The CofE: Time for evangelicals to leave?

On Friday 3 October, the Church of England announced that the Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally would succeed Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury.

There has been a substantial response from all quarters - not surprising given how big the news is. I’ve seen some responses along the lines of arguing that the new appointment offers the best of a poor set of options, and some bemoaning the terrible disaster that they consider this to be. Those responses from within the CofE have a uniting theme: evangelicals can and must stay and fight in the Church; they must not desert their flocks and must continue to care for them.

Meanwhile, the official line from outside of Evangelical Anglicanism seems to be that whilst the appointment was no surprise, we should respect the decision of those who stay and continue to pray for them to be able to remain faithful.

Now, I appreciate that there are quite a few of my Anglican friends who will be hurting at the moment, and who may wonder what right someone like me, as a non-conformist, has to intrude into their private grief.

Brothers and sisters

So, first of all, it might be helpful to remember that whilst we sit on different sides of institutional lines, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are meant to be in the same family, we are meant to be on the same side. Indeed, one of the great frustrations over the years has been the way in which it seems that institutional loyalty to liberals and Anglo-Catholics has been preferred to real unity with evangelical brothers and sisters.

Secondly, it’s personal. I spent three happy university years growing at Christ Church Fulwood in Sheffield. And when I responded to the mission call at Keswick, it was my old vicar, Philip Hacking, who talked and prayed with me. My wife became a Christian in an Anglican church and we spent the early years of our marriage at Oak Hill. It was Morning and Evening Prayer from Common Worship that kept us going through Covid. To this day, we have friends and family who we love dearly who remain part of the Church of England. So, I care at a personal level.

I also understand the pressure and instinct to stay and fight. Those concerns are commendable. However, the time comes when you have to ask whether you really are fighting, and to wonder whether or not you are caring and helping - or rather hurting and harming.

A burning building

The image that comes to mind is of a burning building. People have warned for some time about the fire, but it has felt like it has been at a distance, somewhere else in the building. You think that surely you've got time; surely someone will arrive soon to put the fire out. You get on with caring for those around you, giving them nourishing food and engaging them in conversation.

However, the fire has been getting closer and closer. Those that were warning you have now left the building, all the time shouting their desperate warnings back in. Before you know it, the fire is on top of you, the roof is caving in and still you persuade yourself that it is the right thing to stay, and that you cannot desert your post or your people. Yet by staying, you continue to put yourself and them in danger.

The reality is that the fire has been closer and fiercer than many seem to have realised. In fact, people have reacted to things like recent decisions to bless same-sex relationships and uncertainty over responses to abortion and euthanasia as though these are the start of the fire - as though these might be the warning signs of red lines ahead.

Decades

However, the reality is that these are the outworking of actions and decisions going back years and decades. These things are possible within the Church of England because many years ago it became acceptable for vicars and bishops to reject the authority of Scripture, to deny the historicity of Christ’s birth, miracles and resurrection, and to water down the gospel. The departure from faithfulness has already happened. It’s not that the appointment of the new Archbishop makes doctrinal departure more likely; it's that the appointment happened because the departure had already happened.

This does not mean that the appointment lacks significance. There is a sense in which nothing has changed. If complementarians have an issue with a woman Archbishop, they need to remember that the Church of England had opted for egalitarianism years ago. Did they really think they could simply keep pushing the issue up the hierarchy infinitely? If they have an issue with liberalism, they need to remember that there have been liberal bishops before and that liberal theology has been influencing Synod decisions for some time. However, the appointment crystalises the point that this is the settled will of the church. The fire has come.

Liberal agenda

Furthermore, it brings to the forefront what has been happening around the country for too long, something that I fear that conservative evangelicals within their well resourced micro-networks have become immune to. What we have seen is an evangelical (Justin Welby), a soft evangelical perhaps but still an evangelical - a nice, decent, likeable guy - in charge. Eventually he's been pushed out; in this case, because his own failings caught up with him. There’s been a lengthy interregnum and then he’s been replaced with someone who fits the liberal agenda better.

This makes visible what happens in parish churches. You start with a nice, kind, soft-evangelical vicar. Whether through retirement, the grind, their own failings or other means to intentionally force them out, they are eventually removed. The church then goes into interregnum and the church bureaucracy steps in to be “very helpful” and find the right person for them. Eventually the new vicar turns up and they turn out to be much less evangelical than their predecessor. Sadly, too many Christians in parish churches up and down the country are left unfed and unprotected. Meanwhile the refrain from the conservative evangelical constituency is that they are duty bound to remain.

Excuses

What we also get are the excuses. It’s odd, but some seem to be in a state of shock as though they did not expect this. The reality is that this has been a long time coming, and there should have been time to prepare.

Furthermore, that the Crown Nominations Commission felt able to make this recommendation suggests that they were unbothered by the potential fallout from evangelicals, or even had been given the impression that there would be none. However, the excuses are along the lines that it is "not possible to leave". Yes, it will mean leaving behind buildings and structures, but better to be without a structure (physical or metaphorical) than in a burning one. Indeed, the rest of us are doing okay as we meet in schools, cinemas and community centres.

In Acts 20v28, Paul charges the Ephesian elders: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.“

He also warns that vicious wolves will come in to the church. Brothers and sisters, those of us who are elders in the church have been given a serious charge to provide for and protect the flock. We don’t do that by trying to care for them in the middle of a den of wolves. We do that by leading them to safe, green pastures. This is now your task.