Evangelicals under attack
Is it just me, or is evangelical Christianity under greater attack than it has been for many years? I just can't remember any time in the last couple of decades when I have read so many vociferous and vitriolic attacks.
The latest one I've read in The Guardian is an attack on Wycliffe Hall, an evangelical, Anglican theological college in the UK. It has received some unwanted publicity recently after the appointment of a principal who, shock horror, appears to be an Anglican who believes in quite a few of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion.
The Guardian article argues (and I use the word ‘argues’ loosely) that Oxford University should sever its links with Wycliffe Hall, and that the Anglican Church should likewise cut the college adrift.
But it is not the fact that the article calls for this action that is surprising; the surprising thing is the absurdly inflammatory language that is used when talking about the evangelicals at Wycliffe Hall. They are described as “religious extremists” (yes, let's just lump them in with Osama bin Laden; that seems fair). Supposedly Wycliffe Hall is home to a “new wave of reactionary evangelicalism” that “has no love in its heart for the values of learning”, and which “does little more than peddle the techniques of Christian salesmanship”. The only evidence provided for this assertion in the article is ... oh, sorry, my mistake; there is no evidence offered. Even a cursory glance at the courses offered at Wycliffe Hall shows that it is a place of serious theological scholarship.
Conservative evangelical views on women's ordination are described in the article as “morally abhorrent”, without any justification provided for that extraordinary view. No doubt the author is relying on that increasingly common argument, ‘such is the view of all right-thinking people’.
And it is asserted that “places such as Wycliffe are turning Anglicanism into a cult”. Now my dictionary (the Macquarie; I won't use the Oxford just in case those evil evangelicals have got in there and fiddled with some of the definitions—we certainly wouldn't put it past them) says that a cult is “a particular system of religious worship, especially with reference to its rites and ceremonies”. By that definition, Anglicanism has been a cult for some time, I would have thought. But using the word ‘cult’ is ideal for generating a good dose of irrational fear and loathing.
And finally, the highly inclusive sentiment is expressed by the author that “Anglicanism is fast becoming the nasty party at prayer, with traditionally inclusive theology being submerged by a bargain-basement prejudice that damns to hell all those who disagree”. No doubt the author would damn the evangelicals to hell too ... if he actually believed in hell. Instead, he'll damn them to be ‘cut adrift’ so that they are no longer so troublesome to the nice liberals in the C of E.
And the saddest thing? This attack comes not from an atheistic secularist, like Richard Dawkins, but from the “vicar of Putney”.