Theology Thursday: Walking the tightrope of evangelical unity

Those of us who were not alive when Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Stott publicly debated these issues in the 1960s may be in danger of missing what can be learnt from the history of these discussions. This Churchman article by the Australian Andrew Grills is an attempt to assess the impact of the differing approaches taken by Lloyd-Jones and Stott following their public disagreement in 1966 regarding whether or not evangelicals should ‘come out’ of the mixed denominations.

Lloyd-Jones argued for separation. History, says Grills, has judged Lloyd-Jones more harshly: while he was able to articulate the problem, he had no concrete, realistic solution for what he proposed might actually look like. Indeed, in due course his forceful arguments for evangelical ‘unity’ and his frustration with those Anglicans who did not agree with him actually had the opposite effect, and led to a growing disunity among evangelicals instead.

Stott, on the other hand, is regarded almost universally favourably. His fundamental argument for remaining within the Church of England may ring a bell: the Anglican formularies are ‘both biblical and evangelical’ and therefore it is evangelicals who are ‘Anglican loyalists’ while non-evangelicals should secede and leave. When asked if anything would ever make him leave the Church of England, his response was that he would do so only when ‘the official doctrine of the Church of England denied the Gospel as I have been given to understand it in any fundamental particular.’

Against the scholarly consensus, Grills argues that Stott’s position did not in fact strengthen evangelicalism within the Church of England in quite the way it is sometimes thought. Subsequent events at NEAC in 1967 and 1977 seemed to give too much ground to ecumenism and to acknowledging ‘gospel light’ among non-evangelicals. The influence of evangelicals within the denomination grew, but with that came doctrinal compromise and a broadening in the theological definition of evangelicalism.

I found this article very helpful as I continue to think through the issues for our own context today. Those calling for separation today need to be careful not to repeat the error of Lloyd-Jones: inadvertently creating disunity through frustration with those who do not act in the same way or with the same speed. Those remaining need to be careful that efforts to regain and reform the denomination do not end once again in doctrinal compromise.

We walk the same tightrope that evangelicals have sought to walk for 50 years or more. Time will tell whether we can remain on that tightrope or if we must inevitably fall either into disunity or theological error.

Andrew Grills, Forty Years On: An Evangelical Divide Revisited, Churchman 120/3 (2006): 231-246.