Has Keele Failed?
Reform in the Church of England
Edited by Charles Yeates
Hodder & Stoughton
218 pages. £8.99
ISBN 0 340 64187 8
The emergence of the movement called 'Reform' has challenged the assumption of many Anglican evangelicals that all is changing for the better within their denomination. Reform's analysis of the situation has posed some hard questions. Reform's very existence has naturally raised the question of whether 'Keele' has failed.
Keele was an Anglican evangelical conference which took place in 1967. It is popularly known as the moment when Anglican evangelicals left their ghetto to take over the Church of England. This book comes out of a symposium held in late 1994 which attempted to look at some of the issues which Reform has raised.
Some chapters are very worthwhile. Michael Wilcock's thorough application of biblical principles to the role of parochial ministry makes rewarding reading. David Day's paper is a helpful contribution to the question of which church officers should lead the congregation in celebrating the Lord's Supper. He shows that 'lay presidency' is not a call to anarchy. These chapters are helpful because they engage with what Reform is saying.
But many of the other chapters, while providing useful information, fail. They have not really dared to face up to the really hard questions about ministry. Thus Michael Turnbull, in writing about finance, cannot (p.85) apparently trust anyone other than the diocese to ensure that ministry is poor areas is subsidised.
However, it would be wrong to think that the arguments among Anglican evangelicals are merely over practical strategy. There is something more serious going on and one's understanding of Keele reflects this. Michael Saward's contribution is a personal one, but his account of what was going on at Keele and afterwards, forms a good basis to start from. John Stott (p.7) is quoted as seeing Keele as a change in strategy 'to take our place in the church and the world'. Reform evangelicals would have no difficulty with that - their fear is that the change in strategy camouflaged a change in theology. This book does nothing to allay their fears.
Apparently Margaret Masson would be unhappy with the label evangelicals were it not for Keele (p.12). Yet her paper on the ministry of women includes this disastrous phrase (p.122): 'The fact that many texts or passages in the Bible seem to discourage women's leadership, then, is not argument enough for today's church'. This is the reason why two papers by David Holloway and Peter Baron are vital to understand what is going on. Holloway lays out Reform's case and highlights the failure of many evangelical bishops to speak clearly from Scripture, as evidence of a doctrinal shift.
Peter Baron puts the case against Reform by targeting its understanding of Scripture and the Church. Reform evangelicals agree that these are key areas, but would point to Baron's paper as illustrating the shift in the evangelical position which has taken place. Baron argues that Reform's view of Scripture, as seen in the Chicago statement, is stuck in modernity. He believes that Reform has not caught up with the post-modern world with its fuzzier views of what facts are.
However, Reform-minded evangelicals are perfectly aware of this issue. They would argue that previous debates over Scripture were indeed shaped by the challenge which Enlightenment thinking brought, but that does not mean that the basis on which the authority of Scripture was defended is invalid. They would say that it is evangelicals like Baron who are in danger of being captured by culture as they swallow post-modernity's relativism. There is ample evidence of this in Baron's chapter.
Reform is not naive about the issue of hermeneutics. It simply believes that it is an unevangelical view of Scripture to state that 'different interpretations can come from the same text' (p.73 - different applications of a text pose no problem, but different interpretations imply that truth is relative to the reader). Even worse is the notion (p.78) that the New Testament churches were doctrinally pluriform. This torpedoes the unity of Scripture and has God speaking with contradictory voices.
In conclusion, this book is patchy in content. It has not really faced up to the challenge of Reform. However, if it contributed to the process whereby the real issues facing evangelicalism are tackled, then it is to be welcomed.
And if the above seems remote to non-Anglican readers, then I would ask us to consider two questions which demonstrate that these Anglican arguments are relevant to us all.
(1) Why do you call yourself an evangelical? Is it because your friends and your spiritual experience have been labelled evangelical? Or is it because you hold to certain beliefs?
(2) Is your church fellowship really moulded by the Word of God? Or is the driving force within it a desire to conform to past traditions or modern trends?
