.S. I meant “thoughtfulness” there at the end. Maybe this thread is dead now, but just in case the Ugley Vicar (or Sarah, etc.) is just slow in replying, let me clarify that 4th and last point.
To me, the money quote in the 1945 CoE report with which Richardson begins is the italicized line about the really daunting challenge of converting England being that even the Church is full of “half-converted” people. Such commendable frankness and transparency in official church documents is all too rare.
My point is that while the description of many CoE folk as “half-converted” may have been appropriate in 1945, I strongly suspect that the proportion might have to be revised downward significantly today. Perhaps we might have to say they are only 1/4 converted, or some such thing. OTOH, perhaps now that even pretending to be a nominal Christian is less common today in the CoE than it was in 1945, maybe the tiny minority of regular church-goers in the CoE really are more than “half-converted.” But what about the vast penumbra of merely formal members of the CoE who almost never darken the doors of a church? Should we call them maybe 1/10th converted??
What I’m getting at is that any strategy to seek the conversion of all England, or even the whole CoE, must come to grips with agreeing on an assessment of the current state of things. Are the vast majority of folks within the CoE to be regarded and treated as “[i]lapsed Christians[/i]” who need to be recalled to their former faith and practice (as F. D Maurice contended back in the mid-1800s), or are they really merely [b]baptized heathens[/b], who never were real Christians in the first place? As an American, I won’t presume to know the answer to that, although I strongly suspect that for many millions of English people (just as for many Americans, and not least a great many in TEC) the latter description is the most apt one. Which calls for a strategy focused not on better “pastoral” care to win back the “lapsed,” but rather any successful strategy that would really transform the whole Church and nation must be unabashedly evangelistic.
Anyone out there want to discuss that?
David Handy+
Unashamedly sectarian (in the best sense)
NRA
One: I appreciate your questions to John (The Ugley Vicar). He has published an
informative document with a heartfelt desire for conversion of the CofE and of England.
And I too would like to understand more about the Evangelical presence in the CofE in
distinction from the non-Evangelicals.
Two: I appreciate your digging into the question of where we are as Christians. Lapsed
Christians vs. baptized heathens? The strategy for today re conversion in the Church and in
the culture does seem to depend on what the problem is.
In terms of the big picture, I look to Bp. Allison’s comments and the challenge today of Secularism
as a religion which dominates Western media, politics and institutions and which has infected many Churches. A problem which threatens both Western civilization and many Western Churches.
Are we in a time which needs new strategies and new alliances?
I’m very glad to see you commenting again. Out of self-interest, I hope that your renewed
activity will continue for awhile.
Sorry to be a bit slow coming back. One thing I would just add is that the essay arose out of conference, so there is ongoing thinking about these things and further developments hopefully will follow.
Also, on the issue of reform from above or below, ultimately these are not exclusive, but above is, in my view, most to be desired. Maybe I’ll come back to that later.
On David’s questions.
1. The current ‘litmus test’ to tell open from conservative evangelicals is women’s ordination – simple as that, really. It gets a bit more complicated, so a ‘New Wine’ charismatic might be pro having women as bishops but conservative on other matters, but in non-charismatic evangelical circles women’s ordination is pretty much the test. Shame, but there it is.
2. I’ve set out what I think ought to be the theological definition of evangelical in the essay: Christ’s death for sin as the content of the gospel, our faith as the necessary and sufficient response to the gospel. However, when it comes to the situation on the ground a lot of it has to do with inchoate cultural things, background, inclinations etc. In short, it is very confused! This is one of the reasons why I think calling people back to actually evangelizing would be a help – it would sort some of the wheat from the chaff. As to individuals, I would again say look at their praxis evangelistically as well as there expressed theology. In England, though, inerrancy is not a rallying point as such.
3. “Is being Puritan, Reformed, or even just Protestant an essential element in being a true Anglican Evangelical?” Personally I would say that the first one is not essential, as Puritanism was clearly a movement within a broader Anglicanism. However, being Protestant is definitely to be on the ‘Reformation trajectory’ of historic Anglicanism (it is hard, as far as I can see, to take the Prayer Book and Articles seriously and say these are not ‘Protestant’ affirmations). Therefore Anglicanism is essentially ‘Reformed’, though not identical with the Continental Reformed churches (we have our own view of the Church-state relationship in particular, though it is generally misunderstood, even by Anglicans).
The Anglican approach to authority in the Church, and the role of Scripture, is clearly set out in the Thirty-nine Articles. I doubt that a member of the Church of Rome could faithfully assent to these, but they do not (as far as I can see) require a ‘Chicago Inerrantist’ approach to Scripture either. I can’t remember who it was, but one early post-Reformation bishop observed in a dialogue with someone who required stricter definitions that the Articles were deliberately as minimalist as possible so that they included as many as possible whilst still setting necessary boundaries. The problem, as I have observed in the essay, is that they form almost no part of contemporary Anglican theological dialogue today.
4. On the issue of ‘life rituals’, while they keep coming we should keep using them. I used to be ‘full on’ with Colin Buchanan (who was my lecturer in college) in exercising baptismal discipline. I’ve now swung 180 degrees. I would happily follow a more strict approach, but it has to come from the ‘top down’. Otherwise, the local ‘strict’ church is just seen as mean when the neighbouring Anglican church will welcome all-comers. It just doesn’t work, and I have seen that time after time. The whole church has to come to a mind on this and not leave individual clergy in the firing line.
Theologically, I think that the Federal Vision people seem to regard the baptized as lapsed Christians from the off. The ‘catholics’ – at least in Anglicanism – seem to want to regard them as fully regenerate from that point onwards. The Anglican view (which I think is the Reformed view) is to treat them as fully Christian but to require faith that goes hand-in-hand with baptism, without which they never were Christian.
Hope this helps. There is some interest being shown here in the proposals in the essay. I hope it will help ‘waken the sleeping giant’ that is the evangelical movement.
Sorry – I didn’t mean to ignore Henry. Yes, let’s have disciples of Jesus, a la ‘Great Commission’.
