Kinder, Küche, Kirche

I am rapidly becoming what some might call a T. S. Eliot ‘fanboy’. In the Notes to The Idea of a Christian Society, he reproduces and then comments upon a column in the Evening Standard  of May 10, 1939 headed ‘Back to the Kitchen’ Creed Denounced. This is in the context of a critique of reactionary decision-making based upon a dislike of what other nations do, but makes some interesting side points.

‘Miss Bower of the Ministry of Transport, who moved that the association should take steps to obtain the removal of the ban (i.e. against married women Civil Servants) said it was wise to abolish an institution which embodied one of the main tenets of the Nazi creed – the relegation of women to the sphere of the kitchen, the children and the church’.

The report, by its abbreviation, may do less than justice to Miss Bower, but I do not think that I am unfair to the report, in finding the implication that what is Nazi is wrong, and need not be discussed on its own merits. Incidentally, the term ‘relegation of women’ prejudices the issue. Might one suggest that the kitchen, the children and the church could be considered to have a claim upon the attention of married women? or that no normal married woman would prefer to be a wage-earner if she could help it? What is miserable is a system that makes the dual wage necessary.

(Emphasis mine.)

T. S. Eliot on the Established Church

T. S. Eliot was convinced that the Church of England, while it may be in need of further reformation, is nevertheless the vehicle through which a Christian society may be realised in England; in his third address, he appeals strongly for Christian unity and describes the relationship the Church should have to the State. Eliot argues that we have to be faithful stewards of the situation in which we find ourselves – with an established church - and while he recognises and highlights the particular temptations Establishment gives rise to, he artioulates powerfully the devastating effect disestablishment would have:

If my outline of a Christian society has commanded the assent of the reader, he will agree that such a society can only be realised when the great majority of the sheep belong to one fold. To those who maintain that unity is a matter of indifference, to those who maintain even that a diversity of theological views is a good thing to an indefinite degree, I can make no appeal. But if the desirability of unity be admitted, if the idea of a Christian society be grasped and accepted, then it can only be realised, in England, through the Church of England. This is not the place for discussing the theological position of that Church: if in any points it is wrong, inconsistent, or evasive, these are matters for reform within the Church. And I am not overlooking the possibility and hope of eventual reunion or re-integration, on one side and another; I am only affirming that it is the Church which, by reason of its tradition, its organisation, and its relation in the past to the religious-social life of the people, is the one for our purpose – and that no Christianisation of England can take place without it.

The Church of a Christian society, then, should have some relation to the three elements in a Christian society that I have named. It must have a hierarchical organisation in direct and official relation to the State: in which relation it is always in danger of sinking into a mere department of State. It must have an organisation, such as the parochial system, in direct contact with the smallest units of the community and their individual members. And finally, it must have, in the persons of the more intellectual, scholarly and devout officers, its masters of ascetic theology and it smen of wider interests, a relation to the Community of Christians. In matters of dogma, matters of faith and morals, it will speak as the final authority within the nation; in more mixed questions it will speak through individuals. At times, it can and should be in conflict with the State, in rebuking derelictions in policy, or in defending itself against encroachments of the temporal power, or in shielding the community against tyranny and asserting its neglected rights, or in contesting heretical opinion or immoral legislation and administration. At times, the hierarchy of the Church may be under attack from the Community of Christians, or from groups within it: for any organisation is always in danger of corruption and in need of reform from within…

As we have the Establishment, we must take the situation as we find it, and consider for a moment the merits of the problem of Disestablishment. The advocates of this course, within the Church, have many cogent reasons to expose: the abuses and scandals which such a change might remedy, the inconsistencies which might be removed, and the advantages which might accrue, are too patent to require mention. That abuses and defects of another kind might make their appearance in a disestablished Church, is a possibility which has not perhaps received enough attention. But what is much more to my point is the gravity of the abdication which the Church – whether voluntarily or under pressure – would be making. Setting aside the anomalies which might me corrected without going to that length, I will admit that an Established Church is exposed to peculiar temptations and compulsions: it has greater advantages and greater difficulties. But we must pause to reflect that a Church, once disestablished, cannot easily be re-established, and that the very act of disestablishment separates it more definitely and irrevocably from the life of the nation than if it had never been established. The effect on the mind of the people of the visible and dramatic withdrawal of the Church from the affairs of the nation, of the deliberate recognition of two standards and ways of life, of the Church’s abandonment of all those who are not by their wholehearted profession within the fold – this is incalculable; the risks are so great that such an act can be nothing but a desperate measure. It appears to assume something which I am not yet ready to take for granted: that division between Christians an non-Christians in this country is already, or is determined to become, so clear that it can be reduced to statistics. But if one believers, as I do, that the great majority of the people are neither one thing nor the other, but are living in a no man’s land, then the situation looks very different; and disestablishment instead of being the recogition of a condition at which we have arrived, would be the creation of a condition the results of which we cannot foresee.

