Many of us in the Church of England have acquired labels, self-designated or otherwise, to describe what is known as our churchmanship. The labels that are given us, or we give ourselves, are a bit like a foreign language to those not in the know. Evangelicals especially have many varieties – open, post, conservative and moderate to name but a few. High Church Anglicans also have an equally bewildering cluster of labels which normally centre around the word catholic. The best way to penetrate the confusion of these labels is, in most cases, to find out who is the leader or mentor that a particular individual identifies with. This is a particularly useful method when we try and understand the tribal complexities of the world of Anglican evangelicalism. These identified leaders of the various evangelical groups will each have a distinct nuanced take on a variety of topics within the parameters of evangelical thinking. They will have an opinion on the topics of the day, women’s ministry, speaking in tongues, same sex marriage, critical views on the Bible and the question of who outside the group can be associated with. But the nature of human groups also means that, even when we have identified leaders and those who identify with them, we will find nothing permanent about them. Loyalties and allegiances will be in a constant state of flux. Officially all evangelicals are bound by a central statement of faith. That statement of faith should make them a united and an unchallengeably powerful group in the Church of England. But the reality is different. To take one example. When GAFCON was formed in 2008 to protest the liberal tendencies in the Anglican Communion, many English evangelicals rallied round the so-called Jerusalem Declaration. The current support for this group has weakened somewhat over the past twelve years. At present GAFCON UK struggles to pay for a full-time administrator. The strength of this organisation exists elsewhere – Australia, Africa and the States but not in England. In the same way we learn from contributors to this blog about the varying fortunes of the Evangelical Group on General Synod (EGGS) group. Once again, accepting the testimony of our contributors, we learn that this group has lost some of its power by insisting on adhering to a politically hard-line statement of evangelical belief.
In summary what we are claiming is that the ‘Momentum’ faction among Church of England evangelicals seems less powerful today. My last blog was on the power of the CEEC to represent and speak for Anglican evangelicals. It seems that the video The Beautiful Story has exposed several new fissures in the evangelical monolith in Britain. Not every evangelical wants to have their belief system articulated by others or to be told what they think about every detail of personal sexual morality. The nuances of personal history and belief are seldom articulated satisfactorily by others. Not everyone finds it helpful to hang their personal belief statement on a list of propositions prepared by a committee in perhaps another country. Tribal/party positioning and systems of belief may be becoming less important for the same reasons that churchmanship labels have declined in importance.
There is one further generalisation about the Church of England connected with churchmanship, which it is important to examine. It is reported that most Church of England bishops in post are evangelicals. The truth of this statement could be determined by an examination of each of their personal histories in the Crockford Directory. I have not done that piece of research, but I make these comments on the assumption that this statement is likely to be true. Simultaneously we note that the evangelical label seems not to make any but a tiny minority of this group card-carrying activists in the style of Labour’s Momentum. Few appear to identify with or follow the narrow tribalism of the big ReNew parishes in London and elsewhere. Few have openly supported the CEEC makers of the video The Beautiful Story. At best, we can describe this cohort of evangelical bishops in the House of Bishops as being cultural evangelicals. The evangelical tradition is somewhere in their Christian stories. Pragmatically, it does not represent everything they are now. For example, this group of bishops seem to realise that whatever their beliefs are, it is not prudent or helpful to engage in theological controversy with those who do not agree with them. We are all relieved that it is impossible to take out a CDM simply because one member of the church does not agree with the theology of another member. If bishops and others were political in this sense, arguing constantly about theological issues, that would be a seriously disruptive and unsettling situation. In one diocese a bishop, now retired, made a point of appointing only conservative evangelicals of the same tribe as himself. That left a legacy which is hard to undo and this diocese will be marked (and weakened) by this political intervention for a generation.
