I seem to remember that a great prince of English Nonconformity, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, once said something like, "It is no good protesting, 'We are all evangelicals, we are all evangelicals,' but never defining what an evangelical is." Dale A. Johnson's world of 19th- and early 20th-century English Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Methodists is one in which almost everyone seems to be an evangelical, but the question of the meaning of the term is repeatedly elided. In his defense, Johnson is seeking to offer a corrective to an established narrative of decline in which all deviations from the doctrinal expressions and emphases of earlier evangelicals are viewed as, by definition, not evangelical.

The wider intellectual climate changed dramatically during the century 1825-1925. The older evangelicalism rested on the authority of ideas such as natural theology and the classic proofs for the existence of God, which were respected in the wider world of thought. It expounded its doctrines in an environment in which the modern discipline of biblical criticism had not yet yielded its harvest, and popular sensibilities were not yet greatly troubled by questions regarding the morality of eternal punishment and substitutionary atonement. In the face of these later winds of change, English Nonconformity produced some hard-working, reflective, spiritual leaders, who endeavored to keep faith with the evangelical tradition while reconstructing it to suit new conditions.

The Congregational theologian R. W. Dale is a noble example. He knew that the old evangelicalism of his ministerial predecessor, J. A. James, the author of The Anxious Enquirer after Salvation Directed and Encouraged, could not simply be parroted to a new generation which possessed an altered worldview. Nevertheless, in his own well-circulated volume, The Atonement, Dale fought for the substance of an evangelical witness on Christ's work, while adapting some of the language and imagery in response to recent challenges. Likewise P. T. Forsyth, although he had learned much from theological liberalism, was ready to defend the centrality of the cross in an Edwardian context. Johnson argues persuasively that this understudied third way between rejecting either the old faith or the modern world was actually the one which most Nonconformist theologians and ministers were seeking to travel.

Nevertheless, his zeal for his theme seems to push him toward the opposite extreme from the one he wishes to correct. It is almost as if everyone emerging from an evangelical background is viewed as, by definition, an evangelical, virtually irrespective of how their theological convictions might evolve. Johnson seems to have internalized the assumption that the label "liberal" is a pejorative one and he protectively guards his subjects from it. But his reluctance to draw such boundaries ironically weakens the valuable presentation he is making: the majority tradition can only fully be shown to be evangelical by defining what this means and what forsaking it would have entailed.

Johnson argues that the changes these Nonconformists made were not "a decline from earlier evangelical vitality and appeal" but rather "deeply serious efforts to come to terms with modernity." These categories, however, are not mutually exclusive. "Decline," of course, is pejorative, but, once that is set aside, arguing that someone's Christianity is no longer evangelical is not the same thing as accusing it of being shallow or frivolous (the true opposites of "deeply serious") or insincere or unspiritual. Johnson concludes that what emerged during this period was "different models of how to be evangelical," which is certainly true, but surely what also emerged were different models of how to be Christian. An evangelicalism that is ready to learn from Friedrich Schleiermacher is one thing, but when Mansfield College has a stained glass image of the grand old man of theological liberalism specially made to inspire the faithful in its chapel (a detail that Johnson does not mention), might that not be a clue that we are no longer dealing with a form of Christianity that can still meaningfully be discussed under the "evangelical" appellation?

A theme running throughout this study is the role of the ministry, beginning with an examination of the changing nature of ministerial training. Should higher education be a prerequisite for entering the ministry? As the century progressed, the Nonconformists increasingly answered this question with a "yes" and their definition of "higher" became increasingly higher. The Congregationalists, for example, began the century with only humble academies that could not offer degrees and ended it with an erudite college community safely ensconced at Oxford University.

During the first third of the 19th century it was impossible for Nonconformists to receive a degree in England because the universities (there were only Oxford and Cambridge) required students to take an oath assenting to the doctrines of the Church of England. Thus excluded, they formed little training centers of their own, and then began their long march toward academic respectability. To a certain extent, especially in North America, the clock was re-set on this process in the early 20th century when many evangelicals fled from the pervasive theological liberalism of established universities and seminaries and founded their own institutions.

