One Body

in Christ
The History and
Significance of the
Evangelical Alliance

Ian Randall &

David Hilborn
 One Body in Christ
The History and Significance of the
Evangelical Alliance
One Body in Christ
The History and Significance of the
Evangelical Alliance

Ian Randall
&
David Hilborn
 Copyright © 2001 Ian Randall and David Hilborn

First published in 2001 by Evangelical Alliance and Paternoster Press

07 06 05 04 03 02 01 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Paternoster Press is an imprint of Paternoster Publishing,

P.O. Box 300, Carlisle, Cumbria, CA3 0QS, UK
and Paternoster Publishing USA
P.O. Box 1047, Waynesboro, GA 30830-2047, USA
Website: www.paternoster-publishing.com

The rights of Ian Randall and David Hilborn to be identified as the

Authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance with
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
ithout the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting
restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright
Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1-84227-089-3

Cover design by Campsie, Glasgow

Typeset by WestKey Ltd., Falmouth, Cornwall
Printed in Great Britain by
Bell and Bain Ltd., Glasgow
 Contents

Preface vii
Foreword by Joel Edwards xi
1 A Broadly Based Religious Force 1
The Evangelical Alliance and Modern British
Church History
2 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 18
The Origins of the Alliance
3 Across the Partition Wall 45
The Formation of the Alliance
4 Some Common Action 71
Religious Liberty and the Search for a Social Agenda
5 For the Maintenance of the Truth 103
Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies
6 In the Midst of the Universal Church 134
The Alliance in Global Perspective
7 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize 159
The Alliance’s Relationship to Europe
8 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 183
The Alliance in the Early Twentieth Century
9 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 208
The Alliance and Modern Evangelism
vi Contents

10 Benevolent Neutrality 232

The Alliance and the Ecumenical Movement
11 The Other Side 258
The Alliance and Renewal from the 1960s to the early
1980s
12 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 283
The Resurgence of the Alliance in the 1980s and 1990s
13 A Knife-Edge Exercise 309
Theology and Ethics in the Recent History of the Alliance
14 A Movement for Change 345
Shaping the Alliance for the Twenty-First Century
Appendix 1: The Provisional Doctrinal Basis of Faith 357
of the World’s Evangelical Alliance (1845)
Appendix 2: The Doctrinal Basis of Faith of the 358
World’s Evangelical Alliance (1846)
Appendix 3: Evangelical Alliance (UK) 360
Basis of Faith (1970)
Appendix 4: Eight General Resolutions of the 362
British Organization of the World’s Evangelical
Alliance (1846)
Appendix 5: Practical Resolutions of the Evangelical 366
Alliance (1996)
Appendix 6: The World Evangelical Fellowship Basis 368
of Faith (1951)
Bibliography 369
Index
 Preface

Despite growing scholarly interest in the history of evangeli-

calism, the formation and development of the Evangelical
Alliance has been remarkably little studied.As we make clear in
the following book,while some in recent times have sought to
establish the Alliance’s significance through journal articles
and the occasional monograph, others have treated it as little
more than a footnote, not only to modern Western church
history in general, but to the history of evangelicalism in par-
ticular. While in some cases there may have been ideological
motives for this marginalisation, we suspect that the more
common reason has been lack of access to the Alliance’s exten-
sive archive of minutes, reports, papers and photographs. For
many years, these valuable primary sources have been kept in
storage, and have remained effectively outside the orbit of
scholarship. For this project, however, we have thoroughly
re-organised the relevant material and have made considerable
use of it.As we have done so,it has become clear that the devel-
opment of the Alliance over the last 155 years represents a
fascinating and important indicator of wider theological,
ecclesiastical and cultural developments.
As we shall see,the founders of the Alliance conceived it as a
thoroughly international body, but soon found themselves
having to devolve a considerable degree of power and auton-
omy to national organisations.Our focus here is very clearly on
viii Preface

the British/UK Alliance, but we have tried to set this body

within the contexts of European and worldwide evangelical-
ism, and have sought to relate its history to broader social and
historical trends. As such, we trust that we have not only done
justice to our subject, but have opened up fresh avenues for
others to explore.
The composition of the book has been very much a shared
enterprise. We each originally drafted particular sections
alone, Ian randall taking responsibility for Chapters 1, 2, 3, 6,
7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, and David Hilborn for Chapters 4, 5, 13
and 14. We must emphasise, however, that we then reviewed
what the other had written and, where appropriate, revised it.
Taking account of comments made by other readers, we sub-
sequently agreed the full text that appears here. As such, the
two of us, and the two of us only, take joint responsibility for
any errors that have remained.
There are several people who deserve thanks for helping to
make this project possible. It will become clear that while we
have expanded considerably upon them, the texts written on
the Alliance by J.W. Ewing in 1946 and by J.B.A. Kessler in
1968 served as invaluable markers for our investigation.
Subsequently, a great deal of painstaking analytical work on
the earlier archive materials was conducted by Clive Calver
when General Director of the Alliance in the 1990s.
Although this research never developed into the thesis Clive
had originally planned, it has not gone to waste: the clarity
and orderliness of his notes have served us exceptionally well
here, as has his generosity in giving us access to them. We are
also grateful to Clive’s PA at World Relief, Barbara Elwell, for
organising the safe dispatch of these materials from Wheaton.
Kenneth Hylson-Smith, Steve Brady and Peter Lewis also
contributed very useful papers on the Alliance’s history to the
book For Such a Time as This, which was published in connec-
th
tion with the Alliance’s 150 anniversary in 1996. Our debt
to these papers will be clear, and has been acknowledged in
the notes.
 Preface ix

Various past and present Alliance leaders have offered their

reflections and comments. Gilbert Kirby and Maurice
Rowlandson supplied us with illuminating background ma-
terial, and helped to clarify a number of uncertainties and
ambiguities. Robert Amess, Colin Saunders and Mark
Birchall supplied helpful advice on the more recent history. In
addition, the following people performed the vital task of act-
ing as readers for the book, and we are indebted to them for
the constructive feedback they offered: David Bebbington,
Mark Birchall, Steve Brady, Kenneth Hylson-Smith, Tony
Lane, Peter Lewis, Rob Warner, John Wolffe and David
Wright. Thanks are also due to the Steering Group of the Al-
liance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals,
for their support and encouragement throughout the project.
Keith Jones at the International Baptist Theological Semi-
nary in Prague, and Nigel Wright and Judy Powles at
Spurgeon’s College offered valuable help. Carolyn Skinner,
Maggie Harding, Phil Seager, Adam Sparks and John Smith at
the Evangelical Alliance have all provided help and encour-
agement at crucial times. We are also very grateful that, de-
spite a very busy schedule, Joel Edwards has written the
Foreword. We offer this book as a positive contribution to
Joel’s and the Alliance’s vision of becoming a movement for
change. As ever, the staff at Paternoster have been most sup-
portive – Mark Finnie, Peter Little and Jill Morris have
shown real enthusiasm from the outset, while Tony Graham
has served us admirably as editor.
Finally, we would like to thank our wives, Janice Randall
and Mia Hilborn, and our families, for their continued
support.

Material in chapter 9 previously appeared in Ian Randall’s arti-

cle ‘Conservative Constructionist: The Early Influence of
Billy Graham in Britain’,published in The Evangelical Quarterly,
Vol. 67, No. 4 (1995). We are grateful to the editor of EQ,
Howard Marshall, for granting permission to use this. Certain
sections of chapter 13 draw closely on material previously
x Preface

published by ACUTE – the Alliance Commission on Unity

and Truth among Evangelicals.

Ian Randall,
Director of Baptist and Anabaptist Studies,
International Baptist Theological Seminary,
Prague
Lecturer in Church History
Spurgeon’s College,
London

David Hilborn,
Theological Adviser,
Evangelical Alliance (UK),
Associate Research Fellow,
London Bible College,
London,

July 2001
 Foreword

When the founders of the Evangelical Alliance met in 1846 it

was a most unlikely event. For the first time in Britain, Estab-
lished churchmen came together in visible, organisational un-
ion with Nonconformists. In one sense, it should not have
happened.But there were some compelling factors that caused
them to overcome their historic differences and antipathies.
They crossed ecclesiastical and cultural boundaries to forge a
new trans-denominational identity. In effect, they became the
first ecumenical movement.
As they met they were only too aware that the Bible and its
truth claims were coming under threat.Secularism was already
taking its toll and new scientific discoveries were leading many
to present formidable challenges to historic Christian faith.
Rather than being content to remain an essentially symbolic,
‘do-nothing’ organisation, the Alliance resolved both to meet
these challenges and to offer constructive ways forward.As this
study shows,it committed itself in the first instance particularly
to national prayer and the active defence of religious liberties.
As far as its Victorian supporters were concerned, evangelical-
ism needed to offer more than a reaction to the world; it was
meant to add value to it.
When members and friends of the Evangelical Alliance met
in 1996 to celebrate 150 years of its history one thing became
very clear. Throughout the ups and downs of its distinguished
xii Foreword

past, a consistent thread had remained evident: the Evangelical

Alliance had always been at its best when actively involved in
the world, as a movement for change.
This welcome history of the Evangelical Alliance comes to
us at an opportune moment. In one sense little has changed.
The battle for biblical truth is still very much with us – and is,if
anything, fiercer now than our evangelical forebears might
have anticipated. More than ever, twenty-first century evan-
gelicalism is faced with the challenge of combining our faith in
the apostolic gospel with a united effort to transform society.
Ian Randall’s and David Hilborn’s refreshing new study will
remind today’s evangelicals of where we have come from and
the lessons which have been learned along the way. My prayer
is that it will also guide us into the future as we continue to be-
come a movement for change.

Joel Edwards
July 2001
 1

A Broadly Based Religious Force

The Evangelical Alliance and Modern British Church History

From its beginnings in 1846 the Evangelical Alliance had as its

motto ‘Unum Corpus Sumus in Christo’: ‘We are One Body in
Christ’. The concern for unity expressed in this motif has re-
mained a hallmark of the Alliance’s identity and purpose ever
since. Five prominent representatives of the mainline
Protestant denominations in Britain – Edward Bickersteth
(Anglican), Jabez Bunting (Wesleyan Methodist), James Ham-
ilton (Presbyterian), John Leifchild (Congregational) and Ed-
ward Steane (Baptist) – signed a letter dated 10 November
1845 that encouraged
1
participation in a proposed alliance of
evangelicals. As this alliance took shape, another of its advo-
cates, David King, the Scottish Presbyterian, observed a com-
mon concern that it should adopt
2
an inclusive approach and
thereby exhibit ‘catholicity’. As we shall see, this ideal has
been strained from time to time as certain evangelicals have
questioned whether the Alliance has sufficiently represented
their own views. The achievement of the Alliance, however,
has been to draw together so many who have differed on
important issues, but who have nonetheless taken their shared
evangelical convictions to be a positive basis for co-operation.

1 ‘Proposed Evangelical Alliance’, 10 November 1845. This letter is held with

the Minutes of the Provisional Committee meeting in London, 1845.
2 The Congregational Magazine 9 (1845), pp.775-6.
2 One Body in Christ

D.W. Bebbington’s seminal 1989 work, Evangelicalism in

Modern Britain, explores these convictions in detail.
Bebbington concludes that evangelicalism is a Christian
movement distinguished by its adherents’emphasis on four key
points: the authority of the Bible, the centrality of the
3
cross of
Christ,personal conversion and Christian activism. The study
will examine how those holding to these convictions have
sought to express them through the Evangelical Alliance, and
how,in so doing,they have exemplified a distinctively evangel-
ical vision of ‘oneness in Christ’.

The Alliance in Context

Like any religious movement, the Evangelical Alliance has

been shaped by its context. During its formative period this
context was Victorian Britain – a society that is generally ac-
cepted to have had religion at its heart. But what kind of reli-
gion was it that obtained popular acceptance during this
period? In his 1966 book The Victorian Church, Owen
Chadwick concluded that throughout the mid-Victorian era
‘the evangelical
4
movement was the strongest religious force in
British life’. Writing a decade later, Ian Bradley pointed out
that historians were generally agreed that evangelicalism had
been ‘one of the most important5
forces at work in shaping the
character of the Victorians’. In 1994, John Wolffe, in God and
Greater Britain, described the evangelical movement in the
opening decades of Victoria’s reign as ‘a dynamic and broadly
based religious force, combining6 spiritual energy, institutional
diversity and cultural sensitivity’. As we shall see,the challenge

3 D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to

the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp.2-17.
4 See O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1 (London: A. & C. Black, 1966),
p.5.
5 I. Bradley, The Call to Seriousness (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976), p.14.
6 J.Wolffe, God and Greater Britain:Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland
1843-1945 (London: Routledge, 1994), p.30.
 A Broadly Based Religious Force 3

to those who were committed to the success of an alliance of

evangelicals was to achieve a significant degree of unity against
a background of denominational diversity,and even of interde-
nominational hostility.
The most pressing challenge faced by the Alliance’s found-
ers was the achievement of co-operation between Anglicans
and Dissenters. Anglicans feared the growing interest among
nineteenth-century Dissenters in the possibility of the dises-
tablishment of the Church of England. Owen Chadwick
overstates the case when he talks about ‘the stink of disestab-
7
lishment’ in Evangelical Alliance speeches, but the Alliance’s
advocacy of interdenominational activity did appear as an un-
welcome provocation to those who were committed to the
ecclesiastical status quo. Certainly, the Evangelical Alliance
was launched at a time when evangelicals were enjoying sig-
nificant gains within the Church of England. Although the
first evangelical bishop of the modern era was arguably not
appointed until 1815 – when Henry Ryder became bishop
of Gloucester – by 1848 the evangelical John Bird Sumner
had been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. From 1800 to
mid-century the proportion of evangelical clergy in England
grew significantly and with Sumner as primate a moderate
Anglican evangelicalism came to occupy a central position in
8
the life of the established church. With their attention
focused on ecclesiastical advance, many Anglican evangelicals
were not so attracted by the possibilities of inter-
denominational evangelical co-operation.
The degree of support for the Evangelical Alliance was
greater among English Dissenting denominations (increas-
ingly known in the nineteenth century as the Nonconform-
ists and in the twentieth as the Free Churches). It was also
strong among Scottish Presbyterians who operated outside
the Church of Scotland. Indeed, the early leaders of the

7 Chadwick, Victorian Church, p.441.

8 N. Scotland, John Bird Sumner: Evangelical Archbishop (Leominster: Gracewing,
1995), pp.105-7.
4 One Body in Christ

Alliance were largely Nonconformists.9 However, this was a

period when Nonconformists and Anglicans were uniting in
10
philanthropic enterprises. The significance of the pan-evan-
gelical initiatives that began in the nineteenth century and
which have continued to bear influence up to the present is
well demonstrated by Donald Lewis. In Lighten Their Dark-
ness, Lewis has contributed an outstanding study of evangeli-
11
cal mission to working-class London from 1828 to 1860.
Another factor drawing evangelicals together, and indeed one
clear motive for the formation of the Alliance, was anti-Ca-
tholicism. It must be stressed, however, that the strength of
this motive was hardly unusual for the time. Evangelicals were
very much in tune with the wider suspicion of Rome that
prevailed in mid-century Protestant Victorian England – a
suspicion that had been given greater intensity by Catholic
12
emancipation of 1829. This, as much as philanthropy, was
viewed by its proponents as expressing common concern for
the nation’s social and religious well being, and, as we shall
see, it undoubtedly convinced many Nonconformists and
Anglicans that united action was both possible and worth-
while.
For all evangelicals in Britain, whether in the Established or
Free Churches, the twentieth century brought unexpected re-
versals. Indeed, Adrian Hastings suggests in his History of Eng-
lish Christianity that by the 1920s, whether in ‘vigour of
leadership,intellectual capacity,or largeness of heart’,evangeli-
13
cals had never been weaker. Hastings is thinking mainly of
the Church of England, but the Free Churches were hardly in
better shape.From a membership peak in 1906,the major Free
9 J.W.Massie,The Evangelical Alliance:Its Origin and Development (London,1847),
p.88.
10 K. Heasman, Evangelicals in Action (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1961), pp.27-8.
11 D.M. Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to Working-Class
London, 1828-1860 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001).
12 J. Wolffe, The Protestant Crusade in Britain, 1829-1860 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1991).
13 A.Hastings,A History of English Christianity,1920-2000 (London:SCM,2001),
p.200.
 A Broadly Based Religious Force 5

Church denominations saw steady decline through the re-

14
mainder of the twentieth century. Although secularism is of-
ten viewed as a phenomenon of the later twentieth century,
Jeffrey Cox sees fit to describe the churches in Lambeth in the
period 1870 to 1930 under the title The English Churches in a
15
Secular Society. There is little doubt that church attendance
sharply decreased in many places during the first half of the
twentieth century. The assessment offered by Stuart Mews in
his survey of the period 1920-40 is that churchgoing slumped
in the 1930s, leaving remaining churchgoers ‘clinging grimly
to selected Victorian beliefs and values, or waiting doggedly
for a revival, usually conceived along essentially Victorian
16
lines’. There were those evangelicals who were more open to
17
the future, but this in itself caused division. It is therefore not
surprising that in this period the Alliance lost some of the mo-
mentum it had enjoyed during the Victorian age.
Fresh energy came,however,after the Second World War.In
the late 1960s analyses of new Anglican ordinands showed that
the proportion of those trained in the evangelical Anglican
colleges had risen from an estimated 10% in the 1950s to over
18
30%. Moreover, this would exceed 50% three decades later.
Yet, after an upturn in the late forties and early fifties, overall
churchgoing began to fall markedly; by 2000 the number of
younger people with any church connection was tiny in com-
19
parison with a hundred years before. Even in 1960 24% of
children in Britain attended a Sunday School. In 2000 the
14 R. Currie, A.D. Gilbert & L.S. Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of
Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700 (Oxford:Clarendon Press,1977),p.34.
15 J. Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth, 1870-1930 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
16 S. Mews, ‘Religious Life between the Wars, 1920-1940’, in S. Gilley & W.J.
Sheils (eds), A History of Religion in Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p.466.
17 I.M. Randall, Evangelical Experiences: A Study in the Spirituality of English Evan-
gelicalism, 1918-1939 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999).
18 M. Saward, The Anglican Church Today: Evangelicals on the Move (Oxford: Mow-
bray, 1987), pp.33-4.
19 For an analysis of this trend see C.G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain
(London: Routledge, 2001), pp.170-92.
6 One Body in Christ

figure was estimated to be just 4%.20 Yet at the same time there
were areas of progress. In many evangelical churches the char-
ismatic movement, which began in the 1960s, was associated
with growth. Bebbington speaks about how ‘charismatic re-
newal, a new spirituality for a new age, brought about rejuve-
21
nating change’. The renewal movement spurred many
evangelicals to open up to other Christian traditions,including
22
Roman Catholicism. It was also in the latter part of the twen-
tieth century that the Alliance was itself rejuvenated.

The Alliance and Campaigning

From its earliest days the Evangelical Alliance has been a cam-
paigning organisation. As we shall see, some were prompted to
form the Alliance in reaction to what they took to be the dan-
gerous resurgence of Roman Catholic influence in Britain.
Certain key founders of the Alliance had first co-operated in
1844-45, in protest against government funding of a Catholic
seminary in the Irish town of Maynooth.Several others explic-
itly cast the Alliance as a bulwark against the encroachment of
the ‘Oxford Movement’ – latterly dubbed the ‘Anglo-Catho-
lic’ movement
23
and led by John Henry Newman and Edward
Pusey. Yet it would be wrong to see such anti-Romanism as
definitive of the Alliance’s ethos. Indeed, it is significant that
the Protestant Alliance was formed in 1851,just five years after
the birth of the Alliance, to represent those committed to a
more outspoken critique of Rome. There were significant
20 P.Brierley (ed.), UK Christian Handbook Religious Trends 2000-2001,No.2 (El-
tham/London: Christian Research/Harper Collins, 1999), pp.2, 15.
21 D.W. Bebbington, ‘Evangelism and Spirituality in Twentieth-Century
Protestant Nonconformity’ (forthcoming), p.35.
22 D.Bloesch,The Future of Evangelical Christianity:A Call for Unity Amid Diversity
(New York: Doubleday, 1983), pp.38-42.
23 J.A. James et al, Essays on Christian Union (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co.,
1845), 151; E.R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1968), p.27; J.B.A. Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance in
Great Britain (Goes, Netherlands: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1968), pp.15-6.
 A Broadly Based Religious Force 7

Evangelical Alliance voices in favour of a less strident attitude

to Catholics. To take one example, at an Evangelical Alliance
conference in London in 1851, Norman Macleod, an ardent
supporter of the Alliance and a Church of Scotland minister,
asked that Roman Catholics
24
should be addressed ‘in a spirit of
kindness and love’. Count Andreas von Bernstorff, a promi-
nent Alliance figure in Germany in the later nineteenth cen-
tury, took the view that individual Roman Catholics25who
wished to join the Alliance should be welcome to do so. It is
far from accurate, therefore, to see the Evangelical Alliance’s
first leaders as united by a common antipathy towards Roman
Catholicism. Indeed, in the later nineteenth century it was the
growth of Protestant ‘infidelity’ that would more urgently
claim the attention of several Alliance figures – an indication
that the organisation’s concerns were far broader than
anti-Romanism. As we shall see,bigotry was more muted than
has often been suggested, and the Alliance was at times pre-
pared robustly to defend the religious rights of Roman Catho-
lics.
As the nineteenth century progressed, it was the effective-
ness of evangelical Christian witness in Britain and abroad that
became a more central issue for the Alliance. The Alliance
sought to foster prayer and study focused on how evangelicals
could co-operate to meet the challenge of home mission.
From the beginning there was an emphasis on prayer, which
led to the Alliance’s Worldwide or Universal Week of Prayer,
held during the first week of each year.This call to prayer stim-
ulated Christians of many denominations to a deeper aware-
ness of their united witness. Over a period of 60 years the
British Alliance also organised annual conferences at which
questions concerning the church and society were considered.
Issues of social justice were discussed alongside matters of

24 R. Rouse, ‘Voluntary Movements and the Changing Ecumenical Climate’, in

nd
R. Rouse & S.C. Neill (eds), A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517-1948 (2
edn; London: SPCK, 1967 [1954]), p.323.
25 ‘World Mission Notes’, Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1934, p.109.
8 One Body in Christ

evangelistic strategy.There were also smaller open meetings for

study and debate called ‘Conversaziones’.In 1868 a joint com-
mittee was set up, which included members of the Alliance
Council and representatives from the London City Mission,
the Open Air Mission, the Evangelisation Society and other
bodies, to consider action to counteract ‘secularist errors’.
Members of the committee debated with ‘secularist’ lecturers
around London and ‘united action for the maintenance and
defence of true Christianity’ was urged on all branches of the
26
Alliance.
World mission and international action on social justice fea-
tured especially on the agenda of the Alliance’s international
conferences. In the nineteenth century, such conferences were
held in Paris (1855),Berlin (1857),Geneva (1861),Amsterdam
(1867), New York (1873), Basle (1879), Copenhagen (1884)
and Florence (1891). All were generously supported by the
British Organisation, which was continually referred to as the
parent body.The British Evangelical Alliance Organisation felt
that it held a position of world leadership by virtue, as was said
in 1886, of the British Empire’s influence across the globe – an
influence which ensured that it had ‘thousands of members
27
and its affiliated committees in all parts of the world’. Indeed,
in 1912 the so-called ‘Evangelical Alliance (British Organisa-
tion)’ went so far as to change its name to ‘World’s Evangelical
Alliance (British Organisation)’.It was in this period that lead-
ers of the British Alliance heard the proposals of Alexander
Duff, the pioneer of university-level Christian educational
28
work in India, for an International Missionary Conference.
This vision would, however, be taken up by those committed
to the wider ecumenical movement. Alliance internationalism
would move in a different direction with the formation of the
World Evangelical Fellowship in 1951. For its part, the British
Alliance would revert to its original name in 1953.
26 Executive Council Minutes, 9 December 1868; 27 January 1869; 10 February
1869; 27 October 1869; Evangelical Christendom, 1868, pp.471-4.
27 Executive Council Minutes, 10 June 1886.
28 Rouse, ‘Voluntary Movements’, p.322.
 A Broadly Based Religious Force 9

Linked with the internationalism of the Alliance has been a

concern to defend those facing persecution for their faith.
Throughout its history, the Alliance has been committed to
upholding the fundamental principles of religious liberty.
Cases of religious oppression were often featured in the Alli-
ance’s highly informative journal, Evangelical Christendom. In
1855, as a direct outcome of resolutions passed at the Paris
Conference, Sir Culling Eardley (formerly Sir Culling Eardley
Smith), Chairman of several meetings associated with the
founding of the Alliance, headed an international group in
making representations to the Turkish Sultan appealing for re-
ligious freedom. Although spasmodic outbreaks of religious
intolerance occurred in the Turkish Empire during subse-
quent years,a major concession was gained.In 1856 the Sultan
declared freedom of religion for all his subjects. Recognising
the importance of this issue the Alliance appointed a foreign
29
secretary, Herman Schmettou, during the 1860s. As we shall
see in chapter 4, these were just some of the more notable fea-
tures of a concerted programme of action that saw the Alli-
ance’s Executive Council draft memorials and send
deputations to numerous governments, in order to secure reli-
gious freedom not only for evangelicals, but also for Roman
Catholics, Nestorians, Jews and others. As chapter 4 will fur-
ther make clear, these initiatives have been unduly overlooked
by scholars inclined to paint the Alliance as a quietistic body
disengaged from socio-political concerns.
At the heart of all these campaigns was the drive for unity.
Indeed, so foundational was this concern to the birth and de-
velopment of the Alliance that some have suggested that it ef-
fectively functioned as the first ecumenical body in Great
Britain. We have already seen that it undoubtedly brought sig-
nificant numbers of Anglicans and Nonconformists into a

29 C. Calver, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Alliance, 1835-1905’, in S.

Brady & H. Rowdon (eds), For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism
Past, Present and Future (London/Milton Keynes: Evangelical Alliance/Scripture
Union, 1996), p.155.
10 One Body in Christ

deeper relationship with each other in the nineteenth century,

and,as Normal Goodall notes,the word ‘ecumenical’was actu-
ally used within the Alliance to denote its transcendence of na-
30
tional and denominational divisions. An early honorary
secretary of the Alliance, John Stoughton, Professor of Church
History at the Congregational Hackney College, has been
termed ‘the prophet of ecumenism amongst Free church-
31
men’. At the inaugural Alliance conference of 1846,Adolphe
Monod of the French Reformed Church spoke of the esprit
vraiment oecumenique – a comment that appears to have entailed
the first recorded instance of the word ‘ecumenical’to denote a
positive ‘attitude’towards the superseding of national and con-
32
fessional differences. Furthermore,the Alliance welcomed to
international conferences observers who were not its own
members, which helped to spread ecumenical awareness. In
1873 the Old Catholic Church (which had broken away from
the Roman Catholic Church in protest at the decrees of the
first Vatican Council in 1870) was invited to a conference and
33
expressed pleasure at the invitation.
Despite all these initiatives, however, J.B.A. Kessler demon-
strates in his brief but valuable Study of the Evangelical Alliance in
Great Britain,that the Alliance has evolved an approach to unity
distinct from that which has been developed by the ecumeni-
cal movement of the twentieth century.The Alliance began by
seeking to establish evangelical unity among individuals rather
than church denominations.By contrast,the World Council of
Churches (WCC), from its commencement in 1948, has pur-
sued structural and institutional unity between the historic
denominations. Yet there have always been those within the
Alliance who have been concerned for such organisational
30 N. Goodall, The Ecumenical Movement (London: Oxford University Press,
1964), p.6.
31 H.R.T. Brandreth, ‘Approaches of the Churches Towards Each Other in the
Nineteenth Century’, in R. Rouse & S.C. Neill (eds), A History of the Ecumenical
Movement, p.284.
32 Appendix 1 of Rouse & Neill, A History of the Ecumenical Movement, p.738.
33 Brandreth, ‘Approaches of the Churches’, 269, pp.293-4.
 A Broadly Based Religious Force 11

unity. The Alliance was represented in Amsterdam when the

WCC was formed in 1948. The January-March 1949 issue of
Evangelical Christendom commented that the WCC appeared
to have avoided the dangers of false union outside of the truth,
reunion with Rome and any attempt to form a super-church.
The Alliance Council stated that the right policy for evangeli-
cals was to avoid opposition to the World Council, but ‘care-
fully and prayerfully to foster that unity of the Spirit, which
already exists between all true believers and is something infi-
nitely deeper than the outward form of union which the
World Council has brought into being’.The view taken at this
time was that if evangelicals opposed the WCC or did not
co-operate with it, ‘the Modernists or the Ritualists’ might
capture it, whereas involvement by evangelicals could mean
that they might become ‘an instrument in the hand of God for
34
reviving the churches’.

Tracing the History

Overall, this study of the Alliance will focus on themes rather

than on personalities. As its history unfolds, it will become
clear that the Alliance’s fortunes have fluctuated,and that peri-
ods of relative strength and weakness have been due to much
more than simply the character and ability of a particular
leader.Indeed,our aim in this book is to set the development of
the Alliance in a broader social and cultural context than has
been considered in previous studies. Having said this, it should
be acknowledged that the Alliance’s pan-evangelicalism has
led it to sit relatively light to institutionalised structures, and
that this has allowed certain key figures to stamp their individ-
ual character and gifting on the organisation in a memorable
way. Admittedly, this was not so apparent at the outset: the first
official Secretary, Alexander Digby Campbell, made little im-
pact, and although the respected Anglican Edward Bickersteth

34 ‘The Problem of Unity’, Evangelical Christendom, January-March 1949, p.1.

12 One Body in Christ

and the renowned Wesleyan Jabez Bunting worked hard for 35

the new organisation, they died before it began to grow.
Edward Steane,a Baptist minister,then servd as Hon.Secretary,
but the time he could give was limited. The Alliance did make
some headway, however, when James Davies was General Sec-
retary, from 1859 to 1878, and this accelerated while A.S. Ar-
nold and General Sir John Field held the secretariat. In 1879,
for example, it was reported that 300 new members had been
accepted into the Alliance in the previous year in London
alone and that overall
36
there were more new members than in
any previous year. Alliance annual conferences in Britain
attracted around 1,500 people. In that period the Alliance’s
premises were at 7 Adam Street, London. T.D. Harford-
Battersby, the founder in 1875 of the highly influential Kes-
wick Convention, was a member of the Council of the
Alliance. The Alliance summed up its own vision in this
period when in 1883 it commended 37
Harford-Battersby’s
‘large-hearted, catholic spirit’.
This progress was halted towards the end of the century. By
1896 Arnold,who had done much to foster international Alli-
ance links, was too old to continue. He died two years later.
The new Secretary was John Field’s son Percy,but he could not
work with the Chairman of the Alliance, Lord Kinnaird. Field
was dismissed in 1903 and he subsequently sued the Council of
the Alliance. The matter was finally settled in 1905 when
38
Field’s case was dismissed in the High Court. Henry Martyn
Gooch,aged thirty,whose father,W.Fuller Gooch,was a mem-
ber of the Alliance Council, took up the secretaryship of the
Alliance in 1904. In 1912, new offices at 19 Russell Square
were purchased.Gooch gave considerable attention to issues of
liberty of conscience. He also fostered the Week of Prayer and
other large prayer gatherings. As an Anglican layman, Gooch
35 Calver, ‘Rise and Fall’, p.152.
36 Evangelical Christendom, January 1879, p.25.
37 Evangelical Christendom, September 1883, p.288.
38 The Executive Council Minutes, 1903-5, contain the High Court proceed-
ings.
 A Broadly Based Religious Force 13

was keen to draw leading Anglican clergy into the orbit of the
Alliance. Stress on the European dimension was a feature of
Gooch’s period, with his travels taking him to Russia, Poland,
Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland,
39
Italy and Malta. The weakness of Gooch’s approach was that
he often seemed to be working on his own rather than with a
team. This was remedied when Roy Cattell became the Gen-
eral Secretary. Cattell, also an Anglican layman, gave the Alli-
ance a significant boost during the years 1949-55. By then the
offices were at 30 Bedford Place,a German flying bomb having
wrecked 19 Russell Square.
In November 1956 Gilbert Kirby, a Congregational minis-
ter with wide links in evangelicalism, was appointed General
Secretary. He extended the Alliance’s activities further under
the slogan ‘Spiritual Unity in Action’. The Evangelical Mis-
sionary Alliance (EMA) was formed in November 1958
through the merger of the Alliance’s Overseas Committee
and the Committee of the Fellowship of Interdenominational
Missionary Societies. At one stage, Kirby, who had an insatia-
ble appetite for work, was secretary of the Evangelical Alli-
ance, the EMA and the World Evangelical Fellowship, and
40
took a keen interest in developments in Europe. The stories
of the EMA and the European Evangelical Alliance, formed
in 1952, merit separate treatment and are not covered in this
book. When Gilbert Kirby became the Principal of London
Bible College in 1966, Morgan Derham, who was working
for Scripture Union, succeeded him. Derham, however,
remained only two years, and from 1969 to 1982 Gordon
Landreth, who had worked for the Inter-Varsity Fellowship,
was General Secretary. The period from 1966 to the early
39 J.W. Ewing, ‘Dropping the Pilot’, Evangelical Christendom, July-September
1949, pp.57-8.
40 S. Brady, ‘Gilbert Kirby, An Evangelical Statesman: A Tribute and a Profile’, in
S. Brady & H. Rowdon (eds), For Such a Time as This, p.9. For the World Evangeli-
cal Fellowship see D.M. Howard, The Dream That Would Not Die: The Birth and
Growth of the World Evangelical Fellowship, 1846-96 (Wheaton/Exeter: World
Evangelical Fellowship/Paternoster Press,1986);W.H.Fuller, People of the Mandate
(WEF; Grand Rapids/Carlisle: Baker Book House/Paternoster Press, 1996).
14 One Body in Christ

1980s was a difficult one for the Alliance because of evangeli-

cal divisions over attitudes to the ecumenical movement.
Clive Calver, who became General Secretary in 1983, repre-
sented a younger generation that brought a fresh perspective,
and the Alliance grew rapidly. Whitefield House in Kenning-
ton had begun to house the Alliance’s offices shortly before
Calver’s arrival. Since 1997 the Alliance’s strong position in
British Christianity has been sustained under Calver’s succes-
sor, Joel Edwards.

Sources for the Book

Most of the primary sources for this project are held in the Al-
liance’s archive. This is lodged at Whitefield House. Central to
the work presented here have been the minute books of the
Alliance’s Provisional Committee, its Executive Council, its
Committee of Council and what would become its Council of
Management.Also of great value have been the notes of its var-
ious annual conferences, and of the international conferences
attended by delegates of the Alliance’s British Organisation. In
some cases, these large gatherings were commemorated by the
publication, in book form, of the papers presented at them.
Several of these commemorative volumes, which are held at
Whitefield House, have proved illuminating. Copies of them,
and of other key volumes relating to the early history of the Al-
liance,are held in the British Library.From time to time,special
sub-committees have been formed for particular purposes,
and, where appropriate, we have consulted the minutes they
have produced.
From 1847-1954 the Alliance issued a regular journal called
Evangelical Christendom.A digest of news,comment,letters and
more in-depth theological writing, this is a rich, extensive
resource that has hitherto remained largely unexplored. It
offers fascinating perspectives, not only on modern evangeli-
calism, but also on nineteenth- and twentieth-century church
history as a whole.Indeed,it has far more to offer than we have
 A Broadly Based Religious Force 15

possibly been able to present within the confines of this text

and, like the rest of the archive, provides fertile ground for fur-
ther investigation. Evangelical Christendom was succeeded by
The Evangelical Broadsheet, which ran from 1954-78. A new
magazine, idea, was then launched, and continues to this day.
The evangelical periodical Crusade was not directly produced
by the Alliance, but between 1955 and 1980 it featured many
Alliance-related writers and articles, and offers substantial in-
sight into the agenda and ethos of the organisation during this
period.
The secondary sources that exist about the Alliance are
limited. Goodly Fellowship: A Centenary Tribute to the Life and
Work of the World’s Evangelical Alliance, by the Baptist leader
J.W. Ewing, was published for the centenary celebrations of
the Alliance in 1946, but covered its whole international net-
work rather than focusing specifically on its British expres-
sion. Kessler’s Study of the Evangelical Alliance in Great Britain is
essentially the dissertation from a taught doctorate, and pres-
ents a useful survey of how the Alliance has functioned as an
instrument for evangelical unity. Yet just under one half of it
deals with the Alliance’s foundation and opening years. Also,
Kessler concentrates on the theological and ecumenical char-
acter of the Evangelical Alliance, virtually to the exclusion of
its other concerns. No doubt the theme of unity is important,
and the stress that is to be found among Alliance speakers on
‘catholicity’ is certainly reflected in the present study. Even so,
it would be wrong to assume that this was the only interest
and activity in which the Alliance engaged. Furthermore, al-
though Kessler draws on annual reports, on Evangelical Chris-
tendom and on The Evangelical Broadsheet, he makes no use of
Crusade for his study of the post-Second World War period,
and refers only sparingly to the Executive Council and
Council minutes. Besides, his book was never made widely
available. Moreover, as will become clear from the later chap-
ters included here, the Alliance has undergone remarkable
transformation and growth in the period since Kessler’s work
was published in 1968. An excellent article appeared in 1986
16 One Body in Christ

by John Wolffe, entitled ‘The Evangelical Alliance in the

41
1840s: An Attempt to Institutionalise Christian Unity’. The
volume edited by Steve Brady and Harold Rowdon in com-
th
memoration of the Alliance’s 150 anniversary, For Such a
Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism Past, Present and Fu-
ture, also contains much useful material. With the Alliance
now looking to its development in the twenty-first century,
however, there is a need for a more detailed appraisal of its
history.

Charting the Book

This book begins with the foundation of the Alliance in the

mid-nineteenth century. Chapter 2 looks at earlier moves to-
wards unity that provided the impetus for the formation of the
Alliance, while chapter 3 records the formation itself. Chapter
4 examines the commitment of the Alliance to religious free-
dom, especially in the Victorian period. Chapter 5 analyses
some of the theological controversies that challenged the Alli-
ance’s unity during the same time span. Chapters 6 and 7 then
take up the international dimensions of the Alliance. As we
have mentioned, the first half of the twentieth century was a
problematic era for British evangelicals. Chapter 8 traces the
theological tensions that the Alliance faced during those de-
cades. In chapter 9 the renewal of Alliance life, especially
through united mission in the 1950s, is explored. This renewal
was followed, as chapter 10 shows, by deep divisions over
ecumenism. In the 1960s and 1970s evangelicals found them-
selves in a further period of change, which is analysed in chap-
ter 11. The remarkable period of Clive Calver’s secretaryship
from 1983-97 is then recounted in chapter 12. More attention
was given to theological reflection towards the end of this time,

41 J. Wolffe, ‘The Evangelical Alliance in the 1840s: An Attempt to Institutional-

ise Christian Unity’, in W. Sheils and D. Wood (eds.), Voluntary Religion, Studies in
Church History, Vol. 23; Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 333-46.
 A Broadly Based Religious Force 17

and developments on this front are examined in chapter 13.

Finally, the role and agenda of the Alliance under its current
General Director, Joel Edwards, is explored in chapter 14. It
will become clear that the Alliance has developed increasingly
through the later twentieth century as a broadly based religious
force. Joel Edwards underlined this when he spoke in 1997
about42 knowing ‘true biblical unity in our legitimate diver-
sity’. As we shall see, the original vision – the vision of a
movement bold to proclaim ‘We are One Body in Christ’ – is
still very much alive.

42 idea, June/July/August 1997, p.3.

 2

An Evangelical and Catholic Union

The Origins of the Alliance

In the previous chapter we looked at the evangelicalism of the

Victorian era and the way that the Evangelical Alliance was
shaped by that context. The desire for pan-evangelical unity,
however, pre-dated the nineteenth century. In 1795 David
Bogue, a Congregational minister, preached a memorable
sermon on the occasion of the formation of the London
Missionary Society (LMS),1
an event which for him marked
‘the funeral of bigotry’. Initially, the LMS brought together
representatives from the Church of England and Dissenting
denominations, but such co-operation was not sustained.
Nonetheless,the formation of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846
was a result of forces that had been encouraging evangelical
unity over at least the preceding 50 years. Thus Edward
Bickersteth, an Anglican leader who was a central figure in the
founding of the Evangelical Alliance, was a secretary of the
LMS and also a director of the Religious Tract Society, a body
that gradually brought a number of Anglicans, Wesleyans and
Baptists into the realm of pan-evangelical endeavour. The
Sunday School movement was another important inter-
denominational influence. At the same time, there were deep

1 J. Bennett, Memoirs of the Life of the Revd David Bogue, DD (London, 1827); cf.
R.H. Martin, Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-Victorian Britain,
1795-1830 (Metuchen & London: The Scarecrow Press, 1983), p.43.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 19

differences between the Church of England and Dissent

(known increasingly as Nonconformity). Historic tensions
over such issues as restrictions on political freedom for Dis-
senters and payment by Dissenters of the church rate were
exacerbated by fears among clergy in the Church of England
that to be associated
2
with Dissenters was to risk being branded
as revolutionary. Yet, as we shall see in this chapter, the early
part of the nineteenth century saw significant development
towards the inauguration of a pan-denominational alliance of
evangelicals.

Evangelicals and Unity

The impact on British Protestantism of the eighteenth-cen-

tury revival led by the Church of England clergymen John
Wesley and George Whitefield has been thoroughly analysed
by David Bebbington.He describes in Evangelicalism in Modern
Britain, how the decade beginning in 1734 ‘witnessed in the
English-speaking world a more important development than
any other, before or after, in the history of Protestant Chris-
tianity:the
3
emergence of the movement that became evangeli-
calism’. In 1735 Whitefield, then an Oxford undergraduate,
experienced an evangelical conversion, and three years later
John Wesley, in a meeting in Aldersgate 4Street in London,
famously felt his heart ‘strangely warmed’. The influence of
Whitefield and Wesley stretched widely. Dissenters, especially
Baptists and Congregationalists, were affected. A new move-
ment, Methodism, was developed on the model of Wesley’s
remarkable ministry. Evangelicals within these different

2 Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness, 11. The background was the French Revolution
and the pro-Jacobin sentiments of some Dissenters.
3 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p.20.
4 For Whitefield see H.S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the
Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans,1991).For John Wesley see
H.D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London:
Epworth, 1989).
20 One Body in Christ

streams, although they were aware of their denominational

distinctives, recognised their common convictions. Thus
Samuel Walker of Truro, a clergyman who was dramatically
transformed by the message preached during the evangelical
revival, urged that ‘all friends of the gospel’, although differing
denominationally, 5
should ‘unite in heart for the support of the
common cause’.
At the Methodist Conference of 1757 John Wesley set out
his own hope that there might be ‘a national union of evan-
gelical clergy’. He saw this union as drawing together Meth-
odist societies and the evangelicals in the Church of England.
There was little support for the scheme at the time. Even
clergymen who spoke of a common evangelical cause were
wary of any moves that would undermine the established
church. Wesley returned to the theme in a paper written
seven years later. He argued that what was needed was not a
union in opinions, expressions or outward order, but a unity
based on belief in original sin and justification by faith, and
characterised by holiness of life on the part of those who
joined this bond of union. In fact, it was difficult to achieve
unity even within Methodism. Whitefield and Wesley were
divided over the doctrine of predestination and over the
question of whether ‘perfect love’ towards God was (as Wes-
ley believed) possible in this life. By 1769 Wesley had come to
the view that his efforts to achieve wider union had been
fruitless. He now saw the evangelicals whom he had hoped to
6
draw together as a ‘rope of sand’.
Nonetheless, there was an underlying evangelical sense of
shared purpose. Evangelicals were evidently united in their
commitment to active mission and to conversion. This
included evangelism at home and overseas. In looking at the
forces that made for unity it is important to recognise not

5 Cited by K. Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals in the Church of England (Edinburgh: T.

& T. Clark, 1988), p.23.
6 F. Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England (London: Epworth, 1970),
pp.183, 191, 196.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 21

only the place of movements within Britain but also the im-
pact of overseas mission. The end of the eighteenth century
saw vigorous Protestant missionary activity that led to the
formation of British missionary societies. Baptists were the
first, in 1792, to form a denominational missionary society,
largely due to the efforts of William Carey, a young Baptist
pastor in Leicester, and the support of several
Northamptonshire Baptists. Although this was a denomina-
tional enterprise, Carey and those associated with the venture
had been affected by non-Baptists, notably by the outstanding
American theologian Jonathan Edwards and his 1747 book
entitled An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and
7
Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer. The
Northamptonshire Baptist Association issued its own ‘Prayer
Call’ in 1784, and the idea of visible unity would soon extend
beyond praying together to acting together. In 1806 Carey
proposed to Andrew Fuller, the Secretary of the Baptist Mis-
sionary Society, the idea of a conference that would bring to-
gether Christians from all denominations and all parts of the
8
world.
Congregationalists and some Wesleyans were also active in
moves towards unity. Philip Doddridge, a Congregationalist
with expansive views, called for united prayer as early as 1742.
The LMS provided an example of overseas missionary co-
operation. It was a bold initiative, started by some Church of
England, Congregational, Presbyterian and Wesleyan repre-
sentatives. The intention was to channel mission to the South
Seas. Increasingly the LMS became a Congregational society,
with Baptists and evangelicals within the Church of England
supporting their own societies. With the founding of the
Church Missionary Society in 1799 and the Wesleyan Mis-
sionary Society in 1813 it might have seemed that evangelicals

7 B. Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792-1992 (Edinburgh:

T. & T. Clark, 1992), pp.4, 13.
8 E. Carey, Memoir of William Carey, DD (Hartford: Canfield & Robins, 1837).
p.364.
22 One Body in Christ

were stuck in denominational grooves. It was very difficult for

the barriers between the Church of England and Noncon-
formists to be transcended.Nonconformists were still,in terms
of their legal status,second-class citizens.They could not play a
full part in public life. Yet the idea of common participation in
the wider evangelistic task had taken root and would continue
to have an impact. John Newton emerged as an example of a
bridge-building Church of England clergyman. The forma-
tion of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804 was a
9
co-operative move that would have enduring effects. It was to
be cited by early Evangelical Alliance leaders as inspirational in
10
its example.

Evangelical Tensions

During the early years of the nineteenth century the Estab-

lished Church and the Dissenting denominations were often at
loggerheads. Only relatively few well-known Church of
England clergymen, such as Baptist Noel (who became an
Evangelical Alliance leader and subsequently fulfilled his name
by becoming a Baptist),
11
were calling in the 1830s for under-
standing of Dissent. Neither was there a great deal of sympa-
thy flowing in the other direction. A body called the
Anti-State Church Association (which in 1853 became the
Liberation Society) brought together a number of ‘political
Dissenters’, as Anglicans often called them, who waged a sus-
tained campaign against the privileged position of the Church
of England. There was a similar state of unrest in Scotland.
Evangelicals in Scotland, who were to be significant in the
founding of the Evangelical Alliance, were growing, with
Presbyterian Dissenters in Edinburgh in 1835 comprising
9 Martin, Evangelicals United, especially pp.80-146.
10 Report of the Proceedings of the Conference held at Freemasons’ Hall, Lon-
don, From 19 August to 2 September Inclusive, 1846, p.63.
11 B.W.Noel, The Unity of the Church,Another Tract for the Times,Addressed Particu-
larly to Members of the Establishment (London, 1837), p.9.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 23
12
one-third of the churchgoers in the city. Their numbers were
to be boosted considerably within a decade. The acknowl-
edged leader of evangelicals still within the Church of Scotland
in the 1830s was Thomas Chalmers, a professor at Edinburgh
University who had also given an outstanding 13
example of how
to rise to the urban challenge in Glasgow. In 1843 Chalmers
would give a lead to many evangelicals who would leave their
parishes and form the Free Church of Scotland.
The tensions that existed were not only connected with the
place of the established churches. Edward Irving, a young and
flamboyant Scottish Presbyterian minister, was one of those
engaged in a sharp critique of existing evangelical thinking and
practice, whether among members of the established or Non-
conformist bodies. Irving, who had assisted Thomas Chalmers
in Glasgow,enjoyed considerable fame in the 1820s as the min-
ister of the Church of Scotland’s congregation in Hatton Gar-
den, London. Several of London’s aristocrats came to hear his
dramatic preaching. But Irving succeeded in alienating many
evangelical leaders. In 1824, in a highly controversial sermon
preached before the LMS, Edward Irving argued that mission-
aries should not go out supported by missionary societies.
Rather,he said,they should renounce all human support.Later
his espousal of speaking in tongues meant that he found even
more of the evangelical establishment ranged against him.
Irving challenged the ‘love of order, moderation, piety and
prudence’ that characterised evangelicals in the Church of
14
England.
There were also tensions over eschatology.Highly respected
evangelicals, such as Charles Simeon, whose ministry at Holy

12 C.G. Brown, The Social History of Religion in Scotland Since 1730 (London:
Methuen, 1987), p.61. D.W Bebbington uses the figure of one third, noting that
Baptists and Congregationalists are wrongly classified by Brown as Presbyterian
Dissenters. See Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, pp.21, 284.
13 S.J. Brown, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1982), chapter 3.
14 J.F.C. Harrison, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780-1850 (Lon-
don: Routledge, 1979), p.7.
24 One Body in Christ

Trinity Church, Cambridge, had national significance, had no

interest in debates about a visible return of Christ. In this Sim-
eon represented the mainstream thinking of Church of Eng-
15
land evangelicals of the early nineteenth century. But there
were increasing numbers of younger evangelicals who, like
Irving, were placing great emphasis on the personal return of
Christ, the advent hope. They believed that this would be fol-
lowed by a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth – the belief
16
known as premillennialism. Edward Bickersteth, who was
perhaps the best-known and most colourful evangelical in the
Church of England after Simeon, decided in the 1830s to
produce a book on the Second Advent and in the course of
writing it he changed his position and adopted
17
premillennialism. In fact, Bickersteth would go on to reiter-
ate his premillennial beliefs at the founding conference of the
18
Evangelical Alliance. Among those influenced by
Bickersteth’s premillennialism was Anthony Ashley Cooper,
later the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, who was a determined
campaigner for better working conditions in Britain and was
19
especially concerned about the exploitation of children. For
others this adventist emphasis was a distraction. For all that it
transcended denominational boundaries, it did not appear to
contribute much to evangelical unity.
The rejection of the moderate and optimistic evangelical-
ism of Simeon by a younger group in the Church of England
was symbolised by the founding in 1828 of the periodical, The
Record. By 1838 this had the largest circulation of the religious
15 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, pp.83-4.
16 See D.W. Bebbington, ‘The Advent Hope in British Evangelicalism since
1800’, Scottish Journal of Religious Studies 9.2 (1988), pp. 103–14; for America see
T.P. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism,
1875-1982.
17 T.R.Birks,Memoir of the Rev Edward Bickersteth,Vol.2 (2 Vols.,London:Seeleys,
1850), pp.43-4.
18 Report of the Proceedings of the Conference held at Freemasons’ Hall, Lon-
th nd
don, From August 19 to September 2 Inclusive, 1846, p.234.
19 For Shaftesbury see G.B.A.M. Finlayson, The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury,
1801-1885 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981).
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 25

weeklies. It fostered a climate of religious confrontation. Ro-

man Catholics, broader evangelicals in the Church of England
and Nonconformists were all attacked in uncompromising
terms. But the opposition to Dissent was widespread among
Anglican evangelicals of all shades of opinion. In the wake of
the 1828 repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which had
effectively excluded Nonconformists from public life, there
was considerable fear that Dissenters would use their greater
political freedom to help bring about the disestablishment of
20
the Church of England. Many within the Church of Eng-
land, not least evangelicals, saw the established church as a bul-
wark of the nation. By contrast, for most Nonconformists this
arrangement was a denial of the freedom of the church to or-
der its own life and a denial of liberty of conscience. Disputes
about the ‘voluntary’ nature of religion were to be revived in
the 1840s, when they impinged significantly on the founding
of the Evangelical Alliance. Indeed, attitudes adopted on this
issue had a clear effect on the support that different evangelicals
gave to the fledgling organisation.
Evangelicals within the Church of Scotland were involved
in precipitating a major secession – the Disruption – in 1843.
In fact, the leaders of the Free Church that was formed in
Scotland as a result would go on to play a significant part in the
founding of the Evangelical Alliance.A focus of their unhappi-
ness, which led to the division, was the role of patrons.
Although many who seceded – including, most notably, their
leader Thomas Chalmers – were in favour of a national church,
they argued that appointment of Church of Scotland ministers
by patrons was inappropriate since it took away the freedom of
the heads of families in each local congregation to choose their
own minister. Over one-third of the Church of Scotland’s
21
ministers (451 out of 1,203) left their parishes. An English
Baptist minister, Edward Steane, later one of the honorary

20 Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness, pp.14-25.

21 See G.I.T Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1832-1868 (Ox-
ford: The Clarendon Press, 1977), pp.112, 141, 145.
26 One Body in Christ

secretaries of the Evangelical Alliance and the editor of its

journal Evangelical Christendom, wrote of the way ‘the volun-
tary controversy’ in England and Scotland operated at ‘fever
heat’. He commented that ‘the bitterness of the controversy
caused much scandal and was the source of great weakness to
22
the church, paralysing its efforts to reach the world’. Cer-
tainly, this period saw major obstacles being placed in the way
of evangelical unity.

Uniting Against Common Enemies

Further challenges to evangelicalism came from the

Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement and the extension of
Roman Catholicism in Britain and America. On 14 July 1833
John Keble, the Oxford Professor of Poetry and a priest of the
Church of England, gave the Assize sermon (so called because
it was preached before the Assize judges), which is often
thought to mark an important stage in the emergence of the
Oxford Movement. Keble asked for the church to be regarded
as an instrument of the divine will and not as a national institu-
tion. Another leader of this movement was Edward Pusey,
Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford.On 9 September 1833
the priest who would soon become the most prominent figure
in this movement,John Henry Newman,published three tracts
– hence the name Tractarian Movement – which were on the
office of the ministry as properly constituted by ‘apostolical
descent’,the ‘catholic church’,and the liturgy.The emphasis as
the movement took off was on defence of tradition in the face
of changes, the revival of piety and the priority of holiness, the
importance of the sacraments, and a higher view of the minis-
try and ordination. Much of this23
was a direct challenge to pre-
vailing evangelical priorities.
22 Evangelical Christendom, June 1863, p.259.
23 S. Gilley, Newman and his Age (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1996),
pp.116-9. See also P.B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High
Churchmanship, 1760-1857 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 27

Newman himself had experienced an evangelical conver-

sion at the age of fifteen, towards the end of 1816. The influ-
ence of the Anglican evangelical Thomas Scott’s book, The
Force of Truth, had been important in this. In the 1820s, during
his early years in Oxford, Newman was involved in the evan-
gelical Church Missionary Society.But the study of the church
fathers was moving him in a new direction. It is true, as some
writers have indicated, that there was continuity between the
24
doctrinal orthodoxy of Tractarianism and evangelicalism.
But the constant aim of the Oxford Movement’s leaders was to
25
show that evangelical theology was inadequate. In 1841 the
series of tracts came to an end when Newman sought to prove
that the Church of England’s doctrinal position was consistent
with Roman Catholic teaching,and in 1845 Newman seceded
to the Roman Catholic Church.Many other Tractarians,how-
ever,remained in the Church of England.The need for a more
united evangelical front against Tractarian growth was part of
the background to the formation of the Evangelical Alliance.
In 1845 John Angell James, who was pressing hard for a united
evangelical witness, wrote that ‘Puseyism has effected a fearful
26
schism, and the rent is growing wider and wider.’
In the same period,the strengthening position of the Roman
Catholic Church also provoked Protestant reaction.As we have
already noted, some writers have placed emphasis on the
‘anti-Romanism’that they consider to be an important factor in
27
the birth of the Evangelical Alliance. No doubt this was a sig-
nificant influence,even if at times its extent has been overplayed.
In 1844 Sir Robert Peel’s government decided to increase the
annual grant to the Roman Catholic seminary in Maynooth,
24 See, for example, D. Newsome, The Parting of Friends (London: John Murray,
1966).
25 D.W.Bebbington,Holiness in Nineteenth-Century England (Carlisle:Paternoster
Press, 2000), p.11.
26 James, et al., Essays on Christian Union, p.151.
27 Goodall, The Ecumenical Movement, p.161. D.H. Yoder, ‘Christian Unity in
Nineteenth-Century America’, in Rouse & Neill (eds), A History of the Ecumenical
Movement, p.225. M. Hennell, Sons of the Prophets (London: SPCK, 1979), p.82.
28 One Body in Christ

near Dublin,from £8,000 to £25,000.It also proposed to make

the grant permanent, rather than subject to yearly review. This
struck a raw Protestant nerve.As a consequence,1,039 delegates
from various parts of Britain and from different denominations,
held a conference in Exeter Hall, London, from 30 April to 3
May 1845 to get the measure overturned. Some present at the
London meeting opposed any kind of financial support from
the State for religious organisations.Included among these were
well-known Baptist ministers such as J.H. Hinton, then Secre-
tary of the Baptist Union and someone who was to be at the
heart of early Evangelical Alliance life, J.P. Mursell of Leicester,
and Charles Stovel of East London. Another Baptist, William
Brock, later minister of the well-known Bloomsbury Baptist
Chapel, spoke at Yarmouth in the same year of the ‘damnable
doctrines which are inculcated at Maynooth’, and expressed
outrage that Maynooth should be ‘provided with a princely in-
28
come’ from State funds.
This kind of anti-Catholic rhetoric might have united evan-
gelicals, but, in fact, Maynooth served to highlight internal
Protestant divisions. The Record was incensed at what it saw as
betrayal of the Protestant heritage by the Conservative govern-
ment. In the light of the crisis, and despite the great differences
it maintained on secondary matters,The Record was prepared in
March 1845 to encourage working with Dissenters, since An-
glican evangelicals were ‘one with them in the fundamentals of
29
gospel truth’. In December 1845 The Record disagreed with a
sermon delivered by Hugh M’Neile from Liverpool, a
doughty Protestant and defender of the Anglican establish-
ment who argued that there could be ‘no real bona fide co-
operation’ between Anglicans and Dissenters; he had insisted
that far from the proposed Evangelical Alliance doing good,
30
the moves towards it were already creating mischief. For
28 The Endowment of Maynooth,p.4,cited by Norman,Anti-Catholicism in Victorian
England (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968), p.27.
29 The Record, 17 March 1845, p.4.
30 The Record, 18 December 1845, p.4; 22 December 1845, pp.2, 4. Cf. Wolffe,
Protestant Crusade, p.141.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 29

some on both sides of the Anglican-Nonconformist divide,

co-operation was certainly deemed to be impossible. J.H.
Hinton and his fellow Baptist, Edward Steane, withdrew from
the anti-Maynooth committee because, as Baptists, they were
opposed to any state funding of religion, not only the funding
of a Catholic seminary. But a mediating party led by Sir
Culling Eardley Smith, a Congregationalist who was to play a
pivotal role in the establishment of the Evangelical Alliance,
survived. The Maynooth committee failed to influence the
government,but the bulk of those meeting in London in 1844
agreed to plan for a Protestant body ‘to embrace this country,
the continent and the world’, with the aim that Protestants
31
‘may be prepared to meet a powerful and united foe’. As such,
it is clear that the ‘anti-Maynooth’ action ignited a desire for a
32
more permanent vehicle for Protestant association.

Steps Towards ‘Catholic Union’

More positive moves towards unity were also evident. As early

as 1825 ministers from different denominations in Liverpool
met to encourage united prayer. Three of these leaders – the
Wesleyan minister, Jabez Bunting, and the Church of England
evangelicals Edward Bickersteth (who was committed to
evangelical action and who was for six years Secretary of the
Church Missionary Society) and Josiah Pratt – were to emerge
later as key figures in the formation of the Evangelical Alliance.
Americans were similarly active in promoting the idea of
better relations between denominations.In 1839 the US Soci-
ety for the Promotion of Christian Union was created. The
leader of this movement was Samuel Simon Schmucker,a cen-
tral figure in the founding of the first ecumenical American
Lutheran body. He was also a respected Professor of Theology
at the Lutheran seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In his

31 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, p.103.

32 Machin, Politics and the Churches, p.176.
30 One Body in Christ

Fraternal Appeal to the American Churches (1838), Schmucker

advocated full recognition of membership and ministries
between different denominations. He wished, as his book’s 33
sub-title put it,for ‘Catholic Union on Apostolic Principles’.
In Geneva, the Swiss theologian and historian Merle
D’Aubigné also did much to promote Christian unity. A
German leader,Dean Kniewel of Danzig,made a tour through
England, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany in 1842
to forge
34
closer links between leaders in different denomina-
tions.
John Angell James, who from 1806 was minister of Carrs
Lane Independent Chapel, a noted Congregational church in
central Birmingham, was one of the first in Britain to suggest
an evangelical alliance. In doing so, however, he paid tribute to
a letter from William Patton, a Presbyterian leader in New
York and a director of Union Theological Seminary, who had
written to James urging that a ‘General Protestant Convention’
35
be called. At a meeting of the Congregational Union in May
1842, James proposed that a union should be formed amongst
churches holding the voluntary principle (i.e. Dissenting
churches). This, he said, should have the objects of combating
infidelity and also ‘Popery, Puseyism and Plymouth
36
Brethrenism’. As we have seen, opposition to Roman Ca-
tholicism and the Oxford Movement was then standard fare
among Protestants generally, even if a significant American
Evangelical Alliance leader, Philip Schaff, would engage in
37
long conversations with Edward Pusey. As for James’ opposi-
tion to the Plymouth Brethren, he spoke tartly of this lay-led

33 P.D. Jordan, The Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America, 1847-1900:
Ecumenism, Identity and the Religion of the Republic (New York & Toronto: Edwin
Mullen, 1982), pp.34-5.
34 N.M. Railton, No North Sea: The Anglo-German Evangelical Network in the Mid-
dle of the Nineteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p.2.
35 Jordan, Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America, p.206; James, et al.,
Essays on Christian Union, pp.224-5.
36 Rouse & Neill (eds.), A History of the Ecumenical Movement, p.318.
37 Railton, No North Sea, pp.183-4.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 31

movement espousing ‘the high-sounding but hopeless ambi-

tion of swallowing up all denominations in the endearing
name of “Brethren”, thus usurping that title, and designing to
38
withhold it from others’. In the event, however, Alliance op-
position to the Brethren was soon dropped from its list of pri-
orities.
Two months after his Congregational Union address, John
Angell James extended his idea of unity. He wrote in a letter
published by the Congregational Magazine about the possibility
of embracing within a broader evangelical unity not only Dis-
senters in the United Kingdom, but also ‘pious clergy of the
39
Churches of England and Scotland’. This represented a con-
siderable step for James,who had commented previously that it
seemed to be the policy of the Church of England to suppress
Nonconformists. Certainly, many in the Established Church
40
regarded Congregationalists as ‘sectarians’. A committee was
formed to take James’ idea forward and a rally was held in June
1843 at the Exeter Hall in the Strand, London – a building
erected in the 1830s and owned by a group of wealthy evangel-
ical laymen. A remarkable 11,000 people applied for tickets, a
clear indication of the interest that the subject was now gener-
ating. However, the main hall could accommodate only about
4,000. Those who led this meeting were soon to play impor-
tant roles in the formation of the Evangelical Alliance. At this
stage, however, there was no pan-evangelical organisation, and
the resolutions passed by the meeting were little more than
statements of intent. In addition, although a few churchmen
such as Baptist Noel attended, the supporters were almost en-
tirely Nonconformists. This was a period marked by national
ecclesiastical conflict over the education clauses of Sir James
Graham’s Factory Act, whose Anglican-dominated stipula-
41
tions on religious instruction had alienated Dissenters.
38 James et al, Essays on Christian Union, p.151.
39 Congregational Magazine, 1842, pp.458-62, cited by Wolffe, ‘The Evangelical
Alliance in the 1840s’, pp.333-46.
40 Calver, ‘Rise and Fall’, p.149; Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, p.86.
41 Wolffe, ‘The Evangelical Alliance in the 1840s’, p.336.
32 One Body in Christ

The vision of William Patton for a convention had continu-

ing influence on British evangelicals. Patton worked with
other American Presbyterian leaders such as Samuel H. Cox
and Thomas Skinner in Union Theological Seminary, then
became editor of a weekly Presbyterian paper in New York
and was finally appointed President of Howard University.
Patton, Cox and Skinner saw the possibility of evangelical
unity on a world scale and indeed encouraged a group seeking
to set up an evangelical ecumenical movement in North
America. In his letter to James, Patton suggested that evangeli-
cals worldwide would respond to an international gathering if
a call came from Britain, the leading Protestant power of the
42
day. Specifically, Patton urged James to ‘Open a correspon-
dence with Dr Chalmers, and Dr Wardlaw and others of Scot-
land; with prominent men among the Baptist, Methodist,
43
Moravian and other denominations’. He added, ‘Sir Culling
Eardley Smith will go heart and soul with you.’ This was in-
deed the case.James published the letter by Patton as an appen-
dix to an essay in an important book, Essays in Christian Union,
which is referred to below. Specific steps towards unity came,
therefore, from both sides of the Atlantic.

Scottish Divines

Vital encouragement44to foster unity came from a number of

Scottish evangelicals. There was a strong desire for some kind
of drawing together of Scottish and English evangelicals fol-
lowing the events that led to the Disruption of 1843. Within a
year of the Disruption the Free Church erected about five
hundred churches, was supporting its own ministry and estab-
lishing its own colleges. In July 1843 a bicentenary celebration
of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, held in Edinburgh,
assumed the character of a demonstration in support of the
42 Jordan, Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America, p.33.
43 James, et al., Essays on Christian Union, p.224.
44 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, chapter 2.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 33
45
Free Church. One of the speakers, J.W. Massie, a Manchester
Congregational minister who was a Scottish Presbyterian by
background, spoke of how John Angell James was inviting
‘Christians of every denomination to recognise Christian
catholicity, in the formation and exhibition in practice of an
evangelical and catholic union in England’. Robert Smith
Candlish, a younger leader of the Free Church of Scotland
who would later become Principal of New College, Edin-
burgh, said that he ‘concurred most cordially’ in the desire
expressed by Massie for ‘a Christian catholic union’. He added
that he hoped – presumably in the Scottish context – this
would not be limited46to Presbyterians who followed the West-
minster Confession.
This emphasis on ‘catholic union’ was given greater weight
by the contribution of the venerable Robert Balmer of Ber-
wick-on-Tweed. A Professor of Theology for the United Se-
cession Church, Balmer had not been scheduled to speak. Yet,
when asked to do so from the Chair by Thomas Chalmers, he
argued that the New Testament called for visible unity among
Christians and that the ‘principles of catholic union’, as he put
it, were distinctly recognised in the Westminster Confession.
For him there should be ‘no schism in [Christ’s] mystical
body’. If, Balmer urged, Christian believers have love towards
one another as they ought to have, ‘it will either compel us to
put an end to our divisions, or our divisions will compel us to
relinquish our love’. This point was met with shouts of ‘hear,
hear’. In a reference to Philippians 3:15-16, Balmer urged his
audience to ‘walk together in the things in which we are
agreed’. He considered that the denominations were not yet
ripe for ‘incorporation’ (by which he meant organic church
union), but believed that if they were to co-operate in the
things in which they were agreed ‘our incorporation would be
47
ripened and would come in due time’. This was an explicit

45 Wolffe, ‘The Evangelical Alliance in the 1840s’, p.337.

46 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, pp.93-4.
47 Ibid., pp.97-8.
34 One Body in Christ

articulation by a revered evangelical churchman of a hope for

future visible unity.
Robert Balmer’s speech had a profound impact on his Edin-
burgh audience and was to be significant in the genesis of the
Evangelical Alliance. Among those present was John
Henderson from Glasgow, an elder of the United Secession
Church and an enterprising businessman. The Henderson
brothers, John and Robert, had directed a thriving East India
trading company, which they had begun and developed in
Glasgow, and to which they had subsequently added extensive
shipping and banking enterprises to create a business empire.
But tragedy had struck them. The two brothers, together with
their minister, David King (minister of the Greyfriars United
Secession Church in Glasgow), and a female domestic servant,
were involved in a boating accident on the river Clyde in
which Robert and the maid were drowned. This tragedy
deepened John’s desire to use his wealth wisely. His donations
for religious and benevolent purposes reached thirty to forty
thousand pounds annually. During Balmer’s address in Edin-
burgh,Henderson had the thought that essays on the subject of
Christian unity could be invited,with the best awarded a prize.
His minister,David King,suggested instead the production of a
volume of essays on the theme of union.As a consequence,Es-
says on Christian Union,a volume of 440 pages,was published in
48
1845.
All except two of the contributors to this volume (John
Angell James and Ralph Wardlaw) were Scottish Presbyterians.
In the first of the essays, Thomas Chalmers emphasised the
value of co-operative efforts to reach out to others with the
Christian gospel. The second essay was by Balmer. He put the
case for acceptance of those from other denominations to the
Lord’s Supper, suggesting that ‘to exclude from the Supper of
the Lord those whom the Lord himself invites, seems mani-
festly repugnant’. He added that divines such as Richard
Baxter and Philip Doddridge had called for ‘Catholic
48 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.19-20.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 35

Communion’.49 Another essay, by Robert Candlish, looked at

Christ’s prayer in John chapter 17.Candlish saw visible unity as
a necessary goal, but argued, in idealistic fashion, for ‘a union,
50
not of man’s contrivance, but of God’s inspiration’. John
Angell James asked: ‘Can it be pleasing to our common Father
to see his children thus shutting themselves up in their separate
rooms in the great house of the holy catholic church,and never
coming into one common hall to own their relationship?’
Ralph Wardlaw, who was a Congregational minister in Glas-
gow and a supporter of the LMS, took up the same theme. His
essay was entitled ‘A Catholic Spirit’ and argued that intoler-
ance and uncharitableness were ‘the very opponents of catho-
51
licity’. This concern for catholicity among the Alliance’s
founders reflected a desire to rekindle a commitment that, as
W.R. Ward has shown, had been prominent among evangeli-
cals in the 1790s, but which Balmer, Angell James, Wardlaw
and their colleagues thought had been largely lost in the in-
terim. The participation of avowedly ‘catholic’ Moravians in
the genesis of the Alliance would serve as a reminder that some
had managed to sustain the spirit invoked by Wardlaw
throughout this period, but the formation of the Alliance of-
fered genuine hope that it would once again enter mainstream
52
evangelical life and thought.
Each of the essays had theological and practical elements.
However, David King who looked at local unity in Scotland,
and Gavin Struthers who examined sectarian aspects in
church life, had a less evidently theological purpose. Struthers
bemoaned the ‘coldness, and distance, and repulsiveness’ to be
found among Scottish churches.‘Their love’,as he saw it,‘fills a
53
nut shell, while their party feuds fill the land.’ When consid-

49 James, et al., Essays on Christian Union, pp.57-8, 64.

50 Ibid., p.134.
51 Ibid., pp.193, 318.
52 W.R. Ward, Religion and Society in England (London: Batsford, 1972); C.J.
Podmore, The Moravian Church in England, 1728-1760 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998); Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.22.
53 Ibid., p.405.
36 One Body in Christ

ering the practical expressions of visible unity,the authors took

different positions.Some advocated the goal of ultimate union,
while others did not want to go beyond changed attitudes that
could issue in greater co-operation. Kessler suggests that
Chalmers took an Arminian view and emphasised human re-
sponsibility for unity, whereas James held to a high Calvinistic
view and argued that the church was already united.Balmer,he
54
suggests, held a middle position. But to see differences as
based on soteriology is misleading. Chalmers was not Armi-
nian in his beliefs and James was a moderate rather than a high
Calvinist. Nor were the writers of the essays divided over the
view that what should govern their thinking was the idea of
the catholicity of the church. Rather, variations had more to
do with how such catholicity might be expressed.

The Keynote of ‘LOVE’

There were continuing discussions between interested parties

about the way forward for evangelical unity, with John
Henderson, David King and John Angell James among those
who were deeply involved. King’s view was that a smaller
meeting should be convened to draw up a doctrinal basis for a
new co-operative ‘alliance’.Although James agreed,he did not
feel that evangelicals in England could take the initiative
because of their divisions about the voluntary nature of the
church over against a state church. He suggested
55
instead that
the first move must be made from Scotland. The indefatiga-
ble David King then suggested to a number of other leaders in
the Scottish denominations that a meeting might be held in
the strategic port city of Liverpool.An invitation was issued on
5 August 1845 to attend a conference from 1-3 October 1845.
Fifty-five ministers from Scotland, all but nine of whom were
Presbyterian, signed it. None of these however were from the
54 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.21-2.
55 R.W. Dale, The Life and Letters of J.A. James (London, 1861), p.412.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 37

Church of Scotland. Five Congregationalists and four Baptists

56
made up the non-Presbyterian element. The lack of evangel-
icals from the established churches was a feature of this early
period. Only fifteen of the 216 who attended were Church of
England clergy. Edward Bickersteth57
was uncertain and went
‘with many fears and anxieties’. Nonetheless, The Record saw
the objectives of the conference as worthy of support, offering
hope both of evangelical
58
harmony and of ‘repelling the
advances of Popery’.
Again, however, it must be emphasised that opposition to
Roman Catholicism was not the predominant note of the
meeting. At the beginning of the conference, which was held
at the Medical Hall in Liverpool, John Angell James was asked
to occupy the chair. He duly took the opportunity to declare:
‘In every chorus of human voices, the harmony depends on
the “key-note” being rightly struck: that note I am now ap-
pointed to give and it is LOVE.’ David King followed with a
paper in which he stressed that Christian union, not doctrinal
debate or controversy,would be the first object of the intended
alliance. Unity, as Christ prayed for it, was to be visible so that
the world might believe. Thus unity was, said King, an impor-
tant end,but in another sense was simply a means,with the end
59
being people coming to faith in Christ. Yet the conference
delegates, from twenty denominations, were by no means
united themselves. For example, a statement by Scottish dele-
gates was not approved because it wished the new movement
‘to associate and concentrate the strength of an enlightened
Protestantism against the encroachments of Popery and Pusey-

56 D. King, ‘Historical Sketch of the Evangelical Alliance’, in E. Steade (ed.), The

Religious Condition of Christendom: A Series of Papers Read at the fifth annual Confer-
th rd
ence Held at Freemasons’ Hall, London August 20 to September 3 1851 (London:
James Nisbet & Co., 1852), pp.39-40.
57 E.Bickersteth to the editor,5 November 1845, The Christian Observer,Decem-
ber 1845, p.729.
58 The Record, 6 October 1845, p.4.
59 Conference on Christian Union; Being a Narrative of the Proceedings of the Meeting
held in Liverpool, October 1845, p.6; Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, pp.115, 120.
38 One Body in Christ

ism’ and because it mentioned the anti-Maynooth committee.

The opposition to Puseyism was unacceptable to Anglicans,
60
while the reference to Maynooth was deemed too political.
The bulk of those who attended the Liverpool conference
were evangelicals with pan-denominational sympathies who
wished for a new body which would act as a positive force for
unity, rather than being known for its opposition to the beliefs
of others. Thus James Hamilton, a Free Church of Scotland
minister at the Scotch Church, Regent Square, London, and a
strong pan-denominationalist, said: ‘I should regret to say that
this were even chiefly, or principally an anti-papal movement,
or even an anti-infidel movement,or that it took any mere anti
61
form.’ Thomas Rawson (T.R.) Birks, the son-in-law and bi-
ographer of Edward Bickersteth and himself a leading Alliance
figure,recalled in 1850 that what was taking place was a ‘grow-
ing conviction, in the minds of sincere Christians … that their
real union of heart and judgement [was] far greater than the
62
outward appearance’. This union did not draw its main
power from oppositionalism.Granted,one of the objects of the
Alliance was to resist ‘the efforts of Popery’, together with ‘ev-
ery form of superstition and infidelity’. Granted, too, the Alli-
ance committed itself to promoting the ‘Protestant faith in our
own and other countries’, several of which were predomi-
63
nantly Roman Catholic. No doubt, also,as we shall see, the
Alliance continued to attack Roman Catholicism in the com-
ing decades. Yet, despite all this, it is also clear that from its be-
ginnings it was a body that had a positive and broad vision of
unity at its core. In this sense it represented a significant depar-
ture from the more confrontational stances to be found among
many evangelicals at the time.
The Liverpool conference agreed to set up a provisional
committee with four sub-divisions to plan for the formation,

60 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.24.

61 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, p.117.
62 Birks, Memoir of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, p.303.
63 King, ‘Historical Sketch of the Evangelical Alliance’, pp.45-6.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 39

as soon as possible, of what would be known as the Evangeli-

cal Alliance. One division was to meet in London and was to
concentrate its efforts on relationships with other countries,
as well as having responsibility for the midland and southern
counties of England. The second was to gather in Liverpool,
with responsibility for the northern counties and Wales. The
third was to convene in Glasgow and take responsibility for
Scotland. The fourth was to meet in Dublin and to act for
Ireland. The conference agreed that the membership of the
Alliance that was to be created should be restricted to indi-
viduals. This had, from the perspective of the time, several ad-
vantages. It stressed existing spiritual unity, which could be a
reality between individuals but was certainly not a reality be-
tween denominations. Second, it meant that there would not
be a focus on contentious questions of ecclesiology. At the
same time, the restriction of membership to individuals did
not hinder the taking of organisational initiatives. Many of
those present at Liverpool who had come as official delegates
of their churches may have been over-ambitious in pressing
for a commitment to a more visible union of different eccle-
siastical bodies. But at least the conference as a whole was not
prepared to content itself with a mere affirmation of spiritual
unity: concrete steps to express that unity were also being
taken.

A Doctrinal Proclamation

A meeting of evangelicals such as that which took place at Liv-

erpool was bound to generate different opinions about the
place and content of a doctrinal basis. Some felt that it would
be possible for evangelicals to set out agreed foundational
truths that could properly be described as evangelical.
Algernon Wells, the secretary of the Congregational Union
and a participant at Liverpool, referred to the predominantly
Lutheran Confession of Augsburg of 1530, the Presbyterian
Westminster Confession of 1649 and the Thirty-Nine Articles
40 One Body in Christ

of the Church of England.He wanted to take hold of the word

‘catholic’ and wondered if evangelicals could unite around six
or seven cardinal points contained in each of these Reforma-
tion Confessions. The beliefs mentioned by Wells were ‘the
sole authority and sufficiency of Holy Scripture, the Trinity
and the Unity of the Godhead, the fall of man, the redemption
by Christ, justification by faith, regeneration by the Spirit and
so on’.Edward Steane,a leader among the Baptists present,saw
the Baptist tradition as one that refused to impose creeds. He
was therefore prepared to do without a doctrinal formula. His
proposal was to ‘fix upon Christian character, the elements of
vital and experimental godliness, as, at once, the only, and the
necessary,
64
pre-requisites to the fellowship we desire to real-
ise’.
Those in favour of a doctrinal basis were in the majority,
however, and a sub-committee was appointed to formulate a
short evangelical statement of belief. It seemed as if this com-
mittee would fail in its task, but at the last minute unanimous
approval among committee members was achieved on the fol-
lowing eight points, which were read out to conference mem-
bers by Robert Candlish:

1 The divine inspiration, authority and sufficiency of Holy

Scripture.
2 The unity of the Godhead, and the Trinity of persons
therein.
3 The utter depravity of human nature in consequence of
the Fall.
4 The incarnation of the Son of God and his work of atone-
ment for sinners of mankind.
5 The justification of the sinner by faith alone.
6 The work of the Holy Spirit in the regeneration and sanc-
tification of the sinner.
7 The right and duty of private judgement in the interpre-
tation of Holy Scripture.
64 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, pp.160-61, 177.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 41

8 The divine institution of the Christian ministry and the

authority and perpetuity of the ordinances of Baptism
65
and the Lord’s Supper.
(See also Appendix 1)

Candlish explained that the sub-committee had considered

the view that the words of the older confessions of faith should
be used, but its members had come to the unanimous conclu-
sion that the basis should be ‘framed anew, to suit the exigen-
cies of modern times’.He added that this was not meant to be a
creed to which all would have to concur (a very important ca-
veat), but rather a ‘general statement, which could not be mis-
taken by parties who acted in good faith and which should
indicate with sufficient clearness what sort of persons ought to
be entitled to compose this Union’. J.H.Hinton noted that the
article on the Christian ministry and the ordinances of baptism
and the Lord’s Supper would probably exclude the Quakers.
Candlish replied that in their deliberations the committee had
been aware of this problem,but they had felt that since the Alli-
ance would be called upon, as a Protestant body, to enter into
debates about Roman Catholic doctrine, a clear statement
66
on
the ministry and on the sacraments was essential.
Discussion was to continue on this issue, since it was clear
that it introduced the question of ecclesiological distinctives.
One of the points made several times in discussions was that
the Alliance meetings had been, and would continue to be,
opened with audible prayer. This, it was pointed out, would in
itself be likely to exclude Quakers, with their practice of silent
waiting and little audible prayer. Thus the issue was not simply
a doctrinal one. The position of the Brethren was also a factor,
since the Brethren rejected ordained ministry. On the other
hand, Brethren assemblies held that every believer was a priest,
they practised baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and they also
appointed recognised preachers. Indeed, Charles Hargrove, a

65 Conference on Christian Union, p.33.

66 Ibid, pp.33-4.
42 One Body in Christ

former Anglican clergyman who had joined the Brethren, saw

67
the Alliance as embodying Brethren principles. It is evident
that there could have been no Anglican affirmation of the Alli-
ance if the Christian ministry and the sacraments of the church
had not been included in the basis of faith. The only change
that the Liverpool conference made to the doctrinal statement
produced by the sub-committee was that the word ‘regenera-
tion’ was changed to ‘conversion’ in the sixth article of the
statement. This Basis of Faith would prove to be an important
foundation for the formation of the Evangelical Alliance ten
months later, in August 1846.
In order to further the work done at Liverpool and to pre-
pare for the 1846 meeting, planned for London, the members
of the provisional committee met on a number of occasions.At
a provisional committee meeting on 4 November 1845 it was
agreed to publish 5,000 copies of the Liverpool proceedings.
Letters were sent out on 10 November, and later the commit-
tee decided to double the number of copies of the proceedings
68
from Liverpool. Resolutions passed at Liverpool were adver-
tised in Christian newspapers such as The Record and The Pa-
triot. It was hoped to establish a network of 500 corresponding
Alliance members across the denominations. As the work in-
creased,and in order to ensure efficient preparation for the Au-
gust 1846 conference, offices were rented in Exeter Hall,
London, which facilitated contact with the many evangelical
groups that used the Hall. Contacts were further developed
with evangelical leaders in France and Germany who might
come to the London meetings. On 9 December 1845 it was

67 T.C.F Stunt, From Awakening to Secession (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000),

p.292. The Churches of Christ would have been in a similar position to the
Brethren,having also rejected ordained ministry while maintaining the sacraments
– but there is no mention of them in the relevant Alliance minutes from this pe-
riod.
68 Minutes of the Provisional Committee, 4 November 1845; p.25. The letter of
10 November 1845, signed by Edward Bickersteth, Jabez Bunting, James Hamil-
ton, John Leifchild, Edward Steane and Alexander Digby Campbell is held with
the Minute book of the London Provisional Committee.
 An Evangelical and Catholic Union 43

reported to the provisional committee that at a meeting in

Geneva, 130 European ministers had indicated their desire to
be part of the proposed Alliance after reading the Liverpool
69
document. J.W. Massie was happy to report that invitations
had been sent everywhere, ‘so far as Christian catholicity
70
seemed to promise them a reception’. The groundwork for
the formation of an ‘evangelical and catholic union’ was being
carefully undertaken.

Conclusion

There were various motives that moved evangelicals, from the

eighteenth century onwards, into closer co-operation. Evan-
gelicals were, however, often divided among themselves. Some
of the forces making for unity were negative, such as the exis-
tence of perceived common enemies – the ‘monster’, as it has 71
been described, with the names of popery and Puseyism.
However, as the vision of an evangelical alliance became
clearer, the arguments in favour of such a body became more
constructive. The Liverpool conference of 1845 showed that
there was sufficient common ground among disparate evan-
gelicals to put in place a new body, with a basic doctrinal
framework, which was committed to the promotion of a
broadly based unity.It was in the final session at Liverpool,after
three days of serious debate, that those present approved the
name of ‘Evangelical Alliance’ for the body that, they hoped
would be formed. Here, too, they agreed that steps would be
taken to convene an international assembly in London. At this
stage, it appeared that a strong momentum had been created,
and this sense of purpose was carried forward into the provi-
sional committee. The meetings in London in 1846, however,
would prove to be more protracted and difficult than those in
69 Minutes of the Provisional Committee, 9 December 1845.
70 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, p.207.
71 E.R. Sandeen, ‘The Distinctiveness of American Denominationalism: A Case
Study of the 1846 Evangelical Alliance’, Church History 45.2 (1976), p.223.
44 One Body in Christ

Liverpool. Although Robert Candlish’s dream was of ‘a union

not of man’s contrivance’ – suggesting that divine shaping was
taking place and that catholicity would be a major theme –
many obstacles remained in the path of those committed to
seeking such evangelical unity.
 3

Across the Partition Wall

The Formation of the Alliance

Although the lead-up to the inauguration of the Evangelical

Alliance was promising, its actual launch in August 1846
proved to be more complicated. This was not apparent when
the 1846 Conference began. The approximately 800 or so
people who gathered on 19 August 1846 in the Freemasons’
Hall, Great Queen Street, London met in a somewhat incon-
gruous setting for evangelicals, with the signs of the zodiac
decorating the walls. There they heard Sir Culling Eardley
Smith, who had been elected Chairman, assert rather extrava-
gantly that the conference was ‘the first experiment’ that1had
been made to combine the interest of truth and love. As
early as the second day of the conference those present unan-
imously resolved to proceed ‘to form a confederation under
the name of ‘THE EVANGELICAL 2
ALLIANCE’. Enthusi-
asm about unity crested early. The remainder of the confer-
ence’s time was to a large extent spent dealing
with differences of opinion over evangelical doctrine and
over the issue of slavery. Given that there were represent-
atives from nine major English and Welsh denominations, six
Scottish denominations and three Irish denominations, plus

1 Report of the Proceedings of the Conference held at Freemasons’ Hall, London, From
th nd
August 19 to September 2 Inclusive, 1846, p.5.
2 Sandeen, ‘The Distinctiveness of American Denominationalism’, p.224.
46 One Body in Christ

members representing ten denominations in America, and

members from five countries of continental Europe, difficul-
ties might have been anticipated.
The more serious of the two problems that emerged was the
issue of the owning of slaves by evangelicals,a practice that was
then common in the southern states of America. The fact that
the question of slave holding received such attention shows
that evangelical unity could not be confined to the spiritual
realm. An alliance of evangelicals had to examine the connec-
tion between evangelical faith and life in society. British evan-
gelicals, such as William Wilberforce, had exemplified this
process of engagement in the long campaign against the slave
trade. If American evangelicals had tried to form their own
Evangelical Alliance it is almost certain that the attempt would
have foundered over slave holding. As it was, the Americans
present in London in August 1846 hoped that an international
gathering would enable them to transcend their internal di-
lemmas.They could show that they were able to act together –
3
in Britain. But the fact that most British evangelicals had
strongly backed the anti-slavery campaign would impinge
powerfully on thinking about unity. David King, from Glas-
gow, hoped that the Alliance could achieve substantial unity,
and used a vivid metaphor: ‘We meet to shake hands’, he said,
‘across the partition wall and the agreement is that the partition
wall is not to be disturbed, but when we shake hands, what if
4
the partition wall will not bear the shaking?’ As it turned out,
however, the wall would prove remarkably resilient.

