A Wave of Separatist Baptists Engulfs Britain, Then Recedes

Many Britons resistant to imported crusading approach.

When a boxer stops punching, that’s news. It is also noteworthy when a Jehovah’s Witness quits the Kingdom Hall after 14 years. If the boxing Jehovah’s Witness becomes pastor of an American-style Baptist church in England, that’s an ecclesiastical bombshell.

The preaching prizefighter is Bob Boulton-Lear, and he heads two small separatist congregations near Stoke-on-Trent in England’s industrial midlands. Boulton-Lear has two dozen American colleagues who pastor other fundamentalist fellowships, from Andover in Hampshire to Stirling in Scotland.

One of the Americans is Tom Wallace, a missionary with the Bible Baptists. Wallace gathered about 30 in a home meeting near Nuneaton, in the Birmingham area Mainly he drew children, who are always more ready to rally around foreigners. After four years, however, there were enough adults to erect a small chapel. A loan of $35,000 helped the project along.

A close colleague of Wallace is Don Rice, who leads a congregation of about 60 at the Lighthouse Baptist Church in Castle Bromwich, another Birmingham suburb. Rice represents another independent Baptist mission, Baptist International Missions Inc. (BIMI).

North of the Scottish border, the best established Baptist fundamentalist is James Whitted at Edinburgh. Representing the Bob Jones—related mission, Gospel Projects, Whitted came to Edinburgh in 1977. Across Scotland in Glasgow, Malcolm Edwards (BIMI) has settled in the working-class section of Pollock. There Edwards has a nucleus of 25 adults. His aim is to hand over the church to a Scottish pastor and move on to a new challenge.

In all, six separatist missions are at work in the United Kingdom. Most have arrived since 1972, and they concentrate mainly on the industrial centers of England and Scotland. Baptist Mid-Missions shares the task with Bible Baptist Fellowship International, BIMI, Maranatha Baptist Mission, Gospel Fellowship, and Gospel Projects. At their peak, the six societies fielded a force of 40 missionaries. About 25 now remain.

The Baptists keep in touch with each other through the bimonthly magazine, Bible Truth. Ferrell Kearney is the current publisher-editor of this Sword of the Lord look-alike, the bulk of which stems from Kearney or his predecessor, James Ray. The format is quaint, and the editorial content exhibits a remarkable lack of adaptation to British readership.

Bible Truth boasts a circulation of 2,000, and the editor is obviously a crusader. The masthead declares the issues: it is an “independent Christian periodical” which espouses verbal inspiration, the deity and imminent return of Christ for his church, and proclaims salvation for whosoever will (no Calvinism) by grace through faith. The paper declares war against modernism, worldliness, and formalism.

When the World Council of Churches donated $85,000 to guerrillas in Zimbabwe, Bible Truth lashed out. “No discerning Christian will give one pence [sic] to an organization that supports terror.” The slaughter of British Elim missionaries by the rebels gave the editor a convenient stick with which to beat the WCC.

The same vehemence was poured upon rock and roll. “What’s wrong with rock and roll?” the editor asked rhetorically. “It is all wrong and there is nothing about it that is right,” James Ray railed.

More recently Bible Truth has taken up the cudgel against Britain’s Reformed Baptists (CT, April 4, 1980). “Calvinism is a man-made doctrine, not a doctrine taught in the Bible,” according to editor Ray; sovereign grace limits the love of God. A cartoon continued the conflict. At the same time, the editor claimed Charles Haddon Spurgeon (himself a Calvinist) as an “independent Baptist.”

Predictably, Bible Truth readers did not take this lying down. From Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a Mr. B. Pratt fumed: “I find that certain things you propagate are of dubious nature and would lead many into a serious error of the premillennial return of Christ.” Eschatology is regarded by many Britons to be an American hobby horse.

Bible Truth retains its regular readers by battling against all the usual dragons. Many of these issues are relatively unknown in Britain; still, readers relish the combat between a transatlantic Saint George and the doctrinal reptiles.

Another innovation of the separatist Baptists is the introduction of Accelerated Christian Education into England. Under the leadership of John Pangle at the cathedral city of Coventry, an ACE school has been established. Eight further schools have been franchised: four are currently operating. Recently, 150 attended a conference sponsored by ACE at Coventry.

It is an unusual twist that ACE is spreading mainly among charismatics in England. Stanley Jebb, the charismatic pastor of West Street Baptist Church in Dunstable, set up an ACE school earlier this year, and 21 children are currently enrolled. Jebb expects “a big explosion of Christian schools in England.”

