Responding to Angela Tilby and the ‘Evangelical Takeover’: A (reasoned) rant

I’ve come out of hiding to write another blog post, mainly to have a bit of a rant. Like many a clergyperson in the Church of England, I picked up my Church Times last Friday, to read an opinion piece by Angela Tilby. Here it is in full:

‘Deliver us from the Evangelical takeover’

The communication gap between the Church and the rest of society grows ever wider.

A recent study published in a journal for doctors suggests that GPs are unsure of how to deal with patients who are suffering “existential distress”. One suggested that GPs must simply accept that they are “the new clergy”, and must attend to people’s spiritual needs. The author of the report commented that British people’s reluctance to talk about religion publicly had made it difficult to discuss this.

Yet inside the Church there is no shortage of talk about mission and outreach. The initiative Thy Kingdom Come, started by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York two years ago, has morphed into a global wave of prayer – a clear sign, apparently, that it is nothing less than a significant movement of the Holy Spirit.

The marketing of Thy Kingdom Come has been clever. It includes a bit of social gospel to attract the left-wing; it uses the word “novena” to impress the Catholics; and it has colonised the days between Ascension and Pentecost to please the liturgically minded.

But the underlying theology remains that of individuals’ letting Jesus into their hearts and lives one by one. There is nothing wrong with that, of course; but it worries me that the Church of England is being driven by the assumption that there is simply no other way of speaking of the Christian faith.

The culture of Thy Kingdom Come is that of transatlantic Evangelicalism filtered through the public-school system, HTB, New Wine, and the other familiar networks. This is a heritage familiar to both our Archbishops. It will soon simply be the Church of England, thanks in part to the mixture of innocence and gullibility which characterises its appeal.

What, after all, could possibly be wrong with a wave of prayer from Ascension to Pentecost? I shall join in, as I have for the past two years. I shall be praying for an escape from the Evangelical takeover of the Church. I shall be praying for a language that is genuinely respectful of the existential distress that so many seem to be taking to their doctors. I understand all too well why people take their souls to the surgery: I myself would, in the current climate.

Too often in church, people in distress are patronised by the saved and the certain, infantilised by a faux inclusivity that has them playing with tea lights and cutting out little paper flames, while they are jollied along to find Jesus over (excellent) coffee.

The abandonment of traditional religion, with its respect for privacy and the slow nurturing of the person through unconsciously memorised texts and gentle counsel, has left a hole in the heart of society which is too deep for words. That is where (I hope) the Spirit is still crying out.

There are quite a few things that I seriously have issues with here, but I’ll reduce them down to three: 1) the rank hypocrisy of the article; 2) its horribly outdated understanding of Evangelical Anglicanism; and 3) the misreading of the cultural signs.

1) Rank Hypocrisy. I start with this, because it is what infuriates me. The article is praising the merits of ‘traditional religion’, and criticises the liturgical innovations of a group called the ‘Evangelicals’ who are ‘taking over’ the Church of England. But a few things must be stated. Angela Tilby is a female priest, of a more liberal persuasion theologically. Her main liturgy is the Church of England’s Common Worship. She is a canon at Christ Church Cathedral, where she (presumably) wears a chasuble representing a sacramental worldview. This is a Cathedral which uses a congregational style of worship, processions, robed choirs, altar frontals, candles, hymns, an organ, and even incense. Why do I list these attributes? Because each represents a radical change in ‘traditional religion’ from the last two hundred years. When she talks of ‘traditional religion’, which tradition is she referring to? Because the idea of a congregation reading together the liturgy is a radical innovation from the 16^th Century; processions, robed choirs, organs, incense and chasubles, are all radical innovations from the 19^th Century, some of which have only become standard in Cathedrals and parish worship in the last thirty years; Common Worship is the culmination of one hundred years of radical liturgical changes from the settled pattern of BCP worship; her theology is a development of Catholic forms of Modernism which became dominant in the 20^th Century; her very gender as a priest is a radical innovation from nearly two thousand years of traditional religion. Don’t get me wrong: many of these are radical changes that I thank God for! But they nevertheless disrupted the everyday ‘folk’ religion of the people Tilby is concerned about.