John Richardson’s comment on the difference between Conservative and Open evangelicals is seductive in its clarity, but I am afraid somewhat simplistic. A nuanced understanding, which is very widely respected and quoted can be found here:
http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/news/2003/20030930watercourses.cfm?doc=2
Evangelicals in England are all rejoicing in the recent appointments of Justin Welby as +Durham and Tim Dakin as +Winchester. Both will hold seats in the House of Lords giving them a prominent role in the leadership of the national church.
Simon, I would just point out that David asked for a “litmus test”, not a full description.
On the new appointments, we will of course rejoice in anyone appointed to the office of bishop who, as Bp Samson Mwaluda has put it, acts as the foremost evangelist-teacher in his diocese and who upholds the apostolic doctrine.
hereistand (#13),
Thanks for your kind words. Maybe I will do a bit more blogging again, at least for a season, but on a much more selective basis than I used to do.
You posed the (sympathetic) question: “[i]Are we in a time which needs new strategies and new alliances?[/i]” My answer would be: YES! Absolutely.
Why? Well, for several reasons, among which Vatican II and our Post-Christendom social context are perhaps the most important. Namely, from my point of view at least, we must stop regarding RCs as inevitable foes and start regarding at least the most biblical (or even dare I say the most “evangelical”) among them as key allies. But even more important, we must come to terms with what a drastic game-changer it is that Christians are now a distinct minority group in Global North societies, and increasingly a misunderstood, maligned, and suspect minority group at that. I firmly believe that changes everything, and definitely calls for radically new strategies to foster the fulfillment of the Great Commission, by seeking not just to make converts of our various secularized nations on both sides of the Atlantic, but to make real disciples out of the converts. Nothing less will do.
Alas, ++William Temple and the select group that produced that bold report in 1945 that called the CoE to work “[i]Towards the Conversion of England[/i]” never dared to imagine anything as far-reaching and revolutionary as that. They still took for granted a Christendom mentality and context. But new wine often does demand new wineskins, as the Master warned us (Mark 2:22).
That’s why nothing less than a full-fledged New Reformation will do. (As long as it’s understood, of course, that such a New Reformation need not be one-sidedly Protestant).
Cordially,
David Handy+
John Richardson (#14),
Thank you for a gracious, clear, and concise reply to my four questions above (#19). I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to respond. Sadly, my response in turn is also rather slow, and perhaps less excusably, far more verbose and probably more provocative. Still, I think you’ve raised some very important issues that need and deserve far more attention than they are getting in orthodox Anglican circles.
My first attempt at a reply went over the allowed 10K characters, so I’m trying again, and breaking my response into four parts, according to the four questions I posed above. But before getting into them, I wish to make it clear that what follows is not intended in a polemical spirit, but rather in a self-differentiating way. I recognize that many T19 readers (doubtless including the Vicar of Ugley) will vigorously disagree with some of the decidedly unReformed opinions I’m about to express, but my intention at least is to shed more light than heat. After all, we would heartily agree on the absolute necessity to work tirelessly “towards the conversion of England” (and the USA); however, we would simply disagree about what that implies theologically and perhaps methodologically.
Also, if I may be so bold, I’m hoping that perhaps Sarah Hey, who contributed to this thread earlier, will note this exchange and deem it worthy of starting a thread over at SFiF, where it might provide much grist for the mill and where a lively debate just might ensue (hint, hint). Or maybe the Elves might take notice and suggest to Kendall that this thread be renamed and moved to the top again. The issues at stake are indeed profoundly important and strategically vital to the orthodox Anglican movement.
Gratefully,
David Handy+
OK, installment #1 of my reply to Richardson’s #14.
In my #11 above, I asked John how he would characterize the essential difference(s) between the “conservative” and “open” wings of English Evangelicalism (in the CoE). I must admit that I’m disappointed by his frank admission that the litmus test would have to be, at least in practice, WO. I was hoping that the “conservative” wing wasn’t limited to the REFORM group, or any one “hot button” issue like women’s ordination or homosexuality.
My only comment on that sad reality, if true, is that it’s more than a “shame,” as John puts it in #14. It’s a disaster. As a minority group within Anglicanism (at least in the Global North), we evangelicals must pick our battles wisely. We just can’t afford to choose this hill to die on, or this particular little stone bridge (to use Sarah’s familiar image), since we ourselves are so divided on this issue. It’s sheer folly to make WO into a Maginot Line that our foes can outflank. We dare not make WO “the article by which the Church stands or falls” in our generation, when that would leave such evangelical leaders as +Tom Wright or +George Carey, or ++Bob Duncan or +Mark Lawrence, or ++Henry Luke Orombi, or ++Eliud Wabukala, etc., on the sideline (at best). Surely, fighting on that front won’t help foster “the conversion of England” or America.
By way of clarification, let me make my own stance explicit and my bias apparent. I myself strongly favor WO, because I’m convinced it’s in accord and compatible with the thrust of the biblical witness as a whole (despite texts like 1 Tim. 2:11 that run counter to the main trajectory that would include key passages like Acts 2:17-18). Personally, I have no problem even with women bishops (or in “headship positions”), but I do believe the ACNA (to which I belong) has made the right, prudential decision in refusing to permit women bishops, until such time as “a new consensus emerges” in Anglicanism (maybe in a century or so). However, let me hasten to add that I think it’s absolutely deplorable and abominable that the CoE is apparently about to reneg on its solemn promises to carve out a safe and honored place for the opponents of WO (whether high church or low church).
But my point here is that orthodox Anglicans need to be distianghuished by their orthodoxy, not by their stand on WO, which is tangential at best to determining orthodoxy or orthopraxis.
Thank you, John, for your candor about this sorry state of things in Anglican Evangelicalism. It makes me glad that I’m on this side of the Pond.
David Handy+
Installment #2,
My 2nd question in #11 above is actually far more important to me. I asked John how he would define the all-important term “evangelical” and he replied that he thought he’d made it clear already, i.e., an Anglican evangelical held to a simple two-plank minuimalist creed: “[i]Christ’s death for sin as the content of the gospel[/i]” and secondly, “[i]our faith as the necessary and sufficient response to the gospel.[/i]” I hope it won’t seem rude or polemical for me to admit that I think such a minimalist definition is completely inadequate and unhelpfully vague. Now mind you, I’m glad he didn’t propose a quite narrow definition that might include, e.g., the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement as a [i]sine qua non[/i] for being truly evangelical or a particular understanding of how conversion takes places (such as the usual revivalist notions about it). But it seems to me that John’s simple definition doesn’t strike the right notes or tone, in that it leaves out the characteristic biblicist and conversionist emphases that (IMHO) lie at the heart of evangelicalism.
