The Spirit of 66

Back in the UK I hear rumours that a certain well-known Welsh Baptist minister who read a piece I wrote in Themelios on J I Packer and the Anglo-Welsh evangelical crisis of 1966, has been heard to lament loudly at a recent conference (with more than a little Celtic irony), `What a disaster! Apparently Jim Packer and Carl Trueman are the only people who got it right about British evangelicalism!’

My point (and I’d like Delboy to comment on this, though, if he ever wishes to visit Wales again, he may prefer to plead the Fifth): if Packer had left Anglicanism in ’66, when Lloyd Jones made his famous call, then Anglicanism would really have lost nothing – Packer, as a theologically-minded man, was marginalized anyway in the C of E after 1966 by a Bash-camp dominated evangelicalism which to this day in its various institutions and organisations eschews systematic theology and ecclesiology for a type of reductionist expository preaching and a form of piety with deep roots in the culture of upper-middle class public (i.e., private) schools; and non-conformity would have gained a theological mind to curb the increasingly anti-intellectual and non-ecclesiological leadership of the Doctor. The Doctor’s hegemonic role in post-1966 Anglo-Welsh non-conformity certainly did nothing to stop the increasing fragmentation of that world, and may well in fact have served to foster it; his strong predilection for the eighteenth century Methodists over the seventeenth century Reformed (whom he appropriated through the lens of the eighteenth century) meant that, as in Anglicanism, catechisms and confessions (and thus, in oractice, elaborated, historic theology) were sidelined in favour of experience; and certainly he must shoulder much responsibility for the undue emphasis on revival, which has not proved helpful. Packer was English non-conformity’s lost leader. Had he stood with the Doctor, the Anglo-Welsh evangelical world would be a very different place.

Packer and Lloyd Jones have probably had more positive influence on me than any other figures of recent vintage; certainly, their books are solid, gospel-centered meat compared to much that passes for popular Christian writing today. Their writings are also pervaded with a sense of the holiness of God – a note I simply don’t find in much of today’s trendy evangelical material, where human beings and their context and concerns seem to occupy centre stage so much of the time. And MLJ was absolutely right to see the hopeless and compromised situation which resulteded from evangelicals staying in mixed denominations (for example, it is good that a bishop believes the resurrection; but it’s a vvery sad day when that causes such rejoicing -- it is, after all, the most basic point of kindergarten Christian orthodoxy! How low we set the bar these days!) His stand in ’66 was courageous; but, on his own, he lacks all of the knowledge and skills to lead non-conformity to a better place; Packer could have provided that.

So, if you are out there Geoff -- I actually argued that Packer got it wrong; he should have `come out;' which I guess means that, in fact, I am the only person who got it right. I have been very zealous for the Lord and now there is just me left……