Take the example of contemporary films and TV. Christians may be shocked when ministers such as myself watch contemporary films, films which themselves reflect the culture in which we live. Of course, clearly toxic films and TV series should be avoided because of their content. We must exercise discernment, but we must also engage with culture. We are to be ‘in the world but not of it’ (John 17:16).

While we are in the world we need to have, as John Stott put it, ‘one foot in the Biblical World and one in our culture,’ (1) otherwise we are in danger of losing connection with ordinary people and becoming withdrawn in a world only occupied by people who agree with us! If we are to be ‘salt and light’ (Matthew 5:13-16) and give witness to Christ, then we must be engaged, and I would argue watching film and TV can help us to understand the culture we live in. The apostle Peter wisely gives us the godly way we can do this, when he says in the opening phrase of 1 Peter 3:15: ‘But in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.’

My wife Gloria and I enjoy watching films and then analysing them from a Biblical point of view. One of our favourite films is Princess Bride (1987), which is just a bit of heartwarming fun. Peter Cook plays ‘The Impressive Clergyman’ with a speech impediment. He presides over a marriage ceremony, shortened by the wicked Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) because Westley (Cary Elwes) the true love of Buttercup (Robin Wright) is about to storm the castle to save her from his wicked clutches. Peter Cook says, ‘Have you the wing?’ The whole film is full of such memorable phrases and words!

Earlier in the film, a Spaniard (Mandy Patinkin) and Fezzik (Andre the Giant) who are employed and led by Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) to kidnap Buttercup for the Prince, pronounces what he is witnessing as ‘Inconceivable!’ on four separate occasions. He watches Westley follow in a sailboat through choppy giant snake infested waters, climbs an impossible rock face and successfully overcomes the Spaniard and the Giant in one-on-one combat to save Buttercup. Westley then challenges Vizzini who is holding Buttercup prisoner with a dagger at her throat to a dual to the death, to a battle of wits by deciding which one of two goblets Westley has put poison in. Vizzini considers himself cleverer than Plato or Socrates and is confident he can outthink Westley and choose the poison free goblet by his superior intellect and win the lethal contest.

Westley cleverly has put an entirely fictional poison iocane in each goblet outsmarting Vizzini, because over time using lesser amounts of the poison Westley has built up an immunity from its lethal effects. Both men drink from their goblets of wine and Vizzini falls at once down dead, whilst Westley walks away showing no ill effects. There are no great philosophical or theological themes in the film Princess Bride, but it is very entertaining, especially Vizzini’s repetition of ‘Inconceivable’ which brings me back to the theme of this article!

The conceiving of the inconceivable

There is a huge majority in the wider Anglican Communion and a sizeable number in the Church of England who find recent votes in General Synod as ‘inconceivable’. They were shocked by the decision to authorise a trial period of same-sex blessings in the Church of England. These votes were led by the house of Bishops. Bishops in New Zealand and Australia have already adopted this innovation against the clear teaching of the Bible. Historically, the Church of England is the mother church to the Anglican Communion from which Anglican missionaries took the Gospel to the far-flung parts of the former British Empire, places like Africa, South-East Asia, Australia, North and South America. Embracing this sinful act as holy marks a crossing of the Rubicon for orthodox Anglicans who make up 85% of Anglicans globally who in total number 85 million.

I would like to explore the premise that whilst persecution does not destroy the church, false teaching certainly does. If the ark is the Church, and the sea is the world, then if the sea gets into the boat it begins to sink. This has been happening in the Church of England over the last forty years culminating in the recent decisions by the General Synod led by the House of Bishops. I also want to explore the tension between how we understand the sovereignty of God, for as Jesus says, ‘I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,’ (Matthew 16:18) and our knowledge of the very human aspect of church life, namely that the church is weak, erring and at times despairing. 

Recognition of the Spiritual Battle is Critical

Another important dimension is the recognition of a spiritual battle that we are called to enter whilst trusting in the strength of God. The apostle Paul addresses this in Ephesians 6:10,11 ‘Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the whole armour of God.’  Where the church is prepared to suffer and engage in this spiritual warfare, it is growing rapidly and where it does not stand up for Christ and face the inevitable suffering, it withers and dies. 

What Bishop Ryle called ‘Jellyfish Christianity’ is killing the Church of England. When we reflect on our present struggle, particularly in the Anglican church in England in the light of Paul’s Dying Epistle to his son in the faith in 2 Timothy, we see the threat to genuine Christianity. The church there, humanly speaking, was facing annihilation; Timothy felt his weakness and Paul was deeply concerned for him. And yet, through the power and sovereignty of God, the church prevailed through false teaching and persecution. Something similar faced the church in the West when the Roman Empire collapsed, and Europe entered a so-called dark age. God preserved his church through people like Saint Benedict. Commentators like Rod Dreher suggest we are facing a cultural storm of comparable size ourselves. How can the living church in England survive and eventually overcome?