FWIW, here would be my counter-proposal. Primary point: An evangelical, whether Baptist, Anglican, Presbyterian, (or Catholic or whatever) is a [b]gospel Christian[/b]. That is, an evangelical is anyone who is truly a gospel-based, gospel-centered, gospel-driven Christian.
Of course, that begs the question of what a gospel Christian is, and what kind of gospel we’re talking about, since false gospels sadly abound. And my preference would be to relate the content of the gospel to the mighty saving acts of God celebrated in the ecumenical creeds, as summarized for instance in such early credal fragments as 1 Cor. 15:3, or as captured succinctly in eucharistic summaries like “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” There are many ways of translating the unchanging gospel into language that people with differing backgrounds and needs can hear as good news, whether the Pauline language of justification by faith apart from works, or reconciliation with God, or the Johannine language of eternal life, or the Lukan language of the forgiveness of sins, and so on.
But my main point is that the content of the gospel is set, once and for all, by the biblical witness, as interpreted by the consensual tradition of the patristic church, as evidenced in the creeds and liturgies of the early patristic era, with secondary clarifications added by the Protestant Reformers. And there is where some of my differences with John and other Reformed Anglicans start to become apparent.
Personally, I would want to add a secondary level to my above proposal that an evangelical Christian is a gospel Christian. And the two chief elements would be that, as far as I’m concerned, the heart of what is distinctive about evangelicalism (among other brands of Christianity) is its desire to stick close to the biblical witness (relegating post-biblical tradition to a decidedly subordinate and even supposedly non-essential position) and its fervent insistence on the necessity for personal conversion to be a real Christian (even if that conversion need not be seen as sudden or dramatic). That’s what I meant by the characteristic notes of biblicism and conversionism that to me are the heart of evangelicalism. Namely, an evangelical, including an Anglican evangelical, is a biblically based gospel Christian who is strongly conversion-oriented and mission-driven.
Just to make the implicit explicit, the above definiti9on very intentionally avoids associating evangelicalism with either political or cultural conservatism, contrary to the usual assumptions of most outsiders (and many insiders). And perhaps evven more important, it also every deliberately avoids any suggestion that a biblical orthodox Christian is necessarily a Reformed, or even a Protestant, Christian. IOW, I contend very vigorously that it’s perfectly possible to be both evangelical and catholic at the same time (and charismatic to boot, I’d want to add hastily).
For exasmple, I think Richardson’s minimalist definition leaves a crucial point unclear when he suggests that the second plank of the evangelical creed is that, in his words, faith is “the necessary and [b]sufficient[/b] response to the gospel.” That sounds like a nice way of rephrasing the venerable Protestant slogan, [i]sola fide[/i], but it seems inadequate to me when stated in such bald, unnuanced terms. To put it sharply, is faith alone the “sufficient” response to the gospel message apart from later good works that demonstrate that faith to be real (since faith without works is dead, as James 2 rightly insists)? Or again, is a supposedly private belief in the gospel sufficient by itself, apart from being incorporated into the Body of Christ? On both counts, I think not.
But perhaps most tellingly, although I’d agree with Protestant-minded Anglican evangelicals that we are saved by faith apart from works of the law (ala Romans and Galatians), I would roundly deny that we are saved by faith alone apart from the sacraments. In accordance with the 39 Articles (and Article 9 of the Augsburg Confession of our Lutheran kindred too), I would insist very strongly that faithful, believing reception of the sacraments and participation in the common life of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is generally necessary to salvation (contrary to much Reformed and Protestant thought).
But that leads into my 3rd question and my next post…
David Handy+
proudly evangelical, but not necessarily “conservative” or Protestant
Installment #3,
I deliberately placed on four questions in an ascending order of interest to me personally, though my interests may well differ from those of other readers. So we come to my third question. As I put it earlier, “Above all, is being Puritan, or Reformed, or even Protesstaant an essential element in being a true Anglican evangelical?”
And here, John seemed to say, well, being Puritan isn’t, and it’s not necessarily true that you have to be Reformed either, at least not in the specific Calvinist, or Continental Reformed way. But he did appear to say that it’s necessary to be a Protestant to be a real evangelical, ar at least a real Anglican evangelical.
And that I would earnestly and heartily deny. Once again, my aim is not so much polemical or to pronounce the last word in a highly contentious area (despite how provocatively I’m phrassing things), so much as my aim is to elicit clarification of the issues at stake. So let me adopt a self-differentiating posture. Although other readers are naturally free to disagree (and I expect many will), I would argue (very strenuously too) that it is NOT necessary to be Protestant, much less Reformed, and certainly not a Puritan, to be a true Anglican evangelical. Now yes, I freely concede that historically, evangelical Anglicans have been strongly and unashamedly Protestant, and much of evangelical Anglicanism in the last 150 years has defined itself in fervent opposition to the Tractarian/Oxford/Anglo-Catholic movement. Yes, there is absolutely no doubt that the 39 Articles of Religion are thoroughly and unabashedly Protestant. So are the two Books of Homilies, and so is the traditional Ordinal. Now the BCP is perhaps a bit more ambigous, but once again, I would concede that there is really no doubt that the historic prayerbooks, from 1549 to 1662 or even 1928 are fundamentally Protestant, although they continue to retain certain vestiges of Catholic sacramentalism (not least in the very clear and emphatic affirmation of baptismal regeneration).
But that doesn’t settle the all-important issue of how much normative status the Reformation formularies retain today. Now as a member of the ACNA I did sign the Jerusalem Declaration, which of course includes an affirmation that those historic formularies are more than merely “historical documents.” But that exact authority remians very much in dispute, at least when you pass from broad principles to the specific details of the 1571 Articles or the 1662 BCP. Just how much are we in fact bound by them??
