Dear Editor,
The sad death of that giant of Reformed faith, Eric Alexander, has brought back sad memories for some of us ancient enough to have been members of Westminster Chapel many a year ago. In 1968 he won the majority of votes to succeed my grandfather Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel, including mine. What a magnificent and suitable successor he would have been! But a blocking minority scuppered his coming, on the basis that he was a member of the Church of Scotland, a theologically-mixed denomination. Then again in 1977 he gained the votes of most of us to succeed J. Glyn Owen (who had moved to Canada), and again a faction prevent his appointment, on the same grounds.
A nasty irony is that J. Glyn Owen’s successor, R.T. Kendall was also a member of a theologically-mixed denomination, the Southern Baptists. But what was fatal for Eric Alexander was overlooked by the hard-liners with Kendall, who was duly elected – no criticism of R.T. in all this.
That travesty ended my support for theological separation – though it should be said that on a personal level my loving grandfather had no problems about my attendance at St Ebbe’s in Oxford! (And it was the ever kind Glyn Owen who suggested I go there, as his friend Keith Weston was then the Rector).
I cannot now face visiting Westminster Chapel. How gloriously different British Evangelicalism would have been if Eric Alexander had come to London, one giant in the pulpit succeeding another. And for many years I have been part of a wonderful and thoroughly Evangelical and theologically Reformed local Anglican parish church, where the gospel is faithfully preached and
en is sold and read! And the previous Rector, Christopher Ash, preaches at Banner of Truth events! A happy ending decades on??
Yours sincerely,
Dr Christopher Catherwood Cambridge