Preparatory Thinking

As the provisional arrangements were made for the conference

in August 1846 to set up the Evangelical Alliance, there was a
concentration on practical, socio-ethical matters. In April

3 Ibid., p.226.
4 Report of the Proceedings … 1846, p.205.
48 One Body in Christ

Eardley Smith referred to the anticipated presence at the

August conference of friends from America and said that the
Alliance might ‘even tell upon the slavery of the United
8
States’. Thomas Chalmers, writing in 1846 before the inau-
gural meeting,applauded the practical resolutions being put to
9
the conference. He had been worried that practicalities would
be played down and that the proposed Alliance might turn out
10
to be ‘a do-nothing society’. He was later quoted as having
feared that the Alliance would be ‘union without work’,and as
having added that such a union would ‘not constitute an alli-
ance worth preserving’.The Christian spirit,he said,‘must live
11
by working’.
Although there was sympathy for Chalmers’ championing
of evangelical activism, his suggestion that the Alliance should
abandon a declaration of faith and should operate as a broader
12
‘Protestant Alliance’ was not accepted. Indeed, a Basis of
Faith was increasingly seen as something that would save the
Alliance from becoming merely a political crusade against
13
Catholicism. In the discussion that continued to take place
about the doctrinal basis, however, there were, understandably,
those who were concerned over the relegation of certain be-
liefs (about the nature of the church, for example) to the
realm of non-essential convictions. Bickersteth addressed
these concerns on a number of occasions, arguing that as a
churchman he did not abandon his convictions by associating
with those who differed from him. As the most widely re-
spected evangelical Anglican of the time, Bickersteth was
making an important positional statement. He was equally
clear that Dissenters should not abandon their opinions. For
him there could be ‘a unity of spirit within a diversity of

8 Ibid., pp.212, 242.

9 T. Chalmers, On the Evangelical Alliance; its Design, its Difficulties, its Proceedings
and its Prospects: with Practical Suggestions (Edinburgh, 1846), p.40.
10 Dale, The Life and Letters of J.A James, p.412.
11 Jubilee of the Evangelical Alliance, p.497.
12 Chalmers, On the Evangelical Alliance, p.36.
13 Sandeen, ‘The Distinctiveness of American Denominationalism’, pp.224-5.
 Across the Partition Wall 49

forms’.14 The Episcopal system he saw as having been pre-

served in the Church of England through the goodness of
God, but for him it was not essential to the existence of the
Church. What was essential was profession of a true faith,
coupled with true preaching and the due administration of
15
the sacraments. This seemed to offer a basis for unity.
Those who drafted the statement of faith did not intend it
16
to be a statement of all the fundamentals of the gospel. J.W.
Massie referred to the basis as ‘a selection and not a compen-
dium of scriptural truth’, pointing out that ‘no body of unin-
spired men possessed authority to declare what are important
or unimportant truths’. Rather, the basis highlighted the
17
prominent characteristics of the designation evangelical.
The provisional committee accepted one suggestion for a
change to the Liverpool statement, which came from some
Scottish Presbyterian leaders. The fourth article in the Basis
of Faith concerned belief in the incarnation and the atone-
ment, and to this was added belief in Christ’s ‘mediatorial in-
tercession and reign’ – that is, his unique provision of access to
God the Father, and the divine authority confirmed in his as-
cension to the Father’s side (cf. 1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 10:12-13).
There was much more extensive debate about the article on
the ministry and the sacraments, with very different views be-
ing put forward. Some of those from North America who
were involved in the preparatory work also, crucially, wished
to add a statement about life after death and the last things.
Hours of discussion took place about this in the provisional
committee. As a result the conference was asked to agree
that a ninth article of belief be added: ‘The immortality of
the soul, the resurrection of the body, the judgement of
the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, with the eternal blessed-
ness of the righteous and the eternal punishment of the
14 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, pp.132-3.
15 E. Bickersteth, The Promised Glory of the Church of Christ (London, 1844),
Appendix 1, pp.393-6.
16 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.31.
17 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, pp.355-7.
50 One Body in Christ

wicked.’18 The Americans were prompted to call for this ad-

dition largely in response to the rise of Unitarianism in their
own country. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the main
challenge to the traditional view of death, judgement, heaven
and hell presented in their proposed new clause had come
from universalism – the view that everyone will eventually be
saved. Now, however, increasing numbers of theologians and
Christian leaders were seeking a ‘middle way’ between these
two well-established positions. The most popular such course
turned out to be annihilationism – the view that rather than
being tortured forever, the unredeemed will be destroyed by
God some time after they have been judged and punished.
Unitarians took their name from their assertion of God’s
oneness over against the Trinity, but from their formation in
the 1770s onwards they had also been known as advocates of
this increasingly popular annihilationist eschatology. In time
they would come overwhelmingly to embrace full-blown
universalism, but in the 1840s their and others’ promotion of
eventual destruction was deemed sufficiently threatening by
the US delegation to warrant clear censure in the Evangelical
19
Alliance’s Basis of Faith.

Potential for Conflict

It was recognised that a statement of this kind had the potential

to create division, although the strength of feeling that was
later generated over this issue seems to have been a surprise.
Nor was the Alliance prepared for the conflict that ensued over
slave holding. The provisional committee members agreed a
resolution which stated that while they considered it ‘unnec-
essary and inexpedient to enter into any question at present on
the subject of slaveholding’, they were ‘of the opinion that
18 Report of the Proceedings … 1846, pp.79-81.
19 For more detail see G.Rowell,Hell and the Victorians (Oxford:Clarendon Press,
1974); also ACUTE (Evangelical Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth
among Evangelicals), The Nature of Hell, pp.60-67.
 Across the Partition Wall 51

invitations ought not to be sent to individuals,who whether by

their own fault or otherwise, may be in 20
the unhappy position
of holding their fellowmen as slaves’. Although there were
suggestions later, when the matter became divisive, that the
subject should never have been mentioned,it was such a major
issue for transatlantic evangelicalism that ignoring it would
have been inconceivable.The problem was that the question of
slaveholders had not been debated at Liverpool and therefore it
was left to the provisional committee to come to a decision
about an important limitation in the invitations to the forth-
coming 1846 conference. An additional problem was that the
provisional committee had not studied the position of slave-
holders in the United States. One American, Leonard Bacon,
minister of the First Church of New Haven, Connecticut, and
editor of two leading journals, The New Englander and the
New York Independent, although progressive in his views, was
outraged by the provisional21committee’s decision. We shall
return to these issues below.
There were other areas in which conflict was more immedi-
ately apparent. The Christian Observer, a periodical that had
been established by Wilberforce’s so-called Clapham Sect to
speak for moderate Anglican evangelicals, was fairly dismissive
of the plans for an Alliance. Alliance supporters within the
Church of England were dismayed by comments in 1845 sug-
gesting that the Alliance was ‘a scheme of sectaries to increase
strife and confusion’, and that it was ‘a help and encourage-
22
ment to Anabaptism’. This was in line with the antipathy
that, from time to time, the Observer showed towards Noncon-
23
formity. The references to sectaries and Anabaptism seem to
have been directed towards Baptists and Scottish seceders in
particular. Later, in 1845, after referring to the fact that two
well-known Baptist leaders, J.H. Hinton and Edward Steane,
20 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, p.357.
21 R. Baird, Address on the History, Present State, and Prospects, of the Evangelical Alli-
ance Cause in the United States (London, 1851), p.51.
22 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, p.250.
23 Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness, pp.10-24.
52 One Body in Christ

had been unwilling to co-operate with Anglicans in the

anti-Maynooth committee yet had taken a leading part in the
1845 Liverpool conference, the Christian Observer took thirty
pages to make its position quite clear. It asked whether it was
reasonable to think that these ‘warm partisans’ (for voluntary
rather than state support of religion) had now abandoned
‘their evil will at our national Zion’ (i.e. the Church of Eng-
land). The Evangelical Alliance was dismissed as a ‘new
anti-Church League and Covenant’ led by ‘Scottish sectaries’
and designed as an agency for destroying the established
24
church.
From the Baptist side there were also, ironically, allegations
of sectarianism directed at the Evangelical Alliance. In May
1846 two articles, one for and the other against the Alliance,
appeared in The Baptist Magazine. There were obvious Baptist
concerns about how involvement in the Evangelical Alliance
could undermine fundamental Baptist convictions on be-
liever’s baptism, congregational church government and
church-state relationships. William Groser, editor of The Bap-
tist Magazine, set out the reasons for not joining the Alliance.
He described it as ‘essentially sectarian’ since it excluded some
who it believed to be members of the body of Christ.The cru-
cial problem for Grosner, and the reason why he was so con-
frontational, was because the Alliance had a ‘creed’. He
challenged the Baptist members of the provisional committee
with these trenchant words:‘You have assented to the adoption
of a creed as the text of admission.The belief of that creed nei-
ther you nor I regard as justifying faith. The acknowledgment
of that creed is not, in your own judgment, any proof of vital
religion.’ Grosner argued that ‘since there are genuine Chris-
tians whom that creed will exclude … Is it not just … to say
that your union is not catholic, in the good sense of that term,
25
but sectarian?’

24 The Christian Observer, December 1845, pp.731-61.

25 The Baptist Magazine, May 1846, cited by J.H.Y. Briggs, The English Baptists of
the Nineteenth Century, pp.232-3.
 Across the Partition Wall 53

Other Nonconformist newspapers made similar points,

showing the difficulties that the pro-Alliance leaders had to
overcome in their search for ‘an evangelical and catholic un-
ion’. There were strong criticisms in The Nonconformist, which
was edited by Edward Miall,a Congregationalist,and was ded-
icated to achieving the separation of church and state, and in
The Christian Witness and Church Member’s Magazine. To join
with Anglicans, they held, was to compromise the voluntary
position.The Nonconformist also saw the attempt at ‘compelling’
people to subscribe to a particular statement of faith as ‘unjust
26
and unscriptural’. In fact, joining the Alliance was voluntary,
but ‘compulsion’ to assent to a Basis of Faith stirred up some
Nonconformist feelings. John Campbell, a London based
Scottish Congregationalist who edited The Christian Witness,
was a powerful writer, and as the official organ of the Congre-
gational Union his publication was influential, if unpopular
27
with many Congregationalists. Campbell claimed, in a letter
to Bickersteth in January 1846,to yield to no man in his ‘admi-
ration of a Catholic spirit’,but he expressed ‘quenchless hostil-
ity to all Ecclesiastical Establishments’. His vision of unity was
to bring together ‘the entire sisterhood of Dissenting commu-
28
nities’. Concrete actions by denominations to further Chris-
tian union would not be undertaken until much later, but the
Alliance did confound its critics by pointing a way forward in
ecumenical endeavour.

Establishing an Alliance

On 19 August 1846 the conference that formally brought the

Evangelical Alliance into being began in London. Of the 922
people who signed as attendees, 84% came from Great Britain,
over 8% from the United States and over 7% from European
26 The Nonconformist, 28 January 1846, pp.43.
27 Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness, pp.179-80.
28 John Campbell to E. Bickersteth, 7 January 1846, The Christian Witness, 2 Feb-
ruary 1846, pp.85-90.
54 One Body in Christ

continental countries, from Canada and from areas of the

world where western missionaries were serving. Indigenous
leaders from the non-western world were noticeably absent.
Although assessments of denominational affiliation at the
meeting vary somewhat, Clive Calver has calculated that the
largest group represented was Presbyterian in allegiance, with
the majority of these coming from Scotland, and a further 27
from the United States.In addition,there were 187 Methodists,
and 182 Congregationalists, thirteen of whom had come from
the USA. The strong representation of these three groups
reflected the well-established ecumenical commitment which
had been demonstrated in their formation and development of 29
the London Missionary Society in the preceding decades.
Anglicans and Episcopalians together numbered 172, and
there were some 80 Baptists. Among the Americans, the Pres-
byterian group comprised an especially distinguished party of
advocates for unity, most of whom had left for Europe almost
immediately
30
after they received an invitation to the confer-
ence. The first few hours of the conference were largely
taken up in reading and discussing a report, which David King
had been asked to compile, that outlined the steps leading to
that point.
Ralph Wardlaw,the Congregational minister from Glasgow
who had written a paper entitled ‘A Catholic Spirit’ in Essays
on Christian Union, emphasised that the conference was being
held primarily to ‘confess’Christian union and that there were
representatives from more than twenty evangelical Christian
denominations present who were involved in this process.The
conference was not there to bring union into being, he
stressed, but to recognise a union which already in fact existed.
It was Wardlaw who presented the first resolution to the con-
ference. It read:

29 R. Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895.

30 Calver, ‘Rise and Fall’ p.150; Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, p.286. Compare
the somewhat divergent statistics in Jordan, The Evangelical Alliance for the United
States of America, p.36.
 Across the Partition Wall 55

That this Conference, composed of professing Christians of many different

Denominations, all exercising the right of private judgment, and, through
common infirmity, differing in the views they severally entertain on some
points, both of Christian doctrine and ecclesiastical Polity, and gathered to-
gether from many and remote parts of the World, for the purpose of promot-
ing Christian Union, rejoice in making their unanimous avowal of the
glorious truth, that the Church of the living God, while it admits of growth, is
one Church, never having lost, and being incapable of losing its essential unity.
Not, therefore, to create that unity, but to confess it, is the design of their as-
sembling together. One in reality, they desire also, as far as they may be able to
attain it,to be visibly one;and thus,both to realize in themselves,and to exhibit
to others,that a living and everlasting union binds all true believers together in
the fellowship of the Church of Christ.31

A number of elements in this resolution are important. In the

first place,in its affirmation of ‘the right of private judgment’it
is a clearly Protestant document, with a leaning towards Non-
conformist thinking. Secondly, differences between Christians
are seen as arising ‘through common infirmity’. Something
important is seen as being lost because of denominational divi-
sions.Yet,at the same time,the church is ‘one church’.Essential
unity, in fact, remains. One reading of this might suggest that
the issues dividing the churches are relatively unimportant,
although this is not what is said. Rather, overarching unity is
seen as incapable of being destroyed, despite the serious eccle-
siastical divisions that exist. Finally, the resolution affirms the
goal of being ‘visibly one’. Although the subsequent history of
the Alliance has not usually been linked with attempts to
achieve visible unity, and although some have even seen it as
opposed to such a goal,the idea of visible unity is undoubtedly
here.
There were those at the conference who were outspoken
in their anti-denominational statements. Stephen Olin, Presi-
dent of the American Wesleyan University (and a minister of
the Methodist Episcopal Church), while welcoming the
resolution, suggested that ‘our Denominational names and
peculiarities are the hay and stubble’, and spoke of a ‘visible
31 Report of the Proceedings … 1846, p.44.
56 One Body in Christ

church’ that was emerging which he saw as transcending

denominationalism. He said that he had offered up his ‘sec-
32
tarian bigotry’ on the altar of his Saviour. There was also
hope of overcoming racial barriers. A black minister, M.M.
Clark, from the African Methodist Episcopal Church in
Washington, spoke on behalf of African Americans and was
enthusiastically received. Some of the conference members
present from mainland Europe also spoke in strongly pan-de-
nominational and pan-national vein. Those from France, such
as George Fisch from an independent church in Lyons, ex-
plained that the major argument of the Roman Catholic
Church against the credibility of Protestant churches was that
Protestantism was hopelessly divided. The French, despite
having only thirteen members at the conference, constituted
33
a significant European presence. Eduard Kuntze from Ger-
many talked about the way a meeting in Germany organised
by a group of rationalists had stimulated evangelicals to realise
the need to come together with others, from Germany and
elsewhere, in a deeper unity.
The ‘one church’ that was affirmed in the resolution cer-
tainly indicated a unity that brought together not only differ-
ent denominations but also different countries. A British
Member of Parliament who was present, J.P. Plumptre, high-
lighted the international character of the conference.Yet it was
different national perspectives that were to prove so problem-
atic. It was because of a desire for freedom for evangelicals to
deal with their national contexts that the British would have
preferred to give each country authority to set up its own
Evangelical Alliance organisation. British leaders, in discus-
sions that took place before the conference, generally saw any-
thing beyond that as too ambitious. In these discussions,
however,representatives from the United States,led in particu-
lar by Samuel Schmucker, argued that such a loose affiliation
was inadequate. World-scale thinking, as we have seen, had

32 Ibid., pp.47-9.
33 Railton, No North Sea, chapter 1.
 Across the Partition Wall 57

already been present in the United States before British plans

for an Alliance took shape. It was this concept of international
co-operation that would cause problems in defining the state-
ment of faith. It would also ultimately steer the delegates to-
wards a rock on which the very existence of the Alliance
almost foundered.
Although the commitment to ‘one church’ was a noble
sentiment, it was recognised that in many places, not least in
Britain, denominational allegiance was held quite tenaciously.
F.A. Cox, a British Baptist who wrote a favourable review in
1845 of Essays in Christian Union and who deplored denomi-
national ‘walls of separation’, nevertheless realised the limits
of what could be achieved. In his frustration with the status
quo concerning denominational unity, he caricatured Bible
Society supporters as meeting at society anniversaries and
leaving ‘generally with undiminished prejudices, jealousies
34
and dislike – with scarcely a shake of the hand’. On the
other hand, Cox brought forward a resolution to the confer-
ence designed to allay fears that the Alliance might seek to
destroy denominations. He asked that the Alliance should be
considered an alliance of individuals. Cox himself was hope-
ful that ‘at some distant period’ there might be wider union.
An individual joining the Alliance ‘does not abandon his de-
nomination; he only moves out for a moment into this vast
fraternity and brotherhood’. There was to be no ‘new ecclesi-
astical organization’, no union of ‘systems’. This seemed to
play down the Alliance’s contribution to unity, although the
conference did affirm that ‘on the basis of great evangelical
principles’ the Alliance would give opportunity for united
35
action.
It was the predominant view of the delegates throughout
the discussions at the inaugural Alliance conference that it was
important to seek to reach out across the divisions that existed
34 ‘Christian Union’, The Eclectic Review, June 1845, p.670; cf. J.H.Y. Briggs, ‘F. A.
Cox of Hackney:Nineteenth-Century Baptist Theologian,Historian,Controver-
sialist and Apologist’, The Baptist Quarterly 38.8 (2000), p.393.
35 Report of the Proceedings … 1846, pp.178-9, 202.
58 One Body in Christ

within the church as a whole,but that it was not realistic at that

point to seek to remove the divisions themselves. This was
Cox’s position. Nonetheless, there were those who saw the
possibility that the Alliance would bring into being a new era
36
in the history of the church. Hopes were high when, on the
second day of the conference, Robert Buchanan a Free
Church of Scotland minister in Glasgow, seconded by a Rev.
Dr. De Witt of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York,
formally proposed the formation of the Evangelical Alliance.
De Witt stressed that this marked a stage in a spiritual journey.
‘It is good for us to be here’,he acknowledged,but echoing the
experience of Jesus with his disciples on the ‘mountain of
transfiguration’,he urged that the conference members should
‘build no tabernacles’, in the sense of feeling that this was the
place where they should settle. Rather, they should carry the
message of eternal life to the world. The proposal to form the
Alliance was put to the conference and after a period of silent
prayer it was passed unanimously, delegates singing the doxol-
37
ogy and shaking hands with one another.

Defining and Re-defining

The third morning of the conference saw the commencement

of discussion of the doctrinal statement. Debates about this,
which were intense, continued until the end of the fifth day.
In his speech presenting the basis, Edward Bickersteth stressed
that although the doctrines in the statement kept some people
out of the Alliance, this was not to be taken as suggesting that
they were outside the church. He did, however, see the basis as
setting out the essential elements – ‘the most vital truths’ – of
evangelical Protestantism,and embracing most,though admit-
tedly not all, ‘real Christians’. There was certainly an inference
here that those who did not hold to the basis were not holding

36 Massie The Evangelical Alliance, p.112; cf. C. Calver, ‘Rise and Fall’, p.150.
37 Report of the Proceedings … 1846, pp.65-70.
 Across the Partition Wall 59

to fundamental evangelical beliefs. It was not the intention to

admit Roman Catholics to the Alliance, said Bickersteth,
‘though some of them might be real Christians’ (others said
that ‘many’ Roman Catholics were to be counted as such),
since the Alliance was designed to link those who could act
together in unity. Bickersteth later emphasised the ‘private
judgment’ as set out in the Basis of Faith, and contrasted this
with the way in which the Roman Catholic Church 38
had
recently denied the reading of Scriptures to the laity. The
right of private judgement, in Protestant thinking, meant that
there was room for fresh interpretations of Scripture and thus it
followed that no basis of faith was ultimately binding.
Unsurprisingly, most of the articles of faith provoked virtu-
ally no debate. All the delegates affirmed that the reality of
human sinfulness and justification by faith alone were central
evangelical doctrines, and they were not prepared to argue
about wording. The Trinity was central: the American dele-
gation in particular insisted that a strong position must be
taken on this and that there must be no truck with Unitarian-
ism. As we have seen, the Americans were also insistent on
the inclusion of an article concerning the immortality of the
soul, the eternal blessedness of the righteous, and the eternal
punishment of the wicked. Indeed, so concerned were they at
the erosion of these doctrines by Unitarians, annihilationists
and others that William Patton implied in one of his state-
ments that the Americans would form their own separate Al-
liance – ‘which would truly hold to a biblical position’ – if
39
the clause on life after death was not included.
Theologically, these Americans represented the middle
ground rather than the conservative pole of American evan-
gelical thinking. Ultra-conservatives, those on the more lib-
eral wing of American Protestantism, and those of
38 Report of the Proceedings … 1846, pp.77-8; 94-5; 116-19; 137-8; see commen-
tary by Jordan,Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America,pp.45-6;The Non-
conformist, 26 August 1846, p.575 – W.W Ewbank, from St George’s, Everton,
spoke of many Roman Catholics who were real Christians.
39 Report of the Proceedings … 1846, pp.111-4.
60 One Body in Christ

high-church persuasion did not attend the conference. In-

deed, only one of the Episcopalians present at the conference
was from the USA.
A number of British delegates were unhappy about the in-
clusion of the statement about eternal punishment. One of
the most outspoken was J.H. Hinton, secretary of the Baptist
Union. He agreed with the truths contained in the article but
did not see the need for it. Having himself faced censure in
the Baptist Union for his unusual views on the work of the
Holy Spirit in conversion, Hinton was worried about ‘a
grand inquisitorial court’ investigating members’ beliefs on
40
this issue. It was only Unitarians and those who were ‘avow-
edly Infidel’, Hinton believed, who denied the doctrine of
eternal rewards and punishments. Hinton even threatened to
resign over the issue and at one point alleged that the Alliance
would be seen as a new denomination – the ‘eternal
tormentists’. Other British participants, however, regarded
this as an extreme reaction. John Angell James argued for the
additional article, suggesting that it was an article of belief that
Congregationalists, while appearing divided on it, did affirm.
This was not, however, the view of another Congregational-
ist, Thomas Binney, who said that ‘many good men’ whom he
knew did not believe in eternal punishment. Ralph Wardlaw
was a Scottish supporter of the article, pointing out that it was
the only part of the Basis of Faith that mentioned the future.
It was clear that the tide of opinion had moved to the point
where this additional article would be accepted. The existing
article on the sacraments was retained, in line with Anglican
wishes. Thus the final version of the basis was proposed to the
conference on 24 August. Hinton and four others abstained
in the vote, but both doctrinally and politically the formula of
belief seemed to satisfy the vast majority of those present (for
41
the full text see Appendix 2).
40 The Nonconformist, 26 August 1846, p.575. On Hinton’s pneumatology see
Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p.8.
41 Report of the Proceedings … 1846, pp.101-7; 112-15; The Nonconformist, 26 Au-
gust 1846, p.575. For background see Rowell, Hell and the Victorians.
 Across the Partition Wall 61

The days immediately before and after the acceptance

of the doctrinal statement appeared to indicate that the
conference was destined to end on a harmonious note. On
Sunday 23 August delegates preached in eighty-one London
churches of various denominations. Holy Communion was
celebrated in Baptist Noel’s remarkably ecumenical Anglican
church, St John’s Chapel, Bedford Row, at 8am on that
Sunday, with 150 people from a number of countries and de-
nominations participating. From 25 to 27 August there was
discussion by the conference of propositions urging practical
co-operation. Uncharitable judgements about other evangel-
icals were deprecated. These ‘practical resolutions’ were to
prove a continuing theme of Alliance life (see Appendix 4).
The prominent Anglican T.R. Birks, then the incumbent at
Kelshall, Hertfordshire, would later find himself at the centre
of doctrinal controversy on the nature of hell. Here, however,
he proposed that ‘the great object of the Evangelical Alliance
be to aid in manifesting as far as practicable the unity which
exists among the true disciples of Christ; to promote their
union by fraternal and devotional intercourse; to discourage
42
all envyings, strifes and divisions’. Johann Oncken, the Ger-
man Baptist leader, encouraged steps that would broaden the
worldview of British Christians, especially relating to Europe,
43
where their knowledge was ‘sadly deficient’. The vision of
Baptist Noel was that gatherings of Christians of different de-
nominations throughout the world would hold ‘the banner
44
of unity’.

Deep Divisions

A group chaired by Samuel Schmucker had worked out the

details of the proposed organisation of the Alliance, and he put

42 Ibid., pp.229-31.
43 Ibid., p.242.
44 The Record, 27 August 1846, p.3.
62 One Body in Christ

these to the conference on 29 August. The plan, which

reflected American thinking, envisaged a world Evangelical
Alliance divided into five regional organisations – Britain, the
USA, France, Germany and Switzerland – to be linked by
international conferences held every seven years or oftener.
Schmucker’s idea was that there should be genuine universality
and that there should not be a concentration of power in the
hands of leaders from any one country. By now, on the ninth
day of the conference,many delegates were tired and wished to
return to their pastoral duties rather than discuss organisational
matters. J.H. Hinton, however, insisted that there had to be
clarity over whether the proposal meant independent Alli-
ances or a worldwide organisation. If what was to be imple-
mented was the latter, then Hinton asserted that slaveholders
must be explicitly excluded from membership. Hinton was
committed to the British anti-slavery movement and was one
of those who had pledged not to have any fellowship with
slaveholders. If regional Alliances were to be independent,
Hinton accepted that the issue of membership for slaveholders
was a regional matter. American leaders had managed to pre-
serve unity in the 1830s within evangelical organisations by
ruling out discussion of slavery. In the 1840s, however, both
Methodist and Baptist denominations split into two over the
issue. Given this background,45 Americans resented what they
saw as Hinton’s interference.
How important was this debate? For many decades after the
Alliance was founded,the divisions that were exposed over the
issue of slavery continued to have an impact, and – in the light
of this – those who attempted to write official versions of the
history of the Alliance were faced with a dilemma. One possi-
bility was to deal with the subject of this ‘partition wall’openly.
The other, which was usually the preferred way, was to pass
over the topic. Kessler notes that when he wrote his history he

45 Report of the Proceedings … 1846,p.290;see T.L.Smith,Revivalism and Social Re-

form: American Protestants on the Eve of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row,
1965).
 Across the Partition Wall 63

found that in the only copy of the report of the Evangelical Al-
liance’s Manchester conference (which followed the 1846
London conference) that was available the pages of the section
dealing with slavery had not been cut open.All the other pages
46
had been cut and were well marked. This reluctance to talk
about the pain that Alliance members felt is seen in the fact that
J.W. Ewing, in his book Goodly Fellowship, published in 1946,
47
devoted only two paragraphs to the question. Even Kessler
does not mention that there was a contribution to the 1846
conference from a Jamaican perspective, with a ‘gentleman of
colour’ (as the conference report put it), a minister from the
Methodist Church in Jamaica, arguing for Christian unity as
48
the means of fighting the slave trade. As it was, the debate on
whether slaveholders could be members of the Alliance took
up four days of the conference.
Although the Americans were not completely united in
their position – J.V. Himes from Boston, for instance, sup-
ported Hinton – William Patton of New York and several
other American delegates stated that they had not come to
join an Anti-Slavery Society. If slavery was to be dealt with
and condemned, they argued, so should intemperance, child
labour, exploitation in factories and other social problems
that existed in Britain. For the Americans, slavery was a polit-
ical as well as a moral issue with roots in the War of Inde-
pendence, in the same way as the existence of the links in
Britain between the state and the Church of England was a
political issue with roots in the very formation of the nation.
Patton declared that the American delegates had travelled to
London not to see a British child born, and to be godfathers
of such a child, but to found a world Alliance. If the
slave-holding issue was introduced, then there could be only
a British Organisation and the hopes of world unity would be
46 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.43.
47 J.W. Ewing, Goodly Fellowship: A Centenary Tribute to the Life and Work of the
World’s Evangelical Alliance (London/Edinburgh: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1946),
pp.18f.
48 Report of the Proceedings … 1846, pp.217-8.
64 One Body in Christ

dashed.49 There were some British voices that were concilia-

tory to the American consciences, such as W.W. Ewbank, an
Anglican vicar from Everton. A proposal was put forward that
condemned slavery but did not exclude slaveholders from Al-
liance membership. Professor Emory, of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church in the United States, was in sympathy with this
approach. He said that his denomination had taken a stand on
slavery and had lost 400,000 members as a result. Even so, he
argued that slavery was not a theological question. Adolph
Monod, professor in the theology faculty at Montauban Uni-
50
versity, France, took a similar line.
F.A. Cox then proposed a motion, which Edward
Bickersteth seconded and Hinton supported, that an ad hoc
group should be convened to seek to resolve this problem.Ac-
cordingly, an Anglo-American sub-committee of forty-seven
people was set up and engaged in protracted deliberations.
Eventually the group’s members, who included the influential
American Presbyterian educationalist and theologian, Robert
Baird, proposed that there might be a way forward if a resolu-
tion were accepted by the conference that strongly con-
demned ‘slavery and every form of oppression’. The evils of
intemperance, duelling and profaning Sunday would thus be
linked with slavery.From the American point of view the spot-
light would be taken off America; evils that were present
throughout the nations linked through the Alliance would be
included in a general condemnation. Alliances in the regions
were to be given the responsibility of addressing the situations
that pertained in their context. This was a way of recognising
evangelical diversity.Confidence was expressed that no branch
of the Alliance would admit into membership slaveholders
who continued in that position out of self-interest and will-
51
ingly. British members hoped that this would save the Alli-
ance. Despite continued American expressions of unease, the

49 Ibid., pp.311-16.
50 Ibid., pp.317-38.
51 Ibid., pp.371.
 Across the Partition Wall 65

motion was carried by a large majority on the Saturday eve-

ning of the second week of the conference, and this again
raised hopes of success.
These hopes were to be dashed. On the Monday morning
the Americans reported that subsequent to Saturday evening’s
apparent agreement they had met for their own discussions
and had reconsidered their position. In their more open inter-
nal discussions it had become clear that out of over twenty
Americans who had been on the sub-committee only five had
supported ‘with entire goodwill’ the resolution that had been
put on Saturday evening. One delegate summed up the prob-
lem, stating baldly that they would be regarded as having vio-
lated American patriotism.It was suggested that three-quarters
of American Christians would not support an Alliance set up
in the way proposed.Robert Baird,who had helped to formu-
52
late the resolution on Saturday, now withdrew his support.
Two years later, as he reflected on his thinking at that stage,
Baird told an Evangelical Alliance audience in London that in
his view the Alliance between church and state had done a
hundred times more to corrupt sound doctrine, blend the
church and the world and prevent people entering heaven than
53
all the slavery that had ever existed. Bitterness had been gen-
erated that would not readily be dispersed.
The debate on the issue of slavery continued for two more
days, with the conference appointing a fresh sub-committee,
but agreement could not be reached. J.W. Massie, who was
close to the Presbyterian contingent, said that the Scots had
54
made the maximum concessions possible to the Americans.
The resolutions and plans that had been agreed were, with
considerable reluctance, ultimately rescinded. Baird believed
that the ‘great evil’ of slavery would be abolished, but he was
not prepared to be told by the British when and how this

52 H.M. Baird, The Life of the Rev Robert Baird (New York: A.D.F. Randolph,
1866), pp.233-5.
53 Baird, Address on the History, p.42.
54 Report of the Proceedings…1846, p.397.
66 One Body in Christ

should be done.‘We will do it’,he said later to the British Alli-

55
ance, ‘but not in consequence of your bidding’. The idea of
the international Alliance envisaged by Schmucker was
dropped. Instead, it was recognised that the British suggestion,
to have loosely linked national organisations that could operate
with a degree of independence over some issues, was the only
workable solution. This would mean that the British would
not be drawn into fellowship with slaveholders and each Alli-
ance body could rightly say that it was not responsible for ac-
tions taken in another region. Partition walls divided nations.
In the final resolutions of the conference, however, there was
no mention of slavery.Although there had been deep divisions,
The Record noted what it considered to be the ‘Christian and
56
Catholic SPIRIT’ of the conference.

A British Alliance

Given nineteenth-century British world power, it was inevi-

table that the British Alliance would take the lead from this
point onwards. The attempt to establish a world body had
failed. Founding membership of the Evangelical Alliance, it
was decided, would be limited to those who were at the
London conference, of whom none were slaveholders; these
members would set up seven regional organisations. The
countries in which there were to be organisations were Great
Britain, the United States of America, Belgium, France and
French Switzerland, North Germany, South Germany and
German Switzerland, Canada and the West Indies. These
regional organisations would not be responsible for the poli-
cies and activities of other regions. Members of the regional
organisations could only become members of the Evangelical
Alliance as originally founded with the consent of all the re-
gions, or by a general conference decision – this was designed

55 Baird, Address on the History, p.46.

56 The Record, 7 September 1846, p.4.
 Across the Partition Wall 67

to ensure that slaveholders could not be members of an Evan-

gelical Alliance in which British evangelicals participated.
British members were to return to the strong line that had
been challenged by the Americans.
The British members of the Evangelical Alliance met again in
November 1846 at a conference in Manchester to set up the
British Organisation.The work that had been done to produce
the doctrinal basis for the August conference,to outline the aims
of the movement and to present practical resolutions on Chris-
tian behaviour, was taken as foundational. But slavery was still
touching raw nerves. J.H. Hinton said that he had heard that a
slaveholder was within the Alliance movement, to which the
conference Chairman, Sir Culling Eardley Smith, replied that
there was an Alliance member connected with a Brazilian min-
ing company that employed slaves. Apparently, however, the
person in question had withdrawn from the Alliance. This was
57
greeted with applause. Discussion then moved to the issue of
whether somebody owning shares in a company that held slaves
should be admitted to the Alliance. Lord Kinnaird, a respected
figure in the British evangelical community, later indicated to
the conference that he – like many others – was connected with
a brokerage firm that dealt in the shares of slaveholding compa-
nies.He asked the meeting to leave the issue and the matter was
58
dropped. Nonetheless, the conference confirmed that slave-
holders were banned from any connection with the British
Alliance.
The Manchester conference also dealt with procedural issues.
The structure of the British Alliance,as it was outlined by Edward
Steane – who did a great deal to shape the early constitution and
who was to serve for a long period as an Alliance honorary secre-
tary – was that Britain was divided into seven regions,each with a
committee. These committees, comprising not more than 100
members,would meet every three months;they would all meet to-

57 Proceedings of the Conference of British Members held at Manchester from November

th th
4 -9 (London, 1847), p.43.
58 Ibid., pp.76-7.
68 One Body in Christ

gether once a year.It was agreed that new members must assent to
the Basis of Faith and should also show the effects of their faith in
their conduct.Two existing members of the regional committee in
their area would recommend such members. In 1846 there were
about 3,000 members of the Alliance and by 1859 the figure was
6,000.At first,in common with the patriarchal structure of many
other church organisations at the time, women played no part in
the Alliance,but the annual report of 1850 stated that ‘a consider-
ablenumberofChristianfemales’werenowinmembership.While
none of these women are mentioned by name,the executive of the
Council did resolve in April 1850 to seek to form ladies’commit-
59
tees. It was local initiative rather than national policy that broad-
ened the membership in this way.If these early attempts to include
women appear modest only by the standards of today’s post-femi-
nist culture, it must be acknowledged that even in more recent
times,the Alliance has appeared somewhat reluctant to assign key
leadership roles to women. For example, while its current Direc-
toratenowincludestwofemalemanagers,theSeniorManagement
Group remains exclusively male, which it has always been. No
doubt this reflects the fact that even in the twenty-first century
many British evangelical churches maintain a traditional view of
women’s roles. Granted, a 1998 poll of 848 Alliance member
churches showed 81% in favour of women’s ordination;two years
later,however,a pastoral care survey on a similar sample established
that only 5% of affiliated congregations actually had a female pastor.
(By comparison,at the same point female clergy representation in
60
the Church of England had risen to over 10%).
Another important step for the Alliance was the launch in
1847 of Evangelical Christendom, the Alliance’s magazine. John
Henderson was the magazine’s owner and financial backer,and

59 Executive Council Minutes, 17 April 1850.

60 Evangelical Alliance, ‘EA Member Churches: 1998 Opinion Survey’, Ques-
tion 11,p.7;L.J.Francis,M.Robbins & W.K.Kay,‘Pastoral Care:Practice,Problems
and Priorities in Churches Today: An Interim Report from the Major Survey
Conducted for CWR and the Evangelical Alliance by the Centre for Ministry
Studies, University of Wales, Bangor’; P. Brierley (ed.), Religious Trends 2000/2001
No.2, p.54.
 Across the Partition Wall 69

Edward Steane was its moving force as editor. It was published

monthly up to 1898 and bimonthly or quarterly until 1954.
The magazine was informative and thorough. It carried news
from different parts of the world about evangelical activity and
especially about mission. It also included theological papers by
leading evangelicals. The theme of Christian unity received
considerable coverage. As we shall see in the next chapter, the
Alliance was committed to helping persecuted minorities in
other countries – an issue that was given prominence in the
magazine. The magazine also highlighted united prayer meet-
ings.From its commencement the Alliance designated the first
week in January as a period of united prayer and this week was
observed in many parts of the world. It was through drawing
evangelicals together with a sense of common identity that the
Alliance exercised its greatest influence.The Alliance provided
a framework that linked diverse sectors of evangelicalism and
61
promoted concerted activity.

Conclusion

The period of planning for the inauguration of the Evangeli-

cal Alliance was one in which there was an optimistic out-
look and what was often termed a ‘catholic’ spirit. It seemed
that traditional divisions between evangelicals could be over-
come. To a remarkable extent this was achieved, for example
through the acceptance of a common statement of faith. But
national ethical perspectives proved to be much more prob-
lematic. British evangelicals were not prepared to relegate
what they saw as a massive social evil, slavery, to a position of
relative unimportance. American evangelicals refused to ac-
cept the British position, seeing it as arising from ignorance
of their situation. Hence the vision for a worldwide Alliance
was not fulfilled. Practical actions did ensue, however, and the
Alliance’s leaders worked hard to encourage co-operation

61 Calver, ‘Rise and Fall’, p.152.

70 One Body in Christ

between evangelicals with diverse denominational views.

Partition walls undoubtedly remained, but more proactive
figures within the Alliance did manage to point the way to a
wider, and even to an international, unity. As the next chapter
shows, they did this substantially by reaching beyond their
own boundaries to champion the cause of religious freedom
in many parts of the world.
 4

Some Common Action

Religious Liberty and the Search for a Social Agenda1

The Proper Basis of Unity

The division on slaveholding at the 1846 inaugural conference

inevitably bred caution about further socio-political moves
within the British Organisation of the Alliance.For all Thomas
Chalmers’ initial 2concerns that the new body might be a ‘do
nothing society’, many now feared the opposite – namely,that
by attempting to do too much in the civic realm it might jeopar-
dise the very unity on which, and for which, it had been
founded. Indeed, just a fortnight after the London conference,
even so active an evangelical social reformer as Anthony
Ashley-Cooper, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, could write
that while the Alliance had become, like the Anti-Corn Law
League, ‘a great fact’, it now seemed ‘unlikely’ that it would
‘have practical results in the same proportion’. For the foresee-
able future,he added,its ‘chief result’would be its sheer forma-
tion – the wonder ‘that such a meeting could have been
collected3 and conducted on such principles and in such a
manner’. Shortly afterwards, David King and J.W. Massie
1 In addition to the published sources formally cited here,we are indebted to the
extremely helpful notes made from the Alliance archive on this issue by Clive
Calver.
2 In Dale, The Life and Letters of J.A. James, p.412.
3 Lord Shaftesbury’s Diary, 16 September 1846.
72 One Body in Christ

would take a similar view, disavowing any attempt to make the

Alliance a ‘political organization’, and warning that it should
avoid duplicating
4
the social projects developed by other Chris-
tian bodies.
Despite the slavery debate, these viewpoints were not new.
They reflected a strain of thinking which had been present
from the earliest,embryonic phase of the Alliance’s life.In 1845
Gavin Struthers’ contribution to the King-edited Essays on
Christian Union had argued strongly that past church divisions
had too often been caused by so-called ‘non-theological fac-
5
tors’, among which he included disputes over social action.
Likewise, although the Alliance had been substantially con-
ceived amidst protests against government funding of the Ro-
man Catholic seminary at Maynooth, by the time of the
Preparatory Conference in Liverpool in October 1845, men-
tion of the anti-Maynooth committee had been sidelined –
despite the presence among the 216 delegates of its Chairman,
Sir Culling Eardley Smith. As Kessler puts it, at this delicate
stage most founders of the Alliance had ‘wished to avoid in-
6
volvement in issues which had become politically coloured’.
Indeed, as we saw in chapter 2, for many the keynote to be
struck from Liverpool onwards would be neither an
oppositionalist nor a controversialist one but rather the key-
note of ‘Love’ – where ‘Love’ implied fellowship between
7
evangelicals, as against concerted, high profile agitation.
Somewhat later,Adolphe Monod,the leading French evangel-
ical, an energetic figure who had helped to found the Alliance
at its inaugural 1846 London conference, would quote an
anonymous Church of England bishop on the same point.
Considering whether the Alliance should develop from being
an essentially relational network to becoming a force for social
transformation, the bishop told Monod bluntly that the new
4 King, ‘Historical Sketch of the Evangelical Alliance’, pp.15-6; Massie, The
Evangelical Alliance, p.176.
5 James, et al., Essays on Christian
6 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.24.
7 Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, p.115.
 Some Common Action 73

body would be overreaching itself if it pursued the latter

course:
He said to me in his turn, ‘An Evangelical Alliance, with any common co-op-
eration, is an impossibility. I am ready to acknowledge as my brother any and
every man who acknowledges Jesus Christ as his Saviour. I could even ac-
knowledge him for my brother,though he should refuse to acknowledge me as
his;nay,should he regard me as a child of the devil.But other conditions would
be necessary before I could unite myself with him in any common enterprise.
How,for instance,could I,who believe that I ought to uphold and serve the es-
tablished church, act permanently with a brother who thinks that he ought to
attack and destroy it? Suppress every common action, or your Alliance will
perish.’8

Most church historians have emphasised this non-interven-

tionist current in early Alliance thought, and have gone on to
present the whole organisation as a disappointingly static entity
committed to little more than the resolution of internal evan-
gelical disputes.Thus,comparing the achievements of the Alli-
ance with those of George Williams’YMCA,founded in 1844,
Clyde Binfield suggests that Lord Shaftesbury’s immediate ver-
dict was justified: ‘The Alliance’, concludes Binfield, ‘did not
possess the vital influence to be expected from the nineteenth9
century evangelical revival’s only ecumenical movement.’
Likewise,other commentators have portrayed an introspective,
pietistic Alliance at odds with more radical Protestant groups
formed during this period – not least militant Nonconformist
bodies like the Anti-State Church Association and the Libera-
tion Society.Hence Michael Watts proposes that the evangelical
Nonconformists who comprised the majority of the Alliance’s
founder members were wedded to an ‘escapist’ spirituality,
which paled beside the steps taken by left-wing Congregation- 10
alists and Baptists towards constitutional and social change.

8 A. Monod, ‘Intervention of the Evangelical Alliance on Behalf of Persecuted

Brethren’, Evangelical Christendom, Vol. V (1851), p.430.
9 C. Binfield, George Williams and the YMCA: A Study in Victorian Social Attitudes
(London: Heinemann, 1973), p.158.
10 M. Watts, The Dissenters: Volume II: The Expansion of Evangelical Nonconformity,
1791-1859 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 510-11.
74 One Body in Christ

Less pejoratively, W.H. Mackinstosh casts those Nonconform-

ists who helped form 11the Alliance as a comparatively ‘more
peaceful’constituency. So too,David M.Thompson maintains
that while some Dissenters were lobbying parliament and hold-
ing public demonstrations, ‘others eschewed political action
altogether and formed the Evangelical Voluntary Church Asso- 12
ciation and were later involved in the Evangelical Alliance’.
Even the generally sympathetic Kessler judges that an ‘individu-
alistic attitude’and an ‘aloofness from the practical issues of life’
hindered the early witness of the Alliance and ‘prevented many
who were associated with it from realizing that spiritual unity
was dependent not only13on love and truth,but on the believer’s
situation in this world’.
While such observations reflect a genuine aspect of the Alli-
ance’s identity,the full picture is more complex.First,the obvi-
ous point needs to be emphasised that once it had resolved to
unite evangelical Nonconformists with Anglican churchmen,
the Alliance per se had effectively to distance itself from its
strong voluntaryist and disestablishment roots. Despite what
Thompson implies, however, this does not mean that individ-
ual members of the Alliance abandoned such commitments.In
fact, as Timothy Larsen has pointed out, F.A. Cox (militant
Dissenter), Ralph Wardlaw (the Scottish Voluntary) and Rob-
ert Eckett (the leading Methodist radical) all saw fit to operate
as founding members of the Anti-State Church Association
while maintaining strong support for the Evangelical Alli-
14
ance. Indeed, this was possible precisely because the Alliance
had decided to work to new agenda – an agenda which would
stress what Anglican churchmen and evangelical Dissenters
had in common qua evangelicals, rather than those issues of

11 W.H. Mackintosh, Disestablishment and Liberation (London: Epworth, 1972),

pp.34-5.
12 D.M. Thompson, ‘The Liberation Society, 1844-1868’, in P. Hollis (ed.), Pres-
sure from Without (London: Edward Arnold, 1974), p.213.
13 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.114.
14 T. Larsen, Friends of Religious Equality: Nonconformist Politics in Mid-Victorian
England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), p.258.
 Some Common Action 75

church polity and constitutional order on which their respec-

tive denominations differed. Again, the observations of Larsen
are salutary here:
the political philosophy of [the] mid-Victorian Dissenters was rooted in their
theology. The specific principles which they wielded, however, were derived
more from the distinctive theology within some of the Nonconformist de-
nominations than from pan-evangelicalism … Nonconformist politics was
rooted in theology, but not in the soteriology of evangelicalism, but rather in
the ecclesiology of Congregationalism.Baptists and Congregationalists shared
in common both their political views and their ecclesiastical views, but they
were not always able to gain the political co-operation of those groups which
held a different pattern of church government, notably the Wesleyans and the
Unitarians (let alone churchmen).15

Larsen’s point is well illustrated by the fact that even leaving

aside its Anglican members, the fledgling Alliance held
together evangelicals who disagreed vigorously on political
ideology and strategy. For example, while Robert Eckett
pressed for radical constitutional reform, another Wesleyan,
Jabez Bunting, resisted many of the measures he proposed.
However, both worked alongside one another in the Alliance.
Likewise, during its formative years the Executive Council
contained both Culling Eardley Smith,who ran for Parliament
as a Liberal candidate in favour of disestablishment,and Robert
Grosvenor (Baron Ebury), a Tory Anglican, who upheld the
church-state link in the House of Lords.
While it might be tempting to suggest that such co-opera-
tion was possible only because the Alliance’s new agenda es-
chewed political issues altogether, this was not, in fact, the case.
Rather, the Alliance set out to avoid undue controversy and
fragmentation by limiting itself to the ‘investigation’ of rele-
vant social concerns, then passing the fruits of such investiga-
tion to those in its membership who might be in a position to
act upon them in other forums. Hence, from its foundation in
January 1847,the Alliance’s monthly journal,Evangelical Chris-
tendom,carried pages of ‘intelligence’from home and abroad as
15 Ibid., p.253.
76 One Body in Christ

a means of alerting its readers to matters of public concern –

not least in regard to the perceived growth of Roman Catholic
power within governments and institutions.Clearly,this infor-
mation was meant for more than prayer alone. Furthermore,
although it would still officially be decrying political activism
as inimical to its own character and ethos into the 1870s and
16
80s, the Alliance nonetheless made sure that its Executive
Council was replete with key parliamentarians and figures of
influence.Indeed,at one point during this period it boasted six
peers and seven MPs, as well as the Lord Mayor of London, a
17
High Court judge and the Dean of Canterbury.
Even beyond this relational, ‘behind the scenes’ approach
to public affairs, the Alliance found that in certain areas, it
could not ignore the need for more direct action.Nowhere did
this need become more apparent than in the arena of religious
liberty.

From Investigation to Campaigning

By the end of the 1840s, the British Organisation of the Alli-

ance was still seeking to clarify its purpose. Although it had
resolved to move on from the specific political protests that had
brought so many of its members together, it was realising that
merely convening for fellowship and exchanging information
would not be enough to sustain things in the long term. The
Alliance needed a signature cause, even if that cause would
have to be such as to maintain,rather than threaten,the delicate
balance and unity that had been achieved thus far.As we saw in

16 Minutes of Special Meeting of Executive Council,16 November 1870,Vol.II.

17 Executive Council Minutes, 10 November 1880. The President at this time
was Right Hon. Lord Polworth; Vice Presidents included Right Hon. The Earl of
Chichester, Right Hon. Lords Ebury, Waveley and Wriothesley Russell, Right
Hon. William Brooke, Alderman McArthur MP (Lord Mayor of London), Right
Hon.Lord Justice Lush and The Very Rev Dean of Canterbury.Executive Council
members included W.S. Allen MP, Richard Davies MP, Alderman Fowler MP, A.
McArthur MP, Sir Thomas McClure MP and Sir Charles Reed MP.
 Some Common Action 77

the last chapter, together with their European neighbours, the

British had stuck fast to their convictions on slave holding at
the inaugural conference in 1846. But the Westminster Parlia-
ment had abolished slavery in 1833,and since Alliance national
committees were now operating with a significant degree of
autonomy, this would no longer function as a front-line cam-
paigning issue. Even so, if freedom had been championed suc-
cessfully in that area, there was another front on which it still
required significant advocacy.
Prominent among the early ‘foreign intelligence’ published
in Evangelical Christendom were stories of believers around the
world who had been persecuted, oppressed or otherwise re-
stricted in the exercise of their faith. As such intelligence
mounted,it occurred to many that this issue might merit more
concerted action. The cause of religious liberty had, in fact, al-
ready been acknowledged at the inaugural conference when
Robert Baird had underlined that the ‘right to preach the gos-
pel everywhere ought to be recognised by a Christian govern-
ment’, and had prompted the passing of a motion to this
18
effect. The same cause had been reiterated by the inaugural
conference of the Alliance’s British Organisation, held in
Manchester in November 1846. Indeed, this meeting had
passed an even fuller resolution,which pledged to monitor ‘the
progress of vital religion in all parts of the world’,but especially
of ‘those who may be engaged, amidst peculiar difficulties and
opposition, in the cause of the gospel, in order to afford them
all suitable encouragement and sympathy, and to diffuse an
19
interest in their welfare’. Of course, Britain at this time was
developing an immensely powerful empire – one that helped it
to operate at the forefront of the international missionary
movement. As Brian Stanley has noted, these factors were sig-
nificant in motivating British evangelical concern for religious
18 Evangelical Alliance,Proceedings of the Conference Held at Freemasons’Hall,(Lon-
don, 1846), pp.231-40.
19 Evangelical Alliance, Proceedings of the Conference of British Members Held at
th th
Manchester from November 4 -9 (London, 1847), Part VI: Concluding Resolu-
tions.
78 One Body in Christ

liberties:in the 1840s,they were central to a growing evangeli-

cal sense that ‘providence had marked out for Britain a human-
20
itarian and salvific role in the world’.
By the time of the annual conference of the British Organi-
sation held in Bristol during June 1848, these general convic-
tions began to be more specifically applied. Delegates to the
conference welcomed and prayed for efforts being made to
counter legal restrictions imposed by the State Council in the
Swiss Canton de Vaud on a fast-growing Free Church denom-
21
ination. Indeed, the Bristol conference went so far as to con-
vene four special committees to act as ‘watchdogs’on religious
persecution in France,Italy and Germany,as well as in Switzer-
22
land. At this point, such moves were qualified by the familiar
caveat that overt political interference lay beyond the Alliance’s
remit.By the following year,however,this non-interventionist
stance had become severely strained.
Having dismissed from office any public educator who de-
clined to attend ‘official’ church services, the Canton de Vaud
Council of State now moved to forbid all religious assemblies
save those held by its own approved Protestant church. The
Free Church consequently established a ‘dissenting academy’
and continued to grow as it met in private houses – but it had
23
to do so in the face of police and army patrols. At its October
1849 conference in Glasgow, the British Organisation duly
crossed the line from ‘investigation’ to overt action as it
adopted a memorial for direct transmission to the State Coun-
cil, protesting its policies and urging it to uphold the rights of
the Free Church.This more direct approach owed much to the
influence of Baptist Noel, who had written a book about the
Canton de Vaud problem, and whose recent transfer from
20 B. Stanley, ‘British Evangelicals and Overseas Concerns: 1833-1970’, in
J. Wolffe (ed.), Evangelical Faith and Public Zeal: Evangelicals and Society in Britain,
1780-1980 (London: SPCK, 1995), p.81.
21 Evangelical Alliance, Minutes of Annual Conferences, Bristol, 1848.
22 Ibid.,;Executive Council Minutes, Bristol, 17 June 1848.
23 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, pp.58-9.
 Some Common Action 79

the Church of England to the Baptist Union had boosted his

24
commitment to religious freedom’. Although this move pro-
voked little immediate response, a covert branch of the Alli-
ance was formed in the canton and, in time, the Free Church
25
was recognised.
If the Canton de Vaud crisis had nudged the British Organi-
sation towards a more proactive stance, another religious free-
dom issue arose around the same time that would cause it to
redefine its approach even more markedly.While it might have
diversified from its early preoccupation with ‘popery’ and
‘Puseyism’, the establishment of monitoring groups on Italy
and France confirmed that Rome still loomed large in the sus-
picions of many British Alliance members. In particular, early
contributions to Evangelical Christendom often castigated the
‘double standard’ whereby the Vatican would support wide-
scale religious liberty in countries where its influence was
relatively weak,while doing little on the issue in regions where
26
Catholicism was dominant. This concern came to a head in
the case of Dr Achilli.
Achilli was a prominent Catholic priest, who became a
Protestant, and began distributing the Bible in Rome. He was
arrested and imprisoned in the Castle of St Angelo,and was set
to be transferred to the prison of the Inquisition. When word
of this reached London, the Executive Council of the Alli-
ance’s British Organisation sought to investigate the matter,
and challenge charges that it assumed had been trumped up
against Achilli.The same Glasgow conference,that had under-
taken to support the Canton de Vaud Free Church duly
assigned a special deputation to deal with the matter. Those
chosen to pursue the case were Sir Culling Eardley (who had
24 For more detail see D.W. Bebbington, ‘The Life of Baptist Noel’, Baptist Quar-
terly 24 (1972), pp.389-411.
25 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.59.
26 For a typical instance, see A. Thomson, ‘On the Extent to Which Religious
Liberty is Enjoyed by Protestants or Denied to Them in Foreign Countries’, Evan-
gelical Christendom, 1851, pp.431ff.
80 One Body in Christ

by now inherited his mother’s estates and dropped the paternal

‘Smith’ from his name), Baptist Noel, the Scottish MP Charles
Cowan, the leading Baptist and editor of Evangelical Christen-
27
dom Edward Steane, and Lord Wriothesley Russell, the
respected Anglican evangelical clergyman. The Alliance un-
dertook to fund a three-point programme for this group. First,
they would seek to find sympathetic advocates for Achilli at
Westminster. Then they would proceed to Paris, where they
would enjoin the French government to mediate on Achilli’s
behalf with Rome – a plan made necessary by the fact that
France was at this time occupying Italy. Finally, if necessary,
they would themselves proceed to Rome to plead Achilli’s
28
cause. In the meantime,a ‘Special Meeting for United Prayer’
was called,which would seek God’s protection for the deputa-
tion. This took place at Carrs Lane Chapel in Birmingham,
where the chapel’s minister, John Angell James, and the distin-
guished Methodist surgeon John Melson explained Achilli’s
29
plight.
As it turned out, the Alliance found powerful allies in the
then Liberal Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, and in Lord
Normanby. They persuaded the renowned French Foreign
Minister and political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville to
block Achilli’s transfer to the inquisition. By March 1850, the
converted priest had been freed altogether and the Executive
Council of the British Organisation were making plans to
honour him at a series of special receptions, where
thanksgiving would be offered ‘for his deliverance from the
30
Roman Inquisition’. Achilli subsequently visited Britain in
August of the next year, addressing Alliance members at the
31
Freemasons’ Hall and elsewhere.

27 Steane edited Evangelical Christendom from its inception in 1847 until 1864.
28 Executive Council Minutes: Meeting Held in Merchants Hall, Glasgow,
th
Fourth Session,11 October 1849;Meeting Held at 7 Adam Street,5 March 1850.
29 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.60.
30 Executive Council Minutes, 5 March 1850.
31 Executive Council Minutes, 23 August 1851.
 Some Common Action 81

France, Britain and ‘Common Co-operation’

As we shall see,Achilli would subsequently embarrass the Alli-
ance,but in its immediate wake his case had a galvanising effect,
not only on the British Organisation, but also on its French
counterpart. Indeed, following de Tocqueville’s intervention,
the Committee of Paris was inspired at its April 1850 meeting
to adopt a resolution which it hoped would gain international
assent from the Alliance as a whole. This resolution proposed
‘That the Alliance should, as far as lies in its power, undertake
the defence of any brother, throughout the whole world, who
may be persecuted for the Saviour’s cause.’ Significantly, it
resolved to join forces with the ‘Committee of London’in pre-
senting this form of words – partly in recognition of the success
that the British had achieved in the Achilli case, but also in
acknowledgement32
of the growing power of the British Empire
in the world.
One of the most illuminating contemporary accounts of
these developments is presented in an article for Evangelical
Christendom by the French pastor and professor of theology,
Adolphe Monod.As we have seen,Monod had been a delegate
at the 1846 London inaugural conference, and had spent a
considerable amount of time after that pressing for religious
liberties concerns to be placed at the centre of the Alliance’s
work. Reflecting on the Paris Committee resolution, and his
own part in persuading the British to co-sponsor it, Monod
demonstrates a profound appreciation of the debates then sur-
rounding evangelical social engagement in general,and the Al-
liance’s approach to it in particular. He explicitly recognises
that Achilli has provided the catalyst for the resolution, and
praises the British Organisation,without whose ‘interposition’
he would ‘still be in the prisons of Rome’. Even so, Monod
bears out the continuing caution of the Alliance about such
matters when he specifies that the resolution commits it ‘to in-
terfere only in favour of brethren – and brethren persecuted’. He
explains this in the following terms:
32 Monod, ‘Intervention’, pp.428-30.
82 One Body in Christ

Every man who suffers for his sincere belief, whether true or false, be he
Protestant, Papist, Jew, Mahometan, or even Pagan, has a right to our commis-
eration and sympathy; but the Evangelical Alliance, as an Evangelical Alliance,
is not called to take up any but those who have one common faith with it, and
who suffer for that faith … Personal or local sufferings, which our brethren
have to endure for the faith,demand,in all cases,our warmest sympathy,but do
not require the interference of the Alliance;a public evil only requiring a pub-
lic remedy. Nor is even labour endured, and difficulty met with in preaching
the gospel,sufficient to call for the interposition of the Alliance;its work being,
not so much to emancipate, as to assist, and beginning only in case of real per-
secution.33

The balance between models of the Alliance that would pre-

serve it as an essentially static association, and those which
would cast it as an essentially single-issue pressure group, is
being sought here. In Monod’s terms, the search for a clear
position between these two poles represents nothing less than
the definitive ‘problem’ of the Alliance’s development. More-
over, as subsequent chapters in our study will confirm, his
exposition of this problem is relevant not only to the history of
the Alliance’s work on religious liberties as such, but also to its
wider record of social and political involvement. It is, he says,
the problem of how exactly to work out ‘one common
co-operation’.On the one hand,he writes,there are those who
conceive such co-operation in terms of direct, high-profile
engagement:
The Evangelical Alliance,say some,must have common action.If it confines itself
to the mere declaration of Christian union, where is the necessity of a perma-
nent and organised existence? For the publication of a principle,nothing more
is required but to meet once in order to prepare and issue a common declara-
tion.If meetings are periodically to be held,merely to renew that declaration,a
languid uniformity will inevitably ensue, which will make the Evangelical Al-
liance more prejudicial than profitable to the sacred cause which it avows.
Some kind of common action, which will embody the principles of the Evan-
gelical Alliance in things visible, is absolutely required to give it an existence,
sui generis, a real influence and a usefulness perceptible to everyone.34

33 Ibid., p.429.
34 Ibid.
 Some Common Action 83

By contrast, there are those who take a more purely ‘spiritual’

view:
But others say – that the Evangelical Alliance cannot undertake any common
action – that unity which exists between all true Christians,and which it is the
object of the Evangelical Alliance to recognise and confess, is purely spiritual,
and cannot be promoted by brethren belonging to different or opposite eccle-
siastical parties, except on condition of scrupulously confining itself to the su-
perior sphere of things invisible. The moment that any common action be
attempted, we shall place ourselves in a position where divergent and contrary
notions will arise to divide; so that what we have done in favour of union, will
prove less to its promotion than to its injury. The Alliance can only become
permanent by confining itself to those reunions which shall have for their sole
object to recognise, proclaim, and encourage Christian union.35

These distinctions would be played out more starkly in the

divergence of ‘liberal’from ‘conservative’evangelicalism in the
early twentieth century,but would then to some extent be rec-
onciled through the ‘recovery’ of evangelical social concern
after the Second World War (see chapters 9 and 11). Back in
the 1850s, Monod was unapologetic about siding with those
committed to ‘some common action’, but insisted that this
should be such as to enrich, rather than unduly strain, the
intrinsic unity which was so precious to the quietists. The
‘common action’ in question would therefore be ‘strongly
organised’, yet would ‘belong to an order of things where sec-
ondary discrepancies of true Christians do not reach’.The reli-
gious freedom of fellow evangelicals would fit this
requirement best, urged Monod, not least because it was a
transparent,cardinal principle on which few would be likely to
disagree:
To interfere in favour of brethren persecuted for the faith will be doing a work
of indisputable usefulness, which will require the most prompt and best-com-
bined efforts,but at the same time,a work in which all true Christians can con-
cur, because such an interference is so natural and necessary a consequence of
fraternal love, that nothing is beyond that love made visible.36

35 Ibid., p.430.
36 Ibid.
84 One Body in Christ

As it was,although Monod made Achilli the cue for this ‘natu-

ral and necessary’ shift in the Alliance’s focus, Achilli himself
would turn out to have been a less ideal precedent. After his
appearances on various pan-evangelical platforms in Europe,
he relocated to the United States, where he founded his own
heterodox,
37
sectarian movement and was exposed as a woman-
iser. By this point, however, the Alliance had already devel-
oped its campaigning on several other fronts, and had
effectively accepted Monod’s argument. If anything, in fact, it
would prove to be more radical than he had envisaged, since it
would find itself compelled to defend a number of individuals
and groups who hardly fitted the description ‘evangelical’.
By 1852, with the joint London-Paris resolution adopted,
the minutes of the British Organisation were already recording
that memorials and deputations had been sent on behalf of
persecuted evangelicals and Nonconformists to ‘Turkey, the
38 39 40
Holy Land and Holland’, Germany and Italy. Many more
causes would be championed all over the world in the next few
decades; the details of these fill literally hundreds of pages of
Evangelical Christendom. The sheer weight of this documentary
evidence and its corroboration in the minutes of the Alliance’s
Executive Council, bears out Ruth Rouse’s observation that
the defence of religious liberty became the Alliance’s ‘one dis-
tinctive, strong and continuous practical activity’ during the
41
Victorian era. If Rouse is also justified in noting that the Alli-
ance was ‘prone, sometimes perhaps uncritically, to defend the
42
small body or sect against the national church’, it should be
realised that it was prepared consistently to support such un-
derdogs when others barely noticed them. No doubt, as with
Achilli, it made occasional misjudgements, but the vast bulk of

37 M. Trevor, Newman: The Pillar of Cloud (London: Macmillan, 1962),

pp.547-602. Calver, ‘Rise and Fall’, p.155.
38 Executive Council Minutes, 23 August 1851.
39 Executive Council Minutes, 6 May 1852.
40 Executive Council Minutes, 24 August 1852.
41 Rouse, ‘Voluntary Movements’, p.323.
42 Ibid.
 Some Common Action 85

its work in this area contributed positively to our modern un-

derstanding of ‘freedom of religion’. Indeed, the sentiments
expressed by this Executive Council resolution from May
1854 have a strong resonance with the religious liberties cam-
paigning of our own day – even if the focus on continental Eu-
rope may now have shifted elsewhere:
That in the present position of the continental nations, moreover and espe-
cially in view of the numerous and severe persecutions which so many of their
fellow Christians are called to suffer, and which disgrace alike the age and the
countries in which they are perpetrated, the Council feel themselves con-
strained to manifest their sympathy with those foreign brethren who for con-
science towards God endure grief,suffering wrongfully,and to use their efforts
in every legitimate method which Divine Providence may open to them for
the removal of the restraints which are imposed upon the human conscience
by many of the Governments of Europe, so that full Religious Liberty may be
enjoyed by all their peaceful and loyal subjects.43

Shortly after this declaration, the Executive Council

appointed a ‘Foreign Secretary’, Hermann Schmettou, specif-
ically to develop its religious liberties work. While space does
not permit an exhaustive analysis of this work as it expanded
in the ensuing years, it is worth recalling key representative
examples as they emerged within different geographical and
confessional contexts, and as they established a pattern of
worldwide campaigning which has continued into the
present.

Catholic Europe

While the Canton de Vaud case had shown that evangelicals

could suffer at the hands of state church Protestants as well as
Roman Catholics, the anti-Romanist sentiments stirred up by
the Achilli episode continued to run deep.

43 Executive Council Minutes, 11 May 1854. Punctuation has been added here
for clarity:the original minute eschews almost all punctuation in favour of a ‘legal’
style.
86 One Body in Christ

In 1851, the Duke of Tuscany signed a decree authorising

his magistrates to jail anyone found in possession of a Bible.
One prominent victim of this new measure was Count
Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman who had renounced Ca-
tholicism and who had begun to attend Protestant services.
Seeking support from the Evangelical Alliance, Guiccardini
made preparations to attend its international conference,
which had been scheduled for London in August – to coincide
44
with the Great Exhibition. As we have seen, the liberated
Achilli managed to speak at this gathering; the Count, how-
ever, was arrested before he could travel there, and was incar-
cerated.By the following year,when the conference convened
in Dublin, the Alliance Council again called on the advocacy
of Edward Steane, who formed a committee with C.M. Bissell
and a Dr Kirkpatrick,so that a memorial could be presented to
the Grand Duke of Tuscany,urging him to repeal the offending
45
law. At the same time, Steane informed the Council that a
Protestant couple, Francesco and Rosa Madiai, had also re-
cently been condemned with hard labour to the galleys of
46
Florence, on suspicion of heresy. The key charge against
them had become familiar in the region:that they had read and
distributed the Bible. At his trial, Franceso was apparently
asked whether he had been born a Roman Catholic. In re-
sponse, he said, ‘Yes, but now I am a Christian according to the
47
Gospel.’ As well as passing resolutions deploring their treat-
ment, the Alliance Council managed to publicise the Madiais’
plight in The Times. This in turn led to a protest meeting in
Exeter Hall. Steane’s committee then met the Foreign Secre-
tary, Lord John Russell, after which a deputation went to
Florence to negotiate with the Grand Duke. Initially, the Tus-
can government resisted what it perceived to be bullying by
northern Protestant powers.On 18 March 1853 however,Lord
44 Executive Council Minutes, 21 August -3 September 1851.
45 Executive Council Minutes, 24 August 1852.
46 Ibid., p.267.
47 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.62.
48 Ibid.
 Some Common Action 87

Russell was able to tell the House of Commons that the

48
Madiais had been freed.
Another country in which Roman dominance went hand
in hand with the oppression of evangelicals was Spain. In
mid-1861, the various national organisations of the Alliance
met for a world conference in Geneva. One of the sessions
at this gathering was devoted to religious liberty, and was
addressed by the French theologian Dr. de Pressensé. De
Pressensé had already established himself at an earlier interna-
tional conference, in Paris in 1855, as an eloquent promoter of
religious freedom,and as an equally eloquent critic of the Vati-
49
can’s record in this sphere. At Geneva,he outlined the biblical
basis of religious liberty and then turned more specifically to
reports from Spain that some Protestants were currently lan-
50
guishing in jail there because of their faith. After asking,‘Shall
we do nothing,gentlemen,for these glorious and well-beloved
captives?’, de Pressensé persuaded the conference to adopt a
resolution deploring the persecutions and committing their
respective home organisations to take appropriate action. The
British would prove especially diligent in pursuing this chal-
lenge.
From the autumn of 1861, both the Executive Council
Minutes and the ‘foreign intelligence’ sections of Evangelical
Christendom showed growing concern for what they called
the ‘Spanish persecution’. In a meeting held at 7 Adam Street
on 19 November, the Executive considered a draft resolution
51
on this issue. Two days later, the wording of the resolution
had been developed so as to focus more specifically on an in-
dividual whose plight would become a genuine cause célèbre
during the next two years – a young evangelist from Malaga
52
called Manuel Matamoros. Matamoros had converted from
Catholicism to Protestantism, and had moved swiftly into

49 Ibid., pp.85-6.
50 Ibid., p.67.
51 Executive Council Minutes, 19 November 1861.
52 Executive Council Minutes, 21 November 1861.
88 One Body in Christ

successful outreach across his home region. Soon, his influ-

ence extended much farther, to Seville, Granada and Barce-
lona. In Barcelona, however, he was arrested and called before
the magistrates. As Ewing records it, when asked by them,
‘Do you profess the Catholic Apostolic Roman faith, and if
not, what religion do you profess?’, he answered, ‘My religion
is that of Jesus Christ: my rule of faith is the Word of God, or
Holy Bible … The Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church
not being based on these principles, I do not believe in her
53
dogmas, still less do I obey her in practice.’ Matamoros was
next ordered to appear at the Council of Granada, but the
Paris and London committees of the Alliance heard of his
case and managed to send money to defray his travelling ex-
penses. When Matamoros had been jailed on his arrival, they
then despatched a delegation and a joint memorial to the
Madrid government on his behalf, and on behalf of other
54
persecuted evangelicals in the country. As it happened, Sir
Robert Peel the Younger also visited Matamoros while on a
visit to the Iberian Peninsula, and managed to negotiate an
55
improvement in his conditions.
When Matamoros’case was eventually heard,he was acquit-
ted of political agitation,but was found guilty,along with several
other Spanish Protestants, of apostasy. The sentence imposed
was seven years’penal servitude – a term which was actually ex-
56
tended to nine years after appeals. In response, the Alliance
lobbied the Westminster Parliament on several occasions, with
its Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and London committees
each presenting petitions to Lord Palmerston,who had now be-
come Prime Minister. In addition, a major rally was held at St
James’ Hall, where both Lord Shaftesbury and Sir Robert Peel
spoke on behalf of the convicted Spaniards. Following this, the
Alliance deputed its new Chairman,Major-General Alexander,
to lead a delegation to put the prisoners’ case to the Spanish
53 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.65.
54 Executive Council Minutes, 21 November 1861.
55 Ewing, GoodlyFellowship, p.66.
56 Ibid., pp.66-7.
 Some Common Action 89

Prime Minister, the Duke of Tetuan.57 When this and a subse-

quent visit by French evangelical women proved unsuccessful,
the British Organisation convened a long and agonised meeting
on 19 February 1863,after which it resolved to join forces with
Alliance representatives from Austria, Bavaria, Denmark,
France, Holland, Prussia, Sweden and Switzerland to petition
Queen Isabella II.She commuted the prisoners’sentence from
imprisonment to banishment, but refused to retract her earlier
denunciation of them as heretics whose crimes ranked worse
58
than those of common criminals.
Matamoros continued to encourage Spanish Protestant
evangelists and preachers from exile in Pau, Bayonne and
then Lausanne. However, he died aged 32 in 1866. Indeed,
there seemed little sign that progress had been made by the
Spanish government when, two years later, the Alliance was
led, through Lord Stanley, to protest once again at the impris-
59
onment of a young evangelical – Julian Vargas of Malaga.
Despite some relaxation of constraints against Protestants af-
ter a change of regime later in 1868, Evangelical Christendom
was still citing abuses of religious liberty in Spain well into
60
the late nineteenth century. Even in 1929 the London
Executive was moved to back the Alliance’s Spanish Com-
mittee financially when it supported Carmen Padin – a Span-
ish woman tried for declaring that Mary had borne other
61
children besides Jesus.
Elsewhere in Catholic Europe and its outposts, as ‘common
action’ on religious liberty became the Alliance’s hallmark, the
British Organisation backed a whole range of further causes,

57 Executive Council Minutes, 17 October 1862; Ewing, Goodly Fellowship,

pp.67-8.
58 Executive Council Minutes, ‘Special Meeting “Exclusively to Consider and
Decide Upon the Action of the Evangelical Alliance with Reference to the Span-
ish Prisoners”‘, 19 February 1893.
59 Executive Council Minutes, 7 May 1868; also 29 July 1868’.
60 A. Benoliel, ‘Religious Liberty in Spain’, Evangelical Christendom, September
1874, pp.287-8.
61 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, pp.76-7.
90 One Body in Christ

from calls for Protestant chaplains in the French army,62

through defence of persecuted evangelicals in Barletta, Italy63,
64
and of gagged missionaries in the French Colonies, to
campaigns on behalf of jailed evangelists and witnesses in
65
Portugal. No doubt, these initiatives were given impetus by
the Alliance’s general antagonism towards the Vatican.It would
be wrong, however, to assume that religious liberty was a mere
flag of convenience for anti-papist attack. Indeed, the record
shows that even after the de Vaud episode, the Alliance as a
whole, and the British Organisation in particular, devoted at
least as much time to abuses of evangelicals by state Protestant
churches.

Protestant Europe: Established Churches Against

Independent Evangelicals

As early in the life of the Alliance as September 1847, Sir

Culling Eardley was warning the British Executive Council
that many ‘Lutheran brethren’ in the German region 66
of
Bavaria were proving ‘exclusive in their sentiments’. Over
the next few years this concern would extend across Germany,
as the dominant Protestant state churches typically set them-
selves against the Alliance’s efforts to secure the rights of
independent evangelicals, and Baptists in particular.

62 I. Molenaar, ‘European Intelligence: France – Protestant Chaplains to the

Army’, Evangelical Christendom, 1855, pp.39-49.
63 Executive Council Minutes, 3 May 1866.
64 Executive Council Minutes, 24 June 1868. See also Executive Council Min-
utes, p.29 December 1869.
65 The Alliance defrayed the legal expenses of two Portuguese Evangelicals sen-
tenced to two years imprisonment for speaking against the state Catholic church –
Executive Council Minutes, 29 July 1868. It also defended an English merchant,
‘Mr. Cassels’, who was deported from Oporto for convening Protestant services
on a Sunday and for attempting to win converts from the Roman church for his
own ‘sect’ – 23 December 1868’, 2 June 1869.
66 Executive Council Minutes, ‘Statement Laid on the Table by Sir Culling
Eardley Respecting the Continent, 29 September 1847’.
 Some Common Action 91

One German state that especially repressed Baptists was

Saxe Meningen. It prohibited the small Baptist community
there from meeting together and from observing the Lord’s
Supper. It also barred their pastor from home visitation. This
prompted the Alliance to appeal to the Minister of the Interior,
67
and a degree of liberty was granted as a result. Elsewhere,and
not least in the Principality of Lippe-Schaumburg, Edward
Steane told a May 1853 meeting of the British Executive
Council that German Baptists continued to be imprisoned for
their convictions. Steane went on to report that Arthur Fitz-
gerald Kinnaird and Samuel Morton Peto,the evangelical MPs,
had called on the Foreign Minister, Lord Clarendon, to inter-
68
vene. Some progress had already been made in Prussia, and
the same meeting suggested that the openness exhibited by
Frederick William IV, the King of Prussia, might be presented
as an example to harder-line areas. Indeed, the Executive
Council worded a memorial to this effect, which is typical of
the many they issued in this period:
the Council desire to express their thankfulness to God ‘by whom kings reign
and princes decree justice’for the favourable issue to which by this good prov-
idence their communications with the Prussian Government and those of
other friends of Religious Liberty have been conducted.They place on record
their deep sense of obligation to his Majesty the King of Prussia for the per-
sonal interest which he has manifested in the wrongs endured by his subjects
who have suffered from the operation of intolerant laws, and the enlightened
and liberal views by which he has guided the recent measures of his govern-
ment in relation to this subject. They offer their Christian congratulations to
their brethren of the Baptist denomination on the new liberty they have ac-
quired in that kingdom; and finally they renew their protest against religious
intolerance wherever it persists, their sorrow at learning that it is still so preva-
lent in Protestant Continental states, and their earnest hope that the other
Governments of Germany, influenced by the example of Prussia, will in like
manner proceed to recognise the right of their subjects to the free profession
of their religious convictions, and the free exercise of their religious worship,
without molestation or hindrance.69

67 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.63.

68 Executive Council Minutes, 11 May 1853.
69 Ibid.
92 One Body in Christ

The German situation was publicised not only in Evangelical

Christendom, but also in the London Quarterly Review, and by
1853 the Alliance had joined forces with the Protestant
Alliance and the embryonic religious liberties pressure group,
the Hombourg Conference,to lobby 70
the state church assembly
– the Kirchentag – on the matter. Further petitioning of the
Prussian King in71
1855 led to a gradual liberalisation of attitudes
in other states, but Lippe-Schaumburg remained intransigent 72
through the 1860s despite further deputations from London.
Furthermore, Episcopal Methodists had to appeal to the Brit-
ish Organisation in May 1869 to help them 73
remove constitu-
tional barriers to evangelism in Saxony.
The other established Protestant church to which the Alli-
ance paid special attention in the mid-1800s was the Lutheran
church in Sweden. In 1851 Evangelical Christendom published a
paper by the Swedish Baptist pioneer F.O. Nilsson, which re-
ported that all Swedish subjects except the Jews were obliged
to be members of the State church. Nilsson continued:
No dissent is tolerated, upon penalty of the loss of property, and banishment
for life from the country. By a law that, although obsolete, is not repealed, par-
ents are subject to a heavy fine, if they neglect to have their infants baptised. At
the age of fifteen or sixteen, every person must go through a course of cate-
chising, previous to his confirmation. Then, after a man has been confirmed,
he must,according to law,receive the sacrament at least once in twelve months,
or else he will lose his privileges as a citizen.74

Nilsson went on to catalogue restrictions on independent

meetings for worship and on evangelism,listing several cases of
70 ‘Religious Liberty in Germany’, Evangelical Christendom, August 1855,
pp.233ff;. See also Lord Shaftesbury’s account of the convening of the Homburg
Conference, and its subsequent transmutation into the Committee for the Vindi-
cation and Promotion of Religious Liberty in Evangelical Christendom,1854,p.16.
71 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.64.
72 Executive Council Minutes, 3 May 1866. ‘European Intelligence: Germany’,
Evangelical Christendom, January 1856, pp.14-33.
73 Executive Council Minutes, ‘Adjourned Meeting’, 10 May 1869.
74 F.O. Nilsson, ‘On Religious Liberty in Sweden’, Evangelical Christendom, 1851,
pp.426-7.
 Some Common Action 93

oppression by the state. At the same time, however, he pointed

to more tolerant politicians and clergy who 75 were inclined to
see the offending conventicle law abolished. By 1857 these
liberal influences had managed, with support from the Alli-
ance,to persuade the King to draft a new law granting a degree
of religious freedom to non-established congregations.
Although the Swedish Diet formally rejected this, new pro-
posals were adopted
76
which nonetheless eased the situation for
the Dissenters. Later,in April 1873,the Executive Council of
the British Organisation were asked by the Alliance’s Stock-
holm Committee to help them prepare a response to a new Bill
of Religious Liberty for77Dissenters, which had been tabled in
the Swedish Parliament. Although both groups raised objec-
tions to certain points in the legislation, the existence of the
bill, and its subsequent adoption, bore testimony to the prog-
ress that had been made over the previous two decades.

Russia: Orthodoxy and the Tsar

The Alliance’s defence of German Baptists in the 1850s was

extended to their Russian counterparts in the following
decade. At the Dublin Rotunda in September 1863, J.H.
Millard, a Secretary of the Baptist Union, addressed the Alli-
ance’s annual conference. He told delegates that Baptists were
being severely oppressed by the Russian authorities in Poland;
he asked the Conference to support the Baptist Union and the
German Committee of the Alliance in their petitioning of
those authorities. It was duly agreed that a deputation includ-
ing Lord Frederick Calthorpe and 78
Arthur Kinnaird MP should
wait upon Russian ambassador.

75 Ibid., pp.426-8.
76 G. Scott, ‘Sweden: Question of Religious Liberty’, Evangelical Christendom,
January 1858,pp.25-7;‘Sweden and Finland:Proposed Law on Religious Liberty’,
Evangelical Christendom, December 1859, pp.482-4.
77 Executive Council Minutes, 2 April 1873.
78 Executive Council Minutes, 4 November 1863.
94 One Body in Christ

Russian suppression of evangelicals combined the formida-

ble power of the Tsar with the antagonism of the Orthodox
Church. These forces proved to be particularly severe in the
Baltic States.In 1871,a multi-national deputation from the Al-
liance appealed to the Russian Court on behalf of evangelicals
in this region,and urged the Tsar to recognise the solemn right
of all to cherish, profess and propagate their religious convic-
tions. The British Organisation was prominent in this action,
having convened a strong committee specifically to address it.
On behalf of the Tsar, the Chancellor, Prince Gortschakoff,
emphasised that religious liberty was curtailed in Russia only
insofar as people were not permitted to leave the Orthodox
Church once baptised into it,and that the Tsar alone could re-
peal this restriction. Such repeal was not forthcoming, but the
Alliance’s efforts did result in some relaxation of the penalties
79
imposed against converts to Protestantism. Despite this, in
May 1873 reports were still reaching the Executive Council of
‘most harassing’ acts of ‘cruel persecution of Baptist Christians
… who had previously belonged to the Russian Greek
Church [sic]’. The Council heard that in the southern states
‘several brethren,rather than recant their faith,had now been a
year in prison, nine others and a sister 6 months’. Again in
co-operation with the German Alliance, it was resolved, sub-
ject to further investigation, to ‘take up the case and act rigor-
80
ously on behalf of our suffering brethren’. By the following
year, when the Tsar visited London, the British Organisation
was able to congratulate him on his personal intervention in
this and other such cases – even if it typically asked at the same
time that ‘further progress in religious liberty may be made
81
throughout his majesty’s empire’.
As far as the Baltic States were concerned, the caveat would
remain sadly necessary. In 1888, persecutions returned to
a level which prompted a fresh appeal to the Tsar. On this
79 Executive Council Minutes, 28 December 1870; Ewing, Goodly Fellowship,
pp.70-1.
80 Executive Council Minutes, 12 May 1873.
81 Executive Council Minutes, 1 April 1874.
 Some Common Action 95

occasion, however, he appears to have left the matter in the

hands of the Procurator of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox
Church, M. Pobedonostzeff. His response characterised the
attitude of most clergy in the region:
You ask for all sects an equal and full liberty. Russia is convinced that nowhere
in Europe do heterodox faiths, and even those which are not Christian, enjoy
so full a liberty as in the bosom of the Russian people. But Europe does not
know this. And why? Only because among you religious liberty comprises
also an absolute right to unlimited propagandism, and so you exclaim against
our laws against those who pervert the faithful from orthodoxy … In Russia
the Western faiths are always ready to attack the power and unity of the coun-
try.Never will she allow the Orthodox Church to be robbed of her children.82

Of course, the arrival of communism in the early twentieth

century meant that the Russian Orthodox Church would go
on to suffer its own share of persecution.Even then,however,it
could be argued that the suppression of independent evangeli-
cal churches, and ‘unregistered’ evangelical churches in partic-
ular,was proportionally even greater than that meted out to the
former state church. What is more, religious persecution of
evangelicals by the Orthodox has returned as an issue in the
post-Communist era, as the Russian Church has reasserted its
national identity and priority. Hence, even now, evangelical
associations and mission agencies concerned with religious
liberty in Russia find themselves following
83
the example and
methods of their Alliance forbears.

The Muslim East: Turkey and Persia

From the mid-1850s onwards, abuses of religious freedom in
the Muslim world occupied an increasing amount of the
82 Cit. Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, pp.72-3.
83 M. Bordeaux, Protestant Opposition to Soviet Religious Policy (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1968); also Gorbachev, Glasnost and the Gospel (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1990); Interserve/Middle East Media, Turning Over a New Leaf:
Protestant Missions and the Orthodox Churches of the Middle East (London,
Lynnwood, 1992).
96 One Body in Christ

Alliance’s attention.Chief among its concerns on this front was

the treatment of Christian converts in Turkey.
In 1855, the international Alliance conference in Paris ap-
proved a memorial from the Executive Council to the Turkish
Sultan, asking him to halt the routine execution of those who
turned from Islam to Christianity. Overseen by Lord
Shaftesbury and transmitted by the French Ambassador Count
Walewski,the memorial appealed for ‘the establishment of real
religious freedom’ in the Turkish Empire and complained that
it was ‘still a capital offence for a Turk to make a profession of
Christianity’. Then, in a confession of past errors that would
resonate with many evangelicals today, the text continued:
God forbid that Europe should oppose such an evil in the spirit of the crusad-
ers upholding the cross in the East by exterminating the Crescent! … In en-
treating your Majesty to adopt this course, we are unanimous in desiring that
the whole of Europe should practise what the Allied Powers would enjoin on
Turkey.84

To the Alliance’s considerable surprise,on 21 February the fol-

lowing year the Sultan responded with a detailed edict which
allowed ‘all forms of religion’ to be ‘freely professed’, and
which insisted that ‘no subject shall be hindered in the exercise
of the religion that he professes,
85
nor shall be in any way
annoyed on this account’. The edict specifically applied this
new freedom to the building of churches,synagogues and tem-
ples, to employment policy, education, military service, legal
processes, taxation, housing and municipal funding. Not sur-
prisingly, Edward Steane and his fellow editors at Evangelical
Christendom prefaced their publication of the Sultan’s text by
stating that it was an ‘extraordinary’document,and a ‘triumph’
for the cause of religious liberty. It was now ‘well understood
by the Turks’, they confirmed, ‘that they may now become
84 ‘Memorial to the Emperor of the French on Religious Liberty in Turkey’,
Evangelical Christendom, September 1855, p.299.
85 ‘Religious Liberty in Turkey: Firman and Hati-Sherif by the Sultan, Relative
to Privileges and Reforms in Turkey’, Evangelical Christendom, April 1856,
pp.117-21.
 Some Common Action 97

Christians without molestation’. Indeed, wrote the editors, ‘It

is no exaggeration to say that, regarded in almost any, but espe-
cially in a religious point of view, the nations of Europe have
not read a State paper for centuries
86
destined to effectuate such
marvellous changes as this.’
As with other such advances, there would be periodic set-
backs in subsequent years. In September 1868 the Executive
Council wrote to the press and the government Foreign Sec-
retary, Lord Stanley, about ‘the cruelties committed against
Protestant Christians’ in Mesopotamia by the Turkish Gover-
nor, Ismael Pasha, ‘at the instigation of the Romish Patriarch,
87
Pillibos.’ The following year the British Organisation ap-
pealed for its Turkish counterpart in Constantinople on be-
half of Protestants suffering beatings and unjust taxation at
88
Biblis. Similarly, in January 1874, representation was made
on behalf of three converts from Islam who had been forced
to serve in the Turkish army and barred from attending
89
church services. This last case in fact engaged not only the
British government, but also Queen Victoria, to whom the
Countess of Gainsborough had given a copy of Evangelical
90
Christendom bearing a report on the matter. Although the
Executive Council considered buying the men out of the
army, a compromise was eventually reached whereby they
were moved to Constantinople from their base in Damas-
91
cus. Although they received better treatment there, the Alli-
ance still saw fit to send a deputation, led by Lord Francis
Collingham, to visit the men and appeal on their behalf to the
92
Grand Vizier.

86 Ibid., p.117.
87 Executive Council Minutes, 30 September 1868.
88 Executive Council Minutes, 27 October 1869.
89 Executive Council Minutes, 7 January 1874. See subsequent developments at
minutes for 4 February 1874, 1 April 1874, 6 May 1874, 17 June 1874.
90 Executive Council Minutes, ‘Special Meeting’, 24 August 1874.
91 Executive Council Minutes, 4 November 1874.
92 Executive Council minutes, 22 February 1875, 3 March 1875.
98 One Body in Christ

Dealing with Islamic governments did much to persuade the

Alliance to extend its defence of ‘evangelical brethren’to other
persecuted Christian groups.After centuries of Muslim oppres-
sion, the Nestorian Christians of Persia saw in the Alliance an
activist body that might use its influence to further their cause.
In May 1861 two of them duly set out on foot from Oroomiah
for London. In a journey that took six months, they travelled
through Armenia,Russia,Poland and Germany,and then by sea
to England. On arrival, their first question was ‘Where is the
Evangelical Alliance?’The Alliance then appealed on behalf of
the Nestorians to the Shah,who granted them land on which to
rebuild their systematically destroyed churches, and money
with which to construct them. He also dismissed the official
93
who had been responsible for the campaign of destruction.

Defending Catholics and Jews

If the imperatives of religious liberty moved the Alliance to

work beyond its own natural constituency, it nevertheless ex-
ceeded the expectations of many when it moved to defend the
rights of Roman Catholics in Japan in 1872. Along with
Protestant converts,native Catholic Christians had come to face 94
an increasing threat of desecration,legal oppression and exile.
At its meeting on 5 December 1872 the Executive Council re-
solved to lobby a visiting
95
official from the Japanese court on be-
half of both groups. The following year,the Alliance’s British,
American,French and German Organisations
96
co-ordinated an
impressive campaign of lobbying, and the Japanese govern-
ment annulled key restrictions on Catholics and Protestants 97
alike, releasing a number of jailed converts in the process.

93 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, pp.69-70.