Forty years of liberal drift

The tragedy we are seeing unfold has been a long time coming. The Church of England has finally turned away from the Lord, the culmination of forty years of liberal drift. The decision to endorse gay blessings by the Church of England has once again torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion as it did with the consecration of the first gay bishop, Gene Robinson by the American Episcopal Church in 2005. Since then, same-sex blessings have gone ahead in the Church of Wales and gay marriage in the Scottish Episcopal church, but now for the Church of England to do this is incredibly significant. 

In 2008, The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) was set up by national archbishops (known as Primates in the Anglican Communion) in direct response to the consecration of the first gay bishop Gene Robinson. At the 4th GAFCON in Kigali Ruanda in April 2023, the response to the decision of the Church of England to go ahead with same sex blessings means the Archbishop of Canterbury will no longer be recognised as ‘the first among equals’ by the Anglican Primates. When I attended, along with the English delegation, the 2nd GAFCON held in 2014 in Nairobi Kenya, we were keen to tell those in the persecuted Anglican churches how much we felt for them and were praying for them. The general reaction to this was for them to tell us they were thankful for our prayers, but they were far more concerned about the liberal drift in the Church of England than their own sufferings! In 2014 the signs were there of a steady move away from the authority of the Bible, but what has happened in General Synod shows that the Rubicon has been crossed.

Paul’s dying epistle gives insight and hope

At the end of his life and ministry the Apostle Paul declared, ‘all in Asia turned away from me.’ (2 Timothy 1:15). This too was surely inconceivable. Paul was facing imminent death and the apparent failure of the Gospel at the time. 

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7-8)

2 Timothy is about Gospel faithfulness and hope in the face of physical persecution and suffering. 2 Timothy shows that while physical persecution does not destroy the church (the early church saying, ‘The blood of the martyrs is seed’), false teaching always does. 
Speaking of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Sinclair Ferguson wrote: ‘Like the early fathers of the church, he well knew that not even physical persecution can destroy the Church of Jesus Christ, but false teaching always will.’ (2)

When the sea (the world) gets into the ark (the church) the ark sinks!

False ideas have entered the church like the sea entering a sinking ship! How and why has this massive change happened in the Church of England? False teaching, which Paul describes as ‘spreading quickly like gangrene’ (2 Timothy 2:17-18) has undermined the authority of the Bible and therefore the biblical Gospel. We can trace back these ideas to influential thinkers like Rousseau, Marx, and Freud. Of course, the authority of the Bible has also been eroded in the Free Church as well. In fact, this is an issue facing all Christians in the West.

Why is the issue of homosexuality church-defining?

You could ask why the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) - along with the Global South who make up 85% of the eighty-five million Anglican Christians in the world – focuses so much on this issue of homosexuality? Their response reveals two competing world views. These two world views offer two competing ‘gospels’ (one has a big G one a small g ?!) each claiming to offer hope and transformation.

Cultural Marxism and the undermining of Biblical Doctrine

I have been involved in the Anglican church for over forty years, first as a lay leader and then as an ordained clergyman for thirty-four years in four Dioceses. I have seen how these ideas have taken over the establishment of the Church of England little by little, through what is known as Cultural Marxism, combined with post-modernism in the secular culture and then how it began affecting the Church of England. This has now spread to every part of the Western Church where the traditional teaching of the Bible on sexual ethics is scorned as toxic, repressive, and dogmatic by Liberal Progressives. The seeds of this go back many years. When I went to the Anglican selection conference in 1986, my local vicar who is now a retired liberal bishop referred to me in a reference to the panel as ‘dogmatic’. Carl Truman writes that, ‘Christianity, as both Martin Luther and John Henry Newman knew, is dogmatic, doctrinal and assertive.’ (3) Failure to hold onto the biblical doctrines with courage and resist the virus of what has become known as a ‘woke’ mindset has led to catastrophic decline in mainline denominations. In contrast, Church fellowships that are growing in England are those that hold to the authority of Scripture and offer a welcome to all with clear teaching on sexual identity, marriage, and singleness.

I can give specific examples of the drift away from the authority of the Bible in the Church of England. During my time as a vicar, I witnessed many bishops adopting revisionist theologies, I attended compulsory clergy training offering a seminar entitled, ‘alternative sexualities’ in one diocese, and in another I was faced with the threat of dismissal by my Diocesan bishop for refusing the ministry of an assistant bishop who told me ‘he supported the ordination of homosexuals’.  We would have accepted another bishop from the diocese for our parish confirmation, one who did believe in the sound teaching of Scripture, but the four bishops in the diocese closed ranks and put pressure on me to back down. This I refused to do since, as I told the diocesan bishop, it was a question of conscience before God, who would judge both me and him on the day of Judgment (Romans 14:10-12.) I invited a retired missionary bishop to do the confirmation instead. In the end, at my request, the diocesan bishop signed Lambeth 1:10 (a motion passed overwhelmingly in 1998 by the Anglican Communion which said that ‘homosexual practice was incompatible with Scripture’) and then I was able to invite him to do the parish confirmation. In my last parish, from which I retired on Easter Day 2022, the bishop officially supported traditional marriage and yet voted for same-sex blessings at General Synod - based on putting unity first! Ecumenism that stresses unity at the expense of orthodox biblical truth was the only explanation for this behaviour which I find quite shocking!! On hearing this, an evangelical free church friend of mine exclaimed: ‘Inconceivable!’

