As If It Were up to Us

God’s sovereignty exists apart from any human collaboration, and from that we can take heart.

When i opened my diary at 1980 1 knew there was something special about it, but that fugitive thought led me a merry dance. 1980. Bachelors beware (Gregory XIII was not your friend). The one-hundred-second rchbishop of Canterbury takes office. 1,460 days to Orwell. All true, but irrelevant.

I tried centenaries but 1980 is light on such. Thomas à Kempis would have been 600, Thomas Chalmers 200, Homer Rodeheaver 100.

Then I nailed it. Summer 1964. The British Faith and Order Conference at Nottingham had prophesied great things for 1980. I have two chief memories of that 1964 occasion. One was of singing “For All the Saints” when suddenly I was beset by a bout of free-ranging imagination. Looking at the spacious upper reaches of Nottingham University’s Great Hall, I sensed that they were crammed with a celestial company looking down on us and perhaps wondering how much we meant it. I am no mystic (no one will challenge that), but the exhilarating vision persisted until rude recollection came that heaven, alas, was no longer “up there.” I’ll never forgive the erstwhile bishop of Woolwich for that.

It was the second memory that concerned 1980. From one of the conference subsections came what Norman Goodall called a “splendidly irrational symbol,” later embodied in resolutions passed by a large majority. Here are the first two: “United in our urgent desire for One Church Renewed for Mission, this conference invites the member Churches of the British Council of Churches, in appropriate groupings, such as by nations, to covenant together to work and pray for the inauguration of union by a date agreed among them.

“We dare to hope that this date should not be later than Easter Day, 1980. We believe that we should offer obedience to God in a commitment as decisive as this.”

Most denominational leaders supported the plan (the archbishop in Wales was a rare exception). Considering that 20 denominations were represented at Nottingham, this was indeed a remarkable result.

There were other memorable aspects of that gathering. Its chairman, Dr. Oliver Tomkins, bishop of Bristol, stressed that unity was not necessarily a good thing in itself—“the massive merger of unrepentant, unrenewed, self-regarding ‘denominations’ would be a disaster” and could not happen, for his Satanic Majesty, the Author of Confusion, would have overreached himself. The real fiasco, continued the bishop, “could lie in our going away unchanged, deaf to the Spirit and blind to each other.”

On the same theme, World Council of Churches general secretary Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft said that our apparent deadlock on church unity must remind us that unity is not man-made but God-given, that “we are receivers, not creators. So we must get rid of all pride, stop talking about our great churches with their impressive history, forget church statistics which are anyway notoriously misleading, and come together as what we really are: beggars who depend wholly on the grace of God.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey expressed the hope that there would emerge “a new awareness of a missionary scene … of Christ weeping over the city which does not know the things which belong to its peace; the unbelief, the apathy, the moral chaos, the spectacle of eternal loss.”

Sixteen years have passed. All three of those speakers have retired, and it is as though their words had never been. The covenant subscribed by such a large majority at Nottingham has been forgotten. And here we are at Easter 1980. A few remember Nottingham, but otherwise the Waters of Lethe have done their fell work. And when I think now of the enthusiastic assembly I can’t help applying to it those splendidly irreverent words:

Hans Breitmann gife a barty–

Vhere ish dat barty now?

Only 2 of the 20 denominations at Nottingham have got together: in 1972, English and Welsh Congregationalists merged with English Presbyterians and became the 200,000-strong United Reformed Church. Not all agreed to the unión, though; some opted to remain Congregationalists, and two Presbyterian congregations in the Channel Islands retained that polity by improbably (see a map) joining the Church of Scotland.

The post-Nottingham scene was otherwise bleak. Dating between churches has not been repeated, going steady has come to nothing, engagements have been broken off, one of them just before wedding day. Despite the backing of both archbishops, the Church of England turned down union with the Methodists. Scottish Methodists declined union with the Church of Scotland. Anglican-Presbyterian talks were again broken off, foundering on the rock of the historic episcopate. Within the transdenominational evangelical ranks, Church of England representatives insensitively gave the impression of having decided to concentrate on their own church’s affairs. From a section of non-Anglican evangelicaldom had earlier come an appeal for those in mainline denominations to leave their guilty associations. And as if the Nottingham 1964 resolutions were not sufficiently in ruins the World Council of Churches fanned the flames of dissension by the hamfisted way it was operating its Programme to Combat Racism.

Reflecting on all this, one might be forgiven for concluding that the Author of Confusion had orchestrated his diabolical symphony just right. In 1980, as an Anglican dean points out, 90 percent of English people are not regular members of any worshiping community. Here in Saint Andrews, the old ecclesiastical capital of Scotland where John Knox once ministered, town and gown between them can muster no more than a 10 percent attendance at worship on an average Sunday. One has to go to Northern Ireland to see enthusiastic British churchgoing!

I am uneasy about such a dismal recital, and conscious that faithful witness to Christ is continuing in this nation, deserving of an article in itself. I tried to sum up my views on the foregoing:

1. The Bible does not call for organic unity.

2. Headcounting is no sort of reflection of the extent of Christ’s victory.

3. Why am I surprised that the love of many is waxing cold (that’s biblical)?

4. God is working his purpose out. In William Temple’s words, “While we deliberate, He reigns; when we decide wisely … (or) foolishly, He reigns; when we serve Him self-assertively … (or) rebel, He reigns—the Alpha and the Omega which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” To believe that is to go unafraid into the 1980s.

J. D. Douglas is an author and journalist living in Saint Andrews, Scotland.

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