94 Ibid., p.71.
95 Executive Council Minutes, 5 December 1872.
96 Evangelical Christendom, 1873, p.29; 1872, 125; 1873, 153.
97 Evangelical Christendom, 1872, 217; 1974, p.127. Minutes of Annual Confer-
ences, Glasgow, October 1849.
 Some Common Action 99

Perhaps even more surprising still was the Alliance’s defence

of persecuted Jews.As we have seen,the Alliance essayed a deli-
cate balance in socio-political matters between Anglican
churchmen and higher Wesleyans on the one hand, and more
radical Dissenters on the other. Whereas the former tended to
be more conservative on the implications of religious equality
for constitutional reform, the latter followed those implica-
tions through in a more thoroughgoing manner. The tension
between these two groups was typified in the mid-Victorian
era by their respective attitude toward the right of Jews to be-
come members of the Westminster Parliament. As Larsen
points out,evangelical churchmen in particular led the opposi-
tion to such Jewish representation, even as evangelical Dis-
98
senters strongly advocated it. Indeed,it is salutary to note that
for all his later veneration as an exemplar of evangelical social
action, and despite his keen support of the Alliance’s general
policy on religious freedom, Lord Shaftesbury was set bitterly
against his Nonconformist brethren on this issue:
Some years ago they stood out for a Protestant Parliament. They were per-
fectly right in doing so,but they were beaten.They now stood out for a Chris-
tian Parliament.They would next have to stand out for a white Parliament;and
perhaps they would have a final struggle for a male Parliament.99

Despite this background,atrocities committed against the Jews

in Tsarist Russia in 1882 managed to unite the Executive
Council in a common resolve to petition the court with a
memorial expressing its ‘horror and indignation’ at what was
taking place. As conveyed through the Liberal Foreign Secre-
tary Earl Granville,the memorial noted the special relationship
of Judaism to Christianity and underlined the repeated mani-
festation of God’s ‘displeasure’ towards
100
those who had ‘op-
pressed and persecuted the Jews’. In a letter of thanks, the
Chief Rabbi, N. Adler, wrote: ‘I fully and gratefully recognise

98 Larsen, Friends of Religious Equality, pp.126-7.

99 Hansard, XCV, 1278 (16 December 1847).
100 Executive Council Minutes, 19 January 1882.
100 One Body in Christ

the fact that the Council of the Evangelical Alliance gave the
first note of that warm sympathy for the persecuted Jews of
Russia which
101
was so powerfully echoed throughout Great
Britain.’

Conclusion: The Enduring Legacy of ‘Common

Action’

We have seen in earlier chapters that the first ‘external’ con-

cerns of the Alliance as it was being formed were popery,
102
infi-
delity, Sabbath observance and Christian education. As has
become clear, however, it also very quickly seized upon the
issue of religious liberty, and this became its hallmark for the
remainder of the nineteenth century.As it laboured in this area,
the Alliance sometimes championed marginal groups which
hardly reflected its own theological outlook, yet by promoting
freedom of religion largely without fear or favour, it estab-
lished a formidable reputation with governments and civic
institutions as an ‘honest broker’ on behalf of the oppressed.
Thanks to the power of the British Empire and the related,
considerable presence of British missionaries around the
world, the London-based Executive Council of the British
Organisation was able to lead the way in this work.As it did so,
it ensured that its membership comprised a remarkable
number of active peers, MPs and civil servants.
As the new century dawned,Evangelical Christendom contin-
ued to carry a good deal of ‘foreign intelligence’ on the perse-
cution of evangelicals, but the British Organisation itself
became relatively less activist in this area. This was due to a
number of factors. First, the rise of the ecumenical movement
prompted the Alliance to concentrate rather more on the
question of Christian unity, and under the long secretaryship
101 Executive Council Minutes, 9 March 1882.
102 These were the four key areas of social endeavour outlined at the Provisional
Committee meeting in Birmingham, 1846: Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alli-
ance, p.30.
 Some Common Action 101

of Henry Martyn Gooch (1904-1949, detailed in chapter 8), it

responded by positioning itself as a broad Protestant move-
ment over against the emergence of both theological Funda-
103
mentalism and liberalism. Second, while the Alliance
maintained its commitment to corporate prayer for interna-
tional issues and pressed for a spiritual dimension to be recog-
nised within the emerging League of Nations, the rise of
premillennialism within evangelical circles during the
104
inter-war years blunted the edge of its social concern.
Gooch’s father, Fuller Gooch, was a leading advocate of
premillennial doctrines, while D.M. Panton captured an in-
creasingly popular mood when he wrote in a 1924 edition of
Evangelical Christendom that all international political reform
was doomed because it was a denial of the imminence of the
105
Second Coming. Third, Gooch’s determined stress on the
Protestant nature of the Alliance meant that to some extent its
anti-Roman Catholic identity, which had been mitigated by
religious liberties work in the Victorian age,became more dis-
tinctive. This all reflected a more general playing down of
socio-political involvement among evangelicals during this
period – a trend which David Moberg has called ‘the great re-
106
versal’.
Although we shall see in chapter 8 that the British Alliance
supported Karl Barth and the German Confessing Church in
107
their struggle against the Nazis in the 1930s, it would only
be after the Second World War that its former international
focus on religious liberties would be recovered. This would
occur,however,not through the old model of a London-based
Executive leading other international committees in the

103 I.M. Randall, ‘Schism and Unity: 1905-1966’, in Brady & Rowdon (eds), For
Such a Time as This, p.164.
104 Ibid., p.168.
105 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1924,p.178;Randall,‘Schism
and Unity: 1905-1966’, p.168.
106 D. Moberg, The Great Reversal: Evangelism versus Social Concern (London:
Scripture Union, 1973).
107 See, for example, Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1930, p.35.
102 One Body in Christ

petitioning of various repressive regimes, but through a new

global body – the World Evangelical Fellowship. The story of
108
WEF as a whole has been told elsewhere and will be dealt
with at greater length in chapter 10. At this juncture, however,
it is worth noting that when WEF was formed at
Woudschoten, Holland in 1951, it immediately set itself to
109
work on a religious liberties agenda. By 1962, at an interna-
tional meeting in Hong Kong,it had established a special Reli-
gious Liberty Commission, and it is significant for our story
that the first convenor of that body was the then General Sec-
110
retary of the British Alliance, Gilbert Kirby. It was subse-
quently chaired by another prominent figure within the
British organisation, John Langlois, and appointed a Lon-
don-based Alliance staff member,Mike Morris,as its Research
111
Associate in the late 1980s. Today, the Commission is con-
vened by a Finn, Johan Candelin, has an office at the United
Nations, and is active in the many areas of the world which re-
main less than open in terms of religious freedom – from Iran
and Pakistan to Nigeria, China and parts of post-Communist
112
Eastern Europe. The commitment made in London in 1846,
and applied so effectively through the first fifty years of the Al-
liance’s life, has regained its prominence.

108 Fuller, People of the Mandate, pp.114-5.

109 Howard, The Dream That Would Not Die.
110 Ibid.
111 Fuller, People of the Mandate, 105.
112 Ibid., pp.103-17.
 5

For the Maintenance of the Truth

Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies

From its first days the Alliance functioned as an arena of theo-

logical debate. We have already described in chapters 2 and 3
the arguments on eschatology, sacraments and moral character
that surrounded the drafting of the doctrinal basis in 1845-6.
We have also seen that even as the inaugural London confer-
ence agreed the text of this basis of faith, delegates clashed and
then divided on the ethics of slaveholding. Over the next few
decades, however, further issues would arise which would test
the Alliance’s view not only of what it meant to be ‘evangeli-
cal’, but also of how it might deal with those in its ranks who
appeared to diverge from that definition.

Darwinism and Revivalism

In 1859 Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species presented a radical

challenge both to traditional evangelical understandings of
creation and to established evangelical views of the relation-
ship between ‘fixed’ and ‘progressive’ revelation. As the impli-
cations of Darwin’s work became clear, some within the orbit
of the Alliance took up this challenge and sought to reconcile
his ideas on evolution and natural selection with an evangeli-
cal theological outlook; others, by contrast, viewed his theo-
ries as a severe threat in need of robust opposition. Either way,
104 One Body in Christ

foundational concepts were at stake. In Kessler’s terms,

whereas until around 1860 most Christians had regarded di-
vine truth as essentially static, eternal and transcendent, and
had seen the imprint of that truth in nature, ‘with Darwin
and his contemporaries … truth was no longer considered to
be something static, but something which was developing dy-
namically as a result of the 1
interplay of the various forces at
work in human society’. In fact, this ‘progressive’ view of
truth owed as much to the longer-standing influence of Ro-
manticism as to Darwin, and, as we shall see, was also implicit
in the new critical approaches to sacred texts which had been
developing
2
on the continent since the late eighteenth
century.
In any case, it would be some considerable time before the
Alliance moved seriously to address this paradigm shift: even
as late as a decade after Darwin’s epochal text was published,
its records contain little or no discussion of evolution, or of
new scientific approaches generally. Granted, various interna-
tional Alliance conferences from 1873 onwards would ad-
3
dress these concerns, and by 1884 the report of one such
meeting in Copenhagen would record ‘great interest attached
to the more apologetic discussions on science and revelation,
4
especially in regard to evolution’. Yet before this, the most
that can be found in the British minute books, or in Evangeli-
cal Christendom, are more general expressions of concern
about ‘infidelity’, ‘rationalism’, ‘skepticism’ and ‘philosophical
1 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.65-6.
2 On Romantic influences see B. Reardon, Religion in the Age of Romanticism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). On the development of biblical
criticism during this period see G. Bray, Biblical Interpretation, Past and Present
(Leicester: Apollos, 1996), pp.221-375 (cf. pp.255-6 on Romanticism). See also
D.N. Livingstone, et al., Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
3 D.N. Livingstone, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between
Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought (Grand Rapids/Edinburgh:
Eerdmans/Scottish Academic Press, 1987), pp.78, 109-10.
4 Report Presented to the Thirty-eighth Annual Conference of the Evangelical Alliance,
(Brighton, 1884), p.3.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 105

forms, novel and peculiar to the present times’.5 This entry,

from 24 February 1869, is typical:
Secretary read draft circular letter from this Council to the committees of the
EA throughout the United Kingdom on the subject of the action already
taken by this Alliance to counteract the rationalist and secularist opinions
openly disseminated in the present day and suggesting methods by which this
important work may be carried on in different cities and towns where
branches of the Alliance exist.6

During this period,the London-based Executive actually went

so far as to operate an ‘Infidelity Committee’– but the work of
this group appears to have been focused on long-standing here-
sies and7 anti-Sabbatarian attitudes, rather than on Darwinism
per se.
No doubt some who served the British Organisation of the
Alliance did oppose evolutionism, in an individual capacity, as
one of those ‘novel and peculiar philosophical forms’ that
threatened the evangelical faith during the 1860s and 70s.
Most prominent among these was T.R. Birks. An Anglican
clergyman,Birks had served as curate to Edward Bickersteth in
Watton during the 1830s, had married his daughter in 1844,
and succeeded him as an Honorary Secretary of the Alliance in
8
1850. As we shall see, Birks’ relationship with the Alliance
would end on a distinctly low note, but for the nineteen years
during which he served it, he wrote extensively and influen-
9
tially on a wide range of theological topics. In particular, after
5 For a summary see Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, 85-7. See also Report Presented to
the Thirteenth Annual Conference, (Belfast, 1859), p.15.
6 Executive Council Minutes, 24 February 1869.
7 Executive Council Minutes, 10 February 1869.
8 For biographical details see C.D. Hancock, ‘Birks, Thomas Rawson’, in D.M.
Lewis (ed.), Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, Vol.1 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995),
pp.101-10; Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals in the Church of England, pp.74, 138-9, 143,
160; R. Bromham, ‘A More Charitable Christian Eschatology: Attempts from the
Victorian Era to the Present Day to Mitigate the Problem of Eternal Punishment,
with Particular Attention to the Teaching of T.R.Birks and Its Influence’(M.Phil.,
University of Wales, 2000), pp.55-116.
9 E.g., Horae Evangelicae (1852); Modern Rationalism (1853); The Inspiration of the
Holy Scriptures (1853); The Bible and Modern Thought (1861); First Principles of Mod-
ern Science (1873); Modern Utilitarianism (1874).
106 One Body in Christ

the Origin of Species emerged,he distinguished himself as one of

Darwin’s most eloquent detractors.Having first critiqued Dar-
winism in his book The Bible and Modern Thought in 1861,
Birks continued to do so until, at Cambridge in 1876, he of-
fered one of the most comprehensive rebuttals of it in a series
of lectures entitled ‘Modern Physical Fatalism and the Doc-
trine of Evolution’. Three years later, he would summarise his
position in another volume, Supernatural Revelation: according
to Darwin, wrote Birks, ‘The universe will exhibit to us noth-
ing but a Proteus without reason or intelligence,going through
a series of endless changes, without conscious design, or any
10
intelligible end or purpose in those changes.’ The extent to
which Birks featured in this and other key debates of the pe-
riod is borne out by the fact that in 1872 he was appointed to
the prestigious Knightbridge Professorship in Moral Theol-
ogy and Philosophy at Cambridge.
While it is hard to imagine that Birks’ views on evolution
would not have affected his fellow Executive Council mem-
bers, it remains the case that on a formal level, Darwinian ideas
were conspicuous by their absence from the British Alliance’s
agenda during his Honorary Secretaryship. Prompted by the
independent evangelical leader E.J. Poole-Connor, Kessler
suggests that a major reason for this was the impact of the
so-called ‘Second Evangelical Awakening’ or ‘Ulster Revival’,
which had spread from the United States to Northern Ireland,
and which had also touched Wales, Scotland and parts of Eng-
land in 1859 – the very same year in which the Origin of Species
11
appeared. Not only did the Alliance play a significant role in
this revival through its extensive co-ordination of united
12
prayer; it is also reasonable to infer, as Kessler does, that the
British Organisation assumed for some time after it had arrived
that this fresh outpouring of spiritual life would provide a far
10 T.R.Birks,Supernatural Revelation (London 1879),p.136.Also J.R.Moore, The
Post-Darwinian Controversies (Cambridge, 1979).
11 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.70-71.
12 E. Orr, The Second Evangelical Awakening (London & Edinburgh: Marshall,
Morgan & Scott, 1955); Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.60-61
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 107

better antidote to secular intellectual trends than any number

of tracts, seminars or lecture tours.
Having said all this, it should be underlined that even if the
Alliance had decided explicitly to attack evolution, it would
not have been able to count on the support of all its members.
Indeed, it is fascinating to note that the very academic whom
the Alliance appointed to offer an apologetic for the 1859 re-
vival turned out to be a leading advocate of rapprochement be-
tween evolutionary thought and Christian theology.
Professor James McCosh was hardly unique among Alli-
ance supporters in his embrace of ‘old earth’ and evolutionary
ideas. The great Thomas Chalmers, no less, had willingly in-
terpolated long stretches of geological time into the creation
13
narrative of Genesis chapters 1-3, while the respected
Swiss-born Professor of Physical Geography at Princeton
University, Arnold Guyot, had begun to develop a ‘biblical
cosmogony’ which was patient of evolution through natural
14
causes. As we have seen, Chalmers was one of the architects
of the Alliance; the somewhat younger Guyot represented the
American branch at the Alliance’s international conference in
Geneva in 1861, and he went on to speak at its sixth general
congress in New York in 1873 on ‘The Biblical Account of
15
Creation in the Light of Modern Science’. At the second of
these meetings, he shared the platform with the president of
McGill University and first president of the Royal Society of
Canada, Sir John William Dawson. Like Guyot, William
Dawson was hardly a straight Darwinian, but was at this time
just beginning to develop a qualified form of theistic evolu-
16
tion. It was even more significant, however, that McCosh
should address this Sixth Congress.
By this stage in his career, McCosh had joined Guyot at
Princeton, but he had earlier studied under Chalmers at
Edinburgh University and,after a brief spell as a minister in the
13 Livingstone, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders, p.9.
14 Ibid., pp.22, 77-8.
15 Ibid., pp.78, 109.
16 Ibid., pp.80-85, 109.
108 One Body in Christ

Scottish Free Church, had assumed the chair of logic and

metaphysics at Queen’s College, Belfast. While there, he
emerged as a keen supporter of the Alliance,and established his
reputation with two books – The Method of Divine Government
(1850) and Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation (1855).
Both volumes confirmed McCosh as a leading assimilator of
natural theology with contemporary scientific ideas; in partic-
ular, they owed a debt to the French zoologist Jean Baptiste
Lamarck, who had postulated that acquired characteristics can
be inherited by future generations. It was little surprise, then,
that McCosh took a keen interest in Darwin’s theories soon af-
ter the Origin of Species appeared in November 1859. Just a few
weeks before this, however, he found himself engaged by the
Alliance on a somewhat different task.
The Alliance’s close association with the 1859 revival had
won it a good deal of support, but had also attracted criticism
from those convinced that it had been driven by unbiblical
17
emotionalism and manipulation. In order to answer these op-
ponents,the Executive Council recruited McCosh to write an
article for the October edition of Evangelical Christendom.
McCosh had himself been an enthusiastic participant in the re-
vival and duly produced a paper entitled ‘The Ulster Revival
18
and Its Physiological Accidents’. In it,he argued that the pros-
trations, trembling and other dramatic phenomena associated
with the revival could function as legitimate marks of the Holy
Spirit’s work, even if they required authentication in the
changed moral and spiritual character of those who experi-
enced them. In taking this view, McCosh echoed the analysis
that had been presented by the eighteenth-century theologian
of revival, Jonathan Edwards, in his classic texts, The Distin-
guishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741) and The Reli-
19
gious Affections (1746). McCosh also anticipated the response
17 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.61.
18 Evangelical Christendom, October 1859, pp.368ff.; Livingstone, Darwin’s For-
gotten Defenders, p.106.
19 J. Edwards, The Distinguishing Marks of the Spirit of God (1741), in Jonathan Ed-
wards on Revival (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965); The Religious Affections
(1746) (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1961).
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 109

which would be given by the Alliance a century and a half later,

when challenged to pronounce on the validity of another puta-
tive ‘revival’, the so-called ‘Toronto Blessing’ of 1994-6 (see
chapter 13).
20
McCosh moved from Belfast to Princeton in 1868. It is a
mark of the esteem in which the British Organisation held
him that a special meeting of the Alliance’s Executive Council
was organised prior to his departure,to thank him for his work,
to wish him well, and charge him with the task of forging
21
closer relations with the American branch. On arriving in
the United States, McCosh embarked on a series of lectures
22
eventually published in 1871 as Christianity and Positivism.
Here, he sought to work from Darwin’s premise that life on
earth had developed and diversified over aeons of time due to
innumerable mutations and adaptations within and across spe-
cies. Although McCosh departed from Darwin’s scheme by
maintaining a unique and distinct place for humankind –
which, he argued, ‘modifies Natural Selection by bringing
23
things together which are separated in natural geography’ –
he was nonetheless very keen to fuse Darwin’s concept of or-
ganic progression for the rest of the natural world with the
Christian doctrine of providence:
every one trained in the great truths of science should see a contemplated pur-
pose in the way in which the materials and forces and life of the universe are
made to conspire,to secure a progress through indeterminate ages.The persis-
tence of force may be one of the elements conspiring to this end; the law of
Natural Selection may be another,or it may only be a modification of the same
… [T]he law of the progression of all plants and animals … [implies] adjust-
ment upon adjustment of all the elements and all the powers of nature towards
the accomplishment of an evidently contemplated end, in which are displayed
the highest wisdom and the most considerate goodness.24

20 The university at this point was still known as ‘The College of New Jersey’.
21 Executive Council Minutes, ‘Special Meeting of Members of Council … to
Meet and Confer with Rev Dr McCosh Prior to His Departure for the United
States’, 8 July 1868.
22 J. McCosh, Christianity and Positivism: A Series of Lectures to the Times on Natural
Theology and Christian Apologetics (London: Macmillan, 1871).
23 Ibid., pp.69-70.
24 Ibid., pp.90-92.
110 One Body in Christ

When McCosh appeared alongside Guyot and William

Dawson in the philosophical section of the Alliance’s New
York Congress two years later, he summarised his ideas in a
paper entitled ‘Religious Aspects of the Doctrine of Develop-
ment’ – ‘development’ being his preferred theological gloss on
‘evolution’. Having made his case for a rapprochement
between theistic design and Darwin’s ‘natural law’, McCosh
added that it would now be pointless to tell younger naturalists
that there were no grounds for the theory of evolution.Despite
its problems, he said, ‘they know that there is truth [in it],
which is not to be set aside by denunciation’. Moreover, he
suggested, ‘Religious philosophers might be more profitably
employed in showing them the religious aspects of the doc-
trine of development; and some would be grateful to any 25
who
would help them to keep their new faith in science.’
McCosh would go on to explore these themes further in his
1887 Bedell lectures, which were subsequently published as
26
The Religious Aspect of Evolution. Granted, he continued to
present a benevolent God intervening to mitigate the random-
ness, profligacy and cruelty inherent in the Darwinian
worldview. Granted, too, he extrapolated from natural selec-
tion a ‘spiritual progressivism’ that would be increasingly chal-
27
lenged by Darwinians. Even so, his example, and that of
Guyot, William Dawson and others, shows that despite its ini-
tial caution,the Alliance moved on willingly to debate and ex-
plore new scientific ideas. Indeed, as we shall see, it would
never align itself as an organisation with the fundamentalist
movement that, in the 1920s, would come to define
anti-evolutionism as a sine qua non of evangelical orthodoxy.
Hence, too, when the UK Alliance conducted a survey of
theological views among its member churches in 1998, it
25 J.McCosh,‘Religious Aspects of the Doctrine of Development’,in P.Schaff &
S. Irenaeus Prime (eds), History, Essays, Orations and Other Documents of the Sixth
General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1874),
pp.264-71.
26 J. McCosh, The Religious Aspect of Evolution (New York: Scribner’s, 1890).
27 For further discussion,see Livingstone,Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders,pp.106ff.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 111

would find 37% affirming a ‘young earth’ or ‘six day’ creation,

28
but 58% endorsing a more general form of theistic evolution.

Historical Criticism and Biblical Authority

Shortly after the publication of the Origin of Species debate was

aroused among evangelicals by the appearance, in 1860, of the
landmark volume, Essays and Reviews. Comprising seven
papers by leading Anglican liberals, this book did much to
introduce the then-emergent school of German ‘higher criti-
cism’ to a more general readership. Pioneered by the
‘Tübingen school’ of F.C. Baur, Albrecht Ritschl and D.F.
Strauss,the higher critical method subjected the Old and New
Testaments to the sort of historical, contextual and scientific
scrutiny which was becoming commonplace within textual
studies as a whole. Its willingness to treat the Bible as a human
canon redacted and compiled over many centuries for varied
sociological purposes,and its related questioning of supernatu-
ral and miraculous elements within the narrative, were per-
ceived by many as a challenge to established belief 29
in the
uniqueness, authority and inspiration of Scripture. Indeed, as
David Bebbington has noted, evangelicals were among the
most prominent opponents of Essays and Reviews, with anyone
leaning towards its sceptical
30
approach being marked,by defini-
tion, as ‘broad church’.
Despite this initial resistance, however, by the late 1870s the
influence of the new movement began to affect evangelicalism.
William Robertson Smith, a gifted Old Testament scholar
from the Free Church College in Aberdeen,contributed an ar-
ticle on ‘The Bible’ to the Encyclopedia Britannica that assumed
higher critical principles. Although a close vote of the Free
Church Assembly in 1880 allowed him to stay in his post, a
28 EA Member Churches: The 1998 Opinion Survey, 5, Question 2.
29 For a summary of the contents and impact of Essays and Reviews,see Bray,Bibli-
cal Interpretation, pp.287ff.
30 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p.184.
112 One Body in Christ

more radical article for the same publication saw him dismissed
31
the next year. This episode would prove significant for the
Alliance, not least because of the Free Church’s key role in its
formation.
As with evolution, the 1859 revival appears to have diverted
the British Organisation of the Alliance from an immediate,
concerted response to the critical movement,even if certain of
its individual members were moved to engage with it from an
earlier point.A minute from 7 May 1868 records the Council’s
support for a campaign of the so-called Hackney Bible De-
fence Association to oppose ‘the spread of infidelity both in
London and the Provinces’, but does not explicitly relate this
32
to higher criticism. Likewise, the Infidelity Committee,
whose appointment we noted above,was reported in February
1869 to be ‘meeting by various agents the infidel preachers and
lecturers around London’, with a view to prompting others to
counteract ‘the attacks made by secularists upon revealed
truth’,but,again,the only such attack mentioned directly is the
33
neglect of the Sabbath. Further notes in the 1870s make ref-
34
erence to the ‘invidious attack’ of ‘rationalism’ on the gospel,
and to the need to uphold ‘doctrines which form the basis of
35
society’, but these are passing references,and no thoroughgo-
ing attempt appears to have been made by the British Organi-
sation as a whole to relate these concerns to contemporary
debates on biblical exegesis and interpretation. Rome, of
course,continued to be monitored with suspicion – but hardly
36
because of its embrace of German higher criticism!
Only in the late 1880s did British Alliance reports begin to
allude more obviously to biblical critical controversies, as the

31 Ibid., pp.184-5.
32 Executive Council Minutes, 7 May 1868.
33 Executive Council Minutes, 10 February 1869.
34 Executive Council Minutes, 5 June 1872.
35 Executive Council Minutes, 4 February 1874.
36 See, for example, the Alliance’s ‘Manifesto’ against Protestant participation in
an ecumenical council summoned by the Pope – Executive Council Minutes, 3
December 1869.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 113

Council aligned itself with those seeking ‘to contend for the
faith once delivered to the saints’ in the face of others whom it
37
took to be set on undermining God’s word. By March 1888
the Alliance raised its public profile considerably on this front
by organising rallies in various cities to affirm ‘the great central
truths of faith in Christ’, and to protest against ‘the prevalence
of erroneous teaching’. In doing so, it sought to engage speak-
ers for these events who would bear ‘faithful testimony to the
cardinal truths of the Christian gospel’, and who would ‘pos-
38
sess the confidence of the Christian public’as they did so. Sig-
nificantly,one such speaker was the leading Baptist and ‘prince
of preachers’, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Spurgeon’s selection by the Alliance Executive to lead its first
rallies in London was indicative of a more urgent concern about
theological compromise – not least in relation to Scripture. In
1864,he had actually resigned from the Alliance over its unwill-
ingness to take his side in the so-called ‘Baptismal Regeneration
Controversy’– a dispute about the Anglican theology of initia-
tion in which Spurgeon had suggested that evangelical clergy in
the Church of England perjured themselves by using the Book
of Common Prayer,when they did not actually believe its teach-
39
ing on the salvific effect of infant baptism. Given its history of
conciliating between evangelical Anglicans and Nonconform-
ists,the British Alliance had been reluctant to exacerbate the di-
40
vision. Spurgeon had subsequently been reconciled with the
Alliance, but now he was appearing on its platform at a time
when he had become embroiled in another dispute – one that
was, if anything, even more clamorous than that which had led
to his withdrawal from the Alliance twenty-four years earlier.

37 Report Presented to the Forty-First Annual Conference, Aberdeen 1887, pp.13ff.

38 Executive Council Minutes, Vol. IV, 14 July 1887, pp.142-3; 8 September
1887, pp.146-8; Report Presented to the Forty-Second Annual Conference, (Plymouth,
1888), p.8.
39 I.H. Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1973),
p.146.
40 For more detail, see M.T.E. Hopkins, ‘Spurgeon’s Opponents in the Down-
grade Controversy’, Baptist Quarterly 32.6 (April 1988), pp.274-94.
114 One Body in Christ

The so-called ‘Downgrade Controversy’41 was initiated by a

series of articles written in The Sword and The Trowel – the
widely circulated bulletin of Spurgeon’s large congregation at
the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Kennington. The earliest of
these articles were unsigned, but are thought most probably to
42
have been penned by Robert Shindler of Addlestone. In
February 1887,under the heading ‘The Down Grade’,the first
contribution argued,in line with the fears expressed by the Al-
liance Council in the preceding years, that ‘rationalism’ was
threatening evangelical truth,and that as a result,evangelicals as
well as liberals were in danger of ‘going downhill at breakneck
43
speed’. However, whereas the Alliance had generally re-
frained from detailing the causes of this problem, the author
quite explicitly laid the blame at the door of ‘the Germans’ –
that is, the higher critics and the philosophers, such as Imman-
uel Kant, Gotthold Lessing and Georg Hegel, who had influ-
44
enced them. Further unsigned articles traced the spread of
higher critical approaches through Holland to Andover New-
45
ton, a leading Congregationalist seminary in United States.
In particular, they appeared to implicate Baptist ministers such
as William Landels,J.G.Greenhough and W.E.Blomfield,who
had accepted higher critical methods and who had embraced
46
some of their theological implications. Then, in August,
Spurgeon himself openly joined the fray,offering a sharp sum-
mary of the decline presented thus far:

41 For detailed accounts of the Downgrade Controversy, see Hopkins, ‘Spur-

geon’s opponents in the Downgrade controversy’, pp.274-94; P.S. Kruppa, Charles
Haddon Spurgeon: A Preacher’s Progress (New York: Garland, 1982); E. Payne, The
Baptist Union: A Short History (London: Baptist Union, 1958), pp.127-43; E.W. Ba-
con, Spurgeon: Heir of the Puritans – A Biography (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967),
pp.128-46.
42 M. Nicholls, C.H. Spurgeon: The Pastor Evangelist (Didcot: Baptist Historical
Society, 1992), pp.131-45.
43 The Sword and the Trowel, February 1887, pp.122-6.
44 R.M. Grant & D. Tracy, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible (London:
SCM, 1984), pp.110-18, 155-6.
45 The Sword and the Trowel, 1887, pp.174-5, 274-9.
46 Nicholls, C.H. Spurgeon, pp.136-41.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 115

the atonement is scouted, the inspiration of Scripture is derided, the Holy

Spirit is degraded into an influence, the punishment of sin is turned into fic-
tion, the Resurrection into a myth, yet the enemies of our faith expect us to
call them brethren and maintain a confederacy with them.47

More specifically, Spurgeon concluded, ‘We cannot be

expected to meet in any Union which comprehends those
whose teaching is upon 48
fundamental points exactly the reverse
of what we hold dear.’ As a result,he withdrew from the Bap-
tist Union on 28 October 1887.
Spurgeon’s influence was such that the Baptist Union took
his allegations and secession very seriously indeed. Its Council
meeting,in December,demanded that he either substantiate or
withdraw his allegations, and appointed a delegation to draw
him back in. During the subsequent discussions, Spurgeon
made it clear that the Baptist Union was susceptible to hereti-
cal influences – such as those associated by him with higher
criticism – because it did not have a clear doctrinal basis.In this,
he averred,it could learn from the Alliance,whose statement of
faith defined exclusively those who were part of its fellow-
49
ship. Indeed, when forming his own Pastors’ College Evan-
gelical Association later in 1888, Spurgeon and his trustees
would adopt the Evangelical Alliance Basis ‘with certain alter-
50
ations and additions’ as ‘a convenient summary of the faith’.
Taking the preacher’s point to heart, both Union representa-
tives and Spurgeonites drew up doctrinal declarations, and it
was while a compromise between their respective drafts was
being negotiated, in March 1888, that Spurgeon appeared at
Exeter Hall and Mildmay Conference Hall in the capital to
51
promote ‘Fundamental Truth’ on behalf of the Alliance. As
he did so, the ‘Down Grade Controversy’ was extending far
47 The Sword and the Trowel, 1887, p.379.
48 Ibid., pp.509-15.
49 Nicholls, C.H. Spurgeon: The Pastor Evangelist, pp.141-2.
50 L. Drummond, Spurgeon, Prince of Preachers, (Grand Rapids: Kregal, 1992),
pp.706-7.
51 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.71; Executive Council Minutes, 12
April 1888.
116 One Body in Christ

beyond the confines of an internal denominational debate,and

was attracting copious comment across the wider evangelical
52
and Protestant community. As things turned out,when it met
at the City Temple on 23 April 1888, the Baptist Assembly
went on to adopt a form of words more moderate than
Spurgeon had hoped for,and he retreated,with a small number
53
of followers and churches, into relative isolation.
That the British Organisation should have seen fit to spot-
light as controversial a figure as Spurgeon at so sensitive a time
underlines the alarm which was then felt within the Executive
Council at the implications of historical criticism. This alarm
would remain for some while, but it would begin to abate as
the new century approached. One early indication of this shift
came with an address given at the Alliance’s 1890 annual meet-
ing in Manchester by Alfred Cave – an address entitled ‘The
54
Old Testament and Higher Criticism’. Cave had been a fierce
55
critic of William Robertson Smith, but now he argued for an
acceptance of critical methods insofar as they operated in con-
structive relation to the primacy of the Scriptures themselves.
As Kessler comments, ‘Up to this moment the Alliance had
contented itself with modernized restatements of the old faith,
56
but this was something new.’ Indeed, it was telling that
Spurgeon quickly dissociated himself from Cave’s apologetic,
on the grounds that Cave had accepted the classic higher criti-
cal model of the ‘documentary hypothesis’ for Genesis.
Spurgeon declared that this notion, which ascribed multiple
sources to a text traditionally assumed to derive from one pe-
riod and one community, had severely compromised the Bi-
57
ble’s historicity and accuracy. For Spurgeon and his
supporters, higher criticism remained an unnecessary ‘prop’
52 Payne, The Baptist Union, pp.131-43; Drummond, Spurgeon, pp.688-94.
53 Nicholls, C.H. Spurgeon, pp.141-5.
54 Evangelical Christendom, November 1890, pp.305ff.
55 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p.185.
56 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.71.
57 H.D. MacDonald, Theories of Revelation (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1963), p.271.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 117

for faith in the Bible; by contrast, they contended, the Bible

itself bore sufficient testimony to its own reliability as the word
58
of God written.
The Spurgeonic party would go on to define their under-
standing of biblical inspiration and authority in more detail in
June 1891,as part of what they dubbed ‘A Timely Manifesto’:
We, the undersigned, banded together in Fraternal Union, observing with
growing pain and sorrow the loosening hold of many upon the Truths of Rev-
elation, are constrained to avow our firmest belief in the Verbal Inspiration of
all Holy Scripture as originally given. To us, the Bible does not merely contain
the Word of God,but is the Word of God.From beginning to end,we accept it,
believe it, and continue to preach it. To us, the Old Testament is not less in-
spired than the New. The Book is an organic whole. Reverence for the New
Testament accompanied by scepticism as to the Old appears to us absurd. The
two must stand together. We accept Christ’s own verdict concerning ‘Moses
and all the prophets’ in preference to any of the supposed discoveries of
so-called higher criticism.59

While there are many in the Alliance today who would align
themselves wholly with this definition, it undoubtedly goes
beyond the essential ‘inspiration, authority and sufficiency’ of
the Scriptures affirmed in the original 1846 Basis of Faith. As
such, it positioned the Spurgeonites closer to what might now
be termed a fundamentalist view of the Bible than the more
general evangelical position represented by the Alliance per se.
Indeed,the assertion here of ‘the Verbal Inspiration of all Holy
Scripture’ reflects a growing divergence at this time between
those content to affirm the overall supremacy of Scripture
while applying historical critical study to its constituent parts,
and those who rejected any such ‘modern’ interpretation in
favour of more absolutist definitions of its ‘infallibility’and ‘in-
errancy’, and its ‘plenary verbal’ inspiration.
Now it must be admitted that if the drafters of the 1846
Basis of Faith saw no need to reinforce its assertion of biblical
‘inspiration, authority and sufficiency’ by adding that it was
thereby ‘infallible’, most of those who first endorsed it would
58 The Sword and the Trowel, 1981, p.246.
59 Word and Work, 26 June 1891.
118 One Body in Christ

have believed the latter to have been implied by the former.Ed-

ward Bickersteth,who proposed the Basis of Faith to the inau-
gural London conference, had certainly taken the ‘infallible’
line that a God who is altogether trustworthy and true must
60
have produced an utterly reliable written revelation. In doing
so, he had followed Henry Venn, who had earlier defended an
‘infallible Word of God’, the Countess of Huntingdon’s
Connexion, which had affirmed the ‘infallible truth’ of the
Old and New Testaments, Robert Haldane, who had written
influentially on the ‘infallibility and inspiration’ of Scripture,
61
and many other Victorian evangelicals. Having said this,even
in the early nineteenth century there had been some evangeli-
cals prepared to admit the possibility of errors in the Bible,
while maintaining that this did not threaten its thoroughgoing
inspiration. Charles Simeon and Henry Martyn, for example,
had defended this view by placing emphasis on the inspired
sense or meaning of biblical discourse,rather than on every indi-
62
vidual word. Certainly, from its earliest days, the Alliance had
contained proponents of each viewpoint.
As these distinctions became more marked following the
‘Downgrade Controversy’ and Cave’s address to the Manches-
ter conference, the Alliance worked hard to maintain a bal-
anced course. While continuing to repudiate liberal attacks on
core Christian doctrine, it undoubtedly essayed a greater
openness towards higher critical interpretation. Hence by
1906, in an address sponsored by the Alliance and delivered at
King’s Hall, Holborn, the Brethren evangelical Sir Robert
Anderson told of how a friend had given an unsigned exposi-
tion of his to a prominent broad church vicar. When the vicar

60 E. Bickersteth, A Scripture Help, Designed to Assist in Reading the Bible Profitably

th
(17 edn; London, 1838), p.2.
rd
61 H.Venn,The Complete Duty of Man (3 edn;London,1779), p.51;‘The Fifteen
Articles of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion’, in E. Welch (ed.), Two Cal-
vinistic Methodist Chapels, 1743-1811 (Leicester: London Record Society, 1975).
For further references see Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, pp.13-4.
62 For detail, see. D Tidball, Who Are the Evangelicals? (London: Marshall
Pickering, 1994), p.87.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 119

learned that Anderson had written the exposition, he replied,

‘If I were from this pulpit to put out such statements as that,
then you would call me a higher critic.’ Anderson retorted by
admitting that he was indeed a higher critic, but with the dis-
63
tinction that he still read the Bible as the word of God.
We shall see in chapter 10 that tensions on the authority, in-
spiration and interpretation of Scripture would flare up again
half a century later, as the international fabric of the Alliance
was reconfigured at the founding of the World Evangelical
Fellowship. Even here, however, while others would insist on
the affirmation of ‘infallibility’, the British Alliance would
again find itself brokering a leaner definition of biblical au-
64
thority. Then, as in the later nineteenth century, it would be
characterised by a cautious but moderately progressive attitude
to new theological thinking.
If the Alliance sought generally to adopt an eirenic approach
to intra-evangelical doctrinal disputes, there is one episode
from its Victorian period that stands out as an exception.
Ironically, it involved the Alliance’s leading anti-Darwinian,
T.R. Birks.

T.R. Birks: Hell and the Parameters of Alliance Doctrine

As we noted in chapter 3, there is little doubt that the majority

Christian tradition up to the nineteenth century had taken hell
to be a place of unending physical and psychological punish-
ment. Moreover, with the possible exception of children who
die in infancy and those who never hear the gospel,this major-
ity tradition had assumed hell65 to be the fate of all who die
without faith in Jesus Christ. Hence, when it affirmed ‘the
63 Thy Word is Truth:A Report of the Meetings for the Testimony to the Integrity of God’s
Word, Held in King’s Hall, Holborn, p.112; Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance,
p.72.
64 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.95-101.
65 For accounts of the evangelical tradition on this subject see R.A.Peterson, Hell
on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1995),
120 One Body in Christ

immortality of the soul’ and ‘the eternal punishment of the

wicked’,the Alliance’s 1846 Basis of Faith was following a the-
ology articulated by early church fathers like Tertullian,Jerome
and Augustine, by the medieval teaching of Thomas 66
Aquinas,
and by the magisterial Protestant Reformers.
As Geoffrey Rowell has shown, however, the period in
which the Alliance was formed was marked by a rise of interest
– among evangelicals as well as others – of alternative views on
67
hell and the afterlife. From the days of Origen until Victorian
times the main challenge to the traditionalist doctrine of eter-
nal punishment had come from universalism. Rather than
holding to the unending torment of the wicked, Origen pro-
posed a theory of apokatastasis in which everything, perhaps
even Satan and his angels,would eventually be restored to God.
This ‘restitution of all things’ did not exclude the possibility of
hellfire and divine condemnation, but saw them as ultimately
remedial, rather than eternally penal. Universalism recurred in
several variations thereafter and came to hold sway in more lib-
eral circles as the nineteenth century progressed. Insofar as it
proposed salvation for all regardless of faith,universalism never
significantly appealed to British evangelicals. On the other
hand,however,some were happy to interpret restitution not so
much as a remission of judgement, but as a positive consequence of
judgement – i.e. as something which must follow God’s con-
demnation and destruction of wicked people and things at the
end of the age.
Latterly, this view would take its place within the mediating
positions known as ‘conditional immortality’ and ‘annihi-
lationism’. Conditional immortality argues that the concept
the ‘immortal soul’, as affirmed in the 1846 Alliance Basis of
65 (continued) pp.97-117; Rowell, Hell and the Victorians; D. Powys, ‘The Nine-
teenth and Twentieth Century Debates about Hell and Universalism’, in N.M. De
S. Cameron (ed.), Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell (Carlisle: Paternoster Press,
1992), pp.93-138.
66 For more detail on this tradition see R.J. Bauckham, ‘Universalism: A Histori-
cal Survey’,Themelios 4.2 (January 1979),p.48;Peterson,Hell on Trial,pp.97-138.
67 Rowell, Hell and the Victorians, 1974.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 121

Faith,owes more to Greek neo-Platonic thought than to bibli-

cal teaching. Rather than accepting that unbelievers will for-
ever be tortured by a wrathful God, conditionalists infer from
Scripture that the unrighteous will ultimately be destroyed, or
annihilated – either at the point of death, or after a period of
punishment in a hell which will itself pass away once God has
recreated the universe. They see this as more consistent with
the actual vocabulary of the relevant texts, and God’s grand
plan of salvation: they also argue that it more adequately
reflects his character as a God of love and mercy. For
these reasons, conditional immortality is often identified as
‘annihilationism’, though in specific terms ‘annihilation’ is
better understood as following from conditional immortality,
rather than fully defining it.
As we have seen, American delegates to the Alliance’s inau-
gural conference in 1846 were seeking to head off these very
ideas when they proposed adding ‘eternal punishment’ to the
Basis of Faith. Certainly, they seem to have anticipated that
such ideas would make their mark on evangelicals,as well as on
others. Indeed, a later Evangelical Christendom editorial would
echo such concerns when it observed:‘there seems to have oc-
curred a considerable amount of tampering, even in England,
with this important doctrine;not merely by Unitarians,Univer-
salists or sceptics, but by evangelical clergymen, ministers and
68
others deemed to be,in other respects,evangelical Christians.’
Partly in response to final wording of the 1846 Basis of Faith,
F.D. Maurice, the former Unitarian-turned-Anglican, pub-
lished a book of Theological Essays in which he argued that the
phrase usually translated ‘eternal punishment’ in Matthew
chapter 25 referred to the quality, rather than the duration, of
God’s retribution.In particular,he contended,it should be un-
derstood to denote ‘the punishment of being without the
knowledge of God’, rather than a physical and everlasting tor-
69
ment in hellfire. Maurice was dismissed from his Chair at
68 ‘The Evangelical Alliance and Eternal Punishment’ Evangelical Christendom,
February 1870, p.33.
69 F.D. Maurice, Theological Essays, (Cambridge/London, 1853) p.450.
122 One Body in Christ

King’s College, London for expressing these views, but they

were growing more popular – a fact evident not only in the
backing given to them by the liberal authors of Essays and Re-
views, but also in events which would soon shake the Alliance
to its foundations.
As we have noted, T.R. Birks established a reputation as a
distinguished commentator on a range of theological issues in
the years after his appointment as Honorary Secretary of the
Alliance in 1850. Thus it was hardly surprising that he should
in time turn his attention to the growing debate on hell. What
took the Alliance aback,however,was the unusual approach he
adopted towards this now highly contentious subject. Its reac-
tion to this approach, and the crisis which arose as a result, did
much to point up the tensions inherent in the constitution of
the Alliance. Although Kessler offers a useful summary of the
70
‘Birks Controversy’, Raymond Bromham has presented a
more recent and more thorough account of it. This, coupled
with the minutes of the Executive Council and relevant copies
of Evangelical Christendom,offers a telling insight into the theo-
logical and institutional dynamics of the Alliance in the third
decade of its life.
In 1867 Birks published a book called The Victory of Divine
71
Goodness. In it, he took a broadly restitutionist line, going so
far as to suggest that ‘the lost’might develop in the afterlife to a
point where they could eventually share some of the joy of
God’s re-made cosmos, if not its full blessings. Birks held that
this was consistent with the Alliance’s theology and, in a way, it
was. His scheme did maintain unbelievers in an eternal realm
rather than annihilating them, and this eternal realm was di-
vided off from heaven.It was,however,palliative (if not exactly
remedial), and this hardly reflected the intent of those Ameri-
cans who had first inserted the ‘hell’ clause into the Basis of
Faith. Neither did Birks’ decidedly speculative approach to the

70 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.66-9; Bromham, ‘A More Chari-

table Christian Eschatology’.
71 T.R. Birks, The Victory of Divine Goodness (London: Rivingtons, 1867).
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 123

condition of the lost sit well with their traditional wording of

that clause.Early on in The Victory of Divine Goodness,Birks asks
the reader to ‘suppose’ that the fate of the unredeemed might
‘combine, with the utmost personal humiliation, shame, and
anguish,the passive contemplation of a ransomed universe,and
of all the innumerable varieties of blessedness enjoyed by un-
fallen spirits, and the ransomed people of God’. Such contem-
plation, he adds, ‘would be fitted, in its own nature, to raise the
soul into a trance of holy adoration in the presence of infinite
72
and unsearchable Goodness’. Birks concedes that this sce-
nario is ‘nowhere in the Bible, in set terms, explicitly re-
73
vealed’. Even so, he goes on to infer from passages such as
Philippians 2:11 that just as those who have been condemned
at the last judgement must make ‘unwilling acknowledgement
of God’s justice in their own sentence’, so too they must expe-
rience ‘a compulsory but real perception of all other attributes
of the Almighty’,including his ‘infinite wisdom and love’.De-
spite their eternal conscious suffering, this means that they
must also from time to time have an ‘unutterably blessed’ sense
74
of God. While Birks accepts that the co-existence of these
two vastly contrasting states among the damned might be hard
to grasp, he insists that ‘if righteousness and grace co-exist for
ever in the infinite perfections of the Most High,their exercise
may co-exist for ever in his dealings even with those whose
guilt requires that righteousness should assume the form of ir-
75
reversible and lasting punishment’.
At first, no one on the Alliance Executive Council seemed
especially perturbed by the latest theological publication of
their esteemed Honorary Secretary.Indeed,the matter was not
raised until Monday, 10 May 1869. On that occasion, a letter
was read out from the Treasurer, the city banker and philan-
thropist Robert Bevan,who had sent his apologies for absence.
The minutes record Bevan’s letter as having asserted that Birks’
72 T.R. Birks, The Victory of Divine Goodness (London: Rivingtons, 1867), p.45
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid., p.48.
75 Ibid., p.187.
124 One Body in Christ

views on hell were ‘not compatible with the 8th Article of the
Basis’, and that for this reason, Bevan ‘could not conscien-
76
tiously continue in the Alliance with Mr. Birks’. After some
deliberation, the Council resolved to respond to Bevan by
clearly defending Birks:
[T]he Council, entertaining sincere respect for the conscientiousness which
has induced … Mr Bevan to address them on the subject of his communica-
tion now read cannot but at the same time express their regret that he should
have deemed it necessary to do so. They respectfully submit to Mr Bevan that
since Mr Birks continues to avow his adhesion to the 8th Article of the EA doc-
trinal basis,and in the book referred to maintains the eternity of future punish-
ment,and disavows the construction of the contrary put upon certain passages
in it by others, they cannot deem it a part of their duty to call in question the
sincerity of Mr Birks in the avowal of his continued belief in the doctrine in
question, or to enquire how far (if at all) his speculations may be logically in-
consistent with it. They therefore earnestly express their hope that Mr Bevan
will not press the further consideration of the subject ….77

The strength of the Council’s support for Birks at this stage is

evident in the fact that at the same meeting, they appointed 78a
special deputation to convey their wishes to Bevan in person.
Bevan, however, was not ready to let the issue rest. At the Alli-
ance’s Annual Conference in Derby on 25 November 1869,
another letter from him was read out, in which he confirmed
that unless it moved to condemn Birks’stance as irreconcilable
with the Basis, he would be ‘obliged to retire’ from member-
ship.
Immediately after this, Birks read a letter of his own, which
expanded on one which had been written on 19 July and laid
79
before the Executive at its meeting on 1 October. This letter
stated that Birks did not wish his name to be offered for
re-election as Honorary Secretary.He gave as his principal rea-
son for this the fact that despite the support of his colleagues on
the Council, his office had now become ‘an occasion of strife’;
76 Executive Council Minutes, 10 May 1869.
77 Ibid., pp.6-7.
78 Ibid., p.7.
79 Executive Council Minutes, 1 October 1869.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 125

he then added that he did not want to jeopardise the ‘internal

harmony’ of the Alliance. He reaffirmed his allegiance to the
Alliance’s ‘Basis,Principles and Objects’,stressing that over the
nineteen years of his service as Honorary Secretary, this had
‘undergone no change’. However, Birks then went on in some
detail to answer Bevan’s objections, and in doing so, undoubt-
edly fuelled an already volatile dispute.‘I think it only right’,he
said,‘to add some parting words of caution against serious dan-
gers which seem to me at this moment to imperil not only [the
Alliance’s] usefulness, but its very existence.’ This dramatic
tone was maintained as Birks proceeded to list six such threats
to the Alliance’s future. His concerns are worth quoting in full,
because they highlight challenges which the Alliance had
faced periodically up to that point, and which it continues to
face today:
First,that it should cease to be evangelical,reflecting the grace and forbearance
of the gospel of Christ, and should become in spirit an illegal and tyrannical
body, in which a few members by the influence of their wealth, can impose
their own private constructions of the Basis as a new test of peaceful member-
ship on all the other members of the Organization.
Secondly,that it should cease to be an Alliance and become practically a Court
of Inquisition summoning its members to its bar to entertain charges against
them either of intellectual lunacy or of dishonesty in their own professions of
faith.
Thirdly,that it should explain away its second article,the right and duty of pri-
vate judgment, into the right and duty of a majority or even a minority of its
members to impose their own private judgement on the right of interpreta-
tion of any article of the Basis as a law to exclude the rest from membership in
the Alliance.
Fourthly, that it should reverse its own declaration and turn its summary of
doctrines into a creed or confession practically more stringent than the creeds
of the universal Church of Christ.
Fifthly, that it should contradict its own fundamental law, that no compromise
of the views of any member on the points wherein they differ (including
plainly all inferences from the Basis not named in it) is either expected or de-
sired.
126 One Body in Christ

Sixthly, that contrary to its own professions it should claim to exercise the
functions of a Christian church and become a Court of ecclesiastical enquiry
into the orthodoxy and moral honesty of any or all its members.80

Plainly, Birks was invoking a cardinal principle of the Alliance.

The ‘Right and Duty of Private Judgment in the Interpreta-
tion of the Holy Scriptures’ had been enshrined in the Basis
largely in recognition of the damage done to evangelical unity
in the past through the forced imposition of dogma by one
party on another – not least on Dissenters by the Church of
England, and on Free Church 81
adherents by state Protestant
churches on the continent. Yet, the Basis of Faith clearly
stood as a testimony against unfettered licence in the under-
standing of doctrine. Bevan was arguing that in this respect,
Birks’claim that his views on hell remained consistent with the
Basis was not, in itself, enough. As Bevan saw it, Birks’ reputa-
tion might have persuaded the Council to take this claim at
face value, but as the Executive of a voluntary association
defined by a statement of faith, it also had the right to apply a
more objective, corporate test. The key question was whether
it could do this without aping the ‘Court of Inquisition’
described by Birks.
After Birks had finished reading his letter to the Conference,
the mood of the meeting appears to have changed. Whatever
the merits of his case, it seems that the apocalyptic terms in
which he expressed it, and the bitterness of his tone, aroused a
degree of sympathy for the absent Bevan. Certainly, the Con-
ference formally expressed its ‘deep regret’ that ‘anything
should arise likely to disturb the intimate relation which for
many years has so happily been maintained between them-
selves and their Treasurer’. It then went on to mandate the
newly-appointed Council to convene ‘at the earliest possible
time’a special meeting in London,‘to take into their consider-

80 Executive Council Minutes, 25 November 1869.

81 For more on the historical background of ‘the right to private judgment’, see
D. Little, ‘Reformed Faith and Religious Liberty’, Church and Society (May/June
1986), pp.6-28.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 127

ation the whole question’. It was clear that the subject could
no longer be dealt with quietly.
The Special Meeting duly took place on Wednesday,12 Jan-
uary 1870. Significantly, Bevan returned for this occasion, but
Birks was not present. After the leading evangelical solicitor
Robert Baxter had read various letters on the hell issue from
Council members, he proposed that the British Organisation
should recognise as its members only those who hold ‘what are
actually understood to be evangelical views with regard to the
eternal punishment of the wicked’ [our italics]. As if this were
not pointed enough in its repudiation of Birks, the resolution
added that the Alliance could not recognise as consistent with
these views ‘the assertion that there will be mercy in some
form or other extended to the souls under the solemn sentence
of eternal judgment’.It continued by criticising Birks’conten-
tion that the traditional model of hell was ‘absolutely merciless’
and that the God implied by such a model would have perpe-
trated ‘an act of cruelty’ inasmuch as he had created the vast
majority of humankind for damnation. The resolution con-
cluded that the publication of such views meant that Birks
could not ‘any longer be deemed a member’ of the Alliance.
After various amendments were discussed, further consider-
82
ation of this proposal was adjourned until 16 February.
In the meantime, the Executive Council met on 26 January
and decided formally to accept Birks’previous resignation from
his post as Honorary Secretary.The reasons they gave were that
his opinions on hell had caused ‘great pain to members of the
Evangelical Alliance and other Christians,as being in their judg-
ment discordant with the Word of God’,and that the number of
‘assaults’being made upon the Bible from other quarters obliged
the Alliance to be seen to ‘maintain the Divine truth and au-
thority of the doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures’.To these ends,
they expressed their ‘satisfaction’ that he had decided to step
83
down from his post. Despite all this,a letter was read out at the

82 Executive Council Minutes, 12 January 1870.

83 Executive Council Minutes, 26 January 1870.
128 One Body in Christ

same meeting from J.S. Blackwood, Yorkshire-based Anglican

Vicar, in which he rejected a unanimous offer of Birks’ now
vacant post. Explaining his reasons, Blackwood wrote that
despite personally disapproving of Birks’ views, and despite
being the one who urged him to resign in the first place ‘as an
offering upon the altar of peace’, only ‘great and grievous
discomfort and disturbance’would now ensue from any attempt
‘to render our Executive Council a tribunal before which the
theological and other writings of a member are to be formally
impeached’.Such a course,Blackwood added,would be ‘ruin-
84
ous to our peace, if not perilous to our association’. It is a
measure of the rift that was opening up within the British
Organisation at this point that an editorial in the 1 February
issue of Evangelical Christendom (unsigned, but attributed by
Kessler to former editor Edward Steane) duly concurred with
Blackwood against the Executive:
Mr.Birks … [has] alienated the minds of many brethren and must bear his own
burden. We cannot, however, but observe with sadness, and deprecate the
course of action attempted in this instance. No great success has ever attended
the condemnation of books by any corporation – whether Popes, Councils,
Convocations, or Committees; and of all conceivable bodies the Executive
Council of the Alliance is,perhaps,the worst qualified and the least authorised
to act as a Church Court, or to imitate the Holy Inquisition.85

The adjourned Special Meeting of the Alliance in fact took

place a week later than scheduled,on 25 February 1870.Black-
wood was prominent in the proceedings, and read a new letter
sent to him by Birks dated 22 February. The full text of this
letter was subsequently published in the 1 March edition of
Evangelical Christendom, and appears to have swayed members
back towards a more conciliatory view. In this letter, Birks
pointed out that despite having tendered his resignation a full
seven months earlier, ‘with no previous request from any
member of the Alliance,but of my own accord,as a sacrifice to
84 Ibid.
85 ‘The Evangelical Alliance and Eternal Punishment’, Evangelical Christendom,
February 1870, p.35.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 129

peace’, he had still received no formal response from the Alli-

ance. Acknowledging the difficulty that the Alliance had been
facing on his account, he added that had he foreseen the prob-
lems that had been caused by his book,he would have resigned
before publishing it. Yet, he emphasised, these problems had
genuinely taken him by surprise:
I expected,in the church at large,the gentle disapproval of some and the stron-
ger dislike of others; but the idea never crossed my mind that it could possibly
be made the ground for internal controversy within the Alliance.How could I
guess that any thoughtful Christian, a lover of peace, should ever charge me
with contradicting the Basis,when,holding exactly my present views,I had ac-
tively concurred in the addition of that very article [on eternal punishment],
which I am so strongly alleged to contradict and oppose?86

Once Birks’letter had been read,Baxter informed the meeting

that the motion he had proposed on 12 January had been with-
drawn. A similarly condemnatory resolution in the names of
H.M Matheson and General Alexander was then defeated by
eleven votes to nine, but this more moderate text, drafted by
R.A. MacFie MP, was carried:
That the Council need not re-affirm – although they are ready,if need arise,to
do so – the doctrine of the 8th article of the Doctrinal Basis inasmuch as,in de-
clining or omitting action in the painful business for which they have been
convened, they know, and desire it to be understood, that this cause by no
means implies or involves the smallest degree of acquiescence in, or any un-
concern in regard to, the individual opinions that have caused so great anxiety
and regret, and must be viewed in connexion with the rule of the Alliance by
which members are declared free from complicity in such cases.87

In the spirit of this resolution,the editorial in Evangelical Chris-

tendom for 1 March acknowledged Birks’ integrity and sincer-
ity, while courteously arguing against the specific position
which he had advanced on hell. It recognised his intended
distinctions from annihilationism,but nonetheless warned ‘the

86 T.R. Birks, ‘The Rev T.R. Birks to Rev Dr Blackwood’, Evangelical Christen-
dom, March 1870, p.69.
87 Executive Council Minutes, 25 February 1870.
130 One Body in Christ

champions of evangelical doctrine’ to ‘look to it that no weak

defences are 88
erected and relied upon for the maintenance of
the truth’. In similar vein, a letter from the Scottish Free
Church minister Robert Candlish published in the same edi-
tion concluded, ‘I think [Mr Birks] has drifted much further
than he imagines from the common faith of evangelical Chris-
tendom … But I give him all credit for uprightness and Chris-
tian honour,
89
and would be disposed to leave the matter with
himself.’
If it was hoped that responses like this might help end the
discord, such aspirations were shattered at the next meeting of
the Executive Council, held on 30 March 1870. A letter was
read out from Bevan and fifteen others,in which they resigned
en masse from the Council, in protest at its unwillingness to
censure Birks in any direct or public way, or to strip him of his
90
actual membership. Curiously, in view of his recently ex-
pressed generosity towards Birks, Candlish was one of the sig-
natories. Reiterating their conviction that Birks’ views were
‘inconsistent’with the Basis,and that ‘however unconscious of
it, [he] does not hold what, in the words of the said Basis, are
usually understood to be evangelical views in regard to the
eternal punishment of the wicked’, the correspondents de-
clared that it was the ‘bounden duty’ of the Council ‘to renew
the testimony of the Alliance to the scriptural truth contained
in the article in question, and this no less for the sake of Mr.
Birks himself than for the warning of the unwary’. Dissenting

88 ‘The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment’, Evangelical Christendom, March

1870, p.66.
89 ‘The Rev Dr Candlish to the Rev Dr Blackwood’, Evangelical Christendom,
March 1870, p.72.
90 The fifteen in question were: Robert Baxter, the Scottish Liberal MP Arthur
Kinnaird, Hugh Matheson, Clarmont Skine of St Peter’s Chapel, Pimlico, General
R.Alexander,Marcus Rainsford,Bevan’s son J.A.Bevan,the independent Scottish
episcopalian David Drummond, the Edinburgh botanist J.H. Balfour, the leading
Scottish Free Church minister Robert Candlish, the Church of Scotland clergy-
man Andrew Thomson, the Dorset Anglican vicars John Glyn and G. Curme, the
Oxford churchman J.Jordan, and Henry Beverley.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 131

from the vote of the Council on 25 February, they reasserted

Matheson and Alexander’s defeated resolution, which had de-
clared that article 8 of the Basis had been framed explicitly to
combat annihilationism and ‘universal restoration’, and that
‘the confessedly novel opinions’ of Birks were ‘equally incom-
91
patible’ with the same article. They then concluded by com-
plaining that in this matter the Executive Council had
conceded ‘the utmost liberty to members of the Alliance to
promulgate any opinions however at variance with true and
natural meaning of the articles [of the Basis], provided only a
verbal adherence to [them] be given’.In doing so,they wrote,it
had lost a ‘great opportunity’ for ‘vindicating the Scriptural
basis of the Alliance, apart from which the organisation is
92
hollow and valueless’.
The Council responded to this body blow by referring the
critical letter to a committee of six, including Blackwood and
Edward Bickersteth. Having examined its provenance, the
committee reported back to the Council on 27 April 1870
that two of its signatories were not members of the Council
when the letter was submitted, and that one of these
non-members was Bevan’s own son! Of the remaining four-
teen, eight had been absent from all of the meetings at which
the Birks case had been considered. The report went on to
confirm that when adopted conscientiously, the Basis was suf-
ficient as it stood. Birks himself was acknowledged to have
been truthful and honourable in his rejection of
annihilationism and universalism, and to have ‘unequivocally
affirmed his adhesion to the whole Basis’. In any case, the
committee urged that the Council should not assume legal
powers that had not been assigned to it in respect of rescind-
ing his membership. As a result, the committee hoped that the
seceders would, on further reflection, ‘perceive the injustice
of their imputation’ that the Alliance was ready to allow
unlimited freedom to its members to interpret the Basis

91 Executive Council Minutes, 30 March 1870.

92 Ibid.
132 One Body in Christ

however they wished. These recommendations were duly ac-

cepted and entered into the minutes. At a later meeting, on
25 May, a letter was despatched to the seceders, expressing the
93
hope that their split from the Alliance would be short-lived.
Sadly, no such official reconciliation appears to have taken
place. Birks remained technically in membership, but played
no further active part in the Alliance. Moreover, the impact of
the Birks affair was so severe that no annual conferences were
held in 1870 or 1872, and for the years 1871-4 annual reports
94
were either withheld or significantly truncated.
Although Birks himself had explicitly disavowed
annihilationism and conditional immortality, through the
1870s and 80s prominent figures like Dean Farrar, Edward
White and Henry Constable gained a degree of acceptance for
them within Anglican and larger Free Church constituencies.
Furthermore, even if evangelicals remained overwhelmingly
opposed to these doctrines in the Victorian period, as the
twentieth century progressed they would gradually gain a de-
gree of acceptance until, in the year 2000, the Alliance’s own
theological commission would recognise conditionalism as a
‘significant minority evangelical view’. We shall return to this
development in chapter 12.

Conclusion

The Basis of Faith was central to the Alliance’s identity, but the
Alliance never pretended that it could be exhaustive.Indeed,as
the nineteenth century presented a series of tumultuous theo-
logical challenges – from Darwinism, through the baptismal
regeneration debate and higher criticism to re-examinations
of hell – it realised that its own doctrinal foundations would
require regular appraisal and careful application. In practice,
93 Executive Council Minutes, 27 April 1870; Evangelical Christendom, 1870,
p.199; Bromham, ‘A More Charitable Christian Eschatology’, pp.92-3.
94 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.69.
 For the Maintenance of the Truth 133

the Executive Council functioned as the British Organisation’s

key interpreter in these new contexts, even as it continued to
affirm the essential transparency of the Basis when viewed in
the light of Scripture’s self-attestation and the established
canon of evangelical thought.
The Alliance was quick to condemn modern ‘rationalist’
and ‘secular’ thinking when it appeared to threaten the gospel,
and organised various committees, campaigns and rallies to
counter this threat. Typically, however, it maintained a gener-
ous stance on the ‘right to private judgment’and eschewed the
more separatist and reactionary doctrinal strictures of what
would come to be known as fundamentalism. In particular
through the ‘Birks affair’, it came to acknowledge that as a
voluntary association rather than a church denomination, it
could not hope to run a ‘court of enquiry’ on the various
specific doctrinal understandings of its individual members.
Rather, it resolved to define its own position on contentious
matters by principled dialogue and debate, both within its
councils and conferences, and through the pages of Evangelical
Christendom. As such, it showed itself willing to assimilate new
ideas insofar as it deemed them to be consistent with the
primacy of Scripture. Hence from its formation in 1846 to the
end of the century, it would come to count theistic evolution-
ists, higher critics and those of more cosmic eschatological
views among its membership – even if such groups would
remain in the minority.
 6

In the Midst of the Universal Church

The Alliance in Global Perspective

Many of those who originally envisaged the formation of the

Evangelical Alliance saw it as a body that would be not only in-
terdenominational but also international – a sign of the univer-
sality of the ‘catholic’ church. As we saw in chapter 3, the
possibilities for internationalism were severely curtailed by the
division between evangelicals in North America and Britain
over slaveholding. Yet the international instinct continued.
During a conference in New York,held from 5 – 11 May 1847,
an Evangelical Alliance for the USA was formed.As an indica-
tion of the desire for pan-national unity,the Basis of Faith from
the London Alliance conference was affirmed at the New York
meeting. Even so, this conference also made it plain that the
American Alliance was not subservient to Britain. Delegates
believed Christian union had existed – to a considerable extent
– in American churches
1
long before the organisation of the Alli-
ance in London. This chapter will explore the internationalism
that Evangelical Alliance leaders attempted to sustain in the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the
twentieth century.It will also focus on the relationship between
evangelical unity and world mission.The role of the Evangelical
1 ‘The Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America’, The Christian Un-
ion and Religious Memorial, Vol. 1, January 1848, pp.4-8. For the New York confer-
ence and sources see Jordan, Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America,
pp.63-5.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 135

Alliance in world affairs changed because of the rise of the

movement that was to produce the World Council of Churches.
But the Alliance was an important pioneer of international ex-
pressions of Christian unity.

Internationalist Forces

American evangelicals went to the Evangelical Alliance con-

ference in London in 1846 hoping, as one of their number,
Robert Baird, put it, to ‘set forth a brief statement of doctrine
… a symbol of faith, in which all evangelical Protestants could
unite’. Their aspiration had been to create a body that would
promote Christian fellowship across ‘all’ nations. As we have
seen,this idealistic dream had,however,been shattered because
of strong views held by other nationalities – notably the British
– about slavery. In 1851 Baird, who had spent sixteen years in
Europe, asked a British Alliance audience whether Britain had
no sin in relation to Ireland, India
2
and China. Was Britain, he
asked defiantly, ‘immaculate’? Although the Americans felt
that British evangelicals refused to understand the difficulties
of their position, they did engage in internal debate about
slaveholding following the London conference. Some leaders
proposed that an attempt should be made to distinguish
between evangelicals who held slaves from ‘benevolent’
motives and those who did so ‘for the sake of gain’, with the
latter group being excluded from Alliance membership. This
approach had been mooted in London,but had failed to satisfy
the British. American leaders such as Thomas Bond, editor of
the powerful Methodist Christian Advocate, became convinced
that the moral obligations arising from the London conference 3
meant that the American Alliance must stand against slavery.
The May 1847 Alliance meetings in New York followed
this line, and affirmed that

2 Baird, Address on the History, pp.40-6.

3 Jordan, Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America, p.65.
136 One Body in Christ

we are … persuaded that the great object of the Association, the promotion of
a larger Christian union, may be furthered by a frank expression of our senti-
ments on the subject of slavery: we therefore declare our deep, unalterable op-
position to this stupendous evil, and we hold it to be the duty of all men, by all
wise and Christian means, to seek its entire extirpation and removal from the
land. Still the one object of the Alliance shall be steadily kept in view, which is
the promotion of Christian union and brotherly love.4

This stance meant that the American Alliance organisation lost

support in the southern States.In theory,northern evangelicals
should have been supportive of the Alliance, but because the
issue of slavery was largely shelved following the 1847 New
York conference, northern abolitionists were not satisfied.
Others in the northern states were unhappy about the way the
northern and southern churches were dividing; they saw the
Alliance as contributing to this division.As an organisation,the
American Evangelical Alliance made no progress; after its
inception it lasted for only three years. In the 1850s, however,
some American Alliance leaders sponsored public meetings,
and during the Civil War some Alliance spokesmen were in
communication with their British counterparts. After the
Civil War a number of Americans felt that the time was right to
begin planning for a World Evangelical Alliance conference.
This was held in New York in 1873.
Several international conferences of the Alliance were held
during the 1850s and 1860s, all of them in Europe. The Euro-
pean dimension will be examined in the next chapter. In 1851
there was a conference in London; it coincided with the Great
Exhibition in the city. Reference to international conferences
5
as ‘Ecumenical Conferences’ became commonplace. Paris
was the venue in 1855,when 1,200 representatives from fifteen
nations gathered. A shared communion service was held. The
German Evangelical Alliance,formed in 1847,drew together a
number of leading evangelical theologians, such as E.W.
Hengstenberg,and in 1857 an Alliance conference was held in

4 ‘Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America’, pp.6-7.

5 Evangelical Christendom, September 1858, pp.289-90.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 137

Germany. This attracted special interest since Frederick Wil-

liam IV, King of Prussia, and a supporter of Protestant unity,
welcomed the 900 delegates. At Berlin it was decided that an
ideal place for Alliance meetings would be Geneva, with its
6
Reformation heritage. At the Geneva conference, held in
1861, delegates from Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Switzer-
land and America were welcomed. The British were referred
to as those ‘who extend [the Alliance’s] operations far and near,
who aid and support every branch of it’. James Davis was the
energetic secretary of the British Alliance at that time. There
was a message for America, ‘at this moment tried even by
bloodshed’, expressing hope that ‘the wound from which you
have long been suffering may be gradually but finally cured’,
and pointedly looking to the time when ‘your noble country
7
shall include none but freemen’.
Another international thrust in this period was provided by
missionary conferences that were related to the Evangelical Al-
liance. At the annual meetings of the British Alliance in 1851
and 1852 there were suggestions for an international missionary
conference.In 1853 a gathering of missionaries was held in con-
junction with the meetings of the Alliance.The following year
saw a conference of British missions and also a Union Mission-
ary Convention held in New York.In 1860 an even more signif-
icant missionary conference was held in Liverpool,. The
Liverpool event attracted 126 delegates, fifty-two of them di-
rectors and administrators from various missionary societies and
8
others leaders from several denominations. Lord Shaftesbury
chaired the final session. Alliance leaders such as Sir Culling
Eardley were prominent at these conferences. Eardley, who
spoke French,had a strong sense of the universality of Christian
witness.At the Geneva Alliance meetings of 1861 he described
the privilege he felt at being ‘in the midst of the universal church,
6 G. Carlyle (ed.), Proceedings of the Geneva Conference of the Evangelical Alliance
(London: Hamilton, Adams & Co, 1862), pp.v-vi.
7 Ibid., pp.2-3.
8 Conference on Missions Held in 1860 at Liverpool, pp.4-9; W.R. Hogg, Ecumenical
Foundations (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1952), pp.39-40.
138 One Body in Christ

in the midst of an assembly from which no one believing in a

9
God of salvation is excluded’. In the later 1860s further Alli-
ance developments took place. An Evangelical Alliance was
re-launched in the USA in 1866 and in the following year an in-
ternational conference was held in Amsterdam.
A key figure in the new international impetus from the later
1860s onwards was a Swiss-American,Philip Schaff.The roots
of Schaff ’s spirituality were in German pietism.He was a theo-
logian and historian of the American German Reformed
Church and became a professor at Union Theological Semi-
nary,New York,in 1869.Schaff was initially critical of the Alli-
ance,but from the time of the Berlin Alliance meetings in 1857
he became a strong supporter,and from 1865 until his death in
1893 he was a central personality in the international Alliance
movement. Schaff ’s broad ecumenical vision derived from his
Lutheran and Reformed connections and he envisaged the
possibility of the ultimate coming together of the Roman
10
Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Churches in one body.
Together with another Presbyterian, Samuel Prime, editor of
the widely read New York Observer, Schaff had a major share in
the planning and executing of the international Alliance con-
ference in New York in 1873. This conference, which will be
looked at in more detail later,grew out of a desire,especially on
the part of Americans,to give expression to the reality of an in-
ternational evangelical movement.

Obstacles to Internationalism

Within Europe, as well as transatlantically, pan-national rela-

tionships presented continuing challenges.As early as 1847,the
Evangelical Alliance Council in Britain received a request
9 Carlyle (ed.), Proceedings of the Geneva Conference, p.7.
10 Jordan,Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America,p.75.See also Railton,
No North Sea,pp.183-4.S.R.Graham, Cosmos in the Chaos:Philip Schaff’s Interpreta-
tion of Nineteenth-Century American Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 139

from the Swiss that the Alliance should receive into member- 11
ship ‘all the children of God who may be willing to join it’. In
1851 the international Alliance conference in London
received a request from the Swiss Alliance to adopt a doctrinal
basis that said:
The Alliance receives to membership every disciple of Jesus Christ, who, ac-
cording to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, acknowledges that
there is no salvation but in Christ, receiving Him as a complete Saviour and
trusting entirely in him as the Eternal Son of the Father, ‘God manifested in
the flesh’, who having procured eternal redemption for us, by His expiatory
death, sends down the Holy Spirit upon those who believe, to accomplish the
work of regeneration and sanctification.12

The background to this request was that many members of the

Brethren, who were strongly represented in the Lausanne area
of Switzerland, were unsympathetic to the existing Alliance
Basis, with its reference to ministry and sacraments. Discus-
sions about this issue were cordial,but they highlighted the dif-
ference of view between a sectarian approach to ecclesiology
and the British Evangelical13Alliance’s commitment to the spir-
itual unity of the church.
Charles Barde, a minister of the Reformed Church in
Geneva,visited one Brethren leader in Lausanne and discovered
that the organisational approach of the Alliance was also inimi-
cal to Brethren.As Barde reported at the British Evangelical Al-
liance Council meetings in Dublin in 1852, with their
commitment to ‘open’meetings,Brethren felt able to join oth-
ers in prayer only if no ‘President’was formally appointed.The
Alliance representatives in Dublin considered the points made
by the Swiss about the Alliance statement of faith and decided
that they did not have any authority to change an international
14
basis. Indeed, no change was made until 1912. In 1854 the
11 Executive Council Minutes of the Evangelical Alliance,29 September 1847.
12 Evangelical Christendom, August 1851, p.255.
13 Evangelical Christendom, December 1851, p.460.
14 Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Conference, 15, p.56.
140 One Body in Christ

Swiss Alliance made alterations to its own basis of faith.National

Alliances were free to do this, although such moves strained
wider pan-national links.Such problems were,however,the ex-
ception. A review of the work of the Alliance in 1864 spoke of
what it had done to ‘demonstrate the catholicity of the Chris-
tian church’.The dream of a universal church had,said Evangeli-
cal Christendom, been a ‘lofty abstraction’, but hopes for deeper
communion and even ‘ecclesiastical amalgamation’ had been
15
raised as people met one another at Alliance meetings. In 1864
the Pope condemned the Association for the promotion of the
Unity of Christendom, which had attracted over 6,000 mem-
bers from Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox
16
churches. The Alliance was certainly not open to union with
the Roman Catholic Church,but neither did it have sympathy
with those who opposed spiritual unity.
The 1860s saw new interest in international, especially
transatlantic, revivalism. Evangelical Christendom reported in
May 1858 that a revival movement had begun in the United
States that was attracting interest in British evangelical circles.
Before that, in 1857, James Caughey, the American Methodist
evangelist, was attracting large crowds to his preaching at Sur-
17
rey Gardens, London. It became clear later in 1858 and 1859
that this was an international revivalist movement,with areas in
Northern Ireland,Wales and Scotland – particularly close-knit
Scottish fishing communities such as those from Aberdeen to
Inverness – especially affected. Edwin Orr, an evangelist and
historian, sees this as a ‘second evangelical awakening’, al-
though his account of revivals in Britain does not distinguish
between local spontaneous awakenings and carefully organised
18
evangelistic meetings. In 1860 there were experiences of

15 Evangelical Christendom, January 1864, pp.1-2.

16 Rouse, ‘Voluntary Movements’, p.347.
17 Watts,The Expansion of Evangelical Nonconformity,p.657.On Caughey’s work in
Britain in the 1840s see R.Carwardine,Transatlantic Revivalism:Popular Evangelical-
ism in Britain and America,1790-1865 (Westport:Greenwoood,1978),pp.97-133.
18 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p.116; cf. Orr, Second Evangelical
Awakening.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 141

revival in a few parts of England, notably in some fishing com-

munities in Cornwall and Devon.There were also localised re-
vival movements in Sweden and in some other European
countries,but the greatest impact seems to have been in North
America and Britain. The Evangelical Alliance, with its com-
mitment to a broad vision of unity, played a crucial role, as
Edwin Orr has argued, in this interdenominational and inter-
19
national movement through the period 1857-60.
It was hoped that a revival of this kind would foster the com-
ing together of evangelicals in different countries. The revival
created, however, certain obstacles to unity. One problem was
the frequent incidences of physical prostrations and other phe-
nomena that were associated with some of the revival meet-
ings. As we saw in the last chapter, James McCosh, an Alliance
supporter and professor of philosophy at Queen’s College,Bel-
fast, was asked to write an analysis of the revival for Evangelical
Christendom. In an attempt to overcome hesitations that were
felt about the Ulster revival in other places, in 1860 the Alli-
ance Council also requested the bishop of Down and Connor
(as someone known to be sympathetic) to suggest those who
could speak to English audiences about what had been taking
place. Meetings were arranged in eleven venues and Charles
Seaver, the bishop’s nominee, had private conversations with
20
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London.
Barriers to mutual understanding were created by outbreaks of
revival and the Alliance attempted to foster better communi-
cation in this area.
In addition to preparing the ground for the revival move-
ment through its stress on unity, the Alliance also encouraged
united prayer by its members. A widely publicised call to
prayer was issued in 1858 at the annual Alliance conference
19 Orr, Second Evangelical Awakening, p.63. For a more critical assessment see J.
Kent, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London: Epworth Press,
1978). I.H. Murray in Revival and Revivalism, the Making and Marring of American
Evangelicalism, 1750-1858 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1994), seeks to
draw a distinction between revival and revivalism.
20 Report to the Fourteenth Annual Conference, p.7.
142 One Body in Christ

held that year in Liverpool. In 1860 American missionaries in

Ludhiana, India, also invited English-speaking churches to
unite in prayer during the second week in January. One of
these Ludhiana missionaries suggested that in January1861 the
Alliance should send out a more official call to churches
21
around the world,not only to Alliance members,to pray. The
first Alliance ‘universal week of prayer’ was duly held, starting
on 6 January 1861. The effects of the week were far-reaching,
with tens of thousands of copies of a call to prayer being dis-
tributed in several languages for use during the first week in
January each year. The intention of this was to transcend na-
tional divisions. International news was shared. Large prayer
meetings in cities attracted most attention, but in many Swiss
villages, to take one lesser-known example, people from the
national Reformed church, members of free evangelical
churches,and leaders of Brethren assemblies,prayed together –
overcoming the doctrinal differences that had previously kept
22
them apart.
There was talk in the 1860s of denominational differences
being forgotten,but Samuel Schmucker,who had been central
to early pan-evangelical enterprises in America, was one of
those who realised that united prayer without other actions
was not sufficient.He pressed the Alliance to invite denomina-
tions to send delegates to a world conference on unity,suggest-
ing, in an echo of proposals he had made in 1846, that such a
conference should be convened every seven years.
Schmucker’s appeal was published posthumously in an Evan-
gelical Alliance report of 1873, the year of the major Alliance
conference in New York. The report covered the conference
speeches,but added other items.The editor of the report noted
that the plan by Schmucker was ‘a proper subject for discussion
at a conference and possibly for future action, though not by
the Alliance as now constituted. The Alliance aims simply at a
voluntary union of individual Christians of different churches
21 Evangelical Christendom, August 1860, p.447.
22 Rouse, ‘Voluntary Movements’, p.321.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 143

without interfering with their denominational relations or as-

23
suming any power of ecclesiastical legislation.’ The vision,for
many, remained one of spiritual unity. Denominational barri-
ers appeared too strong to be pulled down.

The ‘One Catholic Church’

In later nineteenth-century America it seemed, however, that

the lines of denominational demarcation were not as sharply
drawn as they were in Europe. The secretary of the British
Alliance,James Davis,visited the United States in 1870 and was
received by President Grant. Commenting on the more open
atmosphere he noted, Davis was not sure whether the absence
of a state church or the impact of democratic institutions con-
tributed to American Christianity’s relative lack of strife over
doctrinal positions. He was clearly delighted that American
Christians wished ‘closer fellowship with all in every land’,and
24
to draw towards to ‘every section of the one catholic church’.
Some American voices to be heard in the same period were
self-assured about the American role in this process. Matthew
Simpson, a Methodist bishop, spoke about the need for the
world to be ‘elevated’ spiritually and considered that in such a
process ‘God cannot afford to do without America’. Although
this was an extreme view, an American Presbyterian commit-
tee on ‘the State of the Country’ was confident that the future
would see ‘our Christian Commonwealth a praise among the
nations, exemplifying and speeding the progress of the king-
dom of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ’. The respected
Philip Schaff, who travelled in Europe and met leaders such as
the Archbishop of Canterbury, considered that those from

23 History, Essays, Orations and other documents of the Sixth General Conference of the
Evangelical Alliance held in New York,October 2-12 1873,p.742.For developments in
this period and sources see Jordan, The Evangelical Alliance for the United States of
America, 1847-1900, chapter 4.
24 Deputation to the American Branch of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.14-6; Minutes of
the Executive Council of the Evangelical Alliance, 30 November 1870.
144 One Body in Christ

outside North America who conferred with American evan-

gelicals would learn more in a few days about voluntary and
self-supporting
25
religion than they could in years in their own
countries.
Schaff ’s comments became sharply focused on the Europe-
ans who arrived in America in 1873 to be part of the sixth gen-
eral conference of the World Evangelical Alliance, the first
such event to be held in the USA. More than 500 delegates
gathered in New York from 2 – 12 October 1873 for this his-
toric occasion. The eighty-strong British Alliance delegation
was led by James Davis, who spoke of the Alliance as an ‘ecu-
menical society’, and by one of the Alliance’s Vice Presidents,
26
Lord Alfred Churchill. There were one hundred speakers,
with the main platform personalities and others who attended
constituting a varied group of world evangelical leaders, in-
cluding theologians from German universities such as Berlin,
Bonn and Halle.America’s President Grant hosted a reception.
William Adams, who gave the opening conference address,
was pastor of Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New
York, and later President of Union Theological Seminary. Ad-
ams argued that despite differences over church organisation
and despite national diversity, those present exhibited ‘a real
unity of faith and life’ and a commitment to the ‘holy catholic
27
church and the communion of saints’. A British Anglican
delegate, R. Payne Smith, who had been recently appointed as
dean of Canterbury, echoed this sense of the church universal.
Payne Smith cast the Alliance as a counter to the dangers of
28
Protestant individualism. The Evangelical Alliance was thus
25 ‘The Report of Dr Schaff on the Alliance Mission in Europe’, Evangelical Al-
liance, Document III, p.32, cited by Jordan, The Evangelical Alliance for the United
States of America, 1847-1900, p.92; Minutes of the Executive Council of the Evan-
gelical Alliance, 2 June 1869.
26 Minutes of the Executive Committee Council of the Evangelical Alliance, 21
November 1873.
27 W Adams, ‘Address of Welcome’, Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Al-
liance held in New York, pp.65, 67.
28 R. Smith, ‘Christian Union Consistent with Denominational Distinctives’,
Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance held in New York, pp.145-9.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 145

conscious of its catholicity, both in denominational and geo-

graphical terms.
The broadly based spiritual unity that the Evangelical Alli-
ance was seeking was expressed in a speech by Charles Hodge,
the well-known Princeton Seminary professor, whose writ-
ings were read by evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic. A
conservative Presbyterian, Hodge saw the Alliance as held to-
gether by doctrine and experience.The tenets of the Alliance’s
Basis of Faith were, for him, the scriptural beliefs held by all
evangelicals.Hodge was a strong proponent of Reformed the-
ology. He also mentioned the importance of belief in the
Apostles’Creed and the doctrinal decisions of the first six Ecu-
menical Councils concerning the nature of Christ. Yet he was
adamant that Christians were united by their spiritual experi-
ence – by their worship, love and devotion to Christ. Indeed
his Alliance address was entitled ‘The Unity of the Church
Based on Personal Union with Christ’. For Hodge there was a
divine command that Christians should be united, and this, he
believed, must be obeyed. His concern, however, was not for
structural union. Indeed, in 1870 he opposed attempts to re-
unify Presbyterians in the USA. Differences over matters of
doctrine constituted, in Hodge’s view, legitimate reasons for
the existence of the historic denominations. What he wanted
was greater co-operation and, significantly, ‘intercommunion’.
With reference to the Lord’s Supper he asked:‘How can we re-
29
fuse to receive those whom Christ has received?’
Which American denominations were to the fore in sup-
porting Evangelical Alliance priorities in the 1870s? American
Presbyterians, as we have seen, were influential in promoting
the work of the Alliance. There was also support from Meth-
odist and Congregational leaders. These denominations
tended to see American democracy and ‘Free Church’ life as
having provided an example for other parts of the world. Bap-
tist leaders in the USA were, on the whole, less committed to

29 C. Hodge, ‘The Unity of the Church Based on Personal Union with Christ’,
Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance held in New York, pp.139-44.
146 One Body in Christ

the Alliance, since they had grave reservations about commu-

nion services that included those who had not been baptised as
believers. High-church episcopalians normally distanced
themselves from the Alliance. Schaff emphasised in 1872 that
the kind of union he had in view was ‘as far removed from in-
difference to denominational distinctives as from sectarian big-
30
otry and exclusiveness’. Two years later Schaff indicated his
real priorities. He urged the cultivation of ‘a truly evangelical,
catholic spirit’ towards all Christians – ‘all who love our Lord
Jesus Christ’ – of whatever creed. It was not that Schaff wanted
to give up creeds. Indeed, he spoke of an ‘ecumenical consen-
sus’ being expressed in the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds.
Rather he wished for liberality of spirit. ‘We must subordinate
denominationalism’, he argued, ‘to catholicity, and catholicity
31
to our general Christianity.’
It was difficult for the sense of universality to be maintained.
Americans attended the world Alliance conferences in Europe,
but in 1884 they blocked moves towards forming an interna-
tional Alliance committee that would act as a central executive.
This was a reversal of the position they had pressed for in 1846
and Philip Schaff,for one,resisted the new stance.His thinking
had become increasingly expansive:indeed,prior to coming to
Copenhagen he argued for Roman Catholic and Orthodox as
well as Protestant churches as being valid expressions of the
church. He was, however, over-ruled by others. The isolation-
ist argument was that Americans should remain outside any in-
ternational committee that might give power to small
Alliances.By way of compromise,the international committee
became advisory,although even then the Americans were hes-
32
itant. It began to meet after Copenhagen. In 1888 the New
York committee of the Alliance was asked to produce a draft
for the Alliance week of prayer. However, the Europeans did
33
not regard what was produced as substantial enough. A
30 Evangelical Christendom, July 1872, p.216.
31 Evangelical Christendom, November 1874, pp.327-8.
32 Evangelical Christendom, December 1886, pp.395-6.
33 Executive Council Minutes, 14 June 1888.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 147

further international Alliance conference took place in 1891

in Florence, and in 1893 Chicago was the venue. By this time
there was concern about the social mission of the church and it
was to this question that the 1893 conference gave most atten-
tion. At the same time, Schaff returned to his theme of a uni-
versal church that brought together Protestantism, Orthodoxy
34
and Catholicism.