Here, I would want to point to the counterbalancing weight of the famous Lambeth Quadrilateral, which strike quite a different note and tone that is far more compatible with Catholic values and principles. It’s no secret that the four planks or sides of the Quadrilateral are far closer theologically (as well as chronologically) to the norms of the Christianity of the ancient catholic fathers than to the standard themes of the Protestant reformers. In essence, the canon of Holy Scripture, the early creeds, the shape of the sacramental liturgies, and not least the episcopal polity of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church are all products of the patristic era. All four were essentially settle in their main outlines by the end of the second century, but the point is that all four of them go BEYOND the Scriptures (although not contrary to them of course) and all four are BINDING. Not simply as permissible ootions that are compatible with the Scriptural witness, but as mandatory aspects of being a part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. They are NOT matters of adiaphora (as many Protestants vainly suppose).
I submit that despite the stress on the historic formularies in the GAFCON Jerusalem Statement, the Lambeth Quadrileral is actually a more important formulary in spelling out what it means to be Anglican. Numerous Lambeth Conferences have reaffirmed the continuing normative status of the Quadrilateral in a way that they pointedly have NOT done with the 39 Aritcles, whose normative status is far more dubious.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not anti-Protestant, the way some Anglo-Catholics are. Rather, I’m the sort of evangelical who is not anti-Catholic, and the kind of catholic-minded Anglican who isn’t anti-evangelical. Now I freely grant that not only was Richard Hooker fundamentally a Protestant Anglican, albeit not in the same Puritan mold as ++Grindal or William Perkins etc.; so were the Caroline Divines like Lancelot Andrewes, John Cosin, John Pearson, Henry Hammond, Jeremy Taylor, and so on (even including ++William Laud, that most zealously anti-Puritan Anglican of all). The pre-Tractarian High Church wing didn’t disdain the label Protestant the way the later Oxford Movement leaders unfortunately did (and many of their later Anglo-Catholic successsors were even worse in that regard). But Anglicanism post 1833 is, for better or worse, simply without question very different from that which was universal before 1833. Many evangelicals would say it’s clearly for the worse. On the contrary, I’d say it’s very much for the better, as we’ve been able to recover increasing amounts of the Catholic inheritance that were needlessly thrown out with the dirty bathwater at the time of the Reformation (or perhaps, it really was a temporary necessity in response to the extreme problems of medieval Catholicism).
Maybe it would help to speak more personally here, and admit my bias openly. As veteran readers of T19 and SFiF know all too well, I’m an ex-Presbyterian denominationally, and ex-Reformed theologically. When I left my Presbyterian upbringing behind, I didn’t disrupt my relational network severely just to become another J. I. Packer or John Stott sort of Anglican (noble as those great men of God are). No, I also left Calvinism behind, even in its most moderate form.
But I freely concede that this past life experience of a wrenching, traumatic shift in my theology leaves me vulnerable to the usual tendency of religious converts to exaggerate the flaws and negative aspects of the tradition they left behind to join another that they deem better or more suitable for them. As we all know, there is no one so negative about something as an ex-something. And I frankly admit that therefore I may tend to be excessively hard on the Reformed tradition within Anglicanism, since I abandoned it to revel in the glories of Anglo-Catholicism. Indeed, for those who can understand what I mean by it, I am unafraid to confess that I’m an ex-Protestant to boot (without however being anti-Protestant, just opposed to any one-sided emphasis on the Proestant face of Anglicanism).
But here is where it’s vital to understand what I mean by my ardent claim to be a “3-D” Anglican: evangelical, catholic, and charismatic. For contrary to the majority of Anglicans who take it for granted that Anglicans are intrinsically and forever necessarily Protestant (as the Refoirmation formularies and John Richardson would seem to suggest), I would contend that, properly understood, Anglicanism is NOT merely a liturgical variety of Protestantism, or a uniquely English brand of Reformed Christianity in particular, but rather Anglicanism is a Protestant-Catholic hybrid that is, in many ways, BOTH Protestant and Catholic, and in some other ways, perhaps even more importantly NEITHER one or the other but a whole third kind of Christianity altogether. However, unlike Newman in his Anglican period, I would NOT try to account for that hybrid nature of Anglicanism by using the familiar analogy of the Via Media, as if we were futilely trying to navigate a middle course between the two camps, the Scylla of Catholicism and the Charybdis of Protestantism. No, I would make a very different claim myself, i.e., that at its best, Anglicanism is a unique blend of the complementary Protestant and Catholic DIMENSIONS of Christianity, and that those two dimensions (along with the third one, the Pentecostal or charismatic dimension) operate on different PLANES, and hence aren’t mutually exclusive after all. Yes, they intersect and at times can therefore collide, but they collide like cars driven by unwary drivers at the intersections where perpendicular roads meet, not like cars that hit head-on when traveling the opposite direction on the same highway.
Of course, that argument opens up a whole Pandora’s box of theological complications that perhaps belong on another thread. In any case, I’m not arguing for that perhaps eccentric view here so much as merely asserting it, in order to clarify what I mean by arguing that, contrary to what is so often supposed, it is NOT necessary to be Protestant, or merely or one-sidedly Protestant, in order to be a true Anglican evangelical. Rather, you can be genuinely evangelical and authentically catholic at the same time, but in a very different way than John Jewel and the English Reformers would have thought, but which the Caoline Divines would at least have begun to appreciate.
David Handy+
3-D Anglican
OK, at last the 4th and final installment of my response to John Richardson’s #14 and his original essay.
My fourth question in my #11 above had to do with the Ugley Vicar’s espousal of a non-rigoristic approach to what he termed “occasional serices” such as infant baptism, weddings, and burials, i.e., the three familiar rites of passage that the CoE has historically provided for the whole population. As I understand it, (please correct me if I’m wrong) all English citizens (and perhaps inhabitants) are guaranteed access to those church services by law, although at least in the case of marriage, no vicar is obligated to conduct the wedding of any particular couple.
I must admit that it is in regard to baptismal discipline that I found John Richardson’s essay to be the most disappointing, and I see his clarification above to be the most dissatisfying and even disturbing at that point. For I find the usual CoE practice of so-called “indiscriminate” infant baptism –(which I prefer to call, scathingly, promiscuous baptism), i.e., baptism on demand even in the case of clearly non-practicing parents– I find this common practice to be absolutely abhorrent and utterly intolerable. It is a scandal of the worst sort and a horrific abuse that ought to have been ended long ago, but that is something which a state church finds exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, even when the vast majority of the population no longer even pretends to be good Christians.