I began by mentioning that churchmanship labels are often self-designated. I thought it might be useful to take the example of one individual and explain how churchmanship loyalties can start but also change. This example involves my own story and goes back to the autumn of 1964 when I first arrived as an undergraduate in Oxford. From the point of view of ecclesiastical choices, Oxford was like a fabulous restaurant offering a myriad of dishes. It was hard to choose. On the very first Sunday (after attending college chapel) I had a choice of attending St Aldates, the lively evangelical church in the centre of the city or the cathedral right opposite. Why was I considering St Aldates? The reason was that a teacher at the school I had attended in Eastbourne eleven years before (aged 7) was the sister of the Rector, Keith de Berry. I felt some distant loyalty to an evangelical past which I had met at her school. But there was another churchmanship loyalty which I also needed to honour. This was my formation in a cathedral choir school from the age of eight. This had inculcated a love of polyphonic music to be heard barely two hundred yards away on the other side of the road at Christ Church Cathedral. A busy road separated these two ecclesiastical worlds. The story does not resolve itself in a tidy way. After a few weeks alternating between the two, I found myself at Pusey House, a very high church institution. I eventually graduated to the role of thurifer. This allowed me to perfect the skill of generating enormous clouds of incense at High Mass. I wonder if health and safety rules would now allow so much smoke in church!
The lesson I took from Oxford was that worship (and churchmanship) cultures come with many different forms. Although the differences can be described in cultural terms, the important thing is that different groups of people become accustomed to the variety of practices we describe as worship. Experiencing everything from Christian Union meetings to Orthodox liturgies meant one important thing for me personally. No one would ever be able to convince me that a single form of worship should take precedence over all others. Later I spent two years studying for a higher degree in the theology of the Orthodox liturgy. Although I cannot write about my findings here, I can share a couple of sentences. The Eastern Orthodox experience of worship is quite distinctive in the way that, unlike the west, it honours imagery and visual experience. The worshipper ‘sees’ divine reality in the liturgy far more than he/she hears and interprets spoken words, understanding them in a cerebral way.
The conclusion I want to offer my reader is that churchmanship is always going to vary across the church-going population. It is never a question of establishing right and wrong in this area. Differing theological ideas may be often far closer to each other than the rules of logic might suggest. Worship, whether through silence, raucous singing or the still perfection of a Palestrina mass, will communicate God to different people. It will also be wrong to suggest to another Christian that his/her experience of worship is wrong in some way. It is also wrong automatically ever to assume that what someone else believes is wrong. There may be times when I need to question this idea, but I have a sense, honed by my rich exposure to the variety of religious expression in Oxford all those years ago, that our approach to another person’s experience of God must normally be one of humble awe.
I too sampled a rich variety of Anglican worship styles while at Oxford. I took it as a good opportunity to to get to know the Church of England a little better, since I was still a relatively new Anglican. I never really settled in one particular church – which would have been difficult anyway, with termtime church placements – but probably attended St. Aldates and Christ Church more than the others. At the time, my ideal church would have been one which had elements of each.
I’m intrigued, though, to know what is the ‘central tatement of faith that all evangelicals follow’?
I worded that badly but I keep coming across statements of faith in all the evo web-sites which seem similar to each other. The CEEC one is the one I looked at most recently and from memory it is like the Christian Union one and the one for GAFCON.
Yes, they would be similar. Not all evangelicals would be able to sign up to them, however. I think most Anglican evangelicals would accept the Apostles Creed as being a good statement of faith.
There’s an interesting contribution on this subject, “What does it mean to call myself evangelical”, from Thomas Renz here – https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/what-does-it-mean-to-call-myself-evangelical/
Hi Leslie. I’m afraid I have a problem with any group who say, “God created men and women”, because that isn’t true. You do need the premises upon which you build to be correct.
Hi EA – I don’t have a problem there, I would be more aligned with J.K. Rowling but there we are.
On your bit about hymns I remember hearing an old tongue-in-cheek test to discern an evangelical Church . Check – the Quality of the singing / the size of the offering / the number who turned up their Bibles at the sermon / and the length of time they took to disperse after the service. A good score on the four and you were probably in an Evangelical Church.
Intersex isn’t trans, Leslie. Google it, this is a family show!
Agreed. Intersex is a biological fact. Even evangelicals need to pay some attention to science.
Hi EA and Janet – Why do you think I am not aware of Intersex? Of course I am.
Sorry, Leslie, no offence intended. It was when you mentioned JK Rowling. She got into trouble for talking about trans people. And it was the implied denial of the existence of intersex in the link you posted that attracted my attention.
