Four years ago Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, pastor of the influential Westminster Chapel, London, issued a stirring challenge to evangelicals to leave the mainline denominations and their reputed guilty associations. One result of this was the rejuvenation of the British Evangelical Council (BEC) with prominence given to a doctrine of separation held by many evangelical free churches.
The BEC has now made it extremely difficult for its regional fellowships to include evangelical congregations “actively linked with any local or national expression of the ecumenical movement as headed up by the World Council of Churches.” Exception is made only for an individual church whose members inform “the denominational authorities that they dissociate themselves from their denomination’s involvement in, and financial support of” WCC affiliations.
Some BEC supporters are nevertheless uneasy that their local fellowships may conflict with Evangelical Alliance groups already in existence, and it was agreed that such specific cases be examined one by one.
At a recent BEC session, Lloyd-Jones quoted a reference to himself in an unidentified American magazine as “the devil’s agent, dividing evangelicals in Britain.” It may be significant that in seeking his successor as pastor, the Westminster Chapel vacancy committee failed to get an assurance from one candidate that he would not appear on any Evangelical Alliance platform.
It was from such a platform in 1965 that Lloyd-Jones urged evangelicals to move out of the WCC’s orbit. While the charge of diabolical involvement is unsubstantiated, it is irrefutable that the veteran Welsh preacher’s views on separation have split evangelical ranks.
J. D. DOUGLAS
