Tag: Christianity

For some reason today I did a search to find out when the Cambridge Inter-collegiate Christian Union (CICCU), one of the most influential Christian bodies of the 20th century, split away from the Student Christian Movement (SCM).  The CICCU had founded the SCM, but the latter became compromised with liberalism and had to be cut adrift.  The split took place in 1910, I found.  The CICCU encountered quite a bit of hostility, and was rather smaller than the SCM; but the latter withered and died between the wars.

But in the process I started to find various interesting books in Google Books.

The 1986 edition of John Stott’s book, The Cross of Christ, on p.13-14 put the issues pretty squarely.  After WW1, it seems, the SCM wanted to reconnect to the CICCU.  A meeting took place between Daniel Dick, Norman Grubb (president and secretary of the CICCU) and Rollo Pelly (secretary of the SCM).  Grubb wrote:

After an hour’s talk, I asked Rollo point-blank, ‘Does the SCM put the atoning blood of Christ central?’  He hesitated, and then said, ‘Well, we acknowledge it, but not necessarily central.’  Dan Dick and I then said that this settled the matter for us in the CICCU.  We could never join something that did not maintain the atoning blood of Jesus Christ as its centre; and we parted company.^[1]

The context of the enquiry was 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: ‘For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.’ (RSV)

In A History of the University of Cambridge: 1870-1990, p.133, we find a brief history of the CICCU, with the telling phrase:

In the 1940s and 50s the SCM was much more in tune with the opinions of the leading college deans and chaplains than CICCU….

The same would doubtless have been true in the 80s, although the SCM barely existed by then.

Mark A. Noll’s Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship and the Bible in America, makes some sensible observations on how British Christianity never became as polarised as happened in the USA.  On p.87-88 there is an interesting passage on the role of the classics:

At least one other aspect of British education differentiated British from American evangelicals, namely the continuing vitality of classical studies in the secondary schools and universities. After the revolution in American education in the 1870s, the classics, which had been the mainstay of the American curriculum, rapidly lost their importance. Harvard, a bastion of conservatism on this question, after 1886 made it possible for students to enter without the traditional preparation in Latin and Greek, a provision which expanded rapidly in the following decades. Soon more modern and more pragmatic subjects had replaced the classics almost entirely in the secondary school curriculum. In Britain, by contrast, study of Greek and Latin remained foundational for at least the elite educational tracks. This had two important consequences. So long as evangelicals did the regular secondary preparation, it kept them conversant with not just the ancient languages, but also classical history and literature. This offered a ready-made group of potential Bible scholars for whom it was second nature to study the ways in which ancient cultures differed as well as resembled the modem. It also offered a career path for evangelicals whose conservative views on Scripture might have kept them from gaining initial appointments in more strictly biblical study. More than one prominent evangelical Bible scholar in Britain during the twentieth century began a professional career as an instructor of classics, only to move over into professional study of Scripture as time went on. The continuing vigor of the classics in Great Britain, in sum, offered a range of possibilities for the study of the Bible, which had become increasingly rare in the United States by the end of the nineteenth century.

Alister Chapman’s Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement, p.26 contains the following interesting passage:

For the most part, Stott was wary of his lecturers, and he did not develop close relationships with any of them. Yet he still excelled. The hours he spent at his desk in the university library paid off, and the additional hours poring over the Bible helped too. But it is still a little puzzling that Stott the conservative evangelical achieved a first-class degree. Whale’s example surely helped, although it is unlikely that examiners would have rewarded answers that were rigorously conservative. Stott may have adopted a strategy of laying out what the faculty wanted to hear without committing himself either way. Or perhaps Stott began to agree with his teachers. Oliver Barclay, a fellow pacifist and close friend of Stott’s at Cambridge who went on to become the general secretary of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, recalled that during his theological studies Stott “struggled quite acutely at times”.  … Stott spoke at a CICCU conference that October, so he had not been blacklisted. But the evidence leaves open the possibility that people other than Barclay were aware of Stott’s theological struggles, and that they were worried about his doctrinal soundness. This may have been the time when Nash’s letters to Stott were (on his own account) so full of rebuke that he needed to “pray and prepare… for half an hour” before he could open them.” It is certainly possible that Stott temporarily modified some of his beliefs in the face of the acumen of the Cambridge Divinity faculty.

