Can the Church of England be revived?

It would be easy to answer that question with a  quick ‘no’. After all, we Anglicans are facing huge problems: a loss of gospel truth, obstruction from bishops and ongoing spiritual compromise throughout the institution.

This present mess has been a long time coming, and it is, in many ways, no surprise. Surely, then, it is all over with the Church of England, and we should just leave such a moribund institution? There is, after all, nothing sacred about an ecclesiastical institution in and of itself, and we know that denominational borders are not the borders of spiritual Israel. Everything would be simpler if we just came out so that we could breathe freely once again!

Sovereign grace

But, there’s a problem with this reasoning, attractive as it is: we have a God of sovereign grace. And this God, throughout the Old Testament, regularly acts to save his very unworthy people from utter disaster.

1. In Hosea, God promises to heal an apostate people through a sheer act of grace, ‘I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them.’ (14:4) The word translated ‘wayward’ in the NIV is too weak. It really means apostasy (it is used throughout Jeremiah 3 to describe utter faithlessness). These people have a host of self-inflicted spiritual wounds. They are beyond help, but God promises to heal them.

2. In Psalm 85, we see a pattern of gracious restoration/revival though the people find themselves under divine anger. ‘You, Lord, showed favour to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins. You set aside all your wrath and turned from your fierce anger. Restore us again, God our Saviour, and put away your displeasure toward us.’ The psalmist reasons: God has intervened in the midst of wrath in the past, so he can do it now for us in our present.

3. In Ezekiel 37, we have the famous picture of God’s people as a spiritual graveyard. They are lost in physical-spiritual exile and without hope. As Ezekiel encounters the vision, it seems impossible for the dry bones to live. Read the passage, and it becomes clear that God has other ideas. God delights to bring life to a dead people.

The point with these, and many other passages, is that the ultimate hope is not in the people getting themselves together spiritually, but in a radical, gracious intervention from the very God they have offended. It’s not the people who change their hearts, but God who changes their hearts. Any repentance that they live out will not have its ultimate source in them, but in God.

Now, of course, none of this means that the Church of England will be revived. God is in charge and I do not pretend to have prophetic powers. However, these inspired scriptural patterns, grounded in the experience of God’s people, do mean that the Church of England can be revived. These passages show us that apostasy, divine anger, and dead bones, are not insuperable obstacles to revival. Rather, they can be the starting point for a spectacular transformation. We have a covenant God who seems to specialise in unexpected, gracious interventions that leave people on their faces before him. Who knows what the Lord might just do in this moment?

Evangelicals in the Church of England must be as shrewd as snakes (Matt 10:16), and know the times (Luke 12:56), but are also to be people of hope (1 Tim 4:10). We must not compromise our holiness (1 Cor 5:11), but we also live by faith in an almighty holy God who comes down in the midst of crisis and turmoil (Isa 6:1-4). We should not be escapist, but we can be expectant (Ps 131:3). We have a God who does more than all we ask or imagine, and that should give us perspective on what seems to be a spiritual disaster.

So, while we do not pretend to know what God might do, we honour him by asking for great things. There’s a wonderful apocryphal story from the time of Alexander the Great about this. In the story, one of Alexander’s daughters was getting married, and Alexander told the future son-in-law to ask him for a dowry. The man then proceeded to ask Alexander for a fantastic sum of money. Shocked by this, Alexander’s advisers suggested that the man be executed for impertinence. Alexander, though, replied, ‘Certainly not, for this man in asking for such great things, does me a great honour. Firstly, he must believe that I am fabulously rich, and, secondly, he must think that I am also very generous and will give it to him. Give the man what he asks!’ Similarly, we can glorify God by asking him for ‘impossibly great things’ for the Church of England. In doing so, we show that we believe him to be both very powerful and very gracious.

I think, then, that we Anglicans have a much better spiritual option than simply leaving, and certainly better than falling into despair. Our better option is to build spiritual expectancy, come together for extraordinary prayer, and recover the gospel once again. The situation is pretty much impossible without a dramatic revival, so why not explicitly seek it? We have a God who heals apostasy, who covers his anger and who raises the dead. That is a great basis on which to build our hopes – even while we submit them to his hidden purpose and will. Who knows what the Lord might just do in this moment?