‘Inconceivable!’ aptly describes the sexual revolution in the church. In one sense it is hard to believe where we are and how quickly we arrived at this place but mapping the issue over 40 years enables a view of the steady Liberal Progressive drift of the Church of England away from the authority of Scripture. Ecumenism with its belief that truth is trumped by unity has been the handmaiden of false teaching. Bishops of the Church of England wrongly claim that they have received new revelation on the meaning of Scripture as they gather, and that unity is more important than doctrine. They have turned away from the plain teaching of Scripture and from the godly pastors and doctors of the Church through the ages. This liberal drift is not only important for the Church of England. Free church friends tell me that what happens in the Church of England is important for them and for Christianity in the UK. This sexual revolution has deeply affected all the mainline denominations who are in severe decline whilst churches who stick to the Bible are generally thriving.

The seeds planted by progressive liberal thinkers years ago have perverted the grace of God in the church. The pace at which this revolution has taken place is astounding. Why has the church in the West been so powerless to resist acceptance of what amounts to another gospel and an alternative religion to Christianity? The seeds planted by liberal thinkers hundreds of years ago have entered the mainstream church through academia and the media and have gradually eaten away confidence in the sufficiency and authority of the Scriptures. The church in the West has turned away from the truth and as Jude 3-5 says:

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Liberal progressives stress the love of God, whilst rejecting the judgment of God on sin. By accepting same-sex blessings, they have perverted the grace of God into sensuality and deny the Lordship of Christ through his Word. This is a first order Gospel issue on at least two counts. First, if sin is no longer sin then why did Christ die? Second, homosexual acts cause people to lose the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) and so by deceiving them that this lifestyle is godly, false teachers are potentially sending them to hell! (How loving is that?!). Let me give an important caveat at this point. What Paul says here, includes other lifestyle choices that reflect unrighteousness (vs 9-10), a range of sexual sins not just homosexuality is mentioned -and also thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers. To this he could have added the self-righteous! As John Newton said, ‘I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Saviour,’ (4) and that applies to everyone without exception. However, we are dealing with the specific issue of homosexuality here, and the Bible is clear that it is a sin to live in this way. If we choose to persist along this path without repentance and new life in Christ, we will lose our souls on Judgment Day. To ‘go along to get along’ as many clergy do is to perpetuate a dangerous lie. Furthermore, if the Church turns away from the Lordship of Christ and obedience to his revealed truth then the Holy Spirit will leave the Church of England and all that will remain will be an aging congregation looking after decaying buildings. 

What is the future direction of our fast-changing culture? Will it be more like the dystopian culture imagined by Orwell in his book ‘1984’, or more like Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’? Is it conceivable that there might be physical persecution of the confessional church in England by the institutional church using the state? 

2 Timothy and the history of the Church remind us that God not man has the last word. We need to accept the seriousness of the situation, hold to our credal beliefs based on the Scriptures, and build arks of community. 

Footnotes

(1) On 'Double Listening' The Contemporary Christian Nottingham, UK, IVP 1992, p.101-113.

(2) Sinclair Ferguson Foreword in Lloyd-Jones on the Christian Life by Jason Meyer 2018 Crossway Books Wheaton, Illinois, loc 217

(3) Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Wheaton Illinois, Crossway, 2020, p. 403.

(4) John Newton (page 5 of my chapter) full quote, ‘My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour.

This is an edited version of Chapter One of 'How the Inconceivable was Conceived. The Evolution of a New Sexual Morality', by Steve Donald due to be published in the Autumn by Day One.

Steve Donald retired from 34 years of Anglican parish ministry at Easter 2022 and now focuses on writing and preaching around the country. He can be reached on stevedon1@aol.com for invitations. Earlier publications include, 'Heaven in your eye, earth on your Heart-a taste of Boston, Baxter and Bunyan for the journey' (2014) and 'Marriages are Made in Heaven' (2021) both by Evangelical Press and available on Amazon. Steve is currently working on a book about suffering well as a Christian, entitled, '18 Weeks a Fight for Life', detailing his wife Gloria’s battle with cancer in Basingstoke Hospital which led to her death in October 2023. Steve lives on Sandylands Promenade Morecambe Lancashire and has two married daughters and three grandsons.