American evangelicals whose only acquaintance with Anglicanism is with the Episcopal Church of the United States are often surprised to discover the strength of evangelical witness within the Church of England. Since the end of World War II the evangelical movement within England’s national church has steadily grown and deepened. Starting as a despised minority, it became politely tolerated and is now a force that is respected by most, is looked to for leadership by some, and can be ignored by none.
The Church at large became aware of this development in 1967 when about a thousand people gathered at Keele University for the first National Evangelical American Congress. A decade later, just after Easter this year, nearly two thousand assembled at Nottingham University for the second, with the theme “Obeying Christ in a Changing World.” The pre-congress study material had been published in three paperback symposiums entitled The Lord Christ, The People of God, and The Changing World. At the congress itself the authors responded to the responses they had received to these, and then the debate was taken a stage further in innumerable study groups. The participants (two-thirds of whom were lay men and women) threw themselves with evident relish into three and a half days of hard intellectual work. And each morning and evening in plenary session we celebrated the supreme Lordship of Jesus Christ with great joy. [The Current Religious Thought column in this issue contains another report on the Nottingham congress; see page 41.—ED.]
Now the 20,000-word Nottingham Statement has been published by Falcon Press (50 p.). It claims to be neither a comprehensive nor an authoritative declaration of what Anglican evangelicals believe, for it contains both gaps and a few inner contradictions, and no part of the text received a final endorsement from more than one of nine subplenary sessions. Nevertheless, the Nottingham Statement does claim to be a faithful expression of the mind of the Nottingham Congress. It should stimulate and provide material for further debate.
In the statement, familiar evangelical beliefs are reasserted with conviction, but also often with a difference. For example, the Incarnation is called “the foundation truth on which Christianity rests” (para. B.1), and “the bishops of the Church of England as guardians of its doctrine” are solemnly called upon “to confirm the church’s historic faith concerning the person of Jesus Christ the Lord” (B.2). At the same time, Jesus is declared to be “a real man in every way,” and we confess that “we have not always taken full account of Jesus’ humanness” (B.3). The “divine inspiration of Scripture, its entire trustworthiness, the sufficiency of its teaching for salvation, and its unique authority” are all reaffirmed (D.1), for “it is our abiding evangelical conviction that in order to obey Christ we must obey Scripture” (A.7). At the same time, we confess our failures in study and obedience, and we commit ourselves to a “creative listening” to the text that takes with proper seriousness the cultural horizons of both biblical author and Bible reader (D.2).
On the subject of mission, after an appreciative reference to the Archbishops’ “Call to the Nation” in 1975, the hope is expressed that “some kind of ‘Mission to the Nation’ may follow it.” Important convictions are then added that “regional enterprise is greatly preferable to a centrally imposed plan,” and that “every coordinated evangelistic effort requires a common statement of faith and purpose, a diversity of approaches and methods, and a commitment to continuous outreach” (A.4).
The large central section of the statement is devoted to contemporary church issues that we evangelicals have sometimes ducked. The Church’s identity is refreshingly redefined in terms of a threefold “commitment”—to “Christian truth” (Scripture as God’s revelation and the creeds as the historic expression of Christian faith), to “a Christian lifestyle” (including the two sacraments of the Gospel), and to an “every-member ministry” (E.3). This latter point receives particularly strong emphasis. “Christianity is a one-caste religion. All Christians are equally called to minister to Christ in the world.… Clerical professionalism has gravely inhibited the proper development of the diversity of ministries. We deplore the prevalent pattern of ‘one-man ministries.’ … The New Testament pattern is always for a group of presbyters to form the leadership” (J.1 and 2). Moreover, “we repent of our failure to give women their rightful place as partners in ministry with men,” a statement balanced by the qualification that many believe preserves a permanent biblical truth: “Leadership in the church should be plural and mixed, ultimate responsibility normally singular and male” (J.6).
Two sections bravely tackle questions of church unity as they relate both to the “Ten Propositions” now being debated by English churches and to the Roman Catholic Church. Our goal is reaffirmed on biblical grounds as a unity that becomes visible when Christians “not only share in a common baptism and a common confession of faith, welcome each other to the Lord’s Table and work together in mission, but also merge their institutional structures to the point where there ceases to be any concept of ‘each other’ but only of a common life of all” (L.1). The present state of play in Anglican-Roman Catholic discussions is described: it is firmly but courteously stated that “agreement on fundamental doctrines must precede any formal act of reunion” (M.1); and some penetrating requests are made for clarification, e.g., whether the Roman Catholic Church now places itself under Scripture “as the final authority under Christ,” whether it teaches that sinners are “justified by grace through faith, with their good works a fruit of justification and not a source of merit,” how “the Eucharist is related to Christ’s sacrifice,” and what standing the Marian dogmas have (M.2).
On the thorny issue of establishment, the hope is expressed that the Church of England “will not seek to renounce, but to share with other Protestant churches the ancient constitutional ties that establish her as the church of this realm.” “We value these,” it is judiciously added, “not for privilege but for service, not for the church but for the nation,” that is, in order that the church may accept its mission to the nation and its responsibility to be the nation’s conscience (K.7).
The third section of the Nottingham Statement takes up questions of social ethics that were only broached ten years previously at Keele, and then with naïveté and tentativeness. Now, however, there are thoroughly thought through paragraphs on “power in our democracy” (which challenge “the accepted norm that ever-growing economic prosperity is the sole aim of a responsible society” and call for “real participation by the whole community in political power”—N.3 and 4), on “the power of the media” (both weighing their effects on society and welcoming the opportunities they afford for “human creativity in artistic terms”—P. 1–3), on “the law and education” (Q. 1–3), on “marriage and the family” (including also references to the single life, homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, and the differing roles of men and women—R. 1–8), on “responsibility in mission” (in a multi-racial society, in urban areas, and in the world—S,T, and U), and on “global stewardship” (with reference to such matters as harvesting the world’s resources, human rights, government aid, multi-national corporations, and simple lifestyles—V.1–10). It is extremely heartening to see evangelical Christians seeking to apply their biblical faith to such complex problems of today.
Looking back on the Nottingham experience, I was struck by the spirit of love, joy, and openness that characterized the debates. We by no means always agreed with one another, but we were given grace to listen to others with a new level of respect. Ten years ago at Keele we were not yet ready to face the charismatic controversy; at Nottingham it seemed already to belong to the past. The recent publication of the agreed evangelical statement Gospel and Spirit had defused it, and we expressed our “wish to live and work together from now on without any sense of the ‘them and us’ to which both sets have often been accustomed” (L.5). Several other areas of disagreement emerged. For example, the section on “power in our democracy” was thought by some to be faintly pink in color, and so includes an “alternative statement” (N.8) that was evidently written in a bluer ink. But the determination to face such differences in love and not conceal them is to be seen as a mark of growing evangelical maturity, Besides. Nottingham (though important) was only an episode in our continuing domestic evangelical dialogue.