Here is another area (one of a few, but see installment #1) where I’m very happy to be a North Americasn Anglican, rather than living on the English side of the Atlantic, as the pressures to give in to baptism on demand by non-believing parents (or grandparents!) are undoubtedly much less here in the USA. And here again, I’ll resort to the mode of personal testimony, in order to clarify my position and my reasons for holding it.
One of the main things that drove me from the Reformed camp theologically and into the catholic wing of Anglicanism was my disgust with the usual way that Reformed Christians defend infant baptism, i.e., through the appeal to the (fallacious) notion that the children of believing Christian parents are automatically included in the covenant and thus appropriately marked with the New Covenant seal of baptism, just as Jewish male children were marked by the Old Covenant seal of circumcision. I hold that commonly-held notion to be both spurious and downright repugnant to Scripture, properly understood (in the strong condeming sense of Article 20 of the 39). Rather, I asssert, along with Tertullian (about AD 200), the fundamental principle that “[i]Christians are made, not born.[/i]” Or as the great Pentecostal leader David du Plessis winsomely put it, “[i]God has no grandchildren[/i]” (only children, because he wants to be every Christian’s father, not grandfather or greatgrandfather).
Now of course, that doesn’t mean that I am opposed in principle to infant baptism. My own tow children were baptized as infants and I’ve baptized countless infants of believing couples over the 25 years of my ordained ministry. But I can testify that I’ve made it a matter of principle always and invariably, as far as I can remember without a single exception, to insist in my sermon beforehand, that we are baptizing little Joe or Susie today, NOT because he or she is already a Christian by virtue of her birth to Christian parents, but solely because through the sacrament of Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit supernaturally and sacramentally gives him or her new birth and God the Father adopts the child then and there as his own. To restate the matter even more bluntly, while I continue to uphold the practice of infant baptism, as appropriate in at least some cases where there are two clearly strong, practicing Christians as parents, I utterly reject and repudiate the usual evangelical reasoning that futilely seeks to justify the practice of infant baptism on the false and unevangelical basis of Reformed covenant theology (at least in the usual Continental form pf Reformed theology, where Zurich and Geneva were fully in accord in their militant opposition to Anabaptism).
I won’t go any further here at the moment. Readers of SFiF with good memories will recall that I’m writing a lengthy tome (estimated to run 300+ pages, and cluttered with footnotes on almost every page) that I hope to publish next year. It’s tentatively titled, [b]Christians Are Made, Not Born[/b]: [i]Restoring the Integrity of Christian Initiation in a Post-Christendom Society[/i]. And the heart of the book is a fervent appeal for a drastic overhaul of our inherited practices of Christian initiation, not least by recovering the ancient catechumenate, including using it for the children of Christian parents, whose sacramental initiation would be deferred until they came to the point of embracing the Christian faith and life for themselves.
On this point, I’m prepared to press forward with a New Reformation, almost “without tarrying for any.” Now I grant, along with John Richardson, that such drastic overhauls to baptismal discipline are best handled as reforms legitimated (if not mandated) “from above.” But I strongly suspect that in this area, such radical change is going to have to come at first “from below.” I must admit that of all the many CoE study or position papers on Christian Initiation that were released from the 1940s to the 1970s (at least six major studies), the absolte worst of the lot was the abominable Ely Report of 1971. I hate it. I can’t stand it. It’s putrid, disgusting stuff the reading of which almost makes me vomit.
IOW, I don’t think +Colin Buchanan went nearly far enough. John Richardson has adopted a 180 degree turn and reversed his earlier support for Buchanan’s famous campaign to promote a more rigorous (and spiritually healthy) policy of baptismal discipline. I take exactly the opposite position, and would go much farther than +Buchanan in wanting to phase out infant baptism altogether (albeit gradually, over several generations), even with two model Christian parents. Not because infant baptism is inherently unbiblical (I’m no crypto-Baptist), or has always been wrong (it made sense in medieval Christendom Europe), but because our strange and increasingly hostile post-Christendom social context has rendered it obsolete and counter-productive, and very spiritually unsafe. And in that sense, I sincerely claim to be more evangelical than ever, not less.
David Handy+
Radical as ever
#23 Hello Rev Handy – good to see you commenting again, with your usual economy of words…just kidding!
If I may just take up one issue, I can understand with your Wheaton background your concern about infant baptism, but if I may just make three points which are in part historical and particular to the CofE and its development:
1. We consider baptism [and indeed the right to it] to be particular to the welfare of the infant, rather than the parents. Moreover notwithstanding anything about the parents and their beliefs, often the Godparents chosen will include hopefully those who will indeed take their promises about the upbringing and education of the child in the Christian faith very seriously.
2. The established Church of England has by law had granted to its vicars, the cure of all souls within the parish. This dates back to the time when all members of the parish were expected to be members of the church and expected to turn up to church regularly – indeed could be sanctioned if they did not. The converse of this is that anyone within the territory of the parish is entitled to ask the church, and unless there is substantial reason with evidence why they should not, has the right to be baptised, married and buried by the church.
3. Before the early part of the 20th Century the rates of infant and child mortality were massive, and hence the absolute urgency [for the child’s soul as it was then thought] to baptise infants promptly. They did not have the luxury of the assumption we take for granted that we will survive childhood.
So as we see it baptism is not a scandal for the children. Indeed submission of their children for baptism may indeed be, even by parents not themselves regular churchgoers, in some sense an openness to the possibility of the power of the Holy Spirit to act in the lives of their children and perhaps even themselves, and by the time the process has been completed, who knows how the Spirit may have moved? We take people at their word, and if they say they are prepared to promise to undertake certain actions as parents and godparents, we welcome them to do just that.
David, I wrote a reply and it seems to have disappeared into cyberspace! Forgive me for not being able to replicate it in full.
Four quick responses.
1. I went for the ‘litmus test’ idea – OE and CE can quickly and simply be distinguished, like acid and alkali, on the women’s issue. A full analysis would be more complicated, of course. This doesn’t mean that all CEs see women’s ordination as the last ditch or the hill to die on.