That Stott achieved a first, in the face of such faculty bigotry, is indeed remarkable.  The book continues with a somewhat sneery account of the history of the CICCU, and then, on p.40, a more or less accurate description of the “fundamentalism controversy” of the 50s, when the Anglican establishment decided to attack rather than support Billy Graham and Christians generally in the universities.  Little of this history is remembered today; probably more should be.

An amusing contrast may be found in Edward Carpenter’s Cantuar: The archbishops in their office.  Among the archbishops of the 20th century was a now-forgotten man named Donald Coggan, who had a Christian background and joined the CICCU on coming up to Cambridge.  On p.532 we read:

C.I.C.C.U. had long been the power-house of Conservative Evangelicalism, a group of narrow-minded fundamentalists, men only, with puritanical moral standards, considerable zeal and extremely rigid doctrinal criteria for deciding with whom they could cooperate. The Student Christian Movement, at that lime in its most lively and outgoing phase, was not included. Coggan became a Vice-President of C.I.C.C.U. and then a member of the Executive of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship which linked together the Christian Unions in all British universities. He fully shared the rather anti-ecumenical view’s of these bodies, but he was unusual within them in the depth of his knowledge of Scripture, a depth which over the years helped lead him gently away from the constrictions of XXth-century fundamentalism.

In 1937, the year his father became National President of the Federation of Meat Traders, Coggan accepted a teaching post in Canada, in Wycliffe College, Toronto, unquestionably Evangelical but a little less intolerantly so than the theological atmosphere he had known in England. He was in Canada for seven years, returning to England in 1944 to take up the principalship of the London College of Divinity, an institution whose buildings had been bombed and which had almost ceased to exist but which he quickly put back on its feet. It was a strictly Conservative Evangelical college and those responsible for the appointment may not altogether have grasped the quiet but decisive shift going on inside their appointee. Back in England he was invited by the Inter-Varsity Fellowship to be again involved in its work by becoming a Vice-President For this it was required, among other things, that he declare his belief in the Bible as ‘infallible’. This Coggan felt no longer able to do. His non-return to the I.V.F. was symbolic of where he now stood — among a group of scholarly liberal Evangelicals led by Max Warren, General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society. Symptomatic too was his earnest and successful endeavour to cooperate as Principal with Bishop Wand of London, despite Wand’s noted Anglo-Catholicism. In the face of opposition on the part of members of the Council, Wand was appointed on account of Coggan’s quiet insistence as College Visitor.

I am always amused to be called “narrow-minded” and having “puritanical moral standards” by those who see nothing morally wrong with someone becoming Principal of a Christian college on the basis of sharing that ethos, and then coolly attempting to destroy it.  One wonders whether it would be safe to drink out of the author’s coffee cup, so vehement is he against those of us with “puritanical” morality.

An interesting but odd book is Randle Mainwaring’s From Controversy to Co-Existence: Evangelicals in the Church of England, 1914-1980, Cambridge, 1985.  The back-cover blurb states: “While it highlights the progress of the gospel through evangelism and literary output, the work does not gloss over the small-mindedness and ‘sectarianism’ that has sometimes characterised Evangelicals”; which, since the book was produced by Cambridge University Press, it doubtless had no risk of doing.  The book appears to have been written by someone for whom Christians exist mainly to underpin the church.  Amusingly, we learn on p.43 that between the wars, “… no strictly conservative evangelical bishop was appointed…”.  The same has been true since 1997, which neatly refutes a good number of the kind of claims the author makes on the same page.

A world religions reader by Ian S. Markham &c contains, on p.293 f., a curious exposition by a certain Michael Goulder telling us how he became a Christian through the CICCU, and then abandoned it again because it was difficult to do evangelism, and only then discovered, mirabile dictu, that “I could not stay long in an organisation that defied science, biblical criticism and common sense” (etc).  The incredibly unmanly tone is quite curious to read, and gives a convincing (and perhaps unfair) picture of a very shallow man.  He earned his living in a series of religion-related posts, and died an atheist.

