Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury and captain of the good ship Anglican, having steered the ship onto the rocks is bailing furiously in an attempt to stop the vessel from sinking. His officers meanwhile can only give one order ‘Full steam ahead’. Meanwhile most of the deckhands have taken to the lifeboats or jumped into the cold cold water, deserting the sinking ship however they can. The remaining tenacious few of the crew left behind are frantically trying to persuade the officers to alter course and patch the leaks.
A Shrinking Church Despite the crying need of the great majority of Brits to hear the unvarnished gospel. Despite the longing of those few continuing to attend services in the CofE for worship which connects with their lives rather than the concerns of the editors of the Guardian and Pink News. Despite all the evidence of danger to the church, the officers keep on insisting, ‘Those aren’t rocks, it is clear calm water ahead.’
And things continue to get worse. The last census indicated that 46 percent of the English population claimed to be Christian. Less than half the population but still a considerable percentage. However, at the same time normal Sunday CofE attendance for all ages represents just 0.9 percent of the population.
The officers are in a quandary, somehow ‘Pride Month’ celebrations in the local parish church and a helter skelter or pitch and put in the cathedral just don’t seem to be having an evangelistic impact on the unchurched of England. Membership in the CofE is in freefall. The future does not bode well, one in four congregations in 2017 did not have any children at worship services, will this have improved following Welby’s rigorously imposed church lockdown during Covid? What more can the church leadership possibly do? If only there was some method of attracting people to Jesus.
Something More Important Than The Gospel The latest issue causing widespread debate is that of the Anglican evangelical mission body, the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS). CPAS was founded with the ‘conviction that a primary calling of local churches is to enable those who are far from Christ to be reconciled to him, and that CPAS could help resource churches to that end.’ This they have been doing with considerable success for nearly 200 years. Countless lives have been impacted by the work of CPAS in and with local churches. Unfortunately today they are the latest casualty in the war against the Bible being mounted by ‘progressive’ Christians.
The help CPAS has given and continues to give the church is as nothing compared to the offence they have caused the self-regarding woke ecclesiastics who ferociously guard their reputation in the CofE as a leaders of progressive inclusiveness. The staff of CPAS had the temerity to align the organisation with the Evangelical Alliance’s (EA) statement on human sexuality. In particular it was CPAS’ endorsement of EA’s affirmation eight which caused the reaction, ‘We welcome and support the work of those individuals and organisations who responsibly seek to help Christians who experience same-sex attraction as in conflict with their commitment to live in accordance with biblical teaching.’
This brought the predictable accusations of ‘homophobia’ and ‘hate’ from progressive Christians, with the unfounded assertion that CPAS had endorsed conversion therapy. This despite the fact that affirmation eight goes on, ‘This help will involve counsel and pastoral support to live a chaste life and, as part of this process, some may seek and experience changes in the strength or direction of their same-sex attractions.’
Christian progressives are no nicer than secular progressives
When a comment appeared on social media the trustees of CPAS turned tail and had the offending endorsement deleted. This did nothing to calm things down, rather, as always it encouraged the progressives to go further. Christian progressives are no nicer than secular progressives, they are given to the same censorious and sometimes vicious attacks on those with the temerity to disagree with them. When they smelled blood in the water the cyber-bullies, those keyboard warriors of progressive Christianity, leapt into action to repel the insurrectionists and mutineers who insist on the Bible and 2000 years of theology.
Like all elites the ecclesiastical elites believe that they are moderate, sensible centrists, more informed and learned than those undereducated pew fillers who disagree with them, especially those obscurantists who want to follow Scripture. One could almost hear the gasps of horror as the gospelphobic ecclesiastical elites clutched their pearls at the thought of evangelical Christians having the temerity to adhere to biblical doctrines.
Rev Colin C Coward MBE, CofE priest and director of Changing Attitude commenting in ‘Thinking Anglicans’ writes, ‘Friends in CPAS, your Biblical theology is homophobic and prejudiced and abusive of LGBTQIA+ people in church and society. I do not recognise your theology as Christian – Biblical maybe, but not Christian – not all Biblical theology is Christian.’
A Struggle For The Soul of the Church There we have the nub of the matter, our woke ecclesiastics want a theology which countenances the Word of God only when his Word agrees with what they want anyway. Scripture must appear before the bar of their desires and either conform or be found guilty and dismissed. When they say that evangelicals are a threat to the church what they really mean is that evangelicals are a threat to the ecclesiastical elites self-regarding rule of the church and their imposition of a modern non-biblical ideology onto the millennia old theology of the church.
It was ever thus. Sir Thomas More complained that William Tyndale put concern for the Bible before the concern for the church. The Reformers, the Wesleys, wherever anyone has prioritised Scripture over the ecclesiastical organisation the church mandarins and their acolytes have turned on them.
The progressive ecclesiastic priorities the normalisation of homosexuality, the evangelical Christian prioritises the truth of Scripture. Ultimately this is not a controversy about what people do in their bedrooms, it is a struggle for the soul of the church.
A Grain of Sand 
What reason did the CPAS give for deleting their facebook comment?
I feel that it is worse than outright apostasy when churches try and tread two paths at the same time. The Baptist Union is a similar case as they said it was ok for Ministers to perform ss unions but not to engage in them themselves!
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The trustees in their statement, as you indicated, are trying to tread two paths at the same time –
‘With regards to human sexuality, CPAS holds to the historic doctrine of the Church of England, which teaches that ‘marriage is in its nature a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others’ (Canon B30).’
‘*[08.01.24] For the avoidance of any doubt, CPAS is opposed to any form of conversion therapy. In response to concerns, we have removed reference to the Evangelical Alliance document referred to as ‘Affirmations of human sexuality’ whilst we work further to express the CPAS position more clearly.’