With the reform of the Establishment I am not here concerned: the discussion of that requires a familiarity with constitutional, canon, and civil law. But I do not think that the argument from the prosperity of the disestablished Church of Wales, sometimes brought forward by advocates of disestablishment, is to the point. Apart from the differences of racial temperament which must be taken into account, the full effect of disestablishment cannot be seen from the illustration of a small part of the island; and if disestablishment were made general, the full effect would not appear at once… I am convinced that you cannot have a national Christian society, a religious-social community, a society with a political philosophy founded upon the Christian faith, if it is constituted as a mere congeries of private and independent sects. The national faith must have an official recognition by the State, as well as an accepted status in the community and a basis of conviction in the heart of the individual…

We have observed the lamentable results of the attempt to isolate the Church from the World; there are also instances of the failure of the attempt to integrate the World in the Church; we must also be on guard against the attempt to integrate the Church in the World. A permanent danger of an established Church is Erastianism: we do not need to refer to the eighteenth century, or to pre-war Russia, to remind ourselves of that. Deplorable as such a situation is, it is not so much the immediate and manifest scandals but the ultimate consequences of Erastianism that are the most serious offences. By alienating the mass of the people from orthodox Christianity, by leading them to identify the Church with the actual hierarchy and to suspect it of being an instrument of oligarchy or class, it leaves men’s minds exposed to varieties of irresponsible and irreflective enthusiasm followed by a second crop of paganism.

(Emphasis mine.)

A Christian Society and Christian Education

I picked up a remarkable volume in the Oxfam bookshop on the Turl on Saturday: The Idea of the Christian Society by T. S. Eliot. It is a published series of lectures he gave in Cambridge in 1939, just before the outbreak of war, appended with some notes and an appendix of another talk he gave. He is not interested in how we get to a Christian society, nor is he describing the ideal Christian society, but he attempts to a sketch out what one would look like in our generation. In the second lecture, he describes the rulers of this Christian state, in which he articulates a classical view of authority, and when his attention turns to the education of the would-be rulers, his passing observations about contemporary education ring true today. What he leaves unsaid is that – like the conversion of Nineveh in Jonah 3 (click here to listen to a superb sermon on Public Theology from Jonah 3 preached by Steve Jeffrey) – this is a bottom-up movement, and indicates that what would be required to establish such a society is the conversion at some level of the general populace through the preaching of the gospel.

It must be clear that I do not mean by a Christian State one in which the rulers are chosen because of their qualifications, still less their eminence, as Christians… I do not deny that some advantages may accrue from persons in authority, in a Christian State, being Christians. Even in the present conditions, that sometimes happens; but even if, in the present conditions, all persons in positions of the highest authority were devout and orthodox Christians, we should not expect to see very much difference in the conduct of affairs. The Christian and the unbeliever do not, and cannot, behave very differently in the exercise of office; for it is the general ethos of the people they have to govern, not their own piety, that determines the behaviour of politicians. One may even accept F. S. Oliver’s affirmation – following Buelow, following Disraeli – that real statesmen are inspired by nothing else than their instinct for power and their love of country. It is not primarily the Christianity of the statemen that matters, but their being confined, by the temper and traditions of the people which they rule, to a Christian framework within which to realise their ambitions and advance the prosperity and prestige of their country. They may frequently perform un-Christian acts; they must never attempt to defend their actions on un-Christian principles…

They would neither be self-educated, nor have been submitted in their youth merely to that system of miscellaneous or specialised instruction which passes for education: they would have received a Christian education. The purpose of a Christian education would not be merely to make men and women pious Christians: a system which aimed too rigidly at this end alone would become only obscuranist. A Christian education would primarily train people to be able to think in Christian categories, though it could not compel belief and would not impose the necessity for insincere profession of belief. What the rulers believed, would be less important than the beliefs to which they would be obliged to confirm. And a skeptical or indifferent statesman, working within a Christian frame, might be more effective than a devout Christian statesman obliged to conform to a secular frame. For he would be required to design his policy for the government of a Christian state.