Genuine Catholicity

From the 1880s to the period immediately before the out-

break of the First World War, there were great hopes among
many evangelicals for increased international co-operation.
Conferences at Northfield, Massachusetts, organised by the
American evangelist, D.L. Moody, inspired a new generation
of evangelicals such as John R. Mott. Moody was committed
to unity and to the increasing call, from the 1880s, for ‘the
evangelisation of the world in this generation’. The same call
would shape and become the watchword
35
of the international
Student Volunteer Movement. The Alliance was growing
rapidly at this juncture, and its emphasis on catholicity mir-
rored this theme of the universality of mission. Alliance work
in France in 1878 was a testimony to ‘true catholic unity’. At
an Alliance conference in 1881 the bishop of Liverpool spoke
of the Alliance’s testimony to the essential unity of ‘the whole
catholic church’, and in 1884 there36
was a call from Philip
Schaff for ‘genuine catholicity’. But what did this mean?
When the Alliance celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 1896
with an international conference in London, there were
indications that moves towards organisational unity were
34 Executive Council Minutes, 14 September 1893; Jordan, The Evangelical
Alliance for the United States of America, 1847-1900, p.180.
35 C.H. Hopkins, John R. Mott, 1865-1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1979), pp.70-1.
36 Evangelical Christendom, November 1878, p.346; 1 December 1881, p.367; 1
October 1884, p.316.
148 One Body in Christ

gathering momentum. Lord Polwarth, then President of the

British Alliance, spoke about hopes for ‘a vast reorganization
of the outward visible churches of Christendom’. He offered,
however, the Alliance vision of a union 37
‘not of human orga-
nization, but of a spiritual nature’. Conference speakers,
who came from fifteen different countries – France, Ger-
many, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Holland, Nor-
way, Russia, Armenia, Greece, Egypt, the USA, Canada and
Australia – noted that the Alliance had contributed to im-
proved relations between denominations. By this time Angli-
cans, Presbyterians and Methodists had followed 38
the
Alliance’s lead in holding international conferences.
Through interdenominational missionary conferences in
London in 1878 and 1888,international evangelical co-opera-
tion was further strengthened. It seems very likely that
the 1888 missionary conference built on the thinking of
Schaff, who in 1884 had called for a new spirit of reconcilia-
tion, with each denomination contributing its own ‘charism’
39
and mission. Almost all the main British and colonial mis-
sions – totalling fifty-five – were represented at the missionary
conference, with 1,319 people from these societies participat-
ing.There were 219 delegates from North America,represent-
ing 66 societies, and 41 from continental Europe, representing
40
eighteen societies. Among the speakers were Schaff, Hudson
Taylor of the China Inland Mission and Henry Drummond,an
influential professor in Edinburgh. A paper by Gustav
Warneck, a German professor of missions, argued that unity
was ‘a mere pious expression’ if not recognisable in practice,
41
and he suggested an organisation for that purpose. The
American missionary statesman Arthur T. Pierson, who is
37 The Jubilee of the Evangelical Alliance, p.22.
38 Ibid., pp.47, 49-50.
39 Evangelical Christendom, October 1884, p.315.
40 Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations, p.42.
41 J.Johnson (ed.),Report of the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the
th th
World, held in Exeter Hall (June 9 -19 ), London, 1888, Vol. II (2 Vols; London:
James Nisbet & Co., 1888), pp.431-7.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 149

credited with articulating the Student Volunteers’ credo, con-

sidered the 1888 conference ‘the grandest ecumenical council
42
ever assembled since the first council in Jerusalem’. To dis-
miss the great ecumenical councils of the Christian church in
this way was astonishing, but the conjunction of unity and
world mission was undoubtedly significant.
In the 1890s mission was being increasingly interpreted
not only in terms of spiritual endeavour but also social action.
Josiah Strong, the General Secretary of the American Alliance
in this period, was committed to the social mission of the
church. The General Secretary of the British Alliance, A.J.
Arnold, worked effectively with Josiah Strong, whose com-
mitment to social action he shared. A close Anglo-American
43
partnership was formed. Both the American and British
leaders considered that unity was important for mission.
Strong aimed for federations of churches, or ‘local alliances’,
working together to offer salvation for society as well as for
individuals. He even envisaged ‘men of all faiths and no
faiths’, serving in co-operation, a perspective not endorsed by
44
the British Alliance. Although it has been argued that the
narrow basis of the American Alliance was a cause of its prac-
45
tical disappearance in the 1890s, it is also arguable that it was
a lack of a clear confession of faith that contributed to its
demise. The British were strongly wedded to mission as
explicitly Christian mission. J. Monro Gibson, a British Pres-
byterian, gave an address on divine love flowing into the
world through the union of Christian people in unselfish
46
devotion. This was a call to translate unity into actions for
the good of society.

42 The Missionary Review of the World, Vol. I, p.582.

43 C. Calver, ‘Rise and Fall’, p.159.
44 Executive Council Minutes, 14 November 1895; Jordan, The Evangelical Alli-
ance for the United States of America, 1847-1900, p.182.
45 Rouse, ‘Voluntary Movements’, p.322.
46 The Jubilee of the Evangelical Alliance, p.181.
150 One Body in Christ

The turn of the century, however, was not marked by sig-

nificant Evangelical Alliance advance.A.J.Arnold died in 1898
and Josiah Strong resigned from his role in the same year.Fresh
energy for united evangelical action was coming at the turn of
the century not from the Alliance but from the leaders of the
missionary movement. From 21 April – 1 May 1900, an ecu-
menical missionary conference was held in New York; it at-
tracted more than 4,000 people each day to the city’s Carnegie
Hall. For the first time the word ‘ecumenical’, referring in this
case to the whole world,appeared in the actual title of a confer-
ence.William McKinley,the President of the USA,opened the
conference with an address. Notable missionaries and mission
organisers such as John G. Paton from the New Hebrides,
Timothy Richard and Hudson Taylor from China (who repre-
sented, respectively, broader and more conservative thinking
about mission in China), and John R. Mott and Robert E.
Speer, both of whom were significant for the emerging ecu-
menical movement, were present. There were some women
speakers, most notably Pandita Ramabai and Lilavati Singh
from India.A total of 162 mission boards were represented,the
largest representation being from the USA, with continental
Europe second and Britain third.Over 170,000 people in total
attended the meetings. The main emphasis was on audiences
listening to addresses rather than on making plans for mission-
47
ary action.

Edinburgh, 1910 and Visible Unity

Strategies that would profoundly affect world mission in the

twentieth century, and which would also lead to the establish-
ment of the World Council of Churches in 1948,were formu-
lated a decade later. The World Missionary Conference in
Edinburgh in June 1910 drew together 1,200 delegates. It
would become a landmark in the history of the world church.
47 Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations, pp.45-7.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 151

Much has been written about Edinburgh 1910 and the details
of the conference do not need to be rehearsed here. The
common verdict on the conference is that it48 was ‘the birth
place of the modern ecumenical movement’. It built on the
previous world missionary conferences and was also deeply
influenced by the Student Volunteer Movement and the
increasingly powerful Student Christian Movement. John
Mott was the Edinburgh conference’s Chairman. The confer-
ence’s commission on co-operation and unity ventured to sug-
gest the goal ‘that we should be one in a visible fellowship’.
The World Missionary Conference Continuation Committee,
which continued to operate after Edinburgh, with J.H.
Oldham from Scotland as its highly motivated and influential
secretary,pursued 49the vision for mission and unity that was for-
mulated in 1910. This was a period when the Evangelical
Alliance was driven to reconsider the nature of unity and also
its implications for the work of mission.Henry Martyn Gooch,
General Secretary from 1904, attempted to meet this chal-
lenge.
Two months before the Edinburgh conference,at a meeting
of the British Evangelical Alliance held on 12 April 1910, J.
Campbell Gibson, a moderator of the Presbyterian Church in
England,referred to a conference that had been held in 1907 in
Shanghai to celebrate the centenary of evangelical Protestant
missionary activity in China. Gibson indicated that for him it
was now time for the Evangelical Alliance ‘to bring that Chris-
tian union, which is so much more real than it was, into some
concrete form’. Those at Shanghai, he said, felt called ‘to take
practical steps to further the visible unity of the church of
Christ’. This had radical implications. The practical steps en-
visaged, Gibson explained, included the coming together in
union of all churches belonging to one type of ecclesiastical
48 K.S. Latourette, ‘Ecumenical Bearings of the Missionary Movement and the
International Missionary Council’,in Rouse & Neill (eds),A History of the Ecumen-
ical Movement, p.362.
49 K.W.Clements,Faith on the Frontier:A Life of J.H.Oldham (Edinburgh/Geneva:
T. & T. Clark/WCC Publications, 1999).
152 One Body in Christ

order (for example Anglican, Presbyterian or Baptist) and the

promotion of co-operation between all denominations. Gib-
son accepted that interim steps might not convey ‘real catho-
licity’, but he applauded the desire of Chinese leaders ‘to
regard each other as members of one church, bound together
by the name of the one Lord’. His plea was that leaders in the
churches at home should be enthusiastic when those in the
‘younger churches’ sought ‘to flow together and form one
great church’ and did not feel bound by ‘differences which we
50
suffer from in the West’. Gibson was issuing a farsighted call
from the non-western world.
Six months later, in October 1910, Evangelical Alliance
annual meetings were held in Dublin. The title of the confer-
ence was ‘The Problem of Unity’, and Prebendary H.W.
Webb-Peploe,vicar of St Paul’s,Onslow Square and a noted An-
glican evangelical,and (from 1883) an Alliance honorary secre-
tary, delivered one of the addresses. In the 1870s Webb-Peploe
had been profoundly affected by teaching about the deeper
spiritual life and had become a leader of the annual Keswick
Convention,which attracted about 5,000 people each year and
51
advocated consecration and personal holiness. A prebendary
of St Paul’s Cathedral, Webb-Peploe was a dominant figure
among evangelical Anglican clergyman in London.He spoke of
52
himself as a strict churchman, but he was also committed to the
pan-denominationalism of Keswick’s motto – ‘All One in
Christ Jesus’.Webb-Peploe brought the Keswick message about
the power of the Holy Spirit to Alliance gatherings, and at the
October 1910 Alliance meetings he argued in typical Keswick
53
fashion for deeper spiritual unity. The 1911 Annual Report of
the Alliance showed that the Alliance Council was not uncriti-
cal of Edinburgh 1910, but on the other hand saw it as an
50 J.Campbell Gibson,‘China,and the Promotion of Unity’, Evangelical Christen-
dom, May-June 1910, p.62.
51 C. Price & I.M. Randall, Transforming Keswick (Carlisle: OM, 2000), chapters 3
and 4.
52 J.C. Pollock, The Keswick Story, p.111.
53 Evangelical Christendom, May 1891, p.167; The Problem of Unity, p.131.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 153

‘evident outcome of the early and later labours of the Alliance in

54
the promotion of Christian Union and co-operation’.
Doubts about the emphasis of Edinburgh 1910 were most
prominently expressed by. Bishop Evelyn Hassé of the
Moravian Church in Great Britain.Hassé believed that the Al-
liance had been more effective in fostering unity than had Ed-
inburgh. He commented in Evangelical Christendom in 1911
that delegates had come to Edinburgh ‘in ignorance of the fact
that there had been preliminary negotiations resulting in un-
derstandings and concessions and limitations which had never
found public expression, but which, if they had been made
known, would have called forth protests from many quar-
55
ters’. The reference here was to the fact that Edinburgh was
inclusive,extending beyond evangelical Protestants,and that in
order to secure the presence of Anglo-Catholics it had been
necessary to exclude from discussions at Edinburgh any allu-
sion to Protestant missions working in Catholic countries in
Europe and Latin America. This troubled many evangelicals
deeply. G. Campbell Morgan, minister of Westminster Chapel,
London, said at the annual meeting of the British Alliance in
May 1913 that he lamented the deliberate exclusion of mission
in Latin America from consideration at Edinburgh.He saw this
56
as ‘a very significant and depressing sign of the time’. From
the evangelical point of view, it was also unsatisfactory that
matters of doctrinal belief were not discussed at Edinburgh.
This deficiency was later remedied through the Faith and
Order Movement, which was formed in 1927 as a direct result
57
of the Edinburgh conference.

54 Annual Report of the Evangelical Alliance, p.9.

55 E.R. Hassé, ‘The Problem of Unity’, Evangelical Christendom, January-Febru-
ary 1911, p.2.
56 G. Campbell Morgan, ‘The Present Need and Possibility of Christian Union’,
Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1913, p.102; cf. H.H. Rowdon, ‘Edinburgh
1910, Evangelicals and the Ecumenical Movement’, Vox Evangelica 5 (1967),
pp.49-71.
57 T. Tatlow, ‘The World Conference on Faith and Order’, in Rouse & Neill
(eds), A History of the Ecumenical Movement, chapter 9.
154 One Body in Christ

The Shanghai missions conference of 1907 continued to

have an influence on British and American evangelical think-
ing. D.E. Hoste, director of the China Inland Mission, referred
in 1911 to ideas on unification that had been discussed at
Shangai.He commented:‘It is easy to say,“Let the Chinese ar-
range a church order of their own.” Until such time, however,
as the requisite experience and knowledge render them com-
petent to do this, the missionaries are obliged to institute some
ecclesiastical arrangements.’ As a practical missionary thinker,
Hoste recognised that foreign missionaries brought to China
their own convictions about church order, and indeed he be-
lieved that there was value in the older traditions of the church
being shared with new believers overseas. On the other hand,
Hoste considered that inherited western views brought to
China from outside should not be allowed to stand in the way
of what might emerge as a new ecclesiastical identity in China.
There was hope that the churches in China might be able to
transcend divisions found among the missionaries. Given his
position as leader of an interdenominational mission, it is not
surprising that Hoste favoured ‘recognition on the part of the
several churches of each other’s ministry’and also ‘admission of
alternative views in regard to the rite of baptism as a basis of
58
church membership’. The effect of the Edinburgh confer-
ence was to reinforce the belief that unity was important for
mission. This drove the Alliance to engage more deeply with
its own understanding of unity among evangelicals.

A Parting of the Ways

During the course of the twentieth century,there were periods

when tensions were evident between those who considered
that unity should only be sought through associations of
fellow-evangelicals and those whose outlook and approach
58 D.E. Hoste, ‘Church Unity in China’, Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1911,
p.117.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 155

were wider. The Evangelical Alliance has often been seen as

one of the major bodies arguing for the first view. The second
approach, which argues that all Christian denominations
should be embraced within the quest for union, has been the
defining characteristic of the ecumenical movement, a move-
ment partly embodied in the World Council of Churches. Yet
divergence of opinion between the Alliance and the
post-Edinburgh ecumenical movement initially emerged
during a debate in 1913 in which the Alliance seemed to be
taking a position that was more inclusive. The issue was inter-
denominational participation in Holy Communion. The
Kikuyu Conference of June 1913,held in the Kenyan village of
the same name, highlighted this issue. Kikuyu, however, was
not a direct outcome of Edinburgh; an idea proposed there for
a ‘Federation of Missionary Societies’ had, in fact, been talked
about before 1910. But Kikuyu was part of a concern for 59
unity
found in some regions of Africa following Edinburgh, and a
Church of Scotland missionary in Kenya,J.W.Arthur,wrote in
April 1913 to J.H. Oldham asking 60
for advice on issues that
might be brought up at Kikuyu.
Those present at Kikuyu represented Anglicanism,
Presbyterianism and other Protestant bodies. The proposals
formulated, under the leadership of the bishops of Mombasa
(W.G. Peel) and Uganda (J.J. Willis), included the idea of a
Central Missionary Council for East Africa which would be
pan-denominational. This proposal in itself generated virulent
attacks from the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican
Church, the opposition from within Africa being led by Frank
Weston,bishop of Zanzibar.There was particularly adverse re-
action to a united service of Holy Communion at Kikuyu.
Evangelical Christendom reported in the January-February 1914
issue that Kikuyu conference members (including non-Angli-
cans) ‘received Holy Communion from the hands of a bishop.
Immediately clamour was raised … The cry of heresy was

59 Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations, p.159.

60 Clements, A Life of J.H. Oldham, p.115.
156 One Body in Christ

raised against the bishops who attended the Conference.’ For

Evangelical Christendom this kind of reaction represented ‘An-
61
glican exclusiveness’. In July 1914 Evangelical Christendom re-
turned to the subject,saying that the storm of protest about the
united communion service was deplorable and emphasising
that evangelicals had long been involved in intercommunion at
62
devotional conferences and at Evangelical Alliance events.
During the golden Jubilee international Alliance conference
of 1896, two thousand people participated in a communion
63
service.
In the period following the Edinburgh conference, with in-
creased stress on unity, evangelicals were looking for more
openness to the practice of inter-communion. They therefore
regarded the step that had been taken at Kikuyu as altogether
right. An Alliance resolution was printed in Evangelical Chris-
tendom: it stated that the Alliance Council ‘desires to record its
sense of gratitude for the excellent spirit of love and unity
which led fellow Christians of sister churches to join together
in a united Conference followed by the Lord’s Supper at Kiku-
yu’. This was seen as ‘carrying into practice some of the ideals
for which the Alliance has laboured during the past sixty-eight
years’. The hope was expressed that there might be similar
64
unity in other places. The effect of Kikuyu, however, was to
engender greater caution among Anglicans, and even among
ecumenical statesmen like J.H.Oldham.Randall Davidson,the
Archbishop of Canterbury, was quoted by Evangelical Christen-
dom in 1915 as having said ‘we shall act rightly, in abstaining
65
from such services as the closing service held at Kikuyu’.
It was inevitable,given such statements,that Alliance leaders
would see themselves as being at odds with the broader stream
61 ‘Kikuyu and Ideals of Reunion’, Evangelical Christendom, January-February
1914, pp.17-9.
62 ‘The Kikuyu Conference – Its Bearing on False and True Unity’, Evangelical
Christendom, July-August 1914, p.152.
63 The Jubilee of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.379-83.
64 Evangelical Christendom, July-August 1914, pp.148-9.
65 ‘The Kikuyu Statement’, Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1915, p.109.
 In the Midst of the Universal Church 157

of ecumenical thinking that developed from Edinburgh 1910.

For them Kikuyu was a sign of revival and spiritual openness,
the like of which had not been evident at Edinburgh. None-
theless, the Alliance leadership under Henry Martyn Gooch
sought to have good relationships with the ecumenical move-
ment. In 1921 the International Missionary Council (IMC),
with John Mott as Chairman,was formed as a fruit of the Edin-
burgh conference. Gooch used Mott to prepare material for
the Alliance Week of Prayer. In December 1938 Gooch wrote
to Mott to express the hope of the Alliance that the World
Missionary Conference beginning at Madras Christian Col-
lege, India, would ‘further through the work of Missions the
unity of the Spirit’. Mott regarded this conference as a greater
event than Edinburgh: it ‘transcended our highest expecta-
tions’,he wrote.Mott emphasised the need for a World Coun-
cil of Churches that was built on a solid foundation. The letter
from the Alliance was read at Madras and Mott replied to
Gooch on 30 December 1938 to convey appreciation for ‘the
vital part’ played by the Alliance members through their
66
prayers. The parting of the ways between the Alliance and
the ecumenical movement was by no means total.

Conclusion

To a large extent, the dedicated internationalism of the

Evangelical Alliance in the later nineteenth century and early
twentieth century mirrored the mood of the times. The
increasingly significant role of the United States of America
through this period was a sign of things to come, although
Britain was still giving a major lead to international evangeli-
calism. Indeed, in 1912 the British Alliance introduced the
name ‘World’s Evangelical Alliance’ to describe the British
Organisation,and this name was used until the 1950s.From the

66 Minutes of the Executive Council of the Evangelical Alliance, 22 December

1938; 26 January 1939; Hopkins, John R Mott, pp.684-9.
158 One Body in Christ

American side, Philip Schaff ’s determinedly catholic thinking

was seminal. He opposed exclusiveness, lamenting that some
polemical figures had ‘exhausted the vocabulary of reproach
and vituperation’, and he argued in 1884 that evangelicals 67
should ‘look hopefully for a reunion of Christendom’. Such
thinking undoubtedly lay behind the marked broadening of
the Alliance’s theological scope during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. However, it was world missionary
leaders, most notably through the Edinburgh conference of
1910, who formed an international organisation that was the
basis for the ecumenical movement and in particular for the
World Council of Churches. Worldwide movements towards
unity in the early twentieth century drew from earlier Alliance
thinking,but the emphasis that came out of Edinburgh in 1910
on drawing denominations rather than individuals together
meant that the Alliance’s own emphasis on promoting unity
through mutual love and evangelical affirmations was some-
what overshadowed. Eventually, in fact, there was a parting of
the ways.Nonetheless,the original Alliance desire for ‘the pro-
motion of a larger Christian union’continued to be a powerful
factor within evangelical life in a number of nations,and played
its part, therefore, in encouraging the realisation of a vision for
greater unity within the global Christian community.

67 Evangelical Christendom, October 1884, p.315.

 7

To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize?

The Alliance’s Relationship to Europe

There was a distinct European dimension present from the

beginning of the Evangelical Alliance. At the London inaugu-
ral conference in 1846 representatives from continental
Europe made a presentation in French at the final session. The
European leaders included Adolphe Monod, Professor of the
Theology faculty at Montauban University in France, August
Tholuck, professor at Halle University, Germany,
1
and Johann
Oncken, the leader of the German Baptists. The French rep-
resentatives, who were active in discussions, committed them-
selves to forming a branch of the Alliance in France, Belgium,
French-speaking Switzerland and other places where the
French language was used. Other Protestant countries fol-
lowed. Branches of the Alliance were formed in North and
South Germany. Outside of the Protestant areas of Europe
there were also initiatives.An Evangelical Alliance was formed
in Constantinople in 1855.In Spain many of the leading evan-
gelicals within the Protestant community united in forming an
Alliance. The Spanish government saw the Alliance as the
voice of Spanish evangelicals. This chapter will survey the
international conferences of the Evangelical
2
Alliance that were
held on the continent of Europe; and it will then look at the

1 Railton, No North Sea, pp.xvi-xviii.

2 See Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, pp.26-34.
160 One Body in Christ

place of mainland Europe in the life of the Alliance, and more

particularly at the European dimension of the Alliance’s
British Organisation through the first half of the twentieth
century.

Conferences in Europe

The Evangelical Alliance conference in Paris in 1855 was the

first International Conference of the Alliance held outside
the British Isles. George Fisch, originally from the Vaud re-
gion of Switzerland, who had followed Monod as pastor of
the independent church in Lyons, was a central figure. He had
left the French Reformed Church, and as President of the
French Alliance, Fisch encouraged French3
evangelicals to set
up free evangelical churches in France. Twelve hundred peo-
ple from fifteen nations came to Paris and discussed various
issues including religious liberty. At the close of the confer-
ence there was a united service of Holy Communion, led in
seven languages – French,
4
English, German, Dutch, Italian,
Swedish and Danish. Alliance members who gathered in
Berlin in 1857 were addressed by Frederick William IV, King
of Prussia, who hoped that ‘there may descend upon all the
members of the conference an effusion of the Spirit of5 God,
like that which fell on the first disciples at Pentecost’. Alli-
ance work in Germany was animated by Eduard Kuntze, a
Lutheran pastor (formerly a curate at the German Savoy
Church in London) and G.W. Lehmann, a Baptist, both of
whom worked in Berlin. Baron Carl Bunsen, the envoy of the
Prussian court in London, fostered Anglo-German evangeli-
cal links. Many Lutherans were wary of such co-operation,
but F.W. Krummacher, court preacher in Berlin, assured
Germans at the 1857 conference that the Alliance was not
3 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.17, 53.
4 Evangelical Christendom, October 1855, p.317.
5 E. Steane (ed.), The Religious Condition of Christendom: The Conference Held in
Berlin, 1857 (London, 1857), p.xiv.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 161

seeking 6‘to Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize the German

people’. European enthusiasm had limits.
The Reformed rather than the Lutheran heritage of evan-
gelicals in Europe was recognised at the Alliance conference
held in Geneva in 1861, and in conferences convened in Paris,
London, Geneva and Edinburgh during 1864. At the 1861
Geneva conference speakers included the Reformed histo-
rian/theologian and Alliance supporter Merle d’Aubigné,
who talked about John Calvin, the Genevan Reformer, as one
who ‘belongs to us all’. Twelve ministers from different de-
nominations distributed the bread and wine at the commu-
7
nion service. The conferences in 1864 celebrated the
tercentenary of Calvin’s death. In May 1864 a Calvin com-
memoration was held in the Freemason’s Hall, London, when
addresses were delivered by Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and
Presbyterian figures who were well known within Evangelical
Alliance circles – T.R.Birks,Baptist Noel,William Arthur and
Thomas M’Crie. William Arthur, a noted Methodist, said that
he was ‘no admirer of that part of Calvin’s views in which Cal-
vin differed from the great majority of evangelical Christians’,
but, he continued, he heartily concurred in the ‘great body of
truth which Calvin taught’. Citing C.H. Spurgeon, he added
that he would rather unite with someone who denounced
Methodist Arminianism than with someone who praised
Methodism’s Arminian tradition but doubted redemption by
8
Christ. There were cheers. A distinctively European
pan-evangelical heritage was coming to the fore.
A similar sense of connection with European history was to
be found at Alliance conferences in 1867 and 1879. The Am-
sterdam conference in 1867 was intended to attract ministers,
theological professors and other leaders. About 4,000 people
attended the opening service, at which the preacher was Pro-
fessor Van Oosterzee, Professor of Theology at the University
6 Evangelical Christendom, October 1857, pp.361, 366.
7 Carlyle (ed.), Proceedings of the Geneva Conference, p.205. For Merle d’Aubigné
and the Alliance see Railton, No North Sea, pp.32-42.
8 Evangelical Christendom, July 1864, pp.348-9.
162 One Body in Christ

of Utrecht, an orthodox theologian who stood in contrast to

many theologians in Germany and Holland. He spoke about
the communion of saints. Hymns were sung in four languages
9
– Dutch, German, French and English. In 1879 the city of
Basle, a recognised evangelical centre, was the venue for an
Evangelical Alliance conference. The 2,000 members present
(which included 250 from Britain and 50 from the USA) were
reminded by John Stoughton, for ten years editor of the Evan-
gelical Magazine, about the way the city had given refuge to
English Protestant exiles in the sixteenth century. The Times
covered each day of the Basle conference in detail and paid
tribute to the Alliance’s leaders. One editorial asserted: ‘What
they say is listened to, and what they purpose will be eagerly
watched and aided, by a vast band of sympathisers in every
country,and not least in our own.’The Alliance welcomed this
10
‘friendly leading article’. European evangelical develop-
ments were followed by opinion-formers in Britain.
European Evangelical Alliance conferences in 1884 and
1891 were groundbreaking. In Copenhagen, during 1884,
Scandinavian nations were drawn in a new way into the sphere
of Alliance activities. Some Swedish Lutherans, as will be seen
below, were unsympathetic, but the conference was a success.
The King and Queen of Denmark attended. Major General
Field, one of the British Alliance secretaries, spoke of such
‘ecumenical’ assemblies as a manifestation of the unity of the
11
Church of Christ. At one of the sessions E.B. Underhill,
secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society,referred to the pro-
tection given by a former king of Denmark to William Carey’s
Baptist mission in the Danish settlement of Serampore, India.
Underhill made it clear that the British East India Company
9 Evangelical Christendom, September 1867, p.459; Proceedings of the Amsterdam
Conference of the Evangelical Alliance (London, 1868), pp.xvi-xvii; cf., Evangelical
Christendom,February 1871,pp.37-8,when doubt was cast on Van Oosterzee’s be-
lief in the eternity of the future punishment of the wicked.
10 The Times, 4 September 1879, p.4; 5 September 1879, p.5; 8 September 1879,
p.11; Executive Council Minutes, 9 October 1879.
11 Executive Council Minutes, 23 October 1884.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 163

had no sympathy for mission to Indian people. An Alliance

resolution was passed expressing appreciation for support from
12
Denmark. At the Alliance conference of 1891 in Florence,
which 1,200 people attended, Professor Mariona, of the
University of Florence spoke of how he had left the Roman
Catholic Church as a result of his study of Hegel’s philosophy,
and described his belief in the gospel of Christ, leading to ‘a
mystical transformation of the heart’. He had not, however,
joined any of the Italian evangelical churches, which he con-
13
sidered often looked like ‘places of business’. To have
Mariona speaking was an adventurous attempt to increase Eu-
ropean understanding. Another participant, Count di
Campello, was working towards a Reformed Italian Catholic
Church. The Alliance agreed to produce these unusual pro-
14
ceedings in English and Italian.

European Fractures

There were, however, fractures within European evangelical-

ism. In 1883 five German pastors who were not within the
Lutheran Church wrote to the British Evangelical Alliance
alleging that non-Lutherans were being excluded from the
German Alliance. Alliance representatives from Bonn denied
this, but feelings ran so high that there was talk of forming a
new body
15
that would be ‘a real German Evangelical Alli-
ance’. In some countries the initial enthusiasm for an Alli-
ance waned. The Alliance joint secretaries, Field and A.J.
Arnold, found it necessary in 1882 to seek to revive Alliance
work in Sweden and in Holland. The intention at that stage
was that there should be an Evangelical Alliance conference in
12 Evangelical Christendom, October 1884, p.309; cf., J.H.Y Briggs, The English
Baptists of the Nineteenth Century, p.234.
13 Evangelical Christendom, May 1891, pp.146-7; Christendom from the Standpoint of
Italy, pp.56, 125-30.
14 Executive Council Minutes, 14 May 1891.
15 Executive Council Minutes, 13 December 1883.
164 One Body in Christ

Sweden, but discussions that took place throughout the whole

of 1883 failed to resolve problems over Lutheran involvement.
The Archbishop of Uppsala said that the Alliance committee
in Sweden had insufficient standing and that ‘scarcely any’ key
Lutherans would participate. In early 1884 the Stockholm
committee finally agreed to stand aside in favour of a commit-
tee ‘appointed by the Lutheran dignitaries’, but even this was
not acceptable to Lutheran leaders. The Archbishop of
Uppsala finally wrote to Lord Polwarth, the President of the
British Alliance, to say that16it was advisable to postpone the
conference for a few years.
As an alternative to the Stockholm conference it was de-
cided to hold the 1884 event in Copenhagen, and this move
received support from the German, French, Swiss and British
17
branches. Philip Schaff made an important statement at Co-
penhagen which distinguished between genuine catholicity
and ‘negative liberalism which ignores or obliterates the dis-
tinction between truth and error’. In the face of growing lib-
eral theological influence across the continent, Schaff argued
for a ‘deep conviction of the infinite grandeur of truth’,despite
18
the inability of any single Christian group to grasp its fullness.
It was not clear, however, what would happen to evangelical
theology in Germany, in particular, given the rising tension
between orthodox and liberal theological views. In the 1890s
British Alliance representatives such as A.J. Arnold and
F.B. Meyer attended German evangelical conferences at Bad
19
Blankenburg, and in 1899 Meyer spoke of the remarkable
Gemeinschaft or ‘fellowship meeting’ movement in Luther-
anism,although he was not sure if this would revive or split the
20
church.
16 Executive Council Minutes, 13 April 1882; 7 December 1882; 17 January
1884; 13 March 1884.
17 Executive Council Minutes, 25 April 1884.
18 Evangelical Christendom, October 1884, p.316.
19 Executive Council Minutes, 11 July 1895.
20 Evangelical Alliance Quarterly, 2 October 1899, p.20.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 165

National issues exacerbated the problems faced by evangel-

icals in Europe. Because Britain and Germany took opposing
stances on the Boer War, there was a degree of estrangement
between British and German evangelicals. This was a blow to
inclusive German Alliance leaders such as Count Bernstorff.
The international conference of the Evangelical Alliance,
which was to be held in Hamburg in 1902, had to be cancel-
led. The view in Britain was that the German Alliance had
21
refused to have fellowship with the British. In the annual
report of the British Alliance for 1905 there was much con-
cern that another year had gone by in which the postponed
22
international conference had still not been held. The
conference was eventually convened in London in 1907, but
the opportunity to engage with mainland European develop-
ments in a more significant way was lost. A number of church
leaders were active in seeking to promote understanding
between England and Germany and in 1910 ‘The Associated
Councils in the British and German Empires for Fostering
Friendly Relations between the Two Peoples’ was launched.
F.B. Meyer was a vice-President of the British Council’s
23
committee. In this period Henry Martyn Gooch continued
his travels in Europe, not only in Germany but also further
24
east.
The First World War, however, fractured attempts at An-
glo-German friendship. John Clifford, a leading Baptist minis-
ter, peace supporter and internationalist, who in 1911
addressed an Evangelical Alliance audience of 3,000 people as
25
President of the Baptist World Alliance, told his London
congregation in January 1914:‘A new era is coming nearer and
nearer every year … Militarism belongs to the dark ages; it is

21 Evangelical Alliance Quarterly, 1 July 1902, p.278.

st
22 Report of the Council for the Year ending March 31 1905 (London,1905),p.16.
23 I.M. Randall, ‘The Role of Conscientious Objectors: British Evangelicals and
the First World War’, Anabaptism Today 11 (1996), p.10.
24 H.M. Gooch, ‘A European Travel-Talk’, Evangelical Christendom, Novem-
ber-December 1911, pp.207-9.
25 Ibid., p.230.
166 One Body in Christ

not fit for our time. It must go. It is going.’26 A mere seven
months later, following the outbreak of the First World War,
Clifford had dramatically changed his mind. ‘The progress
of humanity’, he informed his west London congregation,
‘hinges upon this war … We are forced into it.’ There were
27
appreciative murmurs of ‘Hear, Hear.’ A similar volte-face was
evident at London’s Congregational Westminster Chapel.The
2,500 people who were at the Chapel on Sunday 2 August
1914 responded with applause to a statement from the minis-
ter, G. Campbell Morgan, a vice-President of the Alliance, that
anyone in Europe wanting war was ‘accursed’.Yet a week later
the same congregation cheered a sermon by Morgan with the
message that war, though caused by man’s wickedness, could
produce ‘renewal of moral consciousness and the re-birth of
28
the soul’.
This affirmation of the war was characteristic of many deliv-
ered by British evangelicals at this time. In September 1914
Gooch spoke of war as ‘repugnant to the followers of the
Prince of Peace’, but went on to affirm that many officers and
men, some of them members of the Evangelical Alliance, were
‘fighting in the strength of alliance to Christ and his Word’.
H.W. Webb-Peploe, with his strongly internationalist Keswick
outlook, wrote in Evangelical Christendom at the same time of
the unity that he felt with Christians in Germany, while at the
same time asking for Alliance members to pray that German
militarism, infidelity and ‘swell-headedness’, as personified in
29
the Emperor, would be defeated. Two months later, Gooch
commented on the fact that Alliance leaders in Germany were
writing and speaking in favour of the German cause. He made
it clear that he respected their devotion to Christ and their
honest convictions in what they said, and his conclusion was
that they did not know the full story of the events that led up to
26 The Christian World, 8 January 1914, p.7.
27 The British Weekly, 20 August 1914, p.525.
28 A. Wilkinson, Dissent or Conform?: War, Peace and the English Churches,
1900-1945 (London: SCM Press, 1986), pp.24-5.
29 Evangelical Christendom, September-October 1914, pp.177, 188-9.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 167

the war. Indeed, Gooch warned against believing evil of

30
German brothers in Christ.
Patriotic sentiments, however, meant that such sober state-
ments were often ignored. The partisan spirit found among
British Christians was reinforced by conceptions of spiritual
warfare that appealed especially, though not exclusively, to
evangelicals. Some, like John Clifford, portrayed the war in
apocalyptic terms. A collection of essays, which included
contributions from Clifford and A.F. Winnington-Ingram,
Bishop of London, was produced in 1914 and entitled Kaiser
or Christ?. Winnington-Ingram – who did not belong to the
evangelical camp – preached a sermon in which he claimed
that everyone who died in the war was a martyr, and he pre-
sented the struggle of the Allies in graphic terms as ‘the
31
Nailed Hand against the Mailed Fist’. W.Y. Fullerton, the
home secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society, conveyed
this theme to the Alliance, contrasting the ‘nailed hand of
Christ’, which he claimed would yet rule the world, with the
‘mailed hand of man’, and in particular the philosophy of
32
force then prevalent in Germany. Equally dramatic, and ex-
pressed in imagery not normally associated with conservative
evangelicals, was the assertion by Campbell Morgan of West-
minster Chapel that ‘the sign of the cross is on every man that
33
marches to his death’. Evangelicals, with their cross-centred
theology, tended to see the sacrifices made during the horrors
of war as the way to victory. During the war the theme of
victory, in which spiritual and national triumphs could be-
come confused with each other, became more prominent
among evangelicals than the emphasis on pan-national
fellowship. Fractures were evident.

30 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1914, p.242.

31 S.Mews,‘Spiritual Mobilization in the First World War’, Theology (June 1971),
p.259.
32 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1914, pp.213-16.
33 Wilkinson, Dissent or Conform?, pp.5-7.
168 One Body in Christ

Calls to Prayer

The priority for the British Evangelical Alliance during the

First World War, however, was not rousing militaristic fervour;
it was calling the British nation to united prayer. Monthly
meetings for prayer that attracted over 2,500 people took place
in the Queen’s Hall, London. On occasions there was an over-
flow into All Souls Church, Langham Place, which was next
door. It was the Alliance’s strategy to use prominent denomi-
national leaders to speak at these meetings in the hope that
they would further the cause of spiritual renewal in Britain. In
this, the Alliance’s Executive Council was prepared
34
to endorse
co-operation with high church Anglicans. In November
1914 the speakers included Winnington-Ingram, William
Temple, who was to be appointed bishop of Manchester after
the war, Luke Wiseman, a well-known Methodist leader, and
F.B.Meyer.Different emphases were patently obvious.Temple,
who was to use his enormous talents in part in the service of
the ecumenical movement, argued that the war was under-
scoring the need for witness to the world through visible
Christian unity, through a church that was ‘one, catholic, and
holy’.Meyer,who was to launch the premillennial Advent Tes-
timony and Preparation Movement in 1917, proclaimed
‘Marantha!’ and pronounced: ‘The war is the pre-travail out of
which 35the New Age is about to be born. The Lord is at the
doors.’
Speakers at Alliance meetings for prayer in 1915 included
the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, Lord
Kinnaird and bishop Taylor Smith (the Chaplain-General,
who addressed Alliance meetings in the Queen’s Hall that
were designed to promote family prayers in the nation).Gooch
was delighted that the 2,700 people present included those

34 Executive Council Minutes, 25 March 1915.

35 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1914, pp.230, 235; I.M.
Randall, ‘Cultural Change and Future Hope: Premillennialism in Britain follow-
ing the First World War’, Christianity and History Newsletter, No 13, June 1994.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 169

from the high and low sections of the Church of England and
36
from the Free Churches. This initiated a movement for the
National Revival of Family Prayers. Gooch considered that
there was power in unity. He expressed his pride at the way in
which the Alliance was uniting churches and Christians dur-
ing the stresses of war. At the same time, the use of speakers
from very different sections of the church could create difficul-
ties. It might have seemed that F.B. Meyer, as the best-known
international Keswick speaker, would have been unlikely to
cause embarrassment to the Alliance. However, Meyer had
travelled widely and had a broad view of spiritual experience.
In May 1915 Evangelical Christendom strongly opposed the
opinion expressed by Meyer that the war was bringing the
churches together and that there was hope, within this process,
for the Roman Catholic and Eastern churches to be ‘puri-
37
fied’.
Although the Alliance could see few signs of hope for such
a wider Christian renewal, the way in which it adopted the
strategy of prayer for the nation led to criticisms from those
who felt it was compromising its evangelical beliefs. A.C.
Dixon, an American who was minister of the huge Metro-
politan Tabernacle, which had been founded by Spurgeon,
accused the Alliance in 1917 of fraternising with ‘sacer-
dotalists’ and ‘liberals’. Dixon was a member of the Alliance,
but he was not a widely influential figure in Britain, and the
38
Alliance did not seem to feel threatened by his attack. It was
in this period that the Alliance sought to increase pressure on
the government for a ‘Day of Prayer’ to be held by national
proclamation, but Lloyd George and Bonar Law were ner-
vous that this would be a political problem. There were
memories of the phrase used in the Victorian period, a ‘Day
of Humiliation’, and the politicians feared that both allies and
39
enemies would misunderstand such a concept. It was only
36 Evangelical Christendom, July-August 1915, pp.129-30.
37 Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1915, pp.105-6.
38 Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1917, p.81.
39 A. Wilkinson, The Church of England and the First World War (London: SCM
Press, 1996), p.67.
170 One Body in Christ

in 1918 that there was, finally, a Royal proclamation of a ‘Day

of Prayer’. The Alliance felt vindicated.
It was Campbell Morgan who, in 1917, gave what was per-
haps the most thoughtful address at an Alliance prayer meeting
on the evangelical view of the church and the nation. Morgan
began by outlining what he saw as a dual allegiance.‘By birth I
am British’,he stated,‘and I thank God I am.But by grace I am
a member of the holy catholic apostolic Church of Jesus
Christ.’ Morgan promoted love of one’s nation, but also
stressed that God was God of all nations.He warned against the
‘incipient blasphemy … which often lurks in our thinking –
that God is British’. All attempts to prove the superiority of the
British nation were, he considered, anti-Christian. Yet the
churches had a responsibility for the nation. Morgan argued
that British churches had a duty to ‘ask the War Council to
consider the why of what they do,as well as the how of the thing
to be done’, and that Christians should have words of rebuke
and instruction. The church, he concluded, was called to a
campaign: of prophecy, proclaiming the word of God; of priest-
hood, bearing upon her heart human sin; of kingly authority,
leading the nation towards God’s kingdom. The Alliance, in
the crisis of war,believed that in a unique way it had drawn to-
gether Anglican bishops, Free Church leaders, military repre-
40
sentatives, MPs and business people. It had called the nation
to pray.

A Connecting Link

Following the end of the war, this leadership role in Europe

was seen by the Alliance as continuing. During the 1920s the
Alliance was active in supporting mission in Europe.In Russia,
in the later nineteenth century, the Alliance had been involved
in evangelistic outreach through evangelists such as F.W.

40 G. Campbell Morgan, ‘The Church and the Nation’, Evangelical Christendom,

January-February 1917, pp.18-9; May-June 1919, p.54.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 171

Baedeker, a German by birth, who became English by adop-

tion and was well known for his travel guides.Developments in
Russia from the Revolution onwards heightened Alliance
concern.In 1923 Gooch asked whether the time had come for
a ‘step towards closer Christian Unity which would save Eng-
land and the world41from the tragedy of Russia under a Bolshe-
vist Government’. It was not obvious how this connection
would be made, but there was a clear desire to unite against a
common foe,as had been the case during the war.Yet the Alli-
ance also made it clear in the 1920s that it did not see socialism
as intrinsically anti-Christian. Rather, it was the measures of
the Soviet government that were condemned. The Alliance
was involved in campaigning for the freedom of Orthodox as
well as evangelical believers in Russia. Adam Podin, who was
the Alliance’s main link with Russia
42
in the 1920s,met regularly
with Orthodox Church leaders.
The British Alliance paid Podin’s salary. He was a Baptist
based in Estonia and his travels since before the First World
War meant that he was widely known. His work, said the Alli-
43
ance in 1913, was ‘of an apostolic character’. Podin had a
great deal of freedom to preach and also to visit prisons, speak
to prisoners – he had access to 4,000 prisoners – and distribute
Bibles.In Estonia he began a Baptist seminary and set up an in-
stitution for lepers. In 1927 Henry Martyn Gooch visited the
seminary in Estonia, speaking appreciatively of Podin’s work,
and addressed a united evangelical meeting in Sion Church,
44
Riga, Latvia. Podin died during the Second World War. The
British Alliance also supported mission work in Poland, but
there the complexities of the relationships between Baptists
and other Protestants meant that the Alliance regarded it as

41 H.M. Gooch, ‘Bolshevism and the Bible’, Evangelical Christendom,

March-April 1923, p.34.
42 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1920, p.2; May-June 1922, pp.61-2;
March-April 1923, p.39.
43 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1913, p.206; Executive Coun-
cil Minutes, 23 September 1920.
44 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, pp.42-3.
172 One Body in Christ

impossible to be associated,as they were in Estonia and Russia,

with Baptists.In 1937 the Alliance contributed substantially to
the setting up of a Polish evangelical Bible school and a year
later Gooch visited the school to establish a co-operative rela-
45
tionship. The Alliance saw such moves as being expressions
of its traditional concern for situations where evangelicals were
in a small minority.
Concern for good relationships with evangelicals in Ger-
many was a feature of the 1920s. The British Alliance asked in
1923 that there should be no more circulation of literature vin-
dicating positions taken in the war, and emphasised the desire
on the part of German Alliance leaders for a ‘resumption of
our post-war brotherhood’. German evangelicals also shared
with their British counterparts the misery being felt by their
46
people. In 1926 a meeting was held with German Alliance
leaders and there was a strong desire to lay aside past bitterness.
The German-British axis was seen as crucial to the vision that
Gooch in particular advocated – the vision of a strong link be-
tween evangelicals across Europe. For Gooch the Alliance was
able to function as ‘a connecting link’ for continental Protes-
tants, and he urged British evangelicals to take more interest in
their ‘Continental Brethren’. One of the leaders with whom
the Alliance co-operated in this task of generating a European
consciousness was J.H. Rushbrooke, a British Baptist who
spoke German and who was to become secretary of the Baptist
47
World Alliance.
These activities by the Alliance were associated with the de-
sire to establish Protestantism more firmly in Europe. Gooch
spoke at celebrations at Augsburg in Bavaria in 1930 to mark
th
the 400 anniversary of the Augsburg Confession of Faith.It is
significant that Gooch was present there as an official represen-

45 Executive Council Minutes, 31 December 1935; 22 December 1938.

46 Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1923, p.87; November-December 1923,
p.161.
47 Evangelical Christendom,July-August,1929,p.123;November-December 1930,
p.209.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 173

tative of Protestant churches in Europe and America.48 An in-

ternational ‘League’ was formed on the continent of Europe
for the ‘Defence and Furtherance of Protestantism’, and the
President and secretary of this Protestant league were wel-
comed to the annual meetings of the British Evangelical Alli-
ance in 1931. But the Alliance had connections with many
evangelicals who were not part of the dominant Protestant
churches in Europe – Lutheran and Reformed – and in Octo-
ber 1932 the Alliance’s Executive Council noted the difficul-
ties that the League had in recognising the Alliance. In the
49
following month the relationship was terminated.
One part of Europe in which the British Evangelical Alli-
ance took a particular interest was Czechoslovakia, where in
the 1920s evangelicals were welcoming into their congrega-
tions those who were leaving the Roman Catholic Church.At
the invitation of the Evangelical Church of the Czech
Brethren, Gooch visited Czechoslovakia in 1922, travelling by
the Orient Express from Paris.He had been to Prague,the ‘an-
cient and beautiful capital’, 25 years before, and was delighted
to see the evangelical progress that had taken place since then.
Evangelical Christendom suggested that the way in which a new
Czechoslovak national church had been formed,together with
the way in which other Czechs had joined the Evangelical
50
Church, meant that a new Reformation was in the making.
Czech leaders were invited to Britain. On one of his visits to
Czechoslovakia, Gooch also visited Hungary and spoke at
‘Alliance-Keswick’ meetings, as they were termed, along with
other English speakers. This period saw great interest in the
possibility that countries in central Europe where there had
been a long evangelical tradition but where Roman Catholi-
cism had held sway, would see spiritual renewal.
Southern Europe also attracted much attention in the
1920s. Don Fernando Cabrera, the leader of the Evangelical
48 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.56.
49 Executive Council Minutes, 27 October 1932; 24 November 1932.
50 H.M. Gooch, ‘Articles on Czechoslovakia’, Evangelical Christendom, July-
August 1922, pp.91-3; September-October 1923, p.129.
174 One Body in Christ

Alliance in Spain, welcomed a British Alliance delegation in

1925. A capacity crowd filled the Church of the Redeemer,
Madrid, for a special service. In Portugal, the Alliance worked
with the International Missionary Council and it was a cause
of satisfaction to the wider Alliance movement, with its desire
to see Protestantism in the ascendancy,that the headquarters of
the Portuguese Alliance were in a former Catholic convent in
Lisbon. There were also Evangelical Alliance links with the
Italian Waldensian Church, the traditional Protestant denomi-
nation in Italy,which dates back to the twelfth century.At Alli-
ance meetings in London in 1927, Signor Janni of the
Waldensian community expressed his gratitude to the evangel-
51
ical Alliance for its support. In 1931 Gooch visited Albania
and spoke to groups made up of people from Islamic, Ortho-
dox, Catholic and Protestant backgrounds. The Alliance was
supporting witness within the variety of cultures and beliefs to
be found in Europe.

The March of Fascism

The Alliance in Britain looked forward to the 1930s with

some optimism, speaking in 1929 of the continent of Europe
coming to a new period of peace. The ‘dark clouds’ were seen
as passing. Two years later the Executive Council of the Alli-
ance agreed to thank Mussolini for his support of religious lib-
erty in Italy. There had been 1,000 admissions to the
Waldensian Church in Italy in the 52
previous year and the out-
look seemed highly promising. A year later, however, the
implications of the rise of fascism in Europe were becoming
bleakly evident. The Alliance Council, on 27 April 1932,
deplored the persecution of the Jewish people in Germany,
who were suffering ‘at the hands of those who profess and rep-
resent the Christian faith’.Some evangelicals in Germany,who
51 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, pp.45-6, 111.
52 Evangelical Christendom, September-October 1929, p.162; Executive Council
Minutes,28 May 1931;Evangelical Christendom,September-October 1931,p.198.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 175

protested to the British Alliance, received this resolution unfa-

vourably,but at a meeting in the Queen’s Hall in London on 27
June 1933 the Alliance formulated a stronger resolution on the
subject. This stated that ‘the discrimination now being exer-
cised against the Jews is contrary to the basic principles of tol-
erance and equality which are accepted in the modern world
in relation to the treatment of religious and racial minorities’.
The Chairman of the Queen’s Hall meeting,Lord Buckmaster,
described the treatment of the Jews in Germany as ‘an act of 53
cruelty’, the wrong of which it was ‘impossible to describe’.
The Alliance was again in the forefront of battles for human
rights.
The idea that Hitler was supportive of ‘German Christians’
worried Evangelical Alliance observers in Britain, and plans to
create a united Protestant church, with a membership re-
stricted to those of German blood,rang alarm bells.Gooch was
visiting Germany in July 1933 when all the churches were or-
dered to fly the Nazi swastika. Karl Barth’s statement that the
liberties to be defended were those of the word of God, was
quoted by the Alliance. In 1933, while Hitler was still courting
the Protestant church, the Executive Council warned that his
54
anti-semitism could develop into anti-Christianity. From
then on the British Alliance concentrated on following events
connected with the rise of the so-called ‘Confessing’ Chris-
tians in Germany referred to at the time as ‘the Confessional
Church’. 1,500 ‘Confessional’ pastors read a declaration of de-
fiance against the ecclesiastical arrangements put in place by
the Nazis, and Gooch went to Germany in the summer of
1934 to meet some of these leaders.After his return,the British
Alliance agreed a resolution,which was sent to Hitler as well as
53 Executive Council Minutes, 27 April 1932; Evangelical Christendom, July-Au-
gust 1933, p.150.
54 Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1933, p.115; July-August 1933, p.132;
November-December 1933,pp.228,234;J.R.C.Wright,‘The German Protestant
Church and the Nazi Party in the Period of the Seizure of Power, 1932-3’, in D.
Baker (ed.), Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History (Studies in Church His-
tory, Vol. 14; Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), pp.393-418.
176 One Body in Christ

to church leaders,stating that what was happening in Germany

was ‘a conflict to maintain the fundamental principles of the
Christian religion’. This echoed the thinking of Barth. Al-
though the issues within the churches of Germany were com-
plex, the Alliance made clear that the Confessional Church
55
had its wholehearted support.
In this period the British Alliance was continuing to seek to
unite evangelicals in Europe. Reports in 1931 and 1932 stated
that the Week of Prayer had never been so widely observed,es-
pecially in Europe, and attention was drawn to eighty places in
Berlin where people had met for united prayer. Evangelical
Christendom carried a regular ‘European Intelligence’ news
section.Prayer items were being translated into most European
languages in the 1930s. In the mid-1930s Gooch kept up his
European travels,for example visiting southern Europe and at-
tending a large evangelical gathering in Spain.When it was not
possible to travel he found other ways of being involved.
Gooch was instrumental in attempts to encourage the League
56
of Nations to act over religious persecution in Russia. The
situation in Germany,however,was one that increasingly dom-
inated the Alliance’s European agenda.
By 1936 the British Alliance was seeking to help Jews leav-
ing Germany and was taking a special interest in the German
Confessional pastor,Martin Niemoller.In 1936 and 1937 Alli-
ance representatives paid further visits to Germany and to Po-
land. Gooch, bishop Taylor Smith, who was a Keswick speaker
and a vice-President of the Alliance, and J. Chalmers Lyon, a
leading English Presbyterian who served as an honorary secre-
tary of the Alliance,visited a number of people in 1936.In par-
ticular, they experienced the welcome and support of bishop
Bursche the Lutheran,who was to be tortured and killed in the
55 Evangelical Christendom, July-August 1934, p.117; Executive Council Minutes,
25 October 1934; Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1934, pp.194-5.
For further background see Hastings, English Christianity, chapter 22.
56 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1931, p. 37; January-February 1932,
p.34; Executive Council Minutes, 22 February 1934; 24 May 1934; 31 December
1935.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 177

Second World War. When Barth was in London in 1937 the

Alliance sponsored a meeting at the Russell Hotel to pay
tribute to him. The speakers praised Barth’s theology, to his
courage in opposing the Nazi powers – opposition that led to
his dismissal from his post of professor of evangelical theology
at the University of Bonn – and his significance for Europe.
Barth, in his reply, said that declarations of sympathy from
other churches were of little use.What was needed was a decla-
ration from British churches that the beliefs of the Confes-
57
sional Church were the beliefs of the universal church.
During 1938 and 1939, as the situation in Europe deterio-
rated,the Alliance became more and more outspoken.An Alli-
ance meeting in November 1938 adopted a further resolution.
The Alliance statement spoke of ‘the barbarous violence and
cruel legislation inflicted upon the Jews in Germany’. It as-
sured J.H. Hertz, the Chief Rabbi, of the desire of the Alliance
to relieve the plight of Jewish refugees, and called on the Brit-
58
ish government ‘to offer the widest possible asylum’. Both at
that point and during the war the Chief Rabbi expressed ap-
59
preciation to the Alliance. In its attempt to stand with
Czechoslovakia, however, the Alliance found itself involved in
the complexities of the developing conflict.At the end of 1938
it published a long, painful description by the Evangelical
Church of the Czech Brethren of the dismemberment of their
country.Within the report was a section that drew attention to
the plight of two congregations under Polish occupation. One
pastor had been evicted and the congregation dispersed. In
March 1939, as a result of protests from bishop Bursche in Po-
land, Evangelical Christendom issued a disclaimer stating that the
Czech situation was apparently not exactly as had previously
been alleged. By the middle of 1939 the Czechs were under
the rule of the Germans and were, an Alliance correspondent
said, learning again from the country’s late President – the
57 Evangelical Christendom,January-February 1936,p.24;March-April 1937,p.44.
58 Executive Council Minutes, 24 November 1938.
59 Evangelical Christendom, April-June 1943, pp.32-3.
178 One Body in Christ

Christian philosopher and politician, T.G. Masaryk – the mes-

60
sage,‘Jesus,not Caesar’. The march of fascism meant the Alli-
ance could not hold European evangelicals together.

War and Reconstruction

When the Second World War began, the reaction of church

leaders was more restrained than during the First War. As
Adrian Hastings puts it: ‘For the church, as for the nation as a
whole, war was seen by September 1939 as inevitable 61
and just,
but it was entered into soberly and rather sadly.’ As it did
during the First World War,the Alliance organised large prayer
meetings. Denominational leaders, together with representa-
tives from Parliament,the City of London and the war services,
as well as many church members, took part each month.
Posters prepared by the Alliance were placed in the London
underground system. In the Second War the Queen’s Hall was
destroyed by German bombardment, but Alliance prayer
meetings for Londoners were held in the Methodist Central
Hall, Westminster, and later in Caxton Hall. The Alliance
Council again encouraged the Prime Minister and the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury to designate specific Days of National
Prayer. To the delight of the Alliance, a National Day of Prayer
in May 1940 was very well supported, a sign of what has 62
been
termed the ‘transient religious vitality’ of the period.
Some evangelicals, although believing that the power of
prayer was a way to aid military victory, wanted to place stress
on prayer for and continuing solidarity with German evangeli-
cals. This was the stance of committed Europeans such as
Gooch and J.H. Rushbrooke, although the latter also stated in
1941 that the German Baptists had never regarded Baptist be-
lievers in other parts of Europe as equal to themselves. As
60 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1938, pp.186-7; March-April
1939, pp.48-9; July-August 1939, p.152.
61 Hastings, English Christianity, p.373.
62 Wolffe, God and Greater Britain, p.251.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 179

evidence of a ‘perverted racial feeling’, said Rushbrooke, they

had always taken preachers from other European countries to
63
Hamburg to be trained. George Bell, bishop of Chichester,
who had talked to two representatives of German dissidents
(one of them the German pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer), took
on himself the task of suggesting a new direction in British
policy, courageously expressing solidarity in 1942. He was,
however, rebuffed by the British government. In the following
year Bell took up the issue of Allied bombing, stating bluntly:
‘To bomb cities as cities, deliberately to attack civilians ... is a
wrong deed, whether done by the Nazis or by ourselves.’ Such
outspoken assertions by Bell aroused considerable hostility.
64
Evangelical Christendom spoke of Bell’s ‘ill-timed criticism’.
The war strained the broad vision of the Alliance in other
ways. An unexpected ecumenical enterprise that emerged
during the Second World War was ‘The Sword of the Spirit’,
which was launched in 1940, with Cardinal Hinsley, the Ro-
man Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, as its President.
Meetings organised in London in 1941 were hugely successful,
resulting in a remarkable demonstration of unity by leaders of
the Catholic,Anglican and Free Churches.Hinsley himself was
keen to have common prayer as well as united action between
Catholics and Protestants – something that was authorised by
the Roman Catholic Church in Holland – but he was ahead of
his time.The Alliance discussed the ways in which it should re-
spond to this initiative and felt that it was inappropriate to be
involved with Roman Catholics who,as the Alliance saw it,did
65
not support religious freedom. It is likely that the participa-
tion of George Bell in ‘The Sword of the Spirit’ created barri-
ers between himself and the Alliance, and in 1943 the Alliance
63 Evangelical Christendom, July-August 1941, p.98.
64 Hastings, English Christianity, pp.375-6; R.C.D. Jasper, George Bell: Bishop of
Chichester (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p.276.
65 S. Mews, ‘The Sword of the Spirit: A Catholic Cultural Crusade of 1940’, in
W.J. Sheils (ed.), The Church and War (Studies in Church History, Vol 20; Oxford:
Basil Blackwell,1983),p.425.For Alliance discussions see Executive Council Min-
utes, 27 January 1941; 22 May 1941; 25 September 1941.
180 One Body in Christ

leadership responded cautiously to a request from Bell that

representatives of the German Confessional Church should
take part in the 1944 Alliance Week of Prayer. This was a par-
ticularly significant event, with 150,000 copies of the English
language prayer programme alone being produced. It was
agreed to invite Confessional Church representatives to be
present, but despite the support given to the Confessional
Church by the Alliance, not one of its members was invited to
66
lead in prayer.
The caution of the Alliance reflected its perception of itself
as a responsible body that was not seeking to undermine the
war effort. Although deeply concerned for liberty of con-
science, it is striking that the Alliance seems to have given no
attention to the position of British conscientious objectors
(COs) in either of the two wars. At the same time, the Alli-
ance was actively involved in helping refugees – Poles,
Czechs, Armenians and Greeks. One enquiry by the Board of
Trade into the convictions of British COs during the Second
World War listed 1,716 Christadelphians, 145 members of
the Plymouth Brethren, 140 Quakers, 112 Methodists, 73
Baptists, 66 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 65 Congregationalists and 51
67
Anglicans. The total number of COs was 16,500, making it
probable that there were several hundred evangelicals who
took this position of protest. Within the Alliance itself, how-
ever, there was to a large extent an alignment with the gov-
ernment’s war policy. Following the end of the war services of
thanksgiving were held, and the Alliance produced an appro-
priate form of worship for these services. At the same time, it
joined in the calls for ‘Christian Reconstruction in Europe’.
It was in this pan-European role that it could exercise what it
saw as its true ministry.

66 Executive Council Minutes, 28 October 1943.

67 J. Rae, Conscience and Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1970),
pp.250-51.
 To Anglicize, Gallicize or Americanize? 181

Conclusion

For the Evangelical Alliance, the European dimension was a

crucial one.There was a strong sense of a European evangelical
community in the nineteenth century and of genuine catho-
licity,although at the same time national Alliances and denom-
inational bodies were keen to preserve their own sense of
identity.British evangelicals were active in supporting ventures
in various parts of Europe. The reaction of the Alliance to the
First World War mirrored the reaction commonly found in
British society.There was a tendency for evangelicals to equate
the cause of the nation with the cause of righteousness. This
was not so marked in the Second World War, and the position
of the Confessing Church in Germany meant that the sympa-
thies of the Alliance crossed nationalist boundaries. Karl Barth
was the European figure most often referred to by the Alliance.
The most common view in the Alliance during both wars was
that there should be an emphasis on prayer. In the inter-war
years and in the period following the Second World War there
were attempts by the Alliance, to rebuild the pan-European
evangelicalism (including the Anglo-German sense of com-
munity) that had been shattered by the war.
A key feature of this process would be the resurgence of
conservative evangelicalism in Britain and America in the later
1940s and 1950s. In 1948 the Alliance’s Executive Council
members asked Douglas Johnston, the secretary of the
Inter-Varsity Fellowship and someone who was closely in
touch not only with what was happening among students but
also more widely, to speak to them. Johnston advised the Alli-
ance to work with the churches in Europe that identified with
Reformation beliefs. He encouraged the Alliance to keep in
touch with pan-denominational organisations in America,the
recently formed National Association of Evangelicals and also
68
the American Council of Christian Churches. This dual fo-
cus was in line with Alliance thinking,but in the event it would
68 Executive Council Minutes, 26 February 1948.
182 One Body in Christ

become difficult to implement. As we shall see in the next

chapter, tensions over evangelical theology meant that from
the 1950s the British Alliance would align itself more closely
with America, and with the rest of the world, than it did with
its European partner bodies. As they moved towards the for-
mation of their own continental network in 1951, those part-
ner bodies would evince the same ambition as Krummacher
when he had disavowed attempts ‘to Anglicize, Gallicize or
Americanize’ the Alliance. As far as the British Organisation
was concerned, however, it would take rather longer for this
vision of closer pan-European co-operation and unity to take
root.
 8

Comprehensiveness Within the Truth

The Alliance in the Early Twentieth Century

At the annual meeting of the British Evangelical Alliance in

1912 a fresh declaration of faith was proposed and adopted.
This set out a trinitarian statement – belief in ‘One God’, the
Father, the Son, ‘the Lord Jesus Christ our God and Saviour
who died for our sins and rose again’, and the Holy Spirit, by
whom members of the Alliance ‘desire to have fellowship with
all who form the One Body of Christ’. It also affirmed ‘the
divine inspiration,authority and sufficiency of the Holy Scrip-
tures’. The Evangelical Alliance’s Executive Council saw this
move as establishing ‘comprehensiveness without compro-
mise’, the intention being1 to unite members of the Alliance
under a Protestant banner. The previous Basis of Faith was not
replaced by the new one; instead the two were used in parallel.
The period from 1912 to the Second World War was one in
which the Alliance was faced with a number of theological
challenges. The short version of the Basis of Faith was referred
to on a number of occasions,for example in 1932,when Henry
Martyn Gooch pointed out that two leading evangelical theo-
logians, Handley Moule and James Orr, had assisted in the
drawing up of the 1912 basis.Gooch also spoke at that point of
the Alliance’s commitment to the Bible, to the cross, to the
presentation of the gospel and to service. The founders of
1 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.73-4.
184 One Body in Christ

the Alliance, he insisted, had wanted it to be ‘as wide as was

consistent with the widest possible interpretation of the word
evangelical’ and had spoken of its aim as ‘comprehensiveness
within the truth’.However,Gooch
2
rejected compromise at the
expense of truth. The Alliance’s engagement with theological
issues in the first half of the twentieth century will be exam-
ined in this chapter.

The New Theology

In 1907 R.J. Campbell, the minister of the City Temple,

London, who had succeeded the eminent Joseph Parker, pub-
lished a book entitled The New Theology. He argued that
humanity and divinity were parts of one great consciousness,
and in 3so doing drastically revised the traditional concept of
Christ. Controversy raged. The Alliance immediately
launched into the debate, producing a series of pamphlets in
1907, the first of which was by a lawyer, Sir Robert Anderson,
and was entitled The New Apostasy. The sixth pamphlet, under
the heading of what the Alliance began to term its own
‘Tractarian Movement’, was The Virgin Birth, by James Orr.
United meetings were also held under the auspices of the Alli-
ance. Those convened in London were billed as being ‘for the
reaffirmation of foundation Truths’.The Alliance Council was
surprised by the demand for the pamphlets. Enquiries during
the first part of 1907 came from different parts of the world and
there were calls to translate of some of the pamphlets into
foreign languages for circulation abroad. The Council

2 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1932, p.41; May-June 1932,

pp.89-91.For James Orr see A.P.F.Sell, Defending and Declaring the Faith:Some Scot-
tish Examples, 1860-1920 (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1987), pp.137-71; G.C.
Scorgie, A Call for Continuity: The Theological Contribution of James Orr (Macon:
Mercer University Press, 1988).
3 R.J. Campbell, The New Theology (London: Chapman & Hall, 1907); K.W.
Clements, Lovers of Discord: Twentieth-Century Theological Controversies in England
(London: SPCK, 1988), p.39.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 185

appealed for £500 to mount a continuing campaign against

‘the forces organizing for an attack on our common Christian-
ity’. The Alliance Tractarian Movement was described as mis-
sionary in character, with pamphlets not only being sold 4but
also given away to other agencies for special distribution.
Campbell linked his new theology with a new view of the
church’s role in society. He identified himself with the Inde-
pendent Labour Party and in his Christianity and the Social Or-
der, also published in 1907, he argued that the kingdom of God
was to be equated with the socialist order.P.T.Forsyth,the for-
midable Congregational theologian, insisted that Campbell
5
had abandoned the theology of the cross. Alliance leaders saw
the Alliance’s campaign as being in tune with the thinking of
the evangelical world as a whole. As an example of popular
feeling,it reported that at the 1907 Free Church Council Con-
gress an elderly delegate,John King,had protested against a talk
by Campbell and had asked – to a background of a mixture of
cheers and cries of ‘out of order’– for ‘When I survey the won-
6
drous Cross’to be sung.This was done. Evangelical Christendom
contrasted movements such as the Alliance,the Mildmay Con-
ferences and the Keswick Convention in England, and the
Northfield Conferences in the USA, all of which were com-
mitted to the ‘fundamental truths of the gospel’, with other
movements in which such truths were ‘belittled or re-stated’.
The ‘New Theology’ was described as prominent among
movements that were designed to ‘meet the shallow views of
modern thought, and to encourage the widening of so-called
Christian Brotherhood at the expense of Christ and His
7
Word’.

4 Evangelical Christendom, March-April 1907, p.49; November-December 1907,

p.132.
5 R.J. Campbell, Christianity and the Social Order (London: Chapman & Hall,
1907); Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, pp.198-9; K. Robbins, ‘The
Spiritual Pilgrimage of the Rev R.J. Campbell’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30.2
(1979), 261-76.
6 Evangelical Christendom, March-April 1907, p.58.
7 Ibid., p.49.
186 One Body in Christ

The Alliance informed its constituency in 1908 that it had

carried out an effective campaign against the New Theology
through meetings and publications. At that stage the Alliance
leadership seemed to be happy that the existing Basis of Faith
was adequate and that the Alliance was standing for a clear
8
standard of evangelical truth. Two years later, however, a dif-
ferent approach was suggested. An article in Evangelical Chris-
tendom, ‘The Problem of Unity in Relation to the Rising
Generation’,suggested that there was a need to retain ‘all that is
best in the conservatism of the past’,while at the same time be-
ing ‘ready to take into account the particular needs of the pres-
ent day and the activities of the modern mind’. For the first
time there was a suggestion that there should be a review of the
position of the Alliance in relation to its basis of faith.Over the
next two years thought was given to the formulation of a short
and simple declaration of faith which had as its focus ‘loyalty to
the Person and claims of Christ as revealed in the Holy Scrip-
9
tures’. It was this process of re-evaluation that led to the new
statement of 1912. There is no evidence that in making such a
move the Alliance was seeking to align itself with newer theo-
logical trends.However,it is significant that this was the period
which saw the publication and distribution of The Fundamen-
tals, twelve volumes issued between 1910 and 1915 to defend
‘fundamental’ doctrines. The Alliance was, reluctantly, to be
drawn into the ‘fundamentalist’ debate that ensued.

Fundamentalist Battles
There have been a number of studies of the roots of fundamen-
talism. It has been seen as developing out of the apocalyptic
premillennialism that gained
10
prominence in the American
churches in the 1880s. Other contributory factors can be
8 Evangelical Christendom, March-April 1908, p.49.
9 H.N. Rodgers, ‘The Problem of Unity and Relation to the rising Genera-
tions’, Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1910, p.139.
10 See E.R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American
Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 1970).
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 187

identified, such as the response to social upheaval. Yet funda-

mentalism is11properly viewed as a movement shaped by reli-
gious forces. In Britain a controversy in Methodism, which
had to do with an appointment to a teaching post, was the first
significant
12
fundamentalist controversy in a British denomina-
tion. George Jackson, who expressed some higher critical
views of the Bible, was chosen by the 1912 Wesleyan Confer-
ence to take the chair of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology at
Didsbury College, Manchester. Those opposed to Jackson
formed the Fundamentalist Wesley Bible Union,and the harsh
tone adopted by this group alienated many Methodists.Samuel
Chadwick, the Principal of Cliff College, who was a leading
figure in Methodism and a fervent evangelist, did not associate
himself with the stridency of fundamentalism, and, as we shall
see, fundamentalism was far removed from the thinking of lib-
eral evangelicals, who were represented
13
in Methodism by the
Fellowship of the Kingdom.
In 1915 as the Alliance prepared to celebrate seventy years of
its existence, Henry Martyn Gooch expressed his understand-
ing of the theological position of the Alliance.The vision,as he
saw it, was of a ‘reunited Christianity’, with an Alliance that
was ‘free from stodginess, and yet based upon the ancient
bonds of unity in the Church of God – the one Lord Jesus
Christ, the Head of the Church, the one Faith and one Bap-
14
tism’. This seemed far removed from the spirit of the Wesley
Bible Union, which in 1915 saw its main purpose as being to
15
oppose ‘destructive heresies’. However, as in the 1870s and
11 The best introductions are G.M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Cul-
ture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1980); and D.W. Bebbington, ‘Martyrs for the Truth:
Fundamentalists in Britain’, in D. Wood (ed.), Studies in Church History.
12 D.W. Bebbington, ‘The Persecution of George Jackson’, in W.J. Sheils (ed.),
Persecution and Toleration (Studies in Church History, Vol. 21; Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1984).
13 I.M Randall,Quest,Crusade and Fellowship:The Spiritual Formation of the Fellow-
ship of the Kingdom (Horsham: Fellowship of the Kingdom, 1995).
14 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1915, p.249.
15 Journal of the Wesley Bible Union, January 1915, p.4.
188 One Body in Christ

80s, the Alliance found it necessary to engage with what it

called ‘The Fundamentals’.The World’s Christian Fundamen-
tals Association was formed in the USA in 1919, and it was at
the American Northern Baptist Convention of 1920 that the
term ‘fundamentalist’ was coined. W.B. Riley, a militant leader,
said that Baptists had entered the controversy ‘knowing that it
was not a battle, but a war … and that they will never surren-
16
der’. On 1 November 1920 a conference took place at Alli-
ance House in London that was reported under the heading
‘The Fundamentals’. A representative group of invited evan-
gelical leaders discussed attacks being made ‘upon fundamen-
tal Truths of Evangelical Christianity, and the faithfulness of
the record of God’s revelation to man contained in the Holy
17
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments’.
If R.J. Campbell had stirred up evangelicals in 1907, it was
E.W.Barnes,through a sermon delivered at the British Associa-
tion meetings,who became a focus for debate in the early 1920s.
Barnes,who was to achieve fame later in the 1920s as a fiercely
Protestant but also unorthodox bishop of Birmingham,argued
in 1920 that the account of the Fall in Genesis had to be revised
18
in the light of scientific thinking about evolution. As a mathe-
matician and a Fellow of the Royal Society, Barnes was an en-
thusiastic advocate of scientific advances, but there were those
who were wholly unconvinced by the association in Barnes’
mind between evolution and human progress. The evangelical
weekly, The Christian, commented in September 1920 that
Barnes’ theology was ‘a million miles removed from the apos-
19
tolic gospel’. It was a comment with which the Evangelical Al-
liance had sympathy. Barnes, in the view of the Alliance, had
denied the historical truth of the early chapters of Genesis and

16 M. Marty, Modern American Religion: The Noise of Conflict, 1919-1941 (Chi-

cago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p.170.
17 Evangelical Christendom, November-December, 1920, p.141.
18 The Church Family Newspaper, 10 September 1920, pp.8, 10. For Barnes see J.
Barnes, Ahead of his Age: Bishop Barnes of Birmingham (London: Collins, 1979).
19 The Christian, 23 September 1920, p.2.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 189

opposed the teaching of Paul founded on those chapters.To the

question,‘Can a young man,a young women,trust their Bible?’
the answer given by Barnes, said Evangelical Christendom, was
‘No’.In the light of this,the Alliance arranged public meetings
in 1921 to consider the themes of ‘Science and the Bible’,‘The
20
Response of Revelation’ and ‘The Basis of Belief ’.
The question of evolution and creation did not,however,be-
come a major issue within British evangelicalism. In America,
by contrast, the so-called ‘Monkey Trial’ of 1925 was a major
watershed. At the trial, the prominent lawyer and politician
William Jennings Bryan led the attempt to prosecute the Ten-
nessee teacher John Scopes for promoting biological evolution
in his classroom.The judge who heard the case charged the jury
to find Scopes guilty,but the fundamentalists were cast as objects
of public derision,although they were technically the winners.
Yet far from disappearing, fundamentalists in America focused
their attention on local church life:in Mississippi and Tennessee,
church growth in the period 1925-30 was twice as rapid as pop-
21
ulation growth. Much to the disgust of fundamentalists in
Britain,such as the editor of The Journal of the Wesley Bible Union,
Harold Morton,many British evangelicals made a point of dis-
sociating themselves from the fundamentalist battles of this pe-
riod – whether over evolution or any other matter. Indeed, on
the whole,evangelicals associated with the Alliance at this time
deplored the kind of intolerance and vitriol that was a hallmark
of fundamentalist rhetoric.Interdenominational fundamental-
ist organisations such as the Bible League (formed in 1892) ex-
isted in England, but the attitudes adopted by British

20 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1920, p.141; January-February

1921, p.5.
21 J. Rogers, ‘John Scopes and the Debate over Evolution’, in R.C. White, et al.,
American Christianity:A Case Approach (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans,1986),pp.143-8;
Marty, Modern American Religion, p.32.
22 For British-American comparisons see especially G.M.Marsden,‘Fundamen-
talism as an American Phenomenon: A Comparison with English Evangelicalism,
Church History 46.2 (1977), pp.215-32; Bebbington, ‘Martyrs for the Truth’,
pp.418-20.
190 One Body in Christ

evangelicals towards those with whom they differed were gen-

22
erally fairly restrained.
A somewhat neglected reason for this restraint was the
contribution of the Evangelical Alliance. From its beginnings
the Alliance had its ‘Practical Resolutions’ which said that
when members had to ‘defend any views or principles
wherein they differ from Christian brethren who agree with
them in vital truths’, they would seek to ‘avoid all rash and
groundless insinuations, personal imputations, or irritating al-
lusions, and to maintain the meekness and gentleness of
Christ by speaking the truth only in love’. In 1924, when a
British organisation called the Fraternal Union for Bible Tes-
timony was being set up, the Alliance was anxious to draw at-
tention to the Practical Resolutions and to emphasise that the
Alliance was both ‘supremely interested in fundamental
truths’ and yet was also ‘in virtue of its basis, a protest against
the fundamentalist who demands uniformity and denies the
right of private judgment’. The concern of the Alliance was
that in Britain and America a growing number of Protestant
movements were emerging that were ‘as harmful to true
Christian Unity as the intolerance of the Roman Church’.
The Fraternal Union drew in more moderate evangelicals
alongside fundamentalists, but the Alliance was afraid that the
tendency of such movements was separatist. The worst form
of schism, as the Alliance saw it, was ‘separation from any
brother or sister in whom we acknowledge the Spirit of
Christ to be dwelling’. This was precisely what some seemed
intent on doing. They appear, said Evangelical Christendom in
May 1924, ‘to be concerned to create divisions in the evan-
gelical ranks’. With an obvious reference to fundamentalism,
the Alliance was defined as a ‘central organisation’ that sought
23
to ‘maintain evangelical faith, but not with a shut mind’.

23 Evangelical Christendom,March-April 1924,pp.37-8;May-June 1924,pp.77-8.

 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 191

Anglo-Catholic Challenges

Whereas many fundamentalists turned their fire on other Prot-

estants,whom they saw as compromising with liberal theology,
the biggest challenge to Protestantism in the 1920s was the
power of Anglo-Catholicism. After the First World War, huge
Anglo-Catholic congresses were organised. These congresses
began with one in 1920 that attracted 13,000 24people and they
peaked at a remarkable 70,000 people in 1937. The period af-
ter the First World War saw forces coming together that assisted
the Anglo-Catholic cause. Massive loss of life during the war
brought such pressure to bear on the Church of England that 25
in
1917 it authorised public intercessions for the departed. An-
glo-Catholics were delighted with this change. A new genera-
tion was finding itself drawn to Anglo-Catholic ceremony,with
its emphasis on beauty and dignity.In 1917,as an evidence of the
attractiveness of Anglo-Catholic ritual,Guy Rogers,who was a
speaker at Evangelical Alliance events,stated that in his view the
eastward communion position was quite acceptable.
High-church clergy, when officiating at Holy Communion,
faced east,with their backs to the congregation,in what was in-
tended to symbolise priestly ministry,with a sacrifice offered to
God.Evangelicals had traditionally opposed this on the grounds
that the sacrifice of Christ had been offered in a final sense.They
officiated at the north side of the communion table.So Rogers’
change of view was a momentous departure 26
from what was
known as ‘north end’ evangelical practice.
The most contentious issue to arise as a result of the advance
of Catholic ritual in the Church of England was the perpetual
reservation of the consecrated elements used in Holy Com-
munion. Proposals to revise the Church of England’s Prayer
Book, presented to the National Church Assembly in 1923,
24 W.S.F Pickering, Anglo-Catholicism (London: Routledge, 1989), p.56; K.
Hylson-Smith, High Churchmanship in the Church of England (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1993), pp.256-7.
25 Wilkinson, The Church of England, pp.176ff.
26 The Record, 12 July 1917, p.489.
192 One Body in Christ

allowed for the continuous reservation of the sacrament for the

purpose of offering the elements to the sick and dying, but did
not allow any services of worship before the reserved sacra-
ment. The proposals did not satisfy advanced Catholics in the
Church of England, but it was Protestant opposition that was
most noticeable. At a meeting convened by the Alliance in the
Royal Albert Hall in 1925, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, the
Home Secretary (known as ‘Jix’), a vice-President of the Alli-
ance, gave a stirring speech, punctuated by applause, in which
he claimed – with dubious historical warrant – that Noncon-
formists,as well as members of the Church of England,claimed
a heritage in the Book of Common Prayer. Joynson-Hicks re-
ferred to ‘Ecclesiastical Bolshevism’ by Anglo-Catholics. His
speech was later printed as The Reformation: A Clarion Call to
27
Britain. At a similar Alliance meeting in 1926,also held in the
Royal Albert Hall, even Bishop E.W. Barnes of Birmingham
was applauded for his battle against advanced Anglo-Catholi-
cism in the parishes in his diocese. The Alliance was described
28
as standing, in this conflict, for ‘Fundamental Truth’. Given
that Barnes could be seen as an ally, the conflict illustrated the
difficulty of defining the limits of comprehensiveness.
The most visible campaign against the Revised (or Alterna-
tive, or Deposited) Book was that led by the retired bishop of
Manchester,E.A.Knox.Alliance House was used as a venue for
meetings between Knox and Free Church leaders. Over
300,000 signatures were obtained protesting against the
changes to the Prayer Book. Hensley Henson, the bishop of
Durham,famously ridiculed the campaigners as ‘an army of il-
29
literates generalled by octogenarians’, but for the Alliance the
warfare against Catholic tendencies was serious business and its
27 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1925, p.45; G.I.T. Machin, ‘Reser-
vation Under Pressure: Ritual in the Prayer Book Crisis’, in R.N. Swanson (ed.),
Continuity and Change in Christian Worship (Studies in Church History, Vol. 35;
Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 1999), pp.447-52.
28 ‘True Fundamentalism and Dead Orthodoxy’, Evangelical Christendom,
March-April 1926, pp.33-4.
29 Hastings, English Christianity, p.206.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 193

strategy was far from uninformed. The Alliance, and those

with whom it worked to oppose the Revised Prayer Book, re-
cognised that they did not command much support in the
higher echelons of the Church of England. Randall Davidson,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, wanted to see a workable solu-
tion to the problem of liturgical indiscipline. The House of
Bishops voted 34-4 in favour of the Revised Book.The voting
proportions in the House of Clergy were similar. Efforts were
directed, therefore, to the House of Commons. A preparatory
meeting of MPs opposed to the Revised Book was held on 30
November 1927,with Joynson-Hicks presiding,and in the de-
bate itself, on 15 December, Joynson-Hicks gave a speech that
apparently did much to sway the House. He argued that the
provisions of the Revised Book would inevitably lead to wor-
ship of the reserved sacrament;the revision measure lost by 238
30
votes to 205.
A further attempt was made to pass the measure in Parlia-
ment in 1928, but this also failed. The Alliance was concerned
during this period not to lose supporters within the Church of
England. But it considered that it had played a unique role in
‘acting as a liaison office’ so that leaders from different schools
of thought and denominations could keep in touch with one
another. ‘One of the greatest weaknesses in the campaign
against the Deposited Book’, said Evangelical Christendom in
January 1928, ‘was the scattered character of the opposing
forces.’ The Alliance considered that the appeal it had made to
Free Church Councils to consider the situation had awakened
Free Church interest, and that this had been crucial in deter-
mining the outcome. This was certainly an important factor:
the votes of Free Church members of Parliament were of deci-
sive importance. Evangelical Christendom summed it up this
way: ‘Evangelicals in the National and Free Churches were
linked together and under God’s guidance the House of Com-
31
mons spoke frankly and soberly the mind of the Nation.’ For
30 Machin, ‘Reservation under Pressure’, pp.456-60.
31 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1928, p.18.
194 One Body in Christ

a period in the middle and later 1920s the evangelical Protes-

tants who associated with the Alliance were able to mobilise a
national campaign. The victory was rather a hollow one, how-
ever, since in 1929 Cosmo Lang, who had recently become
Archbishop of Canterbury, made it clear that any liturgical
practices that had been embodied in the rejected book were
acceptable.
After 1928 some of the paranoia about a Catholic take-over
of the Church of England subsided.There was continued Alli-
ance watchfulness, however, not least because of conversations
that went on at Malines, France, during the 1920s between
some high church Anglicans, most notably Viscount Halifax,
Walter Frere and Charles Gore, and a few progressive Roman
32
Catholics such as Dom Lambert Beaudouin. In 1928, when
the conversations had come to an end, Halifax published his
Notes, which provoked the Alliance to amazed comment.
Evangelical Christendom stated that few had believed ‘the re-
vered Viscount’when he reported that in the conversations the
Anglican members took the view that it was possible to recon-
cile the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England with
the Decrees of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent of the
sixteenth century. Now it seemed that this was indeed the po-
sition of the Anglican participants. It was impossible, in the
view of the Alliance, to square the outlook of the Anglican
33
conversationalists with the Reformation tradition. In 1930
the official Roman Catholic attitude to the Malines conversa-
tions was that they were conducted without ecclesiastical
mandate. By this time, Henry Martyn Gooch was taking the
view that Anglo-Catholicism had been very influential among
the bishops and the clergy in general, but that lay people were
34
not impressed. The Alliance staked out a central evangelical-
ism that it believed lay people in the churches understood and
appreciated.

32 Hylson-Smith, High Churchmanship, pp.273-5.

33 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1928, p.19.
34 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1930, p.210.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 195

A Broader Evangelicalism

The Alliance found it all the more necessary to define the

evangelical centre ground because of the growth of what was
often termed liberal evangelicalism. In 1906 conversations
between some younger evangelicals in the Church of England
led them to the conclusion that existing leaders of the evangel-
ical party were too rigid in their attitudes to scholarship and
social questions. A ‘Group Brotherhood’, as it was called, soon
grew from six like-minded clergy in the Liverpool area. This
‘Liverpool Six’ provided the nucleus for an Anglican35 network
that pioneered a broader or liberal evangelicalism. In 1922
the Church Missionary Society (CMS) suffered a schism when
a number of CMS supporters who objected to the way the
CMS was willing to co-operate with high-church enterprises
36
formed the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society. In the
wake of this event the Group Brotherhood decided to establish
itself publicly as the Anglican Evangelical Group Movement
(AEGM). Cyril Bardsley, the General Secretary of the CMS,
was active in liberal evangelical ranks. The AEGM was com-
mitted, as its manifesto stated, to showing that its members,
‘while clinging to the fundamental spiritual truths of evangeli-
calism, recognised 37that old doctrines had to be set forth in
modern language’. At that point membership was 300 and
growth over the next decade meant that by 1935 the AEGM’s
clerical membership was 1,454, with the claim being made in
its Bulletin38 that about 10% of active Anglican clergy were
members.
Although the Alliance made reference to liberal evangelicals
as early as 1916, substantial comment on the movement first
appeared in the early 1920s. In 1922 Gooch, while not

35 A.E. Smith, Another Anglican Angle: The History of the AEGM (Oxford: Amate,
1991).
36 D.W. Bebbington, ‘Missionary Controversy and the Polarising Tendency in
Twentieth-Century British Protestantism’, Anvil 13.2 (1996).
37 The Church Family Newspaper, 20 July 1923, p.4.
38 Bulletin, October 1933, p.4; April 1935, p.13.
196 One Body in Christ

referring explicitly to the troubles in the CMS over broader

theology, probably had this in mind when he wrote that the
present time was ‘unfortunate to raise issues on the question of
theories of inspiration’. He argued that the Bible itself did not
establish any particular theory of inspiration and that it was dif-
39
ficult to reach agreement on this matter. This was in 1923,
the same year in which an AEGM volume called Liberal Evan-
gelicalism: An Interpretation appeared. In reviewing this volume
in Evangelical Christendom in March 1923 Gooch reaffirmed
Alliance comprehensiveness and noted that some of the con-
tributors to the volume were personal friends of his (Guy
Rogers had been a speaker at the Alliance week of prayer that
year). Yet his tone was not affirmative. Two months later
Gooch,although welcoming the way the AEGM was support-
ing church reunion,suggested that in some of its pamphlets the
AEGM had not thought out the implications of its theological
40
position. Canon Vernon Storr, a canon of Westminster Ab-
bey and a considerable theologian, soon emerged as the lead-
ing figure in the AEGM. Storr argued in two early AEGM
booklets dealing with biblical authority that the Bible was
God’s progressive self-revelation, a story of religious experi-
ence and not a book entirely free from mistakes.He considered
41
that scholarship enhanced its spiritual value.
By the end of 1923 the Alliance, despite its regard for some
of the liberal evangelical leaders as ‘men of high spiritual at-
tainment’,and ‘servants of Christ,at whose feet we would will-
ingly sit and learn’, was increasingly critical of the new
movement. There was deep suspicion in Alliance circles about
the participation of E.W.Barnes.Vernon Storr was seen as hav-
ing no place in his theology for the personal return of Christ.
By this stage, members of the AEGM such as R.T. Howard,
Principal of St Aidan’s College, Birkenhead, were aligning
39 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1922, p.1.
40 Evangelical Christendom, March-April 1923, pp.40, 59; May-June 1923,
pp.61-4.
41 V.F. Storr, The Bible (London, [1923]), pp.7, 16; V.F Storr, Inspiration (London,
[1923]), pp.5, 16.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 197

themselves with the cause of Prayer Book revision. This did

not help the AEGM case in the eyes of the Alliance. Gooch
quoted Guy Rogers’ statement that liberal evangelicalism is
‘adventurous through its loyalty to the primitive Gospel.It seeks to
bind adventurous souls in a living fellowship that they may
march together in obedience to the Spirit’. For Gooch, this
statement about loyalty to the gospel was not consistent with
AEGM literature. Gooch’s article concluded:
To the plain man if adventurous souls accept the plain teaching of Scripture
and follow it with the Spirit’s guidance, we are with them; but if they treat
Scripture as something to be made to fit in with the prevalent spirit of the age,
then we are bound to protest,and prefer to venture our all upon the Truth that
is revealed in God’s Word written.42

The Alliance was clearly not inclined to align itself with the
liberal evangelical cause.
Yet the Alliance did not wish to be regarded as an obscuran-
tist body.In 1924 Evangelical Christendom carried an article that
had as its over-riding aim the positioning of the Alliance
within the mainstream of Christian orthodoxy. The Anglican
Lambeth Conferences,it was noted approvingly,had laid down
as doctrinal standards ‘Holy Scripture, the Apostles’ and Ni-
cene Creeds and the two sacraments of the gospel with the
Christian ministry holding a commission from Christ’. The
article argued that it was ‘impossible to deny the doctrine of
the Nicene Creed without undermining fundamental doc-
trine’. It also took the view that the sacraments could not be
overlooked without breaking with historic Christianity. In
common with Alliance tradition,it was stated that the Alliance
had ‘no wish to narrow the faith or to make too rigid the
boundaries of the Church of Christ’, but that it could not ac-
cept that those holding to the historical standards of the church
43
‘are to be considered obscurantists’. The growing tension
42 ‘Liberal Evangelicalism’, Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1923,
pp.153-4.
43 ‘The Fundamentals: What is at Stake’, Evangelical Christendom, July-August
1924, pp.105-6.
198 One Body in Christ

with the liberal evangelicals eased somewhat in 1925 when a

second major AEGM volume, The Inner Life, was published. It
contained essays on spirituality, and Evangelical Christendom
44
welcomed what it saw as a different ethos within the volume.
Rapprochement was, however, short-lived. In January 1926
Gooch reported in The Life of Faith,the Keswick Convention’s
mouthpiece, on an AEGM meeting he had attended. His ac-
count, while it accepted that there were in the AEGM men of
45
‘undoubted spirituality’, was highly critical. George Bu-
chanan,who had been a speaker two years previously at the Al-
liance’s week of prayer, replied on behalf of the AEGM. He
stated trenchantly that if Gooch wished to follow ‘die-hard’
conservatism he could do so, but 800 AEGM clergy were pre-
46
pared to follow the Holy Spirit. In spite of its commitment to
catholicity the Alliance had failed to bridge the divide be-
tween evangelical groups in the Church of England.
Much less attention was paid by the Alliance in this period
to liberal-conservative tensions felt by evangelicals in other de-
nominations. This is probably because of the Alliance’s focus
on Anglo-Catholic strength, which primarily affected Angli-
cans.A divided Anglican evangelicalism was not well placed to
counter Anglo-Catholicism.Methodism had a liberal evangel-
ical movement that enjoyed considerable inter-war influence –
the Fellowship of the Kingdom (FK). This had leaders such as
Leslie Weatherhead, minister of the City Temple, but the Alli-
ance had no links with FK. Within Methodism, the Alliance
felt the closest sympathy with eirenic evangelicals such as Sam-
uel Chadwick. The evangelical perspective of Chadwick
meant that he appreciated a range of churchmanship. He said
that if he had not been a Methodist he would have been a Ro-
man Catholic and that he could see himself as an Abbot of a
47
monastery. In 1922, as a member of the Alliance Council,
44 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1925, p.24.
45 The Life of Faith, 20 January 1926, p.61.
46 The Life of Faith, 27 January 1926, p.87.
47 N.G. Dunning, Samuel Chadwick (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1933),
p.20.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 199

Chadwick spoke about the testimony the Alliance had borne

‘to the catholicity of the Christian religion and the evangelical
quality of the Christian faith’. He declared that the evangelical
position,with its ‘comprehensiveness and disregard of denom-
inational distinctives, and its over-riding of all kinds of
sectarian barriers, suits my catholic spirit down to its very
48
roots’. For the Alliance, this statement summed up the kind
of Methodism it wished to affirm.
Baptists did not have an identifiable liberal evangelical
group such as the AEGM or FK. There were Baptists of
broader views,such as T.R.Glover,a classical scholar who was a
Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Fundamentalists ful-
minated against Glover’s election to the presidency of the Bap-
tist Union in 1924. But few Baptist leaders were inclined to
49
disrupt the denomination. Those within the Baptist denomi-
nation to whom the Alliance looked for support were neither
on the fundamentalist nor on the liberally inclined wings. The
Alliance leadership regarded three prominent Baptist speakers
at Keswick in the 1920s as embodying moderate evangelical-
ism. They were F.B. Meyer, then in his seventies but still an in-
veterate promoter of Keswick spirituality, Graham Scroggie,
minister of Charlotte Chapel, Edinburgh, and W.Y. Fullerton,
home secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society. In 1924
Scroggie, by then the leading teacher at Keswick, was enthusi-
astically quoted in Evangelical Christendom. Scroggie said that
‘any one who fairly interprets and wholeheartedly accepts the
Apostles’ Creed is loyal to the evangelical faith’. On the vexed
question of the nature of the inspiration of Scripture, Scroggie
stated that it was ‘enough that evangelicals agree on the fact of
the unique and inclusive inspiration of Scriptures, leaving the-
ories to the enlightened judgment of the individual’.The Alli-
ance’s stance was that anyone laying on others burdens greater
than that imposed by loyalty to Christ and his teaching was ‘an

48 Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1922, p.69.

