Letters

Basic Christianity— with an Oxbridge Accent

Having recently arrived in the States after spending many years in evangelical circles in the United Kingdom, I was most interested to read Bruce Hindmarsh’s piece [September/October].

So many of his observations on the kind of evangelicalism which is associated with John Stott were accurate and perceptive that it came as a surprise to see two major faux pas in what he wrote, the one factual and the other, on his own admission, quite speculative. Both concern the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

The factual error is that Lloyd-Jones did not call on evangelicals to leave their denominations at the Evangelical Alliance meeting in Central Hall, Westminster in 1966 which was chaired by John Stott. What the Doctor said then was known in advance to those who had invited him to speak and it is now published in Knowing the Times (Banner of Truth Trust [1989], pp. 246-57). He called evangelicals to come together, not uttering one word about separation. His message was positive and was pro-unity and not separatist let alone schismatic. To tell the truth, he believed that evangelicals were already guilty of the sin of schism because they were separated church-wise from each other. It was in 1967 that he issued the call to withdraw and this was in the interests of “gospel purity” as David Bebbington rightly noted.

Secondly, Hindmarsh speculates on what might have happened if Lloyd-Jones’ call had been heeded and envisages the possibility that he would, Machen-like, have led “Reformed evangelicals into an ‘Orthodox Anglican Church.'” To anyone who knew Lloyd-Jones this is not credible. First, he had no ambition to be a leader of any denomination. He confessed he had no blueprint for ecclesiastical structures and no gift for administration. That oversight on Hindmarsh’s part is perhaps pardonable. But to entertain the notion that Lloyd-Jones could become a leader of an “Anglican Church”, even an “orthodox” one, requires a stretch of the imagination which is just impossible. Lloyd-Jones was a non-conformist, a Dissenter: Anglicanism is by definition episcopalian. While there is no doubt that his preaching and wisdom would have been a formative and pervasive influence among orthodox churches, the church scene which he argued for was that of a fellowship of independent churches whose confessional statement was evangelical and Calvinistic.

To the books on evangelicalism which Hindmarsh reviews so helpfully another has just been added. It is by Iain Murray and is entitled Evangelicals Divided. This book describes the real difficulties which the evangelicalism associated with Billy Graham and John Stott has raised for a large number of evangelical people and churches in the United Kingdom and also in the United States as well. Perhaps Hindmarsh will review this book in your pages.

Hywel R. Jones Westminster Theological Seminary Escondido, Calif.

Bruce Hindmarsh replies:

Professor Jones claims that Lloyd-Jones did not call on evangelicals to leave their denominations at the Evangelical Alliance meeting in 1966. I do want to be fair to Lloyd-Jones, and perhaps I should have said that it was widely perceived that he was calling upon evangelicals to leave mixed denominations such as the Church of England. Lloyd-Jones had made such remarks as these: “Are we content, as evangelicals, to go on being nothing but an evangelical wing of a church? … To remain in a church in which there are many who may hold views … which we deplore.” And again, “I know that there are men, ministers and clergy, in this congregation at the moment, who, if they did what I am exhorting them to do, would have a tremendous problem before them, even a financial, an economic and a family problem” (Knowing the Times, pp. 251, 256). Were evangelicals such as John Stott really wrong to see this as a call to withdraw from the Church of England?

The books I was reviewing for Books & Culture demonstrate how widely it was perceived to be so. Roger Steer claimed that Lloyd-Jones “called on Evangelicals to leave their denominations and form a national Evangelical church” (p. 224). Oliver Barclay noted that he used the phrase “come out” and spoke of the need for sacrifice if necessary (p. 83). And David Bebbington observed that this address in 1966 was taken as a sensational suggestion “that Christians should leave their existing denominations for the sake of gospel purity” (p. 370).

My counter-factual speculation about a wholesale evangelical secession from the Church of England, and my comparison to Machen and the Presbyterian secession—well, yes, this was meant to stretch the imagination in a “what if” sort of way. I agree that it would stretch the imagination a little too far to imagine Lloyd-Jones in a mitre.

Still, Professor Jones’s letter is interesting to me as a Canadian observer with no particular axe to grind against Lloyd-Jones. It suggests to me that there is still considerable tension in Britain about what constitutes “gospel purity” in a kingdom with a national church, and that the Stott-Lloyd-Jones standoff was a defining moment for many.

I should point out that even if Lloyd-Jones was “pro-unity and not separatist,” it would not be the first time that evangelicals ideals of unity have been divisive. From the earliest days of the Evangelical Revival in Britain, George Whitefield proclaimed the spiritual union of all who had experienced the New Birth and John Wesley upheld an ideal of catholicity. But ironically the movement was dogged by separatism from the beginning as Whitefield and Wesley divided over Calvinism, the Methodists and the Moravians over quietism, the Methodists and many Anglican evangelicals over church order, and so on. The call for unity (even Lloyd-Jones’s call for unity in 1966) invites the question, “Unity on what terms?”