Isaiah 58: A Sermon for Lent and Passiontide

For the fifth Sunday of Lent, March 29th, at St. James’s, Poole.

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke” – Isaiah 58.6

If you walk along one of the local beaches, you won’t have to look very hard to find a sea-shell of some description. It would once have been the protective outside of some shellfish. The pattern on it may be intricate and ornate. But now it’s just empty and lifeless. We continue our journey through the season of Lent and come today to the point known as Passiontide, which gives us the opportunity to renew our focus on Christ’s death on the cross to save us from our sins. The danger with keeping seasons like Lent, as with any religious activity, in fact, is what should be alive and fruitful, what may even be intricate and ornate, becomes an empty and lifeless shell: that is the theme of Isaiah 58. It is part of a section of the book of Isaiah addressing the people of Israel when they had returned from exile, which was God’s judgement on them for their persistent turning away from him. They were seeking to rebuild the nation, restore the land, and re-establish the worship of God. There are lessons for us as we seek the renewal of the church, its growth, its future for coming generations, and ultimately the salvation of our country, and of the world. It has implications not just for how we will keep what is left of Lent, but for what we do when we come together as church Sunday by Sunday, and how we live when we are sent out from here into our communities during the week.

In v. 1, the voice of the prophet sounds like a trumpet proclaiming to inhabitants of land their wrongdoing. On the face of it, it is puzzling that God has anything to bring against them; it doesn’t look as though there’s anything wrong. There is regular religious observance, gathering together in God’s presence. The people talk about hearing God’s message for them, what he requires of them. They pray to God as judge of world to act in their favour & restore them (v. 2a, b). Part of their on-the-face-of-it good and wholesome religious activity includes their fasting: it was commanded on one day a year – the Day of Atonement – and more fast days were added throughout Israel’s history as they experienced God’s judgement on them for their persistent sin. The people are surprised that God doesn’t respond to them, doesn’t acknowledge what they’re doing, isn’t answering their prayers (v. 3a). God tells them quite clearly the reason: ritual is all there is. Their religion doesn’t go any deeper. It is superficial, just a show. It is an empty, lifeless shell. They don’t actually want to walk in line with what God has revealed to them and what he has decreed to be right. The activities of this fast day are a mask for the people’s ongoing selfish exploitation of others for their own gain. This doesn’t fool God for a moment. He sees right through it and it disgusts him.
So as he sits on his throne in heaven and the case of his own people comes before his court, their plea that he would declare in their favour and act to restore them, he won’t hear it (v. 2a, 3b-5).

Friends, we have to take this episode from Israel’s history as a serious warning. It is quite possible to be diligent in going to church Sunday by Sunday, singing the songs, saying the prayers, listening to sermons, and expect God to preserve and grow his church, to ‘seek him daily, delight to know his ways, ask of him righteous judgements and delight to draw near to God’,  but to have an attitude going full steam ahead 180° in the opposite direction. You are constantly looking at your watch, wanting it all to be over as quickly as possible so can get on with your Sunday: you ‘forsake the judgement of your God’, ‘in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure’. You can make the time to watch Eastenders for half an hour three times a week but you are unwilling to sit through a sermon for more than ten minutes. You are not really interested in knowing what God wants of you. You have no intention of putting it into practice. As a specific example of this, like people of Israel, you can observe the church year, seasons like Lent – you might have given something up, be using the opportunity for fasting and focused prayer and the study of the Scriptures – there is nothing wrong with any of that per se: Jesus expected disciples to fast. You could even have marked the beginning of it with the imposition of ashes at a service on Ash Wednesday – it is a Biblical sign of repentance and that we are but dust and ashes, and because of sin, to dust we will return. There can very easily be an inconsistency between that external religious activity and what is going on in your heart, and in the rest of your life and in your dealings with others. There is no examination of yourself, no sorrow for sin, no repentance. Perhaps you continue to take advantage of others at work, you advance your own interests at their expense; you have a short fuse with colleagues, friends or family members – you get into arguments easily, you’re quickly angered. This hypocrisy doesn’t impress God. It disgusts him: ‘Will you call this a fast?’ If that kind of attitude is present among us in any of our religious activities – whether Sunday by Sunday or at particular times like Lent, your prayers and my prayers that God would restore his people, grow and prosper his church, that our nation would increasingly acknowledge Christ’s reign and come to know the forgiveness he offers will not be heard.

