Mini-Version of Back to the Future
based on Jonathan Fletcher's booklet.
The following is an adaptation of Jonathan's talk to the 2007 Reform conference. It has been summarised to be suitable for publishing in Parish magazines, newsletters, etc. (If you wish to do so please copy and paste from this page or contact the Reform administrator.)
Best expression of the Protestant Reformation
As a starting position I consider the Church of England, with its Thirty-nine Articles, Ordinal and Book of Common Prayer, to be the best expression of the Protestant Reformation.
The Thirty-nine Articles express the official legal, historical, and theological position of the Church of England - not the Lambeth Conference, or the debates of Synod, or the deeply-flawed Issues in Human Sexuality. This is where we must stand and it is a heritage that we must not forsake. We believe that the Church of England belongs to us and that we belong to it.
Eighteenth century worse than today
In the middle of the eighteenth century the state of the Church of England was far, far worse than it is today. In the mid-1750s on Easter Day in St Paul’s Cathedral there were a total of six people. Six undergraduates were sent down from Oxford for reading the Bible. The celebrated lawyer, Blackstone, early in the reign of George III went out of curiosity from church to church to hear every clergyman of note in London. He says that he did not hear a single discourse that had more Christianity in it than the writings of Cicero and that it would have been impossible for him to discover from what he heard whether the preacher was a follower of Confucius, Mohammed, or Christ.
Yet over the next century things changed dramatically so that by the middle of the nineteenth century a third of the clergy in the Church of England, it is estimated, were evangelical, the great missionary societies had been founded, the Clapham Sect was achieving great things, and at least three-quarters of the societies that were trying to ameliorate the situation were of Evangelical foundation.
There were a number of contributing factors to that improvement, but in his book Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century Bishop J.C. Ryle’s theory was that it could be put down to a ‘first eleven’ of eighteenth-century Christian leaders. What can we learn from them today?
Staying Evangelical
Firstly, these leaders held firm to their evangelical doctrine and convictions, although there was the constant pressure to ‘move on’ (actually meaning ‘move away’). We will be called narrow, blinkered, obscurantist, fundamentalist and extreme. Tragically, those who were once with us in Christian Unions, CYFA and Pathfinder camps are very angry with us. It is almost as though they hate us, probably because we have not moved with them. When that excellent Covenant for the Church of England, which has a broader base of support than Reform, was produced a year ago, vitriolic attacks came from those who would call themselves evangelicals.
True to the Church of England
Secondly, those eleven leaders remained in the Church of England, excepting Daniel Rowlands who was ejected, despite great pressure to leave. Nor did they necessarily seek out what could be called ‘strategic places’, but went wherever they could and by preaching the Bible they made those places strategic. John Berridge went to Everton in Bedfordshire. William Grimshaw went to Haworth in Yorkshire. Samuel Walker went to Truro. There are strategic places - university towns and so on- but the danger of talking too much in those terms is that it makes people who are working in the Old Kent Road or Streatham Vale or Burford or Yeovil feel that they are doing something second-rate.
Theologically we must be convinced that the Church of England is the right place to be. Pastorally, we dare not leave the sheep without shepherds. Geographically and pastorally it is significant that the Church of England has been able to maintain at least a physical presence in tough areas because we are a connectional church.
Principled Irregularity
Thirdly, they thought outside the box. They kept the law, but they were not bound by conventions and structures. The result is that they did things that were deemed highly irregular, for example field preaching and going into other people’s parishes when invited. First and foremost they worked their parishes. On occasion they went beyond them.
Today there are very exciting initiatives taking place. The challenge of reaching the nation for Christ – the fact that there can be no ‘no-go’ areas for the gospel – means principled irregularity has to be what we need. In a sense because of Fresh Expressions the door is open for us and a number of initiatives are taking place.
Practised what they preached
Fourthly, they lived holy lives. It was said of Grimshaw that he was marked by a rare diligence and self-denial, but he was pre-eminently a peace-maker, and he was marked by a rare humility, a rare charity and brotherly love. Preachers of the gospel of grace must manifest grace in their lives.
Likewise, we must not neglect holiness. It is very easy to be provoked, and to boil internally with some of the things that are said to us, but we have got to control ourselves. We may indeed disagree very seriously with much of what the Archbishop of Canterbury says but it cannot be right to be rude and offensive. He never is himself. So we must match our gospel of grace with lives of grace and we must concentrate on holiness of living.
Conclusion
But those men did make a change - slowly - it took several decades - when the Church of England and the nation was in a far worse state than conceivable today. They stood by their evangelical convictions, they preached the Word, and the situation changed.
We have got an enormous battle on our hands. The situation is not as bad as it was in the eighteenth century, but we are campaigning for the reform of the Church of England and our sights are set on the evangelisation of our nation: that is where we are heading. The lesson from the past is that we must hold fast to our theological convictions; we must continue to strive for that holiness without which no-one will see the Lord; we must have a loyalty to the Church of England and remember that this is the place to be; there must be a boldness as we think outside the box with principled irregularity.
Lastly, an appeal that we maintain unity. For example there is going to be disagreement over what we advise bishops to do about Lambeth. Similarly, there are secondary issues where we will disagree: creationism; limited atonement; annihilationism. I am not suggesting that every position is equally valid on those issues, but we need to trust one another more and have a greater humility towards one another.