Roger,

That is an interesting list, but I think it is a list of the current views of open evangelicals. The mantras of the past include:

We should be people of one book.

By faith alone, by grace alone, by scripture alone, through Christ alone, to God glory alone

Every Christian is a witness

The church is the people

Its not what you get but what you give

To reach every man in our generation

To know Christ better and make him better known

One beggar telling another beggar where to find bread

that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all

Believe with you heart has well as your head.

Jesus is Lord of all or not Lord  at all

The point is not that they are wrong but that insights quickly become clinches and too easily fall from the lips.

Dave

Remaining at the centre of the COfE is not a biblical goal and I would rather be out of it rather than condone anything incompatible with scripture because remaining connected to God's words (John 15) is what matters ..... (and may mean not even being in the CofE one day but that is not the case today given Lambeth 1.10 stands, despite all the non-scriptural arguments which have tried to undermine it....and the 39 articles are still in place even if not treated with integrity by too many...... so evangelicals do not have to leave the CofE.....those who made vows but have issues with their own church's teaching should consider their position if they have integrity.......)  

Mark - I have many times asked you for a case from scripture on other threads (and you do not respond) .... I ask you precisely BECAUSE I am willing to listen to Christ....to what his Father has revealed in scritpure through his Spirit -   but not to you or anyone else if you contradict them or the scriptures God has given us....even with lame questions which assert what is clearly in scripture and understood by the church catholic for millennia is not clear.... 

Keeping in step with the Spirit is a biblical goal for the Christian.....keeping in step with what is compatible with scripture revealed by the Holy Spirit.....wrestling with scripture is great, Mark..... to see  what God is saying -   rejecting what scripture says when it does not fit with our presuppositions or deconstructing it to try and avoid its meaning is not wrestling with it but false teaching ie incompatible with scripture ....

I am grateful to Stephen for his article and for the spirit of much of our discussion on the Forum, agreeing with Mark's comment that this 'does seem...to represent a hospitable evangelicalism where the real questions of real people can be treated seriously, and not dismissed as tangents.'  Stephen mentions two areas of controversy, 'the ordination of women and the church's response to homosexual practice' and Fulcrum allows and supports the debate of such issues with great freedom.

David Baker queries the meaning of 'the tired and worn out mantras of the past' in Stephen's article and I too wonder exactly what these might be.  I suspect we could each offer a list of possibilities.

For me, they would include;

• A tendency to over emphasize the prescriptive and propositional elements within scripture to the neglect of narrative, poetry, metaphor, symbol, parable and ancient wisdom;
• A truncated view of scripture which narrows God to the surface text with a neglect of context and the 'bigger picture' of general revelation and common grace;
• An 'us' and 'them' mentality which pigeon-holes others as 'revisionist', 'liberal', 'unsound' or, simply, 'non-Christian' if they do not conform to a particular set of beliefs and doctrines as defined precisely by the 'in' group;
• An all-embracing stress on the cognitive and behavioural (both clearly essential for Christian living) and the neglect of the affective, intuitive, psychological and experiential, where 'God is the god of all truth';
• An inordinate elevation of the importance of the cross with little or no reference to the centrality of the resurrection.

I wonder what specifically are "the tired and worn out mantras of the past" that are being referred to in the article here towards the end?

Nersen

On the contrary, I don't want to avoid scripture, I want to wrestle with it. This is a forum where that should be possible, don't you think?

I do not pretend to be anything other than I am, and nor do most of the others who post here. The Forum isn't Fulcrum, but it does seem to me to represent a hospitable evangelicalism where the real questions of real people can be treated seriously, and not dismissed as tangents.