The temptation when that happens is to get rid of religious activity, ritual, externals altogether. Christians have done that, and continue to do that. But if you have a cold fireplace with no fire, the solution is not to destroy the fireplace and light a fire in the middle of the living room floor. You light a fire in the fireplace. So in vv. 6-14, God goes on make clear through the prophet what is acceptable to him, the lifestyle which must accompany and be the natural outworking of his people’s worship and ritual when they gather together, the behaviour which demonstrates true repentance, true humility, true faith in their God whom they profess to seek and to whom they delight to draw near (vv. 6, 7, 9, 10, 13). Listen to all that he promises to them if they do. Though it is as if they were in darkness because of situation they were in, returning from exile to a land bearing the terrible scars of warfare, their light shall break forth and they shall be healed (v. 8a). They will receive those ‘righteous judgements’ for which they have asked – God will hear their prayers and restore them. They will be seen to be those whom God favours and upholds (v. 8b). See how the future land is described in v. 11: it is like the Garden of Eden, an idea that has already featured in Isaiah (51.3). This is what Israel was meant to be – a beautiful, protected land at peace, in which God dwelt in the midst of his people, which yields its produce in abundance so that its inhabitants can eat their fill in perfect security and lie down at night without fear. Life experiencing the renewal of creation is what salvation is. The restoration God promises and the rebuilding of the ruins of the cities of Israel are not just for the people there then, but to their children, their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children (v. 12). The final promise looks back to all God did for people in time of Exodus, when rescued them from slavery in Egypt, led them through wilderness & into Promised Land of Canaan & provided for them & sustained them with best of food (Deuteronomy 32.9-14). God is saying that all that he did then he will do once again for his people (v. 14).

If our religious activity is to be the kind that is acceptable to God and is what he wants – whether it is what we do together on a Sunday, or how we keep seasons in church calendar e.g. the rest of Lent, it must lead to changed behaviour towards one another. That has to start with the people you see here as you look around. We need to start by repenting of – admitting to God and then turning away from – any ways in which we nurse resentment & bitterness against one another and accuse and condemn. We must form the kinds of open, honest, trusting and forgiving relationships with one another that means we know which members of the church family are in need so that we can practically help, whether by buying groceries or inviting them over for a meal, giving them clothes, going to see them and keeping them company when they are sick at home or in hospital. But it mustn’t stop at the doors of the church. When you see someone homeless on the street, what is your response? What we do in here must make a difference out there. The benefits system is one of the biggest enemies to Christian godliness. It is not that those with no job or money shouldn’t be provided for so that they can eat, clothe themselves, have shelter and get back on to feet. It is that the church – Christians – should be doing it; but instead we have passed off our responsibilities to government so we don’t have to. God expects us to be the ones out there giving food and clothing to our fellow human beings who don’t have the money to buy those things for themselves, and to do so even when it is not convenient to us. That even extends to offering shelter and welcome to those without homes. This requires wisdom: there are situations where it is very clearly not appropriate to let people into your home whose character you do not know, for example, if you are vulnerable or live alone, or there are others whom you should be protecting. All that said, v. 7b is still there; within our church as a whole, this has to happen. The other way God in Isaiah 58 says there should be consistency between our gathered worship and particular acts of devotion, and our behaviour and what we spend our time doing is Sabbath keeping. As something God has instituted – ‘my holy day’, ‘the holy day of the Lord’ (v. 13) – we are to keep it in the way he has told us it is to be kept. We are not to leave the service on Sunday morning and use it like we would any other day for our own ends, the acquisition of our own material gain. In the Ten Commandments we are told to set apart every seventh day as a Sabbath on which we are to do no work that we may rest and be refreshed. This reflects what God has established from the beginning the world – making the seventh day holy, setting it apart. God has given it to us as a blessing, not as a burden. It is meant to be a delight (v. 13).

If you and I do this, God will give to his church what he promises in Isaiah 58; these blessings are ours in Christ. In Romans 11, God’s ancient people, Old Testament Israel, is depicted as an olive tree into which we have been grafted (by our baptism) and we are called to stand fast and continue in God’s kindness by responding in faith. The point is that we share in the nourishing root of tree and experience God’s kindness. God will hear and answer our prayers for the church to be restored & healed. She will be vindicated and upheld against those who write her off or seek her downfall as we take more and more possession of our inheritance – the earth itself – when people hear the good news of Christ, repent, believe and are saved and individual lives and communities and even nations are transformed. Like Israel was meant to be, the church will be the new creation breaking into this world, God’s restoration of the world he made which has been marred and broken by human sin, a community of fruitfulness and beauty with God in our midst: that is salvation. Our children and our children’s children will build upon this inheritance we pass down to them; what we bear witness to when we baptise infants. ‘You shall raise up the foundations of many generations’ (v. 12). Of course this will follow as we become a community of integrity, of sacrificial, costly love for one another and for those around us, living with a different rhythm from the world, a community characterised by rest. People will see it and be drawn to us and to our God. This is the kind of community we see in Acts 2.42-47.