I point all this out because Angela Tilby is a result of multiple radical shifts in the CofE from the last five hundred years. She is the result of multiple ‘takeovers’ of the English Church: the Reformers in the 16^th Century, the Laudians in the early 17^th and Latitudinarians in the later 17^th Century, the Erastians in the 18^th Century, the Tractarians (via the Liberal Catholic movement) in the early 20^th Century, and the radical liberals in the 60s and 70s. Each of these radical – and often hostile – takeovers have gradually settled into becoming part of the Church of England’s ‘traditional’ religion. Each ‘takeover’ has alienated as many ‘traditional’ worshippers as it has gained them. And yet now, because the ‘takeover’ is from a group of which she is not a part – the Open Evangelical movement – she is praising the wonders of traditional religion. This tradition she talks of is often but a husk of what previous generations would consider ‘traditional’. At which point she may claim the notion of ‘development’ – but anyone who is in anyway versed in critical theory would know that traditions do not have an inevitable direction. Anglicanism could easily have become more akin to German Lutheranism or Orthodoxy had history taken a different turn.

So, the one who is the inheritor of and who benefits from many a radical change in traditional religion, and many a hostile takeover of the CofE, is praying for deliverance from yet another radical ‘takeover’ which will change the landscape of Anglicanism. Sounds like rank hypocrisy to me.

2) Its horribly outdated understanding of Evangelical Anglicanism. Yet again, we have an example of the superiority complex of Liberal Catholicism in the CofE. The article uses terms like ‘innocence’, ‘gullibility’, ‘patronised’ ‘saved’, ‘certain’, ‘infantilised’, ‘jollied’ etc. The impression given is that, of course, her brand of Christianity is wise, discerning, respectful, questioning, mature, and emotionally balanced. This ridiculous language – too often used in the Church Times, I hasten to add – belongs in the rubbish bin of history, perhaps in some mythical land of the 30s and 40s when Liberal Catholicism dominated. It is true that there are some brands of Evangelicalism that does all these; it is also true that there are brands of every other branch of Anglicanism that does it as well. Most of the gullible, patronising, and infantilising sermons and modern liturgies I have heard have sounded from the Liberal Catholic camp of Anglicanism. Are we now to say that this brand of Anglicanism is all like that? Of course not. There are wise, discerning, questioning and mature forms of Evangelical Anglicanism as there are Liberal Catholic (and Anglo-Catholic for that matter). Some of the greatest thinkers and challenging preachers in the contemporary CofE are from the Evangelical wing!

But aside from Angela’s superiority complex, let’s look at the language of ‘takeover’. This word more often than not implies an ‘outsider’ taking over the ‘inside’. In this article, the implication once more is that Evangelicalism is an outsider movement to the Church of England, whereas Anglo- and Liberal Catholics are not. I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that there are none-Anglican influences upon the contemporary CofE, but were that an issue in itself, lets get rid of our chasubles, mitres and candles (for but a 150 years ago, these were seen as Romish). But the implication is still that somehow Anglicanism can do without its Evangelical branch. Not only is this grounded in the misreading of the 17^th Century Anglican Divines by figures such as Cross, More, McAdoo and Stevenson (as Stephen Hampton has argued, the classical Reformed branch of Anglicanism was still in a position of relative strength in Oxford even in the 1730s, one which it had held since the Restoration, and continued to do so afterwards through the Evangelical Revival). It also ignores the wider phenomenon of international Anglicanism, which is mainly an Evangelical movement. Simply put, Anglican Evangelicals have never died out since the 16^th Century, and have had a huge influence on the direction of both national and international Anglicanism in each century till this day. What we are seeing in the CofE is merely the emergence of an insider group to hierarchical dominance. This is a position it has been kept out of for multiple decades, despite having numerical dominance amongst clergy since the 70s and 80s. Let’s stop with the ‘takeover’ language: it’s an example of a Liberal Catholic imperialist attitude (as if that branch of the Church have natural ownership), and it implicitly denies that millions of Anglicans throughout the world are truly Anglican, simply because they are Evangelical.