2. My definition is 3 plank, not 2: Christ’s death, faith as a necessary response, faith as a sufficient response. Personally, I think that summarizes the ‘reformation issue’. The other things – bible, works, etc – flow out of the ‘core gospel’ of 1 Cor 15:1-3: Christ died for our sins ‘kata tas graphas’ (according to the Scriptures).
3. I think the Lambeth Quadrilateral is a Trojan Horse. All English clergy have to make a declaration of assent to the articles, BCP and Ordinal, which are also identified in the Canons as containing the doctrines of the Church of England. The Lambeth Quadrilateral may be popular, but it is not a required understanding. What I have urged in my essay is a functional use of the formularies in our theological formation.
4. As Pageantmaster has observed, in England we are in a particular cultural context. The law requires and society expects, certain things from Anglican clergy. It is all very well disliking it, but you actually have to ask, “What am I going to do?” And I would add as a proper supplementary, “What am I prepared to tell my bishop I am going to do?” You cannot refuse the baptism of a child – not least, I suspect, because as you observe, there is a lingering conviction that baptism gives them a spiritual ‘leg up’ (whatever ‘regenerate’ means in relation to ‘this child’).
Sorry I can’t go into greater length. I’d already done that, and I have to get on.
Pageantmaster (#24),
Thanks for the encouragement to keep posting. I’m glad you noticed this thread, buried as deep as it now is. And I freely concede that I’m been all too verbose here, as is my wont (alas).
I also appreciate your comments helping remind us all of the historical and cultural context of the CoE. I recognize that as an American who has never lived in the UK, I probably can’t understand the peculiar, honored, central place of the CoE for the English epople, even in this highly secularized age. But if you’ll pardon me, I don’t see how your points really diminish the force of my complaints about indiscriminate, promiscuous baptism above. To me, sacramental promiscuity is just as bad as sexual promiscuity.
The famous and highly influential 1982 WCC document [b]Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry[/b] (or BEM), the most significant ecumenical agreement of all time on those highly disputed doctrines and practices, pressed for the historic paedobaptist churches to take seriously the scandal of “indiscriminate” infant baptism and work to end that terrible abuse. The 1988 Lambeth Conference of Bishops partly admitted the fact of such abuse in Anglicanism, but sadly almost nothing has been done to end that intolerable misuse of a dominical sacrament. And my loathing for the 1971 Ely Report is largely due to its blatant attempt to support the status quo and uphold the traditional CoE practice of baptism on demand (with almost no strings attached) on the assumption that England is still “a Christian society” (SIC!).
Now to be fair and ecumenically even-handed, if anything, I regard two other official church statements of similar paedobaptist groups to be even worse, if possible. I’m referring to the 1955 Report of an elite group of Scottish Presbyterians (led by the great T. F. Torrance) that attempted to defend the doctrine and practice of infant baptism against the attacks on it by Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, two leading Continental CAlvinists who rocked the Reformed world by their radical questioning of the formerly unquestionable sacred cow of infant baptism. That Church of Scotland report has the dubious distinction of being the absolute worst official church document in support of infant baptism ever published (IMHO). Only slightly better but still abominable, is the 1980 [i]Instruction on Infant Baptism[/i] released by the Roman Curia (Holy Office) that slammed the door shut on the questioning of the normativity of infant baptism by some prominent, respected Catholic theologians (among them my esteemed liturgy prof at Yale Divinity School, Aidan Kavanagh, OSB, author of [b]The Shape of Baptism[/b]). Alas, all three official documents (Ch of Scotland, CoE, RC) reflect a knee-jerk, automatic reflex of instinctive defense of a practice long held sacrosanct.
Now of course I’m well aware that Anglicanism has long held that any trace of Anabaptist radicalism/”enthusiasm” is to be utterly rejected (Article 27 of the 39; the rubrics of the historic BCPs, etc.). But my contention is that those historic formularies are totally dependent on the assumption that the CoE is a really the church of the whole nation, which I think it clearly ceased to be long ago. The traditional Anglican attitude is totally predicated upon the premise of a Christendom marriage between Church and state (or at least English culture) that seems, to this outsider, to have ended in [i]de facto[/i] divorce, even if it’s not yet [i]de jure[/i]. Here again, as I’ve said above, our strange, scary new post-Christendom social context literally changes everything, and renders our old inherited practices obsolete and counter-productive.
I won’t try to respond further to your welcome post #24. But if you’re interested, we could pursue that whole complex nest of issues privately. Again, as an American, I admit that I’m probably far from being qualified to judge what’s pastorally or culturally appropriate on your side of the Pond.
Cordially,
David Handy+
John (#25),
Thanks for replying, and for once again doing so concisely and non-polemically. It’s perfectly understandable that you didn’t have time (or perhaps even any interest) in engaging in further dialogue. And if you want to bow out completely at this point, that’s fine with me. Despite the extreme length of my series of posts above, I wasn’t really trying to start a vigorous, full-fledged debate on this thread about all the very complex issues I raised. Rather, I was trying to clarify the crucial issues at stake, and to suggest some ways of reframing or refocussing them.
But just in case you only ran out of time (and not out of patience), let me respond (alas, not as concisely as you did) to your brief reply in #25.
1. Yes, you did just what I asked for in providing us with a clear litmus test, and you yourself indicated some dissatisfaction with WO as that acid test. I have no complaint with your answer that way; rather, I find the selection of that particular divisive issue by so many English Anglican Evangelicals to be very regrettable. Thanks again for your candor and clarity.
2. Thanks for clarifying that your summary of the evangelical essentials is really a 3-plank affair, and not just two. But my basic complaint still stands: I don’t find your suggested definition of what being evangelical means to be very precise or helpful. However others may.
3. As for the relative value of using the customary standard of the Articles, 1662 BCP and the Ordinal as the main norm of doctrine and discipline in the CoE/Anglicanism versus the Lambeth Quadrilateral, I freely grant that my proposal must have seemed peculiar (or worse, since your image of the Quadrilateral as a “Trojan Horse” carries some ominous implications). I’m well aware of how Canon A5 requires that all CoE clergy “assent” to the familiar historic trio you highlighted, but I’m also well aware that the assent called for is actually widely understood to be quite general in nature, and thus is actually far from holding all clergy bound to all the details of those classic standards.