At Fleetwood, an ACE school has 70 pupils. Its headmaster is Michael Smith, a London University Ph.D. in theology. Smith is enthusiastic about the programmed educational aids, and has established the British headquarters at Fleetwood. When asked about the legal status of these schools, Smith replied knowledgeably: “The European Convention guarantees parents the right to have their children educated according to their religious principles. ACE schools provide the means of doing this.”

Needless to say, these sturdy independents have also faced resistance, often from the religious establishment. It is the independent churches, more than the schools, which have drawn fire. Tom Wallace reported that he has faced certain “closed doors because [he is] an American.” British reserve throws up the question: “What are Americans doing in England?” To combat this, a Bible college has been set up at Coventry to train British pastors. It is in its second year, with 15 students enrolled.

Don Rice has faced opposition from the Brethren. They called his church a sect, implying doctrinal aberration. To meet this objection the Baptists are actively involved in meeting other British evangelicals.

It is the separatist stand that causes problems for Bob Boulton-Lear. His insistence on “teetotalism” has alienated several members. They also resist other traditional American taboos, such as popular music and the cinema.

Boulton-Lear also faced official opposition when he was denied the right to purchase an unused Methodist chapel. Despite the generous offer made by the Baptists, the chapel was demolished rather than allowed to fall into their hands.

In Scotland, Malcolm Edwards met a chilly response from the Church of Scotland. Prevailing Calvinism predisposes many Scots against American evangelism. Whitted reported criticism in Edinburgh of his church minibus, which displays the prominently painted slogan, “Jesus Saves.” Whitted’s son-in-law, Derrell Gibbs, is located at Stirling, where he too tangled with the Church of Scotland. His assessment is bolder than the others: “The Church of Scotland is apostate.”

How much of this opposition is deserved can only be surmised. It may be too early to evaluate the impact of the American Baptists in Britain. Do they represent a much-needed life transfusion to ailing British nonconformity? Or are they fated to fade and fail?

No doubt the introduction of virile new concepts for Christian education will win ground in Britain. Modern state-run schools are large and often chaotic. Britain’s pluralistic society raises racial questions to which there are few adequate answers.

Perhaps the separatist Baptist churches contain the seeds of decline. First, by their own admission many pastors have returned to the United States discouraged by the lack of response in Britain. Second, the separatist stand conflicts with traditional British Christian ethics. Third, the churches often attract mainly children and young people: not a solid foundation for church growth.

If British nonconformity (as opposed to Anglicanism) continues its theological and numerical slide, the separatists with their distinctive doctrines and ethic may gain ground. On the other hand, Britons are still conservative enough to stay on the old ship, no matter how steep the list.

World Scene

Twenty-five thousand Costa Rican Roman Catholics met in the national stadium for a six-hour Charismatic Renewal Encounter in February. They listened to testimonies of new-found faith and of healing. Clues to concerns of the hierarchy surfaced in the messages. Monsignor Roman Arrieta, Costa Rica’s archbishop, made an almost frantic appeal to attenders for allegiance to their bishops “so that we may be enlightened by God’s truth.” Other speakers called for renewal experience to move from the purely individual dimension to responsible social concern, and stressed continued veneration of Mary.

A statement by a confederation of Colombian evangelical churches appeared in the national newspaper, El Tiempo, two days after the slaying of Chester Bitterman by urban guerrillas. The statement asserted that evangelicals in the country number more than 2.5 million. “A new Colombia will not be formed through terror and violence,” it declared, “but by knowing the gospel.… We, more than 1,600 pastors, are sure that when Christ permits us to give our lives we will do so in the same way.… For us, to die only because we have renounced … hating or persecuting here on earth, is to begin to live.… Beloved enemies, we love you as Christ loves you and hope that upon reading these lines you recognize that, like us, you are human beings and one day will have to give an account of your deeds to the Creator.”

The Unification Church has lost the longest and most expensive libel suit in English legal history and was ordered to pay costs estimated at more than $1.5 million. Dennis Orme, leader of Sun Myung Moon’s church in Britain, claimed damages against the London Daily Mail for a 1978 article that accused the church of brainwashing converts and breaking up families. The jury, after hearing evidence from more than 100 witnesses over six months, decided unanimously that the Daily Mail was justified in its accusations.

Irish Presbyterians have again elected a conservative as their next moderator. John Girvan, 63, of Lurgan, County Armagh, will assume his one-year term in June. His election dashed liberals’ hopes that their church might soon return to the World Council of Churches fold.

