Simul conservative evangelicus et peccator

The Ugley Vicar has a discerning post on problems within the conservative evangelical world, especially British Anglican evangelicalism. Go read it! We must be the first to repent of our shortcomings, which are many. It’s easy to imagine that the reason others don’t like us is because they hate the gospel, when in fact we’re being proud, or combative, or just plain rude.

I think one problem is that conservative evangelicalism tends to define itself by what it’s not: we’re not liberal, we’re not anglo-catholic, we’re not charismatic, and we’re not those liberals-in-disguise open evangelicals (a tongue in cheek comment, BTW!). So if we’re not all those wrong people, we must de facto be right. By definition, we are the true preservers of the gospel. So we’re not particularly good at listening to our critics.

NB I first encountered John Richardson (the Ugley Vicar) on a Cornhill ‘London Week’ which aims to give students a week’s insight into church leadership. His first comment was ‘there is no such thing as a full-time Bible teaching ministry – after all, Paul wasn’t one!’ – which seemed to worry a few but was very refreshing!