In the ACNA, we clergy also must give our “assent” to those same venerable three standards of doctrine and discipline, but our oath of conformity is very carefully nuanced, so that what we actually promise is that we hold those traditional standards to express the “[b]fundamental principles[/b]” of Anglican theology and practice, with the understanding that this means a general assent to those broad principles and not agreement with every specific detail mentioned in them. That of course is how the Anglo-Catholic wing of the ACNA is able to take that oath and sign the Jerusalem Declaration, when those historic formularies are of course FAR more (one-sidedly) Protestant than most of us like.
Once again, for better or worse, Anglicanism today is NOT what it was before 1833 and the outbreak of the Catholic Revival within the AC. It’s perfectly understandable that you, and many other low church Anglicans, would find the widespread acceptance of so much Catholic tradition within Anglicanism since then to be regrettable or even reprehensible (definitely “for the worse), whereas it’s equally natural that other orthodox Anglicans from the opposite end of the churchmanship spectrum would evaluate that change far more positively. But whether you think Anglicanism is better off or worse off since 1833, which is highly debatable, what is undeniable is that Anglicanism has changed, and has changed drastically, so that it is no longer true that Anglicanism is like a wholly-owned subsidiary of Protestantism.
Again, I confess that my life experience as an ex-Reformed, ex-Protestant (but still 3-D) sort of Anglican may make me unduly biased (as converts often are) against the Reformed tradition that has often dominated Anglicanism since the Reformation. Perhaps it might help clarify things, however, if I add here that I’m not the sort of Anglo-Catholic who wants to banish Sydney-style, ultra-Protestant Reformed Christianity from Anglicanism. I freely concede that even the 17th century Caroline Divines (whom I find so much more congenial than the English Reformers) saw Anglicanism as both Catholic and REFORMED (not merely Catholic and Protestant, but specifically even if rather moderately Reformed). Furthermore, I willingly concede that Reformed theology will always have a central place within Anglicanism. This is true not least because as the 21st century unfolds, the rapid growth of Anglicanism in the Global South is mainly taking place in areas evangelized by the low church CMS and not by the high church SPG. So that we can safely expect that Anglicanism in the future will be even more likely to be dominated by Protestant or even Reformed assumptions than in the past and present. All I’m trying to say is the fairly modest claim that Reformed theology shouldn’t have a monopoly on what it means to genuinely evangelical, much less to be authentically Anglican.
4. Finally, about baptismal discipline, “rigoristic” or otherwise, I think I’m well aware of the general, painful dilemma facing CoE priests who are inclined to be even half as rigoristic as I would tend to be myself. Suffice to say here that one of my greatest heroes is the great Anglican missiologist Roland Allen. I think he is a splendid representative of what I mean by “3-D Christianity”: evangelical, catholic, and charismatic. Next year, 2012, is the centenary of the publication of his highly influential masterpiece on mission strategy, [b]Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?[/b]. Roland Allen was a career missionary: first in China, then in Africa, or perhaps I should say, first of all in “darkest England” before going to China. But in 1907, Roland Allen resigned his cure in England, because he felt himself unable in good conscience to baptize all children in the geographical parish on demand. That in fact, is one of the reasons why I hold him in such honor, that he had that kind of integrity.
FWIW, I see Allen as being “3-D” in his:
(1) clear evangelical passion for fostering radical conversion and world mission and in his deeply biblical outlook;
(2) in his firm, unshakeable devotion to catholic order and sacramental theology (he was a missionary of the SPG, not the CMS),
(3) and not least because Roland Allen was thoroughly charismatic in his remarkable trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to do miracles long before the advent of the charismatic renewal movement.
But this all gets back to the central issue of what is the best strategy for working “towards the conversion of England” and the CoE itself. Or as I phrased it above, a key issue is this:
How are we to regard the vast numbers of English people who almost never attend worship in the CoE but may have been baptized in infancy and perhaps are even listed on the parish Electoral Roll?? Are we to think of them as “lapsed Christians?” Or as I provocatively put it earlier, are they really “baptized heathens?” Or are they perhaps better thought of as something like unwitting [i]catechumens[/i], who are on the periphery of the Church and maybe at least potentially can be seen as being on their way into its fellowship, but who made a long detour along the way and got lost? Or perhaps do some people fall in each of those three broad categories, so that no “[i]one size fits all[/i]” strategy will work? (FWIW, I suspect that last option, “all the above,” is most likely)is.
But as in the medical field, what treatment plan we come up with depends very largely on our diagnosis of what the problem really is. What evangelistic and disciple-making strategy we decide on in seeking the conversion of our nations and our churches necessarily depends to a very large degree on how we diagnose the spiritual state of our churches, and the vast number of almost entirely nominal members included in them. Are they “half-converted” as the 1945 report frankly admitted, or are matters today even worse, so that we’d have to say that many of the nominal people who think of themselves as Christians (or at least as “CoE” or “Episcopal”) aren’t really Christians at all, but instead are maybe only 1/4th converted, or 1/8th, or some such thing? My hunch is that, on both sides of the Atlantic, the 1945 estimate of “half-converted” is, alas, very often far too optimistic. But I’d be glad to hear that those of you on the other side of the Pond see things as more promising than that.
Respectfully,
David Handy+
#26 Fr Handy
Many thanks for the background. I think this is one of those areas where the Continental/American reformed outlook comes up against the traditional Anglican and perhaps Catholic viewpoint.
I suppose over here the view was ‘why wouldn’t you have your children baptised?’ rather than ‘why would you have them baptised?’ We are not Baptists who take a rather different view.
Not so long ago it would have been thought rather scandalous not to have your children baptised, and considerable suasion would have been applied to the parents, including perhaps by the church.
Nowadays fewer and fewer children are being baptised, or indeed have any contact with the Church. I think we need to encourage people back rather than throw any discouragement in their path, which I fear the more Continental/American approach would do i.e. setting exams for people to pass before they can cross our doors. If you are not used to it, church can be intimidating enough as it is for those who have no familiarity with it and who may want to ‘do the right thing’ for their children, even if it wasn’t done for them.