3) Its misreading of the cultural signs. I almost laughed out loud when I realised that Tilby was implying that people are not connecting with the church because of the rise of Evangelicalism. It’s probably inspired by the strange sociological analysis of Linda Woodhead and Andrew Brown (That Was the Church That Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People), who argues that it is in part because of the rise of Evangelicalism that people no longer connect with the CofE. Woodhead and Brown’s retrospective solution (and I’m guessing Tilby’s would be as well) would be to go more liberal, especially doctrinally, and maintain the old fashioned liturgical status quo (updated, naturally). Of course, this somehow ignores that the Scandinavians, Dutch, Germans, Baltics and pretty much every other established Protestant denomination in Europe have done the same, and the result has been catastrophic (at least in church numbers: these churches, unlike the CofE, are kept open mainly through State taxes). Were it not for Catholicism, and in parts Evangelicalism, it would be difficult to talk of Christianity having much influence. But what makes it laughable is that the majority of churches which have kept the liturgical status quo are struggling, and possibly will not survive the next thirty years. There are wonderful exceptions – thank God! – but this is nevertheless sadly the case. This is because a massive disconnect has grown between our culture and our established church, especially with the rise of a critical distance from religious concerns. The old liturgies no longer connect with the liturgies of culture, or when they do it is only in a ceremonial moment. It is very difficult for the average person to have to learn the rituals used in traditional forms of worship, because they are so alien from the rituals used in daily life. These rituals have not been learnt, or have simply been forgotten.  The hope that people would want to remain part of the church if only we kept up with the times with our thinking has fallen flat: traditional religion doesn’t connect the majority of young people (once again, there are always exceptions). Yes, in many ways this is a tragedy. It’s also just how it is.

Evangelical churches on the other hand are generally not in such a perilous position. They produce many adult baptisms and confirmations, are involved with resurrecting traditional Anglican practices like catechism, and are increasingly nurturing vocations, especially those towards ordained ministry. And the reason why? For several decades now, they have focussed on missional evangelism (thus retaining a cognitive distinction between secular cultural norms and Christian belief), and have liturgically accommodated themselves to the rapid and often bewildering changes in culture. I attended my cousin’s Pentecostal Church in Manchester a few months ago, and was struck by how many were in attendance (easily over a thousand), and how few grey hairs there were! What a contrast with the parishes of which I have been a part! No matter how we put it, these young people, who are the future of the church, are connecting with a form of Christianity that doesn’t expect them to have to learn a new ritualistic culture; it incorporates the rituals that they already know well.

Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age has far more sociological insight in this regard than Woodhead and Brown’s strange analysis: his overall argument is that we are in a supernova of ‘cultural pressures’, which the church could do little about. To refer to James K.A. Smith, the old cultural liturgies have come under immense strain in this new environment, and much of the symbolic language is alien. And this is where the distinction between traditional and Evangelical responses to this breakdown arise. After the Manchester bombing, a crowd gathered to commemorate those who had died. At the end, they spontaneously sang Oasis’ anthem, Don’t Look Back in Anger. Many of the religious commentators noted that at one point, a similar crowd would probably have sung a hymn. Whereas traditional commentators then said that the Church must prepare for cultural exile, Evangelical commentators said that this demonstrates that we must worship in a language people understand. Perhaps this is why Evangelical Churches bring in more people? Maybe, to quote the language often used by liberal thinkers in the church, it’s about cultural sensitivity?

In short, the reason why people would rather speak to a doctor than a priest is not because of Evangelicalism. It’s because of a wider disconnect with traditional religion due to social factors completely outside of the church’s control (Woodhead and Brown’s analysis is a sociological power fantasy that the church could manipulate the cultural direction). Evangelical liturgical innovations are, like any living tradition, simply trying to adapt to the new cultural reality.

Conclusion

Before I finish, I would like to say that in some ways I agree with Angela Tilby: I also am deeply nurtured by traditional forms of worship and think it is a tragedy that they do not connect in the same way; I also think that the CofE is served best by a plurality of styles and approaches; I recognise the worrying implications of the ‘doctor as chaplain’ model. Where I think she is completely off the wall is in her analysis: the traditional religion which she represents is not nearly as traditional as she would think; her understanding of Evangelicalism is a copy-and-paste job from the 50s, has little relevance to the broad and dynamic reality which is modern Evangelical Anglicanism, and smacks of a Liberal Catholic superiority complex; and her reading of the cultural signs utterly misses the point that the church could do little to keep the English people ‘on their side’.

Perhaps Tilby should stop praying for deliverance, and maybe start thanking God that the radical innovations in Evangelical churches are producing so many adult baptisms, confirmations and ordinands?

FINAL NOTE: Was it me, or at the end of the article, was Tilby claiming that she had the potential to know better than the Holy Spirit? After all, she said ‘That is where (I hope) the Spirit is still crying out’. Is she saying here that she would be disappointed if the Spirit weren’t crying out in that area, and therefore that the Spirit should know better? Surely we should be hoping that we are wherever the Spirit is, not that the Spirit is where we are?