Are you in the land of the open-hearted?

How do we foster evangelical unity? Where do the boundaries of ‘unity’ fall? And how does the New Testament emphasis on unity apply to evangelicals in the Church of England in its current dire state? Some of these questions are helpfully tackled by Andy Mason (see his article). And one terrific example of healthy evangelical unity is the Keswick Convention, ongoing at the moment.

But how should such unity be manifested organisationally elsewhere the rest of the year? Ongoing discussions about a Gospel Coalition UK are an interesting part of this debate. The role of the Evangelical Alliance is also key.

Notions of unity vary. At one end of the spectrum is the feeble, unbiblical sort of ‘unity’ espoused by the majority of Church of England bishops, a touchy-feely wishy-washy mealy-mouthed ‘let’s all be part of one organisation even if we have fundamentally contradictory and incompatible beliefs’ – though this always tends only to last until a liberal victory comes along, in which case that immediately becomes ‘the settled will of the church’ in a way that somehow 2,000 years of previous church doctrine inexplicably weren’t (see George Crowder's comment article).

At the other end of the spectrum is the attitude amusingly satirised by Garrison Keillor in his novel Lake Wobegon Days. Writing about his experience in the Brethren, he says: ‘Once having tasted the pleasure of being Correct and defending True Doctrine, they kept right on and broke up at every opportunity, until … there were dozens of tiny Brethren groups, none of which were speaking to any of the others.’

Our broad cultural context does not help. Recently on Radio 4 and elsewhere in the media, well-known novelist Naomi Alderman has posited that with the invention of the internet we live in a ‘third information crisis’ – the first being the invention of writing, the second being the development of the printing press.

In each scenario, she suggests, ‘there’s an enormous increase in the amount of information available to us,’ which as human beings ‘we do not have emotionally good ways to handle’. In that second ‘information crisis’, the sudden information deluge led to people burning each other at the stake, she says, while today it leads to people shouting down, shaming, and trolling online anyone they disagree with – whatever the issue might be.

The late George Verwer has wise words on all this. Writing in Revolution of Love, he declared: ‘We are on a narrow road as Bible-believing Christians when it comes to basic beliefs. And it is right that we should have clear in our minds what is a minor, negotiable matter and what is behind negotiation and debate – the basic beliefs of our faith … In some cases we may have to separate from someone … I’m not saying we can always work with everyone.’ This is clearly true in the Church of England currently.

But, he continued, ‘once you accept that the whole of the Bible is God’s word, then you need to look at every passage on a particular subject, in context, before you can see what God is saying to us on that subject. And if you take the whole of the word of God, and let one verse balance out another verse, then I believe you will end up in the land of the open-hearted’. How might we take this wisdom and apply it today?