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Anglican Evangelicals and Revival, 1945–59
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
This essay is a study of the religious revival that didn’t quite happen in Britain after the Second World War. It focuses on conservative evangelical Anglicans, whose own renaissance during these years puts them at the centre of discussions about the post-war increase in churchgoing. Its central contention is that human agency and cultural peculiarities are just as important for understanding this chapter of English religious history as any seemingly inexorable, broad-based social changes inimical to religious practice. More particularly, the chapter focuses on Anglican evangelical clergy and their attitudes to religious revival. In so doing, it highlights the fact that the practices and prejudices of church people are an essential part of the story of post-war English religious life. Scholars looking to explain religious malaise in post-war Britain have frequently looked everywhere except the decisions made by the churches and their leaders, the assumption seeming to be that because decline was unavoidable there was nothing pastors, priests or their congregations could do to stem the tide. This chapter seeks to redress the balance by examining the ways in which evangelical Anglican clergy pursued revival in England, some of the obstacles they faced in this pursuit, and how they responded when they felt they had failed. Among the things they discovered was that ‘revival’ was a word to be handled with care.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 44: Revival and Resurgence in Christian History , 2008 , pp. 307 - 317
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2008
References
1 ‘Bishop Gough on the “A” Bomb Threat – Sees Hope for Evangelical Revival’, Church of England Newspaper, 7 October 1949, 5. Ian Randall has commented on the widespread nature of such hopes in Britain in the late-1940s; Ian M. Randall, ‘Conservative Constructionist: the Early Influence of Billy Graham in Britain’, Evangelical Quarterly 67 (1995), 309–33, at 325–6.
2 Gough, Hugh, ‘Modern Trends in Evangelism’, in The Church Extends Her Frontiers: the 121st Islington Clerical Conference (London, 1955), 40–50, at 50 Google Scholar.
3 M. A. P. Wood, The Essence of Evangelicalism: a Symposium: III’, The Churchman 59 (1955), 15.
4 ‘Editorial’, The Churchman 59 (1955), 195; The Bishop’s Letter’, Lichfield Diocesan Magazine, June 1954, 58; and ‘On the Verge of a Spiritual Awakening?’, English Churchman, 28 May 1954, 255.
5 Currie, Robert, Gilbert, Alan, and Horsley, Lee, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles Since 1700 (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar, appendix.
6 Weight, Richard, Patriots: National Identity in Britain, 1940–2000 (corr. edn, London, 2003), 223–4 Google Scholar; Brown, Callum G., The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800–2000 (London, 2001), 5, 187 Google Scholar. Brown, , 233–47 Google Scholar provides the best recent bibliography on Christianity in post-war Britain.
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8 See, for example, ‘“Evangelicals Affirm”: a New Alternative – Replies and Criticisms’, The Record, 17 September 1948, 527; ‘Whither Islington’, Church of England Newspaper, 14 January 1949, 8; ‘Evangelicalism – Party or School of Thought?’, Church of England Newspaper, 25 March 1949, 8; and ‘Preface’, in Crockford’s Clerical Directory 1955–6 (Oxford, 1956), xi.
9 See, for example, Michael Ramsey, The Menace of Fundamentalism’, The Bishoprick, February 1956, 24; ‘Preface’, Crockford’s Clerical Directory 1953–4 (Oxford, 1954), xx; and Eric Kemp, ‘Our Glorious Heritage’, Church Times, 8 July 1955,3.
10 For evidence of this, see the statistics collected in Alister Chapman, ‘Secularisation and the Ministry of John R. W. Stott at All Souls, Langham Place, 1950–70’, JEH 56: 3 (2005), 496–513, at 511–13. The first attempt to quantify churchgoers by different, trans-denominational traditions such as ‘evangelical’ did not take place until the late 1980s. See Brierley, Peter, ‘Christian’England: What the 1989 English Church Census Reveals (London, 1991), especially 161–5 Google Scholar.
11 For example, Brown, Death of Christian Britain, 170–5; Weight, Patriots, 223–4; D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: a History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989), 253–5.
12 Weight, Patriots, 223.
13 Brown, Death of Christian Britain, 170; Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory: Britain 1 çoo-2000 (2nd edn, London, 2004), 240–3.
14 ‘A Key Commission’, The Times, 6 June 1945, 5.
15 “Easter Term at Cambridge’, The Times, 22 May 1945, 6.