Was there a denial of intersex in it? I probably didn’t read it closely enough. I only flagged it up because it came up today (or yesterday) and seemed to be worthwhile in the context of the present blog. I wasn’t trying to make it my own.
If he denied intersex that would be silly.
But I’m not troubled by the idea of God’s revelation speaking of his creation of humanity being in terms of relationship. I love the verses saying “Let us make Man in our own image, Male and Female made he them” .
To me (and please, I’m not trying to make universal dogma here) Man, generic, or Humankind if you prefer, is spelt out in the relationship of the Same but Different. In a sense the image of God does not lie so much in the individual but in the couple. The male/female couple is the image of God.
There you go, my attempt at understanding the why of the family and what God has to say of himself through it.
Thanks!
I agree that the ability to relate is a key part of what it means to be made in the image of God (in the Hebrew ‘Elohim’, which is plural). But ‘the image of God does not lie so much in the individual but in the couple. The male/female couple is the image of God’? That’s taking it too far. It excludes not only same-sex couples, but also children, single people, widows, widowers, and divorcees.
Genesis can equally be read as saying what we find in practice is true – that each of us has both male and female attributes, to differing degrees and in different combinations. This reading is consistent with the existence of intersex people and every conceivable expression of gender, and sees every healthy human relationship, even if flawed, as being an expression of God’s image in us.
Even those without any apparent relationships or ability to relate are still in the image of God. That’s why we care for people who are severely disabled, emotionally crippled, or unconscious. That’s why we have funeral rites even for the Ian Bradys, Myra HIndleys, and Yorkshire Rippers among us. We, every one of us, bear Gods’ image.
Hi Janet. Yes I agree the idea of seeing the image of God in the twoness of the male/female relationship can be scary to the individual person but it needn’t be. Our temptation as individuals is to reverse the image making and to want God to be made in our image as individual but he isn’t, he is trinity and relationship is of his essence. Jesus said I and the Father are one, he in me and I in him (though they are different) and his desire for us is that we be included in this relationship such that he together with us completes us and makes our twoness. Christ is our partner or to put it more biblically, we are the Bride of Christ.
The Genesis story does put it that way however
I would like to look at direction first of all and start with
Woops – last words of my reply should have been deleted, they are disconnected fragments.
…. and a quick reply… Man/Man or Woman/Woman does not give the same metaphor as Male/Female – the same but different .
I’m replying to the comment below, but the ‘reply’ button is missing.
‘Seeing the image of God in the twoness of the male/female relationship can be scary’ – no, it isn’t scary. Simply unhelpful (from my point of view at least) and, I think, misleading. The Trinity are not two but three, after all.
My point is that relating with love and interdependence (if we can use ‘dependence’ of God) is the image of God as seen in all human relationships that aren’t actually abusive. It’s not just, or even mainly, about the physical and emotional union between one man and one woman.
This is too long a discussion to take up on Stephen’s blog So let’s agree to differ here. Blessings.
I think the Bishop you mentioned was part of a cruel experiment by the powers that be to get rid of anyone faintly middle of the road. Have they gone back I wonder, to review the success or otherwise of their efforts. With such a high proportion of extreme evangelicals, are all the churches full to overflowing? All the coffers groaning? All the clergy settled and happy? No? When you take radical action, you really need to check the results.
By the by. If you want to know a person’s churchmanship, ask them what hymns they sing.
I don’t alas know the bishop or diocese you are talking about. I can’t somehow imagine the C of E engaging in a cruel experiment of this kind. The powers that be of whom you speak must have more cunning than I imagine. However I do think the C of E is extremely bad at ever evaluating its seemingly endless stream of initiatives.
Authenticity is something I look for in worship. You can be authentically “happy clappy” or “bells and smells”. Or inauthentic in either. I enjoy polyphonic classics and a song written last night with a handful of guitar chords. But both can be indulgent or crass.
Some churches have dropped the title “Evangelical” because it has become a little pejorative, but remain Evangelical in ethos. Some churches, as we discussed before, are evangelical about not being evangelical.
In many notionally evangelical churches, hardly anyone is particularly evangelical except the pastor, who exhorts every one else to be evangelical.
