Grosey's Messages

ANGLICANISM: SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? - THE ANNUAL MOORE COLLEGE LECTURES 2026 I enjoyed listening to the Annual Moore College Lectures recently given by Professor Andrew Atherstone of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. His formal title was: ANGLICAN EVANGELICALISM IN THE AGE OF JOHN STOTT, JIM PACKER AND DICK LUCAS: SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN A MIXED-UP DENOMINATION His more informal subject was: ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ Anyone wanting a simple answer to this question would listen in vain - and rightly so, because Atherstone makes clear that there is no easy answer. Anglicans in the Church of England have taken different views as a matter of conscience, shaped by their temperaments and contexts, and they have a spectrum of alternative approaches to denominational compromise. Rather than giving a simple answer, Atherstone gives a comprehensive survey of the issues facing evangelicals in the Church of England from the 1960s onwards. For anyone wanting to understand this period, and why people did what they did, this is essential listening. He is fair, gracious and insightful, examining the role of key leaders, many of whom are still alive. He is a brave man because some of them were in his audience! Having become a Christian in 1988, I have largely lived through this period of history. I was discipled in conservative Anglican evangelicalism, for which I am immensely grateful, right in the midst of the intense Wimber v Jensen conflict Atherstone describes. The battles of the 1960s, between MLJ and John Stott, still loomed large in the background. I was accepted for ordination in the Church of England in 1991 through Oxford Diocese, and would have gone to Wycliffe Hall. I had to spend a year working, and during that year realised I wasn’t in conscience an Anglican. It wasn’t just a matter of not wanting to be part of a mixed denomination, though I was influenced by Ian Murray’s newly published biography of MLJ, but because I had encountered a wider world of evangelicalism, had come to Baptist convictions, and no longer believed in the office of ‘bishop’ as understood in Anglicanism. Leaving the Anglican church did not cost me my home and income, as it did for others whose stories are told in these lectures, because I had not got that far, but it did leave me with no obvious route into ministry. An unsupportive family, membership in a small church with little vision or capacity for training, limited options for seminary, and a lack of money left me out in the cold. What had been a clear route to ministry was suddenly a wasteland. Atherstone’s five lectures cover five key periods, and I think there are lessons in each period that are relevant to today, including for non-conformists and Independents. 1 The Threat of Ecumenism His first lecture, ‘In it to win it?’ covers the 1960s and the (in)famous MLJ/Stott contretemps at the National Evangelical Assembly in 1966. He tells the story of Herbert Carson, who left a major evangelical Anglican Church in Cambridge and became pastor of an FIEC church (Knighton Free Church) in Leicester. Whilst Stott famously contradicted MLJ after his opening address, it is important to recognise that MLJ was not speaking primarily or deliberately to Anglicans. The Assembly was called by the EA to consider ecumenism, especially how evangelicals should respond to the British Council of Churches' aim of creating a single united church in England by 1980. MLJ’s views, and what he would say, were known in advance because he had already given his evidence to the EA committee. They invited him to give his opinion. MLJ's great concern was that supporting this drive to ecumenism would create institutional unity on a false doctrinal basis. This issue was not faced only by evangelicals in the CofE, but also by evangelicals in other historically orthodox non-conformist denominations, including the Baptist Union and Congregational Union, to which MLJ’s Westminster Chapel belonged. The call to separate and join with those who hold to evangelical convictions was also heard by non-conformist ministers like Basil Howlett, who left the Baptist Union over its doctrinal compromise and refusal to discipline those who denied the deity of Christ. There is therefore a bigger story to be told. History might judge whether MLJ or John Stott adopted the best response to the challenges of their day, but it is important to recognise that neither was a pure pragmatist, and both wanted to contend for the gospel. Stott genuinely thought the CofE could be won, and evangelical Anglicans from previous generations said how much better things were than in their day. In contrast, MLJ feared that the proposed ecumenical restructuring would lead to the loss of the gospel. If there is a lesson to learn, it is that godly men in different contexts may well come to different conclusions, and it is important to respect one another’s integrity, even whilst disagreeing with the position they take. Carefully fostered evangelical unity can be too easily fractured, and positions can harden behind leaders who are, to some degree, hero-worshipped. 2 Confessionalism His second lecture, ‘A paper church?’, examines whether a formal theological confession is a sufficient foundation for remaining in a denomination. Many evangelical Anglicans were happy to remain in the CofE because of its historical formularies: the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal. These might have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance, but they were the formal constitutional position of the church. Τhis was the argument of R C Ryle in the 19th Century. Evangelicals maintained that they had the title deeds to the CofE, and they were unwilling to concede the church to squatters and interlopers. It is true that the CofE was constitutionally a Reformed Protestant church, and that all clergy had to assent to the specific doctrine of the Thirty-Nine Articles. Many no doubt took their oaths with their fingers crossed, but there was no functional discipline. In the end, in the late 1960s, the Synod voted to change the oath so that clergy only had to assent to the Articles as the ‘historical formularies.’ In itself, this did not prove to be a red line for many evangelicals in the CofE. I think the lesson for us ought to be that the faithfulness of a church cannot, in the end, be preserved merely by formal confessional documents. They are meaningful only if genuinely believed and used as the basis of discipline. History shows that confessionalism fails when the church allows ministers to remain in office even though they do not believe the doctrines they express. It becomes a dead letter, progressively undermined in practice. This was true of all the major non-conformist denominations, where the Westminster Confession, Savoy Declaration and Baptism Confession of Faith proved no protection against Unitarianism in the 18th C or liberalism in the latter 19th and 20th Centuries. There is a current trend back to historic Confessions, but we would be wise not to expect this to ensure faithful churches over time. It has not proved to be the answer in history, though it may seem attractive in this moment of doctrinal compromise and postmodern rejection of truth claims. It is also not enough to be right. Atherstone notes how evangelical Anglicans in the 19th Century resorted to the courts to prevent the ingress of Romish doctrines and practices. This did not work. Evangelicals won some cases, but lost sympathy in wider society for their apparent narrow legalism. In some cases they lost their case and unfortunate legal precedents were set. It is of course important to hold to the doctrine of the church that you serve. One reason I did not become an Anglican is that I could no longer hold to its doctrine of baptism or episcopacy. Whilst it is easy to criticise those who go into the CofE who are Liberal or Catholic, and do not really believe the Articles and doctrine of the BCP, I wonder if many evangelicals equally fail to hold to the Reformed predestinarianism of the Articles (they are not Arminian!), or to the baptismal regeneration of the BCP? There is a danger that Confessionalism cannot be amended by changed insight, nor address the most relevant issues of the day. Confessions tend to reflect the theological battlegrounds of the time at which they were drawn up. I wonder how many Westminster Presbyterians truly believe that the Pope is the antichrist today, or practice the Sabbath the way the Longer Catechism expects? The historical confessions do not contain worked doctrinal positions on homosexuality and gender. Some parallels exist between the historic confessional positions of the CofE and FIEC. Both adopt a relatively minimalist confessional position (FIEC being even more minimal than CofE), whereas other confessions tend to be maximalist. We require all our churches and leaders to reaffirm their affirmation of the FIEC doctrinal basis annually, which acts as a form of protective self-discipline. One of the strongest advocates of staying in the CofE whilst the Articles were in place was J I Packer. It is instructive that he subsequently left the Anglican Church in Canada when it introduced same-sex marriage, even though the Articles remained in place. 3 Heretical Leadership The third lecture, ‘Doubting Bishops’, covers the problem of the appointment of heretical bishops and the evangelical response to it. This stretched from John Robinson’s 1960s book ‘Honest to God’ through to the appointment of David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham. Jenkins was an academic theologian who made clear that he did not believe in the literal fact of the virgin birth, nor the bodily resurrection of Christ. He made the mistake of speaking his mind in relatively colourful imagery in media interviews, saying for example that a bodily resurrection would be merely a ’conjuring trick with bones.’ Jenkins claimed that he did believe in the incarnation and resurrection, but as spiritual rather than literal physical events. Jenkins was taken aback by the level of opposition to his appointment, saying that what he was saying was simply the standard view of academic theologians and in the training colleges - about which he was almost certainly right. The appointment of Jenkins mobilised evangelical opposition and the beginnings of evangelical refusal to accept episcopal oversight from those they considered heretical. However, for all the vehemence of evangelical opposition, Jenkins was still consecrated. He represented the views of a large part of the Anglican hierarchy at the time. The evangelicals' failure to prevent his appointment indicated their relatively limited influence in the church as a whole. In many ways, the liberalism espoused by David Jenkins and his ilk has greatly diminished. Few bishops today would deny the resurrection so blatantly. Liberal theology of this sort has had its heyday. In its place has risen a different form of liberal revisionism on issues such as same-sex relationships, which utilise apparently sophisticated hermeneutical techniques to explain away clear biblical teaching. This has become prevalent in some non-conformist churches as well as in the CofE. The problem of heretical leaders was not confined to the CofE. Liberalism was endemic in all the non-conformist denominations, both on issues of theology proper and matters of ethics. Liberalism invaded the churches through the academy, as academic theologians trained the clergy, who then led congregations astray. Liberalism was a form of entryism that took over the churches. In 1971, Michael Taylor, a Baptist College principal, openly questioned the divinity of Christ, and the Baptist Union took no disciplinary action. A considerable number of Baptist ministers and churches chose to leave the BU as a result, with many coming into the FIEC. If there is a key lesson to learn, it is that we must exclude false teachers from the church, whether from pastoral leadership or from the training of future leaders. False teaching invariably enters under the radar, often with academic respectability, and it is impossible to address once it has gained a substantial foothold and is represented by a ‘party’ in a denomination. As far as I am aware, Steve Chalke remains a Baptist Union accredited minister despite his outright rejection of penal substitution and his support for same-sex marriages. 