Linked to Simon Jenkins article in the Guardian, I’ve seen a number of people comment that they hope the Church of England might experience revival and recognition that this will require reformation.
I’m sorry to pour cold water on the suggestion but I don’t think it is possible. Nor, frankly so I think it is desirable, or even something we are called to pray for. Let’s have a little bit more of a look in order to understand why.
First, it is helpful to think about what we mean by reformation and revival mean. Revival is to do with God’s people being revived, in other words it is to do with renewed life in the Spirit where dry formality, nominalism and legalism have taken hold. Reformation is about returning to the teaching of God’s word, clarity of the Gospel and pruning away of traditions that oppose those things.
This is why I’m pessimistic about such things happening to the Church of England as a whole. First, such a nice would require a purification of the church so that both false teaching and false teachers are removed. The barrier to this is that the requirement of a national church in a secular/pluralistic age is for it to accept a level of pluralism and accomodation to secularism that is diametrically opposed to the reformation of the Church. Hence the Church of England has normally found that it cannot contain new life for long as demonstrated by the Great Awakening and the Wesleys. Reformation would require disestablishment first.
Now I think it is possible for individual churches to experience reformation but I do not know how that is possible now with those churches continuing to remain in the CofE.
The other barrier to reformation goes back to a failing in the original reformation, that it did not go far enough and so meant it was always likely that partially reformed churches were more at risk of falling back rather than continuing to reform.
The primary example is, I would argue, paedobaptism. It introduced two weaknesses. First, that belief requires you to break all the rules of God Biblical exegesis and exposition, verses are taken out of context, things are assumed from silence, eisegesis happens so that meaning is read in. Once you’ve sold the pass on this issue, it enables you to make the same mistakes in other areas
I’ve covered two examples of where this happens recently. First, there is the example of Concupiscence and secondly there has been the seemingly more trivial dispute over communion bread and wine.
The other problem is that once you presume that the children and grand children of believers are elect and in the covenant, you set things up for a move to assumed Evangelicalism.
All of this is important because I fear that those who say they hope for reform and revival think this means a change in the liberal wing of the church that will lead to them being able to stay in. Whereas I think that reform and revival is needed among the Evangelical Churches and can only lead to them having to leave.
Now, earlier, I said that there isn’t a requirement on us to pray for a reformation of the CofE. I am a pessimist about the possibility of such a reformation but I don’t think this makes me a pessimist in general.
If we think that we need the CofE to be reformed and revived that presumed that we need the CofE, that we need an established, national church. And I think that even many of us non conformists have grown up with that presupposition. We have learnt to rely on a level of second hand respectability. The truth is that God’s kingdom doesn’t need an established church, indeed true reformation may require us to all give up on the idea.
Faithroots 