Now that the next stage of the Church of England’s same-sex marriage saga is almost upon us, it might be worthwhile offering a comment or two to help us through the difficulties that will undoubtedly loom up ahead. Convinced Gospel-minded Evangelicals should not be afraid to take a public stand for the Jesus-centred Biblical witness they are all supposed to support, never mind how tough the going gets – and believe me, it will get very tough! The more so because we see all around us the results of a society wilfully rejecting God’s good plans for happy human relationships. Much of the blame for this must rest upon our own Church of England, which, although being in a unique position to influence public debate for good, has chosen instead to be totally silent about the wonders and joys of Christian marriage for the past sixty years. If there are any Evangelical bishops left in office, they have remained studiously and consistently silent.
Nonetheless we should be encouraged that alongside us is a tiny body of faithful Catholics, who are no less anxious to proclaim Christ and help their people to lead a Christian life. We should at the very least be regularly talking to each other as friends, since in so many ways we are breathing the same spiritual air. This seems to be already happening in Oxford Diocese after their bishops’ woeful public stance on marriage. There should by now be a lot more collaboration between genuine Evangelicals and genuine Catholics, and just as St. Ebbe’s have done, parishes should waste no time in clubbing together to form Good Stewards Trusts to conserve scarce Christian money for genuine Christian outreach.
But let us take a closer and more critical look at Evangelicals themselves. Among them we have individuals who toy with the idea of leaving Anglicanism altogether, displaying that favourite old Evangelical bugbear of going off to do their own thing, without so much as a thought for the big picture – that too often forgotten thing we call the Church Catholic.
We have to respect the genuine fears of these potential leavers that the liberal momentum within the Church of England is now so powerful and well bedded in that we will probably never be able to stop the inexorable move of the Church away from Christian truth. Yet it does make one wonder whether such Evangelicals were ever in step with our uniquely English 16th century concept of Reformed Catholicism or whether they would rather see themselves as successors of the 17th century Puritans, who found themselves stranded up the ecclesiastical cul-de-sac of nonconformity when they could have been the very people to save the Church from a century of Latitudinarianism.
If Jesus remains at the centre of all we say and do and our priority continues to be saving people from sin and death, then it is high time we abandoned divisions over secondary issues. The darkening climate of a godless society may well, as Jesus Himself forecast, one day find us joint inhabitants of the same prison cells. We may well be surprised to find the exercise yard full of Roman Catholics, Pentecostals and FIEC people, with whom we will quickly find ourselves praying and sharing fellowship together – because at the end of the day we have all chosen to stay loyal to our Lord Jesus Christ and are not ashamed of His moral teachings. At the current dizzy speed of political and philosophical change in our country, especially among the young, this fate could await us just over the horizon.
The recent publication of the Wigan Report lifts the lid on the uncomfortable results of an effort by Liverpool diocese to revive the dying Church in a major Lancashire town by utilising the organisational philosophies of the unbelieving world. Amalgamate parishes, pare down the numbers of clergy, shut churches, save money and put the income into a central pool. All good management-speak, but heigh presto - people have left in their droves, funds are drying up, morale has collapsed and the whole thing has been a total disaster! Incredibly, this counsel of despair is also being copied in Leicester and Truro and is on the agenda of many other dioceses. What would the very first Bishop of Liverpool, the illustrious JC Ryle have made of it? He wanted no parish to have a population of more than 4,000, because he knew all too well that a single priest could never be expected to cope with caring for more.
However, within the Church of England as a whole we face an even greater crisis of faith that we cannot side-step. We know full well that our created sex is God-given and that the Church will one day become the Bride of Christ, so the cause of this crisis is deeply theological. Let’s face it; a goodly proportion of our bishops and clergy don’t seem very bothered about sin, repentance, death, heaven, hell or judgement. They appear instead to enjoy going through the outward motions of worship largely to indulge a love of great music, grand language and impeccable ceremonial. They read through the “outmoded” Gospels, Epistles and Old Testament readings largely because the Lectionary tells them they have to do so. This, alas, has been the fertile soil from which all current godless and unScriptural ideas have been born.
Most Evangelicals say they will stay within the Church and contend for the Faith. These folk, like Church Society, can legitimately argue that they enjoy a solid parochial base across the whole country, which although somewhat unevenly spread, has its future guaranteed by private patronage, although the effectiveness of that appointments system is being constantly undermined by parochial amalgamations and pastoral reorganisations. Evangelicals certainly have a number of highly successful parishes, with healthy finances and a lively agenda for growth. Who knows? Maybe the liberal agenda could fail in General Synod? After all, it is highly likely that many liberal churches will simply empty themselves of people, spend all their shrinking funds and lose their supply of ordinands as the balance of power shifts back to the orthodox.
However, Evangelicals who plan to stay within Church of England structures – and orthodox Catholics for that matter - would be foolish to take these blessings for granted. They would be well-advised to make contingency plans right now in case things do not go their way. There has to be an alternative organisation for them – in effect nothing less than a Third Province. Time is very short and the omens are not good. Scotland, Wales, the USA and New Zealand have already gone a long way down the liberal route and signally failed to provide a safe space for the orthodox. Not surprisingly, these institutions now find themselves in numerical collapse and financial free-fall.
Those who are thinking about leaving the CofE and joining ANiE have as their main case that large swathes of England are at present totally bereft of Gospel witness. One need only look at the dioceses of Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle and the once famous Evangelical deanery of Islington to see how liberal they have all become. Even so-called Evangelical patrons like Simeon’s Trustees and the Church Patronage Society seem to have drifted away from their roots and rarely appoint a conservative Evangelical to their livings these days.
The orthodox therefore find themselves virtually pinned down within their existing ministries, with very few dioceses allowing them freedom to plant new churches in new housing areas. Any co-ordinated efforts to build a network of new congregations will have to come from ANiE and they already show ample signs of taking up this challenge, now helped by the consecration of four new assistant bishops, including the highly regarded Stuart Bell in Wales. Happily, these men have been consecrated in valid Apostolic succession, with archbishops from the thriving persecuted churches of Africa playing a leading part. What a rare privilege to have had such godly hands laid upon them! As representatives of GAFCON and the Global South, these primates command the loyalty of over three quarters of the world’s Anglicans. In this way ANiE can legitimately claim that its churches are 100% Anglican.
