I don’t think I can be much clearer than I have been in terms of my views about what Evangelicals in the Church of England should do, indeed, should have done a long time ago. It should be obvious to most now, that it is impossible to be an evangelical or a complementarian and remain part of the CofE.
There are however, a number of Evangelicals who are insisting that they should stay and indeed other voices from outside of the church insisting that we should support them and not judge them in their decision. John Stevens has written for Evangelicals Now developing and nuancing the well known criteria for Theological Triage. He identifies both the questions of complementarianism and also of whether or not to stay in a mixed denomination at the level of secondary issues. In other words, these are matters that we should not break fellowship with others on.
To some extent, I agree with John, certainly when it comes to the question of complementarianism. I am complementarian myself but I recognise that there are evangelicals who differ with me on this. Indeed, complementarianism is itself not a uniform position. So, I recognise this as an area where Evangelicals can agree to disagree. However, I think that there are a couple of steps needed in our thinking that John doesn’t address.
First, we need to think carefully about what we mean by “partnership” and “fellowship.” There is a risk that we can have such a low view of partnership that it becomes meaningless. I wonder if, too often we think of its as no more than attending conferences together and being moderately nice about one another. This is quite low bar partnership. In fact, my take is that when you really get to the nuts and bolts of serious Gospel partnership, it tends to be the Church of England that puts a stop to it. Try taking over a Church of England building as an independent evangelical church, you aren’t going to be high up their priority list. Talk to Anglicans about potential projects together such as a church plant and you’ll find that the funding dries up quickly.
The other side of things is that because of this, partnership/fellowship is assumed to basically mean being friends. So, if you say “We can’t partner together anymore”, that becomes “you are saying you don’t want to be friends.” Yet consider a more extreme situation. What if you meet someone who happens to be Roman Catholic but they insist that they don’t agree with much of what the church teachers. Over time it becomes clear that they are born again, are close to evangelical theology and preach the Gospel. They’ve chosen to stay in the Catholic church because leaving will alienate them from their community and from evangelistic opportunities. I might at this point see someone who I can be friends with, pray with, open the Bible with even. However, it is highly unlikely that our church would partner with theirs.
The other thing not properly considered is polity. I wonder at times if even Evangelical Anglicans understand how their church functions. We sometimes act as though your local parish church is just like an independent evangelical church. However, that is not so. The vicar will have varying degrees of autonomy but that’s all in the gift of the Bishop. You are under their authority and direction. You submit to them. Even if you have sought alternative oversight through the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, that Bishop only has authority as delegated from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the diocesan bishops. He must submit to the Archbishop and what is more, the reasons for seeking his oversight are tightly limited.
What this means is that it becomes practically impossible to have meaningful partnership and fellowship with Evangelicals in the Church of England because you cannot break their church off from the wider picture in the Church of Englad.
It is important to repeat what this does and doesn’t mean. It does mean clarity about where partnership is and isn’t possible. It doesn’t mean abandoning people because we disagree with them on the important things.
Faithroots 