In a moment we will be breaking bread as we share the Lord’s Supper. Having this meal often, even weekly, is so important because God has given it to us to enable us to be the kind of people says he wants us to be in Isaiah 58. As we eat the bread, we look beyond it by faith and feed on the body of Christ which he gave for us on the cross to be the bread of life of which we may eat and neither hunger nor die. As we take the cup, we look beyond it by faith and drink the blood of Christ which he shed when he poured himself out for us on the cross to save us from our sins. It is his example we are called to follow as we are sent out into world to pour ourselves out for the hungry. That is what Lent and its destination in Passiontide and Good Friday calls us back to year by year. That is what the Lord’s Supper calls us back to every week. When we eat the bread and drink the wine, we also receive God’s promised blessings to those who draw near to him in true repentance and faith. In the Lord’s Supper, we are fed – as the people of Israel were – with the ‘very finest of the wheat’ and we drink ‘foaming wine made from the blood of the grape’; as we gather at this table, God promises,

“I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” – Isaiah 58.14b

Expunging Trotsky from the Photographs

I was watching the BBC News this morning as I was ironing my shirts, and I was impressed by the comments of the Bishop of Croydon, the Rt. Rev. Nick Baines. In response to the call of one atheist (with the support of the National Secular Society) who has renounced his baptism (with a Certificate of Debaptism, no less!) for a change in the baptismal record, he says:

You can’t remove from the record something that actually happened… Whether we agree whether it should have happened or not is a different matter. But it’s a bit like trying to expunge Trotsky from the photos. Mr Hunt was baptised and that’s a matter of public record.

It was suggested that he announce his renunciation of his baptism in the London Gazette, and the Bishop was willing to have such a notice inserted into the baptismal roll. At least the atheists are taking baptism seriously. For the full story, click HERE.

Once you have been baptised, you can’t be unbaptised. One who has been baptised is in a different category to one who hasn’t been baptised. They have been baptised into the name of the Trinity. They have been incorporated into the church. (If the BBC has understood and reported things correctly, I have to say that the Church of Rome is nearer the money here, rather than the Church of England, which does ‘not regard baptism as a sign of membership so any amendment to the record would be unnecessary’.) Gospel promises have been made to the recipient and signed and sealed. Baptism and all that it conveys, promises, signifies and seals, can be renounced, but you can’t undo it.

The objection of the atheists is, of course, the usual one of children being ’subjected’ to baptism before they have opportunity to choose the Christian faith or not. This is just another incarnation of the individualistic, self-determining attitude that characterises modern society and is no different from Adam’s sin. The problem is, lots of things happen to you that you have no choice over and which impose obligations upon you. You don’t choose which country you are born in. But being born in a particular country means you are subject to that country’s laws, and those who are born in a particular country gradually identify themselves with that country and show loyalty and support for it – its history, culture and traditions. You are born British, and you grow up to call yourself British. Similarly, you don’t choose to be born into a Christian family and baptised. You just are. God promises to be God to us and to our children also. That places certain requirements upon those who are born into Christian families, namely, to repent and believe the gospel and to walk in God’s ways. But Christ’s yoke is easy and his burden is light. The hope is that you will grow up identifying yourself with and showing commitment and loyalty to Christ and his people, the church, and displaying affection for its culture, history and values. Not only will you be a Christian; you will call yourself a Christian.

This is my God, and I will praise him
my father’s God, and I will exalt him. – Exodus 15.2

Welcome back

The Rev’d Matthew Mason is weblogging again, this time at Sed Contra. Gaudeamus igitur!

You shall not lie?

Please don’t read the following post in a Daniel-is-going-liberal-and-doesn’t-want-to-obey-the-Bible way. Please read it in a Daniel-is-thinking-aloud-about-what-the-Bible-actually-says-rather-than-what-we-usually-assume-it-to-say way.

