Anglican Angst
ANGLICAN ANGST
Editorial in Evangelicals Now December 2022
In 1879, Bishop J.C. Ryle, that doughty champion of evangelical orthodoxy, (whose commentaries continue to be so helpful), cited various articles from the media of his day about the state of evangelicalism in the Church of England.
He quoted an article in The Times which declared evangelicalism to be ‘worn out, decaying and passing away…’ And apparently the Church Times was ‘continually telling the public that there is not a single real theologian in the Evangelical School – nobody, of course, being a theologian who does not agree with the Church Times!’ Plus ça change, indeed…
Ryle, however, could scarcely have begun to imagine the nature of the threat facing Anglican evangelicals today. The idea that marriage might be deemed to be between two men or two women, and that the Church of England might even start to discuss accepting this idea, would be incomprehensible and anathema to him.
When facing situations such as this, it is easy to default to a number of ‘oven-ready’ mindsets. For evangelicals not in the CofE it is understandable to ask why evangelicals even bother to stay in the denomination; and that is a reasonable question, albeit one that some Anglican evangelicals may not necessarily find helpful or sympathetic at this particular time.
Another mindset, for CofE evangelicals themselves, is to declare inevitable defeat before the battle is over and jump ship at the very moment the fight is fiercest, thus hastening the fulfilment of their own worst fears. At the other extreme is what might be called the ‘school of mindless optimism’ which points to growing evangelical churches and declining liberal ones, relying on that somehow to banish error at some point in the future.
In between, at the moment, seems to be the idea that plans must be made in order to safeguard the position of orthodoxy in the CofE. This is wise, but currently the plans seem to be more in the nature of aspirations than meticulously-planned, detailed, funded and legally-tight programmes of action. Evangelicals in the Church in Wales found to their cost that they woke up to the need for that sort of preparation when it was too late.
In addition, the public silence (at the time of writing) of CofE evangelical bishops is disturbing, distressing and, some would say, shockingly negligent.
The fate of evangelicals in the CofE will have huge knock-on effects. For example, evangelicals in the Baptist Union will find it harder to hold the line if Anglicans don’t, and there will be global ramifications across the Anglican Communion. Parliament may be less inclined to grant any evangelicals freedom to publicly advocate orthodox morality if the Church of England has itself renounced it.
We conclude with these words which Ryle also wrote in that same 1879 article which are true for all evangelicals in any denomination. We must, he said, be ‘kind and courteous to everybody, but stiff as steel in our adhesion to the old lines … We must beware of trimming, compromising, and conceding, under the vain hope of conciliating our rivals and catching them by guile, or keeping our young people from adopting what we disapprove … We cannot do better than stick to our sling and stones – the word of God and prayer.’
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