They try to maintain they uphold the doctrine of the CofE regarding marriage, whilst at the same time attempt to appease those who wish to fundamentally alter that doctrine.
In case any think this is a Presbyterian picking holes in Anglican behaviour I should remark that Scotland’s largest denomination, the presbyterian Church of Scotland, has gone so far down this road that anything goes
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I feel that all of us who claim to be following Jesus 100% should be praying that we will not do that same thing ourselves. Please Lord give each one of us a pure, undivided heart.
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I’d rather claim to “aim” at following Jesus 100 percent! But I get and appreciate your point. It is difficult to avoid the traps of the enemy, no matter how aware we are of them. He’s good at couching his temptations in convincing language. Prayer against it is powerful, but so much dismissed by believers and non-believers alike.
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Your metaphor chimes with ours in the Diocese of New Westminster, where parishes are exhorted to row harder while for thirty years the ‘leaders’ have been energetically boring holes in the bottom of the boat.
Unfortunately oil was an insufficient preparation for leadership in such a position as Welby’s. Long ago he received a copy of my book with J.I. Packer Holy Homosex. In it we make it clear that the teaching of the Lord Jesus Himself is in question. But he doesn’t seem to have read it. And so he has effectively caused the C of E to part company with the Church Catholic spread out in time and space.
As for the antics of the CPAS, Charles Simeon would be turning in his grave if he were in it.
Mt. 5:27-32: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mt-527-32-dr-priscilla-turner/
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When we consider that it appears that Paula Vennells, disgraced head of the UK Post Office, had only been a priest for ten years in a past time post and yet was Welby’s favourite for promotion to bishop of London in 2017 we have to question his commitment to a managerial ethos in the CofE.
Like you I sometimes wonder what the saints of the past would make of the church today. I shudder to think what my Covenanter ancestors would think of presbyterianism in Scotland today.
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Churches and dioceses that do this sort of thing, privileging one form of unchastity, turn themselves into kleptocracies, where people draw a church salary and eventual pension while believing, teaching and living as they please.
The title of my book with J.I. Packer should read ‘Holy Homosex?: This and That’. It may be bought all over the world. Ten copies could usefully be acquired for a study group. The papers are in chronological order. Ten has been shown to be the maximum practicable number for a small study group: with more than ten, more than one simultaneous conversation will develop.
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You and I go back a long way, Campbell. We have seldom if ever crossed swords about anything. I am glad you wrote about this CPAS v EA news story. I don’t disagree with the gist of what you’ve said here, and have said well (as usual). May God bless you for speaking out. I dare say I am a more appreciative reader of your blog than you have ever been of mine, http://JohnAllman.UK, albeit a blog which has been largely dormant for several years now.
Please forgive me if this information comes across as an attempt to divert some of the web traffic potentially coming your way, but there was another blog post about the same news story a day or two or so before yours, here:
Anglican Theology: A reflection
WHY CPAS IS WRONG ON CONVERSION THERAPY
on which I (and others) have already commented extensively.
For the greater good, I commend to you and your readers, that other blog post, and (of course) my own comments on it. The blogger, Martin, gets down to the nitty-gritty, and so (of course) do my comments, even more so IMHO.
Ultimately, behind the politically-correct or (’tis implied) -incorrect manoeuvering of various para-church agencies desperate for popularity but torn by indecision as to whether today is an Ecclesioates 3 time for refraining from breaking bruised reeds (so-to-speak) or a time for refraining from casting pearls before unappreciative swine, that is to say a time for appeasement or for outright culture war, lies, almost hidden, a profound clash of *doctrines* about how things actually are, in real life – or a clash of *narratives* to put it in today’s parlance.
I thank God that He saved me thoroughly more than 50 years ago from a besetting sin of mine at the time that He had long-since published in holy scripture and through the recognised doctors of the early church, millennia before I was even conceived, that He considered to be an “abomination”, by enabling me, in answer to my earnest, youthful prayers then, to disbelieve a certain false doctrine, to wit the doctrine of unchosen so-called “sexual orientation” that is immutable even for God, and taught to be morally neutral, even though it turns Christian sexual ethics topsy-turvy; doctrines so ubiquitously taught nowadays, even to the extent of becoming part of the new established religion of the post-Christian British state, that believers in those same doctrines have often become incapable of remembering that they were once taught those doctrines – over and over again, especially when watching television – doctrines which what they now take for granted as the truth, perversely denying that their indoctrinated beliefs amount to aptly-called “doctrines” at all!
Please, Campbell and his readers, read Martin’s blog post too, and my comments on it, and respond, either here or there. For otherwise my ashamed confession (but glorious testimony) here might be in vain.
What one believes matters. Doctrine (by which I don’t exactly mean youor own five-point Calvinism – sorry if this disappoints you) changes lives, because rightly dividing the scriptures and teaching accordingly, with or without the help of icons that depict bible stories which the illiterate cannot read for themselves, is what armed the would-be pilgrim and soldier for Christ with what the apostle Paul called the “sword” of the Holy Spirit: or armed the Holy Spirit hinself, when disciplining a disobedient soldier.
To end on a lighter note, here’s a gag I made up earlier:
Question. What does a Campbell say when he’s hungry?
Answer: I don’t know about you, but I could *murder* a McDonalds right now.
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You’ve got to wonder what those clerics think of the original first commandment (Gen 1:28) A strongly heterosexual injunction. Perhaps, one day they’ll delete it from the Bible.
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Effectively that is what happens already. According to them the Bible must come before the bar of their reason to be approved or not according to the standards and values they hold. When this happens they proclaim themselves wiser than the Word of God.
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