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| In a broadcast reflecting on the tremendous amount of media coverage given to the death and funeral of the late Pope one historian said that it showed that Protestant Britain was dead. Another speaker, interestingly a convert from the Church of England to Rome, lamented the fact while agreeing with it. He said that we had lost much that was good from our Protestant heritage, instancing among various examples the loss of the Lord's Day to our national life.
On May 13th inThe Catholic Herald Mary Kenny drew attention to a comment by Mark Almond that if a Martian were to visit this country he would assume that its cultural life was divided between Roman Catholics and atheists. Anglicans, he is said to have commented, are nowhere to be seen on the media, and in any case they tend to bow to Rome as being the more dominant faith. Mary Kenny's explanation was that Protestantism has not stood up strongly enough against secularising and atheistic tendencies. She ended by saying that "the devil has been allowed some of the best tunes in England. Especially in the media".
Ruth Gledhill, religious affairs correspondent forThe Times, denied, in The Church of England Newspaper of the same date, the death of our Protestant heritage. What had died was "an insidious anti-Catholicism that for centuries has poisoned ecumenism and nourished sectarianism with its attendant evils". She goes on to speak of "a newly confident and adult Protestantism, a form of Christianity that can properly admire, respect and even love the mother Church that gave it birth". This has "finally come through the adolescent period of hate-ridden rebellion that drove the initial separation".
We would want to question very seriously some of these statements, particularly those of Ruth Gledhill who does not seem to appreciate how important are the doctrinal differences between Rome and Protestantism over the essential nature of the salvation brought by our Lord Jesus. At the same time, we would be foolish to ignore the degree of truth there exists in them. We have to admit that Protestants sadly must carry some of the blame for justifying such assertions. Yet we believe that the reports of the death of the Protestantism for which we stand are an exaggeration, to borrow Mark Twain's response when he heard a report that he was dead. Our task, big as it may be, is to show that this is so, standing confidently and gladly on "the faith which was once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3). Not only do we stand on it, we are prepared to contend for it, as Jude wrote.
In the first place, we should be clear about one thing. We should not define Protestants today as simply being people who are not (Roman) Catholics. If that were the case adherents of other religions and none would be Protestants, which is manifestly nonsense. Nor can we define them as those who belong to so-called Protestant denominations. There are people in those denominations who certainly do not hold to Protestant doctrines or to belief in the Bible as the only rule for faith and practice.
Protestants are those who hold to the biblical Gospel and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. They define what they mean by this in the biblical teaching rediscovered and formulated at the time of the Reformation and in the century that followed. Throughout the world there are millions of people who are Protestants in this sense even though they may not use that word to describe themselves.
What of our own country? Here too there are many who hold to Protestant convictions. Perhaps they prefer to call themselves Evangelical. Some would define themselves more precisely as Reformed. They belong to different groupings. Some are within the Church of England, some within Presbyterian bodies. There are Methodist, Baptist, Independent Protestants and others in a multiplicity of smaller groupings. Protestantism is certainly not dead, but it is not, to use a sporting metaphor, punching its spiritual weight. Here lies our problem. Why should this be?
One reason is found in a fault frequently remarked on by Roman Catholics, the lack of unity that exists among us. This is tragic, because if we are genuine-ly born again of the Spirit we already are united in the one Body of Christ and we should be able to speak with one voice about the spiritual issues that are as vital for people today as they always have been. There are differences between us, but we should be united on the Gospel message and on the authority of Scripture. It is a rebuke to us that the denominational leaderships we criticise because of what we see as their compromise with truth appear more zealous for unity than we are. The ARCIC document on Mary, that we discuss later in this issue, is a case in point.
How we can express our unity to greater effect is a matter which should concern us. While we may find it hard to overcome differences of interpretation about church government, baptism, and forms of worship we should surely be able to express a more Christian spirit in our relationships with one another and a willingness to co-operate wherever we can. We ought to be able to express with absolute clarity the uniqueness of our Lord Jesus Christ as the only way to God. We ought also to be agreed on the biblical analysis of our universal sinfulness and the need for the work of the Holy Spirit to bring us to repentance and faith.We should share a common concern to be holy, and show the love and reverence we ought towards our God. We should also be driven by a desire to fulfil the commission to preach the Gospel to all mankind with love and compassion. We should want to be one in our likeness to the Saviour Himself.
Perhaps our greatest need is to be more conscious than we appear to have been in the past that all believers are united under one Lord. The Church is not ours, it is His. Our local church is not ours, it is His. Our organisations are not ours, but His. We affirm that Jesus Christ is Lord. He is indeed, but not because we have made Him so. We cannot make Him Lord. He has been given that name and position by the Father Himself. It is our role to acknowledge Him to be such, not in word alone but in the loving obedience of our daily living.
This may sound trite, and it could easily be so if it consisted only in empty words. Yet what a dynamic spiritually consists in the reality of the lives of those who truly serve Christ as their Lord and Saviour. Christian history records what has been done and what advances have been made by those wholly committed to the Lord. It is important also to remember that obedience involves not only love for the Lord, but love for one another. That is not easy. We may frequently fail at this point and this may account for the absence of the blessing we so much desire and for which we pray.
Our Lord Jesus Himself spoke words that need to be written in our minds and on our hearts. "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one : another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:34,35). This is what should characterise relationships in our local churches and between Christians from our varied groupings.
For more than a century the Keswick Convention has taken as its motto "all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). There are other inter-denominational evangelical gatherings which by their very nature express the same conviction. Organisations like Affinity and the Evangelical Alliance act as evangelical umbrellas for many local churches. A good number of missionary societies contain members from different denominations. Specialist agencies like Tearfund, Care, and the Christian Institute draw support from and give help to a variety of churches. There is a proper diversity within the unity of the Body of Christ, but it needs to be held together by love, even when we have disagreements.
Protestantism is not dead. There is much activiry, but we still face this real challenge to demonstrate that love which our Lord commanded. We must respond to that challenge if we truly want to glorify God and preserve Gospel truth in our land. All kinds of problems exist in society, and they are going to get worse, not better, unless there is a turning back to God. At times it seems as though the whole country is on a self-destruct course from which there is no escape. Protestants must, in love, declare that there is no escape without repentance and a turning to the Lord Jesus.
However, we cannot do this in our own strength. We need to humble ourselves and seek God's mercy. We must pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to be at work in us in a real and lasting way. We should be ready for all the artificial appearances of success engineered by human ingenuity to be swept away. Our hope must be set on God alone, and His priorities must be ours.
Originally published in July - August 2005 issue of Protestant Truth. |
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