Part 2 (2/2)

There might well be an enormous growth of meetings, both of clergy and laity of different denominations, for conference, devotion, even retreat. We want more than one ”Swanwick.” Can we not go further, and draw together by experimenting with each other's devotions or organisations of proved value? For instance, I wonder if it is suggesting too much, to suggest that if Nonconformists appropriated with vigour our Christian year, they would be sharers with us of a devotional joy and help, which would certainly promote spiritual sympathy. In the same way, the Church of England has been crying out for some method of using the spiritual gifts of her laymen in church. Why not borrow notions from those who know how to do it?

These are but sc.r.a.ppy examples of ways by which right spirit can be developed within the single communion, or between separated bodies. The _right spirit_ won, the whole battle is won.

Naturally there are many who desire already to go much further and faster. Intercommunion, our goal, is of course impossible at this stage owing to seriously differing convictions on faith and order; and the plain fact that it would cause more cleavage than it healed. But how about interchange of pulpits? The Evangelicals at Cheltenham demanded this as a regular practice. The rest of the Church feels strongly that the time for this has not arrived yet; that haphazard invitations by individual vicars to ministers of convictions widely different are undesirable. The time has come for conference, but not yet for any facile overpa.s.sing of the facts and reasons for historical separations.

Nor do we want to run the risks of indiscipline and disorderliness resulting from such individual action. The Church of England can only be of help to the cause of unity where she acts as a whole. Matters such as interchange of pulpits should be tackled by our suggested Council of Unity. A suggestion in the _Challenge_ of July 19 might well be favourably considered by it. There are Nonconformists of acknowledged eminence, learning, and inspiration, from whose books the Church of England already has received much. We should all be glad to receive likewise from their lips. If a selected number were officially invited by the Church to prophesy in our midst, an immense and religiously fruitful step would have been taken, in perfect order. The plan might well be reciprocal.

The same leading article proposed that ministers of other denominations should be asked by such congregations as wished, to come and explain to them frankly their standpoints of doctrine and order. I am sure that all communions might be, and now should be, more brave in explaining themselves to each other. The gain in preventing misunderstanding and destroying suspicion and unfriendliness would be great, and I can see no loss anywhere about such a proceeding.

Have you read the story of the Woolwich Crusade, published by the S.P.C.K. (1_s._ 3_d._)? The Crusade movement and method is a new thing.

Its idea is not that of a mission--to increase or improve the members.h.i.+p of a particular denomination, but to bring G.o.d and the meaning of Christ into the life and problems of to-day. It is doing the same sort of work which chaplains in France do, among the munitioners, artisans, and labour world at home. Perhaps our Nonconformist brethren could join us here. The difficulties would, I think, merely be those of organisation.

Thanks to the College system, and to the Student Christian movement, Churchmen and Nonconformists are as friendly in this University as they are in France; and joint devotion is usual. We have a great responsibility here amid the young and the enthusiastic, and good feeling is both easier to achieve, and more widespread in result, at a University than anywhere else. Well, we are awake to our chances, and will do our best.

(_e_) This leaves but one more subject to touch on: the old, hard, question of Church order, and the orders of ministry. But all looks in the best sense hopeful here, very hopeful, since the striking report signed by the thirteen members of the sub-committee appointed by the Archbishops' Committee, and by representatives of the English Free Churches' Commissions. Let me quote it.

Looking as frankly and as widely as possible at the whole situation, we desire with a due sense of responsibility to submit for the serious consideration of all the parts of a divided Christendom what seem to us the necessary conditions of any possibility of reunion: That continuity with the historic Episcopate should be effectively preserved. That, in order that the rights and responsibilities of the whole Christian community in the government of the Church may be adequately recognised, the Episcopate should rea.s.sume a const.i.tutional form both as regards the method of the election of the Bishop as by clergy and people, and the method of government after election.... The acceptance of the fact of Episcopacy and not any theory as to its character should be all that is asked for.... It would no doubt be necessary before any arrangement for corporate reunion could be made to discuss the exact functions which it may be agreed to recognise as belonging to the Episcopate, but we think this can be left to the future.

The acceptance of Episcopacy on these terms should not involve any Christian community in the necessity of disowning its past, but should enable all to maintain the continuity of their witness and influence as heirs and trustees of types of Christian thought, life, and order, not only of value to themselves, but of value to the Church as a whole....