This does not mean that there is no ministry or education provided as part of the run up to a baptism – quite the reverse, and at the end of the day, it is for those involved to decide whether they can in good conscience make the renunciations of the world and the devil etc, and the promises in relation to the education and formation of the child required. Moreover for the rest of us, it gives us great pleasure to welcome the child and the parents/godparents into the church, and no doubt there is rejoicing in heaven as well.
On the 1945 report I would say that rather shockingly for such an important document, a copy cannot be found online, other than in extract form. The copyright holders would be doing everyone a great favour to make it more widely available online.
I found the same thing when I went looking for a copy of the Keele statement. It is pretty hopeless that such important and foundational documents are not available online. Imagine not being able to find a copy of the Westminster Confession or Ut Unum Sint online?
Pageantmaster,
Thanks again for another cordial and respectful comment. I’m sure that you’re right that the English Reformers shouldn’t be lumped together with the Swiss Reformers on this matter, as on some others. Nor should the specifically Reformed tradition be assumed to take identical form on opposite sides of the Atlantic, just as it shouldn’t on opposite sides of the English Channel.
I suspect this thread is almost dead or inactive, so we may want to pursue this topic privately (if you care to do so, I’d enjoy that). But just in hopes that this thread has completely lapsed into a dormant state, I’ll venture a couple relatively brief comments (at least brief for me!).
+Colin Buchanan (formerly of Woolwich), at the start of his very important book on baptismal reform in the CoE ([b]Infant Baptism and the Dilemma of the Church of England[/b]) notes with some amusement that when he was first starting out as a parish priest, CoE bishops used to admonish priests at the time of their institution to a new cure to seek out the unbaptized children in the area and make sure their parents brought them in to be baptized. My, how times have changed!
One of the most significant changes adopted in the 1979 BCP here in the USA, but also one of the least noticed or commented on in the last 30 years, is the quiet, unobstrusive dropping of the initial rubric in the baptismal rite of the 1928 American BCP (which of course merely carried over a tradition found in all previous prayerbooks). That historic rubric mandated, presumably as of foremost importance since it was placed first, that priests were obligated and expected to remind their parishioners from time to time that it was urgently important and necessary that they present their children for baptism as soon as it was convenient for them to do so (certainly within a month of birth). Of course, that is wholly based on the fear (can we say, irrational phobia?) of the dire eternal consequences of children dying unbaptized. Alas, that is one of the most unfortunate legacies of the great St. Augustine, who in this matter badly misled the western Church. (Hmmm, please note: I’m not denying the doctrine of original sin, mind you, just denouncing his fatally flawed interpretation of John 3:5 as being applicable to infants and young children, which I think is nonsense).
Since I’ve been very hard on the Calvinist tradition on this thread, let me give Reformed theology some credit on this point at least. One of the minor differences between Reformed and Lutheran theology is that, contrary to Luther and the Lutheran confessions that clearly teach the necessity of baptism for salvation, even for infants and young children, the Reformed tradition has never gone along with that. In particular, Calvin specifically forbid midwives to baptize (for not just men, but ministers alone were authorized to do the rite), and he explicitly declared that it was foolish to think the infants who died unbaptized were denied entry into God’s kingdom. As you know, Pageantmast, I’m generally much closer to the Lutherans than to the Reformed on matters of sacramental theology, but this is one exception to the rule.
But when it comes to baptismal regeneration, of course, it’s a totally different story. I fully agree with the Lutherans (and Catholics) on that core doctrine, which is so emphatically taught in the BCP, and which the Reformed generally shy away from like the plague. So just in case John Richardson is merely delaying any further replies to my comments rather than having abandoned the thread completely, I’ll toss out a very provocative, even incendiary, comment here of a decidedly anti-Reformed sort.
If you have to choose between baptismal regeneration and infant baptism (a big IF indeed), I think it’s abundantly clear that you should hold to baptismal regeneration and abondon infant baptism, not vice versa, as the Reformed are inclined to do (including many evangelical Anglicans). That is, baptismal regeneration is clearly taught in the NT (John 3:5 and Titus 3:5), and was universally taught by the Fathers, from the mid 2nd century on (i.e., at least from the time of Justin Martyr). Not so infant baptism, which I think is a practice that only started in the 2nd century and didn’t become universal or mandatory until at least the 5th century.
But please note, the real issue here really isn’t whether infant baptism is valid or appropriate today, or in which cases, but rather on what grounds it is theologically justified. That is where the Ugley Vicar and I are simply living on different theological planets. I justify the practice almost solely on the basis of post-biblical tradition (I don’t think there are any real grounds for its support in the NT), i.e., on the basis of Catholic sacramental theology (that is how Christians are made, at least in one sense). And I roundly deny, in the strongest terms, what Zwingli and Calvin taught (along with, I’m sorry to say, Cranmer, Jewel, and other leading English reformers who swallowed the Reformed justification for the practice hook, line, and sinker): namely, that baptism merely is the sign and seal of a pre-existing reality, that children of Christian parents automatically belong within the covenant people, just as Jewish children did under the Old Covenant. As I said quite provocatively above, I find that Reformed teaching, so prevalent among English evangelicals, downright “repugnant” to the NT (in the language of Article 20 of the 39). It flies directly in the face of John 1:11-13, among other texts. Now I hope it’s clear that I don’t reject infant baptism itself. But I do utterly reject, denounce, and repudiate the usual Anglican evangelical defense for infant baptism, based on that Reformed covenant theology framework and the circumcision analogy. The historic practice must be defended on other grounds (which basically, are not in Scripture).
You’re free to disagree, of course, my friend. Lots of good Anglicans do. And many of them are better Christians than I am.
Cordially,
David Handy+
P.S., a correction to that last post. The important book I mentioned by +Colin Buchanan is actually entitled [b]Infant Baptism and the Gospel:[/b] [i]The Church of England’s Dilemma[/i]. I was hastily alluding to it from memory and badly garbled it. The bishop’s marvelously clear and forceful (if theologically flawed) argument was published in 1993 by Darton, Longman and Todd (about 200 pages).
Well, it appears that John Richardson may have dropped out of this thread for good, So I think I will as well.
Farewell to one and all,
David Handy+