April 27 would have been the 100th birthday of the late John RW Stott.
Many today may not know the name of this Anglican evangelical leader who was renowned for much of the 20th century. However, Stott deserves to be rediscovered; it may be that we need it now more than ever.
Combiners and dividers
Stott, the former rector of the Church All Souls, Langham Place, lamented the evangelical tendency toward fragmentation, noting that biologists could be classified as “bundlers” or “splitters,” depending on their tendency to group organisms into categories or to emphasize the differences between them. For example, one might talk about the characteristics of birds, while another might get irritated when someone calls a mallard a duck. Stott wrote that the same thing tends to happen within the Christian community. Some emphasize the similarities within the body of Christ, while others focus on the distinctive differences between Christian groups.
Stott deserves to be rediscovered; it may be that we need it now more than ever
“However, both processes become harmful if taken too far,” Stott advised. “Some Christians continue to divide forever until they are no longer a church but a cult. They remind me of the preacher described by Tom Sawyer who ‘reduced the predestined elect to such a small group that they were hardly worth saving.’ Others lump everyone indiscriminately until no one is left out.”
Stott’s influence endures because he refused to band together or divide except in the ways he found required by the gospel. If Stott’s main objective had been his ecclesial career in the Church of England (Church of England), he may well have sought unity that avoided questions about such issues as the verbal inspiration of Scripture, the objective nature of the atonement, the necessary historicity of the virgin birth and bodily resurrection, not to mention biblical teachings on such culturally controversial topics. such as marriage and sexuality. However, Stott often pointed out that, for him, “Anglican” was the adjective and not the noun. He was an Anglican Christian and that meant that his fidelity to Anglicanism was always subservient to his fidelity to mere gospel Christianity.
Stott’s Anglicanism
This sense of himself and his mission meant not only that Stott could and did speak with evangelical Christians in almost every denomination. Baptists learned to preach by reading his book . Pentecostals defended the substitutionary nature of the atonement with . Presbyterians worked through the Sermon on the Mount with the . Missionaries from nearly every conceivable evangelical tribe learned to articulate a missiology that unites love of God and love of neighbor, faith in and obedience to Christ, through Stott’s work with the .
It also meant that Stott could be a better Anglican. After all, if the Church of England is just a way to be a better Englishman, the English hardly need it anymore, outside of holding a royal wedding ceremony once or twice a decade and maintaining the Abbey of England. Westminster. This is the kind of church that philosopher Roger Scruton described as “my tribal religion, the religion of the English, who don’t believe a word of it.” But Stott and his fellow soldier, JI Packer, were among those who saw their fellowship not as a cultural outpost, but as a way of expressing something much bigger than the English church, much bigger than England itself: faith. built on the Scriptures inspired by God.
Most of the criticism concerned not Stott’s doctrine or practice, but his refusal to fight
In this way, Stott’s Anglicanism, far from being the old-fashioned losing side in some bureaucratic fights in Canterbury, is now represented in a vast and growing Anglicanism seen in Africa, Asia and in church plants in North American cities. . None of these churches is established by English culture. Indeed, most of his congregants would find it impossible to name more than one of Henry VIII’s wives. But they know the prophets and the apostles, the creeds and the liturgies and, above all, the gospel.
Stott’s evangelical conviction was considered fundamentalist by some of his peers. However, in the world of evangelical Christianity, especially in the United States, he was sometimes suspected of being “of little substance.” After all, he didn’t divide himself enough. They wondered: Why was he still Anglican, whether as an adjective or a noun? Why didn’t he get into the heated debates about the meaning of the millennium in Revelation 20? If he was a Reformed (along the lines of Cranmer), why didn’t he go beyond defending penal substitutionary atonement and also demand limited atonement? Stott was one of the most comprehensive preachers of world evangelicalism on issues of personal and social Christian ethics, but, they wondered, why wasn’t he at the forefront of the culture wars?
Fighting the right battles
By taking a closer look at some of the criticism of Stott, we can see what must have been a harbinger of troubling things to come. Most of the criticism concerned not Stott’s doctrine or practice, but his refusal to fight, which was generally defined as declaring some tribal allegiance in order to help one faction defeat another in a dispute. Much of this was due to the fact that Stott refused to employ apocalyptic rhetoric, except in reference to the Apocalypse. He knew that resentment could be a powerful social motivator. You can build a following by identifying the villains and saying, “They think they’re better than us!”
But he also knew that this was not the way of Jesus. Jesus was willing to divide homes, villages, and nations over the question of “Who do they say that I am?” (Mt 16:15), but he did not audition for factions, whether pro-Roman or Zealot, answering their questions of “Who do you say we are?” The people Jesus gathered were to be driven by the Spirit, not by the appetites of “the flesh,” either of the sexual or adrenal glands.
Stott therefore emphasized integrity, a unity, both in doctrine and in mission. That’s why he refused to put “both/and” where the Bible puts “either/or.” It can’t be Yahweh Y Baal, God Y mammon, the worship of both of them Jesus Y to Caesar. But, he also refused to put an “either/or” where the Bible puts a “both/and.” We must deal with grace Y of truth, exposure Y application, evangelism Y Justice, both of them the love of God Y love of neighbor, responsibility Y mercy, conviction Y the goodness, both of them intellect Y emotions, both those with roots in a denomination Y with the globally connected.
Stott emphasized integrity, a unity, both in doctrine and in mission.
Stott did not seek to group for grouping’s sake, nor to divide for division’s sake. Both unity and sectarianism could be demanding idols, if they are done definitively. Instead, he sought balance: not the balance that sees where the extremes of the moment are headed and tries to split the difference, but the balance that recognizes that we are prone to wandering and that there is more than one direction out of the way of the odds. sheep. The way back is not by going in the opposite direction of the sheep that one considers worse than oneself, but by listening to the voice of the Shepherd.
On his 100th birthday, consider that Stott could have had a much bigger name. He maybe he could have been Archbishop of Canterbury if he had banded together a little more. He could have raised millions through direct mail warning that we should “act now or lose it all” if he wanted to divide some more. But instead he chose to be a disciple, too rigid for those who want the term “Christian” to modify his liberalism and too soft for those who want the term “Christian” to modify his fundamentalism. He wanted to be Christian and modify all modifiers, as long as they describe something other than Jesus. He was willing to be forgotten and that is why we remember him. He was willing to be expendable and that’s why we miss him.
Originally posted on . Translated by Team Coalition.