49 D.W. Bebbington, ‘Baptists and Fundamentalism in Inter-War Britain’, in
K. Robbins (ed.), Studies in Church History, pp.316-20.
200 One Body in Christ

enemy of the truth’.50 Although the Alliance was not prepared

to embrace a liberal evangelical agenda, it remained broad.
In this approach the Alliance was in tune with the spirit of
the Keswick Convention. The Convention, with its emphasis
on the spiritual life, had a moderating influence on British
evangelicalism.There were deep suspicions by fundamentalists
in the 1920s that theological modernists were engaged in a
‘Capture Keswick’ campaign, and that Stuart Holden, the
Keswick Chairman, was sympathetic to modernism. Yet Evan-
gelical Christendom was convinced in 1928 that there was no
foundation for the charge of ‘incipient modernism’ at
51
Keswick. Keswick’s venerated leaders, such as Meyer, com-
bined evangelicalism with openness. At the Alliance’s week of
prayer in 1925 Meyer said that the High churchman and the
Low churchman met at the point of mystical experience, ‘the
life which is hidden with Christ in God’. Here, he argued,
Thomas à Kempis and Luther were united.This spiritual expe-
52
rience Meyer saw as ‘the birthright of all holy souls’. In 1927
Meyer made it clear in a report on American fundamentalist
battles that his sympathies lay with those outside the conflicts
53
who ‘longed for the deeper aspects of spiritual truth’. For the
Alliance there was evangelical centre ground that was neither
too broad nor too narrow. Even so, liberal evangelicals were
judged by the Alliance to have compromised the evangelical
faith.In 1934 the Alliance maintained that the weakness of the
liberal evangelical approach had to be met by the ‘definite pre-
sentation of the gospel of Christ as it is revealed in the Holy
54
Scriptures’.

50 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1924, p.188.

51 Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1928, p.90; The Life of Faith, 30 May 1928,
p.601; I.M. Randall, ‘Capturing Keswick’, The Baptist Quarterly 36.7 (1996),
pp.331-48.
52 F.B.Meyer,‘The True Centre of Christian Unity’, Evangelical Christendom,Jan-
uary-February 1925, p.14.
53 The Baptist Times, 3 November 1927, p.773.
54 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1934, p.30.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 201

Theological Trends in the 1930s

By 1934 the Alliance had been following for some time the ac-
tivities of another ‘Group Movement’, the Oxford Group. Al-
though this Group began to take shape in the early 1920s when
Frank Buchman, an American Lutheran minister, started to
meet informally with students in Cambridge and then in Ox-
ford,it attracted wider attention in 1928.It was in that year that
the name ‘Oxford Group’ began to be used, and the Daily Ex-
press made allegations about the Group’s practice of public con-
fession of sin. In 1928 Evangelical Christendom welcomed the
Group’s use of the methods of the Methodist class meeting,‘the
waiting upon God of the Quakers’ (seeking personal guidance
each day), and ‘an out-and-out devotion to the Person of our
Lord and Saviour’. In 1931 Group members sought ‘whole-
heartedly to recapture
55
that quality of life which vibrates through
the Apostolic Age’. In the early 1930s, the Group created a
huge impact through house parties attracting thousands of
mainly young people, and through its effective mobilising of
teams of ‘life-changers’.Questions were being raised,however,
about the movement’s lack of any clear theological position.
The Group’s philosophy was that Christianity should be
presented in a way that maximised its relevance, especially
through personal testimonies. Undoubtedly the Group’s stress
on communicating the essence of faith, together with its 56
interdenominationalism and its European-wide vision,
appealed to the Alliance.But the Alliance expressed no further
support for the Group after it held a meeting in 1936 at the
Albert Hall when there were apparently many testimonies,but
57
at which prayer and Scripture were entirely absent.
55 Evangelical Christendom, March-April 1928, p.55; November-December 1931,
p.241. See D.W. Bebbington, ‘The Oxford Group Movement Between the Wars’,
in W.J. Sheils & D. Wood (eds), Studies in Church History Vol. 23 (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1986), pp.495-507.
56 I.M.Randall,‘“We All Need Constant Change”:The Oxford Group and Mis-
sion in Europe in the 1930s’, European Journal of Theology 9.2 (2000), p.171-85.
57 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1932, pp.40-41; July-August 1932,
pp.145-6; July-August 1936, p.157.
202 One Body in Christ

A more significant movement for the Alliance in the 1930s

was what was termed ‘Biblical Theology’ or ‘Neo-Ortho-
doxy’. Nathaniel Micklem, who from 1932 was Principal of
the Congregational Mansfield College, Oxford, and whose
comments were noted by the Alliance, referred in 1927 to a
‘very important quasi-Fundamentalist movement’ associated
58
with Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, on the continent. At that
time few in Britain would have been aware of Barth or Brun-
ner. Two years later Evangelical Christendom reflected on the
importance of Barth for European theology. Barth’s approach
was contrasted with a German theological tradition that had
made little of the historic foundations of faith and had in-
dulged in ‘wild criticism of the Gospel records’. ‘Now Karl
Barth’, said the article, ‘comes forward with emphasis on the
objective facts of Revelation and on the Truth of the Bible ac-
count of Christ.’ Barth’s stress on reading scripture from the
standpoint of ‘revelation’was applauded,and the Alliance con-
sidered that this revived study of the Bible was having an im-
59
pact on Germany. Later, as we have seen, the Alliance would
utilise the reports of Barth on the state of the church in Ger-
many in relation to the rise of Nazi power, but its primary in-
terest in Barth was spurred by his work in the area of biblical
theology.
By 1930 the British Alliance was unhesitatingly supportive
of Barth. Evangelical Christendom spoke in January 1930 of
Barth as teaching a ‘revived Calvinism’ and saw him as ‘one of
the greatest religious forces in Germany’. His Calvinism was
seen not so much as concerned with the doctrine of election as
with the transcendence of God, and with biblical revelation.
By this stage, Barth’s theology was being referred to in theo-
logical circles as a ‘theology of crisis’, but from the Alliance’s
perspective its main (and welcome) characteristic was that it
pointed theology away from the ‘subjective teaching which
had become so common in Germany and which had resolved

58 The Congregational Quarterly 5.3 (1927), pp.327-8.

59 Evangelical Christendom, September-October 1929, p.162.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 203

itself largely into every man following his own feelings’.60

Evangelical Christendom carried a further report on Barth at the
end of 1930. ‘There is no doubt’, it stated enthusiastically, ‘that
as a personality Karl Barth has magnetic qualities. He im-
presses, he wins confidence, and he leads. Students flock
around him … Undoubtedly he is leaving a deep mark on the
61
religious thought of Germany.’ In 1930 few of Barth’s writ-
ings were available in English and the Alliance would have
been relying for its information partly on reports from Alliance
leaders in Germany and partly from the views of those of its
British members who were reading German theological mate-
rial.Books in English on Barth by a Presbyterian minister,John
MacConnachie,appeared in 1931 and 1933.Barth approved of
62
these.
The British Alliance’s reliance on its German counterparts
was evident in the early 1930s. An analysis of the spiritual vi-
tality of the German churches, which drew from German
sources, was made in 1932. The analysis concentrated on the
strength of the various schools of theological thought. On the
one hand the schools that had been prominent were consid-
ered to be declining. These included approaches that concen-
trated on psychology or on the study of religions. On the
other hand, and to the delight of the Alliance, there was a
‘Luther renaissance’, with younger scholars seeking a deeper
understanding of the Reformation. Most encouraging of
these developments was the approach of Karl Barth. ‘In op-
position to almost all theological movements of the last cen-
tury’, said Evangelical Christendom, ‘it aims at regaining a
central position for the great objective facts of Salvation, the
redemption of the world wrought by the Incarnation of the
Godhead, as applied to theological and ecclesiastical work,
thus giving a mighty new impulse especially to the preaching
60 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1930, p.35.
61 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1930, p.226.
62 J.MacConnachie,The Significance of Karl Barth (London:Hodder & Stoughton,
1931); J. MacConnachie, The Barthian Theology (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1933), p.9 (for Barth’s comments).
204 One Body in Christ

of the Gospel’.63 By contrast with later conservative evangeli-

64
cal wariness of Barth, this endorsement by the Evangelical
Alliance is significant. When Barth was appointed to the post
of Professor of Evangelical Theology at Bonn University, the
January 1935 issue of Evangelical Christendom went so far as to
suggest that ‘a new Acts of the Apostles is being written in
65
Germany’.
Nor did the Alliance deal only with Barth at a distance. On
22 March 1937, as Barth was returning to Switzerland from
Aberdeen,where he had delivered the Gifford lectures,the Al-
liance held a reception for him at the Russell Hotel, London.
The Archdeacon of London, E.N. Sharpe, who was associated
with the Anglican Evangelical Group Movement,was asked by
the Alliance to extend a welcome to Barth. In his speech,
Sharpe spoke of Barth’s ‘brave stand for the truth of God’.
W.R.Matthews,the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral,also spoke.He
said that he did not profess either completely to understand
Barth’s theology, or to agree with what he did understand, but
he saw in Barth’s writings a profoundly serious mind. ‘Barth’,
said Matthews, ‘had sounded a trumpet for Europe’. The next
speaker, J.A. Hutton, editor of the popular British Weekly, con-
centrated on the contribution of Barth in bringing people
‘face to face with God’. Carnegie Simpson, Professor of
Church History at Westminster College, Cambridge, who in
his writing had urged the view that evangelical and catholic
traditions had substantial areas in common, gave a passionate
speech. He said that there was ‘no man in Europe whom he
would more gladly come to meet than Barth, who had stood
for the supremacy of God and for the rights of man and the lib-
erty of conscience’.W.Talbot Rice and Henry Martyn Gooch
spoke on behalf of the Alliance’s council, expressing their sup-
port for Barth’s work. In response, Barth argued that the
63 Evangelical Christendom, July-August 1932, p.139.
64 For an account and appraisal of this later wariness about Barth, see B. Ramm,
The Evangelical Heritage: A Study in Historical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1981 [1973]), pp.108-22.
65 Evangelical Christendom, January-February 1935, p.29.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 205

church in Germany was fighting against a new religion – the

new German state under Hitler – and that all churches should
66
identify with this struggle.
Others in Britain besides the Alliance were prepared to do
precisely that. Nathaniel Micklem, who in the 1930s was the
most influential Congregationalist espousing a fresh Re-
formed theology, kept in close touch with developments in
Europe and was regarded by the Alliance as having a keen
knowledge of the situation. On 4 March 1938 Mansfield Col-
lege, Oxford, at Micklem’s initiative, staged a reception for
Barth on the occasion of his receiving an Oxford honorary de-
gree. A few weeks after Barth’s visit to Oxford, Micklem, ac-
companied by Alec Whitehouse (a Mansfield student who
would become a leading Barthian scholar), visited Germany
67
and met Confessing Church representatives. The Alliance’s
deep interest in Barth continued up to the Second World War.
In 1939 Evangelical Christendom quoted extensively from an ar-
ticle Barth had written in The Christian Century (Chicago) in
which he stated that what was at stake in Germany was the call
to practice ‘the truth that God stands above all other gods’ and
in which he explained that it was because of this that he could
not begin his lectures in Bonn with the salutation to Hitler.
The theological conflict, he argued, ‘contained within itself
68
the political conflict’. Barth was presenting a vision of a theo-
logical task that affected the whole of life.
By contrast with the Alliance’s admiration for Barth, there
were those within the evangelical constituency who were dis-
missive. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, minister of Westminster Chapel
from 1938, considered the reading of Barth and Brunner a
69
waste of time. Yet there were similarities between Barth and
66 Evangelical Christendom, March-April 1937, p.44.
67 E. Kaye, Mansfield College, Oxford: Its Origin, History and Significance (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996), p.208; W.A. Whitehouse, The Authority of Grace
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981), vii; Evangelical Christendom, January-February
1937, p.44.
68 Evangelical Christendom, November-December 1939, p.206.
69 I.H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith, 1939-1981 (Edinburgh:
Banner of Truth Trust, 1990), p.137.
206 One Body in Christ

Lloyd-Jones. Both were deeply committed to the revival of

Reformed theology. Both saw God at work in the world in
ways that were not comfortable and which showed the folly of
easy optimism. Both represented a reaction against subjective
religion. Speaking at the Alliance’s week of prayer in 1939,
Lloyd-Jones stressed the difference between subjective knowl-
edge and objective revelation, and argued for the foundation
for faith being found in the word of God. In the same address
he condemned ‘spiritual smugness’. When the war came a few
months later, Lloyd-Jones saw it as entirely possible that the
war was God inflicting judgement on the British nation.‘What
if war has come’, he asked in one sermon, ‘because we did not
deserve peace; because we by our disobedience and godless-
ness and sinfulness had so utterly abused the blessings of
70
peace?’ This renewed sense of the sovereignty of God would
have a powerful influence on evangelical theology over the
course of the next two decades. As we shall see, Lloyd-Jones
would play a crucial part in the unfolding history of the Alli-
ance and would in some respects challenge the validity of the
Alliance’s commitment to comprehensiveness.

Conclusion

In 1921 Henry Martyn Gooch argued for the ‘Catholicity of

the Gospel’ a catholicity that he saw embodied
71
in the Alliance,
with its pan-denominational witness. At this point the
Alliance had made clear its stance over theological liberalism
through its campaign against the New Theology. It had
also reasserted its longer-running opposition to the
Anglo-Catholic movement. On several fronts the 1920s
brought fresh challenges. The Alliance may have resisted the
narrow spirit of fundamentalism but Anglo-Catholics were
opposed at national level and Liberal evangelicalism was seen

70 Ibid., p.26.
71 Evangelical Christendom, May-June 1921, p.71.
 Comprehensiveness Within the Truth 207

as a threat to the Alliance’s attempts to create an evangelical

platform that was comprehensive within the truth. Some lib-
eral evangelicals staked out ground that the Alliance consid-
ered was beyond acceptable evangelical limits. It seems that up
to the Second World War it was Karl Barth whom the Alliance
found to be the most promising theologian in Europe. It may
be,however,that this was the stance of Gooch and was not one
that was widely shared. Yet it was the consistent policy of the
Alliance to argue for a proper openness in evangelical thought
and to resist a narrower line.John Stott would adopt a similarly
moderate stance in the debate about the rise of72fundamental-
ism during the Billy Graham crusades of 1955. Stott entered
the discussion determined to repudiate the fundamentalist
label and distance himself from mechanical ideas of biblical
inspiration. In a book published by the Alliance in 1956, Fun-
damentalism and Evangelism,Stott stated that the personalities of
the Bible’s73 authors were ‘fashioned, enriched and fully
employed’. In 1942 J.C. Mann, assistant bishop of Rochester,
who was presiding at the annual meeting of the Alliance,
referred to the ability of Gooch to ‘rope in one and another’:
he had, said Mann, created a truly ‘catholic’ platform. Indeed,
he suggested that there were few platforms that were quite so
catholic as that of the Alliance. It was catholic, Mann believed,
because it was first of all evangelical – it had been founded
upon evangelical truth. In the light of the vision of compre-
hensiveness within the truth, it is significant that Mann
regarded as evangelical
74
all those who followed Christ Jesus as
Saviour and Lord.

72 I.M. Randall, Educating Evangelicalism: The Origins, Development and Impact of

London Bible College (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2000), pp.98-100
73 J. Stott, Fundamentalism and Evangelism (London: Evangelical Alliance, 1955),
p.6.
74 Evangelical Christendom, July-September 1942, p.68.
 9

A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts

The Alliance and Modern Evangelism

The story of evangelism in Britain in the nineteenth and twen-

tieth centuries has not yet been fully analysed, although con-
siderable attention has been given to the growth of evangelical
life in the nineteenth century. There were spontaneous reviv-
als,but increasingly there were also organised methods of evan-
gelism such as house-to-house visitation. The late nineteenth
and early twentieth-century period was marked by confidence
about evangelism,
1
by ‘an ebullient spirituality … that gener-
ated mission’. Attempts at outreach were often initiated by
local churches or sponsored by denominations, but some were
interdenominational. Of the latter, the most notable was the2
London City Mission (LCM), which was established in 1835.
By the 1880s, there were 460 people on the staff of the LCM.
Two years before the formation of the Evangelical Alliance,the
influential and distinctly evangelical3 Young Men’s Christian
Association (YMCA) was formed. In the 1840s, when the
Evangelical Alliance emerged, there was an excitement about 4
the fulfilment of prophecy and about international revival. A
further wave of interdenominational and transnational evan-
1 D.W. Bebbington, ‘Evangelism and Spirituality in Twentieth-Century
Protestant Nonconformity’, p.1.
2 See Lewis, Lighten their Darkness.
3 For the YMCA see Binfield, George Williams and the YMCA..
4 Wolffe, ‘The Evangelical Alliance in the 1840s’, p.341.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 209

gelistic activity followed in 1858-9 and was expressed in a

more organised way in campaigns led by D.L. Moody and Ira
D. Sankey in Britain in 1873-5. This chapter will begin with
the nineteenth-century background and will then analyse
more fully the relationships that existed between the Alliance
and the fresh evangelistic impetus that occurred in the
mid-twentieth century.

Nineteenth-Century Evangelistic Activity

According to J.W.Ewing,the Alliance from the outset was like

‘a lighthouse flashing out the glory of the gospel’. In 1845
Edward Bickersteth delineated the message of the gospel and
thus the message of the Alliance as ‘the incarnation of the Son
of God: His work of atonement for us sinners – a finished
work:His mediatorial intercession for which He ever lives:His
supreme sovereignty and5
reign … The justification of the
sinner by faith alone’. The mid-1850s saw several initiatives
taken by the Alliance.One hundred ministers were involved in
evangelisation in Ireland, although it was reported that 6
this
project was hampered by ‘violence and persecution’. There
were weekly Sunday evening services in Exeter Hall over a
period of three months. The interest in these was such that
hundreds of people whom the Exeter Hall could not accom-
modate were turned away. It was suggested that two-thirds of
those who attended did not regularly worship in any church.
As a result of these successes, Edward Steane, as an honorary
secretary of the Alliance, called in 1856 for intensified activity
to reach non-churchgoing people in Britain. This helped to
prepare the way for the further evangelistic impetus of the
years 1857 to 1859.In Tyneside,for example,the revival of this
period, with its interdenominational 7
character, was described
as an ‘Evangelical Alliance revival’.
5 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.41.
6 Minutes of the Evangelical Alliance Conference in London, 1853.
7 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.58-61.
210 One Body in Christ

In his analysis of the ‘1859 revival’,Edwin Orr argued that it

confirmed the doctrinal basis laid down by the Alliance in
1846. ‘The Evangelical Alliance view of Christian unity
(namely that as soon as a sinner accepts Christ as Saviour he be-
comes one with all the members of the Body of Christ
throughout the earth)’,Orr wrote,‘was so widely adopted that
it led to a practice of fraternal fellowship having the force of a
8
major doctrine.’ It does seem that in this period many evan-
gelicals inclined towards the idea of spiritual unity advocated
by the Alliance. ‘There is something very remarkable’, said
Evangelical Christendom in 1858, ‘about this revival of religion.
There is no exclusiveness in its operation.From the most dem-
onstrative Methodist to the dignified and orderly Episcopalian,
all participate in the baptism of the Spirit with equal rejoic-
9
ing.’ This was probably an overstatement. J.B.A. Kessler simi-
larly overstates the degree of commitment to spiritual unity
when he suggests that after 1859 ‘everybody’accepted the idea
10
in principle. Yet for Kessler the 1859 revival contributed to a
period of decline for the Alliance, since its primary objective –
spiritual unity – was widely seen as having been achieved.
Giving attention to evangelistic outreach, however, cannot be
equated with decline. Certainly Alliance activities evolved. In
the 1860s, for example, Alliance-sponsored speakers were in-
11
volved in debates with secularists.
Interdenominational evangelism of the kind that the Alli-
ance affirmed was given a further boost from June 1873 to Au-
gust 1875 through the British evangelistic campaigns of D.L.
Moody and his singer and co-evangelist, Ira D. Sankey. F.B.
Meyer was one of the future Alliance figures who felt the im-
pact of Moody’s approach. George Bennett, the founder-sec-
retary of the York YMCA, had written to Moody about the
possibility of his coming to Britain, but Bennett was taken by
surprise when,in June 1873,Moody and Sankey unexpectedly
8 Orr, Second Evangelical Awakening, p.126.
9 Evangelical Christendom, August 1858, p.288.
10 Kessler, A Study of The Evangelical Alliance, pp.63-4.
11 Executive Council Minutes, February 1869.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 211

arrived in England. The Americans headed for York and there

established Priory Street Baptist Church as their base. In his
role as Priory Street’s pastor,Meyer was fascinated to discover a
new, expansive approach to evangelism – an approach that
freed him from what he saw as conventional forms of worship.
Later, Meyer was to describe how, through Moody, he saw ‘a
wider, larger life, in which mere denominationalism could
have no place’. Meyer was deeply involved in Baptist life, be-
coming (among other things) President of the Baptist Union,
but in his pioneering ministry at Melbourne Hall in the 1880s
he was determined that there should be no ‘marked
12
denominationalism’. In this Meyer was signalling a trend to-
wards a wider view of the mission of the Church.
The Alliance in Britain gave the evangelistic efforts of
Moody and Sankey wholehearted support in the 1870s, with
the Alliance’s Executive Council speaking in November 1875
of the united evangelistic activity, prayer meetings and
interchurch co-operation that had been taking place as ‘a har-
13
binger of awakening and revival’. C.H. Spurgeon, who, as we
have seen, had a complex relationship with the Alliance, was
sufficiently supportive of the evangelistic thrust to host Moody
and Sankey in his huge Metropolitan Tabernacle at the
Elephant and Castle, London. It is significant that in 1876
when this spirit of evangelistic co-operation was strong, Hugh
Price Hughes, who would become a leading Wesleyan
Methodist minister and promoter of the progressive Forward
14
Movement in Methodism, joined the Alliance. In 1878, at an
international exhibition in Paris, the Alliances of Europe
sponsored a ‘Salle Evanglique’ that attracted 100,000 visitors.
Well-known British figures such as Lord Shaftesbury gave
talks. The outreach was seen as a ‘testimony to true catholic
12 I.M.Randall,‘Incarnating the Gospel:Melbourne Hall,Leicester,in the 1880s
as a model for holistic ministry’, The Baptist Quarterly 35.8 (1994), pp.394-5; I.M.
Randall, ‘Mere Denominationalism: F.B. Meyer and Baptist Life’, The Baptist
Quarterly 35.1 (1993), p.20.
13 Executive Council Minutes, 12 November 1875.
14 Executive Council Minutes, 14 June 1876.
212 One Body in Christ

unity’.15 The Billy Graham meetings and crusades of the 1940s

and 1950s were to promote a similar concept of broadly based
unity, in part by reactivating the Moody and Sankey ethos.

Twentieth-Century Revivalist Movements

The twentieth century began with a united campaign which

was entitled the ‘Simultaneous Mission’,and which was organ-
ised by the Free Church councils of England and Wales.During
ten days in January and February 1901 London audiences were
addressed, and16
missioners then moved elsewhere throughout
the country. A National Free Church Council (NFCC) had
begun in 1892,with a special congress in Manchester.This was
connected to a loose network of local councils, and a Welsh
body was formed around the same time.Later,in 1919,a Federal
Council of Evangelical Free Churches was co-ordinated and by
1940 this had joined with the NFCC in the Free Church Fed-
eral Council.During the first half of the twentieth century,these
Free Church councils would emerge as key agents for joint
evangelism and social action, and in the process would divert 17a
significant degree of strength and support from the Alliance.
This is not, however, to suggest that the two movements were
mutually exclusive:the Methodist Hugh Price Hughes and the
Baptist John Clifford were prominent in the development of the
Free Church councils,but as we have seen,were also both active
within the Alliance.Besides,revival and mission were hardly de-
marcated concerns.The Welsh Revival of 1904-5,for example,
was another influential interdenominational movement within
British evangelicalism which engaged the attention of both the
Free Church councils and the Alliance. Evan Roberts was the
principal and most controversial figure in the Welsh Revival.
15 Evangelical Christendom, November 1878, p.346; Report Presented to the
Twenty-First Annual Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, p.10.
16 E.K.H. Jordan, Free Church Unity: History of the Free Church Council Movement,
1896-1941 (London: Lutterworth Press, 1956), pp.66-72.
17 On the Free Church councils see Jordan, Free Church Unity.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 213

Several evangelical leaders from other parts of Britain travelled

to Wales in 1905 to hear and meet Roberts.Although the strain
of the ministry he had undertaken meant that Roberts with-
drew from public preaching after a comparatively short time,the
challenge
18
of the revival spirit continued in a number of quar-
ters. At the Alliance conference of 1907 there was reflection
on the state of the nation,and it was pointed out that ‘the masses’
– the reference was particularly to urban areas – were alienated
from the churches. In south London it was reckoned that only 19
one in twelve men and one in ten women attended church.
Evangelists to working class people were,however,emerging in
this period. George Jeffreys, the founder of Pentecostalism’s
Elim Church,together with his brother Stephen,both of whose
roots were in the Welsh Revival,led Pentecostal evangelistic and20
healing campaigns that attracted large audiences in the 1920s.
It seems that towards the end of the First World War there
was a growing expectation within evangelicalism that spiritual
renewal might be imminent. At the Islington conference for
evangelical Anglican clergy held in London in January 1918,
Webb-Peploe, by then a venerable a Keswick Convention
leader,spoke about Christ as the foundation for renewal ‘of so-
ciety, of ecclesiastical matters, and of individual spiritual life’.
Webb-Peploe’s focus was on Anglicanism, but other denomi-
nations were thinking in similar terms.John Kent describes the
period 1921-8, and especially 1922-6, as the years of the last
‘flicker’ of expansion in modern Methodism, and attributes it
in part to the efforts invested in traditional evangelism, su-
21
premely by the ‘ageing Victorian revivalist’, Gipsy Smith.
Methodism’s Cliff College, in the Derbyshire Peak District,

18 B.P. Jones, An Instrument of Revival: The Complete Life of Evan Roberts (South
Plainfield: Bridge Publishing, 1995); B.P. Jones, The King’s Champions (Cwmbran,
Gwent: Christian Literature Press, 1986).
19 Maintaining the Unity: Report of the Eleventh International Conference of the Evan-
gelical Alliance (London, 1907), p.151.
20 See D.W. Cartwright, The Great Evangelists (Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering,
1986).
21 J. Kent, The Age of Disunity (London: Epworth Press, 1966), p.6.
214 One Body in Christ

was also crucial. Gipsy Smith regularly visited its Whitsun

Conventions. During the period of Samuel Chadwick’s pow-
erful leadership as Principal, in the years before, during and af-
ter the First World War, there was a strong emphasis on revival.
A new mood of hope prevailed in the Cliff College constitu-
ency after the war, thanks in part to what Chadwick called a
‘Pentecost’ at the College in October 1920. At a Cliff College
mission in Chesterfield in May 1922, in which 60 missioners
took part, it was reported that there were 3,000 conversions.
22
Local Free churches were drawn together in united mission.
Discussions about the possibility of a wider interdenomina-
tional revival in Britain in the early 1920s were brought into
sharp focus by events in East Anglia. In the autumn of 1920
Hugh Ferguson, minister of London Road Baptist Church,
Lowestoft,visited Douglas Brown,minister of Ramsden Road
Baptist Church, Balham, to ask if he would conduct a mission
in Lowestoft.From March 1921 when the mission began,there
was a sense of unusual spiritual revival. In July 1921 Ferguson
and John Hayes,vicar of Christ Church,Lowestoft,reported at
Keswick that a revival had come to East Anglia. The subject of
revival was also taken up at a meeting of the Evangelical Alli-
ance in January 1922, when J.E. Watts-Ditchfield, Bishop of
Chelmsford, presided. The speakers on that occasion included
Charles Raven, later Regius Professor of Divinity at Cam-
23
bridge. In the wake of this event, the Alliance, keen to affirm
that it had always been ‘intensely evangelistic in its aims and
operations’,arranged a ‘Week of Witness’in the period of Pen-
24
tecost. Each night preachers spoke in churches other than
those of their own denomination,as a sign of evangelical unity.
There was a particular emphasis within the Alliance on
personal evangelism. Larger scale Alliance events took place
in 1924 in connection with the British Empire Exhibition in
Wembley.The Alliance co-operated with other bodies to hold
22 Joyful News, reports of 1922; Joyful News, 15 July 1925, p.3; Dunning, Samuel
Chadwick, p.190.
23 The Record, 10 January 1922, p.39.
24 Evangelical Christendom, July-August 1923, p.100.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 215

meetings, addressed by evangelists such as Gipsy Smith, in the

25
large conference hall of the Exhibition.
The ‘Week of Witness’was observed by Alliances in a num-
ber of countries. A report from Mussoorie, India, noted that
the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1920 had enunciated
principles of intercommunion and that steps in this direction
were to be encouraged in India. The Alliance’s call to united
witness was seen as ‘calculated to further the cause of unity’.In
response, Anglican clergymen and Free Church ministers in
Mussoorie had united. The example of what had happened at
Kikuyu was cited.There was prayer for revival at well-attended
services in the various churches in the Mussoorie district. At a
united missionary service, representatives of the Church Mis-
sionary Society,the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Pres-
26
byterian Church gave addresses. Although this report from
India seemed to be heavily biased towards western Christian
influences, in the same period the Alliance paid tribute to the
remarkable work of Pandita Ramabai, an Indian who at-
tempted to conduct mission in an Indian way. As well as being
an outstanding Christian teacher and scholar, she founded a
school where,as the Alliance put it,‘hundreds of girls were ed-
ucated. Widows, deserted wives and famine victims won her
sympathy and help.Her school grew into a regular colony with
some two thousand members … Her Mukti Colony is unique
27
in India.’
One aspect of spiritual revival that the Alliance attempted to
foster in Britain – what Ewing called ‘the world-wide revival of
the keeping of the Holy Day’– was not destined to flourish.The
Alliance,in its early period,had highlighted Sunday observance
through a book entitled The Pearl of Days,written by a Scottish
labourer’s daughter.The Alliance not only promoted the book,
which sold widely, but also had it translated into several lan-
guages. At various points, the Alliance enlisted the support of

25 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.47.

26 Evangelical Christendom, July-August 1923, p.100.
27 Ewing, Goodly Fellowship, p.103.
216 One Body in Christ

the Archbishop of Canterbury for its campaigns over Sunday

observance,and in 1922 was in tune with churches as a whole in
opposing the decision of the London County Council (LCC)
28
to open public parks in London on Sunday for games. At a
meeting called by the Alliance in early 1923 to address the issue
the Queen’s Hall was filled, with an overflow in All Souls,
Langham Place, and at these meetings resolutions were passed
condemning the LCC.Some evangelicals,however,were com-
ing to doubt the strict Sunday observance position.In the 1930s
Edward Woods of Croydon,an evangelical bishop with broader
views, supported Sunday opening of cinemas and chaired a
committee that selected films to be shown on Sunday evenings.
The Evangelical Alliance joined with the Lord’s Day Obser-
vance Society in opposing Sunday opening of cinemas, but
29
there was limited support for the campaign.

New Evangelistic Forces

Although
30
British evangelicalism reached its nadir around
1940, evangelistic activity was by no means absent in Britain
in the later 1930s. The National Young Life Campaign
(NYLC), which was founded in 1911 by the brothers Freder-
ick and Arthur Wood, was a significant interdenominational
movement in inter-war evangelicalism, attracting enterprising
evangelists to its ranks.
31
It claimed 13,000 young people in
membership in 1947. In 1938 10,000 boys were attending
interdenominational boys’ Crusader 32
classes and 6,000 were in
girls’ Crusader classes each week. Towards the end of the
28 Ibid., 83; The British Weekly, 13 July 1922, p.309.
29 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p.211; J. Wigley, The Rise and Fall
of the Victorian Sunday (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), p.193.
30 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p.252.
31 The Christian, 24 April 1947, p.1. For the Wood brothers, see F.P Wood & M.S.
Wood, Youth Advancing (London: National Young Life Campaign, 1961).
32 See J.Watford,Yesterday and Today:A History of Crusaders (St.Albans:Crusaders’
Union,1995),and H.Roseveare,On Track:The Story of the Girl Crusaders’Union (St.
Albans: Girl Crusaders’ Union, 1990).
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 217

Second World War,the Alliance,partly influenced by outreach

such as that undertaken by Methodists in their Commando 33
Campaigns, committed itself to a campaign of evangelism. A
younger British evangelist who had been influenced by the
Wood brothers was Tom Rees. At the end of the war, Rees,
who had worked for the Children’s Special Service Mission
(CSSM) and an active evangelical Anglican church in
Sevenoaks, Kent, initiated large-scale meetings in London,
particularly orientated towards young people.
Rees’first major campaign in the capital was called ‘Faith for
the Times’, and ran for a fortnight at the Albert Hall. Accom-
panying him were others who would go on to exercise power-
ful evangelistic ministries in their own right: Alan Redpath,
F.T. Ellis and Stephen Olford. Later in 1945 Rees organised a
month of meetings at Westminster Central Hall.He planned to
return there the following year, but when the United Nations
requisitioned the building for the period he had planned, they
offered him an alternative venue of his choice and he opted for
the Albert Hall! Rees would go on to hold more than fifty
weekly rallies there, as well as speaking at other large London
venues like the City Temple. Guest speakers at these meetings
included C.S. Lewis, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who had taken over
from Campbell Morgan as minister of Westminster Chapel,
and the highly regarded Methodist preacher, W.E. Sangster, of
Westminster Central Hall, who was a supporter of the Evan-
gelical Alliance. These meetings drew many young people, al-
34
though backing from London ministers was less obvious.
Rees was an important promoter of the unity for which the
Evangelical Alliance stood,and there is no doubt that he paved
the way for the visit to Britain of an even more significant ad-
vocate of united evangelical outreach.
In the spring of 1946 an American evangelist,Billy Graham,
then aged twenty-seven and at that time virtually unknown
outside the USA, was part of a small team of Youth for Christ
33 Executive Council Minutes, 22 June 1944.
34 J. Rees, Stranger than Fiction (Frinton-on-Sea, 1957), pp.24-5.
218 One Body in Christ

(YFC) emissaries who came from the USA to Britain charged

with the task, as they saw it, of saving Britain out of a spiritual
35
‘abyss’. Roy Cattell assisted Tom Rees as his executive officer.
Cattell,who would later become the Alliance’s General Secre-
tary when he was in his early forties,was a businessman who was
active in interdenominational affairs as a leader of the Hendon
Crusaders Bible Class.From 1944 he was involved in organising
wider evangelism in London. Rees and Cattell gathered about
sixty clergy and lay people to meet the Americans at the
Bonnington Hotel in London. Evangelistic events across Brit-
ain began to be scheduled. Not all British evangelicals wel-
comed the invasion of American-style revivalism that they saw
as taking place. Stanley Baker, for example, the evangelistically
minded minister of Bordesley Green Baptist Church in Bir-
mingham, was unconvinced that the way to reach the 95% of
people in Birmingham who allegedly did not attend church was
through ‘surplus saints’,as he labelled them,from America.Billy
Graham convinced him otherwise,and Baker was so motivated
that he engaged in frantic telephoning of his acquaintances,urg-
ing support for Graham’s Birmingham youth meetings. Num-
36
bers attending quickly rose to 2,500.
The initial YFC British tour, which lasted forty-six days,
was followed by six months of mission that Graham conducted
throughout Britain from October 1946.Accompanied by Cliff
and Billie Barrows as his musical team, Graham spoke in
twenty-seven centres and on 360 occasions – an average of
about two meetings a day.He had made four further transatlan-
tic trips by 1949 and T.W. Wilson, one of his close friends and
colleagues, also spent several months in Britain. Support for
Wilson was forthcoming from prominent businessmen as
37
well as ministers. The idea of a crusade in Britain was already
35 Report by Wes Hartzell on the British trip by Billy Graham and his colleagues,
in Collection (CN) 224, Box 1, Folder 17, Billy Graham Archives, Billy Graham
Center, Wheaton, Illinois, USA. Also W Martin, The Billy Graham Story: A Prophet
with Honour (London: Hutchinson, 1992), pp.94-5, 106.
36 Report by Billy Graham,(CN) 318,Box 54,Folder 13,Billy Graham Archives.
37 The Christian, 8 April 1948, p.9.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 219

germinating, and it was this that would draw Graham into the
orbit of the Evangelical Alliance. Graham’s comment to
George Beverly Shea, his associate and someone emerging as a
leading gospel singer in America, was: ‘There is a feeling
among some of us that we should go back again some day and
38
hold a campaign not directed primarily to youth’. In 1947
British Youth for Christ was inaugurated and Billy Graham
was in Britain for the second YFC annual conference in 1948.
Tom Rees noted in 1948 that there had been a marked increase
in co-operation between many churches and Christian leaders
39
in Britain. Inspired by experiences in the United States,Rees
purchased Hildenborough Hall,a large country house in Kent,
and turned it into an influential Christian conference centre.
Roy Cattell was manager of Hildenborough Hall and was
therefore at the centre of the continuing evangelistic develop-
ments of the period. Lindsay Glegg, an evangelical business-
40
man, saw in Rees an embodiment of Moody’s ministry.
American influences were becoming stronger.
The years 1946 to 1949 were notable for the fresh evange-
listic impetus coming from Billy Graham and his associates,
and for new appointments within the Evangelical Alliance.
Hugh Gough, then rural dean of Islington and later bishop of
Barking and Archbishop of Sydney, became an honorary sec-
retary in 1946, and a year later Gilbert Kirby, who would be-
come Alliance General Secretary, joined the Executive
Council. These were key figures in a time of transition.
Gough warned in 1947 that continual tramping over the
41
same soil could turn a path into a rut. There was to be a
new stress on relevant forms of evangelism. A statement

38 G.B. Shea, Then Sings My Soul (Old Tappan/London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1968), p.95.
39 The Christian, 29 April 1948, p.6.
40 The Christian, 24 January 1946, p.9; 27 April 1951, p.3. I am indebted to
Maurice Rowlandson for his help with information about this period, especially
about Roy Cattell.
41 H.R.Gough,‘One Great Evangelical Fellowship’,Evangelical Christendom,Jan-
uary-March 1947, pp.1-2.
220 One Body in Christ

issued by the Alliance in 1947 covered a number of issues, but

only one of these was printed in capital letters. The Alliance
called for ‘a return to true EVANGELICALISM, that evan-
gelicalism which has at its heart the EVANGEL, the gospel of
42
salvation, free for each and every one to accept’. Hugh
Gough made it clear in 1948 that in his view it was time for a
complete change in the policy and leadership of the Alli-
43
ance. When Gooch retired in 1949, and received an OBE, it
was stated that the Alliance would continue to promote unity,
assist persecuted Christians, be involved in evangelistic work
44
and emphasise prayer. This suggested continuity, but
changes were afoot. The enterprising Roy Cattell was
appointed to a secretarial role to ‘put the Alliance on the
map’, and would soon make his presence felt.

The Alliance and British Evangelism

At the meeting of the Executive Council of the Alliance on

27 July 1950, the fourteen members present – who included a
number of new faces such as Geoffrey King, minister of the
East London Tabernacle – expressed their optimism about
the future. The experience of the past year had been encour-
aging, and there was particular stress on the role of Cattell,
who was45taking on the task of building up the work of the
Alliance. The momentum increased. Lt.-Gen. Sir Arthur
Smith, the Executive Council Chairman, reported at a meet-
ing in February 1951 that plans were moving ahead for a
major evangelical ‘Exhibition’ and associated public meetings
during the national Festival of Britain to be held later in
1951. Cattell had met with a group of evangelists. It was
suggested that the slogan for the campaign, which would ulti-
mately draw in 160 evangelical organisations, should be ‘For
42 Evangelical Christendom, April-June 1947, p.31.
43 Executive Council Minutes, 28 October 1948.
44 Evangelical Christendom, October-December 1949, p.85.
45 Executive Council Minutes, 27 July 1950.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 221
46
Such a Time as This’. At a further meeting, in May, names
of missioners were mentioned. These included John Stott,
who became rector of All Souls Church, Langham Place,
London, in 1950 at the age of twenty-nine, and in the same
year started a training school in All Souls to equip church
members for active evangelism. Cattell, with typical enthusi-
asm, wrote in Evangelical Christendom that the Alliance’s con-
tribution would ‘undoubtedly form one of the most
impressive of the various acts of witness being arranged in
connection with the Festival of Britain’, and that the display
of evangelical unity and strength 47
would be ‘of a character and
on a scale never before seen’. Evangelical confidence was
certainly evident.
Other evangelistic preachers who were utilised during the
Exhibition campaign were Tom Rees and his brother Dick,
Alan Redpath and Stephen Olford, both of whom would be-
come known as effective Baptist pastors and evangelists, and
W.E. Sangster, who was by then a vice-President of the Alli-
ance. On two nights 7,500 people filled the Methodist Cen-
tral Hall, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Chapel. On 27
September 1951, as the Alliance’s Executive Council consid-
ered the results of the campaign, it was agreed that ‘many so-
cieties had come into close contact with others doing similar
work’ and that the seeds of closer co-operation between
evangelical agencies had been sown. It seemed to the Alliance
leadership that the Alliance now had ‘a great opportunity to
be of still greater service to the evangelical world’, although it
was also recognised that the Alliance had the problem, which
was to be a continuing one, of how to encourage united ac-
tivities without ‘appearing to dictate’ (as it was put) to other
societies. Further suggestions were made. The Alliance’s week
of prayer could, it was thought, be a launch pad for larger
events. Meetings for prayer were held in Baptist Church
House, Southampton Row, and were therefore small in scale,
46 Executive Council Minutes, 22 February 1951.
47 Executive Council Minutes, 24 May 1951; T. Dudley-Smith, John Stott: The
Making of a Leader, p.296; Evangelical Christendom, May 1951, pp.33-5.
222 One Body in Christ

but there was interest in using Westminster Central Hall

again. Sangster, the Central Hall minister, was preparing a let-
ter to be sent to all those who had responded during the Ex-
hibition. Lindsay Glegg, who was present at the Alliance
executive, floated the idea of the Alliance organising na-
tion-wide evangelistic campaigns. Tom Rees, also present,
considered that this could be done using local missioners.
48
United witness in 1953 or 1954 was discussed. The creative
ideas emanating from Rees to use British evangelists, how-
ever, would be overshadowed by more widely publicised ini-
tiatives in mass evangelism in America.
As Rees’ Executive Officer, Roy Cattell was in close touch
with evangelistic developments that were taking place in
America as well as in Britain. It was at Graham’s Los Angeles
Crusade of 1949, when such celebrities as Stuart Hamblen, a
popular cowboy singer, Louis Zamperini, an Olympic track
star, and Jim Vaus, a wiretapper with underworld connections
in the USA, were converted. All of this guaranteed Graham’s
position as America’s foremost evangelist.At an Alliance meet-
ing held on 22 November 1951 – attended by Hugh Gough, J.
Chalmers Lyon (a Presbyterian minister in London), Ernest
Kevan (the Principal of London Bible College), Gilbert Kirby
(Kevan’s colleague at London Bible College), Frank
Colquhoun (the Alliance’s Editorial Secretary) and Roy
Cattell – it was reported through an intermediary called Ralph
Mitchell that Graham had signalled his willingness to address
49
church leaders on evangelism. Negotiations, which took
place during the period March–July 1952, were far from
straightforward.Alliance leaders also met with Geoffrey Fisher,
Archbishop of Canterbury, who indicated that the Church of
England would not officially support a campaign conduced by
Graham alone,although it would not oppose such a venture.A
meeting was subsequently held with Francis House and Bryan

48 Executive Council Minutes, 27 September 1951.

49 Executive Council Minutes, 22 November 1951; F. Colquhoun, Harringay
Story, pp.17-8.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 223

Green of the British Council of Churches (BCC), the ecu-

50
menical body that had been set up in 1942.
Further to these discussions, Roy Cattell went to the USA
with the Alliance’s Treasurer, J.H. Cordle, and spoke with the
Graham team. The ideas being put forward as a result of the
BCC discussions included the idea of a pilot crusade, but Gra-
ham was not prepared to co-operate in such a scheme. In view
of this,the Alliance decided that there should be no further of-
ficial co-operation with the BCC in arranging what became
the Greater London Crusade at Harringay Arena from
March–May 1954. The intriguing statement was made that a
campaign of the kind proposed was best sponsored by ‘a body
51
of responsible enthusiasts outside ecclesiastical organisation’.
The fact that such responsible enthusiasts could be drawn to-
gether in Britain was due in no small measure to bodies such as
the Keswick Convention, the Inter-Varsity Fellowship and
Hildenborough Hall, to new Alliance leaders such as Gough,
Kirby and Cattell, and to Graham’s influence in Britain during
the later 1940s. An outstanding example of someone with
many connecting links was Gilbert Kirby. In addition to his
lecturing role at London Bible College, Kirby was at this time
pastor of Ashford Congregational Church,and was involved in
the Alliance, in Hildenborough Hall, and in Martyn
52
Lloyd-Jones’ fellowship for ministers.
The committee which planned Harringay in the period
leading up to 1954 included Lindsay Glegg, minister of Down
Lodge Hall, Wandsworth, and a Keswick young people’s
speaker who had interests in evangelical groups such as Chris-
tian Endeavour and Crusaders. He was immoderately de-
scribed in an American YFC report in 1946 as one who
‘probably has more influence on British Christian life than any
53
other man’. Also on the committee were Tom Livermore,
50 Executive Council Minutes, 22 May 1952; 24 July 1952.
51 Colquhoun, Harringay, p.27.
52 For the role of London Bible College in this period see Randall, Educating
Evangelicalism, chapter 4.
53 CN 224, Box 1, Folder 17, Billy Graham Archives.
224 One Body in Christ

who had used Graham as the main speaker in a much ac-

claimed mission to his own parish, St John’s, Deptford, in 1947
54
and was involved in Youth for Christ, and Joe Blinco, who
had invited Graham to his Methodist Church in Southampton
and who would later join the Graham team.As a result of Gra-
ham’s visits to Birmingham between 1946 and 1949 he forged
a lasting friendship with Alfred Owen, the Chairman of the
large engineering firm Rubery, Owen & Co. Owen became a
powerful evangelical force through his work for Birmingham
55
YFC, and then as treasurer of the Harringay Crusade. An-
other businessman, Oliver Stott, was active in supporting Gra-
ham’s visits to Britian, and in fact hosted him on his first night
in England. A key figure within the Harringay team was
Maurice Rowlandson, an Evangelical Alliance staff member
whose personal history as Billy Graham’s representative in
Britain was to be so closely intertwined with the evangelist’s
work that his autobiography was entitled Life with Billy. This
association started when Rowlandson met Graham at a Lon-
56
don YFC presentation in 1948.
There was some confusion as to the role of YFC in the pe-
riod when preparations were being made for the Harringay
Crusade. Roy Cattell had a meeting with Tom Livermore and
Eric Hutchings, the director of British Youth for Christ, at
which they discovered that YFC in America was thinking of
sending teams to Britain to participate in an evangelistic effort.
Nothing more came of this and it seems likely that Graham
discouraged YFC from becoming involved in a large-scale en-
terprise at the time of the Harringay Crusade. The next step
was to bring Graham to London for preparatory meetings. In
March 1952 he spoke to about 700 British church leaders at a
54 The Christian, 20 March 1947, p.11.
55 D.J. Jeremy, ‘Businessmen in Interdenominational Activity: Birmingham
Youth for Christ, 1940s-1950s, The Baptist Quarterly 33.7 (1990), pp.336-43; D.J.
Jeremy, Capitalists and Christians: Business Leaders and the Churches in Britain,
1900-1960 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), pp.397-410.
56 M. Rowlandson, Life with Billy: An Autobiography (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1992), p.11.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 225

reception in Church House,Westminster.His speech was care-

fully calculated to play down any idea that America had the an-
swers to the problems of Britain. Graham stated, in an address
that was widely circulated, that as he looked around ‘and par-
ticularly as I think of America’, he was desperately afraid. He
went on to argue that both America and Britain faced perils
from within, the threat of communism from outside and the
imminent possibility of God’s judgement. He saw the period
1920-40 as one of spiritual drought in America, characterised
by a church that was ‘prayerless and powerless’, and by
‘super-sensational, hyper-emotional’ evangelism. Mass evan-
gelism, he stated, was only one form of outreach and was
largely ineffective unless conducted in full conjunction with
57
churches in any given district. The reference to unacceptable
styles of evangelism was designed to assure British church lead-
ers that this was not what he would promote.

Harringay and its Aftermath

The scale of the Greater London Crusade at Harringay Arena
was unprecedented. It attracted an aggregate attendance of
over two million at all associated meetings, including 120,000
at Wembley Stadium on the closing day of the campaign,
15,000 of whom had to be accommodated on the pitch itself.
In addition, demand for final day tickets was so great that the
Alliance had to arrange an overflow rally for a further 55,000
people at White City. Although Billy Graham was open to the
idea of employing what he called a ‘different technique’ in
Britain, his method of making an appeal at the end of his
address and then linking up those who came forward and
‘made a decision’
58
with a counsellor, was the method used at
Harringay. It would become standard practice in much mass
evangelism in Britain. Graham received the approval of

57 B. Graham, The Work of an Evangelist (World’s Evangelical Alliance: London,

1953), pp.7-12; Evangelical Christendom, May 1952, p.40.
58 Executive Council Minutes, 24 September 1953.
226 One Body in Christ
59
Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Leslie
Weatherhead, minister of the City Temple, London.
Weatherhead was widely quoted when he said: ‘what does
fundamentalist theology matter compared with gathering in
the people60we have all missed and getting them to the point of
decision?’ In this period Graham,as he received support from
church leaders who were not evangelicals,made it clear that he61
did not wish to draw people out of their existing churches.
Such evangelical reservations about Graham as there were in
Britain tended to come from some in the Calvinistic camp.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones declined to take part in ministers’ meet-
ings held in conjunction with Harringay. He included in his
prayer at Westminster Chapel on 1 March 1954 the ‘brethren’
who were ‘ministering in another part of the city’,but
62
spoke of
reports from the campaign as ‘most confusing’. Yet looking
back on Harringay, the author John Pollock emphasised the
unity in 63evangelism and prayer that had come out of Graham’s
crusade. This was exactly what the Evangelical Alliance
hoped would happen.
The members of the Executive Council of the Alliance
were convinced,by the end of the Harringay Crusade,that – as
Sir Arthur Smith, the Chairman, put it – ‘all other aspects of
the work of the Alliance was [sic] secondary to the follow up of
the Greater London Crusade’. There were suggestions of an-
other major campaign, although it was recognised that this
would need ‘a vast sum of money and enormous headquar-
ters’.The Executive Council did not commit itself to this plan,
but the thirteen members present did agree that ‘the Evangeli-
cal Alliance should regard evangelism as its primary task’. The
Alliance was seen as having a ‘tremendous responsibility,which
if it did not undertake nobody else would’. Military figures
such as Lt.-Gen. Sir William Dobbie and Major Batt were
59 In the Canterbury Diocesan Notes, June 1954.
60 Martin, Billy Graham Story, p.181.
61 Christian Century 77.7 (1960), p.188.
62 Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, p.338.
63 J.C. Pollock, Christianity Today, Vol. 2, No. 15 (1958), p.11.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 227

attracted by the idea of an ongoing spiritual crusade.With pas-

toral leaders such as John Stott,Ernest Kevan and Gilbert Kirby
on the Executive Council,however,it was unlikely that the Al-
liance’s agenda would be solely evangelistic in nature. It was
also agreed that ‘the Alliance had a vital responsibility of minis-
try to the clergy and the churches to foster and strengthen the
64
spiritual life of the churches’.
It was never likely that the Alliance would concentrate ex-
clusively on mass evangelism.During the 1950s,through Ken-
neth Hylson-Smith and others, it was heavily involved in the
running of a students’ hostel, the Alliance Club, in London. It
also sponsored film evangelism in prisons – a project initiated
by Billy Graham’s close friend Oliver Stott. The Alliance Club
was mainly for overseas students. The Duke of Edinburgh vis-
ited the Club in 1953. By the end of the decade hundreds of
students from many different countries had been given accom-
modation in the hostel. The film ministry, which was the re-
sponsibility of Maurice Rowlandson, was one of the major
activities of the Alliance’s Extensions Department. Over a pe-
riod of five years every penal establishment in England, Wales
65
and Scotland was visited. Lindsay Glegg proposed to the Alli-
ance in November 1954 a follow-up convention for the Gra-
ham Crusade to be held at Butlins Camp, and this became an
annual event – the Filey holiday week convention. It was
widely recognised that the Graham Crusades of 1954 in Lon-
don,together with a further highly influential Scottish crusade
in the Kelvin Hall, Glasgow, in the following year, had made a
major contribution to a change in evangelical outlook. The
sponsorship of Harringay by the Evangelical Alliance could
have substantially narrowed Graham’s support,but in the event
evangelical Christianity was given a significant boost. In what
was to be the last issue of Evangelical Christendom in September
1954, it was suggested that Harringay had indeed marked a
66
turning point in the history of the Alliance.
64 Executive Council Minutes, 25 March 1954.
65 Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Autumn 1961, p.5.
66 Evangelical Christendom, September 1954, p.65.
228 One Body in Christ

For Cattell,who liked to operate on a grand scale,Harringay

had been a dream come true. Alliance staff numbers rose
sharply as a direct result. After publication of Evangelical Chris-
tendom came to an end,a more popular style of magazine called
Crusade was launched. Although its title confirmed an initial
relation to the Harringay campaign,it was not a direct publica-
tion of the Alliance.For its part,the Council of the Alliance be-
gan at the same time to issue the Evangelical Broadsheet – a
regular digest of about eight pages. Although there was a re-
markable flurry of activity, it was evident that the level of Alli-
ance staffing could not be maintained. Peter Hemery, a
businessman who was brought in to look at the Alliance’s af-
fairs,dismissed most of the existing staff and set out in a letter to
Maurice Rowlandson of 5 October 1954 his view that unless
new projects were undertaken the Evangelical Alliance had ‘a
very frail future’. He believed that the only true Alliance mat-
ters were in the field of hostels and in the organising of the
week of prayer.A smaller movement called the ‘Movement for
World Evangelisation’(MWE) was running the Filey Conven-
tion. The first Convention attracted 1,700 people, of whom
1,200 were under thirty-five years old. Hemery wondered
whether the holiday camp group Butlins might link up with
evangelical ventures directed at youth, but he did not see the
67
Alliance as capable of running such a project.
There had been plans to unite the Evangelical Alliance
with the MWE, and Cattell had been earmarked as the prob-
able secretary of the merged organisation. There had, how-
ever, been concern about Alliance overspending during the
later period of Cattell’s secretaryship. When it became clear
that plans regarding the future were not coming to fruition as
he had hoped, Cattell resigned from the Alliance and em-
barked on training for Anglican ministry. He was a curate at
Christ Church, Beckenham, and then became Vicar of
Moulton, Northamptonshire. At the point of Cattell’s resig-
67 P. Hemery to M. Rowlandson, 5 October 1955. I am grateful to Maurice
Rowlandson for this letter.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 229

nation, some of the Alliance’s council members were dis-

turbed to learn that there was talk of Ben Peake from the
Movement for World Evangelisation being appointed as Sec-
retary of the Alliance. It emerged that there was opposition to
this move and indeed a growing opposition to the merger as a
68
whole. By March 1956 it was clear that it was going to be
impossible to merge the two bodies. Steps were taken to find
a new General Secretary for the Alliance and Gilbert Kirby
was persuaded by Hugh Gough to allow himself to be con-
sidered. Kirby was appointed as General Secretary from 1
November and together with his team, which included a
gifted editorial secretary in Timothy Dudley-Smith (later
bishop of Thetford and also well known for his hymns), and
the entrepreneurial Rowlandson, he set to work mapping out
the future of the Alliance.
Under Kirby’s leadership evangelism continued to be seen
as a fundamental commitment of the Alliance. Developments
in the 1960s will be explored in chapter 10. It was accepted by
some commentators in the late 1950s that Harringay had not
been the beginning of a revival and that new ways forward in
69
evangelism would need to be explored. Kirby, who was inti-
mately acquainted with the strengths and weaknesses of the
Alliance, consistently took the view that its strength was the
role that it could play in encouraging evangelicals to put evan-
gelism and spiritual revival at the top of their agenda. Its weak-
ness was that it was often able to bring only limited influence
to bear when evangelicals disagreed. In the light of this, he at-
tempted to bring evangelical leaders together in conferences.
In 1959 Kirby wrote about the way in which evangelicals
co-operated in mission through such organisations as the in-
terdenominational overseas missionary societies, Keswick, the
Children’s Special Service Mission, the Inter-Varsity Fellow-
ship and ‘a host of kindred societies’. In the same issue of the
Alliance’s Evangelical Broadsheet, however, he referred to ‘our
68 Honorary Secretaries of the Alliance to Sir Arthur Smith, 3 January 1956.
69 Crusade, March 1959, p.5.
230 One Body in Christ

sadly divided evangelical ranks’.70 This aspect of the British

evangelical scene caused Kirby much concern and it was a situ-
ation he consistently sought to improve.
Kirby also worked hard to draw evangelicals together to en-
gage in more effective mission overseas. He became secretary
of the Evangelical Missionary Alliance (EMA), which was
formed in November 1958, and which drew together forty
missionary societies and eight evangelical training colleges.
Within two years there were seventy societies and colleges in
EMA membership.John Savage,who was a member of the Ex-
ecutive Council of the Evangelical Alliance, was vice-Chair-
man of the EMA. As had been the case earlier in the century,
the challenge of Christian mission to a world that suffered
from divisions caused by ethnicity and by the unequal distribu-
tion of wealth raised the question of the divided state of Chris-
tianity. Reference was made in Crusade in 1960 to the role of
the missiologist Stephen Neill, who was working for the
World Council of Churches in Geneva. The editorial com-
ment in Crusade reflected the continued view of the Alliance
about the unity of the church,a view that was at odds with that
of the WCC.‘The Church of Christ is one’,was the argument,
‘and our experience of that unity does not wait for a formal re-
71
union of our churches’. A body of enthusiasts united by the
Spirit, with a minimal structure such as that of the EMA, was
seen as the right kind of missionary expression.

Conclusion

The evangelistic successes of the nineteenth century created

within British evangelicalism a belief that a certain style
needed to be adopted in order to be effective. The Moody and
Sankey method, which was adopted and adapted by Billy
Graham, was to be influential for at least one hundred years.

70 The Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Winter 1959, pp.1-3.

71 Crusade, March 1960, p.5.
 A Body of Responsible Enthusiasts 231

There were new initiatives in the early decades of the twenti-

eth century, most notably among youth, but it was the Billy
Graham crusades that were to bring fresh hope to many evan-
gelicals. The beginnings of Graham’s influence in Britain can
be located in the year immediately after the Second World
War. This was also a period that saw the re-vitalisation of the
Evangelical Alliance. New leaders such as Hugh Gough were
pleading for united action.In 1946 Gough stated:‘It is essential
that we should develop a deeper sense of our unity as members
of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church. Evangelical individualism
has obscured the corporate spirit and our church life has been
sorely impoverished thereby.’ Gough saw the post-war Alli-
ance as a rallying point for all evangelicals
72
who wished to com-
bine their evangelistic efforts. The earlier Alliance vision of
catholicity was still to be found. But the high hopes of the
mid-1950s, that responsible enthusiasts could come together
in broadly based evangelistic endeavour, would not be sus-
tained. Indeed, as we shall see in the next chapter, just twelve
years after Harringay evangelical unity would be strained to
the limit.

72 Evangelical Christendom, January-March 1947, pp.1f.

 10

Benevolent Neutrality
The Alliance and the Ecumenical Movement

Hugh Gough represented the thinking of a new wave of youn-

ger post-war leaders within the Alliance. In early 1947 he
wrote: ‘It is essential that we should develop a deeper sense of
our unity as members of Christ’s holy catholic church. Evan-
gelical individualism has obscured the corporate spirit 1
and our
church life has been sorely impoverished thereby.’ Gough’s
comments were prompted by the formation of the World
Council of Churches (WCC), which was then in process.
Inevitably, the issue highlighted the question of evangelical
relationships with the wider church. In 1946 the Alliance had
stated that it had nothing but goodwill for the British Council
of Churches and the WCC,calling them ‘great and representa-
tive bodies’. At the same time, however,
2
it had stressed that it
was itself distinctively evangelical. A request from the WCC
in 1947 to merge WCC and Alliance weeks of prayer was duly
rejected.Even so,Gough chose to reiterate the traditional Alli-
ance theme of catholicity, and was keen to stress that although
it was an association of individuals, it did not encourage indi-
vidualism. The Council of the Alliance followed Gough’s arti-
cle later in the same year with an ‘Evangelical Charter’. Some
saw this as a statement of opposition to the World Council of

1 Evangelical Christendom, January-March 1947, pp.1-2.

2 Evangelical Christendom, April-June 1946, p.50.
 Benevolent Neutrality 233

Churches, but Gough denied the charge. Instead, he insisted,

‘The World Council of Churches is out to achieve something
which does not yet exist and that is the union of churches. We
in the Alliance are out to demonstrate and foster something
which already exists and
3
that is the unity of the Spirit amongst
all Christian people.’ As Kessler notes, the Alliance in 1846
was actually trying to achieve something that did not yet exist
just as much as the World Council of Churches in 1948. Both
were trying to manifest unity rather than merely recognising it.
Having4 said this, their means to this end were undeniably dif-
ferent. In fact, closer examination shows that these distinct
approaches to unity led to enormous tensions.

The Alliance and the World Council of Churches

The Alliance’s Evangelical Charter of 1947 stated:

As the World’s Evangelical Alliance is an alliance not of churches, nor of
church societies, but of individual Christians, its relationship with the World
Council of Churches is clear. The World Council of Churches may (as some
believe) have come into existence partly as a result of the prayers and witness of
the World’s Evangelical Alliance, but its objective is entirely different. The Al-
liance advocates the close unity of Protestantism and works for a more real fel-
lowship between all evangelicals. It believes that here in real spiritual unity (a
unity which already exists) and not in an outward uniformity (a uniformity
which would have to be imposed against insuperable difficulties) lies the hope
of revival and Christian victory.5

The first point of distinctiveness, that the Alliance was not an

alliance of churches or church societies, was one that would
not continue. By the 1960s, churches would be invited to join.
Second, it is difficult to see the clear difference between the
Alliance’s advocacy of ‘the close unity of Protestantism’and the
early goals of the WCC.Although the ultimate objective of the

3 Evangelical Christendom, July-September 1947, p.79.

4 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.91-2.
5 Evangelical Christendom, July-September 1947, p.79.
234 One Body in Christ

WCC was broader Christian unity, it was essentially a

Protestant initiative and brought together Protestants. Finally,
there is a supposed contrast between spiritual unity and out-
ward uniformity. In fact, the WCC never stated that it was in
favour of uniformity,and the early leadership of the WCC was
certainly committed to spiritual as well as organisational one-
ness.
Although the issue of ecumenism would become highly
contentious among evangelicals, this was not so obvious in
1948. Kessler records that at least two (unnamed) members of
the British Alliance were present at the 1948 conference in
Amsterdam at which the World Council of Churches was
6
formed. Moreover, in January of the following year this com-
ment appeared in an Evangelical Christendom editorial:
True evangelicals assure us that these dangers – 1) false union outside of the
truth, 2) reunion with Rome, 3) formation of a super-church – have so far
been successfully avoided. The Council (of the Alliance), therefore feel that
the right policy for evangelicals is to avoid opposition to the World Council,
but courageously to point out wrong tendencies and carefully and prayerfully
to foster that unity of the Spirit,which already exists between all true believers
and is something infinitely deeper than the outward form of union which the
World Council has brought into being. If evangelicals oppose the World
Council of Churches or abstain from co-operating with it, the Council may
well be captured by the Modernists or the Ritualists,but if we play our part we
may be an instrument in the hand of God for reviving the churches.7

Kessler regards this pronouncement as ambiguous. It could

mean, he suggests, that evangelicals were urged to co-operate
with other Christians in order that the World Council’s
attempts at forming an organisational unity might by God’s
grace be so deepened and extended as to result in a true unity
of the Spirit. However, it could also mean that evangelicals
were expected to inject into the World Council’s basically
man-made and inessential
8
unity the real unity that existed only
between true believers. Frankly,it is harder to draw the second
6 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p. 92.
7 Evangelical Christendom, January-March 1949, p.1.
8 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, 92.
 Benevolent Neutrality 235

inference than the first, although it was hardly surprising that

an Alliance pronouncement would give priority to the unity
of the Spirit. Certainly, Hugh Gough’s conviction in 1948 was
that the Alliance could provide spiritual inspiration for the
WCC 9
and should continue to adopt a middle, or bridge, posi-
tion.
In the autumn of 1949 the Alliance Council looked again at
the question of its attitude towards the WCC, but did not feel
able to give full support to the new movement. Nonetheless, it
is clear that the Alliance’s leadership did not wish to be seen as
being in conflict with the WCC, and resolved that ‘the Alli-
ance, for the time being therefore, will adopt an attitude of be-
10
nevolent neutrality’. In the meantime,steps were being taken
by evangelicals in the USA to seek to set up a world evangelical
11
fellowship – a plan that had, of course, faltered in 1846. The
Evangelical Alliance of the post-war period in Britain still
carried the cumbersome and confusing title ‘The World’s
Evangelical Alliance (British Organisation)’. This suggested
some ambiguity as to the balance of its national and interna-
tional status. There was a feeling, as the Alliance Council
acknowledged in late 1949, ‘that the Alliance is too much
centred on Britain’. Evangelicals in some countries, however,
understandably misconstrued the words ‘British Organisation’
as meaning that the entire Alliance was British-run. ‘This’, the
Alliance Council conceded, ‘tends to hold them back from
closer co-operation with the parent body and in some cases has
led to a national organization being formed with the same aims
and objects as the Evangelical Alliance, but adopting another
12
name in order to keep its national identity.’ There was
pressure on the British Organisation, therefore, to foster trans-
national co-operation.From the British perspective,the World
Council of Churches was undoubtedly a stimulus to thinking
about wider evangelical unity, even if moves towards a world
9 Executive Council Minutes, 17 November 1948.
10 ‘The New Alliance’,Evangelical Christendom,October-December 1949,p.86.
11 See Howard, The Dream that Would Not Die.
12 ‘The New alliance’, Evangelical Christendom, October-December 1949, p.86.
236 One Body in Christ

fellowship were not made simply in response to the creation of

the WCC.
In North America, however, there was a significant new
evangelical movement dedicated to promoting evangelical
unity. The American branch of the Evangelical Alliance had
officially ceased to function in 1944 and a fresh body, the Na-
13
tional Association of Evangelicals (NAE), had been formed.
This was to affect British evangelicals significantly. In 1946
Martyn Lloyd-Jones called a meeting at Westminster Chapel
at which Harold J. Ockenga, the President of the NAE, was
the speaker. This provoked Alliance fears that the NAE might
be about to create a new pan-evangelical organisation in Eu-
rope. Hugh Gough went to see Lloyd-Jones about this, but he
14
was non-committal about the American plans. Lloyd-Jones
did, however, persuade the NAE to consult Alliance leaders.
It was understood that the NAE would wish to proceed on
15
narrower and more exclusive lines than the Alliance. In
1948 a meeting about possible world links was held in
Clarens, Switzerland, and in preparation for that meeting
Gough and Henry Martyn Gooch met in London with
Lloyd-Jones and E.J. Poole-Connor, who in 1922 had
founded the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical
Churches (FIEC). Differences over policies of evangelical
co-operation and the ecumenical dimension became increas-
16
ingly apparent in the summer of 1948. By the end of the
year the FIEC had made it plain that it could not condone
the way in which the Alliance invited to its platform those
whose views were, from the FIEC standpoint, divergent from
17
the Alliance’s doctrinal basis. This was a foretaste of
divisions to come.

13 Howard, The Dream that Would Not Die, pp.26-7.

14 Executive Council Minutes, 25 April 1946; 25 July 1946.
15 Executive Council Minutes, 1 July 1948.
16 Executive Council Minutes, 22 July 1948; 23 September 1948.
17 Executive Council Minutes, 25 November 1948.
 Benevolent Neutrality 237

The World Evangelical Fellowship

Given the differences of opinion in Britain, American interest

in the creation of a pan-evangelical body became crucial. It
was the outlook of the Americans, who were generally criti-
cal of the wider Christian scene in America outside evangeli-
calism, which would have a major influence on discussions in
the period 1948 to 1951. At the preliminary discussions in
Clarens, the view was expressed that the weakness of the
World Council of Churches was that it did not in any way
bind the members of the participating churches to the Basis
of Faith agreed upon by the delegates. From 7 to 10 March
1950 an International Delegate Conference was held at
Hildenborough Hall in Kent, the centre that had been set up
by the British evangelist, Tom Rees. Those who attended in-
cluded representatives from twelve countries in Europe, in-
cluding the British Evangelical Alliance organisation. There
were also delegates from the NAE in America. Lt.-Gen. Sir
Arthur Smith, Chairman of the British Alliance, was elected
Chairman of a new international committee and (partly in
view of the problems of 1846) it was agreed that a ‘basis of
belief would be the foundation stone’, while each affiliated
group would have freedom 18
in ‘the application of this basis to
their national situation’.
More concrete steps towards a world fellowship were taken
at a conference at Gordon Divinity School in Boston, USA,
4–8 September 1950, at which it was recommended to set up
an International Association of Evangelicals. The agreed pur-
pose of this body was: (i) to witness to evangelical and historic
Christianity; (ii) to encourage and promote fellowship among
evangelicals; (iii) to stimulate evangelism and promote united
evangelical action in all spheres. The proposed statement of
faith was as follows:

18 World Evangelical Fellowship Bulletin, No. 2 (1964), pp.1-2.

238 One Body in Christ

1 The inspiration and entire trustworthiness of the Holy

Scriptures as originally given and their supreme authority
in all matters of faith and conduct.
2 One God eternally existent in three Persons, Father, Son
and Holy Ghost.
3 The deity of our Lord Jesus Christ,his virgin birth,his sin-
less human life,his divine miracles,his vicarious and aton-
ing death, his bodily resurrection, his ascension, his
mediatorial intercession, and his personal return in power
and glory.
4 The salvation of lost and sinful man through the shed
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and regeneration by the
Holy Spirit by faith apart from works.
5 The indwelling of the believer by the Holy Spirit en-
abling him to live a godly life and to witness to the Lord.
6 The resurrection both of the saved and the lost; they that
are saved into the resurrection of life and they that are lost
unto the resurrection of damnation.
7 The spiritual unity of all believers in our Lord Jesus Christ,
composing his church, the Body of Christ.

This form of words drew to some extent from the 1846 Alli-
ance statement of faith. There were some significant changes,
however – most notably the omission of the statement about
the right to private judgement,and the lack of an article on the
ministry and the sacraments. By the 1950s, private judgement
was not the issue that it had been a century before,and the new
statement also reflected a loss of the sense of churchmanship
among evangelicals. Perhaps even more significant was the in-
sistence of evangelicals from the USA that the word ‘infallible’
should be inserted into the first article so that it read: ‘The
Holy Scriptures as originally given by God, divinely inspired,
infallible,entirely trustworthy and the supreme authority in all
matters of faith and conduct.’ During this period of doctrinal
debate and organisational development the involvement of the
NAE was a notable feature. The NAE formed a Commission
on International Relations with Harold Ockenga as Chairman
 Benevolent Neutrality 239

and J.Elwin Wright (who had led a body called the New Eng-
land Fellowship) as executive secretary. The purpose of this
group was to encourage worldwide evangelical co-operation.
Together with NAE leader Clyde W. Taylor, J. Elwin Wright
was requested to make a world tour to contact evangelicals in
as many countries as possible. From 12 October 1950 to 28
January 1951 Taylor and Wright undertook a punishing
schedule, visiting Tokyo, Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Cal-
cutta, Bombay, New Delhi, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Jerusa-
lem, Athens, Rome, Zurich, Geneva,19
Marseilles, Barcelona,
Paris, Amsterdam and London.
This flurry of activity generated further interest.The interna-
tional committee formed at Hildenborough Hall met in Janu-
ary 1951 at Woudschoten, a student conference centre on the
outskirts of Zeist, near Utrecht, in the Netherlands. It was rec-
ommended that the name of the new body should be the World
Evangelical Fellowship. The committee invited evangelicals
from around the world to an international convention at
Woudschoten in August 1951. Among the speakers was John
Stott,rector of All Souls’Church,Langham Place,London who
expounded the theme of ‘The Holy Spirit and the Church’.The
name World Evangelical Fellowship was approved. Because
some who were present were wary of joining a group opposed
to ecumenical endeavour, it was stated that the Fellowship was
‘not a council of churches,nor is it in opposition to any other in-
ternational or interdenominational organization. It seeks to
work and witness in a constructive manner, ever maintaining
20
the truth in love’. There were still fears,however – particularly
among evangelicals in Europe with whom British Alliance
leaders had traditionally enjoyed good relationships – that the
body might ‘become ultra-fundamentalist and adopt a belliger-
21
ent attitude towards the ecumenical movement’.
19 Gilbert Kirby to Everett Cattell,6 May 1965,cited by Howard,The Dream That
Would Not Die, p.29. see also, Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.95-8.
20 N. Goodall, The Ecumenical Movement (London: Oxford University Press,
1964), p.153.
21 Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Autumn 1962, p.5.
240 One Body in Christ

Although most delegates affirmed the need for a worldwide

fellowship of evangelicals,when the proposal to establish WEF
was voted on there was not unanimity. Eleven countries were
in favour, but Germany abstained, and France, Denmark, Nor-
way and Sweden opposed it since they wanted the Alliance to
continue as before.Indeed,Spain was the only continental Eu-
ropean country that joined WEF. One of the main concerns
among the Europeans was that the word ‘infallible’implied too
mechanical an understanding of biblical inspiration. There
were also concerns that co-operation with those who might
not hold to the Basis of Faith in its entirety was being prohib-
ited. These objections led to some hesitation among represen-
tatives of the British Alliance, but they decided to join
22
nonetheless. A constitution was drawn up consisting of the
following five points:

1 Belief without mental reservations in the basic doctrines

of our faith as expressed in the statement of faith.
2 Acceptance into active co-operation with us of all who
hold these doctrines and give evidence of loyalty to them,
though there may be differences in conviction on other
points of doctrine or of ecclesiastical policy.
3 Obedience to the commands of Scripture by renuncia-
tion of all co-operation with unbelief in or apostasy from
these doctrines.
4 Recognition of the complete autonomy of every constit-
uent national or area-wide body within the Fellowship.
5 Dedication to a programme of mutual helpfulness in the
propagation of the gospel, the defence of Christian liber-
ties and the attainment of objectives which are of com-
mon concern.

As well as the creation of a world evangelical fellowship, evan-

gelical division also resulted from the Woudschoten confer-
ence. In 1952 representatives from several European countries
22 Executive Council Minutes, 24 July 1952.
 Benevolent Neutrality 241

met in Germany and established their own separate European

Evangelical Alliance. The breach with WEF would not be
healed until 1968, up to which point WEF was able to make
little headway in Europe. The stance of WEF towards the
World Council of Churches also created divisions of opinion.
In 1962 it held a conference in Hong Kong and at that confer-
ence the delegates from the United States suggested that article
3 of the constitution, which already spoke about the limits of
co-operation, should read: ‘Obedience to the commands of
Scripture by avoidance of any association which would com-
promise its loyalty to the statement of faith.’ Many of the dele-
gates present, however, felt that to adopt wording like this
would mean that WEF would find itself in open conflict with
the World Council Churches. This may have been the think-
ing of some who proposed the amendment,but after consider- 23
able discussion the proposal to change article 3 was dropped.
The neutrality of the British Alliance towards ecumenism was
being maintained, but the conflict being played out on the
world stage would soon become public in Britain.

Roots of Division in Britain

As we have seen, the seeds of division over ecumenism lay in

the 1940s. The anti-ecumenical convictions held by some
British evangelicals during this period found institutional
expression in the establishment in 1952 of the British Evangel-
ical Council (BEC), then known as the British Committee for
Common Evangelical Action. This was formed in St
Columba’s Free Church in Edinburgh. Its founders were
G.N.M. Collins and Murdoch Macrae of the Free Church of
Scotland and T.H. Bendor Samuel and E.J. Poole-Connor of
the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. W.J.
Grier of the Irish Evangelical Church, which became the
Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ireland, also later joined
23 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, pp.99-100.
242 One Body in Christ

the BEC. Strong elements within the BEC had separation

from larger denominations at the core of their identity. The
Free Church of Scotland and the FIEC gave official backing to
the BEC.Carl McIntyre,the leader of the International Coun-
cil of Christian Churches – a fiercely anti-ecumenical organi-
sation based in North America – hoped that a British branch of
the ICCC could be formed. Indeed, it was a conference held
by McIntyre in Edinburgh in 1952 that stimulated the Free
Church of Scotland to approach the FIEC about forming a
new joint fellowship of evangelical churches. However, the
BEC did not wish to be an appendage of an American body,
aspects of whose
24
spirit and stance its own leaders did not find
acceptable.
At this stage, the Evangelical Alliance was far more involved
in evangelistic endeavour than it was in thinking about ecu-
menical issues. It was prepared to have dialogue with the Brit-
ish ecumenical body, the British Council of Churches, but this
dialogue was focused on issues concerned with evangelism and
the role of Billy Graham. In the mid-1950s, there was no rea-
son to suppose that the BEC was going to play a significant part
in British evangelicalism. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who would
later become a major supporter of the BEC, was quite willing
to be associated in the 1950s with the Evangelical Alliance.
Lloyd-Jones was the main speaker, for instance, at an Alliance
day conference held in 1957 at Westminster Chapel. E.J.
Poole-Connor, writing to Lloyd-Jones to thank him for his
contribution on that occasion, took exception to the fact that
Hugh Gough,who had also spoken,had contemplated co-op-
eration with the World Council of Churches. Gough’s efforts
to argue for a bridge between evangelicals and the ecumenical
movement were dismissed by Poole-Connor as ‘the vaguest
25
platitudes’. Although Lloyd-Jones attended a luncheon
24 H.R. Jones, ‘The Doctor and the British Evangelical Council’, in H.R. Jones
(ed.), D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Unity in Truth (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 1991),
p.8.
25 E. J. Poole-Connor to D. M. Lloyd-Jones, 20 June 1957, cited in Murray, D.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, p.306.
 Benevolent Neutrality 243

arranged by the BEC in the Cora Hotel, Bloomsbury, in 1954,

he did not join the organisation. This may be because he was
opposed to para-church organisations,but it is more likely that
he was wary of the BEC’s relationship with the ICCC.He may
also have considered that evangelicals had not had time to re-
26
flect on the issues involved in ecumenism.
Such reflection was, however, taking place. In 1959 Gilbert
Kirby,as General Secretary of the Alliance,published an article
entitled ‘Oecumenical Problems’. In it, he wrote: ‘It is clear
that spiritual unity can and does exist quite apart from ecclesi-
astical union. The great interdenominational missionary soci-
eties, the Keswick Convention, the Children’s Special Service
Mission, the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, the Evangelical Alliance
and a host of kindred societies all bear witness to this fact.’ He
27
also referred to ‘our sadly divided evangelical Ranks’. The
BEC was,at this point,seeking permission from Lloyd-Jones to
print one of his sermons on revival, but the BEC had not yet
been able to enlist Lloyd-Jones to its cause. The alternative vi-
sions of the Alliance and the BEC were, however, to become
more evident in the early 1960s. An important assembly of the
WCC was held at New Delhi in 1961. Although some evan-
gelicals were present,evangelicals as a whole were seen as being
opposed to the ecumenical movement because for them
‘Christian unity is invisible’ and because the WCC was being
viewed by many evangelicals as theologically modernist and as
28
seeking relations with Roman Catholics. In his report on
New Delhi,Kenneth Slack,General Secretary of the BCC,saw
that assembly as formulating a conception of unity that ‘de-
parts wholly from any idea that Christian unity is a wholly
29
“spiritual” idea’.

26 Jones, ‘The Doctor and the British Evangelical Council’, pp.10-12.

27 Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Winter 1959, pp.1, 3.
28 J.Lawrence,The Hard Facts of Unity:A Layman Looks at the Ecumenical Movement
(Naperville: SCM Book Club, 1961), p.65.
29 K. Slack, Despatch from New Delhi: The Story of the World Council of Churches,
Third Assembly,New Delhi,18 Nov.–5 Dec.1961 (London:SCM Press,1962),p.79.
244 One Body in Christ

Despite all this, the Alliance itself desired a measure of or-

ganisational unity. Its stance continued to be an inclusive one,
with a call being made in 1963 that in view of ‘the growing in-
fluence of the ecumenical movement, evangelicals should
overcome some of their petty differences and unite around the
great fundamental verities of the Word of God and give evi-
dence to the world of the spiritual unity that they already have
30
in Christ’. The way in which evangelicals united was more
than by affirmation of their spiritual bonds, although at times
Kirby appeared not to be sure how visible unity should be ex-
pressed. One method was by united celebration of the Lord’s
Supper. The 3,000 who gathered in the Royal Albert Hall in
January 1963 for the united communion service arranged by
the Alliance were,from the perspective of the Alliance,a visible
31
demonstration of unity. Both in 1962 and in 1963, Kirby re-
flected in The Evangelical Broadsheet on the prospects for unity.
He recognised that evangelicals were divided in their assess-
ment of the ecumenical movement, but considered that the
Spirit was pointing Christian people towards spiritual unity.
Evangelical Christians had been rediscovering the effective-
ness of such unity when expressed in positive action. In some
areas local Evangelical Fellowships had come into being and,
through their agency, Bible Rallies and Conventions had been
held. There had been a drawing together of evangelical societ-
ies, particularly in overseas mission. Over seventy societies and
Bible colleges were by then linked together in the Evangelical
Missionary Alliance.Kirby’s appeal in 1963 was that in the light
of ‘the growing influence of the Ecumenical movement,evan-
gelicals should overcome some of their petty differences and
unite around the great fundamental verities of the Word of
God and give evidence to the world of the spiritual unity that
32
they already have in Christ’. One united initiative in this

30 Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Summer 1963, supplement.

31 The Christian, 18 January 1963, p.1.
32 Evangelical Broadsheet, Summer 1963, Supplement to the National Association
of Evangelicals Convention.
 Benevolent Neutrality 245

period was of enormous encouragement to Kirby. A ‘Union

and Communion’statement was prepared by an Alliance theo-
logical study group and signed in 1962 by forty evangelical
33
leaders. This was followed by a united communion service,in
the Royal Albert Hall. Ernest Kevan and John Stott preached.
Some had told Kirby that to organise such a service was ‘irre-
sponsible’, and others had expressed misgivings, but after the
event the Alliance office had been deluged with letters ex-
34
pressing deep appreciation of the service.
For all the success of the Albert Hall event, other evangeli-
cals, however, were thinking seriously by this time in terms of
more thoroughgoing, structural unity. In the period 1963 to
1965 J.I.Packer,who had been deeply involved in the revival of
Reformed theology in Britain, served as a member of the An-
glican-Methodist Unity Commission discussing the report
Conversations Between the Church of England and the Methodist
Church. Packer began to contemplate a comprehensive state
church that excluded liberals but included Anglo-Catholics.
Lloyd-Jones found this a disappointing development and
stated his belief in the need for more independent evangelical
35
churches. In a parallel development at a Nottingham Faith
and Order conference in1964, 550 delegates from fifteen de-
nominations passed a resolution inviting BCC member
churches to work for unity by 1980.For the first time,evangel-
36
icals were represented in some strength at such a conference.
Tensions were growing. Kirby, who was more acutely aware
of the problems within evangelicalism than almost anyone else,
began, in 1962, to plan for a National Evangelical Conference.
This was eventually held in 1965. By this stage, Kirby had
enabled churches as well as individuals to affiliate to the Alli-
ance and 6,000 evangelical churches were invited to send
delegates: 1,155 registrations were received. Anglicans formed

33 Crusade, December 1962, pp.18, 27.

34 Evangelical Broadsheet, Winter 1963, p.2.
35 Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, pp.498-506.
36 The Christian, 25 September 1964, p.1.
246 One Body in Christ

the biggest group, with Baptists not far behind, followed by

members of FIEC churches. The National Assembly of Evan-
gelicals, as it was called, was held in Church House, Westmin-
ster. A number of Baptists, Methodists and Congregationalists
who attended had begun to question whether their position in
their denominations was tenable. For his part, Kirby stated:
‘The evangelical is the loyalist in his denomination – our de-
nominations owe their origins to the very things that we hold
dear … There is good historic evidence for staying in until we
37
are thrown out.’ The Assembly decided to set up a represen-
tative Commission of nine people to study evangelical atti-
tudes to ecumenism, denominationalism and a possible future
38
united evangelical church. A report was to be prepared by the
Commission for the planned 1966 Assembly. Kirby wanted a
balanced picture of evangelical views.Due deference must not,
he suggested in July 1966,be given to the right wing or the left
39
wing of evangelicalism.

