It’s not often we get asked to write something together, so this is newish territory for us. 'You write it,' said one of us, 'and I’ll correct it afterwards.' To which the other could easily have said, 'You write it… and I’ll make it readable afterwards.' But as one is in the pub watching the Rugby and the other is at home writing, I’ll leave you to guess which is which.
So, the commission was for joint authorship; the topic, what evangelicals need to learn post-Makin. Immediately, we encounter our second challenge. One of us has always (since conversion aged 13, anyway) been an evangelical: more precisely a 'Prayer Book Evangelical.' The other never has.
Which is exactly my – or possibly our – point about what we need to learn following the publication of the Makin Review.
Evangelicals love to be Right
Evangelicals are very fond of being Right. Arguably at the cost of everything else. If you are 'sound' and if you are 'keen', you cut the mustard: you can Do No Wrong. Well, John Smyth was 'sound', his doctrine was right down the line. He was also 'keen', so keen he would beat you into being 'sound' and 'keen' too. (Provided you were young and male and good-looking and upper-middle class, that is.)
And if we can persuade you of nothing else today, may we (please God) persuade you that being Right is not necessarily quite all it’s cracked up to be.
Some years ago, one of us took a new role in a church that was, yes, 'sound' and 'keen'. But we were abused as a family so shockingly, so appallingly, that the other one of us still suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (according to our children) and can’t set foot inside an evangelical church without being reduced to sobbing for up to a week afterwards. It was when we went to that church that we learnt that being Right (being 'sound' and 'keen') is not only not enough: it is not necessarily even remotely important.
If we preach in the tongues of Luther and Calvin and have not love, we are a lot more noisome than banging gongs and clanging cymbals. If we understand all mystery and reformed theology and substitutionary atonement but have not love, we are far worse than empty and void and worthless. We could even be abusive… and possibly, very likely to get away with it.
Why did John Smyth go so wrong?
Why did John Smyth and his wickedness go unchecked for so long? Undoubtedly, at least in part, because he said the Right Things, fought the Right Fights and was On The Right Side. As a barrister, he even defended Mary Whitehouse for goodness’ sake, against Gay News - and won. (Mrs Whitehouse had taken issue over a poem, arguably with erotic overtones, speculating on the centurion’s love for Christ: the newspaper and its editor were found guilty of blasphemous libel.) 'It may be said,' Smyth is reported as saying, 'that this is a love poem – it is not, it is a poem about b***ery.'
He might have expressed himself more fruitily than evangelicals would today. But there are plenty who are dismayed (for instance) at the Prayers of Love and Faith, who might align themselves with anyone opposing these without scrutinising them too carefully. They are so glad to have a glamorous and high profile advocate who agrees with them. Why, just this last week we’ve been witnessing an indecent haste for everyone to jump into bed with anyone who would lend a voice in ousting Archbishop Justin Welby, for any reason or none… and it seems 'unlikely' (to quote Makin) that sympathy with victims and survivors has been motivating all of it. Some of it was surely because Archbishop Justin is no longer seen as Right.
'The trouble with being on the right side is the company you find yourself in…' We were at the theatre the other night for Terence Rattigan’s play Table Number Seven (set in 1954, about vicious self-righteousness when someone is found guilty of cottaging; Rattigan himself being same-sex attracted). So beware: Smyth was 'on the right side', if you happen to share his theology of sexuality. And was very unsavoury company indeed.
The importance of being able to change your mind
Perhaps the most important thing evangelicals need to learn post-Makin is that being Right (in other words, doctrine alone) may not be nearly as important as we once thought it was.
Let’s go back to where we started. We (Shaun and Anne) find ourselves in a Mixed Marriage; one of us is 'sound' and 'keen' and the other has never been either. So much so, that our love was very vigorously opposed by those who were both - this opposition was driven by an, also extremely unsavoury, confederate of Smyth’s as it happens.
Recently, one of us confided to the other about being asked by three walking companions (half-way up the third Munroe and fifth mountain of the day, when one isn’t really in a position to argue) when was the last time one had changed one’s mind on anything.
'And?' said the other.
'I said I’d changed my mind on the "women’s issue."'
'What "women’s issue"?'
'Women’s ordination. You know.'
'Why, what’s your view now?'
'Well, I don’t think I really agree with complementarianism any more. I now rather suspect it can all too easily be an excuse for sexism.'
'What! You were once a complementarian? I’ve been married all this time to a misogynist bigot! Wow…'
The point of this story, reader, is that it really couldn’t have mattered less. (Though arguably fortunate the other didn’t know… or hadn’t bothered to find out. Some ten or 15 years ago, someone asked one of us what the other’s view was on women’s ministry, only to be given the bemused answer: 'I don’t know, actually…' After all, oddly perhaps, we seem to agree on everything important: the life-saving, all-encompassing urge to share the gospel, the need to feed the hungry at the vicarage door, what to drink with supper, how to make a pot of tea…)
So if I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, be very careful indeed: I could be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
I could be another John Smyth, who just happens to share your theology.
* * * * *
As someone wiser and godlier than I asked, 'Who is sufficient for these things?' Now is not the time for prescribing what should be learned from the wretched business of John Smyth’s appalling abuse and its fallout. For one thing, I do not believe we are ‘post-Makin’ yet. The blood-letting has only just begun, and I expect it will run and run for some time. As an ancient pagan observer once remarked, 'How these Christians love one another!'
It is too soon to draw lessons, but perhaps instead time to ask ourselves questions. A couple occur to me:
1. Leadership
First, a question about leadership. Is our understanding of leadership in evangelical circles all wrong? I would go further. I would ask whether we have made an idol of leadership, to the detriment of discipleship and mutual service. For the past 40 years or so, there has been a seemingly endless supply of books, articles, courses and magazines on the topic, with a resulting expectation that all committed church members should aspire to it. We've had a church culture that over-emphasises its importance, especially when it is ‘strong’, which all too often in practice means assertive, autocratic, coercive or bullying.
But does the New Testament emphasise leadership? Does it even mention leaders much, beyond enjoining us to 'remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you' (Hebrews 13:7) i.e. those who evangelised us? Rather than leadership, the New Testament talks about ‘ministry’, i.e. service, laying down our lives for one another and washing each other’s feet. Where are the books and courses on that?
2. Ourselves
Secondly, a question about ourselves. Much of the current calling to account of leaders who are perceived to have failed unforgivably seems to me rather self-righteous and virtue-signalling: I haven’t ever failed to act over what John Smyth or others like him did (because I’ve never been in a position to have to do so?) so I am entitled to castigate those who have.
Perhaps we would all be better to ask ourselves honestly whether we might not have done just the same in the same circumstances. Could we even have done, or yet do, what Smyth did? It seems inconceivable to me that I ever would, and yet…
Smyth seems to have been driven not so much by a desire to inflict pain, but by a pathological need to misuse his influence and power in order to exercise control over others. I cannot understand such a need myself, and yet I know what it is to want desperately to get my way or to get others to agree with me, especially when I have persuaded myself that what I think is ‘Biblical’ or that what I want is ‘for the cause of the gospel’. I am sure there have been plenty of occasions when I have been assertive, over-bearing, even coercive or bullying, in my attempts to get what I want. We must all reckon with the possibility, given our sinfulness, that any of us, given facilitating circumstances, conditions or opportunities, is capable of pretty much anything.
As someone greater than anyone I have cited so far cautioned, 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.'