Anglicans are beginning to raise various “hard questions” on the outlook for some form of union with the Roman Catholic church. Delivering Lenten lectures at Westminster Abbey, Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie asked what range of diversity is compatible with unity. He noted that while separation from Rome was intolerable, so was absorption by Rome, considering “the Roman tendency toward an authoritarian centralization and uniformity.” He asked, “What relation would the Vatican have to the various synods of the Anglican Communion?” Also, in a clear reference to the dispute over birth control, Runcie mentioned “moral issues relating to particular interpretation of natural law and the Anglo-Saxon tradition of the informed Christian conscience.”

The German Theological Seminary will move to its own campus this summer. The Greater Europe Mission-supported school has, since its founding in 1974, shared facilities with the German Bible Institute in Seeheim. It will move to Giessen, where it will have a long-term student capacity of 100 students. Cleon Rogers is dean of the four-year school, which is known in Germany as the Free Evangelical Academy. It is called free because it is Germany’s only interdenominational seminary not sponsored by the state (Lutheran) church, and academy because it is not a faculty attached to a university.

The vice-president of the unregistered Baptist Council of Churches in the Soviet Union has been sentenced to five years in a labor camp. Pyotr Rumachik, 49, was tried on March 21, according to information received through the Friedensstimme Mission in West Germany, probably in Dnepropetrovsk, the Ukraine, where he was arrested in August 1980. According to Keston College, Rumachik has spent 12 of the last 20 years in prisons and labor camps. After release from his last three-year term in 1977, he lived with his family for only a year before being forced to go into hiding.

Uganda will again have a white Anglican bishop. The last one was expelled in 1977 during the Idi Amin regime. But now Ugandan Archbishop Silvanus Wani has asked Howell Davies from Surrey, England, to become bishop of Karamoja, the northern sector of the country plagued by famine and tribal conflict. Davies, a former worker with the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society in Africa, accepted, and said it was a privilege to serve a people who “have had the worst the world can hand to them.” He promised to work for reconciliation and regional development.

The Ethiopian government is considering compensating the Lutheran World Federation for its former radio station, nationalized in 1977. The LWF entered a claim in an amount of $8.3 million for its Radio Voice of the Gospel properties, confiscated in September 1977. Its claim was first confirmed in December 1980. Last month, Manfred Lundgren of Sweden, director of the station prior to its nationalization, returned from a five-week stay in Addis Ababa, where he had talks with authorities on the compensation question. Ethiopia’s compensation commission has recently settled compensation claims with a number of commercial enterprises in Ethiopia that also lost their installations.

South African Prime Minister Pieter W. Botha has promised to confiscate the passport of Desmond M. Tutu again on his return from a visit to the United States. Speaking at the United Nations last month, Tutu, a black Anglican bishop who is general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, said millions of blacks in his country are “voiceless” and live under “one of the most vicious systems since Nazism.” The diminutive Tutu speaks strongly both inside and outside South Africa; but election campaign season is on in South Africa, and Tutu is a popular target among Afrikaner audiences.

The mutilated body of a Bible teacher at the Lebanon Evangelical School for Boys was found last month after a 10-day search in the Muslim sector of West Beirut. Jamil Saffouri, 59, is believed to have been killed by Muslim militant extremists who may have resented what acquaintances called “his bold witness.” At his funeral service, a pastor said that Saffouri’s “testimony for his Lord” was not tempered by any “fear of man.” The autopsy report indicated that he had been killed by a gunpowder charge placed around his neck and detonated. A few days later, the custodian of a Baptist church in the same area was attacked by armed men as he took out trash from the church building. Although hospitalized, he refused to press charges, telling police, “I pray that God will forgive them.”

Controversial hydroelectric projects are slated to change the Middle East landscape. The Israeli cabinet has approved construction of a 67-mile canal from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea. The controversial aspect of this project is that it would pass through the four-mile-wide (occupied) Gaza strip. President Anwar Sadat has given the go-ahead for construction of a 35-mile canal from the Mediterranean to the Qattara Depression in Western Egypt—a below-sea-level area about the size of the state of Vermont. The controversial feature of this project centers on discussion about clearing the water course through the high land between the sea and the depression by means of atomic blasting.

Christians in Nagaland, India, are increasing their missionary outreach. The Baptist Council of Churches of one tribal grouping—the Angamis—met in February at Kohima. With 13,000 members, the Angami Baptists already support six evangelists outside Nagaland. At the conference, 19 more made commitments for missionary service. A recent reshuffling of executive posts in the denomination has provided leaders mainly in their twenties and early thirties, and should indicate increased missions vigor. The secretary of the newly formed missions department is Tezashito Terhuza, who is only this year graduating from Union Biblical Seminary at Yavatmal (Yevtmal).

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