Evangelicals in Disarray

In planning for the 1966 National Assembly of Evangelicals,

Gilbert Kirby took a calculated risk by asking Martyn
Lloyd-Jones and John Stott to play a prominent part in the
opening session. What Lloyd-Jones said on that occasion did
not surprise Alliance leaders. Indeed, he was asked by the Alli-
ance to state publicly what he had said in private. Lloyd-Jones
had put his views to the members of the commission and the
members of the commission believed that he should have the
opportunity to state his position. According to several com-
mentators at the time and subsequently, Martyn Lloyd-Jones
was advocating at the opening public session of the 1966
assembly that evangelicals should leave their denominations if

37 The Christian, 8 October 1965, p.1.

38 Crusade, December 1965, pp.18-9.
39 Executive Council Minutes, 27 July 1966.
 Benevolent Neutrality 247

those denominations were40‘mixed’– that is,theologically com-

promised by liberalism. Others, including 41
Lloyd-Jones’
biographer Iain Murray, have denied this. If secession was
implied at all,however,Lloyd-Jones did not specifically use the
term ‘separate’ or ‘secede’. As far as he was concerned, the key
issue was the broader one of the doctrine of the church. ‘I
would dare to suggest tonight’,he said to his Alliance audience,
‘that we find ourselves in a new situation. And the new situa-
tion has very largely been caused by the rising and revival
amongst us of what is known as the ecumenical movement,
which began in 1910,but has become a42pressing problem to us
as evangelicals, especially since 1948.’ It should be remem-
bered,as Kessler notes,that just a month beforehand the British
Council of Churches had covenanted for organic church
union in Great Britain by Easter 1980, and that this may have 43
served to make Lloyd Jones’ statements all the more cutting.
Lloyd-Jones did refer to denominations being ‘prepared to put
everything into the melting pot in order that a new world
church might come out of it’ and spoke of Methodists and
Anglicans, Congregationalists
44
and Presbyterians as ‘well on
with their negotiations’. As Robert Amess comments, the
fact that a ‘world church’ has never shown any sign of emerg-
45
ing has not lessened the impact that Lloyd-Jones made.
But Lloyd-Jones was not simply being negative. Indeed, he
castigated evangelicals for being negative and being ‘defensive
in their denominational relationships’. On the one hand

40 For a recent expression of this viewpoint,and an account of its provenance,see

D.W.Wright,‘A Review Article [of] Evangelicalism Divided…[by] Iain H.Murray’,
Reformation and Revival, 10:2 (Spring 2001), pp.121-36.
41 Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, pp.513-33.
42 Evangelical Alliance, Unity in Diversity: The Papers Given at the National Assem-
bly of Evangelicals at Westminster,London,in October,1966 (London:Evangelical Alli-
ance, 1967), p.9.
43 Kessler, A Study of the Evangelical Alliance, p.107.
44 Evangelical Alliance, Unity in Diversity, p.9.
45 R. Amess, ‘Evangelicals and the Ecumenical Movement’ (unpublished M.Phil
Thesis, Open University, 1998), p.154. I am indebted to the thesis by Robert
Amess in this section.
248 One Body in Christ

Lloyd-Jones regarded the position of evangelicals as ‘pathetic’,

‘tragic’, and ‘serious’, especially in view of the ignorance that
prevailed among evangelicals about the changing attitudes of
Protestants to the Roman Catholic Church.On the other hand,
Lloyd-Jones believed that ‘evangelical people have got an op-
portunity today such as they have never had’.The opportunity,
as Lloyd-Jones saw it,was to stop being only an evangelical wing
in what he believed would become a ‘comprehensive, total,
national,territorial church’,and instead to ‘start afresh’and ‘go
back to the New Testament’.This kind of call was not new.It had
been the vision of the Brethren movement in the nineteenth
century.What made this occasion significant was the passionate
call issued by Lloyd-Jones for a fellowship or association of evan-
gelical churches, which would be free from what he saw as the
compromises entailed in ecumenical or wider denominational
involvement,and which instead would express ‘evangelical ec-
umenicity’. It was inconsistent, in Lloyd-Jones’ view, for evan-
gelicals to unite with those with whom they agreed only on
secondary matters.‘Why is it’,he asked,‘that we are so anxious
46
to hold on to our inherited positions?’
As Robert Amess points out, to blame Lloyd-Jones for per-
sonally wrecking the serene waters through which evangeli-
calism seemed to be sailing at the time of the 1966 Assembly
would not be just. It cannot be fairly argued, he suggests, that
Lloyd-Jones abused the platform he was offered. He had been
requested to express his view and he made it clear that he was
not saying anything he had not previously said to the Alliance
47
commission on church unity. Neither was he directly re-
sponsible for what followed. John Stott, who was chairing the
meeting, brought the evening to a sensational end by adding
his own comments. Both history and Scripture, asserted Stott,
were against what Lloyd-Jones had said. ‘Scripture’, Stott con-
tinued, ‘is against him; the remnant was within the church not

46 Evangelical Alliance, Unity in Diversity, pp.11-3; Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,

pp.523-5.
47 Amess, ‘Evangelicals and the Ecumenical Movement’, pp.155-6.
 Benevolent Neutrality 249

outside it. I hope no one will act precipitately.’48 The outcome

of these events is not in dispute. ‘One immediate consequence
was a deep division both between Anglícan evangelicals and
many of their non-conformist brethren, but also among
49
non-conformist pastors and churches.’ But that meeting did
not cause the division. One Baptist writer commented about
that evening: ‘I went to the Central Hall, that night, disillu-
sioned with the Baptist Union, desiring closer unity with
50
evangelicals.’ This kind of comment indicates something of
the atmosphere of the times. There were evangelicals who
were disillusioned with denominations,even when,as with the
Baptist Union, the majority of those who were within a de-
nomination were evangelical. This disillusionment would lead
not only to secessions from denominations but to the emer-
gence of new churches – something that would in turn result
in the forming of new denominations.
The 1966 Assembly continued with other business. The re-
port prepared for the assembly referred to the option of ‘a
united evangelical church on denominational lines’.The com-
mission stated that it had found no widespread support for
such a move. Rather, it encouraged ‘evangelical churches of
varying traditions’ to form effective fellowships both locally
51
and nationally. In the debate that followed, points were made
on both sides of the argument, with some supportive of seces-
sion. Still, a large majority adopted the report of the commis-
sion. Positions had, however, publicly polarised and attitudes
were palpably hardening. The Church of England Newspaper,
which represented an inclusive position, dismissed what
52
Lloyd-Jones had said as ‘nothing short of hare-brained’. The
reporter for Crusade, influenced no doubt by Gilbert Kirby’s

48 Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, pp.523-5; E. Davies, ‘18 October 1966: Its con-
text, message and significance’, in Foundations, No. 37 (1996), p.11.
49 Davies, ‘18 October 1966’, p.11.
50 B.Howlett,‘18 October 1966:I was there …’,Foundations,No.37 (1996),p.16.
51 Report of the Commission on Church Unity to the National Assembly of Evangelicals
(London, 1966).
52 The Church of England Newspaper, 28 October 1966, p.5.
250 One Body in Christ

restraint, was content to call the opening session of the assem-

53
bly ‘adult stuff ’. Looking back over a decade later, Kirby felt
that encouraging Lloyd-Jones to put his case had been ‘proba-
54
bly one of my biggest mistakes’. Evangelicals committed to
separation from theologically ‘mixed’ denominations would
associate increasingly with the BEC. Morgan Derham, who
followed Kirby as the General Secretary of the Alliance, com-
mented gloomily that evangelicals were being pushed to make
55
a choice between denominations and individualistic anarchy.

The Aftermath of the Assembly

Hopes of conciliation within the evangelical constituency

were largely dashed at a packed meeting of the Westminster
Fellowship of ministers in November 1966 when Lloyd-Jones
made the issues clear. There was, he said, an unmistakeable
cleavage between those who believed in staying in their
denominations and those who saw no purpose in so doing.
From now on,he added,he would offer his help only to minis-
ters 56already out of their denominations or thinking of leav-
ing. The stance taken by Lloyd-Jones gave a huge boost to the
FIEC and the BEC. In 1967 Westminster Chapel, which had
previously been in the Congregational Union, joined the
FIEC, and the numbers at the BEC’s 1967 conference mush-
roomed to 2,700 when Lloyd-Jones spoke. The same year saw
the launch of Evangelical Times, a monthly ‘separatist’ newspa-
per edited by Peter Masters,previously a member of Westmin-
ster Chapel. Two main reasons were advanced in favour of its
appearance. First, it would meet the need for a means of com-
munication between thousands of churches, missions and
assemblies in Britain that were wholly evangelical, self-gov-
erning, unaffiliated to denominational bodies and usually
53 Crusade, December 1966, p.33.
54 Crusade, October 1979, p.56.
55 Crusade, October 1966, p.13.
56 Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, pp.528-31.
 Benevolent Neutrality 251

strongly opposed to ecumenicity. Secondly, it would serve as a

contrast to existing popular Christian journals that adopted a
benevolent or at best strictly neutral attitude towards the ecu-
menical movement.
Meanwhile,Anglican evangelicals were travelling in a differ-
ent direction.The historic National Evangelical Anglican Con-
gress held at Keele University in April 1967 declared the
following:
The initial task for divided Christians is dialogue at all levels and across all bar-
riers. We desire to enter this ecumenical dialogue fully. We are no longer con-
tent to stand apart from those with whom we disagree. We recognize that all
who ‘confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scrip-
tures and therefore seek to fulfil together their common calling to the glory of
the one God, Father Son and Holy Spirit (World Council of Churches Basis)
have a right to be treated as Christians,and it is on this basis that we wish to talk
with them.’57

The older evangelical view, that ecclesiology was a ‘secondary’

matter, was being questioned – not least because 58
of the
neo-Puritan movement’s emphasis on the church. It was per-
ceived at the time that Keele, with its new stress on the visible
church and on wider ecclesiastical involvement, 59
would loom
large in the annals of Anglican evangelicalism. The Alliance’s
position, as a force for evangelical unity, was under threat.
Morgan Derham considered that it was essential for the Alli-
ance to find ways of restoring belief in pan-evangelical
co-operation. The Alliance attempted to do this by encourag-
ing the formation of regional and local evangelical fellowships,
conferences and meetings of ministers. Anglican evangelicals
were involved in such events. For instance, one of their leaders,
Michael Cole,60was prominent at a Northern Alliance Confer-
ence in 1967.
57 National Evangelical Anglican Congress, Keele ‘67, The National Evangelical
Anglican Congress Statement, p.37.
58 C.O.Buchanan,Is the Church of England Biblical? (London:Darton,Longman &
Todd, 1998), pp.6-7.
59 The Christian, 14 April 1967, p.2.
60 Executive Council Minutes, 27 July 1967.
252 One Body in Christ

These attempts did not,however,placate the separatist wing.

At a meeting of the Alliance’s Executive Council in October
1967 it was reported that resignations had been received from
John Caiger and T.H. Bendor-Samuel, both of whom ‘were
finding themselves in a difficult position,due to their positions
in the Westminster Fellowship and the British Evangelical
Council respectively’. At the same meeting considerable dis-
cussion took place regarding ‘the increasing activity of the sep-
aratist movement associated with the BEC’. There had been
meetings between Alliance and BEC leaders with the aim of
61
establishing a working relationship, and it was decided by the
Alliance Executive Council that it would be good to meet
again and to come to an agreement on ‘professional etiquette’.
It was noted that very few individuals or churches had with-
62
drawn from the Alliance. In the same period Roland Lamb,
who had been a Methodist minister, was appointed as
part-time secretary to the BEC in order to promote what was
at the time a growing movement.
The major figure within the separatist constituency was,
however, Lloyd-Jones. Sir Fred Catherwood, Lloyd-Jones’
son-in law and a deacon of Westminster Chapel at the time,
speaks of Lloyd-Jones’ ‘passionate plea for evangelical unity’.
He comments on the result of Lloyd-Jones’ concerns:
Evangelicals divided instead of uniting. In retrospect it is easy to say that he
should have left it there. But the vocal minority, who wanted to translate his
plea into a united evangelical church, also wanted him as their leader, and he
was identified with them and lost to the evangelical majority.63

One result of the October 1966 debacle and the events that
followed was that 64
the separatists were perceived as a
single-issue party. It was not obvious to the bulk of evangeli-
cals that the ecumenical movement was as central to the
61 Executive Council Minutes, 25 May 1967.
62 Executive Council Minutes, 14 December 1967.
63 F. Catherwood, At the Cutting Edge (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995),
p.65.
64 Amess, ‘Evangelicals and the Ecumenical Movement’, p.158.
 Benevolent Neutrality 253

ecclesiastical scene as the separatists seemed to believe. Alan

Gibson,who became the General Secretary of the BEC,wrote
in 1988: ‘Perhaps that was one weakness of evangelical beliefs
in 1966 – they gave more credence 65 to the power of the ecu-
menical movement than it merited.’

The Doctrine of the Church

Despite the rupture that had taken place in evangelicalism,

there were continuing relationships between those who dif-
fered on the ecumenical movement. An attempt was made in
1970 to engage in constructive dialogue on the subject
through a day conference in London on the ‘Doctrine of the
Church’.This brought together thirty-four evangelical leaders.
The event was held at the Alliance offices,but was not officially
sponsored by the Alliance. At a time when evangelical Angli-
cans were widely thought to have taken on the Keele agenda to
the detriment of pan-evangelical concerns, it is significant
twelve Anglican clergy were present, and that they formed the
largest denominational group at the conference. Included
among them were Raymond Turvey from St George’s
Church, Leeds, who was a co-chair of the conference, J.I.
Packer from Tyndale Hall, Bristol, and Colin Buchanan from
St John’s College, Nottingham. These three had been invited
to speak, but others in attendance included Alan Stibbs from
Oak Hill College, London, Michael Saward from the Church
Information Office, and R.T. Beckwith and J.W. Wenham
from Latimer House,Oxford.It had been hoped to have a resi-
dential conference, but the publication in 1970 of the book
Growing into Union, part-authored by Packer and Buchanan,
and espousing evangelical-Anglo-Catholic co-operation,
66
had
caused fresh tension within British evangelicalism.
65 A. Gibson, Holding Hands in the Dark (St Albans, 1988), frontispiece.
66 C.O. Buchanan, E.L. Mascall, J.I. Packer, & The Bishop of Willesden, Growing
into Union: Proposals for Forming a United Church in England (London: SPCK, 1970),
p.255.
254 One Body in Christ

Free Church leaders at the conference were divided be-

tween those who were separatist by inclination and those who
were open to wider denominational involvement.The Baptists
included David Pawson from Guildford,one of the sponsors of
the conference, Robert Horn from Horley Baptist Church,
who was a speaker, Paul Helm from the University of Liver-
pool, Graham Harrison from Newport, and Ron Luland from
Bedford. Some of these Baptists were within the Reformed
constituency. John Doggett represented the Strict Baptists.
There were no members of the Methodist, Congregational or
Presbyterian denominations present, apart from Iain Murray,
an independent Presbyterian,and D.O.Swann,an independent
Congregationalist. FIEC/independent representatives in-
cluded Leith Samuel from Above Bar Church, Southampton,
who was a co-chair, David Middleton from Surrey Chapel,
Norwich, who was a speaker, Michael Buss from Tollington
Park Baptist Church, and Alan Gibson, then a pastor in Win-
chester.Harold Rowdon and H.L.Ellison,both of whom were
well known for their Bible College teaching, represented the
Brethren, and John Lancaster and Eldon Corsie the Elim Pen-
tecostal denomination. John Laird, the former General Secre-
tary of Scripture Union, was the Chairman. Morgan Derham
and Gordon Landreth, past and present General Secretaries of
the Alliance, were also in attendance. Landreth acted as secre-
tary to the conference, and it is symbolic of the Alliance’s ‘be-
nevolently neutral’ policy on ecumenical matters at this time
that his role was essentially one of quiet note taking.
The main speakers presented their papers. From the Angli-
can side, Colin Buchanan argued that Growing into Union had
not changed the situation among Anglican evangelicals.As had
been set out at Keele, they wished to be involved both in An-
glican affairs and in relationships with other evangelicals.
Packer acknowledged the mistrust and pain that had been
caused by the book’s publication.He had spent much of his life
with Free Church evangelicals and hoped that the conference
would result in greater understanding.Regarding the nature of
the church, Packer questioned whether apostolic practices
 Benevolent Neutrality 255

were norms for all time. Earlier generations had been divided
over this matter.On the ecumenical issue,Packer argued that it
was legitimate to talk to people in the ecumenical movement
and in the Church of Rome.These were highly complex bod-
ies and it was extremely difficult, in his view, to simplify what
was going on within them. Packer saw any approach that put
everything in unduly black and white categories as ‘sectar-
67
ian’.
In response, David Middleton said that Free Church evan-
gelicals had hitherto thought that evangelical unity was more
important than denominational unity,but the attitude of evan-
gelical Anglicans was throwing doubt on this assumption. He
wondered whether the uniqueness of Scripture as the author-
ity for the church had been betrayed in Growing into Union.
Robert Horn took up the question of episcopacy. It had been
thought that evangelical Anglicans regarded episcopacy as of
the bene esse of the church,but it seemed that the new approach
was to regard it as of the esse of the church – that is, as intrinsic
and indispensable rather than merely preferable. In Growing
into Union fellowship seemed to be on the basis of the episco-
pacy rather than the gospel. ‘Regarding future relationships
among evangelicals’, said Horn, ‘church issues could not be
isolated and all interdenominational activity was affected by
the present tensions, including the work of Societies like
Scripture Union, I.V.F., etc’. He asked how evangelical Angli-
cans related their position to these societies and whether they
had faced the implications of the new lack of consensus among
68
British evangelicals.
Both Buchanan and Packer responded to these statements.
Buchanan accepted that there were different views of the doc-
trine of the church among evangelicals – hence the confer-
ence. He asked Free Church evangelicals to accept the
integrity of their Anglican brethren. He added later that the

67 Evangelical Alliance, Record of a Private Day Conference on the Doctrine of

the Church, 8 September 1970, pp.1-3.
68 Ibid., pp.3-4.
256 One Body in Christ

two Anglo-Catholics they had worked with, Graham Leonard

and Eric Mascall, were serious about sharing real theological
concerns. Packer asserted that it was wrong to say that Growing
into Union placed Scripture and tradition on an equal footing.
Scripture must test tradition. On the subject of church order,
episcopacy had been defended in Growing into Union as a
‘meaningful sign’ of the identity of the church. Confession of
the faith and the sacraments were also signs. Finally, he ac-
knowledged that there were omissions in Growing into Union.
The way of conversion had not been spelled out. Justification
69
by faith had also received a barely adequate treatment.
The ecumenical issue became a focus in subsequent dis-
cussion. Some who considered ecumenical involvement to be
a mistake believed that through ecumenical discussions in
which evangelicals took part evangelical orthodoxy was be-
ing diluted. Leith Samuel said he had hoped that Anglican
evangelicals would ‘stand together with all evangelicals when
the question of the church was in the melting pot’, but that
now they ‘were looking the other way’. H.L. Ellison took the
view that there were not two standpoints, Anglican and Free
Church, but three. The third he believed was that of the radi-
cal reformation. This might have seemed to complicate mat-
ters further. There was, however, sufficient common ground
for the conference members to suggest that a small working
group should go on discussing the issues. It was proposed that
Gordon Landreth should discuss this with Roland Lamb so
that future initiatives should, if possible, have the co-opera-
70
tion of the BEC. This conference illustrated that at the be-
ginning of the 1970s deep feelings of suspicion and of
distrust, as well as genuine doctrinal differences that had
emerged among British evangelicals. At the same time, how-
ever, there at least remained a willingness to talk together.
The inclusive vision of the Alliance had suffered a severe
blow, but it was not dead.

69 Ibid., pp.4-5.
70 Ibid., pp.8-10.
 Benevolent Neutrality 257

Conclusion

After the Second World War, issues connected with the ecu-
menical movement were raised by the creation and increasing
role of the World Council of Churches. For the Evangelical
Alliance the ecumenical vision was not new, although its pri-
ority had traditionally been spiritual. What divided evangeli-
cals increasingly in the 1950s and early 1960s was the
question of whether the vision for unity should also be
churchly. The World Evangelical Fellowship took a narrower
position. In Britain, Martyn Lloyd-Jones espoused a strongly
anti-ecumenical stance, and this helped to polarise evangeli-
cals in the mid-1960s. For a time it seemed that separatism
would pose a major challenge to the Alliance’s traditional role
as a body that included all shades of evangelicals. Despite all
this, as the 1970s progressed, mainstream evangelicals, and a
growing charismatic evangelical constituency, would see the
separatists somewhat marginalised. After the death of
Lloyd-Jones in 1981, these separatists would lack a leader or
leaders of the stature they needed. Separatists themselves tend
to agree with this analysis: ‘One obvious difference between
1966 and 1996’, writes Geoffrey Thomas, ‘is the figure of Dr
Lloyd-Jones … Our greatest71weakness is a lack of an awaken-
ing ministry in the nation.’ In the meantime, evangelicals
within most of the historic denominations would see
their own influence increase. Indeed, as we shall see in the
remaining four chapters, a more avowedly inclusivist Alliance
would emerge from the crisis of 1966, and would gradually
recover to become a powerful force within British Christian-
ity.

71 G Thomas, ‘Then and Now: 1966–1996, Foundations No. 37 (1996), p.32.

 11

The Other Side

The Alliance and Renewal from the 1960s to the early 1980s

As the 1960s brought dramatic challenges to established

norms,so evangelicalism in Britain was profoundly affected by
the rise of the charismatic movement. The two developments
were not unconnected; as Nigel Scotland observes, they both
indicated a new hunger for spiritual reality:
The 1960s … saw the emergence of the hippie culture which was a reaction to
the materialism of the ‘never had it so good’ post-war years under Harold
Macmillan. Prompted by Timothy Leary, people began to take drugs in the
hope of getting in touch with some deeper level of reality.Others followed the
example of the Beatles and began to look East for meaning.The Maharishi and
the practice of meditation became the focus of many hopes in a country which
was losing its way spiritually. The charismatic experience which began to
emerge in England in the 1960s was to some extent part of this environment.
On the one hand, it was a reaction away from enlightenment thinking. On the
other, it reflected the widespread quest of the time for the exotic and the cul-
turally new.Western evangelicalism was very much a one dimensional affair in
which the middle classes, reinforced by Intervarsity paperbacks, looked for
‘sound’teaching.But for most,there was little in it beyond a certain satisfaction
of having been able to bend one’s mind around a ‘good word’. At the same
time existentialist thinking which emphasised the importance of the present
moment prompted people to seek new experiences and the growing popular-
ity of television increased their desire for deeper emotional and spiritual satis-
faction.1
nd
1 N. Scotland, Charismatics and the New Millennium (2 edn; Guildford: Eagle,
2000), pp.36-7.
 The Other Side 259

Of course, these cultural interactions were not immediately

apparent, and early participants in the charismatic movement
were far more concerned with its potential for transforming2
their understanding and experience of God the Holy Spirit.
In 1963, speaking as General Secretary of what was now pop-
ularly referred to by the initials ‘EA’, Gilbert Kirby drew at-
tention to an encouraging trend. A good many Christians, he
noted, were ‘applying themselves to the detailed study of the
biblical doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and we can but hope that
this will clarify evangelical thinking on this vital matter’.
Kirby recognised that there were long-standing disagree-
ments over the ‘baptism of the Spirit’, the filling of the Spirit
and spiritual gifts – not least between classical Reformed
evangelicals and Pentecostals. Since its rise in the United
States in the first years of the twentieth century,
Pentecostalism had generally adopted evangelical doctrine,
but its emphasis on Spirit baptism as a ‘second blessing’ after
conversion, and on speaking in tongues
3
as ‘initial evidence’ of
that baptism, had caused friction. The Alliance was, in fact,
no stranger to such friction. As early as 1908 the apologist Sir
Robert Anderson argued in Evangelical Christendom that
Pentecostalism ‘subordinates the great facts and truths of
the Christian revelation
4
to the subjective experience of
the Christian life’. Campbell Morgan of Westminster Chapel5
suggested a year later that the ‘tongues movement’ was evil.
At the start of the 1960s, the charismatic movement
was beginning to bring Pentecostal emphases into mainline
denominations – hence its technical identification as
‘neo-Pentecostalism’. Now, however, Kirby trusted that the
2 For a detailed account of the rise of the charismatic movement during this pe-
riod see P. Hocken, Streams of Renewal: The Origins and Early Development of the
Charismatic Movement in Great Britain (rev’d edn; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1997
[1986]).
3 For more detail see W.K. Kay, Pentecostals in Britain (Carlisle: Paternoster Press,
2000).
4 Evangelical Christendom, March-April, 1908, p.48.
5 Evangelical Christendom, March-April 1909, p.37.
260 One Body in Christ

Alliance would respond more eirenically: the days were gone,

he hoped, when evangelicals would write booklets dismissing
Pentecostalism, or its newer expressions, as ‘a delusion of the
Devil’. He also looked for ‘increasing charity’ from Pentecos-
tals, so that those who had not travelled by the same pathway
might be seen 6
as equally committed to ‘the deepening of
spiritual life’. Kirby’s desire was for a greater openness to the
Spirit that would lead to renewal.
This chapter will look at the theme of renewal in relation
to the Alliance. The charismatic movement may have been a
fresh form of spirituality, but it was not the only expression of
renewal in the 1960s and 1970s. There were also attempts to
find ways forward in evangelism. In 1966 the Alliance’s Na-
tional Assembly of Evangelicals set up a commission to look
at mission. The report of the commission was published in
1968 and was entitled On the Other Side. The introduction re-
ferred to the danger of passing by ‘on the other side’ (Lk. 10),
to Jesus and his disciples coming ‘to the other side’ (Mk. 5),
venturing into unknown territory in mission, to the disciples
casting their nets ‘on the other side’ (Jn. 21) in a change of
strategy, and to crowds finding Jesus ‘on the other side’ (Jn. 6).
Taken together, the thrust of these passages from the gospels,
and the thrust of the report, was the need to cross over
boundaries. For the authors, the call was to Christians to be
7
willing to ‘alter traditional methods’ in their evangelism.
This chapter will look at the report and its consequences, and
also examine the way in which, in the 1970s, evangelism was
increasingly linked with social action. Finally, we shall see
how the Alliance itself was seeking, in the later 1970s and
early 1980s, to find a renewed vision.

6 G.W. Kirby, ‘In All Things – Charity’, The Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Win-
ter 1963, p.2.
7 Evangelical Alliance, On the Other Side: The Report of the Evangelical Alliance’s
Commission on Evangelism, (London: Evangelical Alliance, 1968), pp.13-4.
 The Other Side 261

Spiritual Unity in Action

As the 1960s began the Alliance seemed to be operating with a

strong and united team. Gilbert Kirby was advocating ‘Spiri-
tual Unity in Action’ as a core value for the Alliance. In the
Annual Report for 1959-60 he explained that the work of the
Alliance at that point fell into two categories. There were spe-
cial projects,such as the hostels in London,the evangelistic film
work led by Maurice Rowlandson, the extensions secretary,
the production of a monthly magazine edited by David
Winter, Crusade, and the organisation of the week of prayer.
Alongside this Kirby described what he termed the strategic
work of the Alliance, speaking for evangelical Christians and
acting in their interests. The Alliance provided a ‘platform’ on
which evangelicals united, he said. In this respect its
twenty-strong Executive Council was important. In 1960 it
drew together Anglican evangelical clergymen such as John
Stott, Kenneth Prior, Maurice Wood, L.F.E. Wilkinson and
Frank Colquhoun, Baptist ministers such as Geoffrey King,
Ernest Kevan and John Caiger, a Presbyterian in Tom Allan
from Glasgow, Methodists such as Howard Belben, the
secretary of the FIEC and T.H. Bendor-Samuel, missionary
leaders like John Savage, and prominent military laymen such
as Lt.-Gen. Sir Arthur Smith (the Chairman), Lt.-Gen. Sir
William Dobbie and Major W.F. Batt. By their united contri-
bution, the Alliance’s leaders played, as Kirby
8
saw it, a unique
role in co-ordinating evangelical witness.
This witness was varied. The emphasis in many evangelistic
presentations of this period in Britain was on seeking to pres-
ent an apologia for the Christian faith, and the Alliance was
prominent in this. In 1961 it organised a National Bible Rally
th
at the Royal Albert Hall to mark the 350 anniversary of the
Authorised Version of the Bible – at this time the most widely
used version among evangelicals. Sir Kenneth Grubb, Presi-
dent of the Church Missionary Society and a well-known
8 Evangelical Alliance Annual Report, 1959-60, pp.1-2.
262 One Body in Christ

figure within the World Council of Churches, was the chair-

man. Speakers brought a range of perspectives. Robert (later
Sir Robert) Boyd, then lecturer in physics at University Col-
lege, London, spoke on ‘A Scientist and his Bible’. Another
speaker was D.J. Wiseman, Professor of Assyriology at London
University, whose subject was ‘An Archaeologist and his Bi-
ble’. Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave a typically rousing biblical ad-
9
dress. The Alliance also involved itself in overseas mission.
Overseas tours were undertaken, especially by A.J. Dain (the
overseas secretary), and after he left to take up a position with
the Church Missionary Society of Australia these contacts
were to some extent taken up through the growing Evangeli-
cal Missionary Alliance (EMA). Initially the Evangelical Alli-
ance and the EMA shared a number of key personnel, with
John Caiger as Chairman of the EMA, Kirby as secretary and
Col. C.D.O. Pugh as secretary of both bodies.
In 1962 Gilbert Kirby gave an illuminating survey in the Alli-
ance’s publication,The Evangelical Broadsheet,of spiritual trends
in Britain at that point. Pre-war theological liberalism he saw,
rather optimistically,as being ‘as dead as the dodo’.There were
certainly signs in theological circles of growing evangelical in-
fluence. Kirby highlighted the fact that Bible and theological
colleges in which the main emphasis was upon the authority of
the word of God were filled.With this new emphasis on the Bi-
ble had come a renewed interest in the Reformed faith. The
writings of Calvin and of the Puritans were being re-published
by the Banner of Truth Trust and were being read again. An-
other feature to which Kirby drew attention was the renewed
interest in and discussion of the nature and character of evange-
lism.He highlighted a tendency amongst evangelical Christians
to reassess the place of mass evangelism in the churches’
programme.Partly as a result of the revival of Reformed think-
ing and thus of the awareness of doctrines associated with divine
sovereignty, the methods employed in mass evangelism had,
Kirby noted,been under fire in some quarters.The relationship
9 We are grateful to Maurice Rowlandson for the programme of this evening.
 The Other Side 263

of evangelism to the sovereignty of God was being frequently

debated in evangelical circles in the early 1960s. Kirby argued
that whatever particular views evangelicals might hold in rela-
tion to these issues, the fact remained that the Spirit had awak-
10
ened the church to the need for evangelism.
Kirby was also concerned for unity within local churches.
The 1960s saw the accentuation of the generation gap, and for
Kirby this could have serious consequences for unity. He
pointed out that in the post-war years the accent had been on
youth. Through government agencies huge sums of money
were being spent on local youth committees and facilities for
recreation.The church,too,had become increasingly absorbed
in catering for youth.By the early 1960s there were many more
Christian youth movements than there had been before the war.
Many facilities were provided for young people in local
churches. Kirby did not wish to question the importance of
young people in the churches,but saw dangers in any tendency
among youth to dominate the scene and for youth activities,and
even youth movements, to become an end in themselves. A
New Testament church, he argued, was a family, and different
generations had to live together.The tendency,he observed,had
been one of segregation.In some churches separate Bible studies
were being provided for different age groups.Kirby questioned
whether ‘this is in fact following the pattern of New Testament
11
Christianity’. The charismatic movement was to appeal to a
younger generation,intent on rediscovering the dynamic of the
New Testament churches. Despite Kirby’s hopes for unity, this
movement would contribute to increased tensions.

The Third Person of the Trinity

‘When we come to deal with the doctrine of the third Person

of the blessed Trinity’, said Kirby in 1964, ‘our tendency to be
10 G.W. Kirby, ‘The Post-War Years’, Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Summer
1962, pp.1-3.
11 Ibid., pp.1-3.
264 One Body in Christ

unbalanced once more shows itself.’ He argued that evangeli-

cals found it difficult to show equal enthusiasm for the gifts of
the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit,and suggested that in some
quarters there was a greater emphasis on the importance of
‘ecstatic12utterances’than seemed to be the case in the New Tes-
tament. This was certainly a period when there was great
interest in spiritual gifts. It was in 1962 that many evangelicals
in Britain became aware of this ‘new Pentecostal’movement in
mainline Protestant churches. An American Episcopal clergy-
man, Dennis Bennett, had announced in 1960 to his parish in
Van Nuys, California, that he had received the baptism of the
Spirit and had spoken in tongues. The experiences at Van
Nuys were publicised through a magazine entitled Trinity,
backed by a Pentecostally minded Episcopalian and edited by
Jean Stone, a member of Bennett’s congregation. Copies of
Trinity were distributed to a number of British evangelicals in
March 1962. Interest was further stimulated later that year.
Philip Hughes, a respected Anglican evangelical scholar and
editor of the journal Churchman, visited California and wrote 13
about ‘indications of a new movement of the Holy Spirit’.
The Alliance was quick to respond to this new develop-
ment. It was reported that in 1963 at a quarterly seminar that
brought evangelical scholars together under the auspices of the
Alliance, ‘scholarly papers have been read by evangelical theo-
logians, dealing with different aspects of the work of the Holy
Spirit’. Although this seminar was limited in size, it included a
cross-section of denominational life – Anglicans, Methodists,
Baptists, Congregationalists, members of the Christian
14
Brethren, and Pentecostalists. One issue raised in these dis-
cussions was whether any new emphasis on the gifts of the
Spirit would of necessity lead to the forming of new denomi-
nations – as had happened with many who were caught up in
the Pentecostal movement at the beginning of the century – or

12 The Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Summer 1964, pp.2-3.

13 ‘Editorial’, Churchman, September 1962, p.131.
14 The Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Winter 1963, p.2.
 The Other Side 265

whether, as with the Anglican Priest Alexander Boddy in his

ministry in Sunderland, renewal could come within the de-
15
nominations. For Kirby, it was a healthy sign that the redis-
covery of the doctrine of the Spirit had associations with a
renewed interest in the doctrine of the church. Evangelical
Christians, in his experience, had not been renowned for their
sense of churchmanship. Instead, they had often been marked
by excessive individualism. It was as a counter to this individu-
alistic and fissiparous tendency that Kirby, in line with the his-
toric catholicity of the Alliance,tried to bring people together.
He spoke of ‘countless private consultations between evangel-
ical leaders’, most of which could not be written about, that
16
were taking place in the boardroom of the Alliance in 1963.
The relationship between the Alliance and this new expres-
sion of spiritual renewal was not, however, only at the level of
discussion. The Alliance shared the charismatic movement’s
concern for revival and applauded the ‘Nights of Prayer for
Revival’ being held in the early 1960s. These had their begin-
nings in the early 1950s when George and May Ingram, who
had been missionaries with the Church Missionary Society in
India (George received an MBE for his work among
‘untouchables’), became involved in the prayer committee for
the forthcoming Billy Graham Crusade. The Ingrams devel-
oped a friendship with Colin Kerr, a well-known Keswick
speaker and the vicar of St Paul’s,Portman Square,where some
of the prayer meetings were held.From 1957 they led monthly
‘Nights of Prayer for Worldwide Revival’ and began to pro-
duce news-sheets which by the time of George Ingram’s death
in 1969 had a print-run of 6,000 copies.In 1959,the centenary
of the 1859 revival, Ingram attended Westminster Chapel reg-
ularly to hear a series of sermons on revival preached by
Martyn Lloyd-Jones. In the same year, Ingram launched the
Anglican Prayer Fellowship for Revival (APFR), and he and

15 E. Blumhofer, ‘Alexander Boddy and the Rise of Pentecostalism in Great

Britain’, Pneuma 8.1 (1986), pp.31-40.
16 The Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Summer 1962, pp.1-3; Winter 1963, p.2.
266 One Body in Christ

others began to concentrate on prayer that the clergy of the

parish of All Souls, Langham Place, which was Ingram’s parish,
would experience the baptism of the Spirit. Ingram under-
stood this as an experience of entire sanctification, although
others who were close to him saw Spirit-baptism as linked
with the gift of tongues. The new Pentecostal outlook devel-
17
oped partly out of a concern for revival.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones met with Michael Harper, a curate at
All Souls, Langham Place, and with other Anglicans who were
affected by the new charismatic movement. He spoke about
the subject in an address to the annual meeting of the Evangeli-
cal Library in December 1963. Although he had serious ques-
tions about aspects of what was happening at that time, he
18
affirmed the longing for deeper spirituality. Neither
Lloyd-Jones nor Gilbert Kirby held the view that the charis-
matic gifts were confined to the apostolic age. It was on other
grounds that Kirby raised questions about the exercise of spiri-
tual gifts. He was concerned, rather, about what he saw as a
danger of distortion in the assessment of gifts. In February
1964 Kirby wrote in Crusade and later in the year in The Evan-
gelical Broadsheet about what he took to be the major dangers
posed by the new developments within evangelicalism. One
was the claim that speaking in tongues was essential ‘initial evi-
dence’of the experience of the baptism of the Spirit.The other
was the danger of dismissing tongues, since, Kirby believed,
‘whenever and wherever God pours out his Spirit in abun-
19
dance there are unusual manifestations’. From the beginning
therefore, the Alliance showed its sympathy towards renewal
within historic denominations. This gathered strength
through the leadership of Michael Harper, who left his curacy
at All Souls and, in September 1964, became the first General
Secretary of the Fountain Trust, an interdenominational body
formed to encourage renewal.

17 These developments are dealt with in Hocken,Streams of Renewal,pp.70-74.

18 Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, pp.480-82.
19 Crusade, February 1964, p.33.
 The Other Side 267

Bridge-building was also taking place with the Pentecostal

denominations, some of whose leaders were perplexed about
charismatic phenomena breaking out in Anglican and Baptist
contexts. From the later 1950s the Alliance had been making
its own links with Pentecostalism. Through Gilbert Kirby’s
initiative,individuals from Pentecostal churches and then Pen-
20
tecostal churches as bodies, became involved in the Alliance.
In the 1960s and 70s,some Pentecostals continued to have res-
ervations about the Alliance’s neutral stance on the ecumenical
movement. Furthermore, when John Stott was proposed as
President of the Alliance for the period 1972-4 some Pente-
costals voiced their reservations on the grounds that he was too
cautious about the gifts of the Spirit. But for a period in the
mid-1960s evangelicals from differing backgrounds expressed
an openness to renewal – an openness due,as Alliance Council
member A.Morgan Derham put it,to the prevailing ‘formality
21
and dullness’ of evangelical worship and spirituality. In the
1970s,there were to be deep divisions within the ranks of those
who in the 1960s seemed to be part of one movement.Follow-
ing an international charismatic conference in Guildford in
1971, which brought together Protestants and Catholics, Cru-
sade suggested that ‘neo-Pentecostalism’had become ‘the most
important single development in British church life since the
22
War; possibly this century’. In 1975 however, Restoration
magazine was launched, and in its pages proponents of new
charismatic streams began to challenge the inclusive renewal
23
that the Alliance had sought to foster. As the magazine’s title
suggested, these streams taught the necessity of restoring the
New Testament church as a prerequisite of Christ’s return –
hence their collective identification as the ‘restorationist’
24
movement.
20 Executive Council Minutes, 23 May 1957.
21 The Christian, 10 December 1965, p.2.
22 Crusade, September 1971, p.1.
23 A. Walker, Restoring the Kingdom: The Radical Christianity of the House Church
Movement (Guildford: Eagle, 1998), especially chapters 2-5.
24 For background see Walker, Restoring the Kingdom.
268 One Body in Christ

Evangelical Assemblies

Evangelical Alliance leaders could not foresee that

restorationism would spawn a number of new denominations
in Britain in the 1970s. Far more challenging in the 1960s, as
we saw in the previous chapter, were tensions over the ecu-
menical movement. Yet it is a mistake to think that this issue
dominated the Alliance. When, in spring 1964, Gilbert Kirby
announced the plans that were being made for ‘the first Evan-
gelical Assembly’, due to be held in the Autumn of 1965, he
envisaged that it would ‘draw together for consultation and
mutual edification evangelical Christians from the different
churches and denominations’. Delegates from local churches
or groups of churches would handle business. The sense of
leading a genuinely national movement was strengthened in
this period through successful residential ministers’ confer-
ences. Also, the united service of Holy Communion at the
Albert Hall was being repeated in 1964. At the proposed con-
ference there would be devotional sessions, Bible readings and
preaching services. Kirby hoped that the number of churches
linked to the Alliance would greatly increase and that those
who attended could therefore be seen to be widely representa-
tive of the evangelical life of the nation. Far from ecumenical
issues being high on the agenda, Kirby did not mention them.
Rather,he considered that the main topics dealt with by speak-
ers at the
25
main meetings could be related to revival and evan-
gelism.
It is possible that Kirby was seeking to divert attention away
from the growing tensions within evangelicalism by focusing
on the areas that could unite evangelicals. However, at an Alli-
ance Executive Council conference on 29 January 1965, he
told the twenty people present, who represented the Alliance’s
‘inner circle’,that he believed ‘we have reached a most exciting
stage in the history of the Evangelical Alliance’.He was pleased
with the activities of the Alliance, mentioning in his report to

25 Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Spring 1964, pp.1-3.

 The Other Side 269

the council the work of the Alliance clubs,the Alliance’s theo-

logical study group under the Chairmanship of John Stott,and
a successful youth conference at which almost all evangelical
youth societies were represented. But Kirby’s vision went be-
yond individual ministries, however important. The reason
why, as he put it, he believed the Alliance had been ‘called to
the kingdom for such a time as this’, was that evangelical
Christians were seeking for ways to express their common
concerns and that was ‘no other body geared to meet the aspi-
rations … apart from the Alliance’. Kirby did not think he
would be overstating the case if he referred to 1965 as ‘a year of
26
destiny’ as far as the Alliance was concerned.
By the summer of 1965 Kirby was comparing the forth-
coming conference in the capital to the 1846 London confer-
ence at which the Alliance had been inaugurated. Since then,
he said, there had been many vicissitudes in the life and work
of the Alliance, but he contended that the work had been re-
vived and given fresh impetus. Kirby suggested that the con-
ference was being held at an opportune moment considering
‘the present spiritual and moral state of the nation as a
27
whole’. John Stott was conveying the same message, com-
menting on the ‘paganising tendencies’ at work in Britain and
lamenting the fact that the lessons Graham had taught in
28
1954 had been largely forgotten. It was also timely to have a
conference, Kirby believed, because evangelicals were ‘under
fire’, being dismissed as ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘obscurantists’.
His earlier optimism about liberal theology being dead had
been misplaced. With the publication of John Robinson’s
Honest to God in 1963, and the rise of the so-called ‘Death of
God’ theology, Kirby admitted that evangelicals were out of
step with much theological thinking. A further factor making
the conference important was that some evangelicals had
misunderstood one another and drifted apart. Kirby hoped
26 Report of the Executive Council Conference held at the Alliance Club, Newington
Green, 29 January 1965.
27 Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Summer 1965, p.3.
28 Decision, June 1964, p.8.
270 One Body in Christ

for deeper unity so that ‘the voice of evangelicalism in Britain

29
can be heard’.
The theme of unity did, in fact, come close to dominating
the 1965 assembly – a development that would set the stage for
30
the 1966 assembly. About 1,000 delegates attended the 1965
assembly and in his report to an Alliance conference, held on
27 January 1966, Kirby said that he was convinced ‘that we
cannot exaggerate the significance of this event’. It was widely
31
regarded as encouraging. Four things in Kirby’s report high-
lighted its significance. First, he wrote, evangelicals were look-
ing for a forum to meet and discuss,and this had been provided.
In the second place, the Alliance had found a way to act as a
mouthpiece of evangelical opinion. A third significant feature
was that those who had come had been delegates from
churches and societies. Although there had been criticisms of
this, Kirby believed it had given the conference authority.
Finally, a Christian Unity Commission had been set up. From
Kirby’s perspective, the Alliance’s ‘Assembly at Westminster’
ranked alongside the annual assemblies of the major denomi-
nations and of the British Council of Churches.He recognised
that in a future assembly there would be a need to have more
debate, and he accepted that the path ahead would not be easy.
Kirby’s hope,however,was that the Alliance could steer a mid-
dle course and ‘give due deference to the views of our Right
32
Wing and our Left Wing’. Within a few months, however,
this hope would be dashed.

Renewal of Mission

The 1966 assembly took place just after the end of Gilbert
Kirby’s period as General Secretary of the Alliance. Morgan
Derham, who took over from him, had the task of finding a
29 Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Summer 1965, p.3.
30 Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Spring 1966, p.1.
31 Brady, ‘Gilbert Kirby’, p.10.
32 Report to the Evangelical Alliance Council Conference, 27 January 1966.
 The Other Side 271

way forward for the Alliance. Derham had been a Baptist min-
ister in West Ham and in Barking, and had then worked for
Scripture Union. He realised how essential it was that after the
break of 1966 the Alliance should find ways of restoring belief
among evangelicals that the Alliance could be the place where
all those who shared a common concern for the gospel could
come together. In this task he looked to the work of a Com-
mission on Evangelism set up by the 1966 Assembly, whose
members were seeking a renewal of mission under the direc-
tion of the Holy Spirit. The Assembly resolution said that in
view of the ‘urgent spiritual need of the nation’ the Assembly
‘dedicates itself anew to the task of evangelism, recognizing
33
its
need for a scriptural experience of the Holy Spirit’. The
background of renewal was evident. The Commission was to
recommend the best means of reaching unchurched people,
bearing in mind the need to co-operate with existing evange-
listic endeavours where possible ‘and specifically to promote a
new emphasis on personal evangelism’. The membership was
designed to reflect the Alliance’s constituency. Two members
were Anglican clergy, two were Baptists ministers, one was a
Pentecostal minister and three, including two women, 34
were
Bible College staff or staff of evangelical societies. Morgan
Derham ensured that the group that was set up was orientated
towards younger
35
evangelical leaders. All the members were
under forty.
The resulting report, entitled On the Other Side, was pub-
lished in 1968. Its first part surveyed the situation within Brit-
ish society. Particular attention was paid to three areas: young
people and education, urbanisation, and the mass media. In
view of the ways in which young people were taught in the
British educational system, with an increasing stress on en-
couraging young people to question and search for satisfactory
answers in all areas of life, the report argued for informal

33 Evangelical Alliance, On the Other Side, p.11.

34 Ibid., pp.11-2.
35 Kirby, ‘On the Other Side’, unpublished notes (1975).
272 One Body in Christ

discussions with young people about the Christian faith.These

should be characterised by understanding, honesty and open-
ness. The report argued that evangelicals must be willing to
distinguish between the true historical Christian faith and tra-
36
ditional trimmings and prejudices. The section on urbanisa-
tion and industrialisation analysed features of city life:
anonymity, a secular outlook, concern for ‘the here-and-now’,
and indifference to spiritual values. On the mass media, the re-
port found a serious shortage of those willing and able to dedi-
cate themselves in an imaginative and radical way to the task of
presenting and applying the gospel in this arena. The conclu-
sion of this sociological part of the report was that Christians
were often out of touch with the world that they sought to win
and too many evangelical Christians were ‘depressed, intro-
spective and downhearted’. In place of this mood, the report
called for a renewed confidence that the gospel was relevant
and suggested that the insecurity and fluidity of society could
provide the context for large numbers of people to turn to
37
Christ.
The remainder of the report dealt with the theology and
practice of evangelism. Questions had been raised in the 1960s
about the effectiveness of mass evangelism. Billy Graham had
returned to Britain in 1961 for a Crusade in Manchester, stat-
ing that Britain was ‘either on the brink of a catastrophic moral
38
declension or on the verge of a spiritual revival’. Clearly
seven years on from Harringay,it seemed that there was limited
evidence of a change in national life.In June 1961 the Crusade
was being heralded in Graham’s own Decision magazine as a
‘mass evangelistic effort on a scale unknown in the history of
the Christian church’, but by November 1961, when a British
edition of Decision was launched, its pages spoke of British
alienation from the churches (less than 10% attending) and of
39
rampant immorality. When Maurice Rowlandson, on behalf
36 Evangelical Alliance, On the Other Side, pp.24-33.
37 Ibid., pp.33-59.
38 Decision, August 1961, p.10.
39 Decision, June 1961, p.16; November 1961, p.2.
 The Other Side 273

of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, approached the

leaders of the Evangelical Alliance in 1963 about a further in-
vitation to Billy Graham to come to Britain, they surprised
40
him with ‘a unanimous and categorical rejection’. In retro-
spect, it appears that this negative response was at least partly
prompted by the unease about Graham’s methods that would
come to be more fully expressed in On the Other Side. The re-
fusal meant that an independent lay-council was convened.
This managed to achieve 100 signatures to a parchment to in-
vite Billy Graham to come to Britain, and he duly accepted.
When Gilbert Kirby heard about this, he contacted
Rowlandson to ask why the Alliance had not been asked to is-
sue the petition. Rowlandson had taken the initial refusal still
to apply, but the lay-council agreed to put things back in the
Alliance’s hands. As a result, the Alliance became the official
sponsor of what would be the Greater London Crusade of
1966 – the crusade at which, famously, the pop singer Cliff
Richard was converted. The Executive Committee of the
41
Crusade met at the Alliance headquarters.
There were indications that fresh theological thinking was
taking place.Section 2 of On the Other Side argued that belief in
God as Lord of creation and the desire to follow Christ ‘both
impel the Christian to be identified with the world. This
means a genuine, a full, and a Christian participation in the life
of the world’.The report called for a commitment to the social
42
implications of the gospel. Drawing on new research, its as-
sessment of the effectiveness or otherwise of local churches’
engagement in evangelism was that much preaching was out of
touch with actual human needs.On the other hand,the report
recognised that there was a growing interest in evangelism in
theological college programmes. There were evangelistic
agencies taking up the challenge of work outside the churches,
especially in schools,colleges and universities,but other sectors

40 Martin, Billy Graham Story, p.318.

41 Report to the Evangelical Alliance Council Conference, 27 January 1966.
42 Evangelical Alliance, On the Other Side, pp.60-88.
274 One Body in Christ

of the population were not being reached.Evangelicals had not

fared well in inner-city areas. Existing churches, the report
continued, had been ‘signally unsuccessful in reaching
non-white members of the community with the result that
43
separate places of worship are springing up’. The growth of
the black churches,which was to have such a significant impact
on the evangelical scene in Britain, was beginning to be no-
ticed.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the report was its
critical comments about crusade evangelism. Maurice
Rowlandson found the critique of mass evangelism very hard
to understand and accept, and considered that On the Other
Side ‘put the clock back on evangelism for at least the next ten
44
years’. Certainly the survey that the members of the Alliance
Commission undertook was significant. It showed that with
regard to mass evangelism ‘the recurring theme was that the
crusade did not make a lasting effect on the complete outsider’.
The report spoke of a declining confidence among churches
and ministers in the crusade method. It suggested that in the
future crusade meetings should concentrate more on instruc-
tion than inspiration and that it might be better not to have an
45
open appeal in the meetings. Not surprisingly, this section of
the report caught the attention of the press. An Alliance As-
sembly was held in 1968 to consider the report and this Assem-
bly received more prominent coverage on radio and in the
national press than the previous assemblies. Reporters were
keen to find evidence of direct criticism of the Billy Graham
Crusades, but Morgan Derham was anxious to stress that good
relationships between the Alliance and the Billy Graham
46
Evangelistic Association were not at risk. Nonetheless, new
directions in mission were being proposed.

43 Ibid., 89-161.
44 Rowlandson, Life with Billy, pp.95, 115.
45 Evangelical Alliance, On the Other Side, pp.143, 16-9.
46 Evangelical Alliance, January-April 1969, pp.5-8.
 The Other Side 275

A Service Agency

Morgan Derham left the Alliance to work for the United Bible
Societies at the end of December 1968. His successor was
Gordon Landreth, an Anglican lay reader, who had been in
Malawi with the Overseas Civil Service and had then worked
for the Inter-Varsity
47
Fellowship as secretary of the Graduates’
Fellowship. This was a time of reappraisal of the work of the
Alliance. In July 1968 Derham had written a paper that sug-
gested that the Alliance should be ‘a compact information and
service agency’ and should move out of the world of evangeli-
cal politics, stop holding national assemblies and acknowledge
the self-sufficiency of most evangelical groups and movements.
There should be continued support for relief work and for
groups that were part of the Alliance family, such as the Arts
Centre Group.It was a time,in Derham’s view,when the wider
evangelical world was ‘breaking up into self-sufficient group-
ings’, with evangelicals in the Church of England likely to
become less distinctive and to find their needs met within
Anglicanism, with independents regarding the Alliance as a
hindrance, and with the Baptists likely to be left as the only
major denominational group in the Alliance family. Thus
Derham could not see the Alliance being able to48continue in its
traditional role of promoting evangelical unity.
In some respects the picture was not as bleak as Derham had
privately painted it. From 1966 to 1968, 117 congregations of
various types joined the Alliance, representing an increase of
49
28% in church affiliation. In 1967 the circulation of Crusade
was over 21,000 – an increase of 20% from 1964. Another sig-
nificant development in this period was the establishment and
growth of an Alliance department, led by Mary-Jean Duffield,
which became known as TEAR Fund (originally EAR –
the Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund; the new, serendipitous
47 Evangelical Alliance, Summer 1969, p.3.
48 A. Morgan Derham, ‘The Role of the Alliance’, a confidential statement, 10
July 1968.
49 Annual Report given by the Rev. Morgan Derham, 1968.
276 One Body in Christ

acronym was suggested by Peter Meadows). In the first in-

stance, the department grew out of a need to distribute an in-
creasing number of donations for relief work. Initially, these
were sent to Hong Kong, but money was subsequently di-
rected towards projects in the Congo, India and Vietnam. The
Alliance was seeking to show that the dichotomy between ‘the
50
social and the spiritual Gospel’ was a false one. TEAR Fund
was to grow at a remarkable rate and during the 1970s, under
George Hoffman, it became the best known evangelical
51
agency in Britain engaged in global social action. The Alli-
ance set up Commissions on World Mission and on witness in
new towns. Two important reports – One World, One Task and
Evangelical Strategy in the New Towns – were published. Both
had an impact in the 1970s. While, therefore, it was true to say,
as Crusade did in 1970, that there had been a serious rift be-
tween evangelicals in the mainline denominations and some of
52
those outside, there were still many ways in which evangeli-
cals continued to co-operate together.
The specific initiatives taken during the period of Gordon
Landreth’s secretaryship focused mainly on evangelism in Brit-
ain and elsewhere.In 1972 John Bird,who was then the pastor of
Duke Street Baptist Church, Richmond, was appointed to the
full-time staff of the Alliance as Director of Evangelism.The Al-
liance was keen that Bird should visit local churches and area
evangelical fellowships to discuss ways in which evangelism
53
could be promoted locally. Bird took on a wider brief a year
later – to lead an Alliance national evangelistic project entitled
POWER. This was a call to intercession centred on the Alli-
ance’s week of prayer. It was also a call to evangelism. A
programme of church-based outreach lasted from Easter 1974
50 The Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Spring 1967, p.5; Evangelical Alliance, Sum-
mer 1969, pp.18-21.
51 See T. Chester, Awakening to a World of Need (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press,
1993), p.23.
52 Editorial, Crusade, August 1970, p.1.
53 idea, Autumn 1972, p.1. idea was published by the Information Department,
Evangelical Alliance.
 The Other Side 277

to Easter 1975. POWERpacks were produced by the Alliance

for local churches and Bird addressed ministers’ meetings
54
around the country. Along with this,Landreth helped to revive
the Evangelists’Conference,which had originally been hosted
by Tom Rees at Hildenborough Hall and which became an in-
creasingly important forum for those involved in local mis-
55
sion. In this period,there was also a deliberate emphasis within
the Alliance on the relationship between evangelism and
socio-political action. Patrick Sookhdeo was employed by the
Alliance to promote evangelism in multi-ethnic areas, and the
Alliance also supported the work of the Evangelical Race
56
Relations Group. Internationally, Landreth served as Secre-
tary of the European Evangelical Alliance. He was also a
member of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelisation.
This had arisen out of the momentous Lausanne Congress of
1974 – an international meeting of leading evangelicals which
had done much to re-establish socio-political action as an
indispensable partner to personal conversion in the presenta-
57
tion and reception of the gospel.
In 1976 a small group of denominational leaders met with
Alliance leaders and in due course it was agreed that there
should be a ‘Nationwide Initiative in Evangelism’ (NIE). The
chief mover of NIE was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Don-
ald Coggan, but he was prominently supported by the Meth-
odist evangelical leader, Donald English, and by Baptist
58
spokesmen such as David Russell and David Pawson. Partly
in response to these discussions, the Alliance began to talk
about presenting the 1980s as a decade of evangelism.At a resi-
dential conference of the Alliance on 30 and 31 January 1978

54 idea, Summer 1974, p.5.

55 P. Lewis, ‘Renewal, Recovery and Growth: 1966 Onwards’, in Brady & Rowdon,
(eds), For Such a Time as This, p.182.
56 idea, Summer 1974, p.2.
57 J.Stott (ed.), Making Christ Known:Historic Mission Documents from the Lausanne
Movement, 1974-1989 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1996).
58 D. McBain, Fire Over the Waters: Renewal Among the Baptists and Others from the
1960s to the 1990s (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1997), pp.80-81.
278 One Body in Christ

involvement in NIE was discussed in more detail. Gordon

Landreth reported that evangelicals had been asked to play a
major role in choosing the Initiative Committee. At this con-
ference, the Anglican theologian, James Packer, gave a paper in
which he argued for the contextualising of the gospel. He
commended what was going on in the charismatic movement,
especially the sense of local church community, which he saw
59
as vital. At a meeting of the Executive Council on 12 Sep-
tember 1978 it was agreed that Clifford Hill,the Alliance’s Sec-
retary for Evangelism and Church Growth, would work as
closely as possible with the NIE Secretary. The leading Meth-
odist NIE supporter, Donald English, who would launch the
initiative in 1979 as President of the Methodist Conference,
was a guest at this meeting. He considered that NIE and Alli-
ance ideas were virtually identical and hoped that there would
60
be agreed spheres of co-operation. Although the extent of
Alliance involvement in an ecumenical enterprise provoked
debate, the Alliance was clearly seeking to serve the wider
church in its mission.

Renewed Vision

There was a feeling of renewed energy in Alliance circles in the

early 1980s.At a day conference of the Alliance Council on 22
July 1980 Gilbert Kirby spoke of evidence of God at work in
the independent churches,including
61
Pentecostal churches and
house fellowships. At a time when many groups were ‘doing
their own thing’, said Kirby, the
62
Alliance had a unique oppor-
tunity to co-ordinate efforts. Partly by way of response, in
January 1981 reports were given at the Alliance Executive

59 Minutes of the Residential Session of the Executive Council of the Evangeli-

cal Alliance held on 30 and 31 January 1978.
60 Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Executive Council of the Evangelical Alli-
ance, 12 September 1978.
61 Minutes of a Day Conference of the EA Council, 22 January 1980.
62 G.W.Kirby ‘The Role of the Evangelical Alliance’,unpublished paper,1980.
 The Other Side 279

Council by David Abernethie, Gilbert Kirby, Michael Barling

and Clive Calver on – respectively – the independent evangeli-
cals, the denominational evangelicals, charismatic renewal, and
the youth scene and the ‘House Churches’. David Abernethie
said that he had taken soundings among independent evangeli-
cals and had found an optimistic note. There were 435 FIEC
churches with 25,000 members and numbers were increasing
at the rate of about ten churches per year. The charismatic
influence was being felt.There was a new concern for evange-
lism. Within the independent network there was support for
London Bible College and Scripture Union, and also for the
Evangelical Alliance – although there were worries among
some that it had become too broad, and that Crusade was
‘brash, crude and cruel’. Despite this, independents
63
were
largely committed supporters of TEAR Fund.
Gilbert Kirby gave a report on evangelicals in the denomi-
national churches. He saw disarray among evangelicals, with
Anglicans in particular being ‘self-contained and self-suffi-
cient’.Within the renewal movement there was debate regard-
ing various gifts, attitudes to Roman Catholics and a general
failure of the leaders to relate to one another. Kirby saw the
charismatic movement as having caused a general ‘loosening
up’ in church life, particularly in worship, the sharing of minis-
tries and the adoption of modern language. On the whole, the
Anglicans were more responsive to change than the Free
Churches, and there was also a tendency for restorationist
groups (often also dubbed ‘House Churches’ in this period) to
break away from the mainstream.Michael Barling,an Anglican
involved in the renewal movement, said that new features
within this group included less emphasis on tongues and heal-
ing, increased stress on prophecy, teaching and evangelism, and
a decline in big central meetings. Looking to the future,
Barling anticipated prophecy and its role being debated, evan-
gelism being seen as a demonstration of God’s power as well as

63 ‘A Review of the Evangelical Scene in Britain’:Note of a discussion at the Ex-

ecutive Council of the Evangelical Alliance, 20 January 1981.
280 One Body in Christ

proclamation, new hunger for teaching in the renewal move-

ment,and new emphases on community and lifestyle.Barling’s
plea was that there should be a coming together of what he
called ‘credal Christians’, whether Protestant, Catholic, evan-
gelical or charismatic.This was at a time when the Alliance was
asking for a clearer confession of faith than that contained in an
64
interim NIE statement.
Clive Calver, the director of British Youth for Christ
(BYFC), surveyed the youth scene. In order to achieve a
broader unity among younger evangelicals from varied church
backgrounds,he reported,the Spring Harvest festival had been
launched in 1979. Morgan Derham recalled that in the 1960s
he had not believed bridges could be made between inde-
pendent and inclusivist evangelicals. But Roger Forster,
founder of the Ichthus Fellowship in London and typical of the
new generation of evangelical leaders, felt that diversity need
not cause polarisation. David Pawson, a Baptist charismatic
who had chaired the commission that produced On the Other
65
Side, similarly wanted to move beyond the past debates. In
view of this new mood, an Alliance Task Force was set up to
consider the future. Chaired by Morgan Derham, it reached
the startlingly radical conclusion that the way forward was
through a new representative body to replace the Alliance. It
was proposed that a conference of evangelical leaders be called
66
to take the process further. As we saw in the last chapter, in
1970 there had not been sufficient common ground to bring
evangelicals together for a residential conference. Some of
those on both sides of the divide that had been evident in 1970
were now prepared to make a fresh effort.Thus from 9-11 Sep-
tember 1981 fifty-two evangelical leaders met at High Leigh
to discuss the Alliance’s willingness to put its future on the line
if this would help unity. There was no one present from the
United Reformed Church or from Assemblies of God, but
64 idea, Spring 1981, p.3.
65 ‘A Review of the Evangelical Scene in Britain’:Note of a discussion at the Ex-
ecutive Council of the Evangelical Alliance, 20 January 1981.
66 Executive Council Minutes, 14 May 1981.
 The Other Side 281

apart from that the major denominations and evangelical

groupings in England – though not in the rest of Britain – were
represented. Gerald Coates of the Pioneer network acted as
spokesman for the House Churches and Peter Lewis from
Nottingham emerged as the main speaker from the independ-
67
ent wing. A new mood of co-operation was emerging.
The discussions at High Leigh covered such topics as the
Bible, the nature of the church, mission and the charismatic
movement. The suspicion that there were evangelicals selling
out on the gospel did not seem to have been substantiated. A
year later, at a further conference arranged by the Alliance, it
was reported that there was now even more open fellowship
between evangelical leaders. David Watson of York, the most
prominent Anglican charismatic leader, and Robert Horn,
later General Secretary of the Universities and Colleges
Christian Fellowship (UCCF), spoke on approaches to co-
operation. It was plain in the early 1980s that the Alliance was
providing a unique forum in which evangelical leaders –
Anglican, charismatic, conservative and Reformed – were
interacting constructively in a way which had not been the
case for almost two decades. In the light of this development,
it appeared that there was no overwhelming case for the de-
mise of the Alliance. So when Gordon Landreth announced
that he was moving to a new job at Trinity College, Bristol,
the search began for a new General Secretary. This time there
was no ambiguity about the kind of person who was wanted.
Kirby, who was then President of the Alliance, set out the cri-
teria. He (or possibly she – there were now a few women on
the Council) would need to ‘gain the ear of Christian people
up and down the country’, would be ‘a reasonably young
person, although not without some experience’, would
be theologically aware, would ‘hold the respect of the
vast majority of evangelicals’, and would be ‘acceptable to
68
charismatics and non-charismatics’.

67 Notes of an Alliance conference, 9-11 September 1981.

68 idea, Winter 1982/83, p.1.
282 One Body in Christ

Conclusion

The period of the 1960s and 1970s was one that threw up con-
siderable challenges for the Alliance.New movements brought
fresh energy but also fresh tensions. Both in the area of spiritu-
ality and of evangelism there was a move away from traditional
paths,a development that reflected the changing mood in soci-
ety. As we have seen, the Alliance was open to renewal on sev-
eral fronts:there was a willingness to go over to ‘the other side’.
Yet at the same time,it was struggling to deal with the divisions
within British evangelicalism. Gilbert Kirby managed to keep
many evangelicals together through his emphasis on evange-
lism, but unity became harder after the divisions of the 1966
Assembly. It would be wrong, however, to think that the Alli-
ance was moribund in the 1970s. The idea of the service
agency, which Morgan Derham proposed, suggested a still
important role. However, Derham’s ideal for the Alliance was
that there
69
should be someone at the helm who was a ‘pro-
moter’. With the new confidence about the future of the
Alliance that emerged in the early 1980s it became possible to
envisage such a person. The steady bridge building that
Gordon Landreth had undertaken was about to bear fruit in a
powerful coming together of those who had been on different
sides of the charismatic renewal debate. It might have seemed
impossible to find the kind of ‘catholic’ mix that was being
sought by the Alliance at the end of 1982 as it began to con-
template a new General Secretary. Yet Clive Calver’s experi-
ence with BYFC was taken to have equipped him well for the
role, and he was duly appointed in 1983.

69 Derham, ‘The Role of the Alliance’.

 12

A Deepening of Evangelical Unity

The Resurgence of the Alliance in the 1980s and 1990s

The Alliance announced in the Spring 1983 edition of its bul-

letin, idea, that 34 year-old Clive Calver had been appointed
General Secretary, and that he was one of the youngest men to
hold the position in the Alliance’s 137 year history. idea
emphasised Calver’s ability to motivate others and to encour-1
age people and organisations to develop their full potential.
There was some surprise in the evangelical world that the Alli-
ance should turn to someone of Calver’s age, but it was to
become clear that Calver could fulfil the kind 2
of influential
role the Alliance’s senior advisors had in mind. The period of
Calver’s secretaryship, from 1983 to 1997, was to be one in
which the Alliance grew rapidly. In the early 1980s, the
number of individual Evangelical Alliance members was
between 900 and 1,000.In the mid-1990s individual member-
ship of the Alliance reached 56,000. The number of churches
in membership 3
grew from under 1,000 to almost 3,000 in the
same period. In 1990 the members of the Executive Commit-
tee of the Evangelical Alliance,as they reflected on the progress
that had been made in the previous seven years,affirmed that it

1 idea, Spring 1983, p.1.

2 J. Capon, The Baptist Times, 11 January 1996, p.7.
3 Historical Membership Statistics for the Evangelical Alliance produced in
2000.
284 One Body in Christ

remained committed to what they saw as five activities that

have been at the heart of the Alliance since 1846. These were
the promotion of true Christianity, the encouragement of
evangelism,the stimulation of prayer,the maintenance of bibli-4
cal truth and the engendering of Christian action in society.
This summary did not convey the Alliance’s ‘grand object’ in
1846, which was ‘manifesting and promoting the unity of
Christ’s disciples’ (see chapter 3), but the stress on active
involvement in society was true to the Alliance’s history.

In Continuity with the Past

A brief look at Calver’s career up to 1983 might have led to

the conclusion that he would be interested in producing a
forward-looking and active Alliance and would have rela-
tively little interest in continuity with the past. From a
Brethren background, he was converted at the age of nine-
teen, under the ministry of future Ichthus Fellowship leader
and Alliance Vice-President, Roger Forster. At that time he
was involved in political activities (with the young Liberals)
and in community work in East London. He then studied at
London Bible College, where he met his wife, Ruth, a
daughter of Gilbert Kirby, and he subsequently led evangelis-
tic teams for several years. In 1975 Calver became director of
British Youth for Christ and was a member of the planning
group for the annual conference of British evangelists. Calver
and Peter Meadows were instrumental in launching the phe-
nomenally successful Spring Harvest festival in 1979. At the
time of his appointment as General Secretary of the Evangeli-
cal Alliance, Calver was already a member of the Executive
Council and was the programme director for Billy Graham’s
Mission England crusade in Britain. He was known interna-
tionally, having made several visits overseas, including a

4 Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Council of Management, 14

November 1990.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 285

preaching tour in America and Canada. In his local area at the

time, Milton 5Keynes, he was an elder of a recently formed
Free Church. Clive Calver seemed to be a classic evangelical
activist.
At the same time, Calver was well aware, especially through
Gilbert Kirby, of the story of the Alliance in the 1960s and
1970s. At a meeting in 1983 of the Executive Committee of
the Council of Management, a body that had been set up in
response to a desire to make the structure of the Alliance more
effective, Calver reviewed the recent history of the organisa-
tion. He stressed that the Alliance was an umbrella for corpo-
rate evangelical action and not another society. He made
particular reference to the critical events of 1966,when the late
Martyn Lloyd-Jones was associated with the advocacy of the
separation of evangelicals from mixed denominations and, on
the other hand, evangelicals such as John Stott advocated re-
maining in denominations.For Calver,there was a need for the
Alliance as a non-denominational uniting body. He reminded
the Alliance committee members of the review that was un-
dertaken in 1981 of its role and future, a review that had con-
cluded that there should be a metamorphosis of the Alliance,
out of which would emerge a body that would be more repre-
sentative of evangelical groupings. Calver considered that the
new moves taking place within the Alliance were in continuity
with this decision. The council of management would be
operating as a widely representative body dealing with policy
and issues of theological and denominational importance, and
the Executive Committee of the council would deal with
6
strategy, finance, staffing and new projects.
Soon Calver was also exploring the more distant past. He
spoke later of discovering for himself ‘exactly what the heart-
beat of the Evangelical Alliance was’,and his conclusion was to
have considerable significance for its future direction.As a result

5 idea, Spring 1983, p.1.

6 Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Council of Management, 14
October 1983.
286 One Body in Christ

of his historical study, Calver began to champion two causes.

The first to which he dedicated himself was the dream of united
evangelical action espoused by the Alliance’s founding fathers.
The second was the recovery of the concern of Victorian evan-
gelicals such as Lord Shaftesbury and William Booth to have an
7
effective social impact. In his public statements in 1984 Calver
was committed to setting the tone. The Alliance received high
profile exposure at Spring Harvest in that year – membership
increased by almost 50% as a result of the 1984 Spring Harvest
8
meetings. Calver was clearly also aware of the need to make
evangelical views known through the media.He took the view
that many in the media were struggling to find a cohesive, rep-
resentative voice,because evangelicalism has been so divided.In
1983 and 1984 Calver visited conferences, such as the charis-
matic leaders’ conference and the annual conference of the
largest Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God, in
order to achieve the kind of radical realignment of evangelicals
9
and the co-operation that he envisaged. This concern for a
broad-based unity was a contemporary expression of the Alli-
ance’s founding vision – ‘One Body in Christ’.
Enthusiasm for evangelical unity was clearly growing in this
period, although tensions were also evident. One of Calver’s
first major achievements was a conference entitled ‘Leadership
84’,which took place at the Pontins Holiday Camp at Brean in
Somerset. This brought together about a thousand evangelical
leaders. It was, as Peter Lewis commented, ‘a significant event
10
in the deepening of evangelical unity’. Calver reported to the
Evangelical Alliance Executive Committee after ‘Leadership
84’ that the overwhelming majority of those returning ques-
tionnaires had commented very positively, but there had also
been negative responses, especially from some Anglicans,
7 idea, June/July/August 1997, p.22.
8 Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Council of Management,17 April
1984.
9 Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Council of Management, 15
December 1983; 24 October 1984.
10 Lewis, ‘Renewal, Recovery and Growth’, pp.187-8.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 287

Methodists and United Reformed Church participants. In

particular,it had been suggested that the Alliance had a dispro-
portionately low percentage of members from the Anglican
constituency and it was noted that there had been a lack of
senior Anglican leaders attending the conference. There had
also been complaints that the style of worship did not take ac-
count of Anglican tradition. It had also been suggested that
Methodists and URC members were not adequately repre-
sented within the Alliance and that this constituency felt dis-
quiet about the growing charismatic emphasis. In response to
Anglican concerns, Calver had discussions with John Stott,
who indicated his willingness to represent the Alliance to the
evangelical Anglican constituency. Calver was also in discus-
sion with Howard Mellor from the Methodist Cliff College.
The URC’s Group for Evangelism and Renewal (GEAR) was
11
unconvinced about joining the Alliance. It had been formed
to promote broad-based charismatic renewal rather than evan-
gelicalism per se, and was concerned that such a move might
alienate more liberal charismatics within its constituency.
Meanwhile, in the attempt to reach out to new groups, the
Alliance was struggling to retain some of its own more tradi-
tional constituency.
It was seeking to draw from its past not only in the sphere of
evangelical unity but in the way it was emphasising social ac-
tion. In 1985 the Executive Committee was informed that the
Shaftsbury Society was concerned to encourage the church in
Britain to greater involvement in social and community affairs.
The Alliance was in touch with Fran Beckett, who later be-
came the Chief Executive of the Shaftesbury Society. It was
suggested that the Alliance should draw together member so-
cieties with a particular interest in this field to discuss raising
finance. George Hoffman of TEAR Fund was also raising the
12
profile of social issues. In addition, the Alliance was building
11 Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Council of Management,17 April
1984.
12 Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Council of Management, 7
November 1985.
288 One Body in Christ

on its concern to campaign for religious liberty and was, as

Christianity Today noted later, achieving visibility and credibil-
ity with the media and political leaders in Britain. Journalists
began to contact the Alliance for its views on a broad range of
issues. The challenge for the Alliance in this period was to en-
sure that the information and the comments it gave to the me-
dia were a product of thorough research and could take their
13
place in the arena of debate about issues of public policy.

The Multi-Ethnic Dimension

One issue with which the leadership of the Evangelical Alli-

ance was increasingly determined to engage was the multi-
ethnic nature of British evangelicalism in the 1980s.Calver was
challenged by a black church leader, Philip Mohibir, who later
recalled how he had summoned up all his courage to ask
Calver why there was only one black-led church in member-
ship of the Alliance. Mohibir had come to Britain from the
Caribbean in the 1950s.His work became international,but in
the early 1980s he returned to Britain. Having issued his chal-
lenge to Calver he waited for the rebuttal and the polite telling
off he had come to expect from British evangelical leaders, but
instead Calver asked Mohibir to ‘help me to 14
change things’.
Some painfully honest exchanges followed. The result was
constructive. In April 1984 the West Indian Evangelical Alli-
ance (WIEA), which was later renamed the African and
Caribbean Evangelical Alliance (ACEA), was launched. A
congregation of 450 people attended the launch at Rye Lane
Chapel, Peckham. The report in idea noted that there were
approximately one million West Indians in Britain and that the
WIEA was seeking to represent evangelicals from 150 different15
West Indian church groupings and some 1,500 churches.

13 Christianity Today, 9 December 1996, p.29.

14 idea June/July/August 1997, p.22.
15 idea, Summer 1985, p.3.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 289

At the launch, Brian Mills, who was leading the prayer and
evangelism department of the Alliance’s work, made a public
apology on behalf of the white evangelical community ‘for not
treating our West Indian brethren as we should have done’.He
made it clear that in his view there was a need to ‘repent of
deep-seated prejudices and coldness of heart which have cre-
ated distance between us and to work out how our unity in
Christ can find practical expression in the days ahead’. Philip
Mohibir, who was then the newly elected Chairman of the
WIEA, endorsed this approach. Mohibir spoke of ‘a divided
world torn apart by class differences and racial and sexual dis-
crimination’ and urged evangelicals to ‘unite in order to be-
come an authentic Christian witness in our torn and divided
16
society’. A year later the Alliance leadership discussed pro-
posals from Mohibir for the development of the WIEA and
agreed that office facilities,part-time secretarial help and other
financial assistance would be provided to the WIEA by the Al-
liance, that two Alliance staff would be representatives on the
WIEA committee, and that the WIEA would function auton-
17
omously within the Alliance. A new structure was being put
in place to seek to meet the needs of a new societal situation.
Joel Edwards, pastor at the New Testament Church of God,
Mile End, who was for ten years a probation officer with the
Inner London Probation Service,succeeded Philip Mohibir in
1988.Edwards had met Mohibir at Spring Harvest the year be-
fore,an indication of how larger evangelical events were acting
as bridge-building occasions.Although Edwards had studied at
London Bible College in the early 1970s, and had made many
18
friendships that would later prove strategic, to an extent he
had lost touch with the wider British evangelical world after
college, and his reconnection came through ‘Leadership 84’.

16 Ibid.
17 Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Council of Management, 13
March 1986.
18 Joel Edwards, Lord, Make us One – But Not All the Same! (London, Hodder &
Stoughton, 1999), chapter 3.
290 One Body in Christ

At the time of his appointment as General Secretary of the

WIEA, Edwards spoke of 2,000 ‘black-led churches’ – the
number was growing and also more were being discovered –
that had little contact with white Christians. Edwards believed
19
the situation must change. One project that was indebted to
WIEA involvement was the Evangelical Enterprise Unem-
ployment Consultancy, which secured a voice for the black
churches on bodies like the Inner London Education Author-
ity. When Edwards became the Alliance’s UK Director in
1992, he reflected on the ‘significant strides forward’ that the
African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance (ACEA, as it was by
then called) had made. It had given the black church commu-
nity a ‘focal point and coherence where needed’, and had ‘let
down the drawbridge between the black church and the wider
20
Christian community’.
ACEA continued its work under Ron Nathan, who joined
21
the Alliance in 1991 as Community Initiatives Consultant.
Like Edwards, he stayed in the post four years, moving in 1996
to undertake Master’s study at Westminster College, Oxford.
He saw his most important achievement as having been ‘to
help the black church to see its potential as a community de-
22
velopment agency for social change’. By the later 1990s,
those attending black-led or black majority Pentecostal
churches (belonging to a variety of denominations), which
were especially strong in inner-city areas, formed over 7% of
church attendees in England as a whole, with many black
23
Christians, in addition, to be found in other churches. Mark
Sturge, who became the new leader of ACEA in 1996 at the
age of thirty-one, was the pastor of the Caribbean Fellowship
at Kensington Temple, London, and had studied at London
Bible College. He was determined to continue the policy by
19 idea, Summer 1988, p.7.
20 idea, September-October 1992, p.11.
21 idea, August-September 1991, p.6.
22 idea, June-August 1996, p.9.
23 Brierley (ed.), UK Christian Handbook, 9.16, 12.3.
24 idea, November-December 1996, p.2.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 291

which black-led churches would ‘engage with what other

24
churches are doing for the sake of the gospel’. The identity
of the black-majority churches was further enhanced by the
production of a directory of churches.

Alliances for the Nations

In the later 1980s, the Alliance was also seeking to recognise

diversity within the different parts of the United Kingdom.
The development of this UK-wide vision merits a detailed
study of its own; here we offer a summary, conscious of signifi-
cant ongoing growth and change at this level even as we write.
In 1987 it opened a Belfast office to encourage co-operation on
specific projects such as ministries to those with addiction
problems, and community care schemes. Howard Lewis, a
Presbyterian minister who had worked in Belfast all his life,
took responsibility for Evangelical Alliance Northern Ireland,
and by 1992 it represented some 22,000 evangelicals in the
25
province. At that stage,one Ulsterman,Sir Fred Catherwood,
was taking a prominent role in the Alliance. He was born in
1925 in County Londonderry and followed a career path that
included posts in industry as managing director of British Alu-
minium Company and John Laing and Sons Ltd. He was also
Chairman of the National Economic Development Council
and of the British Overseas Trade Board. As a Member of the
European Parliament, Catherwood was strongly pro-Europe
(Pro-Europe? was the title of one of his books) and was vice-
President of the European Parliament in 1989.As the President
of the Evangelical Alliance from 1992, he made it clear that he
did not like to conform, a tendency that he attributed to his
26
resistance as an Ulsterman to ‘being put in a mould’.
Catherwood embodied the spirit of the Alliance, which was
seeking to affirm national and transnational identity.

25 idea, November-December 1992, p.6.

26 Alpha, October 1992, 25; idea, April-May 1992, p.11.
292 One Body in Christ

Developments in Wales also illustrated what was being at-

tempted. Arfon Jones, who was appointed co-ordinator in
1989 for the newly formed Alliance in Wales, spoke about the
promotion of unity among evangelicals and churches in Wales
as one of the major challenges ahead. He commented on the
way in which the number of evangelicals in Wales was growing
and also becoming more diverse, suggesting that there was an
urgent need for a movement that would encourage evangeli-
cals to work together. Jones, a former national youth officer
with the Union of Welsh Independents, was deeply commit-
ted to Welsh life.The Alliance in Wales was set up intentionally
as a bilingual movement,reflecting the trends that were evident
27
in the wider church and society of the period. It would,
according to Jones,seek to respond to the unique needs of both
small chapels and large city congregations and would ‘act as a
catalyst for evangelistic and social action’. In Jones’ view,
the difficulties and challenges faced by Welsh churches were
markedly different from those in England. Hence the focus on
shaping an Alliance that would, in his words, ‘grow from the
28
soil of the Welsh churches’.
Three years later, a Scottish Evangelical Alliance was
launched,following three years of consultation among evangel-
ical leaders in Scotland.Colin Sinclair,director of Scripture Un-
ion in Scotland,and Chairman of the steering group of church
leaders behind the formation of the new Alliance,explained in
idea in 1992 that the Scottish Alliance would provide ‘a frame-
work for evangelicals throughout the country to unite in prayer,
mission and active concern about our country’.Responsibility
for oversight of the Alliance would be with a forty-member
council of management drawn from across the denominations
in Scotland. The Scottish Alliance, which was to become even
more strategic with the setting up of a Scottish Parliament,had
as its vision the provision of a forum where evangelicals from

27 See D. Densil Morgan, The Span of the Cross: Christian Religion and Society in
Wales, 1914-2000 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999).
28 idea, November-December 1989, p.16.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 293

different denominations and different parts of the country

could work together. Ian Coffey, then field director of the UK
Evangelical Alliance, highlighted the fact that the Alliance had
begun in 1846 as a result of initiatives from Scottish church lead-
ers and emphasised the rightness of Alliance members in Scot-
land having their own council, executive and staff. He looked
29
forward to the rich contribution they would make. The dan-
ger was that the UK Alliance would not hold together so
strongly as the national Alliances developed,and when Joel Ed-
wards was appointed UK director in 1992 an Alliance press re-
lease made clear that he would work with Alliances in Northern
Ireland, Scotland and Wales to promote evangelical co-opera-
30
tion across cultural and national boundaries.

Ecumenical Issues
As a body committed to unity, the question of co-operation
with ecumenical ecclesiastical bodies remained a challenging
one for the Alliance. By this period the acrimonious debates
about withdrawal from all those involved in theologically
mixed denominations, which had characterised the 1960s,
were rare.Nonetheless,there was sensitivity about the extent to
which the Alliance could officially associate with the ecumeni-
cal movement. In June 1988, at a meeting of the Executive
Committee, two Baptists who were present, Robert Amess –
who would later become the Alliance Chairman – and Ian
Coffey reported that the British Council of Churches (BCC),
the British ecumenical body, planned to cease operation in its
present form by 1990,and then to set up new ecumenical struc-
tures at local, regional, national and UK levels. The Executive
Committee noted that a consultative process to examine differ-
ent proposals for a new structure had been in process. A major
evaluation had taken place at a conference at Swanwick in
1987,and it was now envisaged that specific proposals would be
29 idea, April-May 1992, p.2.
30 Evangelical Alliance News Release 21 August 1992.
294 One Body in Christ

available in the Autumn of 1989. The BCC had also requested

the Alliance’s involvement in providing written questions,
31
comments and criticisms in connection with their proposals.
This ecumenical development, which took the title ‘Not
Strangers but Pilgrims’,offered hope of a broader expression of
Christian unity than had been the case with the BCC – a unity
that included black-led churches and Roman Catholics.
Against a background of failed unity schemes,such as the Cove-
nant proposals of the 1970s and early 80s which had sought to
bring five major denominations closer together, this ‘Inter-
32
Church Process’ (ICP) seemed to some to be more hopeful.
Alliance members welcomed the fact that the new body would
operate under a basis of faith that would be trinitarian,but noted
that it would not be as complete as the Basis of Faith of the Alli-
ance. The purpose of the new body would be to encourage
Christians to work together in local areas on social issues and
evangelism.It would have three levels of membership:full mem-
bership for denominations only, associate membership for
groups like the Alliance which could assent to the basis of faith,
and observer membership for groups which could not assent to
the Basis of Faith.After discussion about the BCC’s invitation,it
was agreed that Kenneth Prior, Robert Amess and Ian Coffey
should prepare a list of questions for the BCC and that these
should be referred to the Executive Committee before sending
them to the BCC. Clive Calver advised Alan Gibson of the
33
British Evangelical Council (BEC) of this decision.
The concern to keep the BEC informed showed the desire
of the Alliance to guard the evangelical constituency from an-
other damaging period of polarisation over ecumenism. A
meeting between representatives of the Inter-Church Process
and Alliance representatives on 25 May 1989, by which time
definite proposals about new ‘ecumenical instruments’ (The

31 Minutes of the Executive Committee, 22 June 1988.

32 C.J. Ellis, Together on the Way: A Theology of Ecumenism (London: British Coun-
cil of Churches, 1990), pp.4-5.
33 Minutes of the Executive Committee, 22 June 1988.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 295

Next Steps for Churches Together in Pilgrimage) had been pub-

34
lished, explored the possibilities in more detail. Those who
attended the meeting recommended on 25 July 1989 that the
Evangelical Alliance should seek a consultant relationship with
the ICP, and the Executive agreed to adopt this approach. It
was considered that the ICP would appear attractive to many
Alliance supporters and that it could be damaging to the Alli-
ance not to have some sort of relationship with the Process.
However, it was regarded as important to communicate to
Alliance members that any relationship it might have with the
ICP would be entered into realistically in the light of past ex-
perience of evangelicals with ecumenical bodies. The convic-
tion among Alliance leaders at that stage was that a relationship
with ICP would enable the Alliance to take part in discussions
where otherwise evangelical standpoints could be ignored. It
was noted that the WIEA had opted for observer status in the
new ecumenical process,and in view of the regret expressed by
the WIEA that there had not been a joint response to the ICP
from the Evangelical Alliance and themselves, it was agreed to
35
formulate a joint approach.
Although the Alliance was able to develop constructive re-
lationships with leaders within the ICP, and indeed in the
1990s Alliance council members such as David Coffey, the
General Secretary of the Baptist Union, would be involved in
Churches Together in England,it was decided in 1990 that the
Alliance could not accept an invitation to become a member
of the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland. This deci-
sion followed months of intensive discussion. This had not,
however, led to divisions within the Evangelical Alliance. It
was the unanimous view of the Evangelical Alliance council

34 D. Palmer, Strangers No Longer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990),

pp.69-80.
35 Minutes of the Executive Committee, 25 July 1988.
296 One Body in Christ

that it would be impossible for the Alliance,based as it was on a

credal confession, to enter into membership with a body
whose basis of faith was significantly different. Also, it was re-
cognised that the Alliance incorporated evangelicals holding
differing views about ecumenism and that in the light of this
Alliance membership of the new ecumenical council would
be inconsistent. The obvious retort was that the Alliance had
been seeking for 150 years to draw together individual Chris-
tians,local churches,denominations and agencies.Why should
it,therefore,distance itself from a new initiative in the sphere of
unity? The reality was,as Executive members saw,that for most
evangelical Christians in the UK the Evangelical Alliance had a
distinctive role.Besides,Alliance leaders made it clear that they
wished ongoing dialogue with officers of the new ecumenical
36
councils on matters of mutual interest and concern.