4 Revolutionary Ministry His third lecture, ‘Radical Ecclesiologies’, covers the late-1980s and the rise of radical new approaches to ecclesiology and ministry that entered the CofE. Rather than seeking to reform the institution as a whole, they focused on the life of the local church and the work of its minister. Atherstone points to two new models of doing church that evangelicals in the CofE copied and implemented. On the one hand, Philip Jensen brought the radical ecclesiology of Sydney Anglicanism to England, primarily through the Proclamation Trust conferences initiated by Dick Lucas. On the other hand, John Wimber brought his charismatic ‘signs and wonders’ ministry from California and the Vineyard movement to charismatic Anglican churches, especially influencing Holy Trinity Brompton. Atherstone makes the astute claim that whilst these two movements were deeply antithetical to each other, in many ways they were very similar - infusing a radically different ecclesiology and pattern of ministry that was anti-establishment and informal in nature. Philip Jensen brought Broughton-Knox's ecclesiology to English conservative evangelicals. Central to this theology is the claim that the 39 Articles make the local church central and the institutional church marginal in Article XIX, which states that ‘The visible church is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly ministered…'. Given that the Church of England was meant to be the only Church operating in England, it is highly unlikely that the Articles originally meant this. Jensen argued that bishops were merely the ‘deacons’, or administrators, of the church, and that the real action was in the local church. Here the focus of the minister should be on teaching the Bible, not visiting, caring for the sick or performing baptisms and weddings for unbelievers. This was a radically different focus for pastoral ministry. Whilst Jensen was sharply critical of the CofE, Atherstone does not mention that he was even more critical of evangelical non-conformists, whom he regarded as doctrinally orthodox but evangelistically ineffective. If Anglicans were fishing from a rotten boat, then non-conformists were either fishing only in the boat or from a cliff where their lines did not reach the sea at all! There is no doubt that Jensen’s impact led to a radical reshaping of conservative evangelical ministry - largely to the good. I agree with his ecclesiology, but I find it harder to see how it fits with Anglicanism, as it seems to reject the threefold order of ministry. The bishops are meant to be the teachers of the church, its theologians. If they act like deacons, that derogates their ministry. It is something of an irony, therefore, that Jensen’s vision for local church ministry was perhaps more easily realisable in a free church context, without all the constraints and distractions of an institutional structure. A generation of evangelicals whose convictions might be more instinctively free-church were encouraged to enter CofE ministry as Bible teachers, convinced that the hierarchy does not really matter and that the church is just a rain shelter from which to preach the gospel. Over time, quite a number of these ended up in FIEC ministry, which was probably their more natural home all along. Jensen’s powerful rhetoric no doubt encouraged non-conformist evangelicals to reform themselves, adopt new patterns of ministry, re-emphasise the importance of word ministry, and regain an evangelistic focus that engaged with society. We are today the beneficiaries of his sharp critique forty years ago. It was also easy for Jensen’s deliberate radicalism to be taken too far by some. Whilst he did not think the minister should visit the sick, because the sick need care and not Bible teaching, we have perhaps lost something of the true diaconal ministry of care in conservative evangelicalism, with a tendency to think that everything has to be about the Bible in one-to-one ministry. Sometimes what is needed is just practical care and loving support. Tim Keller subsequently helped restore the balance. Wimber had a similar impact on the ministry of more charismatic CofE churches, leading to new initiatives, programmes and networks. Quite a number of CofE clergy left to start Vineyard churches, whereas those that remained in the denomination tended to disengage from the institution and do their own thing. The lesson of this period is surely that ecclesiology matters. It shapes how ministry can be done. Introducing an alien ecclesiology into a church is difficult. You can change the local church, but that does not change the denomination. It may result in either clergy or congregations leaving the denomination because they find they can pursue their newly discovered ecclesiology more effectively outside of it. I am grateful for all that Philip Jensen and the Proclamation Trust have brought to British evangelicalism. It has had a hugely beneficial impact on free church ministry and the FIEC. I am also thankful that the hostility between the Wimberites and Sydneyites, which was at its height in the late 80s and early 90s, has been overcome and that there is greater evangelical unity, including between Anglicans and non-conformists. 