Topical Tuesday: the credibility crisis

Recently, I was invited by the Council of Affinity (formerly the British Evangelical Council), to address them on the issue of challenges facing evangelicals in the Church of England. The talk was recorded, and can be played or downloaded above. It is 43 minutes long.

I took as my theme the growing credibility crisis which I have perceived within the Church. I looked at four claims being made in the Church, and examined them to see how credible they are. They were:

1. ‘We want you to flourish.’ The Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Bishops have said that they want conservative evangelicals, particularly complementarians (those who are unhappy with women’s ordination) to flourish within the Church. I looked at this claim and we thought about what would need to be done to make it credible.

2. ‘Our official teaching on sexuality has not changed.’ Yes, it is true that officially, the Church of England still holds to the 1987 General Synod motion on sexuality, and has the Lambeth Resolutions of 1998 to back that up. But with the new Pilling Report on sexuality now being debated, that teaching is being challenged and even undermined from below. We thought about what this meant in practice about the breakdown in discipline in the Church.

3. ‘I am an evangelical.’ I went on to think about the definition of ‘evangelical’, and how this was affecting us in the Church of England Evangelical Council. Is the only thing which unites evangelicals these days a shared opposition to liberal sexual ethics? When even evangelicals are denying and deriding penal substitutionary atonement, what is the future for this ‘brand’? I suggested that Anglican Evangelicals should at the very least be Anglican – that is, in terms of their Reformed theology and practice.

4. ‘We are committed to the Church of England.’ The FIEC is thriving, precisely because it has a strong sense of purpose and identity. My Baptist and Presbyterian friends celebrate their theological distinctives with passion. But though Anglican Evangelicals sometimes claim to be committed to their denomination, sometimes we look down on those who speak that way. I made a case that we have nothing to be ashamed about in being Anglican, and said that we could be committed to the future of the Church of England in a credible way, not retreating into a ghetto or running too quickly for the lifeboats.

The leaders gathered together at Affinity were gentle and clear in their questions afterwards, and John Stevens of FIEC was kind enough to close the meeting in prayer. I hope you might enjoy the recorded talk, and be encouraged and strengthened by it. But please, do also pray for us: this is a tricky time to be an evangelical in the Church of England, though it’s true, there’s never a dull moment!