Therefore, the minority voices in the Victorian era that raised concerns regarding this increasing prioritization of academic excellence still have resonance. Will a more academically rigorous approach encourage colleges and prospective ministers to confuse scholarly prowess with more telling qualifications for ministry such as a clear sense of calling, proven preaching ability, and genuine piety? Will people who would make very able preachers, and ministers with a common touch, but who have little academic bent, be excluded from the ministry? Will higher education dull the zeal and weaken the theological convictions of promising candidates?

But if these questions have their place, the majority had questions of its own, which put the matter in a rather different light. Is ignorance preferable to knowledge? Should prospective ministers be more intellectually lazy than those training for secular professions? Should ministers be able to comprehend and address the intellectual climate of the age?

The logic of these latter questions eventually won the day. Moreover, the proper relationship between higher learning and ministerial training could not be settled as if it were merely a case of discovering a timeless biblical or ecclesiological ideal. English society as a whole was becoming more educated, more intellectually curious, more willing to demand from their authorities credible responses to complicated issues of modern thought, and the Nonconformist ministry could not easily ignore such changes in the climate.

Perhaps the expectation that there must be one, normative mold into which all potential ministers ought to be squeezed is itself part of the problem. The Congregational minister J. B. Paton's scheme for a fairly short, largely practical course which would help to equip a certain type of person to have an effective evangelistic ministry, and his co-religionist A. M. Fairbairn's dream of a Nonconformist college playing a full part in the life of Oxford University, could both serve the wider cause of Christ in their own way.

Helmut Thielicke once wrote, "Actually the unfaithful witness is the one who simply transmits the conventional and familiar, unchanged and undigested. … He who simply repeats the old phrases takes no risks; it is easy to remain orthodox and hew the old line. But he who speaks to this hour's need and translates the message will always be skirting the edge of heresy." Johnson has given us a vivid and detailed portrait of the painstaking mental activity of several generations engaged in this vital theological task. He brings us close enough in to see the beads of sweat.

Moreover, one of the more haunting points he makes is that during much of the 19th century, the faculty members at Nonconformist colleges were routinely using their lectures to address 18th-century controversies that were largely irrelevant to their students, while steadfastly ignoring contemporary issues which urgently needed some response. To note that when they did start to address them they did not always get it right, does not mean that we do not respect them for trying. Nor that there is any faithful alternative to taking such risks.

If Johnson assumes that theological change need never create a crisis of identity for evangelicals, Grayson Carter's study is about evangelicals who found that they could not move through life so smoothly. Those who have studied Anglicanism in the second half of the 19th century and watched it in the 20th could well have a working hypothesis in their minds that while Anglicans might grumble about seceding, come what may, they always find a reason to stay in.

The exception, of course, is High Churchmen. It is well known that from the time of John Henry Newman onwards, some of them are apt to rise so high that they eventually float off to Rome. On the other hand, nothing ever seems to dislodge from their secure livings those on the theologically liberal end of the spectrum. In the second half of the 19th century, the theological maverick J.W. Colenso held on to his bishopric despite virtually every English bishop publicly calling on him to resign. The "Sea of Faith" network today represents ministers who sometimes appear to assume that no doctrine is so essential that its denial ought to cause one to reflect on the viability of one's position. I remember hearing an interview with an English vicar who had recently abandoned any belief in God. When asked if he would resign, he replied without missing a beat, "Now that we know there is no god, my people need me more than ever."

But what of evangelical Anglicans? Is it not the same with them? In their first generation, George Whitefield and John Wesley never found their way to secession, despite a fair amount of provocation. As to the current generation, as long ago as the 1960s David Martyn Lloyd-Jones apparently hinted that leading evangelicals such as John Stott and J.I. Packer should consider whether their testimony might not be clearer outside Anglicanism, but however choppy the waters have become since then, they have not chosen to abandon the old ship.