It is also interesting to read accounts, labelled scholarly by their authors and publishers, of events that I lived through and remember.  God in his wisdom has concealed much that He did in the last half of the 20th century from the sort of people who write such books.  Looking at the drivel in so many of them, we may thank Him for this mercy.

1. ^[1]Norman P. Grubb, Once caught, no escape, p.56.↩

While searching for something else, I found an interesting passage in Augustine’s De Trinitate, book 12, chapter 12:

… when the mind is pleased in thought alone with unlawful things, while not indeed determining that they are to be done, but yet holding and pondering gladly things which ought to have been rejected the very moment they touched the mind, it cannot be denied to be a sin, but far less than if it were also determined to accomplished it in outward act.

And therefore pardon must be sought for such thoughts too, and the breast must be smitten, and it must be said, “Forgive us our debts;” and what follows must be done, and must be joined in our prayer, “As we also forgive our debtors.”

The sins of the mind and imagination seem particularly relevant to the internet.  What do we allow to enter our minds?

Equally by chance, I saw on Facebook a quotation of Proverbs 4:23 from something called the New Century Version:

Be careful what you think,
because your thoughts run your life.

Which is a novel rendering of the usual text:

Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.

I don’t think we should over-analyse ourselves.  But I pass these thoughts on in case God is speaking to anyone through them.

At the weekend, I ventured as far as the English coastal resort of Aldeborough.  Like all the little towns on the East Coast of England, it is gloomy and desolate for nine months of the year, its streets swept by the bitter weather that blows in from the North Sea.  But this weekend the sun shone out of a dusty blue sky, and the sea sparkled in the sun.

I parked in the high street, and walked towards the promenade.  On the way I looked into a little second-hand bookshop.  It was a single room, the corner of a little house.  Blocking out entirely one little window and visible from the street, never looked at, stood volumes bound from some gentleman’s library – cheap, useless books, like a Cicero interlinear, that no man would read without compulsion.

But amid the ruin of other men’s libraries, of one generation ago or two, I found a little volume of the Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb.  I leafed through it, and realised that I had never read more than a handful of these essays.  Finding the volume could be bought for less than three dollars, I bought it.

This evening I was reading the essay entitled Grace before meat, when, in his whimsical way, Lamb asked:

Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts–a grace before Milton–a grace before Shakespeare–a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading The Faerie Queen?

Of course Lamb does not mean it.  The idea is unthinkable to him.

And yet … what would happen if, before we picked up a book, we prayed?  If we thanked God for what we were about to receive, if we asked God to bless us, for what we were about to consume with our minds, if we asked Him to guard us against any poison lurking therein?

Nor do I mean only serious books; but also novels and magazines, the “light literature” with which we amuse ourselves.

Might it be beneficial?  At least sometimes?

We are what we eat, they say.  But are we not, more truly, what we read?

What if we likewise prayed before we sat down with an open internet browser, pouring words into our minds and our souls?

I make no rule here for anyone.  To do so is to forget He who said, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”  No load of duties do I seek to impose on another.  Least of all do I wish anyone troubled by this.

It’s a thought, at least, that a grace before reading a blog might not be such a bad thing.

Via Monday Evening I discover an amusing post, Anthony Esolen’s Welcome to the Mental Ward. The author points out that, in our day, the people who have power have reached such a point that their demands make no sense, even from their own point of view.  The article is impossible to epitomise, but is well worth reading.

The author fails to make the connection, but there is one.  The common link is convenience.  These are the demands of people who feel that they have total power, and feel no need to be logical.  Whatever they want, they want, and that is an end of it.

Those who see this as the consummation of the 60’s generation, the “if it feels good, do it” generation, are very likely correct.

But how should we respond to all this?  It would be easy to read the article as a right-wing rant against the PC society.  But I think we must look beyond this.  Those of us who are Christians need to recognise that the picture is fair, and assess that picture against eternity.

We must, of course, refuse to be conditioned.  There is nothing to be said, rationally, for conforming willy-nilly to the demands of such people.  We must keep their nonsense out of our heads, despite the bombardment they make with the mass media.  It is hard, in truth.  Nor should we disengage with society, for we must talk to the fellow-souls here on earth.