Evangelical Unity
It was in the field of evangelical unity that the Alliance felt more
confident. There was awareness in the 1980s of the need to
reach out across some of the divides created by certain strands
within the charismatic movement. In particular, the rise of
churches that claimed to have restored New Testament church
life in a way that the denominations had failed to do. Terry
Virgo, one of the leaders of this ‘restorationist’ or ‘House
Church’ strand, was typical in suggesting that denominational
leaders overseeing churches would simply defend the status
quo. He spoke about safe denominational churches enjoying
37
a little renewal. In order to foster dialogue, the Alliance ar-
ranged a meeting in 1987 at the Friends Meeting House,
London, addressed by John Stott and Gerald Coates, a House
Church leader, like Virgo. A decade previously, Stott had pub-
licly apologised to Michael Harper, the Anglican charismatic
renewal leader, for the way he had allowed their friendship to
36 Minutes of the Executive Committee, 14 November 1990.
37 Restoration, November-December 1981, pp.9-12.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 297

become ‘tarnished’ due to disagreements over charismatic

38
issues. In 1987 Stott was seeking to demonstrate,through ap-
pearing on a platform with a House Church leader, that ‘we
belong together in the body of Christ’. It was a statement that
echoed the classic Alliance concern for the reality of the ‘one
body in Christ’ to be expressed. Coates stated that the coming
together indicated that after years of often-hostile separation,
Anglicans and House Churches (later known as ‘New
Churches’) were learning to express their love to one another
39
without abandoning their own distinctives.
This ‘coming together’ was reflected in the composition of
the Alliance’s Council. The forty-five members at the end of
the 1980s represented some fourteen denominational streams,
including Assemblies of God, Baptist, Church of England,
Elim Pentecostal, Methodist, New Testament Assembly, New
Testament Church of God, Presbyterian, United Reformed
Church, Salvation Army and House Church and independent
streams. A further leadership conference, ‘Leadership 89’, was
organised in conjunction with MARC Europe, to consolidate
the new sense of unity. At that stage the Alliance’s leadership
team was Mike Morris (Secretary for Social and Foreign
Affairs), John Earwicker (Prayer Secretary), Peter Meadows
(Communications Secretary),Joel Edwards (General Secretary
of the WIEA), Jonathan Markham (Administrative Secretary),
Ian Coffey (Field Director), Ian Barclay (Minister at Large),
40
and Clive Calver (General Director). Denominationally, the
bias of this group was towards Free Church life, with Ian
Barclay being the only ordained Anglican clergyman.
The priority for the Alliance, however, was to reinforce a
sense of pan-denominational evangelical identity.It was a view-
point that fitted well with the increasing ambivalence on the
part of many younger evangelicals towards denominational
‘labels’.A report in idea in mid-1991,entitled ‘Under the Spot-

38 idea, Winter 1975, p.6.

39 idea, Spring 1987, p.12.
40 idea, May-June 1989, p.16.
298 One Body in Christ

light’, captured the feeling of the time. It noted that the new
Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, was an evangelical.
The most recent church census had revealed what was described
as ‘dramatic evangelical church growth’, with evangelicals ap-
parently comprising 45% of Protestants in church in Britain on
Sundays.Evangelical social action was also bringing evangelicals
‘into the glare of the media spotlight’.From the Daily Mirror and
the Sunday Times, continued the report, to BBC and ITN, the
media were trying to understand evangelicalism. Journalists
were ‘tying themselves in knots attempting to unravel evange-
lists from evangelicals and New Churches from charismatic
Anglicanism’. Alliance representatives were in front of micro-
phones and cameras answering questions about worship styles,
healing,evangelism and growing churches.Spring Harvest was
by that stage a focus of media interest.It had become the largest
event of its kind in Europe,having grown from 2,700 people in
1979 to 80,000 in 1991. For most of that time, there had been
little interest from religious correspondents,but now journalists
41
were keen to visit, write about and film it.
Internally, the period 1991-2 saw changes that were de-
signed to keep the Alliance in touch with its own constituency
and aid united action.Alan Martin,formerly general director of
Scripture Union,retired as Chairman of the Alliance’s Council
after six years of service.He had given strong support to Calver
in a period of massive change. The new Chairman of the
Council of Management was Derek Copley, Principal of
Moorlands Bible College near Bournemouth. The Chairman
of the Executive Committee was Mark Birchall; he had taken
early retirement from a City of London stockbroking firm to
concentrate on evangelical Christian work, and was the Chair
42
of the Church of England General Synod’s evangelical group.
A Church Life team was formed in this period under the lead-
ership of the former Prayer Secretary, John Earwicker. Also in
the team were David Abernethie, who had been minister of

41 idea, June-July 1991, p.1.

42 idea, August-September 1991, p.6.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 299

Cheam Baptist Church and who was Pastoral Development

Secretary, and Brian Mills, who had been the Alliance Prayer
Secretary in the 1980s,and had returned to that role from local
church ministry.Colin Saunders,the Management and Finance
Director, explained in August 1992 that this ‘major realign-
ment of the Evangelical Alliance’ would further improve
communication and service to members, and would facilitate
43
greater co-operation and united action among evangelicals.
In March 1994 a fresh development took place within evan-
gelicalism with the publication of a historic 8,000-word decla-
ration entitled ‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The
Christian Mission in the Third Millennium’. A core group of
seven Roman Catholics and eight evangelicals in North
America had produced the document, which set out areas of
common affirmation, hope, searching, action and witness. The
document recognised that evangelicals and Catholics ‘consti-
tute the growing edge of the missionary expansion at present
and, most likely in the century ahead’, it affirmed the Apostles’
Creed as a uniting credal statement, and it included the
soteriological proposition that we are ‘justified by grace
44
through faith because of Christ’. Among the well-known
representatives of the Catholic and evangelical communities
involved in drafting the document was Charles Colson, a
prominent voice in American evangelicalism. Prior to its re-
lease the statement was endorsed by a number of other emi-
nent figures, including James Packer, a theologian held in high
regard by evangelicals in Britain and America. Joel Edwards
said that at first he was doubtful about the statement, but his
considered view was that while evangelicals had to take seri-
ously theological issues dividing Catholics and Protestants they
did not need to be ‘locked in a time warp’ as far as attitudes to
others were concerned.The Alliance could associate with Ro-
man Catholic agencies on social issues while insisting on the
45
importance of doctrine.
43 Evangelical Alliance News Release, 21 August 1992.
44 J.I.Packer,‘Why I Signed It’,Christianity Today,12 December 1994,pp.34-7.
45 Alpha, February 1995, p.33.
300 One Body in Christ

Attitudes were changing in Britain as well as in America. In

response to the papal encyclical on commitment to ecume-
nism, Ut Unum Sint, the ‘Faith and Unity’ Committee of the
Baptist Union of Great Britain wrote: ‘Amongst most (if not
yet all) of our people, there is a sense of a growing unity with
Roman Catholics, a unity based on the one Lord Jesus Christ,
46
the bond of love and the mutual study of Scripture.’ The re-
sponse rightly stated that not all Baptists, whether in the
Baptist Union or outside it,shared such sentiments.Indeed,the
Baptist Union convened a forum on the question and pub-
lished a book by several authors, including Robert Amess,
conveying the differing viewpoints. Issues that caused the
47
Protestant Reformation continued to be raised. Nor was the
Baptist Union ‘faith and unity’ perspective uncritical. It was
accepted that serious theological issues remained. Yet it is
highly significant that at the Baptist Union assembly in 1995,
when denominational policy on ecumenical involvement was
debated,the vote was 91.21% in favour of continuing the Bap-
tist Union’s membership of Churches Together in England.
This represented a commitment by evangelical Baptists in
England (the church census of 1989 found that 84% of Baptist
churches identified themselves as evangelical) to working
48
within an ecumenical body with Catholics as full members.
It was against this background that in 1996 Calver spoke of
the evangelical constituency as ‘in many respects a broad
church’. His own definition of an evangelical was succinct. An
evangelical, in his view, was someone who believed that the
Bible was the word of God and that Jesus was the Son of God,
who held to the traditional credal statements of the church and
who owned a commitment to Jesus Christ as their Saviour,

46 Baptist Union of Great Britain, ‘A Response to the Papal Encyclical Ut Unum

Sint from the Faith and Unity Executive Committee of the Baptist Union of Great
Britain’, April 1997. Ut Unum Sint is published by the Catholic Truth Society,
1995.
47 M.I. Bochenski, (ed.), Evangelicals and Ecumenism: When Baptists Disagree
(Didcot: Baptist Union, 1993).
48 See Christian Research Association, Prospects for the Nineties, p.28.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 301

Lord and King. Within this broad church, Anglicans and Bap-
tists accounted for 60-65% of Alliance membership. Calver
considered that evangelical Anglicans were again involving
themselves in the life of the Alliance, while on the other hand
the Alliance had strong support from New Church leaders. In
1987,leading New Church supporters of the Alliance – Roger
Forster of Ichthus, Gerald Coates of Pioneer and Lynn Green
of Youth with a Mission – joined the popular songwriter Gra-
ham Kendrick to launch ‘March for Jesus’. The specific origin
of this new street-based mix of procession, performance and
evangelism did not deter many in the historic denominations
from participating, and by 1990 estimates suggested that some
250,000 marchers had taken part in towns and cities across the
British Isles. In 1994 ‘March for Jesus’ went global, with 177
nations and between 10 and 12 million Christians taking
49
part. For all this success,however,questions were being raised
about whether the Alliance, during Calver’s time, had become
‘a mainly charismatic body’ with non-charismatics feeling left
outside – questions which Joel Edwards acknowledged in De-
cember 1996. Even so, for Edwards’ own part, there was no
tension. He considered that he held to all the fundamental
things that made him Pentecostal,but also to all the fundamen-
50
tal things that made him evangelical. This was an affirmation
of the evangelical ‘broad church’ and illustrated the nature of
the deepening evangelical unity of the period.

Social Involvement

Although its traditional concern for unity was still evident, the
Alliance was able in the later 1980s and 90s to give more atten-
tion to Christian action in society.
An example was Evangelical Enterprise, an unemployment
consultancy launched by the Alliance and the WIEA to com-
49 The Baptist Times, 11 January 1996, p.8; Scotland, Charismatics and the New
Millennium, pp.319-20.
50 Christianity, December 1996, p.24.
302 One Body in Christ

bat unemployment. It was announced in Autumn 1987 that

the Alliance had created a new department to oversee the un-
employment consultancy, which was seen as especially crucial
because of government interest in the project. The project
co-ordinators were Michael Hastings, who was concentrating
on inner cities, and Michael Weatherley, who was focused on
the wider community. Together, they were seeking to help
churches and Christian groups discover how to start or expand
training and unemployment projects in their localities. The
Department of Employment pledged £150,000 to support
the project’s first two years.The aim was to provide direct links
between concerned Christians and the support available from
the Department of Employment,local authorities and charita-
ble trusts and foundations. There would then be expert moni-
toring and back-up once church training and employment
51
schemes were operational.
Further steps followed. In 1989 Calver insisted in idea that
through its increasing support of Christian action in society
the Alliance was ‘keeping faith with its past’. He spoke about
leading national figures who had played a role in the Alliance’s
affairs. Many of these figures gave their weight to Alliance
campaigns – not least those waged on behalf of religious free-
dom in Russia, Austria and Turkey. Calver remarked that a re-
cent visit by Mike Morris to Turkey was a belated follow-up,
since Alliance members had negotiated the original provision
52
of religious liberty from the Sultan of Turkey in the 1850s. In
1990 the Alliance’s investment in social affairs was further in-
creased when the social and foreign affairs department was di-
vided and Mike Morris was given responsibility for foreign
53
affairs. It was recognised that the socio-political issues in
Britain were complex and required expertise. The Movement
for Christian Democracy was formed in 1990 and David
Alton MP, someone identified with issues such as abortion law

51 idea, Autumn 1987, p.2.

52 idea, January-February 1989, pp.8-9.
53 Minutes of the Executive Committee, 27 March 1990.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 303

reform, commented on how it had introduced Catholics and

54
evangelicals to each other.
Martyn Eden, who had been a university lecturer in politics
and social administration and then Director of Christian
Impact (formerly the London Institute for Contemporary
Christianity), was appointed in 1990 to the Alliance’s Home
Affairs department, previously run by Morris. It was Eden’s
task to encourage Christians to become more involved with
local as well as national issues. From his perspective, evangeli-
cals were increasingly aware of issues like Sunday trading,abor-
tion and embryo experimentation. He believed that the work
in recent years of evangelical events and agencies such as
Spring Harvest, the Jubilee Centre and CARE Trust had
helped evangelicals to become more socially aware and active.
His commitment was to widen that concern to issues such as
55
homelessness,housing and education. The vision that had led
to the setting up of the London Institute for Contemporary
Christianity,which was that Christians should be helped to in-
tegrate their faith into every dimension of their lives and to
penetrate the secular world for Christ, was being carried over
to the Alliance.
Even more attention was given to social action from 1992
when Fred Catherwood became President of the Alliance.
‘British Churches’,he insisted in October 1992,‘are not doing
enough to combat racism and nationalism.’ He urged that
Christian teaching which presented the church as ‘a universal
church of all races and all classes’ should be coming across very
powerfully. Still, however, he did not believe that it was being
56
communicated with sufficient impact. In the summer of
1993 idea was delighted to report that Catherwood was leaving
politics to spearhead an Alliance campaign to address Britain’s
moral, social and spiritual problems. He would be working
54 D. Alton, preface to C. Colson & R. J. Neuhaus, (eds), Evangelicals and Catholics
Together: Working Towards a Common Mission (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1996).
55 idea, September-October 1990, p.5.
56 Alpha, October 1992, p.25.
304 One Body in Christ

full-time as President of the Alliance and would devote his en-

ergy to ‘encouraging evangelicals to be more effective in their
social care and faith evangelism,particularly in the inner cities’.
Although he had enjoyed being a politician, Catherwood be-
lieved that evangelical churches and organisations were closer
to ‘the human wreckage of today’s society’.They were dealing,
he said, with ‘the traumas of wrecked marriages, reaching out
to teenagers who roam the estates, and caring for elderly peo-
ple who have been abandoned by their families’. His commit-
57
ment was to encourage this work.
A nationwide tour was planned for 1994 and other visits
were made by Catherwood to meet local church leaders
around the UK and to address church congregations. Under
the auspices of the Alliance, he aimed to stimulate co-
operation among evangelical churches and societies and the
launching of new ventures in areas such as community care,
evangelism and employment training.The name given to these
new ventures was Christian Action Networks (CANS). In
CAN News in 1996 Catherwood reported that he had visited
twenty-five cities over the past three years,and in each case had
seen a project that set a standard in its field. Evangelicals ran
these projects. Whether, said Catherwood, ‘it was debt coun-
selling or jobs for the jobless, someone had cracked the prob-
lem with which others were still struggling’.The way in which
the CANS were developing gave Catherwood hope that this
would be a significant advance in evangelical social action. His
idea of networks was not simply that the churches in a city
should know where to find help when they had to care for a
needy person. Rather, he wished to build and use a national
network so that all churches could have access to the expertise
available in Britain that was relevant to their particular kind of
58
activity. It was a vision that was in continuity with that of a
Victorian evangelical reformer such as Shaftesbury.

57 idea, June-August 1993, pp.1-2.

58 CAN News, No. 1, 1996, p.1.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 305

From 1966 to 1996

In spite of the obvious success that the Alliance was enjoying in

the mid-1990s, it was with some trepidation and with consid-
erable care that plans
th
were made for a major Assembly to mark
the Alliance’s 150 anniversary in the Autumn of 1996. The
magazine Christianity, reporting on plans for the Assembly,
asked a pertinent question. Given the memory of previous
assemblies (in fact,only rather unclear versions of the assembly
of 1966 lived in the memories), and given the evangelical ten-
dency to be fissiparous, why should the Evangelical Alliance
risk another such gathering? The answer given by Joel
Edwards was that the final years of the millennium were a kairos
moment for evangelicals. Given the window of opportunity
that existed – the degree of working together in society and
the interest that was being generated – evangelicalism, he
argued, 59must define itself clearly and agree a wide ranging
agenda. To an extent this had already been happening over
the previous years, but the assembly was to be a high profile
occasion.
The Assembly was also the culmination of a year of celebra-
tion. In January 1996 the Church Times reported that the
th
Evangelical Alliance was celebrating its 150 anniversary at
Wembley with more members and more national influence
than at any time in its history.The Archbishop of Canterbury,it
observed, was the most prominent participant among the
2,400 people at the first in a series of celebration nights. The
Church Times also noted that as final preparations were being
made for the Evangelical Alliance event it emerged that Clive
Calver had been to Downing Street for private talks with John
Major,the Prime Minister.It was the social agenda that was ap-
parently in view. The Alliance was attracting the attention of
politicians because of its involvement in coalitions,forums and
60
agencies addressing issues like drugs,disability and education.

59 Christianity, December 1996, p.24.

60 Church Times 12 January,1996, p.5.
306 One Body in Christ

Other newspapers saw the meeting with the Prime Minister in

strictly political terms. John Major had become aware of the
changing face of the Church of England, with claims being
made that one in four Anglicans were evangelical, and he now
wished to ascertain the political views of evangelicals. Two
prominent evangelicals accompanied Major at the meeting –
Lord McColl,his Parliamentary Private Secretary,and Michael
61
Alison, a Church Estates Commissioner.
The Assembly was held at the Bournemouth International
Centre and attracted 3,000 delegates. Clive Calver’s keynote
speech took up the theme of unity.He appealed to delegates to
‘override their differences and focus on what they have in
common’. The unity that Calver urged seemed to be evident
in the results of a wide-ranging survey of some of the 4,000
congregations and groups in membership of the Alliance.
More than eight out of ten of the churches that responded
considered that the growing gap between the rich and poor in
Britain was unjust, and that a worthwhile goal for the millen-
nium would be a significant reduction in homelessness. The
survey also revealed that 96% of evangelical congregations be-
lieved homosexual practice to be wrong. An almost identical
proportion, 95%, said that sexual intercourse outside marriage
was wrong.Calver described the results as ‘a clear re-statement
of traditional Christian morality and values’and added that the
new millennium would require a new kind of evangelicalism,
which would in fact be a return to the old evangelicalism of
William Booth, Charles Spurgeon, Dr Barnardo and Lord
Shaftesbury,all of whom had helped to change the face of their
62
society.
The stress on social issues at the Assembly was striking. The
Bishop of Hull, James Jones (subsequently Bishop of Liver-
pool),launched a campaign for the doubling of child benefit to
parents who attended parenting courses. He called for politi-
cians to match the rhetoric about the family with policies that

61 Daily Telegraph, 6 July 1996, p.4.

62 idea, January-March 1997, p.8.
 A Deepening of Evangelical Unity 307

strengthened the family. National and local media took up the

Bishop’s speech and he became involved in several hours of
radio and television interviews.Fred Catherwood similarly ad-
dressed social issues in his speech to the Assembly. He blamed
the rise of an underclass in Britain on the greed of many of
those in employment whose interests, he said, were purely in
tax cuts, at the expense of the unemployed. He called for the
restoration of full employment, arguing that work was neces-
sary for the dignity of the individual. Steve Chalke, a Baptist
minister whose involvement in social action included the
launch of Oasis Trust, and who was regularly on television,
closed the Assembly. He described how many of his television
colleagues perceived evangelicals as ‘bigoted and uninformed’,
preaching the Bible in a vacuum, and not against the back-
ground of life. This, however, had not been the kind of
approach seen at Bournemouth. Rather, evangelicals who
looked outwards, not inwards, had marked the Assembly. Such
a shift of perspective, declared Chalke to great applause, repre-
sented the kind of evangelicalism to which he wanted to
63
belong.

Conclusion

Clive Calver was determined to effect change when he

became General Secretary of the Alliance in 1983.This change
was not,however,a departure from Alliance tradition.Over the
next ten years he encouraged the diversity of the Alliance, a
theme that had been present from the beginning of its life. He
also worked hard to achieve the deepening of evangelical unity.
An article in the American periodical Christianity Today in
December 1996 summarised the objectives of the Alliance,
150 years after its commencement, as the promotion of unity
in the church, the encouragement of united prayer and evan-
gelism, and the enabling of Christians to act as salt and light in

63 Ibid., p.9.
 308 One Body in Christ

society. It was the last point that was most important to Calver.
‘As evangelicals have begun to depart from an inherited policy
of self-imposed isolation’, he said, ‘they have emerged from
their comfortable ghettos 64
to grapple with the needs of
contemporary society.’ The fact that the highly respected
Catherwood committed himself to Christian Action Net-
works helped to persuade evangelicals to give this social thrust
a strong measure of support. Evangelical renewal and growth
had given to evangelicals a much greater confidence. Alliance
leaders and others managed internal tensions within evangeli-
calism so that they did not cause serious division. Calver, who
left Britain in 1997 to take up a new post as President of World
Relief in the USA, had helped to change the face of British
evangelicalism. The growth of the Alliance’s membership and
profile during his period in office had been unprecedented.
There had been several richly gifted General Secretaries before
him, but none had made a greater impact.

64 Christianity Today, 9 December 1996, p.30.

 13

A Knife-Edge Exercise
Theology and Ethics in the Recent History of the Alliance

The Formation of ACUTE

In late 1992 Clive Calver paid a visit to Jerusalem. As we have
seen, Calver had led the Alliance into remarkable growth
throughout the preceding decade. Even so, while in Israel he
realised that something was missing. Moreover, he was suffi-
ciently well versed in the formation of the evangelical
worldview to appreciate that this deficit was not new. On
arriving back in Britain, he articulated it thus, in a report enti-
tled ‘The Jerusalem Paper’:
The last decade has witnessed transformation and growth within the Alliance.
[But] the emphasis [of this paper] is on an [outstanding] strategic area of weak-
ness, viz., EA’s lack of proper theological undergirding for what it is attempt-
ing to do. In 1846, our forefathers began by establishing a clear theological
foundation. They then proceeded to establish a vehicle for evangelical unity
and inquired as to what its prime functions and practical outworkings should
be. The great Scottish secessionist Thomas Chalmers raised the objection that
the Alliance could become a ‘do nothing’society.He would not retain that fear
today. However, the opposite objection is sometimes raised – ‘EA does a great
deal, but what is its undergirding raison d’être? Has it thought through the
correct theological basis for its attitudes and activities?’

Calver went on to suggest reasons why such issues were arising.

‘Much of the ground for this concern’, he wrote, ‘emanates
from the fact that the majority of EA’s present leadership are
 310 One Body in Christ

activists at heart.Their desire is to build on the basis of evangel-

ical unity those achievements which can be viewed as measur-
able gains.’ This pragmatic approach, he stressed, had much to
commend it: ‘It can be argued that the current membership
growth indicates popular estimation of the value of what is
being achieved by EA’s coalitions, staff and specific initiatives.’
Even so, he concluded, ‘it is also observable that little emphasis
is placed on relating … doctrinal 1perspectives to our current
cultural and theological situation.
Calver’s recognition of the detrimental effects of evangelical
activism on serious theological reflection echoed a prominent
theme of David Bebbington’s, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain.
In the wake of the Wesley-Whitefield revival, with its charac-
teristically ‘utilitarian’ approach to mission and ministry,
Bebbington notes that for many evangelicals, ‘Learning [came
to be] regarded as a dispensable luxury.’ Hence,
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Independent ministers were
trained not in theology or Greek, but simply in preaching. It would have been
‘highly improper’, according to a contributor to their magazine, ‘to spend, in
literary acquisitions, the time and talents which were so imperiously de-
manded in the harvest field’.2

Such pragmatism, notes Bebbington, fuelled the flexible, ad

hoc ecclesiology of early Methodism and the contingency of
most Free Church evangelical
3
approaches to liturgy and wor-
ship during this period. As Os Guinness has observed, it also
reflected the wider economic and social changes that were
afoot in Britain during the same era:
Through hard work, commonsense and ingenuity, evangelicals prospered and
dotted the countryside and towns not only with mills, but also with church
buildings. The Protestant work ethic took hold. A by-product, however, was
an indifference to ideas in general and theology in particular. If God had

1 C. Calver, ‘The Jerusalem Paper’, Evangelical Alliance archive, London, dated

28 November 1992, pp.1-2.
2 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p.12.
3 Ibid., pp.65-6.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 311

blessed the industrial enterprise with success,what need was there of theologi-
cal sophistication? Pragmatism became a pronounced characteristic of evan-
gelicalism, and has remained so ever since.4

The same entrepreneurial perspective has also been identified

as a key feature of evangelicalism by David Wells. Wells argues
that the ambitious drive of many early evangelicals achieved
much in terms of evangelism, church building and statistical
growth, but also ‘produced some savage anti-clericalism, for
example, not just because of undercurrents of anti-intellectu-
alism but also because the insurgent leaders were “intent on
destroying the monopoly5
of classically educated and university
trained clergymen”’. This vigorously populist legacy is now
evident, suggests Wells, in the proliferation of the evangelical
‘religious marketplace’, with increasing numbers of para-
church ministries and agencies competing for support and
money – most of them too preoccupied with their own
‘bottom line’ to engage in serious collaborative theological
reflection. He also sees the same legacy manifested in the
ever-expanding ‘church growth’sector,where results are given
greater weight than theology,
6
and competition tends to come
before co-operation. This fragmented picture more generally
bears out what Kenneth Hylson-Smith has called evangelical-
ism’s ‘built-in tendency to be centrifugal rather than centripe-
tal’. By its very nature, Hylson-Smith remarks, evangelicalism
‘encourages individuality, stresses personal faith and promotes
distinctive individual or group expressions of faith and prac-
tice’. No doubt, such characteristics ensure a large measure of
personal and corporate creativity; but, warns
7
Hylson-Smith,
they also ‘almost guarantee divisiveness’.

4 O.Guinness,Fit Bodies:Fat Minds:Why Evangelicals Don’t Think and What to Do

About It (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995), p.58.
5 D.F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams
(Leicester: IVP, 1994), p.65.
6 Ibid., pp.65-87.
7 K. Hylson-Smith, ‘Roots of Pan-Evangelicalism, 1735-1835’, in Brady &
Rowdon (eds), For Such a Time as This, p.137.
312 One Body in Christ

As a keen student of evangelical history, Clive Calver no

doubt had all these forces in mind when he wrote of pragma-
tism as a decidedly mixed blessing, and of the theological dan-
gers that could befall an Alliance whose activist leadership had
achieved such impressive numerical gains in so short a time. In
this sense, his ‘Jerusalem Paper’ resonated with concerns ex-
pressed by the lawyer John Langlois and the theologian Bruce
Nicholls when they had helped to form the World Evangelical
Fellowship’s Theological Commission eighteen years before –
namely, that too many practical evangelical initiatives turn out
8
to be ‘shallow, resulting in a ripple lasting only a generation’.
Calver’s solution to all this was to propose a new theological
advisory group for the Alliance – a group that would become
known as ‘ACUTE’.
The ‘Jerusalem Paper’ recommended the appointment by
the Alliance of a part-time theological consultant who would
be chiefly responsible for servicing an ‘Evangelical Unity
Commission’ comprised of Alliance staff, Council members
and specialist academics. At various times in the past, there had
been sub-committees, groups and individuals appointed to
deal with theological concerns.As we have seen,the ‘Infidelity
Committee’ of the 1870s and 80s had a brief to combat ‘ratio-
nalism’,while in the 1960s John Stott had chaired a ‘Theologi-
cal Committee’ whose main achievement had been the
revision of the Basis of Faith. As the media profile of the Alli-
ance rose in the 1980s, Calver had been increasingly invited to
discuss doctrinal questions on radio and in the newspapers: he
emerged, for example, as a leading voice against both the pro-
nouncements of David Jenkins, the liberal Bishop of Durham,
on the virgin birth and the resurrection, and the ‘Sea of Faith’
movement initiated by the radical Anglican philosopher, Don
Cupitt.Calver’s new vision,however,was for something rather
more ambitious and proactive. Although the key issues out-
lined for consideration by the Commission were largely
‘intra-ecclesial’ – ranging from reassessment of the Alliance

8 Langlois quoted in Fuller, People of the Mandate, ch. 10.

 A Knife-Edge Exercise 313

Basis of Faith, through ecumenism and charismata to separat-

ism – Calver also noted that ‘theology is not merely internal,
but external in its application’. Concentration, he urged, ‘must
also be given to EA’s role in representing evangelical theology
9
to secular society’. This tension between internal ‘peacemak-
ing’ and wider prophetic witness would become more appar-
ent as the Commission developed.
On 2 December 1993, almost a year to the day after the
‘Jerusalem Paper’ had been presented to senior staff and
members of the Alliance, the inaugural meeting of the ‘Com-
mission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals’ (CUTE)
took place at the Alliance’s headquarters in London. The
Commission was to be co-ordinated on a part-time basis by
Dave Cave – a Baptist minister well known for his work on
urban theology and mission. By the end of the meeting, it had
been agreed to replace the rather unfortunate acronym
CUTE with ACUTE – the ‘Active Commission on Unity
and Truth among Evangelicals’. ‘Active’ was soon replaced by
‘Alliance’.
Before tracking the subsequent agenda of ACUTE, it is
worth noting that even the very act of its formation set the
Alliance apart from most other non-ecclesiastical Christian or-
ganisations in the UK and,one presumes,the world.In a report
presented to the Bible Society in January 1997, Mark
Bonnington analysed the structures and processes of theologi-
cal reflection in a number of Christian agencies,most of which
were evangelical in outlook.While the majority of groups sur-
veyed expressed a strong commitment to biblical and theologi-
cal reflection on their work, Bonnington found that only 14%
actually had a leading committee charged with offering such
reflection,and only 17% a nominated individual who had been
10
allocated this task. ACUTE’s was thus a rare birth,even while
it apparently embodied the aspirations of many within the
9 Calver, ‘The Jerusalem Paper’, pp.9-12.
10 M.Bonnington,‘The Bible and Christian Organisations’,A Report Presented
to the Bible Society Comprising the Results of the Salt and Light Research Pro-
ject, January 1997, Summarised by Roy McCloughry, October 1999.
314 One Body in Christ

Christian community.The ‘Jerusalem Paper’had clearly envis-

aged it as providing much-needed scriptural and doctrinal re-
flection at the nexus of the academic world,the church and the
mission field, and in doing so saw it as speaking for many who
are otherwise too busy, or too under-resourced, to generate
such reflection for themselves. Indeed, as Bonnington put it
in his report, ‘[Christian] organisations are large, complex
and action-orientated … Usually there is no consistent her-
meneutical strategy and when occasions for interpretation do
11
occur, their relationship to the “organisation” is not clear.’
ACUTE was to be tied firmly to the Alliance’s Basis of Faith,
but Calver recognised that the application of that Basis in partic-
ular cases could not always be straightforward, and would re-
quire very much the sort of holistic hermeneutical endeavour
defined by Bonnington.As we saw in chapter 5,this interpreta-
tive challenge had been recognised by the Alliance from its
earliest decades, as it had sought to grapple with debates on
such matters as revival, higher criticism and hell. At the turn of
st
the 21 century,the range of issues which impinged on the del-
icate balance of evangelical unity and truth would, if anything,
appear even greater than it had in the days of the Ulster out-
pouring, Darwin, the Tübingen School and T.R. Birks. In his
introductory remarks to the first ACUTE meeting, Calver
stressed that the new Commission had been mandated to
‘work through’issues ‘which divide evangelicals’,and to report
directly to the Executive. In order to do this effectively, it had
been composed, he said, to reflect the denominational and
doctrinal diversity of the Alliance’s membership. Calver then
added the startling comment that the Commission would con-
12
stitute ‘the single greatest influence on Alliance policy’.
In the years since its inception, it must be said that this bold
vision of theological discourse driving Alliance strategy and
forward planning looks to have been somewhat hyperbolic.

11 Bonnington, ‘The Bible and Christian Organisations’, pp.17-8.

12 Minutes of the Commission on Unity and Truth Among Evangelicals, 2
December 1993.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 315

Even so, ACUTE, and the wider theological work it has

spawned, has made a valuable contribution, not only to the
output of the Alliance as a whole,but to its essential self-under-
standing as an organisation.This has been borne out by the fact
that the original half-time appointment of Dave Cave, which
ran from 1993-6, was expanded after he returned to pastoral
ministry and was replaced by the co-author of this book,David
Hilborn. An ordained minister of the United Reformed
Church (URC) Hilborn came to the Alliance having done his
doctorate under Anthony C.Thiselton,the leading evangelical
hermeneutics scholar, and having pastored at the City Temple
in Holborn – the place where the Baptist Union had sought to
resolve the Downgrade controversy in April 1888, where R.J.
Campbell had initiated the ‘New Theology’debate,and where
Tom Rees had led many of his evangelistic rallies after the
Second World War.Hilborn’s role now includes the running of
an in-house ‘Theology Department’ within the Alliance,
whose brief beyond ACUTE per se is to handle members’
inquiries,liaise with the media,train staff in theological matters
relevant to their work,oversee a dedicated page on the Alliance
website and brief managers on doctrinal topics,as appropriate.
ACUTE has grown to comprise a Steering Group of twenty
theologians. Having been chaired by the other co-author of
this history,Ian Randall,this body now meets under the Chair-
manship of Professor David Wright of Edinburgh University.
It convenes at least three times a year for half a day and aims to
reflect the breadth of the Alliance’s constituency while main-
taining a high level of theological expertise. Roughly half the
Group are academic theologians working in theological col-
leges and university departments, or involved regularly in
theological education. The remaining half consists of pastors,
teachers and practitioners working more directly ‘in the field’,
but committed to serious theological reflection.
From its inception, ACUTE has pursued its brief in a range
of ways. From time to time, it has published reports on key
issues of concern to evangelicals and/or the wider church.Lat-
terly, these have been produced and marketed in collaboration
316 One Body in Christ

with Paternoster Press.At other times,it has generated internal

discussion documents and research papers to aid the Alliance
Council in its decision-making.It has also been responsible for
gathering evangelical leaders together in order to debate and
reflect on specific theological tensions. Indeed, once it had
been formed, ACUTE very soon found that it had to convene
such gatherings as a matter of urgency.

The ‘Toronto Blessing’ Debate

We saw in chapter 5 that the Alliance played an important role

in the so-called ‘Ulster Revival’ of 1859, covering the issue
extensively in Evangelical Christendom and engaging the
renowned scholar James McCosh to write a paper on it. In the
latter half of 1994 a growing constituency of mainly charis-
matic evangelicals began to invoke the Ulster Revival and
other revivals as precedents for a new spiritual movement – a
movement that became known as the ‘Toronto Blessing’.
However, whereas the 1859 revival had attracted overwhelm-
ing support from the Alliance, ‘Toronto’ soon threatened to
divide it,and thereby to undermine much of the progress made
under Clive Calver in the preceding eleven years. As such,
it represented a major test of the Alliance’s ability to strike a
biblical balance of unity and truth,and a formative challenge to
its newly established theological commission.
The phrase ‘Toronto Blessing’ first appeared in the public
domain courtesy of the Times journalist Ruth Gledhill. In an
article printed on Saturday 18 June 1994 Gledhill reported that
it was becoming popular as a nickname for a ‘religious craze’
of ‘mass fainting’ that had ‘crossed the Atlantic to cause
13
concern in the Church of England’. As it was, the ‘craze’
to which Gledhill alluded had several antecedents, involved
rather more than ‘mass fainting’, and went on to prompt

13 R. Gledhill, ‘Spread of Hysteria Fad Worries Church’, The Times, 18 June

1994, p.12.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 317

debate and discussion well beyond the Church of England.

Gledhill’s geographical reference was to the Toronto Airport
Vineyard (TAV) – a church led by John and Carol Arnott, and
overseen by the influential charismatic evangelist and teacher
John Wimber. Wimber’s Association of Vineyard Churches
(AVC) had grown remarkably through the 1980s to become a
force within North American evangelicalism.TAV had started
as an independent congregation, but contact with Wimber in
the late 1980s led the Arnotts to place it within the Vineyard
network. During the same period a number of Vineyard
churches were planted overseas, and Wimber made a signifi-
cant impact on historic churches beyond the USA and Canada
– not least within Anglican and Baptist member congregations
14
of the Evangelical Alliance in the UK.
Peter Wagner, Wimber’s friend and former Fuller Seminary
colleague,had defined the distinctive approach of Wimber and
the Vineyard as ‘Third Wave’renewal.This term was coined to
suggest that it represented a development from the ‘first wave’
of classical Pentecostalism, and from the ‘second wave’ of the
post-war charismatic movement. According to Wagner, the
‘Third Wave’ borrowed extensively from these two earlier de-
velopments but differed from one or both of them on certain
key points. In contrast to classical Pentecostalism, it disavowed
the notion that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a second work
of grace subsequent to conversion. Rather, it expected multi-
ple fillings of the Holy Spirit consequent upon new birth,
some of which were akin to what others would call ‘baptism in
the Spirit’. Also in distinction from classical Pentecostalism, it
viewed the gift of speaking in tongues not as ‘initial evidence’
of Spirit baptism, but as one of many gifts given by God to the
Church – a gift that may be granted to some and not to others.
In comparison with both First and Second Wave renewal, the
model of ministry developed by Wimber and the Vineyard

14 For a helpful account of Wimber’s ministry and its impact on the UK, see
Scotland, Charismatics, pp.199-250. Also D. McBain, Charismatic Christianity
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997).
318 One Body in Christ

placed particular emphasis on the power and demonstration of

the Holy Spirit’s work in ‘signs and wonders’ such as healing
and deliverance. In addition, it claimed to be more overtly
committed to ‘body ministry’ – that is, to a corporate expres-
sion of spiritual gifts and a team ethos in ministry, as distinct
from either the ‘anointed man’/‘faith healer’ focus of much
classical Pentecostalism, or the clergy-driven ecclesiology of
15
many historic denominations.
As well as these defining features, Vineyard-style meetings
through the 1980s had begun to exhibit other marked ele-
ments. From at least 1986 significant instances of ‘holy laugh-
ter’ were recorded, along with already-established phenomena
16
like slumping or falling to the floor, trembling and weeping.
Despite the growth and profile of this Third Wave/Vineyard
movement, with its high degree of charismatic openness, by
the early 1990s, a number of its pastors and leaders appear to
have been seeking fresh impetus and ‘anointing’. In late 1993
Arnott and various colleagues visited key figures in the ‘Ar-
gentinean Revival’ – a significant wave of evangelical church
17
growth centred on Buenos Aires. While they were looking
towards South America, another Vineyard leader, Randy
Clark of the St Louis Vineyard in Missouri,was experiencing a
radical personal transformation under the ministry of Rodney
Howard-Browne.
Rodney Howard-Browne had come to the USA from his
native South Africa in 1987. A child of devoutly Pentecostal
parents, his American ministry gained considerable momen-
tum in 1989 when laughter and ‘slaying’or falling down in the
15 C. Wagner, ‘Third Wave’, in S. M. Burgess, G.B. McGee & H. Alexander (eds),
Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1988), pp.843-4.
16 M. Robertson, ‘A Power Encounter Worth Laughing About’, in K. Springer
(ed.),Power Encounters Among Christians in the Western World (San Fransisco:Harper
& Row, 1988), pp.149-57; W.J. Oropeza, A Time to Laugh: The Holy Laughter
Phenomenon Examined (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995), p.17.
17 G. Chevreau, Catch the Fire (London: Marshall Pickering, 1994), p.23;
Oropeza, A Time to Laugh, p.22; D. Roberts, The ‘Toronto’ Blessing (Eastbourne:
Kingsway, 1984), p.31.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 319

Spirit became more prominent in his evangelistic meetings.18

While such things were hardly unknown in Vineyard circles,
Randy Clark found them occurring around Howard-Browne
at a level of intensity that deeply impressed him. Clark had
been virtually burned-out by a demanding pastorate, and this
condition appears to have prompted him to overlook doubts
about Howard-Browne’s style and theological background.
Very much a classic ‘front man’ Pentecostal, Howard-Browne
had also trained and ministered in the ‘Rhema’ and ‘Word of
Faith’ constituencies – key engines of the so-called ‘prosperity
gospel’movement.Indeed,it was in Tulsa,Oklahoma – a major
Word of Faith centre – that Clark first encountered
Howard-Browne in August 1993, and duly ended up on the
19
floor laughing. Subsequently, as Arnott and other Vineyard
leaders returned from Argentina, Clark informed them of
what had happened to him, and of the effect it had begun to
have on his congregation, some 95% of whom had ‘fallen un-
der the power’ on his return from Tulsa. At this same meeting,
20
Arnott invited Clark to visit TAV in the New Year. Clark
accepted, and on Thursday 20 January 1994 he led a ‘family
night’ at the airport church. As he called people forward for
prayer, large numbers manifested a range of dramatic physical
phenomena, from falling and then ‘resting’ in the Spirit, to
laughing,shaking,prostration and healing.Within weeks,word
of what was happening had spread, visitors to TAV were
increasing, and some had begun to fly in from overseas to
21
investigate.
Back in St Louis, during April and May 1994, Rodney
Howard-Browne led a series of equally spectacular meetings,
some of which were attended by Terry Virgo, leader of the
British-based charismatic network New Frontiers Interna-
tional – a member body of the UK Alliance. Along with other
18 Roberts, The ‘Toronto’ Blessing, p.85.
19 ‘Rumours of Revival’, Alpha, July 1994, p.46; Oropeza, A Time to Laugh, p.22,
citing R. Riss, ‘History of the Revival, 1993-1995’.
20 Chevreau, Catch the Fire, pp.23-4.
21 Roberts, The ‘Toronto’ Blessing, pp.20-21.
320 One Body in Christ

Britons who had attended TAV during this period, Virgo re-
ported what had been happening to his colleagues,and various
outbreaks of ‘Toronto-style’ manifestations began to occur in
22
the UK. Two further Alliance member bodies – Queen’s
Road Baptist Church, Wimbledon, and the Ichthus Fellow-
ship in South London – had already started to experience such
manifestations when Eleanor Mumford,of the Vineyard’s own
Putney congregation,met with leaders of the high-profile An-
glican charismatic church Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTB), on
23
Tuesday 24 May. After reporting on a recent visit to TAV,
Mumford saw key members of ‘HTB’s’ leadership team ren-
dered virtually immobile as they, too, fell, shook, rested and
24
laughed. Significantly,Sandy Millar,the Vicar of HTB,had to
be called to this meeting from another which he was attending
at the same time at the Evangelical Alliance. The following
Sunday, Eleanor Mumford preached at HTB with similar ef-
25
fect, and news that hundreds of largely upper middle class
Knightsbridge churchgoers were rolling around as if ‘drunk’
and ‘helpless’ at services soon caught the attention of the press
– hence the interest of the Times, and Ruth Gledhill’s coinage
of the term ‘Toronto Blessing’.
Within weeks, the Blessing had spread to hundreds of
churches across the British Isles, and estimates were suggesting
that between 2,000 and 4,000 congregations had embraced it
26
by the end of 1994. The Blessing became one of the biggest
22 T. Virgo, A People Prepared (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1996), pp.13-4.
23 R. Warner, Prepare for Revival (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995), pp.2-3;
P. Dixon, Signs of Revival (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1994), pp.19-21.
24 Roberts, The ‘Toronto’ Blessing, p.25; ‘A Day By Day Diary of What We Have
Seen’, HTB in Focus, 12 June 1994, p.3; M. Fearon, A Breath of Fresh Air (Guildford:
Eagle, 1984), pp.115-6.
25 E. Mumford, ‘Spreading Like Wildfire’, in W. Boulton (ed.), The Impact of
Toronto (Crowborough: Monarch, 1995), pp.17-9. For a fuller transcript, see ‘A
Mighty Wind from Toronto’, HTB in Focus, 12 June 1994, pp.4-5.
26 M.Fearon,‘Principal of Laughter’, Church of England Newspaper, 11 November
1994, p.8; C. Price, ‘Surfing the Toronto Wave’, Alpha, May 1995, pp.6-9;
G. Coates, in Rumours of Revival (Video), Milton Keynes: Nelson Word, 1995.
C. Gardner, ‘Catching a Glimpse of God’s Glory’, Joy, March 1995, pp.17-8.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 321

stories covered by the British Christian media in recent times,

and remained so through 1995 and into early 1996. It also ap-
peared frequently as a subject of debate and discussion in the
secular press – not only in the religious pages, but in the news
sections too. As such, the Toronto Blessing very quickly came
to engage the time,attention and pastoral capacity of the Evan-
gelical Alliance more than any unprogrammed issue since
Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Stott famously clashed over
27
evangelical church allegiance in 1966. The Blessing, too,
soon proved highly contentious. It seemed to many – not only
liberals, traditionalists and conservatives, but also some estab-
lished charismatics – to represent a dangerously potent and
fast-breeding strain of fanaticism which could seriously de-
stabilise the church. Even those who rejected this view, and
who instead championed the Blessing,sometimes did so with a
zeal that only provoked further polarisation. Not surprisingly
in view of its provenance, arguments about the Blessing were
most numerous and most heated among evangelicals.
As the twentieth century unfolded, the majority of Pente-
costals and charismatics came readily to identify with evangeli-
calism’s typically high view of Christ and Scripture, its
commitment to conversion, its activism and its objective view
of atonement.Granted,not all evangelicals – and especially not
those in more classically Reformed circles – were happy to
confirm this identity, and a good deal of familiarly heated de-
bate arose as a result. Even so, in all but the most separatist and
fundamentalist quarters, it is clear that a degree of tolerance
and mutual co-operation developed in the British context
during the 1970s and ‘80s – a development which owed a great
deal to the work of the Evangelical Alliance. With the rise of
Toronto,however,old fault-lines were once again exposed,and
concerns that had either been sublimated or suppressed for the
greater cause of unity,were reiterated.Many of those who wel-
comed the emergence of ‘Toronto’ were confirmed in their
view that those who opposed it had an insufficiently dynamic

27 See chapters 10 and 11.

322 One Body in Christ

understanding of the Holy Spirit. Similarly, opponents tended

to present the Blessing as evidence of a long-held conviction
that despite its protestations to the contrary; the charismatic
movement in fact relied too much on experience, and not
enough on Scripture. Prominent among the former group
were established charismatic leaders like Virgo, Sandy Millar,
Gerald Coates and Rob Warner. Among the latter were
known anti-charismatic detractors such as Christian Research
28
Ministries, Tricia Tillin, and the Derbyshire Baptist minister
Alan Morrison,whose Diakrisis organisation launched a range
of fierce broadsides against the Blessing from July 1994 on-
29
wards. Then again, while the Blessing predictably incurred
the scorn of many separatist Reformed evangelicals, it was also
challenged by the self-professed charismatics of the Centre for
th
Christian Ministry, by the 17 World Pentecostal Conference,
and a group of Sheffield-based charismatic scholars who
would go on to produce a stinging critique of the Blessing’s
30
theology.
This fractious atmosphere put the Evangelical Alliance un-
der considerable pressure. Not surprisingly, given his own
background and vision, Clive Calver sought to foster a bal-
anced, constructive outlook. Invited to address a conference
organised by Holy Trinity, Brompton in early August 1994, he
took the opportunity to assess the new movement and its
implications for British evangelicalism:
Just after this move of God started I was in a set of churches and they said, ‘Is
this an awakening?’ And I said, ‘No. An awakening is what God does in the

28 Christian Research Ministries report, cit. S. Dube, ‘Holy Spirit “Blessing”

Dismissed as Demonic’, Western Mail, 5 September 1994; T. Tillin, Looking Beyond
Toronto: The Source and Goal of Pentecost (Banner Ministries, 1994), S. and C.
Thompson quoted in J.A. Beverley, ‘Toronto’s Mixed Blessing’, Christianity Today,
11 September 1995, pp.23-6.
29 A. Morrison, We All Fall Down (Crich: Diakrisis, 1994).
30 Centre for Contemporary Ministry, Charismatic Crossroads; L. Pietersen (ed.)
Mark of the Spirit? A Charismatic Critique of the Toronto Blessing (Carlisle:Paternoster
Press, 1998); J.L. Grady, ‘Classical Pentecostals Wary of the “Toronto Blessing”,
Charisma, November 1995, pp.41-2.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 323

world when he turns society around as he did in the 18th century.’They said,‘Is
this revival?’ I said, ‘I don’t think so. Revival is what God does when he brings
the world into the church.’They said,‘Is this renewal?’I said,‘Yes,definitely.It’s
as important as this: you have never had an awakening in history that hasn’t
started in renewal and revival.’ Now I want to see an awakening. I want to see
God touch our nation and to see God turn our society upside down and inside
out. But he won’t start in society. He’ll start with the people of God. 31

Realising its responsibility, the Alliance mandated ACUTE to 32

organise three major forums on the Blessing in 1994-5.
While some on the separatist wing of evangelicalism dismissed
33
them as fronts for an Alliance overrun by charismatics, they
in fact engaged a representative proportion of leaders from that
42% of the Alliance’s membership 34
which around this time did
not define itself as charismatic.
The first of these gatherings took place at the Ibis Hotel near
London’s Euston Station on 19-20 December 1994.Alongside
Calver and Joel Edwards,the 23 leaders who attended included
‘Toronto sceptics’ like David Abernethie of Above Bar
Church, Southampton, Robert Amess of Duke Street Baptist
Church, Tony Baker of Bishop Hannington (Church of Eng-
land), Hove, Alan Gibson of the British Evangelical Council,
the Welsh theologian R.Tudur Jones and the leading Anglican
conservative evangelicals Philip Hacking and Stephen Sizer.
Those present who were more favourable to the new move-
ment included Faith Forster of Ichthus, R.T. Kendall of West-
minster Chapel, Bryn Jones of Harvest Time and Rob Warner
– then at Herne Hill Baptist Church but soon to move on to
Queen’s Road, Wimbledon.
31 Quoted in HTB in Focus, 14 August 1994, p.10.
32 For summaries of these Consultations,see entries for 19-20 December 1994,2
June 1995 and 21 December 1995 in Part II of D. Hilborn (ed.), Toronto in Perspec-
tive:Papers on the New Charismatic Wave of the mid-1990s (Carlisle:Paternoster Press,
2001).
33 A.Morrison,‘No Great Surprise’, Evangelical Times (Letters),September 1995,
p.18; ‘Comment’, Evangelical Times, September 1995, p.2.
34 This figure is derived from a 1998 survey of 848 Alliance member churches,
the results of which were published in the Spring 1999 edition of the Alliance’s
churches’ magazine, Ear, p.1.
324 One Body in Christ

The forum began with three short talks on revival. R.T.

Kendall expounded Acts chapter 2 as the cardinal text for
consideration of the Blessing. Tudur Jones then spoke of
revival in church history, and Derek Tidball, Principal at
London Bible College, continued with a reflection on the
tensions that have often challenged the church at such times.
There was then a period of open response and discussion be-
fore the meeting divided into four groups, each of which ex-
pressed a variety of opinions. Later on the first day, Stephen
Sizer and Rob Warner were asked jointly to draft a statement
that might reflect the theological consensus, mood, hopes and
fears of those present. They worked on this into the early
hours of the next day, and eventually presented a paragraph,
800-word text to the meeting. Under the guidance of Clive
Calver, this was endorsed by all but one of those present.
The ‘Euston Statement’ itself began by stressing the need
‘not only to evaluate’ the Blessing, but also ‘to make clear dis-
tinctions between primary and secondary convictions among
us as evangelicals, even though we differ in our initial
interpretations of these experiences’. It proceeded to define
agreed primary convictions as the authority and divine inspi-
ration of Scripture, the atoning work of Christ, the ‘vital
need’ for personal conversion, and the prerogative of active
witness and service in the world. It then rejoiced that God
had poured out his Spirit in revivals, and that these had been
‘intrinsic to the evangelical heritage’ shared by those present.
The text moved on to emphasise the need for a unity of
Word and Spirit in evangelical life and action. With particular
concern for the outworking of this unity in the evangelical
context, it acknowledged that in the past, evangelicals had
sometimes failed adequately to listen to one another, and ‘to
denigrate and caricature those with whom we disagree’. In
the Euston consultation, the statement declared, ‘we have
sought to ask questions of ourselves and one another, without
compromising the integrity of our consciously held differ-
ences’.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 325

Dealing particularly with the manifestations related to

revivals, the statement noted that they should be seen as
‘secondary’. In and of themselves, it explained, ‘they cannot
… prove that a movement is or is not a work of God’. The
final test must be ‘the lasting, biblical fruit’. Acknowledging
that the Toronto experience had not yet been ‘integrated
with theological reflection’, clause 7 expressed thanks for
those who had known ‘genuine life-changing encounters’ as
a result of it, while regretting that ‘some have neglected the
discipline of biblical preaching in the face of current manifes-
tations’. Warning against the dual dangers of imbibing ‘the
existentialist spirit of our age’ along with the Toronto Bless-
ing, and dismissing it out of sheer ‘enlightenment rational-
ism’, the text urged that the ‘absolute truth of the gospel’
should be guarded ‘without compromise’.
The Euston Statement closed by deducing that the church
in the UK was not yet experiencing revival, but accepted that
many during the foregoing months had known significant
‘enrichment’. This, the text went on, encouraged ‘hope that
we may be in a period of preparation for revival’. Concluding
that any evaluation of the Toronto phenomena could only be
‘provisional’ at that point, the statement called for a group
within the Evangelical Alliance ‘to continue to provide eval-
uation and theological reflection on these developments
within the church’. It then urged this group and others
assessing Toronto to apply the eighteenth century revivalist
theologian Jonathan Edwards’ classic tests for a genuine work
of God: exaltation of Christ in people’s understanding; un-
dermining of Satan’s purposes; a fostering of greater regard
for Scripture and truth; a cultivation of seriousness about the
things of God, and of greater love for God, fellow Christians
and the world as a whole.
The Ibis Hotel meeting and the Euston Statement received
extensive press coverage. The Statement itself may have been
less sharp-edged and detailed than many other declarations
on the Toronto movement which were produced from more
partisan quarters, but it remains one of the few documents
326 One Body in Christ

published at that time which can claim a genuinely ‘conciliar’

35
and ‘ecumenical’ evangelical authority.
The Blessing was at the height of its popularity when, six
months on,the Alliance convened a second forum on the issue
at its headquarters in Kennington.This time,some sixty leaders
were present. Speakers for the day were David Coffey (Baptist
Union General Secretary), David Noakes (Marlow Christian
Fellowship lay leader), Roger Forster (Ichthus Fellowship
founder), R.T. Kendall (Westminster Chapel) and Andrew
Walker (King’s College, London). Setting the scene for the
consultation, Walker traced the provenance of the Blessing,
after which he suggested that the Blessing was now moving,on
analogy,from an ‘Acts 2’phase to an ‘Acts 15’phase – ‘from the
first stage of blessing to the church council phase of reflection’.
The Alliance Consultation, he suggested, could represent an
important development in this respect.
David Noakes then proceeded to present the Toronto
movement as a severe challenge to the charismatic church.
Although a charismatic, Noakes conceded, ‘We have lost our
way somewhat’and described many of the manifestations asso-
ciated with the Blessing as being ‘demonic’. By contrast,
Roger Forster suggested that the new movement was not yet
worthy of the term ‘revival’, but that it could legitimately be
seen as a ‘time of refreshing’. He suggested that most of the
manifestations could be shown to have biblical precedent, and
pointed out that Scripture could at times appear even more
radical in this sphere than what had been occurring – e.g.in the
levitation of Ezekiel.Through it all,however,Forster was insis-
tent that the phenomena should be interpreted and explained,
lest the movement fall foul of mystical obfuscation.
R.T. Kendall then surprised some by testifying that al-
though he had been initially hostile to the Blessing, the
personal transformations of his wife and son while sitting

35 We are using the term ‘ecumenical’ here in its general, biblical sense of Chris-
tian co-operation. Martyn Lloyd-Jones regularly spoke of ‘evangelical ecumenic-
ity’, and this comes close to what we are implying.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 327

under the ministry of Rodney Howard-Browne had forced

him to revise his opinion. ‘It just so happens’, he said, ‘that I
believe Rodney is a man of God.God uses crude men who are
not so literate … and who stick their foot in it.’ Recognising
the use that was being made of Jonathan Edwards on both sides
of the Toronto debate, Kendall pointed out that the New
England theologian, in his sermon ‘True Grace as Distin-
guished from the Doctrines of Devils’, showed that the one
thing the devil cannot do is to produce a true love for the glory
of God. Kendall was ready, he said, to affirm that such love and
glory were present in the new movement.Summing up,David
Coffey appealed to Matthew chapter 18 as he called both for a
deeper examination of the theological issues at stake in the
Blessing, and a strengthened commitment to evangelical unity.
The latter prerogative was vital,he said,at a time when political
and social commentators were offering no clear solutions to
society’s loss of confidence.
The Whitefield House consultation ended with a request
from those present that ACUTE undertake further work on
Toronto, and in December 1995 it duly hosted a third consul-
36
tation on the matter. Held once again at Whitefield House,
this meeting was addressed by Rob Warner, Brian Edwards
(Chairman of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical
Churches’ Theological Commission), Philip Hacking, and
Dave Cave. By this point, the impact of the movement was
waning – a fact reinforced by a recent split between the
Toronto Airport Vineyard and the Vineyard Association.
Warner did not discuss this split, but was in any case at pains
to stress that the Blessing could not be characterised as a homo-
geneous movement. Rather, he argued, it had often been
successfully assimilated with existing denominational empha-
ses, whether with classical Pentecostal approaches at leading
‘Toronto church’ Sunderland Christian Centre, or with the

36 Quotations from the consultation are taken from transcripts of the talks given.
These transcripts have been published on the Evangelical Alliance website:
www.eauk.org
328 One Body in Christ

distinctive liturgy of Anglicanism in parishes up and down the

country. Warner added that while some non-charismatics had
been ‘judicious,measured and constructive’in their critique of
the movement, others had been more ‘intemperate’. To these
he replied firmly: ‘A movement of God cannot be properly
evaluated by caricature. A work of God cannot be undone by
such caricature. Smears, distortion and guilt by association are
not devices of good evangelical theology. Are you opposed
to emotionalism and manipulation? So am I. Are you equally
opposed to what Paul described as “holding to the form of
religion while denying its power”? So am I.’
Brian Edwards was considerably less sanguine about the
Blessing,depicting it as symptomatic of the drift of many evan-
gelicals away from commitment to the inerrancy and suffi-
ciency of Scripture towards a more ‘inductive’ hermeneutic.
‘From whatever perspective you begin’, he opined, ‘an honest
biblical exegete will admit that any attempt to justify from the
Bible such phenomena as “slaying in the Spirit”, which has
flippantly been referred to as “carpet time”, uncontrolled
hysterical laughter and various animal noises, reveals either an
ignorance of or a disregard for sound principles of hermeneu-
tics.’ Against this model, Edwards called for a reaffirmation of
traditional doctrines of Scripture and the historic evangelical
approach to hermeneutics. Philip Hacking echoed Edwards’
concerns about the place of the Bible. He warned that the
Blessing was ‘only the tip of an iceberg’ concealing a deeper
threat to evangelical integrity – namely, a relinquishing of the
‘final authority of Scripture’. Some of the Blessing manifesta-
tions were, he said, ‘so far removed from Scripture that I find
it very difficult to accept the movement as being divinely
inspired’.
In summing up, Dave Cave detailed the work done by him-
self, ACUTE and the Alliance on the Blessing since its rise.
The Commission had sent representatives to a number of ma-
jor consultations on the issue, he confirmed, and had gathered
an extensive archive related to it. Even so, he concluded, ‘The
time and energy which have been expended on the “Toronto
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 329

Blessing”appear not only to have put evangelical against evan-

gelical, but also to have diverted us from our two main tasks –
to glorify God and to go out into all the world and preach the
good news.’
Drawing on the benefit of hindsight, in early 2001, David
Hilborn collected a series of essays from prominent evangelical
thinkers on the impact of the Blessing, and added to them a
detailed chronology of the movement based on the Alliance
archive. He also incorporated statements on it from various
Christian bodies around the world. Contributors included
David Pawson, Margaret Paloma and Stephen Sizer. Extracts
from the resultant book, Toronto in Perspective, were posted on
the Alliance’s web site prior to publication. Among these
extracts was Hilborn’s own introductory essay. Referring to
Toronto as a paradigmatic ‘crisis’ of evangelical definition,
discernment and unity, he went on to assess the part played by
the Alliance in dealing with this crisis:
Against [the] fraught backdrop [of the Toronto controversy],the role and work
of the Evangelical Alliance became crucial. No doubt the Blessing spurred
many conferences, consultations, studies and statements, but the truth is that
these tended to reflect the views of one ‘side’or another in the debate,and thus
tended to reinforce, rather than ameliorate, existing differences. Of course,
some of those who took it upon themselves to attack the movement saw
themselves in a ‘prophetic’role – warning the church against a perilous decep-
tion. As such, any attempt at dialogue or co-operation with proponents of
Toronto was presented by them as a compromise to be avoided.37 On the other
hand, there were those in the forefront of the movement who, when it was at
its height, saw little point in having to justify something so self-evidently ‘of
God’ to those whose theological presuppositions ensured that they would
always be set against it.As the largest pan-evangelical body in the UK,the Alli-
ance was probably the only organisation which could seriously hope to work
through and beyond these polarities,and thereby reiterate a unity which could
be neither cheap nor monolithic, but which would be grounded in genuine
biblical collegiality.38

37 See, for example, Morrison, ‘No Great Surprise’, p.18.

38 D. Hilborn, ‘Evangelicalism, the Evangelical Alliance and the Toronto Bless-
ing’, in Hilborn (ed.), Toronto in Perspective. Viewable at www.eauk.org
330 One Body in Christ

Evangelical Identity and Practice

As the Toronto Blessing faded from the headlines, ACUTE

undertook, in 1996, to revisit one of the most pervasive and
foundational questions in the history of the Alliance – the
question of evangelical identity. In preparation for the
Bournemouth National Assembly of the same year, 39
it pro-
duced a document called ‘What is an Evangelical?’ This was
presented as ‘setting the scene for a serious debate’,and offered
broad brush-strokes rather than detail. Even so, the working
group that produced the report stated that it was meant to
stand within a healthy, well-established tradition of evangelical
self-examination. Specifically, they added, it had been necessi-
tated by the challenges of the postmodern age. Echoing
Calver’s concerns in the ‘Jerusalem Paper’ of 1993, the authors
asserted that ‘evangelicalism generally has become light-
weight on the theological front’, and that it was consequently
under-equipped to deal with the intellectual challenges being
presented by contemporary philosophy. One way in which it
had already been compromised, they contended, was in the
increasing ambivalence of some of its representatives towards
statements of faith. In certain parts of the evangelical constitu-
ency, they wrote, these had been reduced to little more than
‘flags of convenience’ – mere ciphers which often concealed 40
‘all kinds of mental reservations’about their actual meaning.
Another postmodern trend cautioned against by ‘What is an
Evangelical?’was an ‘increasing tendency to base fellowship on
friendship rather than on truth’. ‘Evangelical love is the hall-
mark of evangelicalism at its best’, wrote the working-group,
‘but we must never put the cart before the horse.It is truth that
leads to fellowship, not fellowship or friendship that establish
or condition what is the truth’. Seeking to chart a biblical
course through the ‘twin errors of rigidity and laxity’, the
report underlined the need to recover the scriptural

39 ACUTE, What is an Evangelical? (London: Evangelical Alliance, 1996).

40 Ibid., pp.2-3.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 331

understanding of the gospel, and to glean the wisdom of past

generations of evangelicals on this subject: ‘The story of the
Evangelical Alliance and other evangelical bodies’, it sug-
gested,‘provides us with rich oral and written material to learn
from. The issues we face today are not new. The way our pre-
decessors faced them and the conclusions they drew must
provide us with teaching material for facing them again, albeit
in our different era.’ Predicting that the outcome of this
endeavour would be an evangelicalism which was unafraid to
state negatives as well as positives,but which was ‘as inclusive as
possible’, the report surmised that pursuing such a goal would
41
always be ‘a knife-edge exercise’.
After reiterating and briefly expounding the tenets of the
Alliance Basis of Faith, the authors of the report stressed that
evangelicalism is not just about orthodoxy, but also about
orthopraxis’. An evangelical ‘ethos and behaviour pattern’, it
continued, ‘ought to arise out of our evangelical beliefs if it is
to mean more than mental assent’. In concrete terms, this
implied an active love and study of Scripture, a regular life of
prayer, a genuine pursuit of holiness, a passion for spiritual life,
evangelism and revival, mutual honesty and openness, and a
social demonstration of gospel love. With such commitments,
the report concluded, evangelicals might hope to be ‘in the
forefront in the rising challenge of a post-modern age, in
42
which human nature is the same as the day it fell in Adam’.
The emphasis of ‘What is an Evangelical?’on practical dem-
onstration as well as doctrinal correctitude was taken up
shortly afterwards,when the Alliance Council was encouraged
to adopt a ‘modern language’revision of the original ‘Practical
Resolutions’passed at the inaugural conference in 1846.These
resolutions had often lacked prominence, but would be high-
lighted as the agenda of the Bournemouth National Assembly
began to be worked out. Already, ACUTE had provided a
briefing paper for the Alliance Council on the theological and

41 Ibid., pp.3-5.
42 Ibid., pp.6-8.
332 One Body in Christ

social issues arising from the launch of the National Lottery in

November 1994, and had persuaded them to advise Alliance
members on biblical grounds against playing the Lottery or
43
taking grants from it for church and charitable projects. Sub-
sequently, it would advise the Council on the arguments for
and against the Alliance tithing its own income on to other
44
organisations and projects. (Largely on the grounds that it
was itself reliant on gifts and offerings intended for its own and
not others’ work, the Council declined to pursue this as a sys-
tematic procedure,although it did commend tithing a propor-
tion of its income to less well-endowed Alliances abroad.)
Later,too,it would also host a day conference for fifty key lead-
ers to explore the so-called ‘prosperity gospel’, and would
45
begin work on a major report on the matter. In 1997-8,
however, one issue would test ACUTE and the Alliance’s
commitment to the balance of orthodoxy and orthopraxis
more sharply than any other – homosexuality.

Homosexuality and Transsexuality

David Hilborn’s first major task on arriving at the Alliance in
July 1997 was to complete work begun by Dave Cave and an
ACUTE study group on the vexed subject of homosexuality.
Since the time of the Wolfenden Report in 1957, and more
particularly since the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in
1967, British society at large had adopted an increasingly lib-
eral attitude towards same sex relationships,and gay and lesbian
sexual activity. By the late 1990s, this liberalisation moved on
apace as the new Labour administration took steps to repeal
Section 28 of the Local Government Act banning the promo-
tion of homosexuality by Local Education Authorities, to
reduce the gay male age of consent to 16,and to lift restrictions

43 Minutes of Executive Council, September 1994.

44 Minutes of Executive Council, September 1997, February 1998.
45 This conference took place at Whitefield House in June 1998. The book,
edited by Andrew Perriman, is scheduled for publication in 2002.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 333

on homosexual people serving in the armed forces. Gay

couples were also beginning to win cases establishing their
parity with married
46
couples in respect of key employment and
financial rights.
This wider shift had also been reflected in the Christian
community, with books like Derrick Sherwin Bailey’s Homo-
sexuality and the Western Church (1955) and Norman Pittenger’s
Time for Consent (1967) paving the way for the formation of
the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) and the
serious consideration, by liberal-majority denominations like
the United Reformed and Methodist Churches, of whether
they should follow the United Church of Christ (USA) and
the United Church of Canada in officially approving the ordi-
nation of sexually active lesbians and gay men.Even within the
evangelical world, some had begun during the last years of the
century to question whether the traditional,absolute rejection
of sexually active same sex relationships should be main-
47
tained. Most prominent among this group was Michael
Vasey, a lecturer at the Anglican evangelical college St John’s,
Durham. Vasey’s 1995 book Strangers and Friends invoked a
wide range of historical, sociological and psychological re-
search to argue that an authentic understanding of the relevant
scriptural texts on homosexuality might allow that certain
forms of homoerotic intimacy ‘are not contrary to the
Christian vision of human life but close to themes and instincts
48
that are an integral part of biblical and Christian tradition’.
The frankness and thoroughness with which Vasey put his case
did much to convince the Alliance that it needed to formalise
its own position on the issue.
The resultant book was called Faith,Hope and Homosexuality,
and represented ACUTE’s first collaboration with Paternoster
Press of Carlisle. Launched at a Westminster press conference

46 ACUTE, Faith, Hope and Homosexuality (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), pp.1-4.

47 Ibid., p.ix, n.4.
48 M. Vasey, Strangers and Friends: A New Exploration of Homosexuality and the Bible
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995), p.237.
334 One Body in Christ

in January 1998, it attracted more media interest than any

Alliance initiative for decades. All the main national broad-
sheet newspapers carried stories on it; David Hilborn and Joel
Edwards were both interviewed for the main BBC national
radio news programmes, and were busy for a number of
days afterwards providing comment to local journalists. Joel
Edwards had written in the Preface of the book that ‘Homo-
sexuality may well be the single most divisive issue in the West-
ern church today’; the phenomenal media coverage accorded
49
to it seemed to bear this observation out.
The book itself began by stating that it had been written
with three main aims: (i) to respond to the arguments of the
gay lobby in general; (ii) to enable Christians, and evangelicals
in particular, to relate more pastorally to homosexual people;
and (iii) to affirm groups, like the True Freedom Trust, that
were ministering alongside lesbians and gay men who wished
to refrain from lesbian and gay sexual activity. Having set out
the contemporary social and ecclesiastical context, Faith, Hope
and Homosexuality moved on to consider the witness of Scrip-
ture on same sex relationships. Although it conceded that
homoerotic sexual practice was hardly the most frequently
mentioned sin in the Bible, and although it accepted that the
most common contexts of such practice in the ancient world
were not wholly identical to its most common contexts today,
it nonetheless emphasised that authentic interpretation must
still concur with ‘the classical view of the biblical witness –
namely,that homoerotic sexual activity is wrong’.From Old to
New Testament,it added,‘sexual activity outside marriage co-
mes to be seen as sinful, and homosexual practice is presented
50
as a stock example of sexual sin’.
Statistically, ACUTE challenged the common assumption
that anything up to 10% of people are gay.Rather,it quoted the
most reputable secular surveys of western societies as showing

49 ACUTE, Faith, Hope and Homosexuality, p.vii.

50 Ibid., pp.19-20.
51 Ibid., pp.21-4.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 335

that little more than 2% of the population had had any kind of
51
homosexual experience. In the face of growing opposition,
ACUTE then reaffirmed the established theological distinc-
tion between sexual orientation and sexual practice, arguing
that while the former may predispose people to sins of the ‘eye’
and ‘heart’,the church could only practically order its ministry
on the basis of the latter. Despite the historical revisionism of
scholars like Vasey and James Boswell, it also defended this dis-
tinction as underlying the ethics and discipline of the church
52
down the ages.
While the report acknowledged that it was largely reiterat-
ing the classical evangelical stance for the current age,ACUTE
did challenge its own constituency to act with greater pastoral
sensitivity towards homosexual people than it had been known
to do in the past. In their concluding section, the authors ex-
pressed their earnest prayer that God’s ‘love truth and grace
would characterise evangelical responses to debates on homo-
sexuality, both now and in future’. They also repudiated ho-
mophobia ‘insofar as it denotes an irrational fear or hatred of
homosexuals’, and wrote of their ‘deep regret’ for ‘the hurt
caused to lesbians and gay men and the church’s past and pres-
ent hatred and rejection of them’ – although they resisted the
idea that ‘to reject homoerotic sexual practice on biblical
grounds is in itself homophobic’. The report went on to call
upon evangelical congregations to ‘welcome and accept’sexu-
ally active homosexual people, ‘but to do so in the expectation
that they will come in due course to see the need to change
their lifestyle in accordance with biblical revelation and ortho-
dox church teaching’.In keeping with this,it then defined per-
sistent homoerotic sexual activity without repentance to be
‘inconsistent with faithful church membership’, and rejected
53
services of blessing for gay partnerships as ‘unbiblical’.
Although never likely to win plaudits from more liberal
quarters, Faith, Hope and Homosexuality was widely recognised

52 Ibid., pp.25-7.
53 Ibid., pp.33-4.
336 One Body in Christ

to have stated the evangelical view with sensitivity, as well as

with clarity and conviction. As a URC minister, Hilborn had
been engaged for a number of years in the human sexuality de-
bate within his own denomination, and was well acquainted
with contrary arguments and testimonies. He had talked with
Michael Vasey and various LGCM representatives in different
settings,and it was significant that when interviewed about the
book, Richard Kirker (LGCM Secretary) recognised its more
compassionate tone, even while repudiating its basic doctrinal
54
view. Following the book’s launch, dialogue continued on a
number of related fronts. The Alliance kept up contact with
gay ministry groups on both sides of the debate; it also lobbied
the European Union with regard to its Equal Treatment
Directive, whose incorporation into British Law threatened
the right of Christian organisations to decline to employ prac-
tising homosexuals and others who did not accord with their
ethical and theological convictions. Furthermore, in the year
2000, the orthodoxy-orthopraxis balance was starkly tested
again when one of the Alliance’s most prominent Council
members, Roy Clements, resigned his membership having
come out as a gay man,and when Courage,an evangelical trust
engaged in the pastoral care of homosexuals, was reported to
55
have abandoned its previously traditional view.
Faith,Hope and Homosexuality provided a helpful framework
for the first report published by a newly formed ‘Policy Com-
mission’ of the Alliance in 2000. Appointed to deal principally
with ‘issues of an ethical nature with national or international
implications’ as distinct from the more directly theological
remit of ACUTE, the Policy Commission was overseen by
Martyn Eden (Public Affairs Director) and co-ordinated by
Don Horrocks, a former bank manager engaged in doctoral
research at London Bible College. The Commission’s initial

54 Richard Kirker and Joel Edwards, Interview, The World Tonight, BBC Radio 4,
20 January 1998.
55 ‘Counselling Group Changes Heart on Gays’, Church of England Newspaper,
30 March 2001, p.3.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 337

study was entitled Transsexuality and was prompted by

increasing claims for full legal recognition of those who had
undergone gender reassignment surgery. Based on detailed
research conducted by an expert working group of ethicists,
scientists and lawyers, the report acknowledged that transsex-
ual men and women had suffered undue hurt at the hands of
the church, but that ‘authentic change from a person’s sex is
not possible and an ongoing transsexual lifestyle is incompati-
ble with God’s will as revealed in Scripture and in creation’.
While expressing opposition ‘in principle’ to discrimination
against transsexual people in relation to human rights and em-
ployment, the report nonetheless argued against transsexuals
being allowed to amend their birth certificates, except in rare
‘intersex’ cases involving a genuine medical mistake. Such
amendment of so vital a document, wrote the working group,
was ‘fundamentally flawed, open to abuse, and tending to un-
56
dermine accepted realities by condoning illusion and denial’.

The Nature of Hell

As we saw in chapter 5, the ‘Birks Affair’ of 1869-70 made the

theology of hell a litmus test of the Alliance’s identity. It forced
the British Organisation to examine the hermeneutical limits
of its doctrinal basis; it also raised fundamental questions about
the right to private judgement,the criteria of membership,and
the power of the Council to discipline those deemed to hold
unorthodox views. As it happened, Birks’ specific ideas would
remain esoteric, but their more generally perceived affinity
with the positions known as annihilationism and conditional-
ism ensured that the legacy of his case would continue to
weigh upon the Alliance into the latter part of the twentieth
century.
By the time the Alliance revised its Basis of Faith in 1970,
the view that the unredeemed would eventually be destroyed,

56 Evangelical Alliance Policy Commission, Transsexuality, pp.84-7.

338 One Body in Christ

rather than eternally punished by God, had gained some

ground in evangelical circles. So, too, had the closely related
notion that the immortality of the soul was a Platonic rather
than a biblical concept, and that eternal existence was a gift
related to faith in Christ rather than an intrinsic feature of
humanity as a whole. In 1941 Harold Guillebaud, from
the Church Missionary Society, had argued the case for
conditionalism in a study called The Righteous Judge,while Basil
F.C. Atkinson, the widely respected Cambridge librarian and
Inter Varsity Fellowship leader, had influenced a number of
evangelical students towards a similar view before committing
that view to paper in his 1964 book, Life and Immortality. Both
of these texts had been published privately,but John Stott,who
chaired the Alliance Theological Committee that refashioned
the Basis of Faith from 1967 onwards, knew them.
Among several other changes, the revised version of the
Basis dropped the references to ‘the immortality of the Soul’
and ‘the Eternal Punishment of the wicked’ which had been
insisted upon by the American delegation to the inaugural
conference in 1846.Instead,it left Alliance members to infer its
position on hell from two new clauses on human sin. The first
of these affirmed ‘the universal sinfulness and guilt of fallen
man’ as a just cause of God’s ‘wrath and condemnation’. The
other declared Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice on the cross to
be the only basis of redemption ‘from the eternal consequences of
sin’ (our emphasis). The mention of sin’s effects being ‘eternal’
here certainly echoed traditionalist language. Even so, it did
not necessarily exclude conditionalists, who typically argue
that although the instrument of punishment may itself be ever-
lasting (as in ‘eternal fire’),the outcome for any specific individual is
57
terminal (i.e. consummation by the fire).
If the new Basis thus suggested a certain ambiguity with re-
spect to hell, this appeared to be reflected in 1988 when Stott
published a ‘Liberal-Evangelical dialogue’ with his fellow
57 For a representative account of this argument, with supporting references, see
E.W. Fudge, The Fire That Consumes: The Biblical Case for Conditional Immortality,
pp.11-20.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 339

Anglican, David L. Edwards. The dialogue involved a discus-

sion of eschatology, in which Stott leaned towards condition-
alism while finally declaring himself to be ‘tentative’ about
58
whether it should replace the traditional view. Stott’s argu-
ments echoed those that had been put forward by Guillebaud
and Atkinson,but especially resonated with the stance that had
been taken fourteen years previously by another Anglican
evangelical, John Wenham. In his 1974 study The Goodness of
God, Wenham had offered careful arguments that gained a re-
59
spectful hearing and prompted some lively responses. Not
least,he inspired the American scholar Edward William Fudge
to produce a full-length survey of the biblical material that
rapidly became the standard reference work on evangelical
60
conditionalism. Subsequently, at a major conference on hell
in 1992, Wenham expounded his position in a paper entitled
61
‘The Case for Conditional Immortality’. In fact, the book
based on this conference represented just one in a stream of
works on hell produced by evangelicals in the period after
Stott had made his views known. Respected evangelical lead-
ers like Philip Hughes, Michael Green, Nigel Wright, Earle
Ellis,Clark Pinnock and Robert Brow were just some of those
62
who ‘went public’ as conditionalists at this time. Predictably,

58 J. Stott & D.L. Edwards, Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (London:

Hodder & Stoughton, 1988), p.320.
59 J. Wenham, The Goodness of God.
60 Fudge, Fire That Consumes, pp.9-10.
61 In N.M. de S. Cameron, (ed.), Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell (Carlisle: Pa-
ternoster Press, 1992), pp.161-90. For Wenham’s personal reflections on this de-
bate, and on its antecedents, see Facing Hell: An Autobiography 1913-1996 (Carlisle:
Paternoster Press, 1998), pp.229-57.
62 J. Wenham, ‘The Case for Conditional Immortality’, in Cameron (ed.) Univer-
salism and the Doctrine of Hell, 1992, pp.161-91; also Facing Hell. Fudge, Fire That
Consumes; M. Green, Evangelism Through the Local Church (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1990), pp.69f.; C.H. Pinnock & R.C. Brow, Unbounded Love: A Good
st
News Theology for the 21 Century (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1994), pp.87-95;
E. Ellis, ‘New Testament Teaching on Hell’, in K.E. Brower & M.W. Elliott, (eds),
The Reader Must Understand: Eschatology in Bible and Theology; N. Wright, The
Radical Evangelical: Seeking a Place to Stand (Leicester: Apollos, 1997), pp.87-102.
340 One Body in Christ

their pronouncements in turn spurred more traditionalist

evangelicals, such as J.I. Packer, Ajith Fernando, David Pawson,
John Blanchard, Donald Carson and Robert Peterson, to reit-
63
erate the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment.
The debate that was now developing led ACUTE to ap-
point a working group on hell in early 1998. As well as
Hilborn, this included Philip Johnston (the Wycliffe Hall Old
Testament lecturer), Tony Lane (the London Bible College
historical theologian),Tony Gray (of the Universities and Col-
leges Christian Fellowship), Faith Forster and Robert Amess.
As the group began their work,they were aware that a theolog-
ical survey conducted a few months earlier had shown 14% of
Alliance member churches inclining towards annihilationism,
64
with 80% holding to the traditional view on hell. The next
year they duly presented their report to the Alliance Council.
The Council spent a morning debating it, and then com-
mended it to the membership for ‘study, reflection and
constructive response’. Shortly afterwards, the report was
65
published by Paternoster Press as The Nature of Hell.
Stressing that hell represents one side of the church’s re-
sponse to the universal human concern about what happens
when we die, the working group began by outlining the tradi-
tional Christian understanding of it as eternal conscious
torment for the unredeemed. They then contrasted this un-
derstanding with conditionalism, and also with universalism –
the view that all will eventually be saved. Having stressed that
universalism has never been accepted by any more than a tiny
proportion of evangelicals, and having rejected arguments for

63 J.I. Packer, The Problem of Eternal Punishment (Disley: Orthos, 1990); A.

Fernando, Crucial Questions About Hell (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1991); D. Pawson,
The Road to Hell (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992); Blanchard, Whatever
Happened to Hell? (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 1993); Peterson, Hell on Trial
(Phillipsburg: P and R, 1995); D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Con-
fronts Pluralism (Leicester: Apollos, 1996), pp.515-36.
64 EA Member Churches: The 1998 Opinion Survey, Question 7, 6; Ear, Spring
1999, p.1.
65 ACUTE, The Nature of Hell.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 341

it, for purgatory and for so-called ‘post-mortem’ or ‘second

chance’conversion,the report focused on the respective merits
and demerits of everlasting punishment and conditional im-
mortality/annihilation. In doing so, it emphasised that despite
their obvious divergence on significant points, traditionalist
and conditionalist evangelicals could still each affirm a number
of crucial beliefs in respect of the ‘last things’. They both char-
acteristically assented to the finality of death,the general resur-
rection, the reality of final judgement and its consequence in
either heavenly redemption or irreversible condemnation, the
prospect of divine punishment for the reprobate, the unique-
ness of Christ for salvation, justification by grace through faith
in him, the promise of a renewed cosmos, and the priority of
66
evangelism in the face of all this. These,it suggested,were suf-
ficiently important in themselves to oblige church leaders,
theological colleges and religious educators to present hell as
an intrinsic feature of Christian faith and history. They also
demanded serious and sensitive treatment in the pastoral
67
context.
Despite these areas of consensus, however, the report ac-
knowledged that evangelicals had come increasingly to dis-
agree on whether the ‘eternity’ of hell was an eternity of
duration or effect – that is, ‘whether an individual’s punishment
in hell will literally go on “for ever”, as a ceaseless conscious
experience, or whether it will end in a destruction which will
be “forever” in the sense of being final and irreversible’. In
addition, it recognised that although the Bible often pictured
hell in terms of destruction as well as suffering, ‘evangelicals
diverge on whether this destruction applies to the actual exis-
tence of individual sinners (eventual annihilation) or to the
quality of their relationship with God (eternal conscious punish-
68
ment)’. The Nature of Hell accepted that both traditionalism
and conditionalism had their ‘signature texts’ – Mark 9:48,

66 Ibid., pp.130-32.
67 Ibid., pp.110-21, 133-4.
68 Ibid., p.132.
342 One Body in Christ

Matthew 25:46 and Revelation 20:10 for traditionalists, and

Matthew 10:28, John 3:16 and Romans 6:23 for conditionalists/
annihilationists. It interrogated these and other references in
great detail, as well as surveying arguments from ancient and
modern theologians in relation to each view. On the basis of
this work, it reached four key conclusions.
First, ACUTE deemed the interpretation of hell as eternal
conscious punishment to be ‘the classic, mainstream evangeli-
cal position’,and the one most widely attested by the church in
its historic understanding of Scripture.Second,however,it for-
mally recognised conditional immortality as representing a
‘significant minority evangelical view’. Third, it declared that
the debate on these two positions ‘should be regarded as a sec-
ondary rather than a primary issue for evangelical theology’,
and that the holding of either one of them against the other
was ‘neither essential in respect of Christian doctrine, nor
finally definitive of what it means to be an evangelical Chris-
tian’.Fourth,it affirmed that in contrast with the original 1846
Basis of Faith, the current Evangelical Alliance Statement of
Faith would ‘allow both traditionalist and conditionalist inter-
69
pretations of hell’.
Insofar as The Nature of Hell affirmed the credentials of
conditionalism, it did so cautiously. The burden of proof, it
suggested,still rested with this view,since the weight of historic
theological witness and de facto evangelical understanding was
against it, and since biblical arguments for it were hardly
straightforward over against traditionalism. In any case, the au-
thors also suggested,biblical references such as 2 Thessalonians
1:8-9,coupled with new insights from cosmology,might even-
tually reveal the truth to lie not in one view alone, but in an as
70
yet unresolvable fusion of both.
Although it was longer and more patently ‘academic’ than
Faith, Hope and Homosexuality, The Nature of Hell attracted a
surprisingly comparable level of media interest. Hilborn was

69 Ibid., pp.134-5.
70 Ibid., p.125.
 A Knife-Edge Exercise 343

interviewed about it on Radio 4’s Today and Sunday

programmes, and recorded half-hour features on it for the
World Service, BBC Wales and BBC Ulster. Jonathan Petre in
the Sunday Telegraph contrasted its robustness with a more
equivocal statement on the same issue made by the Church of
England’s Doctrine Commission; the Independent on Sunday
followed suit, and there was extensive coverage in the British
Christian press.Perhaps most notably of all,it was accorded the
distinction of an eight-page cover feature in the leading Amer-
ican magazine Christianity Today, where Professor Robert
Peterson called it an ‘outstanding resource’ and ‘a model of
how evangelicals can study together constructively,even when
71
they must agree to disagree’. By this point, The Nature of Hell
had already sold out its first print run. Clive Calver’s hopes for
ACUTE were becoming a reality.

Conclusion
For all its success in the 1980s, the Alliance under Clive
Calver’s leadership came to realise that the reassertion of its his-
toric pragmatism must be married with, and checked by,
responsible theological and ethical reflection. This realisation
was due in no small part to the rise of certain critical debates
during this period – on evangelical identity, the Toronto
Blessing, human sexuality, and hell. Although it had previously
convened theological committees and conferences to deal
with specific concerns, the Alliance now adopted a more pro-
grammatic approach, through the formation of ACUTE and
the Policy Commission. As they developed, the work of these
two bodies did much to confirm the Alliance as a distinctive
contributor to evangelical thought, as well as to evangelical
action.
As we write, further ACUTE projects in process include
studies of generationally based mission and church planting,
71 R.A. Peterson, ‘Undying Worm; Unquenchable Fire’, Christianity Today,
23 October 2000, pp.30-37.
344 One Body in Christ

evangelical ecclesiology and a Reader in evangelical theology.

The Policy Commission is preparing to publish a document
on genetically modified foods, and is planning to convene a
special ‘commission of inquiry’ on issues of church and state.
Here,as before,the emphasis will be on thorough research pre-
sented in a clear style for thinking evangelicals. As we shall see
in the final chapter,it is an approach intended to reflect a grow-
ing commitment within the Alliance to speak with authority
on issues of concern not only to the church itself, but also to
the whole of society.
 14

A Movement for Change

Shaping the Alliance for the Twenty-First Century

A New General Director

As Clive Calver departed for the USA in May 1997 he made it
known that if the new General Director was to be appointed
internally, his preferred successor would be Joel Edwards. In
this, he echoed the sentiments of his senior collegues. Edwards
had worked with Calver since 1992 as UK Director, having
served for four years prior to that as General Director of the
African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance (ACEA). In the event,
the Council noted Calver and his teams wishes, but insisted
that the appointment process should be open and above board.
The job was 1
duly advertised, resulting in a short-list of three
candidates. As it turned out, the interview group were unani-2
mous in offering Edwards the position, and he accepted. Just
four years on, Adrian Hastings, the renowned British church
historian, would be describing him as ‘perhaps, all3 in all, the
most significant ecclesiastical figure of the 1990s’.
As he would later recount in his part-autobiographical book
Lord, Make Us One – But Not All the Same!, Joel Edwards came
4
to Britain from Jamaica at the age of seven, in 1960. Brought
1 idea, September/October 1997, p.21.
2 idea, November/December 1997, p.15.
3 Hastings, English Christianity 1920–2000, p.xlvi.
4 Edwards, Lord, Make Us One, pp.1-19.
346 One Body in Christ

here by a mother fleeing a bad marriage, he grew up in the

north London district of Kentish Town. As one of the first
wave of West Indian immigrants to the UK, he told idea maga-
zine, shortly after becoming General Director, that on settling
in the capital he felt ‘suddenly confronted with being a very
different person’. In the face of culture shock and racial ten-
sions,his local New Testament Church of God became a solace
– ‘the place where you were kept alive … your social centre’.It
was in this Pentecostal setting that Edwards was converted at
the age of eleven. Around the same time, however, he was
caught stealing sweets from Woolworth’s and was put on pro-
bation. With hindsight, this would prove ironic: a bright stu-
dent at school, Edwards would go on to study theology at
London Bible College, after which he decided to become a
probation officer instead of entering into full-time ministry
immediately. By 1988 when he left the probation service to
work for ACEA,Edwards had begun to pastor part-time at the
New Testament Assembly in Leyton,east London.Despite the
demands of his subsequent roles for the Alliance, he has main-
tained links with this church, and continues to relate influen-
tially to the Pentecostal community, both nationally and
5
internationally.