In this well-researched, important study, Grayson Carter reminds us that it was not always so. While the historical spotlight has hitherto been on secessions to Rome, he documents over a hundred cases of evangelical clergymen leaving the Church of England in the first half of the 19th century. Despite the Anglican assumption that it is Dissenters who are inherently prone to schism, one of the curious points of English church history is how often new denominations are founded by erstwhile Anglicans. The original Dissenting bodies such as Congregationalists and Baptists, of course, were founded by Anglicans from the Church's Puritan wing. Eighteenth-century Methodists emerged, not out of these Dissenting denominations, but once again from the established church. Likewise, in the ground covered by this volume, bodies that emerged in the 19th century—such as the Plymouth Brethren and the Catholic Apostolic Church—once again gained their lifeblood from Anglicanism.

So what prompted the evangelical seceders to leave? From the mass of detailed evidence that Carter has offered, I discern two broad themes. First, there was a desire to have a church that was more "apostolic" in its character, one closer to perceived New Testament patterns. The Irvingites made the leap to the recovery of the gift of tongues 70 years before the start of the Pentecostal movement. There was something about Christian thought in the nineteenth century that made restorationist visions particularly alluring. Although Carter's monograph keeps to its geographical brief, it is illuminating to think of these emerging British denominations alongside American movements from the same period such as the Disciples of Christ / Christian Churches and (to move beyond the recognizably Christian orbit) the Mormons.

The second prompt was unease over some apparently unevangelical aspects of the Prayer Book and the rise of the High Church party. A surprising amount of Carter's story revolves around the mischief-making of one individual, Henry Phillpotts, the High Church bishop of Exeter. Phillpotts' antics could make even an entirely sanctified Wesleyan start to fantasize about murder. A local newspaper quipped that their bishop was always "in hot water, but never clean." The notorious Gorham Case, which provoked some secessions and might have led to many more if the evangelical side had not finally triumphed, resulted from Phillpotts' refusal to institute a clergyman to a living in his diocese. George Gorham was deemed unsuitable because he did not believe in baptismal regeneration. Another cause cèlèbre was occasioned by Phillpotts making use of a law that had lain dormant for 150 years, which forbade seceding clergymen from ministering as Dissenters. The minister in question, James Shore, would not back down either, and thus was eventually imprisoned—in the eyes of most evangelicals, for merely preaching the gospel.

Another question then arises, however, which Carter does not address: Why did Anglican seceders so often deem it necessary to create their own denominations instead of joining existing Dissenters? I suppose it is natural enough that those following apostolic visions would have desired the illusion of a tabula rasa. For the rest, the opposite impulse appears to have won out: a desire to retain as much continuity as possible, especially the familiar phrases of the Prayer Book (albeit skillfully edited in order to, so to speak, remove the high places).

Anglican worship without all the baggage of the Anglican Communion continues to be an alluring prospect for some evangelicals. Wheaton, Illinois, where I live, has more than one such option on offer. Nevertheless, Carter's research warns that secession was the road to oblivion. Clergymen who had been celebrated figures in the established church, such as Baptist Noel, one of the Queen's chaplains, found that their ministries diminished once they left Anglicanism. The quasi-Anglican denominations faired even worse. The so-called "Western Schism" fell apart as soon as it happened. The Free Church of England and the Reformed Episcopal Church merged in 1927 and their website now proudly boasts that they have "over 25 Churches spread throughout the United Kingdom."

Carter's study would appear to warn that it is not easy to be an evangelical Anglican outside of Anglicanism; and the story of English Free Church denominations in the rest of the 20th century might cause Johnson to reflect that it is harder for Nonconformity to survive beyond the bounds of evangelicalism than the sanguine tone of his study would lead one to believe.

Timothy Larsen, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, is associate professor of theology at Wheaton College and the author most recently of Christabel Pankhurst: Fundamentalism and Feminism in Coalition (Boydell, 2002).

Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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