5 Seeking Alternative Structures In his final lecture, Atherstone surveys the current context of Anglican evangelicalism and notes that clergy and congregations are responding to the crisis in the denomination in multiple ways. Some are leaving the CofE to join other denominations - whether becoming Presbyterians, FIEC or independents. He tells the story of Newcastle Reformed Church, which was an Anglican parish congregation that left the CofE and is now an independent church that does not belong to any association. I think it is slightly inaccurate to say that those leaving to become Independents are joining a different denomination. They are rather adopting an ecclesiology that finds no place for institutional denominations, although Independent churches have historically formed voluntary associations of various kinds for mutual support and limited accountability. Others are choosing to leave the CofE and join alternative Anglican groupings, for example AMiE. They are conducting ordinations, consecrating bishops and planting churches outside the CofE. Often, they find oversight and support from other Anglican churches around the world that are not theologically compromised, through the GAFCON movement. It is a helpful reminder to non-conformists that we must not assume that being Anglican means being the Church of England. Anglicanism is a particular set of doctrinal and ecclesiological convictions, whereas the CofE is a specific territorial church that claims to be Anglican in its doctrine, structures and practice. Concluding that the CofE is a compromised church is not the same as concluding that Anglicanism itself is a compromised theological position. It is no more legitimate or accurate to conclude that every Baptist church is compromised because some Baptist churches are compromised. Others are choosing to remain in the CofE, believing it is their duty to fight for orthodoxy within the denomination and that they are not compromised in conscience by doing so. Many are motivated by concern for the congregation they serve, not wanting to abandon their sheep to the wolves or lose the gospel opportunity their buildings and place in society give them. Atherstone rightly highlights the unique place that the CofE holds in the nation, and that it is not as simple to leave as in other jurisdictions where the Anglican church is not a state church but just one of multiple denominational options. He quotes the criteria John Stott advanced late in his life for when it would be appropriate to leave the church, but since Stott thought all five criteria he identified needed to be met, he would not leave unless he was banned from preaching the gospel. He would essentially stay until ejected. The main lesson from this final lecture is that we must be very careful before judging the decisions others make about where they feel they can serve in good conscience. The recent rediscovery and release of a recording of MLJ's 1966 address has led to the usual unhelpful chorus of some non-conformists claiming he was right and that Anglicans should leave the CofE. Atherstone’s history shows that for the last 70 years or more (150 if you go back to Ryle) evangelicals have had to battle doctrinal and ethical compromise in the CofE. Many non-conformists have faced something similar in their own context. Unanimity among evangelicals on what to do is highly unlikely, so charity is essential to those who reach a different conclusion. We can be grateful for the faithfulness of many CofE evangelical clergy and the large contribution they make to advancing the gospel in the nation, and for the courage of those who are standing up to compromise in the institution. The history of the last seventy years teaches us that ecclesiology and doctrine matter. Churches and denominations differ because we have different views of how the local church ought to be structured and governed, where authority lies, and how it can be held accountable. Evangelical ministry is not interchangeable between evangelical churches, because evangelicalism is not itself a denomination or a church. The exercise of proper church discipline, that silences false teachers and allows them no entry into the church, is essential for all demonisation/churches. Compromise does not happen overnight. Still, it is the result of failure to exercise discipline over the long term, so that when issues surface, it is almost too late and radical action is needed that can rarely be contemplated or achieved. Every generation will face new threats to the truth of the gospel and will be required to guard it. Whatever the future of the CofE itself, and in a secular and post-Christian context the idea of a state church is no longer compelling. It has to find its place alongside the plethora of alternative denominations. Worldwide, the prospects for Anglicanism as a theological and ecclesiological position seem strong, with Anglican churches growing and remaining biblically faithful. It seems highly likely that, until the Lord returns, there will be evangelicals who are Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist, Independent, Pentecostal, etc. The challenge for all of us, whatever our ecclesiology, is to guard the faith once for all committed to the saints, and to contend against false teaching and false teachers both within and without. I enjoyed listening to Andrew Atherstone’s lectures, learned much from them, and relived moments of my own history through them. He continues researching this area, and I look forward to the full fruits of his work in due course. His lecturers are well worth watching/hearing, and are all available on the Moore College website. https://moore.edu.au/explore-resources/

# posted by Groseys messages @ 6:25 AM