I suspect many churches are populated according to demographic provision. Is there a crèche and good Sunday schools? Expect young families. Are there intellectual sermons by Russell league/oxbridge speakers? Expect university students. Many seem to put up with ideas they don’t fully agree with if the provision is right for them.
I’ve not toured churches to any great extent, but when I have done, it’s seems remarkable how similar they are. Statements of faith occasionally come out in a formal creed, but often statements of faith are just as carefully emphasised in a studied and well planned informality.
I’ll come back to authenticity. Am I authentic in worship? If not it’s time to step aside and get myself right with God.
Good points. Also people stay in a community with which they are familiar. And as clergy flit from flower to flower, they say, “This too shall pass” and let it flow over them!
Yes, they do. One place I attended, they were very sniffy about people leaving. It felt like we were deserters. A few months later we discovered the incumbent was applying for a job at our new place! Ok for some.
There is a marked inertia and an affinity with buildings. I can understand the associations of a beautiful space, but for me the pillars were people, and when they left or died, there wasn’t a lot left.
Indeed!
I don’t alas know the bishop or diocese you are talking about. I can’t somehow imagine the C of E engaging in a cruel experiment of this kind. The powers that be of whom you speak must have more cunning than I imagine. However I do think the C of E is extremely bad at ever evaluating its seemingly endless stream of initiatives.
Stephen, great to hear of your singing Palestrina and co. I was in the Trinity College Cambridge Chapel Choir – similar fare, I guess. Also, Google Mosaic Chamber Choir and see if you can see my haggard face on one of our numbers…
On the point of the blog, labels divide, to my mind. I try to avoid them, having Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians one in mind.
I’ve never been keen on labels. Grew up in a C of E ‘gathered’ church because it had a huge children’s and young people’s ministry. Experienced the charismatic revival. Then went to All Saints Margaret Street and grew to love love that sort of worship. Since then I’ve been at whatever was my nearest parish church – all pretty middle-of-the-road. Always been ecumenical, from being secretary of a local council of churches to hanging out with a lot of free church people, as a street pastor. ‘Churchmanship’ makes very little sense to me. Ubi caritas…
I did a stint with our local “Street Angels” a dozen years ago, and it was the closest thing I’ve experienced to pure church: literally ministering to a diverse mix of often intoxicated strangers in the middle of the night. I thoroughly enjoyed it except the hours.
The “Angels” were eclectically drawn from many local churches, Roman Catholic to Free. We wore a single uniform. Labels were completely forgotten. I was told one of the only churches to refuse to join was a conservative Baptist which couldn’t tolerate the Catholics.
When people are splattered on the pavement after a fight, or not able to find the station because they’re too drunk, no one really cares about the minutiae of our ecclesiastical subdivisions.
Thanks Helen for your refreshing approach.
Steve, The Lighthouse here in Woking is like Street Angels during the day time, offering a dozen projects of love and help (food bank, toy bank, friendship etc.). The helpers come from all the churches across the borough, like you experienced. Pleasing.
Sounds good David!
Similar experience here in Burton with the homeless shelter at one of “my” former churches. More than a few volunteers were atheists – wouldn’t under any circumstances have anything to do with the institutional church. But they lived the gospel. It reminded me that Jesus came to abolish religion.
I think I do know the diocese you are referring to – or at least another where something very similar happened. In the case I know it was fascinating to see one person after another being appointed to this or that post in the certainty that they could deliver the Holy Grail (or fulfil this or that aspect of the ‘Diocesan Strategy’) and then finding themselves on the back burner when they couldn’t, didn’t or wouldn’t. The result was that clergy morale, already weakened by this drive towards a particular kind of ‘orthodoxy’ was further demoralised. Good news is, however that wise and sensitive leadership, has already begun to address the situation and good priests, including some who would (years ago) call themselves liberal evangelicals are ‘finding their feet’ – and in some cases their faith – again
You’re right about the tribalism. At my theological college you had to sign a 16 item Declaration of Faith if you wanted a book grant from a certain source, but if you were of a mind to get the weighty Banner of Truth books – the Puritan strand, the Declaration of Faith a list of 23. And so it goes on.
What you say is always good news, in both senses, in any Diocese.
I recall being given a boarding pass on a flight to a country in Europe years ago which required me to fill in Grandmothers’ maiden names. Did the grant require those?