Christianity in England

The current religious situation in England is woefully uncertain. Obviously an academic year in Cambridge—with occasional visits to London, Oxford, Cardiff, and other centers—hardly qualifies one for pronouncing final judgments. And Cambridge weather, notoriously grey and bleak, may limit visibility. For all that, the university’s changing thought patterns remain creative, often brilliantly so at scientific frontiers. But however frequently one sees the term, there is no professional group of “Cambridge theologians,” nor is there a “Cambridge theology.” Cambridge has, rather, a changing constellation of academic stars whose views run the gamut from moderate evangelicalism to radical Bultmannianism.

A deliberate break with logical positivism, which Cambridge philosophers popularized three decades ago before Oxford’s addiction to it, is seen in the fact that the theory is seldom any longer expounded except in critical context. But positivist philosophy still has a purgative effect. However much the metaphysical “veto” may now be rescinded, the widespread aversion to metaphysical affirmation still remains; philosophers of religion tend not to cast their vote.

England today has no philosophical “schools” or “movements” as in the past. The philosophers and theologians (and there are few of the latter) are “waiting for Godot.” Perhaps some Continental scholar will emerge to shake neo-Protestant theology free of Kant’s baneful influence that extends from Ritschl through Barth to Bultmann. Few leaders seem convinced that process-theology presents either coherent philosophy or adequate Christianity.

Yet the Cambridge mood has some noteworthy features. For one thing, the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is rather widely asserted. Professor G. W. H. Lampe speaks only of a “spiritual” resurrection to which he struggles to give objective and external basis, but Professor Donald MacKinnon contends for more. Professor C. F. D. Moule insists that the resurrection of Jesus Christ offers the only convincing explanation of the origin of the New Testament and of the Christian Church; he is prepared to believe—as are a growing number of German theologians today—the empty-tomb report.

There are other facets of the Cambridge scene. One is an almost unquestioned confidence in universal salvation, predicated on a commitment to ultimate divine love. This issues in flat repudiation of propitiatory atonement and in rejection of Jesus’ “hard sayings,” as well as of other New Testament passages indicating final judgment of the lost. Another facet is the absence of any articulate doctrine of divine revelation. While the dialectical-existential internalizing of divine disclosure is widely scorned (Professor D. E. Nineham’s Bultmannian commitment is the outstanding exception), even those who consider revelation a mental concept seem never to clarify just what universally valid truth it conveys. In short, revelation is sketched so largely in terms of personal-inferential factors that its propositional content is extremely nebulous. Any authoritarian view of Scripture is dubbed passé.

On the evangelical side one must recognize the continuing vitality of the Christian Union (in both Cambridge and Oxford), the impressive number of evangelical faculty members in fields other than divinity and philosophy, the growing significance of Tyndale House as an evangelical research center, the gratifying number of evangelical churches in Cambridge, and the evident vitality of dedicated laymen.

Humanly speaking the ecclesiastical outlook in England is not promising. While this may be the great generation of ecumenical advance and of hierarchical mergers, people’s interest in the churches as such continues to wane. Church attendance is low, on the average; in London, All Soul’s (Langham Place) is an exception in attracting a large Sunday-evening gathering. Many persons who surrendered Christian metaphysics and church identification but hoped to cling to the “moral example” of Jesus—encouraged by the “Gifford Lecture” type of public-school religious instruction—have now also switched to another moral code.

The ecumenical picture looks bleak. The Anglican-Methodist merger proposal has been forthrightly attacked by Anglican and Methodist evangelical dissentients as built on ambiguity. Claims that Methodism would inject an evangelical ingredient seem to overlook English Methodism’s long remove from its heritage. Moreover, if the merger succeeds, it is likely to create a new protesting denomination as a byproduct.

Nor is evangelical Christianity in an enviable position. Face to face with an unparalleled opportunity of leadership, it is hurtling, nonetheless, toward division. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered when evangelist Billy Graham came to London for his 1954 crusade, evangelicals united, whatever their ecumenical alignment or non-alignment, and found new strength in evangelistic cooperation. The Evangelical Alliance gathered momentum, and The Christian and Christianity Today widened evangelical support. But within half a generation two factors seem to have polarized evangelicals into divergent groups. The first was the appeal Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones made to English evangelicals to “come out” of the ecumenical polyglot. The other was the Keele Congress, at which 1,000 evangelical Anglicans reaffirmed their evangelical faith and resolved to maintain their witness within the conciliar movement.

Convinced that the historic denominations have drifted beyond recovery, the anti-ecumenical British Evangelical Council is committed long range to an evangelical alternative. Most of its 500 clergy sympathizers are independent, often in small mission-type churches. This group is forging its own new link alongside the Evangelical Alliance.

Anglican evangelicals, numbering some 2,000, many of them younger men, are by far the most significant body of evangelical clergy in England. Their theological colleges have large enrollments. And over the past decade their strength has grown so markedly that the archbishop’s commissions can no longer overlook them. They have made inroads even into liberal pulpits, and one of their number, David Sheppard, has recently been named successor to the controversial Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich. But their primary denominational strategy siphons them away from the Evangelical Alliance.

A further polarization stems from the reemergence of Reformed theology in the last twenty years. Some contributing factors here have been Dr. Lloyd-Jones’s preaching, the annual Puritan Conference, Banner of Truth republications, and the writings of Dr. James Packer, now warden of Latimer House, Oxford. Reformed Anglicans are disposed to remain in their church unless the doctrinal stance of the Thirty-Nine Articles is altered. But some Anglican evangelicals prefer a less schematic Christianity with larger emphasis on evangelism.

It is increasingly apparent that the cause of the Gospel is at stake in England. But evangelical Christians seem still to lack the proper multi-sided conference table for discussing peace negotiations.

CARL F. H. HENRY

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