Redoubled Activism
Under the banner of ‘New Leadership for a New Era’,
Edwards’ Directorship was launched in October 1997 at
special ‘induction services’ in London and Manchester –
respectively the same cities that had hosted the inaugural
meetings6 of the World’s Alliance and the British Organisation
in 1846. These events were followed up early the next year
with ‘Seizing the Moment’ – a 28-town tour in which
Edwards and a team of evangelical leaders introduced Alliance
members to a new ‘Manifesto’. The thirty-three ‘pledges’
5 idea, September/October 1997, pp.21-2.
6 idea, November/December 1997, p.15.
 A Movement for Change 347

contained in this document covered a wide spectrum of con-

cerns, from more effective evangelism and preaching to the
promotion of biblical morality and appropriate local co-oper-
ation with other churches.There was also a strong undertaking
to harness rapidly advancing computer technologies – an
undertaking borne out by the launch of an Alliance internet
website. However, if there was a distinctive theme running
through the ‘Seizing the Moment’ Manifesto, it was a serious
re-commitment to social transformation. With his back-
ground, Edwards was able to bring authority and authenticity
to this commitment,and it would soon become a defining fea-
ture of his portfolio as General Director.A commentary on the
pledges emphasised that the Alliance had ‘gained credibility
over the years not by standing on soapboxes, but by regularly
engaging with public debates’. As part of intensifying this
process, there would, it added, be a redoubled effort ‘to influ-
ence Government policies from a Christian perspective,as well
as to generate greater respect7 and co-operation from local
authorities and Government’.
The Alliance pursued this fresh social and political commit-
ment on a number of fronts. In November 1997 Sir Fred
Catherwood, its President, launched a major report entitled
Surveying the Roots of Social Breakdown. This was the fruit of
research done by Catherwood and an Alliance-based team
over five years, in which they had surveyed 70 church projects
providing care for some 44,000 people affected by problems
like homelessness,poverty and addiction.By highlighting what
evangelicals on the ground were already accomplishing, the
report sought to urge Alliance congregations to participate
further in ‘Christian Action Networks’ (CANS). These net-
works would, according to the report, ‘encourage the sharing
of expertise and good practice, and … help identify gaps in
social provision and potential resources from within the Chris-
8
tian community to fill those gaps’. The report also committed

7 Ibid., pp.16-7.
8 Evangelical Alliance, Surveying the Roots of Social Breakdown, p.6.
348 One Body in Christ

the Alliance to ‘approach the British Government and local

authorities to press for more funding,recognition and partner-
9
ship with the voluntary and church sectors’. Specifically, it
demonstrated chronic problems arising from family dysfunc-
tion, unemployment, loss of community, drug and alcohol
abuse, and crime. Yet it held out the hope that more active
co-operation between government and church could signifi-
10
cantly ameliorate such problems. As the work of CANS de-
veloped over the next four years, the Alliance would come to
see all the major political parties approach the 2001 General
Election seriously addressing the issue of ‘faith-based welfare’
11
and government support for church social projects.
If the CANS initiative recalled the evangelical social activ-
ism of the Victorian Alliance, another project the following
year echoed its historic co-ordination of national prayer. From
modest beginnings, an Alliance initiative called ‘Amen – A
Day to Pray’ caught the imagination of evangelical churches
and a wide range of Christian communities. On 7 June 1998
some 6,000 congregations were duly mobilised to intercede
for the well being of their communities, for evangelisation, for
parliament and for revival.A rally was held in Westminster,and
12
a special service was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. The Alli-
ance’s head of prayer, Jane Holloway, was particularly pleased
when George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warmly
endorsed the project.
After the ‘Amen Day’, the Alliance sought to maintain the
momentum it was gaining in the public arena. Its Disability
Network launched a ‘Churches for All’ scheme designed to
13
raise issues of access; its Youth and Children’s Unit hosted a

9 idea, November/December 1997, p.26.

10 Evangelical Alliance, Surveying, 22-3; ‘Opening a CAN of Works’, idea,
April/May 2000, p.5.
11 ‘Window of Opportunity?’, idea, May/June 2001, pp.20-25.
12 idea April/May 1998, p.3; idea, April/May 1998, p.30; idea, April/May 1998,
pp.30, 34.
13 idea, September/October 1998, pp.27-8; idea, November/December 1998,
pp.26-7.
 A Movement for Change 349

high-profile conference on social exclusion;14 a new consul-

tancy called Whitefield Associates was developed to enable
more effective lobbying of government;and an ‘Anno Domini’
office was created to promote missionary opportunities pre-
15
sented by the approaching millennium.
Also in 1998 the Good Friday Agreement was ratified by
the people of Northern and Southern Ireland and the Repub-
lic of Ireland. The major constitutional and social changes
promised by this new accord were addressed by the Alliance,
most particularly by David McCarthy in its Belfast office; he
worked hard to maintain dialogue between evangelicals who
16
had divided over the issue. David Porter, an Alliance Execu-
tive Member, also regularly briefed Council members on de-
velopments from his perspective as Director of ECONI – the
Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland. Moreover, as
devolution was realised through the Scottish Parliament, the
Welsh Assembly and the Greater London Assembly, the Alli-
ance’s expanding Public Affairs department worked closely
with its national offices to ensure that the evangelical voice was
heard in each forum.Martyn Eden,the Public Affairs Director,
and Shona Wallace, the Parliamentary Officer, co-ordinated
major reports on evangelical-political engagement and the
proposed Greater London Assembly; David Anderson, the
Scottish General Director,worked with Jeremy Balfour,Parlia-
mentary Officer, to win the confidence of new MSPs, and in
Wales Aarfon Jones, Elfed Gooding and Daniel Boucher de-
veloped Gweini (meaning ‘to serve’) to help voluntary organi-
17
sations make their presence felt in Cardiff.
As campaigns like these raised public awareness of the Alli-
ance’s work, so the media opportunities for which Clive
Calver and others had pressed so hard began to increase.Along
with Martyn Eden, David Hilborn and Paul Harris (Evange-
14 idea, April/May 1998, p.8.
15 idea, June/July/August 1999, p.13.
16 idea, June/July/August 1998, pp.22-3; idea, September/October 1998,
pp.30-31.
17 idea, April/May 2000, pp.22-5.
350 One Body in Christ

lism Secretary), Joel Edwards found himself appearing with

greater regularity in the press,and on radio and television.One
clear sign of the respect he was winning came in the form of a
1998 London Weekend Television interview requested by
Melvyn Bragg,the prominent cultural affairs presenter.As part
of a series that also featured the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
Archbishop of Westminster and the Chief Rabbi, Edwards
spoke at length to Bragg about his Pentecostal background and
18
the history and work of the Alliance. Shortly afterwards, Ed-
wards became a regular contributor to ‘Pause for Thought’ on
BBC Radio 2, and then began to appear in the prestigious
‘Thought for the Day’slot on Radio 4.He also featured on the
same station in Any Questions and The Moral Maze,and formed
part of the panel on BBC 1’s Question Time.
While the Alliance made these considerable strides forward
on the wider social stage, it was careful not to neglect its core
work of resourcing and networking local churches. In early
1999 John Smith was appointed as Church Life Director in
succession to John Earwicker, who left the Alliance to return
to local ministry. One of Smith’s first tasks was to help lead a
new Alliance tour.Entitled ‘Shaping Tomorrow’s Church’,this
covered fifteen regional centres and presented Alliance mem-
bers with the latest thinking on church growth,evangelism and
19
cultural engagement. It also introduced those who attended
to the ‘Disciple Making Church’ process pioneered by Bill
Hull and Rick Warren of Saddleback Community Church in
Orange County, California. Subsequently, the Alliance would
invite Bill Hull to lead a series of day conferences, and would
20
organise guided study visits to Saddleback.
Also during this period, a special ‘Evangelical Relationships
Commitment’ was drafted and agreed with the British Evan-
gelical Council. This undertook to maintain good biblical
practice in dealing with the media, and obliged parties in

18 idea, April/May 1998, p.6.

19 idea, January-March 1999, pp.4-5.
20 idea, November/December 1998, pp.22-3.
 A Movement for Change 351

doctrinal and other disputes to consult and establish facts be-

21
fore issuing critical statements. Within the Alliance Council,
important steps were also taken to update the Alliance’s consti-
tution,with legal and fiduciary responsibilities being shifted to
a new Executive Board. Alongside these changes, Robert
Amess, recently retired from ministry at Duke Street Baptist
Church, took over from Derek Copley as Chair of Council,
while Fran Beckett (Shaftesbury Society Director) was ap-
22
pointed Vice-Chair. Along, most notably, with Faith Forster
of the Ichthus Fellowship, Beckett had already done much to
model a more prominent leadership role for women than had
hitherto been demonstrated within the Alliance.
In the autumn of 1999 the Alliance looked to build on the
success of the ‘Seizing the Moment’ and ‘Shaping Tomorrow’s
Church’ tours by launching another. The theme this time was
‘Truth on the Streets’, and a team including Joel Edwards and
Steve Chalke, the popular evangelical TV presenter, took the
tour to fifteen venues. This time, the format was somewhat
more radical than had been attempted before. The backbone
of each evening’s presentation was a sequence of playlets
scripted by Nick Page and performed by Rob Lacey. Lacey
portrayed various characters, each of whom, in different ways,
starkly illustrated the challenges facing the evangelical church
in contemporary culture – a fashion designer called Justin
raised pertinent questions about gay people and artistic expres-
sion; Graham was a Christian, but so obsessed by work that his
lifestyle undermined the faith he professed; eco-warrior
Moonstick was on a spiritual quest whose destination might
depend on his treatment by evangelicals; and a bumbling vicar
personified common public perceptions of the Church. All
were portrayed as they attended the funeral of a mutual Chris-
tian friend, Jay, who had committed suicide after struggling
with a desire to change his sex.The aim was to provoke debate,
and the Alliance received substantial feedback, most of which

21 idea, June/July/August 1999, p.4.

22 idea, January-March 1999, p.4.
352 One Body in Christ

was constructive. Indeed, so enthusiastic was the response that

the ‘Truth on the Streets’ presentation was subsequently re-
23
corded and marketed as a successful video resource.
For all the progress that was being made, the Alliance was
also confronted with some sobering realities. A new English
church census showed regular attendance at services dipping
to below 8% from 10% just a decade before,and while evangel-
ical congregations had suffered less from this decline than
24
others, the aggregate losses were still alarming. When the
Alliance sought to address this and other issues in August 2000
by co-sponsoring a new youth music festival called ‘Junction
1’, it had to cancel at the eleventh hour due to lack of interest,
25
and lost a significant amount of money as a result. These set-
backs did not deter the Alliance from pressing ahead with its
busy programme of activities, but in the latter part of 2000
it resolved to announce a more co-ordinated agenda to its
members.

Developing the Alliance as ‘A Movement for Change’

In October 1998 Martyn Eden had suggested to his fellow

managers that the Alliance had ‘come to the end of a chapter in
its existence’ and that it needed to ‘plan and prepare for a new
one’. Too often, he wrote, the organisation had ‘dissipated’ its
energies ‘by majoring on minor issues’. Now, however, it
needed to ‘agree some strategic priorities’.Eden proposed that
this should be done through reconfiguring the Alliance as a
‘Movement for Change’. Specifically, he argued, this new
movement would learn from the example of minority interest
groups in other cultures who, despite their relatively small
numbers, had exceeded expectations in terms of the impact

23 idea, January/February 2001, p.27.

24 P. Brierley, The Tide is Running Out (Eltham/London: Christian Research/
Harper Collins, 2000).
25 idea, June/July/August 2000, p.9.
 A Movement for Change 353

they had made. Citing Robert Bellah, the sociologist, Eden

stressed that the quality of a culture could be changed when
just 2% of its population caught a new vision. The vision that
the Alliance needed to catch, he went on, was a vision of social
transformation that would be ‘holistic’ and ‘participatory’. In
particular, he noted, this vision would need to be focused on
‘the continual erosion of Christian values’ within society, its
‘relativist, pluralist, materialist and individualist’ ethos and the
‘re-establishment’ of the gospel as ‘public truth in British soci-
ety’.A useful picture of social change,he added,‘sees society as
a marching column. Evangelicals are in the middle of that
column,calling out to the other marchers that the front-mark-
ers are leading us towards a precipice, and urging them to
wheel in a26new direction or to break ranks before we reach the
precipice.’
Having tested and introduced it to staff and council through
1999, in September 2000 Joel Edwards launched the ‘Move-
ment for Change’ initiative as a prophetic, long-term project
that would ‘work with what the Holy Spirit is already doing,
and develop a corporate consciousness of actively working
together for change within our respective ministries’. The
Alliance may have achieved a great deal through the 1980s and
‘90s, but, added Edwards, it would need to build on these
achievements by determining ‘to unite for a cause greater than
our unity’.Under the new banner of ‘Uniting to Change Soci-
ety’, he told readers of idea magazine:
If it is true that two per cent of a population can change a culture, what might
a million evangelicals do as we bring our distinctive contribution to the
wider Christian community and our society? Such a movement has all the
potential under God to shape our values, restore families, and influence our
media and politics. God is blowing a wind of change, and we want to offer our
Alliance as a catalyst at the heart of a movement, bringing our personal
members,churches and organisations together for this purpose … It’s true:one
person can call for change, but one million people can become a movement for
change.27

26 M.Eden,‘EA:The Next Chapter:Building a Movement for Change’,Internal

Alliance Paper, 10 August 1998.
27 idea, November/December 2000, p.4.
354 One Body in Christ

As we write, these aspirations have yet to be translated into a

detailed plan of action, but the Alliance has undertaken to
refine and deliver this plan through a major National Assembly
at Cardiff in November 2001 and a wide-ranging mission
campaign in 2002. By early 2001 the Assembly programme st
had been designed to offer ‘Reasons for Hope in the 21 Cen-
tury’ and had promised four focal points: Society, Truth,
Church and Discipleship. The 2002 project had been entitled
‘Face Values’, and had agreed a brief to be ‘flexible’ and
locally-orientated as it operated with three main motives:

1 To stimulate thinking and action on the gospel and cul-

ture.
2 To mobilise a nationwide effort in evangelism.
3 To help churches ‘identify ways in which they can serve
their communities and … direct them to additional help
28
and support’.

These plans were presented in February 2001 to a gathering of

senior British evangelicals at the Temple Hall, London. The
100-strong guest list included government ministers, Lords,
key business leaders and senior representatives from several
churches, many29
of whom expressed high hopes for the Alli-
ance’s future.

Conclusion – and Postscript

Following Joel Edwards’ appointment as General Director in

1997, the Alliance developed ‘Movement for Change’ as a
conscious attempt to recover the raison d’être and cultural influ-
ence of its nineteenth-century founders.At a time of ecclesias-
tical division, these early Victorian pioneers had been
justifiably glad to celebrate the fact of their unity, and had

28 idea, November/December 2000, p.6.

29 idea, May/June 2001, p.4.
 A Movement for Change 355

announced it in the original slogan of the Alliance: ‘We are

One Body in Christ’. Yet, where some had argued then that
the mere formation of the Alliance might be testimony
enough to Christian catholicity, the Alliance itself moved
beyond this in its earliest decades. Like the founders, Joel
Edwards has been strongly committed to tangible expressions
of unity. In this vein, he accepted the invitation to become an
Honorary Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral in July 2001 – a strik-
ing move for a Pentecostal. Around the same time, he also
joined a special steering group charged with remodelling the
World Evangelical Fellowship for the new century, as it pre-
pared to change its name,appropriately enough,to ‘The World
Evangelical Alliance’. Yet over and above such expressions of
unity, the Alliance’s founders had also pursued an agenda of
‘common action’at home and abroad,and now,some 155 years
on, Edwards has set out to apply this legacy to a new chapter
in the Alliance’s life. Hence his recent reminder to Alliance
members that while their unity was ‘the envy of many evan-
gelical bodies around the world’, it could never be an end in
itself. ‘We are united for
30
a mission’, he declared: ‘a mission to
see a changed society.’

30 idea, May/June 2001, p.3.

 Appendix 1

The Provisional Doctrinal Basis of Faith of

the World’s Evangelical Alliance (1845)

1 The divine inspiration, authority and sufficiency of Holy

Scripture.
2 The unity of the Godhead, and the Trinity of Persons
therein.
3 The utter depravity of human nature in consequence of
the fall.
4 The incarnation of the Son of God and His work of
atonement for sinners of mankind.
5 The justification of the sinner by faith alone.
1
6 The work of the Holy Spirit in the conversion and
sanctification of the sinner.
7 The right and duty of private judgment in the interpreta-
tion of Holy Scripture.
8 The divine institution of the Christian ministry and the
authority and perpetuity of the ordinances of Baptism
and the Lord’s Supper.

1 The text proposed to the Conference by R.S.Candlish’s drafting sub-commit-

tee had ‘regeneration’ at this point, but the Conference agreed to amend it to
‘conversion’.
 Appendix 2

The Doctrinal Basis of Faith of the World’s

Evangelical Alliance (1846)

The parties composing the Alliance shall be such persons only

as hold and maintain what are usually understood to be evan-
gelical views, in regard to the matters of doctrine understated,
namely:

1 The divine Inspiration, Authority and Sufficiency of the

Holy Scriptures.
2 The Right and Duty of Private Judgment in the Interpre-
tation of the Holy Scriptures.
3 The Unity of the Godhead, and the Trinity of Persons
therein.
4 The utter Depravity of Human Nature,in consequence of
the Fall.
5 The Incarnation of the Son of God, His work of Atone-
ment for sinners of mankind, and His Mediatorial Inter-
cession and Reign.
6 The Justification of the sinner by faith alone.
7 The work of the Holy Spirit in the Conversion and Sanc-
tification of the sinner.
8 The Immortality of the Soul, the Resurrection of the
Body,the Judgment of the World by our Lord Jesus Christ,
with the Eternal Blessedness of the Righteous, and the
Eternal Punishment of the wicked.
9 The divine Institution of the Christian Ministry, and the
obligation and perpetuity of the Ordinances of Baptism
and the Lord’s Supper.
 Appendix 2 359

(i) It is, however, distinctly declared that this brief sum-

mary is not to be regarded, in any formal or ecclesiastical
sense,as a creed or confession,nor the adoption of it as in-
volving an assumption of the right authoritatively to de-
fine the limits of Christian brotherhood.
(ii) In this Alliance it is also distinctly declared that no
compromise of the views of any member, or sanction of
those of others on the points wherein they differ, is either
required or expected; but that all are held free as before to
maintain and advocate their religious convictions with
due forbearance and brotherly love.
(iii) It is not contemplated that this Alliance should as-
sume or aim at the character of a new ecclesiastical
organization, claiming and exercising the functions of a
Christian Church.Its simple and comprehensive object,it
is strongly felt, may be successfully promoted without in-
terfering with, or disturbing the order of, any branch of
the Christian Church to which its members may respec-
tively belong.
 Appendix 3

Evangelical Alliance (UK) Basis of Faith

(1970)

Evangelical Christians accept the revelation of the triune God

given in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and
confess the historic faith of the Gospel therein set forth. They
here assert doctrines which they regard as crucial to the under-
standing of the faith, and which should issue in mutual love,
practical Christian service and evangelistic concern.

1 The sovereignty and grace of God the Father, God the

Son and God the Holy Spirit in creation, providence,
revelation, redemption and final judgement.
2 The divine inspiration of the Holy Scripture and its con-
sequent entire trustworthiness and supreme authority in
all matters of faith and conduct.
3 The universal sinfulness and guilt of fallen man, making
him subject to God’s wrath and condemnation.
4 The substitutionary sacrifice of the incarnate Son of God
as the sole and all-sufficient ground of redemption from
the guilt and power of sin, and from its eternal conse-
quences.
5 The justification of the sinner solely by the grace of
God through faith in Christ crucified and risen from the
dead.
6 The illuminating, regenerating, indwelling and sanctify-
ing work of God the Holy Spirit.
7 The priesthood of all believers, who form the universal
Church,the Body of which Christ is the Head and which
 Appendix 3 361

is committed by his command to the proclamation of the

gospel throughout the world.
8 The expectation of the personal,visible return of the Lord
Jesus Christ in power and glory.
 Appendix 4

Eight General Resolutions of the British

Organization of the World’s Evangelical
Alliance (1846)

… the Members of the British Organization, fully concurring

in the sentiments and recommendations expressed in a series
of resolutions agreed upon by the London Conference of the
Evangelical Alliance,and exhibited in the ‘Abstract of the Pro-
ceedings and Final Resolutions’, under the title of ‘General
Resolutions’,in the following terms adopt them as their own:

1 That the Members of this Alliance earnestly and affec-

tionately recommend to each other in their own conduct,
and particularly in their use of the press, carefully to
abstain from and put away all bitterness, and wrath, and
anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking, with all malice;
and, in all things in which they may yet differ from each
other, to be kind, tender-hearted, forbearing one another
in love, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s
sake, hath forgiven them; in everything seeking to be
followers of God, as dear children, and to walk in love, as
Christ also hath loved them.
2 That, as the Christian Union which this Alliance de-
sires to promote can only be obtained through the
blessed energy of the Holy Spirit, it be recommended
to the Members present, and absent brethren, to make
this matter the subject of simultaneous weekly petition
at the throne of grace, in their closets and families; and
the forenoon of Monday is suggested as the time for
 Appendix 4 363

that purpose. And that it be further recommended, that

the week beginning with the first Lord’s day of January,
in each year,be observed by the members and friends of
the Alliance throughout the world, as a season for
concert in prayer on behalf of the grand objects
contemplated by the Alliance.
3 That, in seeking the correction of what the members of
the Alliance believe to be wrong in others, they desire,
in humble dependence on the grace of God,themselves
to obey, and by their practice and influence to impress
upon others, the command of Christ, to consider first
the beam that is in their own eye: that they will, there-
fore, strive to promote each in his own communion, a
spirit of repentance and humiliation for its peculiar sins;
and to exercise a double measure of forbearance in re-
proving, where reproof is needful, the faults of those
Christian Brethren who belong to other bodies than
their own.
4 That,when required by conscience to assert or defend any
views or principles wherein they differ from Christian
Brethren who agree with them in vital truths; the mem-
bers of this Alliance will aim earnestly, by the help of the
Holy Spirit, to avoid all rash and groundless insinuations,
personal imputations, or irritating allusions, and to main-
tain the meekness and gentleness of Christ, by speaking
the truth only in love.
5 That,while they believe it highly desirable that Christians
of different bodies, holding the Head, should own each
other as Brethren by some such means as the Evangelical
Alliance affords,the Members of the Alliance disclaim the
thought, that those only who openly join this Society are
sincere friends to the cause of Christian Union; that,
on the contrary, they regard all those as its true friends
who solemnly purpose in their hearts, and fulfil that pur-
pose in their practice, to be more watchful in future
against occasions of strife, more tender and charitable
towards Christians from whom they differ, and more
364 Appendix 4

constant in prayer for the union of all the true disciples of

Christ.
6 That the members of this Alliance would therefore invite,
humbly and earnestly, all ministers of the gospel, all con-
ductors of religious publications,and others who have in-
fluence in various bodies of Christians, to watch more
than ever against sins of the heart, or the tongue, or the
pen, towards Christians of other denominations; and to
promote more zealously than hitherto a spirit of peace,
unity, and godly love, among all true believers in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
7 That, since all the disciples of Christ are commanded by
the Holy Spirit to add to brotherly kindness, love, and are
bound to pray that all who profess and call themselves
Christians should be led into the way of truth; it is ear-
nestly recommended to the Members of the Evangelical
Alliance, to offer special prayer for all merely nominal
Christians,as well as for Jews and Gentiles throughout the
world.
8 That the members of this Alliance, earnestly longing for
the universal spread of Christ’s kingdom, devoutly praise
God for the grace whereby, in late years, evangelical
Christians have been moved to manifold efforts to make
the Saviour known to both Jew and Gentile, and faithful
men have been raised up to undertake the toil. They
would offer to all evangelical missionaries their most
fraternal congratulations and sympathy; would hail the
flocks they have been honoured to gather,as welcome and
beloved members of the household of God; and above all,
would implore the Head of the Church to shield his
servants, to edify his rising churches, and by the outpour-
ing of his Holy Spirit, to enlighten Israel with the
knowledge of the true Messiah, and to bring the heathen
out of darkness into light. They would also record their
confident hope, that their beloved missionary brethren
will strive more and more to manifest, before the Israelite
and other classes who know not the Redeemer, that
 Appendix 4 365

union in their blessed Lord, the spirit of which, the mem-

bers of this Alliance would gratefully acknowledge, they
have generally cherished.
 Appendix 5

Practical Resolutions of the Evangelical

Alliance (1996)

Our commitment as Christians should at all times reflect our

commitment to Scripture.
The 1846 Assembly which launched the Alliance, as well as
agreeing a Basis of Faith, passed eight resolutions to guide
members in their relationships with each other and with other
Christians.
Given the historic significance of these eight resolutions we
have sought to maintain both the spirit and the original senti-
ments of the guidelines in the hope that members will apply it
with modernity to our contemporary problems.
As fellow members of the Evangelical Alliance:

1 We encourage one another in making public comment to

place the most charitable construction on the statements
made by fellow Christians and particularly those who are
members of the Alliance and, where expressions of dis-
agreement are made, to do so with courtesy, humility, and
graciousness (Eph. 4:31).
2 We seek to bring the purposes of the Alliance to God in
regular prayer and especially during the annual week of
prayer.
3 We call on each other, where issues of faith and practice
divide us, to take care that when we offer correction that
this is done with awareness of our own failings (whether
as individuals or churches) and the possibility that we our-
selves may be mistaken (Eph. 4:15).
 Appendix 5 367

4 We urge each other, at all times when matters of theology

are in dispute,to avoid personal hostility and abuse,speak-
ing in truth in love and gentleness (Eph. 4:15).
5 We recognise that not all who seek to know and serve
Christ as Saviour and Lord, will wish to be members of
the Alliance and that such persons are not, thereby, to be
regarded as being out of Christian fellowship.
6 We urge all Christian leaders of trinitarian churches to
promote peace, unity and fellowship within the Body of
Christ.
7 We wish to encourage all Christians to commit them-
selves to biblical truth and,to that end,we pray that every-
one including those of other or no religions may find in
Christ true hope and salvation.
8 We rejoice in the spread of the Christian gospel across the
world and thank God for its advance, also acknowledging
the tensions which this has sometimes brought, and long-
ing for the completion of Christ’s kingdom of peace and
justice, to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.

Ephesians 4:3 ‘Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit
through the bond of peace.’
 Appendix 6

The World Evangelical Fellowship Basis of

Faith (1951)

A condition of membership is adherence to the following

evangelical statement of faith, adopted at the Woudschoten
Convention:

1 The Holy Scriptures as originally given by God, divinely

inspired,infallible,entirely trustworthy;and their supreme
authority in all matters of faith and conduct.
2 One God, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.
3 Our Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh. His vir-
gin birth, his sinless human life, his divine miracles, his vi-
carious and atoning death, his bodily resurrection, his
ascension,his mediatorial work,and his personal return in
power and glory.
4 The salvation of lost and sinful men through the shed
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ by faith apart from works,
and regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
5 The Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the believer is en-
abled to live a holy life, to witness and work for the Lord
Jesus Christ.
6 Unity in the Spirit of all true believers, the Church, the
Body of Christ.
7 The resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that
are saved unto the resurrection of life,and they that are lost
unto the resurrection of damnation.
 Bibliography

ACUTE, ‘What is an Evangelical?’ (London: Evangelical Alliance, 1996)

—, Faith, Hope and Homosexuality (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998)
—, The Nature of Hell (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000)
Adams, W., ‘Address of Welcome’, Sixth General Conference of the Evangeli-
cal Alliance held in New York (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1874)
Alton, D., ‘Preface’, in C. Colson & R. J. Neuhaus (eds.), Evangelicals and
Catholics Together:Working Towards a Common Mission (London:Hodder
& Stoughton, 1996), v-viii
Amess R., ‘Evangelicals and the Ecumenical Movement’ (unpublished
M.Phil Thesis, Open University, 1998)
Bacon, E.W., Spurgeon: Heir of the Puritans – A Biography (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1967)
Baird, H.M., The Life of the Rev. Robert Baird (New York: A.D.F. Randolph,
1866)
Baird, R., Address on the History, Present State, and Prospects, of the Evangelical
Alliance cause in the United States (London, 1851)
Baker,F.,John Wesley and the Church of England (London:Epworth,1970)
Baptist Union of Great Britain, ‘A Response to the Papal Encyclical Ut
Unum Sint from the Faith and Unity Executive Committee of the
Baptist Union of Great Britain’, April 1997
Barclay, O., Evangelicalism in Britain, 1935-1995: A Personal Sketch
(Leicester: IVP, 1997)
Bauckham, R.J., ‘Universalism: A Historical Survey’, Themelios 4.2
(January 1979), pp.48–54.
Bebbington, D.W., ‘The Life of Baptist Noel’, Baptist Quarterly 24 (1972),
pp.389-411
370 One Body in Christ

—, ‘The Persecution of George Jackson’, in W.J. Sheils (ed.), Persecution

and Toleration (Studies in Church History, Vol. 21; Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1984)
—, ‘The Advent Hope in British Evangelicalism since 1800’, Scottish
Journal of Religious Studies, 9.2 (1988), pp.103-14
—, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s
(London: Unwin Hyman, 1989)
—, ‘Baptists and Fundamentalism in Inter-War Britain’, in K. Robbins
(ed.), Protestant Evangelicalism: Britain, Ireland, Germany and America,
c. 1750–c. 1950, Studies in Church History (Subsidia 7; Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1990), pp.316-20
—, ‘Missionary Controversy and the Polarising Tendency in Twenti-
eth-Century British Protestantism’, Anvil 13.2 (1996), pp.141-57
—, ‘Evangelism and Spirituality in Twentieth-Century Protestantism’ (unpub-
lished paper, 2000)
—, Holiness in Nineteenth-Century England (Carlisle: Paternoster Press,
2000)
—, ‘Evangelism and Spirituality in Twentieth-Century Protestant Non-
conformity’ (forthcoming)
Bennett,J.,Memoirs of the Life of the Revd David Bogue DD (London,1827)
Best, G., ‘Evangelicalism and the Victorians’, in A. Symondson (ed.),
The Victorian Crisis of Faith (London: SPCK, 1970)
Bickersteth, E., A Scripture Help, Designed to Assist in Reading the Bible Prof-
itably (17th edn; London, 1838)
—, The Promised Glory of the Church of Christ (London, 1844)
Binfield, C., George Williams and the YMCA: A Study in Victorian Social
Attitudes (London: Heinemann, 1973)
Birks, T.R., Memoir of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth (2 Vols., London: Seeleys,
1850)
—, The Victory of Divine Goodness (London: Rivingtons, 1867)
—, ‘The Rev. T.R. Birks to Rev. Dr. Blackwood’, Evangelical Christendom,
1 March 1870, p.69
—, Supernatural Revelation (London 1879)
Blanchard, J., Whatever Happened to Hell? (Darlington: Evangelical Press,
1993)
Bloesch, D., The Future of Evangelical Christianity: A Call for Unity Amid
Diversity (New York: Doubleday, 1983)
Bochenski, M.I. (ed.), Evangelicals and Ecumenism: When Baptists Disagree
(Didcot: Baptist Union, 1993)
 Bibliography 371

Bonnington, M., ‘The Bible and Christian Organisations’, A Report

Presented to the Bible Society Comprising the Results of the Salt
and Light Research Project, January 1997, summarised by Roy
McCloughry, October, 1999
Bordeaux, M., Protestant Opposition to Soviet Religious Policy (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1968)
—, Gorbachev, Glasnost and the Gospel (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1990)
Bradley, I., The Call to Seriousness (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976)
Brady S. & H. Rowdon (ed.), For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evan-
gelicalism Past, Present and Future (London/Milton Keynes: Evangelical
Alliance/Scripture Union, 1996), pp.1-22
Bray, G., Biblical Interpretation Past and Present (Leicester: Apollos, 1996)
Brierley P. (ed.), UK Christian Handbook: Religious Trends 2000-2001, No.
2 (Eltham/London: Christian Research/Harper Collins, 1999)
—, Religious Trends 2000/2001 No.2 (London: Christian Research/
Harper Collins, 1999)
Brierley, P., The Tide is Running Out (Eltham/London: Christian
Research/Harper Collins, 2000)
Briggs, J.H.Y., The English Baptists of the Nineteenth Century (Didcot: The
Baptist Historical Society, 1994)
—, ‘F.A. Cox of Hackney: Nineteenth-Century Baptist Theologian,
Historian, Controversialist and Apologist’, The Baptist Quarterly 38.8
(2000), pp.392-411
Bromham, R., ‘A More Charitable Christian Eschatology: Attempts from
the Victorian Era to the Present Day to Mitigate the Problem of
Eternal Punishment, with Particular Attention to the Teaching of
T.R. Birks and Its Influence’ (M.Phil., University of Wales, 2000)
Brown, C.G., The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730 (London:
Methuen, 1987)
—, The Death of Christian Britain (London: Routledge, 2001)
Buchanan, C.O., E.L. Mascall, J.I. Packer, & The Bishop of Willesden,
Growing into Union: Proposals for Forming a United Church in England
(London, SPCK, 1970)
—, Is the Church of England Biblical? (London: Darton, Longman & Todd,
1998)
Calver, C., ‘The Jerusalem Paper’, Evangelical Alliance archive, London,
dated 28 November 1992
—, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Alliance, 1835-1905’, in S.
Brady & H. Rowdon (eds), For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on
372 One Body in Christ

Evangelicalism, Past, Present and Future (London/Milton Keynes: Evan-

gelical Alliance/Scripture Union, 1996), pp.148-62
Cameron, N.M. de S. (ed.), Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell (Carlisle:
Paternoster Press, 1992)
Campbell, R.J., The New Theology (London: Chapman & Hall, 1907)
Carlyle G. (ed), Proceedings of the Geneva Conference of the Evangelical Alli-
ance (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co, 1862)
Carson, D.A., The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism
(Leicester: Apollos, 1996)
Carwardine, R., Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain
and America, 1790-1865 (Westport: Greenwoood, 1978)
Catherwood,F.,At the Cutting Edge (London:Hodder & Stoughton,1995)
Centre for Contemporary Ministry,Charismatic Crossroads (Bawtry:PWM
Team Ministries, 1995)
Chadwick,O.,The Victorian Church,Part 1 (London:A.& C.Black,1966)
Chalmers,T.,On the Evangelical Alliance;its Design,its Difficulties,its Proceed-
ings and its Prospects: with Practical Suggestions (Edinburgh, 1846)
Chester, T., Awakening to a World of Need (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press,
1993)
Chevreau, G., Catch the Fire (London: Marshall Pickering, 1994)
Christian Research Association, Prospects for the Nineties (London, 1991)
‘Christian Union’, The Eclectic Review, June 1845
Clements, K.W., Lovers of Discord: Twentieth-Century Theological Contro-
versies in England (London: SPCK, 1988)
—, Faith on the Frontier: A Life of J. H. Oldham (Edinburgh/Geneva: T. & T.
Clark/WCC Publications, 1999)
Colquhoun, F., Harringay Story (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1955)
Community Religions Research Project, A Report on Afro-Caribbean
Christianity in Britain (Leeds: Community Religions Project Research
Papers, No. 4, 1987)
Cosner, W.H., Church and Confession: Conservative Theologians in Germany,
England and America, 1815-1866 (Macon: Mercer University Press,
1984)
Cox, J., The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth, 1870-1930
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977)
Currie, R., A.D. Gilbert & L. Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of
Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1977)
Dale, R.W., The Life and Letters of J.A. James (London, 1861)
 Bibliography 373

Densil Morgan, D., The Span of the Cross: Christian Religion and Society in
Wales, 1914-2000 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999)
Dixon, P., Signs of Revival (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1994)
Drummond,L.,Spurgeon:Prince of Preachers (Grand Rapids:Kregel,1992)
Dudley-Smith, T., John Stott: The Making of a Leader (Leicester: Inter-
Varsity Press, 1999)
‘EA Member Churches: 1998 Opinion Survey’, Question 11, p. 7
(London: Evangelical Alliance, 1998)
Eden, M., ‘EA: The Next Chapter: Building a Movement for Change’,
Internal Alliance Paper, 10 August 1998
Edwards, Joel, Lord, Make us One – But Not All the Same! (London, Hodder
& Stoughton, 1999)
—, Cradle, Cross and Empty Tomb: A Faith We Can Be Proud to Proclaim
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000)
Edwards, Jonathan, The Religious Affections (1746) (Edinburgh: Banner of
Truth Trust, 1961)
—, The Distinguishing Marks of the Spirit of God (1741), in J. Edwards, Jona-
than Edwards on Revival (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965)
Ellis, C.J., Together on the Way: A Theology of Ecumenism (London: British
Council of Churches, 1990)
Ellis, E., ‘New Testament Teaching on Hell’, in K.E. Brower & M.W.
Elliott (eds), The Reader Must Understand: Eschatology in Bible and Theol-
ogy (Leicester: Apollos, 1997), pp.199-219
Evangelical Alliance, Conference on Christian Union; Being a Narrative of the
Proceedings of the Meeting held in Liverpool,October 1845 (London,1845)
—, Report of the Proceedings of the Conference Held at Freemasons’ Hall,
London, 1846 (London, 1847)
—, Conference on Missions Held in 1860 at Liverpool (London: James Nisbet
& Co., 1860)
—, Proceedings of the Amsterdam Conference of the Evangelical Alli-
ance (London, 1868)
—, Deputation to the American Branch of the Evangelical Alliance (London,
1870)
—, History, Essays, Orations and other documents of the Sixth General Confer-
ence of the Evangelical Alliance held in New York, October 2-12 1873 (New
York, 1874)
—, The Jubilee of the Evangelical Alliance (London, 1896)
—, Maintaining the Unity: Report of the Eleventh International Conference of
the Evangelical Alliance (London, 1907)
374 One Body in Christ

—, Report of the Commission on Church Unity to the National Assembly of

Evangelicals (London, 1966)
—, Unity in Diversity: Evangelicals, the Church and the World (London:
Evangelical Alliance, 1967)
—, On the Other Side: The Report of the Evangelical Alliance’s Commission on
Evangelism (London: Scripture Union, 1968)
—, Surveying the Roots of Social Breakdown (London: Evangelical Alliance,
1997)
—, EA Member Churches: The 1998 Opinion Survey (London: The
Evangelical Alliance, 1998)
Evangelical Alliance Policy Commission, Transsexuality (Carlisle: Pater-
noster Press, 2000)
Ewing, J.W., Goodly Fellowship: A Centenary Tribute to the Life and Work of
the World’s Evangelical Alliance (London/Edinburgh: Marshall, Morgan
& Scott, 1946)
Fearon, M., A Breath of Fresh Air (Guildford: Eagle, 1984)
Fernando, A., Crucial Questions About Hell (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1991)
Finlayson, G.B.A.M., The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, 1801-1885 (London:
Eyre Methuen, 1981)
Fletcher, C., ‘Hell in the New Testament and Church History’ (unpub-
lished M.Phil., University of Sheffield, 1997)
Francis, L.J., M. Robbins & W.K. Kay, ‘Pastoral Care: Practice, Problems
and Priorities in Churches Today: An Interim Report from the Major
Survey Conducted for CWR and the Evangelical Alliance by the
Centre for Ministry Studies,University of Wales,Bangor’(Presented to
Evangelical Alliance Council, September 2000)
Fudge, E.W., The Fire that Consumes: The Biblical Case for Conditional
Immortality (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1992 [1984])
Fuller, W.H., People of the Mandate: The Story of the World Evangelical Fellow-
ship (WEF; Grand Rapids/Carlisle: Baker Book House/Paternoster
Press, 1996)
Gibson, A., Holding Hands in the Dark (St Albans, 1988)
Gilley, S. & W.J. Sheils (eds), A History of Religion in Britain (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1994)
Gilley,S.,Newman and his Age (London:Darton,Longman & Todd,1996)
Gledhill, R., ‘Spread of Hysteria Fad Worries Church’, The Times, 18 June
1994
Gooch, H.M., William Fuller Gooch: A tribute and testimony (London:
World’s Evangelical Alliance, 1929)
 Bibliography 375

Goodall, N., The Ecumenical Movement (London: Oxford University Press,

1964)
Grady, J.L., ‘Classical Pentecostals Wary of the ‘Toronto Blessing’,
Charisma (November 1995), pp.41-2
Graham, B., The Work of an Evangelist (World’s Evangelical Alliance:
London, 1953)
Graham, S.R., Cosmos in the Chaos: Philip Schaff’s Interpretation of Nine-
teenth-Century American Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995)
Grant, R.M. & D. Tracy, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible
(London: SCM, 1984)
Green, M., Evangelism Through the Local Church (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1990)
Guinness, O., Fit Bodies: Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don’t Think and What
to Do About It (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995)
Hancock, C.D., ‘Birks, Thomas Rawson’, in D.M. Lewis (ed.), Dictionary
of Evangelical Biography, Vol.1 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp.101-110
Harrison, J.F.C., The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780-1850
(London: Routledge, 1979)
Hastings, A., A History of English Christianity, 1920-2000 (London: SCM,
2001)
Heasman, K., Evangelicals in Action (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1961)
Hennell, M., Sons of the Prophets (London: SPCK, 1979)
Hilborn, D., Picking Up the Pieces: Can Evangelicals Adapt to Contemporary
Culture? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997)
Hilborn, D. (ed.), Toronto in Perspective: Papers on the New Charismatic Wave
of the Mid-1990s (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001)
Hocken, P., Streams of Renewal: The Origins and Early Development of the
Charismatic Movement in Great Britain (rev’d edn; Carlisle: Paternoster
Press, 1997 [1986])
Hogg, W.R., Ecumenical Foundations (New York, Harper & Brothers,
1952)
Hopkins, C.H., John R Mott, 1865-1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1979)
Hopkins, M.T.E., ‘Spurgeon’s Opponents in the Downgrade Contro-
versy’, The Baptist Quarterly, Vol. 32, April 1988, No. 6, pp.274-94
Howard, D.M., The Dream That Would Not Die: The Birth and Growth of the
World Evangelical Fellowship, 1846-96 (Wheaton/Exeter: World Evan-
gelical Fellowship/Paternoster Press, 1986)
Hylson-Smith, K., Evangelicals in the Church of England (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1988)
376 One Body in Christ

—, High Churchmanship in the Church of England (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,

1993)
—, ‘Roots of Pan-Evangelicalism, 1735-1835’, in S. Brady & H. Rowdon
(eds), For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism, Past, Present
and Future (London/Milton Keynes: Evangelical Alliance/Scripture
Union, 1996), pp.137-47
Interserve/Middle East Media, Turning Over a New Leaf: Protestant Missions
and the Orthodox Churches of the Middle East (London,Lynnwood,1992)
Chalmers, T., Balmer, R., Candlish, R.S., James, J.A., King, D., Wardlaw,
R., Struthers, G. and Symington, A., Essays on Christian Union
(London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1845)
Jasper, R.C.D., George Bell: Bishop of Chichester (London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1967)
Jeremy, D.J., ‘Businessmen in Interdenominational Activity: Birmingham
Youth for Christ, 1940s-1950s, The Baptist Quarterly 33.7 (1990),
pp.336-43
—, Capitalists and Christians: Business Leaders and the Churches in Britain,
1900-1960 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990)
Johnson, J. (ed.), Report of the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions
of the World, held in Exeter Hall (June 9th-19th), London, 1888 (2 Vols.;
London: James Nisbet & Co., 1888)
Jones, B.P., The King’s Champions (Cwmbran, Gwent: Christian Literature
Press, 1986)
—, An Instrument of Revival: The Complete Life of Evan Roberts (South
Plainfield: Bridge Publishing, 1995)
Jones, H.R., ‘The Doctor and the British Evangelical Council’, in H.R.
Jones (ed.), D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Unity in Truth (Darlington: Evangeli-
cal Press, 1991), pp.7-19
Jordan, E.K.H., Free Church Unity: History of the Free Church Council Move-
ment, 1896-1941 (London: Lutterworth Press, 1956)
Jordan, P.D., The Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America,
1847-1900: Ecumenism, Identity and the Religion of the Republic (New
York & Toronto: Edwin Mullen, 1982)
Kay, W.K., Pentecostals in Britain (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2000)
Kaye, E., Mansfield College, Oxford: Its Origin, History and Significance
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
Kent, J., The Age of Disunity (London: Epworth Press, 1966)
—, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London: Epworth
Press, 1978)
 Bibliography 377

Kessler, J.B.A., A Study of the Evangelical Alliance in Great Britain (Goes,

Netherlands: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1968)
King D. (ed.), Essays on Christian Union (London 1845)
Kirby, G.W., ‘The Post-War Years’, The Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet,
Summer 1962, pp.1-3
—, ‘In All Things – Charity’, The Evangelical Alliance Broadsheet, Winter
1963, p.2
Kruppa, P.S., Charles Haddon Spurgeon: A Preacher’s Progress (New York:
Garland, 1982)
Larsen, T., Friends of Religious Equality: Nonconformist Politics in Mid-
Victorian England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999)
Lawrence, J., The Hard Facts of Unity: A Layman Looks at the Ecumenical
Movement (Naperville: SCM Book Club, 1961)
Lewis, D.M., Lighten Their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to
Working-Class London, 1828-1860 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001)
Lewis, P., ‘Renewal, Recovery and Growth: 1966 Onwards’, in S. Brady &
H. Rowdon (eds), For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism,
Past, Present and Future (London/Milton Keynes: Evangelical Alli-
ance/Scripture Union, 1996), pp.178-91
Little, D., ‘Reformed Faith and Religious Liberty’, Church and Society
(May/June 1986, pp.6-28
Livingstone, D.N., Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between
Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought (Grand Rapids/Edin-
burgh: Eerdmans/Scottish Academic Press, 1987)
—, Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1999)
Lovett, R., The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895 (2 Vols;
London: Henry Frowde, 1899)
MacConnachie, J., The Significance of Karl Barth (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1931)
—, The Barthian Theology (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1933)
MacDonald, H.D., Theories of Revelation (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1963)
Machin, G.I.T., Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1832-1868
(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1977)
—, ‘Reservation under Pressure: Ritual in the Prayer Book Crisis’, in
R.N. Swanson (ed.), Continuity and Change in Christian Worship
(Studies in Church History, Vol. 35; Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell &
Brewer, 1999), pp.447-52
378 One Body in Christ

Mackintosh, W.H., Disestablishment and Liberation (London: Epworth,

1972)
Marsden, G.M., ‘Fundamentalism as an American Phenomenon: A Com-
parison with English Evangelicalism, Church History 46.2 (1977),
pp.215-32
—, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century
Evangelicalism,1870-1925 (New York:Oxford University Press,1980)
Martin, R.H., Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-Victorian
Britain,1795-1830 (Metuchen & London:The Scarecrow Press,1983)
Martin, W., The Billy Graham Story: A Prophet with Honour (London:
Hutchinson, 1992)
Marty, M., Modern American Religion: The Noise of Conflict, 1919-1941
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
Massie, J.W., The Evangelical Alliance: its Origin and Development (London,
1847)
Maurice, F.D., Theological Essays (Cambridge/London, 1853)
McBain, D., Charismatic Christianity (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997)
—, Fire Over the Waters: Renewal among the Baptists and Others from the
1960s to the 1990s (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1997)
McCosh, J., Christianity and Positivism: A Series of Lectures to the Times on
Natural Theology and Christian Apologetics (London: Macmillan, 1871)
—, ‘Religious Aspects of the Doctrine of Development’, in P. Schaff &
S. Irenaeus Prime (ed.), History, Essays, Orations and Other Documents of
the Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance (New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1874), pp.264-71
—, The Religious Aspect of Evolution (New York: Scribner’s, 1890)
Mews, S., ‘Spiritual Mobilization in the First World War’, Theology (June
1971), pp.258-64
—, ‘The Sword of the Spirit: A Catholic Cultural Crusade of 1940’, in W.
J. Sheils (ed.), The Church and War (Studies in Church History, Vol 20
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), pp.409-30
Moberg, D., The Great Reversal: Evangelism versus Social Concern (London:
Scripture Union, 1973)
Monod, A., ‘Intervention of the Evangelical Alliance on Behalf of Perse-
cuted Brethren’, Evangelical Christendom, Vol. V (1851)
Moore, J.R., The Post-Darwinian Controversies (Cambridge, 1979)
Morrison, A., We All Fall Down (Crich: Diakrisis, 1994)
Mumford, E., ‘Spreading Like Wildfire’, in W. Boulton (ed.), The Impact of
Toronto (Crowborough: Monarch, 1995), pp.17-9
 Bibliography 379

Murray, I.H., The Forgotten Spurgeon (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust,

1973)
—, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith, 1939-1981 (Edinburgh:
Banner of Truth Trust, 1990)
—, Revival and Revivalism, the Making and Marring of American Evangelical-
ism, 1750-1858 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1994)
—, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to
2000 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2000)
National Anglican Evangelical Congress, Keele ‘67, The National Evangeli-
cal Anglican Congress Statement (London 1967)
Newsome, D., The Parting of Friends (London: John Murray, 1966)
Nicholls, M., C.H. Spurgeon: The Pastor Evangelist (Didcot: Baptist Histori-
cal Society, 1992)
Nockles, P.B., The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High
Churchmanship, 1760-1857 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)
Noel, B.W., The Unity of the Church, Another Tract for the Times, Addressed
Particularly to Members of the Establishment (London, 1837)
Norman, E.R., Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1968)
Oropeza, W.J., A Time to Laugh: The Holy Laughter Phenomenon Examined
(Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995)
Orr, E., The Second Evangelical Awakening (London & Edinburgh: Marshall,
Morgan & Scott, 1955)
Packer, J.I., The Problem of Eternal Punishment (Disley: Orthos, 1990)
Palmer, D., Strangers No Longer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990)
Pawson, D., The Road to Hell (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992)
Payne, E., The Baptist Union: A Short History (London: Baptist Union,
1958)
Peterson, R.A., Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment (Phillipsburg:
P&R Publishing, 1995)
—, ‘Undying Worm; Unquenchable Fire’, Christianity Today, 23 October
2000, pp.30-37
Pickering, W.S.F., Anglo-Catholicism (London: Routledge, 1989)
Pietersen L. (ed.), Mark of the Spirit? A Charismatic Critique of the Toronto
Blessing (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998)
Pinnock C.H.& R.C.Brow, Unbounded Love:A Good News Theology for the
21st Century (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1994)
Podmore, C.J., The Moravian Church in England, 1728-1760 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1998)
Pollock, J.C., The Keswick Story (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964)
380 One Body in Christ

Powys, D., ‘The Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Debates about Hell
and Universalism’, in N.M. de S. Cameron (ed.), Universalism and the
Doctrine of Hell (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1992), pp.93-138
Price C. & I. M. Randall, Transforming Keswick (Carlisle: OM, 2000)
Rack, H.D., Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism
(London: Epworth, 1989)
Rae, J., Conscience and Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1970)
Railton, N.M., No North Sea: The Anglo-German Evangelical Network in the
Middle of the Nineteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2000)
Ramm, B., The Evangelical Heritage: A Study in Historical Theology (Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981 [1973])
Randall, I.M., ‘Mere Denominationalism: F. B. Meyer and Baptist Life’,
The Baptist Quarterly 35.1 (1993), pp.19-34
—, ‘Incarnating the Gospel: Melbourne Hall, Leicester, in the 1880s as
a model for holistic ministry’, The Baptist Quarterly 35.8 (1994),
pp.394-5
—, Quest, Crusade and Fellowship: The Spiritual Formation of the Fellowship of
the Kingdom (Horsham: Fellowship of the Kingdom, 1995)
—, ‘Southport and Swanwick: Contrasting Movements of Methodist
Spirituality in Inter-War England’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical
Society 50, Part 1 (1995)
—, ‘Schism and Unity: 1905-1966’, in S. Brady & H. Rowdon (ed.), For
Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism, Past, Present and Future
(London/Milton Keynes: Evangelical Alliance/Scripture Union,
1996), pp.163–77
—, ‘The Role of Conscientious Objectors: British Evangelicals and the
First World War’, Anabaptism Today, Issue 11 (1996)
—, ‘Capturing Keswick’, The Baptist Quarterly 36.7 (1996), pp.331-48
—, ‘“We All Need Constant Change”: The Oxford Group and Mission in
Europe in the 1930s’, European Journal of Theology 9.2 (2000),
pp.171-85
—, Evangelical Experiences: A Study in the Spirituality of English Evangelical-
ism, 1918-1939 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999)
—, Educating Evangelicalism: The Origins, Development and Impact of London
Bible College (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2000)
Reardon, B., Religion in the Age of Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985)
Robbins, K., ‘The Spiritual Pilgrimage of the Rev. R. J. Campbell’, Journal
of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1979)
Roberts, D., The ‘Toronto’ Blessing (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1994)
 Bibliography 381

Robertson, M., ‘A Power Encounter Worth Laughing About’, in K.

Springer (ed.), Power Encounters Among Christians in the Western World
(San Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1988), pp.149-57
Rogers, J., ‘John Scopes and the Debate over Evolution’, in R.C. White, L.
Weeks & G. Rosell, American Christianity: A Case Approach (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986)
Roseveare, H., On Track: The Story of the Girl Crusaders’ Union (St Albans:
Girl Crusaders’ Union, 1990)
Rouse R. & S.C. Neill (eds), A History of the Ecumenical Movement
1517-1948 (2nd edn; London: SPCK, 1967 [1954])
Rowell, G., Hell and The Victorians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974)
Rowlandson, M., Life with Billy: An Autobiography (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1992)
Sandeen, E.R., The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American
Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (Chicago: University Press of Chicago,
1970)
—, ‘The Distinctiveness of American Denominationalism: A Case Study
of the 1846 Evangelical Alliance’, Church History 45.2 (1976),
pp.222-34
Saward, M., The Anglican Church Today: Evangelicals on the Move (Oxford:
Mowbray, 1987)
Schaff P. & S.I. Prime (eds), History, Essays, Orations and Other Documents of
the Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance (New York:
Harper Row, 1874)
Schmucker, S.S., Fraternal Appeal to the American Churches (1838)
Scorgie, G.C., A Call for Continuity: The Theological Contribution of James
Orr (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1988)
Scotland, N., John Bird Sumner: Evangelical Archbishop (Leominster:
Gracewing, 1995)
—,Charismatics and the New Millennium (2nd edn;Guildford:Eagle,2000)
Sell, A.P.F., Defending and Declaring the Faith: Some Scottish Examples,
1860-1920 (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1987)
Shea, G.B., Then Sings My Soul (Old Tappan/London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1968)
Slack, K., Despatch from New Delhi: The Story of the World Council of
Churches, Third Assembly, New Delhi, 18 Nov.–5 Dec. 1961 (London:
SCM Press, 1962)
Smith, A.E., Another Anglican Angle: The History of the AEGM (Oxford:
Amate, 1991)
382 One Body in Christ

Smith, R.P., ‘Christian Union Consistent with Denominational

Distinctives’, Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance held in
New York (London: Harper & Brothers, 1874), pp.145-9
Smith, T.L., Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestants on the Eve of
the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row, 1965)
Stanley, B. The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792-1992 (Edin-
burgh: T. & T. Clark, 1992)
Steane, E. (ed.), The Religious Condition of Christendom: A Series of Papers
Read at the fifth annual Conference Held at Freemasons’ Hall, London
August 20th to September 3rd 1851 (London:James Nisbet & Co.,1852)
—, The Religious Condition of Christendom: The Conference Held in Berlin,
1857 (London, 1857)
Stott J. & D.L. Edwards, Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (London:
Hodder & Stoughton, 1988)
Stott, J. (ed.), Making Christ Known: Historic Mission Documents from the
Lausanne Movement, 1974-1989 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1996)
Stout, H.S., The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern
Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991)
Stunt, T.C.F, From Awakening to Secession (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
2000)
Symondson, A. (ed.), The Victorian Crisis of Faith (London: SPCK, 1970)
Thomas,G.,‘Then and Now:1966–1996’,Foundations (1996),pp.30–34.
Thompson, D.M., ‘The Liberation Society, 1844-1868’, in P. Hollis (ed.),
Pressure from Without (London: Edward Arnold, 1974)
Thomson, A. ‘On the Extent to Which Religious Liberty is Enjoyed by
Protestants or Denied to Them in Foreign Countries’, Evangelical
Christendom, Vol. V, 1851
Thy Word is Truth: A Report of the Meetings for the Testimony to the Integrity of
God’s Word, Held in King’s Hall, Holborn (London, 1906)
Tidball,D., Who Are the Evangelicals? (London:Marshall Pickering,1994)
Tillin, T., Looking Beyond Toronto: The Source and Goal of Pentecost (Banner
Ministries, 1994)
Trevor, M., Newman: The Pillar of Cloud (London: Macmillan, 1962)
Vasey, M., Strangers and Friends: A New Exploration of Homosexuality and the
Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995)
Venn, H., ‘The Fifteen Articles of the Countess of Huntingdon’s
Connexion’, in E. Welch (ed.), Two Calvinistic Methodist Chapels,
1743-1811 (Leicester: London Record Society, 1975)
—, The Complete Duty of Man (3rd edn; London, 1779)
Virgo, T., A People Prepared (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1996)
 Bibliography 383

Wagner, P.C., ‘Third Wave’, in S.M. Burgess, G.B. McGee & P.H. Alexan-
der (eds), Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), pp.843-4
Walker, A., Restoring the Kingdom: The Radical Christianity of the House
Church Movement (Guildford: Eagle, 1998)
Ward, W.R., Religion and Society in England (London: Batsford, 1972)
Warner, R., Prepare for Revival (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995)
Watford, J., Yesterday and Today: A History of Crusaders (St Albans: Cru-
saders’ Union, 1995)
Watts, M., The Dissenters: Volume II: The Expansion of Evangelical Nonconfor-
mity, 1791-1859 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)
Weber, T.P., Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American
Premillennialism, 1875-1982 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987)
Welch E. (ed.), Two Calvinistic Methodist Chapels, 1743-1811 (Leicester:
London Record Society, 1975)
Wells, D.F., God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading
Dreams. (Leicester: IVP, 1994)
Wenham, J.W., The Goodness of God (Leicester: IVP, 1974). Later reprinted
as The Enigma of Evil, 1985
—, ‘The Case for Conditional Immortality’, in N. M. de S. Cameron (ed.),
Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1992),
pp.161-91
—, Facing Hell: An Autobiography 1913-1996 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press,
1998)
Wigley, J., The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Sunday (Manchester: Manches-
ter University Press, 1980)
Wilkinson, A., Dissent or Conform?: War, Peace and the English Churches,
1900-1945 (London: SCM Press, 1986)
—, The Church of England and the First World War (London: SCM Press,
1996)
Wolffe, J., ‘The Evangelical Alliance in the 1840s: An attempt to institu-
tionalise Christian Unity’, in W. Sheils & D. Wood (eds), Voluntary Reli-
gion (Studies in Church History, Vol. 23; Oxford: Blackwell, 1986),
pp.333-46
—, The Protestant Crusade in Britain, 1829-1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991)
—, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland
1843-1945 (London: Routledge, 1994)
384 One Body in Christ

Wolffe, J. (ed.), Evangelical Faith and Public Zeal: Evangelicals and Society in
Britain, 1780-1980 (London: SPCK, 1995)
Wolffe, J., ‘Unity in Diversity? North Atlantic Evangelical Thought in the
mid-nineteenth century’, in R.N. Swansson (ed.), Unity in Diversity in
the Church: Studies in Church History, 32 (1996), (Oxford: Blackwell/
EHS, pp. 363–75).
Wood, F.P. & M.S. Wood, Youth Advancing (London: National Young Life
Campaign, 1961)
Wright, N., The Radical Evangelical: Seeking a Place to Stand (London:
SPCK, 1996)
Wright, R.C., ‘The German Protestant Church and the Nazi Party in the
Period of the Seizure of Power, 1932-3’, in D. Baker (ed.), Renaissance
and Renewal in Christian History (Studies in Church History, Vol. 14;
Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), pp.393-418

KEY PERIODICALS AND NEWSPAPERS

Alpha Decision
The Baptist Magazine Evangelical Alliance Quarterly
The Baptist Times Evangelical Broadsheet
The Baptist Quarterly Evangelical Christendom
The British Weekly The Evangelical Magazine
The Christian Evangelical Times
Christian Century Journal of the Wesley Bible Union
Christianity Joy
Christianity Today Joyful News
The Christian Witness The Life of Faith
The Christian World The Nonconformist
Church Family Newspaper The Record
Church History Restoration
Church Times The Sword and the Trowel
Crusade The Times
Daily Telegraph Western Mail
 Index

30 Bedford Place 13 Anti-State-Church Association 22

Abernethie, David 298, 323 Archbishop of Canterbury 3, 141,
Achilli, Dr. 79, 81, 84, 85, 86 143, 156, 168, 178, 193, 194,
ACUTE 50, 309–43 216, 222, 226, 277, 297, 305,
Adams, William 144 348, 350
Adler, Dr. N. 99 Archbishop of Uppsala 164
Advent Testimony and Preparation Arnold, J. 149, 150, 163, 164
Movement 168 Arnold, S. 12
African and Caribbean Evangelical Arnott, John and Carol 317, 318,
Alliance 288 319
Alexander, Major-General 88, Arthur, J.W. 155
129, 131 Arthur, William 161
Alton, David 302 Ashley-Cooper, Anthony 24, 71
American Council of Christian Atkinson, Basil F.C. 338, 339
Churches 181
Amess, Robert ix, 248, 293, 294, Bacon, Leonard 51
300, 323, 351 Baedeker, F.W. 171
Amsterdam 8, 11, 138, 161, 234, Baird, Robert 51, 64–6, 77, 135
239 Baker, Stanley 218
Anderson, David 349 Baker, Tony 323
Anderson, Sir Robert 118–19, Balfour, Jeremy 349
184, 259 Balmer, Robert 33–5
Anglican Prayer Fellowship for Baptists (?) 18, 19, 21, 29, 37, 40,
Revival 265 47, 51, 54, 73, 75, 90, 91, 93,
Anglicans and Dissenters 3, 28 159, 171–2, 178, 180, 188,
annihilationism 50, 120–1, 129, 199, 245, 246, 254, 264, 271,
131, 132, 337, 340 275, 293, 300
anti-Catholicism 4 Barclay, Ian 297
386 Index

Barde, Charles 139 Blomfield, W.E. 114

Barling, Michael 279–80 Boddy, Alexander 265
Barnes, Bishop E.W. 188–9, 192, Bogue, David 18
196 Bond, Thomas 135
Barrows, Cliff and Billie 218 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 179
Barth, Karl 101, 175, 176, 177, Bonnington, Mark 313–4
181, 191, 202–7 Booth, William 306
Basis of Faith 42, 48, 49, 50, 53, Boswell, James 335
59, 60, 68, 117, 118, 120, 121, Boyd, Robert 262
122, 126, 132, 134, 145, 183, Brady, Steve viii, ix, 16
186, 237, 240, 294, 295, Brethren 31, 41, 42, 118, 139, 142,
312–3, 314, 331, 337, 338, 248, 254, 264, 284, 362
342, 356, 357, 359, 365, 367 British and Foreign Bible
Batt, Major W.F. 226, 261 Society 22
Baur, F.C. 111 British Youth for Christ 219, 224,
Baxter, Richard 34 280, 284
Baxter, Robert 127, 129 Brock, William 28
Beaudouin, Dom Lambert 194 Brown, Douglas 214
Beckett, Fran 287, 351 Brunner, Emil 202, 205
Belben, Howard 261 Buchanan, Colin 253, 254, 255
Bell, George, Bishop of Buchanan, George 198
Chichester, 179–80 Buchanan, Robert 58
Bendor Samuel, T.H. 241, 252, Buckmaster, Lord 175
261 Bunsen, Baron Carl 160
Bennett, Dennis 264 Bunting, Jabez 1, 12, 29, 75
Bennett, George 210 Bursche, Bishop 176, 177
Bernstorff, Count 7, 163
Bevan, R.C.L. 123–7, 130, 131 Cabrera, Don Fernando 173
Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Caiger, John 252, 261, 262
Society 195 Calthorpe, Lord Frederick 93
Bible League 189 Calver, Clive viii, 16, 54, 280, 282,
Bickersteth, Edward 1, 11, 18, 24, 283–6, 288, 294, 297, 298,
29, 37, 38, 47, 48, 53, 58, 59, 300–1, 302, 305, 306–8,
64, 105, 118, 131, 209 309–10, 312–4, 316, 319,
Binney, Thomas 60 322–4, 330, 343, 345, 349
Birchall, Mark ix, 298 Calvin, John 161, 262
Bird, John 3, 276–7 Campbell, John 53
Birks, Thomas Rawson (T. R.) 38, Campbell, R.J. 184, 185, 188, 315
61, 105–6, 119–32, 133, 161, Candelin, Johan 102
314, 337 Candlish, Robert 33, 40, 41, 44,
Bishop of Down and Connor 141 130
Blackwood, J.S. 128, 131 Canton de Vaud 78–9, 85
Blinco, Joe 224 CARE Trust 303
 Index 387

Carey, George 297, 348 conditional immortality 120, 121,

Carey, William 21, 162 132, 339, 341, 342
Carrs Lane Chapel 30, 80 Congregational Magazine 31
Catherwood, Sir Fred 252, 291, Congregationalism 47, 75
303–4, 307, 308, 347 Constable, Henry 132
Cattell, Roy 13, 218–24, 228, Conversaziones 8
239 Copley, Derek 298, 351
Caughey, James 140 Cordle, J.H. 223
Cave, Alfred 116, 118 Countess of Huntingdon’s
Cave, Dave 313, 315, 327, 328, Connexion 118
332 Cox, F.A. 57–8, 64, 74
Chadwick, Owen 2, 3 Cox, Samuel H. 32
Chadwick, Samuel 187, 198–9, Cox, Thomas Price ???
214 Crusade 15, 222, 223, 224–8, 230,
Chalke, Steve 307, 351 249, 261, 265, 266, 267, 272,
Chalmers, Thomas 23, 25, 32, 33, 273, 275, 276
34, 48, 71, 107, 309 Cupitt, Don 312
Children’s Special Service
Mission 217, 229, 243 D’Aubigné, Merle 30, 161
Christian Action Networks Dain, A.J. 262
(CANS) 304, 308, 347, 348 Darwin, Charles 103–19, 314
Christian Democracy, The Davidson, Randall 156, 168,
Movement for 302 193
Christian Observer, The 51, 52 Davis, James 12, 137, 143, 144
Christian Witness 53 Dawson, William 107, 110
Church Missionary Society 21, de Pressensé, Dr. 87
27, 29, 47, 195, 215, 261, 262, de Tocqueville, Alexis 80, 81
265, 338 De Witt, Dr. 58
Churchill, Lord Alfred 144 Derham, Morgan 13, 250, 251,
Clapham Sect 51 254, 267, 270–1, 274, 275,
Clark, M.M. 56 280, 282
Clark, Randy 318–19 di Campello, Count 163
Cliff College 187, 213, 214, 287 Digby Campbell (check) 11
Clifford, John 165, 166, 167, 212 Dixon, A.C. 169
Coates, Gerald 281, 296–7, 301, Dobbie, Lieutenant-General Sir
322 William 226, 261
Coffey, David 295, 326, 327 Doddridge, Philip 21, 34
Coffey, Ian 292, 293, 294, 297 Downgrade Controversy 114
Cole, Michael 251 Drummond, Henry 148
Collingham, Lord Francis 97 Dudley-Smith, Timothy 229
Collins, G.N.M. 241 Duff, Alexander 8
Colquhoun, Frank 222, 261 Duffield, Mary-Jean 275
Colson, Charles 299
388 Index

Eardley Smith, Sir Culling (later Ewing, J.W. viii, 15, 63, 88, 209,
Eardley) 9, 29, 32, 45, 47, 67, 215
72, 75, 79, 90, 137
Earwicker, John 297, 298, 350 Factory Education Act, Sir James
Eckett, Robert 74, 75 Graham’s 31
Eden, Martyn 303, 336, 349, Farrar, Dean 132
352–3 Fellowship of the Kingdom 187,
Edinburgh conference 198
(1910) 150–3, 154, 156, 157 Ferguson, Hugh 214
Edwards, Brian 327, 328 Field, General Sir John 12
Edwards, David L. 338 Field, Major General 162, 163
Edwards, Joel ix, 17, 289–90, 293, Field, Percy 12
297, 299, 301, 305, 323, 334, Filey Convention 227, 228
345, 346, 347, 351, 353, 354, First World War 147, 165, 166,
355 168, 171, 178, 181, 192, 213,
Edwards, Jonathan 21, 108, 325, 214
327 Fisch, George 56, 160
Ellison, H.L. 254, 256 Fisher, Geoffrey 222, 226
Emory, Professor 64 Forster, Faith 323, 340, 351
English, Donald 277, 278 Forster, Roger 280, 284, 301, 326
Episcopallanism 47, 49, 56, 64, 92, Forsyth, P.T. 185
215, 264 Fountain Trust 266
Euston Statement 324, 325 Fraternal Union for Bible
Evangelical Broadsheet, The 15, 228, Testimony 190
229, 244, 262, 266 Frederick William IV, King of
Evangelical Christendom 9, 11, 14, Prussia, 91, 137, 160
15, 26, 69, 75, 77, 79, 80, 81, Free Church of Scotland 23, 33,
84, 87, 89, 91, 92, 96, 97, 100, 38, 58, 241–2
101, 104, 108, 121, 122, 128, Free Trade Hall 47
129, 133, 140, 141, 153, 155, Frere, Walter 194
156, 166, 169, 173, 176, 177, Fudge, Edward William 339
179, 185, 186, 189, 190, 192, Fuller, Andrew 21
193, 194, 196, 197, 198, 199, Fullerton, W.Y. 167, 199
200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, Fundamentals, The 186, 188
210, 221, 227, 228, 234, 259,
316 Gibson, Alan 253, 254, 294, 323
Evangelical Missionary Alliance, Gibson, J. Campbell 151
The 13, 230, 244, 262 Gibson, J.Monro 149
Evangelical Times 250 Gledhill, Ruth 316–17, 320
Evangelical Unity Glegg, Lindsay 219, 222, 223,
Commission 312 227
Evangelisation Society 8 Glover, T.R. 199
Ewbank, W.W. 64 Golden Jubilee 147, 156
 Index 389

Gooch, Henry Martyn 12–13, Hastings, Michael 302

101, 151, 157, 165, 166–7, Hayes, John 214
168, 169, 171–6, 178, 183, Hemery, Peter 228
187, 190, 191, 194, 195–6, Henderson, John 34, 36, 69
198, 204, 206, 207, 220, 236 Hengstenberg, E.W. 136
Good Friday Agreement 350 Henson, Hensley 192
Goodall, Normal 10 Hertz, J.H.,Chief Rabbi. 177
Gore, Charles 194 Hilborn, David xii, 315, 329, 332,
Gortschakoff, Prince 94 334, 335, 340, 342, 349
Gough, Hugh 219, 220, 222, 223, Himes, J.V. 63
229, 231, 232–3, 235, 236, Hinsley, Cardinal 179
242 Hinton, J.H. 28, 29, 41, 51, 60, 62,
Graham, Billy ix, 191, 212, 217, 63, 64, 67
218–19, 222, 223–7, 230–1, Hodge, Charles 145
242, 265, 269, 272–3, 274, Hoffman, George 276, 287
284 Holden, Stuart 200
Gray, Tony 340 Holloway, Jane 348
Greater London Crusade 223, Horn, Robert 254, 255, 281
225–6, 233 Horrocks, Don 336
Green, Bryan 223 Hoste, D.E. 154
Greenhough, J.G. 114 House, Francis 222
Grenville, Earl 99 Howard, R.T. 196
Grier, W.J. 241 Howard-Browne,
Grosner, William 52 Rodney 318–19, 327
Grosvenor, Robert, Baron Hughes, Hugh Price 211, 212
Ebury 75 Hughes, Philip 264, 339
Grubb, Sir Kenneth 261 Hull, Bill 350
Guicciardini, Count 86 Hutchings, Eric 224
Guillebaud, Harold 338, 339 Hutton, J.A. 204
Guyot, Arnold 107, 110
Infidelity Committee 105, 112,
Hacking, Philip 323, 327, 328 312
Hackney Bible Defence Ingram, George and May 265–6
Association 112 Inter-Varsity Fellowship 13, 181,
Haldane, Robert 118 223, 229, 243, 275
Halifax, Viscount 194 Irving, Edward 23–4
Hamilton, James 1, 38 Ismael Pasha, Turkish
Harford-Battersby, T.D. 12 Governor 97
Hargrove, Charles 41
Harper, Michael 266, 296 Jackson, George 187
Harringay Crusade (see Greater James, John Angell 27, 30, 31, 33,
London Crusade) 34, 35, 36, 37, 60, 80
Hasse, Bishop Evelyn 153 Janni, Signor 174
390 Index

Jeffreys, Stephen and George 213 Kuntze, Edward 56, 160

Jenkins, David 312
Jennings Bryan, William 189 Lacey, Rob 352
Jerusalem Paper, The 310, 314 Lamarck, Jean Baptiste 108
Jew 9, 82, 92, 98–100, 174, 175, Lamb, Roland 252, 256
176, 177, 363 Landels, William 114
Johnston, Douglas 181 Landreth, Gordon 13, 254, 256,
Johnston, Philip 340 275–8, 281, 282
Jones, Arfon 291, 292, 349 Lane, Tony ix, 340
Jones, Bryn 323 Lang, Cosmo 194
Jones, James 306 Langlois, John 102, 312
Jones, R. Tudur 323, 324 Law, Bonar 169
Joynson-Hicks, Sir William 192, Lehmann, G.W. 160
193 Leifchild, John 1
Jubilee Centre 303 Leonard, Graham 256
Lewis, Peter viii, ix, 281, 286
Keble, John 26 Liberal Evangelicals 187, 191, 195,
Kendall, R.T. 323, 324, 326, 327 198, 200, 207
Kendrick, Graham 301 Livermore, Tom 223, 224
Kerr, Colin 265 Lloyd-George, David 169
Kessler, J.B.A. viii, 10, 15, 63, 72, Lloyd-Jones, Martyn 205–6, 217,
74, 104, 106, 116, 122, 128, 223, 226, 236, 242, 243, 246,
210, 233, 234 247, 248, 249, 250, 252, 257,
Keswick Convention 12, 152, 185, 262, 265, 266, 285
198, 200, 213, 223, 243 London City Mission (LCM) 8,
Kevan, Ernest 222, 227, 261 208
Kikuyu Conference, The 155 London Missionary Society
King, David 1, 34, 35, 36, 37, 46, (LMS) 18, 54, 21, 23, 35
54, 71 Lord Shaftesbury 73, 88, 96, 99,
King, Geoffrey 220, 261 137, 211, 306
King, John 185 Lutherans 29, 39, 90, 92, 138, 160,
Kinnaird, Arthur Fitzgerald 12, 161, 162, 163–4, 176, 201
67, 91, 93, 168 Lyon, J.Chalmers 176, 222
Kirby, Gilbert ix, 13, 102, 219,
222, 223, 227, 229–30, 243, M’Crie, Thomas 161
244–6, 249–50, 259–60, M’Neile, Hugh 28
261–3, 265–70, 273, 278–9, MacFie, R.A., MP 129
281–2, 284–5 Macleod, Norman 7
Kirker, Richard 336 MacMillan, Harold 258
Kirkpatrick, Dr. 86 Macrae, Murdoch 241
Kniewel, Dean 30 Madiai, Francesco and Rosa 86
Knox, E.A. 193 Major, John 305–6
Krummacher, F.W. 160, 182 Mann, J.C. 191, 207
 Index 391

Mariona, Dr 163 Movement for World

Markham, Jonathan 297 Evangelisation 228
Martin, Alan 298 Mumford, Eleanor 320
Mascall, Eric 256 Mursell, J.P. 28
Massie, J.W. 33, 43, 49, 65, 71
Masters, Peter 250 Nathan, Ron 290
Matamoros, Manuel 87, 88, 89 National Assembly of
Matheson, H.M. 129, 131 Evangelicals 246, 260
Matthews, W.R. 204 National Association of
Maurice, F.D. 121 Evangelicals 181, 236
McCarthy, David 349 National Bible Rally 261
McConnachie, John 203 Nazis 101, 175, 179
McCosh, James 107–10, 141, 316 Neill, Stephen 230
McIntyre, Carl 242 Neo-Orthodoxy 202
McKinley, William 150 Nestorians 9, 98
Meadows, Peter 276, 284, 297 New Englander 51
Mellor, Howard 287 New York Independent 51
Melson, John 80 Newman, John Henry 6, 26, 27
Methodism 19, 20, 161, 187, 198, Newton, Andover 114
199, 211, 213, 310 Nicholls, Bruce 312
Mews, Stuart 5 Nights of Prayer for Revival 265
Meyer, F.B. 164, 165, 168, 169, Nilsson, F.O. 92
199, 200, 210, 211 Noakes, David 326
Miall, Edward 53 Noel, Baptist 22, 31, 47, 61, 78,
Micklem, Nathaniel 202, 205 80, 161
Middleton, David 254, 255 Nonconformists xi, 3, 4, 9, 22, 25,
Mildmay Conferences 115, 185 31, 73, 74, 84, 113, 192
Millar, Sandy 320, 322 Normanby, Lord 80
Millard, J.H. 93 Northfield Conferences 147, 185
Mills, Brian 289, 298
Mohibir, Philip 288, 289 Ockenga, Harold J. 236, 238
Monod, Adolphe 10, 64, 72, 81, Oldham, J.H. 151, 155, 156
82, 83, 84, 159, 160 Olford, Stephen 217, 221
Moravians 35, 47 Olin, Stephen 55
Morgan, Campbell 153, 166, 167, Oncken, Johann 61, 159
170, 217, 259 Open Air Mission 8
Morris, Mike 102, 297, 302, 303 Orr, James 183, 184
Morrison, Alan 322 Owen, Alfred 224
Morton, Harold 189 Oxford Group 201
Mott, John R. 147, 150, 151 Oxford Movement 6, 26, 27, 30
Moule, Handley 183
Movement for Change ix, xii, Packer, J.I. 245, 253, 254–6, 278,
345, 352–4 299
392 Index

Padin, Carmen 89 Restorationism 268

Page, Nick 351 Richard, Timothy 150
Palmerston, Lord 80, 88 Riley, W.B. 188
Paloma, Margaret 329 Ritschl, Albrecht 111
Panton, D.M. 101 Roberts, Evan 212, 213
Paton, John G. 150 Robinson, John 269
Patton, William 30, 32, 59, 63 Rogers, Guy 191, 196, 197
Pawson, David 254, 277, 280, 329 Roman Catholic Church 10, 27,
Peake, Ben 229 47, 56, 59, 140, 163, 173, 179,
Peel, Sir Robert 27, 88 248
Peel, W.G. 165 Rowdon, Harold 16, 254
Pentecostalism 213, 259–60, 267, Rowlandson, Maurice ix, 224,
317–8 227, 228, 229, 261, 272, 273,
Peterson, Professor Robert 340, 274
343 Rushbrooke, J.H. 172, 178–9
Peto, Samuel Morton 91 Russell Square 12, 13
Petre, Jonathan 343 Russell, Lord John 86
Pierson, Arthur T. 149 Russell, Lord Wriothesley 80
Plumtre, J.P. 56 Ryder, Henry 3
Plymouth Brethren 30–1, 180
Pobedonostzeff, M. 95 Sangster, W.E. 217, 221, 222
Podin, Adam 171 Sankey, Ira D. 210, 211–2, 230
Polwarth, Lord 148, 164 Savage, John 230, 261
Poole-Connor, E.J. 106, 236, 241,Saxe Meningen 90
242 Schaff, Philip 30, 138, 143, 144,
Porter, David 349 146–8, 158, 164
Pratt, Josiah 29 Schmettou, Herman 9, 85
Preparatory Conference 72 Schmucker, Samuel Simon 29, 57,
Presbyterian Dissenters 22 62, 66, 142
Presbyterianism 47, 155 Scopes, John 189
Prior, Kenneth 261, 294 Scott, Thomas 27
Protestant Alliance 6, 48, 91–2 Scottish Evangelicals 32, 292
Pugh, Col. C.D.O. 262 Scroggie, Graham 199
Pusey, Edward 6, 26, 30 Seaver, Charles 141
Second World War 5, 101, 171,
Ramabai, Pandita 150, 215 177, 178, 179, 180, 191, 205,
Randall, Ian ix, xii, 315 231
Raven, Charles 214 sectarianism 52
Record, The 24, 28, 37, 42 Sharpe, E.N. 204
Redpath, Alan 217, 221 Shea, George Beverly 219
Rees, Tom 217–19, 221, 222, 237, Shindler, Robert 114
277 Simeon, Charles 23–4, 118
Religious Tract Society 18 Simpson, Carnegie 204
 Index 393

Simultaneous Mission 212 Sturge, Mark 290

Sinclair, Colin 292 Sumner, Bird 3
Singh, Lilavati 150 Sunday School movement 18
Sizer, Stephen 323, 324, 329 Sword of the Spirit, The 179
Skinner, Thomas 32
Slack, Kenneth 243 Talbot Rice, W. 204
slavery 45, 46, 48, 62–7, 69, 72, 77, Taylor, Clyde W. 239
135, 136 Taylor, Hudson 148, 150
Smith Candlish, Robert 33 TEAR Fund 275–6, 287
Smith, Gipsy 213, 214, 215 Temple, William 168
Smith, John ix, 350 Test and Corporation Acts 25
Smith, Lieutenant-General Sir Tholuck, August 159
Arthur 220, 226, 237, 261 Tractarian Movement
Smith, R. Payne 144 (Tractarianism) 26, 27, 184,
Smith, Taylor, Bishop 168, 176 185
Smith, William Robertson 111, True Freedom Trust 334
116 Turkish Sultan 9, 96
societal issues 47, 289 Turvey, Raymond 253
Sookhdeo, Patrick 277 Tuscany, Duke of 86
Speer, R. E. 150
Spring Harvest 280, 284, 289, 298, Ulster Revival 106, 108, 141,
303 316
Spurgeon, Charles Underhill, E.B. 162
Haddon 113–7, 161, 169, Union and Communion
211, 306 statement 245
St John’s Chapel, Bedford Union Missionary
Row 61 Convention 137
Steane, Edward 1, 25, 29, 40, 51, Union Theological Seminary 30,
67, 69, 80, 86, 96, 128, 209 32, 138, 144
Stone, Jean 264 Universal Week of Prayer 7, 142
Storr, Canon Vernon 196
Stott, John 191, 221, 227, 239, Van Oosterzee, Professor 161
246, 248, 261, 267, 269, 285, Vargas, Julian of Malaga 89
287, 296, 312, 338 Vasey, Michael 333, 335, 336
Stott, Oliver 224, 227 Venn, Henry 118
Stoughton, John 10, 162 Victorian Britain 2
Stovel, Charles 28 Virgo, Terry 296, 319, 320, 322
Strauss, D.F. 111 von Bernstorff, Count Andreas 7
Strong, Josiah 149, 150
Struthers, Gavin 35, 72 Wagner, Peter 317
Student Christian Movement 151 Walker, Andrew 326
Student Volunteer Walker, Samuel 20
Movement 147, 149, 151 Wallace, Shona 349
394 Index

Wardlaw, Ralph 32, 34, 35, 54, 55, Wilson, T.W. 218
60, 74 Wimber, John 317
Warneck, Gustav 148 Winnington-Ingram, F. 167, 168
Warner, Rob ix, 322, 323–4, Winter, David 261
327–8 Wiseman, D.J. 262
Warren, Rick 350 Wiseman, Luke 168
Watson, David 281 Wood, Maurice 261
Watts-Ditchfield, J.E. 214 World Council of Churches 10,
Weatherhead, Leslie 198, 226 11, 135, 150, 155, 157, 158,
Weatherley, Michael 302 230, 232, 233–6, 237, 241,
Webb-Peploe, H.W. 152, 166, 213 242, 251, 257, 262
Wells, Algernon 39, 40 World Evangelical Fellowship 8,
Wenham, John 253, 339 13, 102, 119, 235, 237, 239,
Wesley, John 19, 20 240, 257, 312, 355, 367
Wesleyan Missionary Society 21 World mission 8, 134, 149, 150,
Wesley-Whitefield Revival 310 276
Weston, Frank 155 World’s Evangelical Alliance 8, 15,
White, Edward 132 157, 233, 235, 356, 357, 361
Whitefield House 14, 327 Wright, Professor David ix, 315
Whitefield, George 19, 20 Wright, J. Elwin 239
Whitehouse, Alec 205
Wilberforce, William 46, 51 Young Men’s Christian
Wilkinson, L.F.E. 261 Association (YMCA) 73,
Willis, J.J. 155 208, 210
Programme for the first annual conference of the British Organisation of
the Alliance, Edinburgh, June 10th – 12th 1847
The Anglican clergyman Edward Bickersteth, one of the architects of the
Alliance

Silk handkerchief designed to mark the inaugural conference of the

Evangelical Alliance in London, 1846
 Four early leaders of the Alliance.
Clockwise from top left: Baptist Noel, James Hamilton, Edward Steane,
W.S. Dodge (USA)
Entrance Hall of 19 Russell Gardens, the Alliance’s Headquarters from
1912 until the Second World War

Henry Martin Gooch, General Secretary of the Alliance from 1904 –

1949. This picture was taken in 1925
British and European Alliance leaders at a special 80th anniversary garden
party held in Russell Square Gardens, London, 1926. The British Alliance
General Secretary, H. Martyn Gooch, is second from the right on the back
row; his father, William Fuller Gooch, is also on the back row, second from
left.

Gilbert Kirby, General Secretary of the Alliance from 1956-1966

Alliance leaders and civic representatives at an event held to mark the
Universal Week of Prayer, Westminster Chapel, London, January 1948.
Left to right: Martyn Lloyd Jones, J.A. Jagoe, Sir Stafford Cripps, the Dean
of St. Paul’s, H. Martyn Gooch, R.V.F. Scott.

Alliance General Secretary Roy Cattell being presented to the Duke of

Edinburgh during a reception at the Alliance Club in Bedford Place,
March 3rd 1953. The Club had been opened by the Alliance the previous
October ‘to serve the needs of men from overseas studying at the
University of London.’
Martyn Lloyd-Jones (left)and John Stott in conversation following their
disagreement at the Alliance Assembly,Westminster Central Hall,October
18, 1966

Alliance staff leadership in the late 1980’s: Left to right, Back Row – Mike
Morris, John Earwicker, Peter Meadows, Joel Edwards, Jonathan
Markham. Front Row – Ian Coffey, Clive Calver, Ian Barclay.
Sir Fred Catherwood, President of the Alliance, 1992–2001

Joel Edwards outlining the Alliance’s vision to become a ‘movement for

change’, 2000
In 1846 the Evangelical Alliance was founded with the aim of bringing together
evangelicals for common action. This book uses material not previously utilised
to examine the history and significance of the Evangelical Alliance, a movement
which has remained a powerful force for unity. At a time when evangelicals are
growing world-wide, this book offers insights into the past which are relevant to
contemporary issues.
IAN RANDALL is Director of Baptist and Anabaptist Studies at the international
Baptist Seminary, Prague, and Lecturer in Church History at Spurgeon’s
College, London.
DAVID HILBORN is Theological Adviser to the Evangelical Alliance (UK) and an
Associate Research Fellow at the London Bible College.

One Body In Christ is a real eye-opener, I thought I knew EA’s history reasonably well, but
Randall and Hilborn have taught me much, filling in details and introducing me to whole
chapters which were new. History must be our teacher. There’s lots to encourage and lots
for us to note with humility. I hope it is widely read.
Dr Derek J. Tidball, Principal, London Bible College

A tremendous job of work, and one that I was privileged to read. I am thrilled that this
book has been produced - it is long overdue.
Dr Clive Calver, President, World Relief, Baltimore MD, USA

The Evangelical Alliance has enjoyed a continuous existence in Britain since 1846, playing a
significant part in theological controversy, the defence of religious liberty and the spread
of the gospel. Ian Randall and David Hilborn show clearly what Evangelicals working
together have achieved in the pst and what their common aims are today.
David Bebbington, Professor of Church History, University of Stirling

Evangelicalism’s prominence in British Christianity has rarely, if ever, been greater, yet it
remains too little known. This attractively written expert account of its most
representative voice should in varying degrees dispel false conceptions, surprise, expand
horizons and strengthen God-given hope in a harsher climate for all the churches.
David F.Wright, Professor of Patristic and Reformed Christianity, University of Edinburgh

The Evangelical Alliance has had a long and distinguished history, and
continues to have an influential ministry today. This story deserves to be
better known, so I welcome the publication of ‘One Body in Christ’.
The Rev Dr John Stott, Rector Emeritus, All Souls Church, Langham Place, London.

This is a well-rounded account of an organization of major historical and contemporary

significance. It is both scholarly and accessible, and combines sympathetic understanding
with critical objectivity.
Dr John Wolffe, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department of Religious Studies,
The Open University.

The years, tears, toil and prayers that have gone into developing and maintaining the
Evangelical Alliance are faithfully recorded in this fascinating book.
Faith Forster, Leader, Ichthus Christian Fellowship.

www.paternoster-publishing.com