16 Towards the Conversion of England (London, 1945). See also Short, A. Rendle, ‘The Place of the I.V.F. in the World of Tomorrow’, The Inter-Varsity Magazine, Lent Term 1944, 2–3 Google Scholar, and Buxton, B. Godfrey, ‘Let us Prepare Now’, The Inter-Varsity Magazine, Lent Term 1944, 7 Google Scholar.
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18 See Gough, , ‘Modern Trends’, 49–50 Google Scholar; and Gough, Hugh, ‘The Church of England (Evangelical)’, in Gough, Hugh et al.. Our Churches & Why We Believe in Them (London, 1961), 11–37, at 22–3 Google Scholar.
19 ‘And After?’, The Times, 3 June 1953, 13; ‘Onward to Glory’, Evening Standard, 2 June 1953.4.
20 On the Anglican nature of the coronation, see Hastings, A History of English Christianity, 1920–2000 (4th edn, London, 2001), 424–5.
21 Wilson-Haffenden, D.J., in the foreword to Frank Colquhoun, Harringay Story: the Official Record of the Billy Graham Greater London Crusade, 1954 (London, 1955), vii Google Scholar.
22 John Stott, ‘Rekindling the Inner Fire’, in All Souls (the parish magazine of All Souls Church, Langham Place, London; hereafter All Souls), January 1960, 13–14. In the final part of the quotation, Stott was quoting from the text for the sermon, 2 Timothy 1:6–7.
23 On anti-Americanism in England’s middle classes, see Weight, Patriots, 175–6.
24 See the collection of letters to the editor of The Times (some of which were supportive of Graham) collected in Fundamentalism: a Religious Problem (London, 1955).
25 Hugh Gough, ‘Greater London Crusade’, All Souls, November 1953, 16.
26 Ibid., 16.
27 John Stott, The Rector’s Letter’, All Souls, March 1954, 10.
28 On Harringay as a more usually working class venue for boxing, ice hockey and circuses, see Colquhoun, Harringay Story, 84.
29 Ibid., 205–19.
30 Ibid., 211, 142.
31 In one of its very few mentions of the crusade, the paper reported on an open-air meeting on Streatham Common where the heavy rain meant Cliff Barrows was unable to continue playing his trombone and a sagging platform required the movement of heavier members of the platform party to the edges; ‘Graham’, Evening Standard, 17 May 1954, 5.
32 ‘Communist Defeated in Union Fight’, Evening Standard, 23 February 1954, 10.
33 On the populist nature of Moody’s revivalism, see Coffey, John, ‘Democracy and Popular Religion: Moody and Sankey’s Mission to Britain, 1873–1875’, in Biagini, Eugenio F., ed., Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931 (Cambridge, 1996), 93–119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 ‘Anniversary’, Crusade, March 1959, 5.
35 Gough, The Church of England’, 3 5–6.
36 On anti-Americanism among Britain’s elites, see Weight, Patriots, 176.
37 Jean Rees, His Name was Tom (London, 1973), 126.
38 This concern was very evident in John Stott’s ministry in the early 1960s. See, for example, Stott, ‘Rekindling the Inner Fire’; and idem, ‘A Study of Revival’, All Souls, March 1960, 12–14.
39 For example, Harper, Michael, None Can Guess (London, 1971), 41 Google Scholar. On the history of the charismatic movement in Britain, see Hocken, Peter, Streams of Renewal: the Origins and Early Development of the Charismatic Movement in Great Britain (Exeter, 1986)Google Scholar.
40 The National Evangelical Anglican Congress at Keele in 1967 was the defining moment. See Bebbington, Evangelicalism, 249–50.
41 For example, Bray, Gerald, ‘Anglo-Catholicism – Facing the Challenge of the ‘80s’, Church of England Newspaper, 20 November 1981, 9 Google Scholar; and McGrath, Alister E., To Know and Serve God: a Life of J. I. Packer (London, 1997), 133 Google Scholar.
42 See Cox, Jeffrey, ‘Master Narratives of Long-term Religious Change’, in McLeod, H. and Ustorf, W., eds, The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750–2000, (Cambridge, 2003), 201–17, at 214 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 See especially Brown, Death of Christian Britian.
44 For the best recent work on working class religious beliefs and practices, see Williams, S. C., Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark a 880–1939 (Oxford, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mark Smith’s essay The Roots of Resurgence: Evangelical Parish Ministry in the mid-Twentieth Century’, 318–28, in this volume, provides an excellent example of the kind of story needed, and one that demonstrates that Anglican evangelicals for whom Oxbridge was a foreign country could flourish in a working-class community.