Evangelical and Evolving
Colin Craston
A friend lent me this book, in the context of an ongoing discussion about what it means to be Evangelical - and whether that's a helpful thing to be. It's a good contribution to that discussion.
The book comes from a decidedly Anglican perspective - and is now more than half a decade old. Nevertheless it presents - at least in that context - a good working description of the notion of an open evangelical position. This is the more noteworthy from the fact that the author was at the time far into his retirement - not the usual location to find radical thought.
Is the book radical? Some of a Conservative Evangelical perspective would find it so, even today. Others might just say "meh?" and wonder at the rivalries of nuance that can exist only among a certain kind of people of faith. The question, for example, of whether the celebrant at the eucharist should stand at the north, or the east, or the west, of the communion table (aka altar) really isn't one that has caused me many seconds of lost sleep.
The open Evangelical position is an honourable one, I think - and something I would have identified with before I became the late emerger. Reading Craston's book made me almost nostalgic for debates about which I really find it difficult to care today. He begins with chapters on the bible and on interpretation - good Evangelical starting points. These are the strongest chapters of the book, I would say: principled without being dogmatic. The discussion turns to the church and the ministry: here the author's deeply-imbued Anglicanism is most evident, and evangelicals of other traditions would find the line of reasoning quite alien - not to say, mistaken. The writing is intensely personal in places - we learn the author's opinion, without particular reference to other authorities apart from his own (extensive) experience. Further chapters discuss the sacraments, ministry, and other topics about which evangelicals might gently disagree among each other.
The final chapter asks "Still Evangelical?" and surveys whether the position advanced in the book still deserves that label. My answer would be a decided "yes", but I am on the far side of the possible tension: a conservative might take quite a different view. His methodology (with a few traditional Anglican blind-spots :-) ) is unambiguously evangelical. But then, I'd say the same of Brian McLaren, even though a great many evangelicals have disowned him by now, disliking not so much his method as his conclusions. Brian, too, is far outside the spectrum of belief which is under consideration in the book.
Although I retain a soft spot for all this stuff, it all seems a bit detached from reality. There's a needy world to serve, and an intellectual cadre which doubts that faith has any place in modern society. Discussions of whether surplices should be replaced by preaching robes for sermons, or whether it is appropriate to combine the roles of suffragan bishop and archdeacon seem, well, obscure at best. Women in the ministry (probably ok), and the position of gay clergy (rather not ok) are two socially-notable issues for the church in its mission to 21st century England, but there's no clarion call here.
The book is positive and constructive - it is a good account of the things on the minds of a certain sub-set of evangelicals at the time. As the book's title suggests, things are in a state of change, and I find it hard to see how this particular position can persist for very long. Its time may already be running out.