It would be difficult to imagine a wiser, braver, or happier statement than this in the whole history of the Church. A landmark indeed! The Chaplains to the Forces in France almost shouted for joy. At one stroke, the first and greatest incompatibility of conviction has been cleared out of the way. Perhaps that is too strong--or prophetic--a way of putting it. Let us say rather, that at least the question of Episcopacy and Church order has been raised to a new plane, where all can discuss it, and think it out, not only peaceably, but with good hope of new wealth of conception and polity pouring into the old, rigid, bitter, rival views of church government. In France I corresponded with a Wesleyan chaplain on the subject of orders and ordination. He wrote a careful letter affirming the historic Nonconformist position about ministry. But, he ended, it would all be changed, if re-ordination could be presented and accepted as a great outward ”Sacrament of Love” which reunited us. That is more than the Church of England has ever asked, for she regards ordination as a Sacrament of Order merely, not of Spiritual Love. But let us gladly put the higher value upon it. And the day will surely come, unless goodhearted Christians settle down to accept the intolerable burden of permanent separation in communion and wors.h.i.+p, when this Sacrament of Love be celebrated, and the Church of England ordains the Free Church ministry, and the Free Churches commission us, to work each and all in the flocks that have been made one Fold.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] In the paragraphs which follow, I owe much to the Bishop of Zanzibar's _The Fulness of Christ_, perhaps the deepest and ablest of all the numerous Anglican books on Reunion.

[15] It is fair to state that after this lecture was delivered, I received a note from one who had been at Cheltenham, saying that my references to it gave an inaccurate impression; and that the findings were only ”an expression of opinion.” To those, however, who read the published account of the meeting, whether in the _Record_ or _Guardian_, much more seemed to be intended.

[16] Quoted from the Second Interim Report of the Archbishops' Committee and the representatives of the Free Church Commissions.

UNITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN DENOMINATIONS

III. THE PROBLEM OF THE ENGLISH FREE CHURCHES

By the Rev. W. B. SELBIE, M.A., D.D.

While I think that what I say may be fairly taken to represent the general mind of these churches it must be understood that I do not in any way commit them but speak only for myself. I propose first to recall the circ.u.mstances which gave rise to these churches and the conditions which still operate in maintaining them as separate Christian bodies, and then to give some account of the various movements towards reunion in which they have taken part. The Baptists and Congregationalists you will remember arose at a time when members.h.i.+p in the Anglican Church was a formal and perfunctory thing. It was open to every paris.h.i.+oner and meant very little in the way of Christian life or witness. The first Nonconformists stood for the principle that members.h.i.+p in Christian churches should be confined to genuinely Christian people, and in order to secure this they formed separated churches, on the New Testament model, of those who were able to give effective witness of their Christian calling. That such churches should be self-governed followed almost as a matter of course. Their meeting in the name of Christ secured His presence among them and the guidance of His spirit in their doings. But it is always important to remember that their essential characteristic is not either democracy in church government or dissent from the Establishment, but the positive witness to purity of members.h.i.+p and to the sole heads.h.i.+p of Jesus Christ just described. The Wesleyan Church, the parent of the whole great Methodist movement, arose at the end of the 18th century from somewhat similar reasons. There was never anything schismatic in the spirit of John Wesley, but when he found that the rigour and stiffness of Anglicanism made a free spiritual witness almost impossible, he was driven, like the Nonconformists of the Elizabethan times, to set up separate churches. While it is quite true that the great principle for which English Nonconformity has stood is now almost universally accepted, and that what may be called the negative witness of the Free Churches is much less necessary than it used to be, there is still room for their positive contribution to the religious life of the country, for their witness to freedom, spirituality, and the rights of the people in the Church. For a long time, no doubt, they did rejoice in the dissidence of their dissent, and they suffered, and still suffer, to some degree, from a Pharisaic feeling of superiority to those whom they regard as bound by tradition and State rule. The great majority among them, however, have long since come to feel that they have more in common with one another and with many in the Anglican Church than they have been hitherto prepared to admit, and that existence in isolation from the rest of Christendom is neither good for them nor helpful to the cause of Christ and His Kingdom. This feeling first took definite shape about the year 1890 in connexion with what are now known as the Grindelwald Conferences. For three successive years informal parties of clergy and ministers were arranged by Sir Henry Lunn, at Grindelwald and Lucerne, with the object of getting representatives of the different churches together in order to exchange views on the subject of union, and to create an atmosphere of mutual knowledge, sympathy, and friendliness. Although no practical steps directly followed them, these conferences undoubtedly did good by removing misunderstandings and paving a way for further intercourse. To many of the Free Churchmen who attended them they seem to have suggested for the first time the evils of our unhappy divisions, and they certainly created a desire for better relations. It became obvious that one of the necessary first steps in this direction would be the setting up of a closer cooperation among the Free Churches themselves, and of breaking down the denominational isolation in which they too often lived. Further conferences were held in England at Manchester, Bradford, London and other centres, the ultimate issue of which was the foundation of the National Federation of the Evangelical Free Churches under the guidance of the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, Dr Berry of Wolverhampton, Dr Mackennal of Bowdon, and Dr Munro Gibson of London, along with laymen like Sir Percy Bunting and Mr George Cadbury. The aim of the Federation was to bring all the evangelical Nonconformist churches into closer a.s.sociation in order that they might in various localities take concerted action on questions affecting their common faith and interests and the social, moral, and religious welfare of the community. Since that time the work of the Federation has gradually covered the whole country through local councils working on a Free Church parish system, and engaging in various forms of social and evangelistic effort. The representative central council has become a powerful instrument for furthering the cause of the Free Churches and for bringing their influence to bear on social and political matters. It must be freely admitted that this council has sometimes gone further in political action than some of the churches have been altogether prepared for. From the first, so representative a Nonconformist as the late Dr Dale of Birmingham stood aloof from it, on the ground that it tended to divert the energy of the churches from the proper channels and to involve them too deeply in political controversy. In this action he was supported by many of the more conservative elements in the churches themselves, particularly as the circ.u.mstances of the time compelled the council to engage in a good deal of political agitation. In spite of this, however, there is no doubt that the Free Church Council movement as a whole has had the effect its first promoters intended and desired, and has brought all the Free Churches into much closer relations with one another, and has established them in a position of mutual understanding and sympathy.

