THE GLOBAL DIFFUSION OF EVANGELICALISM
The age of Billy Graham and John Stott
By Brian Stanley. IVP. 288 pages. £19.99
ISBN 978 1 844 746 217
I snapped up a copy of this, the final volume in IVP’s ‘History of Evangelicalism’ series, as the credentials of the author, series and publisher made it a must-read in a field that has so far mainly been covered by biographies of the main characters, apart from the Cambridge Church History volume.
There is a masterly treatment of the spread of, and developments in, evangelicalism in the English-speaking world, which will give each of us in our local communities a wider and better grasp of what has happened in and just before our generation. It is accomplished in a remarkably short book which makes the selection of facts difficult and controversial. The swing away from conservative positions in scholarship, the bandwagon of women in pastoral/teaching ministry for all the church, the charismatic avalanche, and globalisation of evangelicalism are all well described.
I had, however, a profound sense of unease that the choice of vocabulary and of fact selection reflected a different perspective from my own. The author prioritises the main denominations throughout, as he admits to doing for chapter 7 (p.181), and has little or no time for those who put their evangelical faith above denominational adherence. Thus the 1,300 churches of the FIEC and Affinity constituency in UK are ignored, apart from fleeting mentions of Above Bar Church.
No distinction made
He also fails to make the distinction between principled evangelicals who seceded in a stand against pluralism but continued wider fellowship with other believers in the denominations, and oppositional evangelicals who came out and cut links with everyone who did not do the same . Thus he scatters the pejorative epithets of separatist and fundamentalist on many who would more fairly, at least in UK, be called seceders, independents or conservatives. The Free Church of Scotland men attending the Crieff Conference of evangelical ministers in the Church of Scotland, and the gospel partnerships incorporating FIEC and the C of E all over England, show the existence of principled evangelicals.
This comes out also in his omissions. After his account of IVF (now UCCF) disaffiliating the CU in Edinburgh University because of the wideness of their doctrines and relationships, he neglects to mention how God richly blessed the residual CU group in seeing many conversions in the following year. In Southeastern Baptist Seminary he reports that student numbers fell in the 1990s on the adoption of a standard of biblical inerrancy, but does not mention that under Paige Patterson continuing the same view, by 2000 they were 50% up on previous highs. The mention of prominent departures from evangelicalism could have been balanced with a paragraph on arrivals among us of scholars like Professors Tasker, Etta Linneman and so many others.
It would be a pity if the totality of Stanley’s picture were to become the standard view.
John Grier,
elder, Somerton Road Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Belfast