I have no idea whether you have read the story of the Road to Emmaus recently - it was the Gospel reading for my final service here in Great Parndon yesterday. It tells the story of companions on the road, and the mysterious third who first listens to what they have to say, their questions and confusions. Having listened, he opens up "all the scriptures", but still they do not understand. Then he breaks bread, and they get it. He accompanies them in their confusion as they are going the wrong way. Or as I put it in a recent sermon - they know the story of the cross, they don't need to be told that, indeed it is their story to tell. Only when they have told their story can the story of resurrection begin. I am engaged in pastoral ministry, which involves, very often, accompanying people on their journey. Listening is not compromise.

Dave - the evangelical centre is contested, mainly because just about every evangelical group seems to define the church is such a way that they are in the centre - I agree it is a claim. It could be justified, perhaps, by the Forum as a scripturally serious meeting place for evangelicals across the spectrum, and by serious attempts to interpret evangelical positions for the wider church.

Mark,

I have always found the phrase evangelical center ambiguous - is this the center of evangelicalism, the CofE or the AC  and si it defended aspirationaly or statistically. Graham speaks of the 3 streams, is Fulcrum a player i.e. open or is it an umpire i.e. neutral. It is the history of Fulcrum which concerns me , it was formed in opposition to the leadership of NEAC 4.  and seems to criticize every initiative taken by other evangelicals. I have never been sure who represents Fulcrum so I regard the Fulcrum view as that expressed in Fulcrum Newsletters and Fulcrum  Statements rather than the wider range of views in the articles or even wider range on the Forum.

The conservative understanding is that they are truly Anglican because the believe the faith of the BCP and 39 Articles. The way to strengthen evangelicalism in the CofE is effective mission and church planting and this is what AMiE seeks to support, This is the work that is being done by Proclamation Trust and Crosslinks. 

Are we to regard Tom Wright as THE theologian of Fulcrum? His rejection of the established understanding of justification, imputed righteousness and and penal substitutionary atonement takes him away from the evangelical consensus. He may be right but his views have not yet achieved widespread acceptance.

The strength of evangelicalism internationally can be seen in the Gospel Coalition. 

Dave

Fulcrum, it seems to me, is highly institutional, thus out to protect and develop Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion -  a very bureaucratic mentality, one that likes maps and pushing around the personnel in strategic positions.

As for the evangelical side, it wants both worlds - the evangelical and the notion that you can arrive at it openly. I am always interested in individuals 'on the move' and just as celebrated evangelicals 'ask radical questions' about key evangelical defining doctrines (that is, tread along a well worn path), so do ordinary individuals do things like attend theological college and realise that the evangelical certainties are not so certain after all. Some of them, along with the loyalty to their wider employer, eventually ditch the evangelical label. People are on the move all the time.

Dave

So far as being at the centre is oncerned, I think you are wrong. I am not wholly signed up to Fulcrum, but I find here other Biblically serious christians who will engage on matters of substance. There are a small number of more conservative voices who don't seem to think the questions I ask out of my reading of scripture and my wrestling with the world are worth bothering with - indeed they seem to want to define the world in terms of their own questions. So I would say open and middle on that score.

Also, it may have passed your notice that the conservative elements of the CEEC devised a motion (a 'following motion') designed to obtain support for their position in the Diocesan Synod debates on women bishops. Twelve dioceses have so far vored and none has passed the motion - most votes have not even been close. Stephen is particularly right in this case that the Conservative minority are marginalising themselves - the rest of us can be called names like 'revisionist' and 'liberal', and that may feel good, but it doesn't make it true.

It is up to the Conservative Evangelicals to articulate (as the evangelical constituency did at Keele for example) a positive case for their involvement in the Church of England. All these separate organisations which seem to be emerging look rather ridiculous in this context, and look for all the world as if there is a plan for a separate church.

Pluralist,

Your posting has me again considering the "shape" of the CofE.

I think the simplest division is on style of worship which gives us High - catholic - sacraments, broad -  singing, low-evangelical- the Word read and preached, Liberal -discussion groups. Then I think we all need word and sacrament, hymns and prayers, discussion and meditation. So there is a range of healthy Anglican styles and our choice depends as much on personality as theology. Only the extremes are suspect those who abandon the sacraments etc.