We must also beware of allowing our political tendencies to shape our response.  Those on the political left have it harder here, for the rulers are of the left; they may find themselves tempted more than those on the political right.  The right may be tempted to bewail the “good old days”, not least because baiting the right is part of the policy of the masters.  But both must resist being contaminated, either by conforming or reacting.  Instead we must conform our minds to Christ, and submit to the word of Scripture.

It is easy for us to feel anger and fear at the actions of the dominant groups in our society.  Nor are these irrational responses; these groups are full of hate, fond of intimidation, and quite happy to send people to prison for doing or saying what every man and woman in the west has said or done for a thousand years. But we should remember that God is in charge.  None of these people may do anything, without Him allowing it.

It may amuse us to learn that, in England, these people have abused the power of appointment to ensure that no Christian has been made a bishop since 1997, and all candidates have to be in favour of making women and homosexuals bishops.  I do not entirely despair to seeing the same people, one day, obliged by the puppeteers to endorse the appointment of a horse for archbishop.

With that, we may recall how it was in the 1st century AD.  The emperors brought Roman society into contempt.  Educated Romans mocked at the worship of the gods.  Martial and Statius flatter Domitian, suggesting that Jupiter and Hercules are far inferior to the god on the Palatine, on whom they depend.  Other writers of the period make their doubt that there are any such deities explicit.

Readers of Martial’s De spectaculis can see how the Romans began to depict their religion in the arena.  Those brought up to revere the courage of Scaevola, who sacrificed his hand to the flames rather than betray his country, were able to see a condemned man do the same, because he had been threatened with being burned alive if he did not.  In the process, the Romans must have been led to think less of Scaevola.  The selfishness of the era of Nero and Domitian degraded those who practiced it, and dissolved the religion and society which they lived in.

We may recall, however, that the same people were quite willing to persecute Christians for not sacrificing to the gods in which they themselves did not believe.  For their real belief was to bow to the powerful.

Let us instead look beyond the purely human side to this.  The scripture tells us that we must obey the authorities, but that we must see that we battle with powers and principalities in this life.  These people, whom we despise or fear or treat with disgust, these debauched creatures desperate to debauch others, are victims themselves.  They profess to be wise, yet they are playthings of a mightier intelligence, one that is not their friend.  They have chosen to place themselves in Satan’s power.  They have chosen to reject God; and He has punished them, by allowing them to experience the consequences that they desired.  They have rejected his wisdom, as inadequate, and He has allowed them instead to fall into madness.  Against this, humanly, we may have little power.  But God is mighty, and prayer effective.

In human terms this nonsense will not last.  It is far too toxic for any society to endure for long.  History is a series of reactions against preceding periods.  As the baby-boomers die, sanity will reassert itself.  In 30 years we will look back and wonder at the craziness.  But in the meantime we must endure it, but not be stained by it.  It will limit us, in what we can do in this society.  But do it we must.  Quietism is not an option.

We must also pray.  We must pray for God’s grace, that we may keep safe.  We must put on our armour each day.

We should pray for the victims; those whose lives are ruined by vice, greed, selfishness and the consequences thereof.

Finally, we must pray for those men and women who do the evil.  For they are doomed, unless God takes pity on them and causes them to repent.

It doesn’t matter if the world goes to hell.  One day it will, or so the scripture says.  But it matters a great deal how we respond to the world as it does so.

An interesting post by the Ugley Vicar makes a point that is worth repeating:

Maybe you are a square peg in a round hole – there is no shame in that. One of the turning points in my life came when, sitting in the vicarage in Sparkbrook, my eye was caught by Romans 12:6: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (RSV).

I had thought that God had called me to this particular job, despite many people telling me it was not a good idea, because God calls you through feelings and signs, even to do things you don’t seem cut out for. This was what happened in the books I’d read. But I was desperately unhappy and hanging on by a thread.

Suddenly I had this sense of revelation. According to the passage, you should use the gifts God had given you. So the right job would be one where you could do that. But according to what I’d learned, the right job had nothing to do with your gifts. You went where your feelings led you. Now I found myself thinking, either my view was right, or the Bible was right. And it was blindingly obvious which!

If we follow our gifts, where do they lead us?