Its chief weakness has been that it has depended for support on individual churches rather than on the denominations they represented.

It is the consciousness of this which has led the way to a later movement in the direction of still closer federation. The lead has been taken by the Rev. J. H. Shakespeare, who, as President of the Free Church Council in 1916, propounded an elaborate scheme for the federation of the Free Church denominations. In his first presidential address under the t.i.tle ”The Free Churches at the Cross-roads” he put forward an unanswerable case for the union of the whole of the Free Churches of England. He pointed to the fact that for many years past these churches have suffered a serious decline in the number of their members and of their Sunday school scholars and teachers; and he found one of the chief causes of this in their excessive denominationalism, which led to over-lapping and rivalry. He pleaded that the old sectarian distinctions had now ceased to represent vital issues, and to appeal to the best elements both in the churches and in the nation outside; and he urged that the maintenance of these distinctions now tended to destroy the collective witness of the Free Churches and involved an immense waste of men, money and energy. For the sake of efficiency, as well as in order to maintain a proper Christian comity, he argued that it was absolutely necessary to put an end to this condition of things. As long as the Free Churches were thus divided, they could not expect either to do their own work well or to exercise their proper influence in the life of the nation. There is no doubt that this estimate of the situation represented a growing feeling among those who were best acquainted with the facts. But it is probable that Mr Shakespeare under-estimated the strength of the conservative spirit in many of the Free Churches. And there is no doubt that a considerable educational process will have to be gone through before his proposals take practical shape. This process, however, has already begun and has made considerable way. Mr Shakespeare's challenge led almost immediately to the formation of a large conference of representatives appointed by the Free Church Council along with the Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, Primitive Methodist, Independent Methodist, Wesleyan Methodist, Wesleyan Reform, United Methodist, Moravian, Countess of Huntingdon, and Disciples of Christ Churches. This Conference first met at Mansfield College, Oxford, in September, 1916, and later at the Leys School, Cambridge, in 1917, and again in London in the early part of this year. It appointed Committees on Faith, Const.i.tution, Evangelization and the Ministry, all of which have held many meetings in addition to those of the whole Conference. The Committee on Faith was able to frame a declaratory statement on doctrine which was afterwards unanimously adopted as follows:

I

There is One Living and True G.o.d, Who is revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Him alone we wors.h.i.+p and adore.

II

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