The next model is based on source of doctrine. Again I say we all use revelation, reason and tradition in different ways. If we did not use reason we may as well worship and read the bible in Latin. On this basis I envisage the church as a sort of orange segment shape. The vertical axis runs from tradition to scripture. The horizontal, the application of reason to this mixture. 

On this model, I see Fulcrum as on the edge of the evangelical movement being those who are most open to reason and tradition and in constant danger of being pulled off their Evangelical moorings. This is something quite different from the center of evangelicalism which Graham described in Canal, River and Rapids: Contemporary Evangelicalism in the Church of England Fulcrum has failed to be a point of balance between the open, the charismatic and the conservative. It has become the opposition to the conservative. There are many who are closer to the center of evangelicalism  who self define as conservative or charismatic.

Dave

Pluralist,

Your posting has me again considering the "shape" of the CofE.

I think the simplest division is on style of worship which gives us High - catholic - sacraments, broad -  singing, low-evangelical- the Word read and preached, Liberal -discussion groups. Then I think we all need word and sacrament, hymns and prayers, discussion and meditation. So there is a range of healthy Anglican styles and our choice depends as much on personality as theology. Only the extremes are suspect those who abandon the sacraments etc.

The next model is based on source of doctrine. Again I say we all use revelation, reason and tradition in different ways. If we did not use reason we may as well worship and read the bible in Latin. On this basis I envisage the church as a sort of orange segment shape. The vertical axis runs from tradition to scripture. The horizontal, the application of reason to this mixture. 

On this model, I see Fulcrum as on the edge of the evangelical movement being those who are most open to reason and tradition and in constant danger of being pulled off their Evangelical moorings. This is something quite different from the center of evangelicalism which Graham described in Canal, River and Rapids: Contemporary Evangelicalism in the Church of England Fulcrum has failed to be a point of balance between the open, the charismatic and the conservative. It has become the opposition to the conservative. There are many who are closer to the center of evangelicalism  who self define as conservative or charismatic.

Dave

I agree with the basic argument but the thought occurs to me, increasingly, that the Anglican debate is likely to fail on a key issue. Evangelism is inseparable from the active participation of the laity taught by but not dominated by, the professionalised clergy. The modern debates about the future of evangelicalism in an Anglican context are being conducted by clergy and increasingly, bishops, as in the Covenant debate. It is not that the laity are being deliberately excluded but that the debate is increasingly focussed on clerical issues, as the article demonstrates.

If there is a message from the past that is worth bearing in mind, and I take the point that we should not be tied down by other times, it is that evangelisation is, and has always been, a lay business— the apostles, and our Lord, were laymen, despite efforts to argue otherwise. It is active lay participation that really separated evangelicals from other Christians from the Reformation onwards.

It is friendship, freely given, that brings people to the Saviour, and theological pilpul, liturgies and the like, while central to believers, are marginal to the unchurched. It is only when lay people can declare their faith as working in their personal lives that there is a spiritual dynamic for outreach. The laity cannot, repeat, cannot, be "empowered" by the clergy. The history of evangelism teaches the reverse to be the truth, i.e., it is the giving of the laity that empowers the clergy.

There is a huge Christian church in modern China which flourished after the departure of the foreign professional religious controllers. Growth was not clergy-led as there were too few clergy or ministers to lead the amazing growth of the church in China in the 1970s.

We do not have, in the modern Church, the wealthy (untaxed) philanthropists who dominated evangelical movements in the 19th century. Today's laity are for the greater part, male and female, full-time employees and parents with only limited time available for the ecclesiological visions of the clergy such as the "Missional Church." The immediate task is to liberate that limited time so that the laity can be effective in bringing others to Christ. It is only then that the teaching and nurturing ministry of the ordained Christians can really come into play.

Ian Welch, Canberra, Australia