The ninth commandment does not say, ‘You shall not lie.’ It says, ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour’ (Exodus 20.16). In all the places where the phrase ‘false witness’ is used, it seems to me to be talking about siding with the wicked to pervert justice and bring about the condemnation of the innocent for one’s own gain. For example:

You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many so as to pervery justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit. – Exodus 23.1

The principle is therefore not so much, “Do not lie because God is a God of truth,” but more, “Do not bear false witness because God is a God of justice”, which is different.

Could this perhaps make sense of those trickier passages in the Old Testament where people lie and it seems to be a good thing, e.g. the Hebrew midwives lying to Pharaoh in Exodus 1 and Rahab lying to the men sent from the king of Jericho about the Israelite spies? In both cases, their lying behaviour is explicitly an expression of the fear of Yahweh, and God therefore blesses them – the midwives are given families, Rahab and her family are spared when Jericho is destroyed. To try and get round this, we can say things like, “It doesn’t explicitly say that God commended them for what they did,” although it looks remarkably like that from the narrative, or, “God uses the sinful actions of people to achieve his purposes.” But could we say that the Hebrew midwives and Rahab weren’t actually doing anything wrong? They were lying, yes, but they were not lying to condemn the innocent for their own gain. It was quite the opposite: they were lying to protect the innocent from unjust destruction by others for the gain of those who would destroy them.

Does this perhaps indicate that there may be exceptional circumstances in which we do not have to, and in fact, should not tell the truth, and what those circumstances are? Is the issue of lying actually more complicated than we sometimes think? Here is a call for wisdom.

Luke 15 and the Lord’s Supper

In Luke 15, the Pharisees and scribes grumble against Jesus for receiving tax collectors and sinners and eating with them. In response, Jesus tells three parables, in each of which something was lost is then found, with much rejoicing and corporate celebration. The man who finds his lost sheep calls together his friends and neighbours and invites them to rejoice with him. The women who finds her lost coin calls together her friends and neighbours and invites them to rejoice with her. The man whose son leaves home, squanders his property, comes to himself, and returns home, calls for his son to be clothed with the best robe, given a ring and shoes, and the fattened calf is killed so the father and his household can celebrate. All this, says Jesus, reflects the joy in heaven over sinners who repent.

In the Lord’s Supper, God spreads before us a banquet because, just like the son in Luke 15.11ff, we who were dead are alive again; we who were lost are found. Our status, our dignity, have been restored in God’s sight. In this celebration, we join in with the joy of heaven itself. Like the feast which the father held for his son, the Lord’s Supper should feel like a celebration: people should hear music and gladness, we should eat a decent amount of good, wholesome bread and drink a decent amount from a cup of good wine. We feast, not on a fattened calf, but as we eat the bread and drink the wine, on the body and blood of Christ, who died for the very purpose of bringing back the lost, of giving life to the dead. The challenge of these parables is not to be angry like the older brother (who stands for the Pharisees and the scribes) and refuse to sit down and table because it spread for those who don’t deserve it, but to celebrate and be glad, like Jesus, and like our Father in heaven.

Emmanuel Evangelical Church

I am also pleased to announce the blossoming of a new bud on the tree which has been around since God promised in Genesis 3.15 that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the seed of the serpent.

Emmanuel Evangelical Church is a Christian, evangelical, and Reformed church in Southgate, North London; the pastor is the excellent Steve Jeffery, a bold, gracious and faithful evangelical whom you may remember from such publications as Pierced for our Transgressions.

If you are looking for a church in North London, Emmanuel comes with hearty recommendations.

Distinctively Reformed, with a contemporary cutting edge

This is how Ecclesia Reformanda, a newly launched theological journal, describes itself, to which – a little belatedly, I know – I would like to draw the attention of any whose attention has not already been drawn.

The editorial board are all excellent folk, and any concerns about this being a subversive way of propagating Federal Vision propaganda are, I think unfounded. Although a glance at the contents of the first issue reveals an article on ‘The Maximalist Hermeneutics of James B. Jordan’ and books by Peter Leithart (which is fitting, because, as the home page of the Ecclesia Reformanda website notes, ‘a genuinely Reformed theology is always looking for God to shed new light on his Church from his Word’ – although I would argue that in many ways Federal Vision theology actually seeks to recover what evangelicalism has lost from traditional Reformed theology), there are also pieces on John Owen and Herman Bavinck (who I believe are not under suspicion of being advocates of Federal Vision theology) and reviews of books by people who are regarded as more generally acceptable including Thomas Schreiner, Timothy Keller and Tim Chester.

I warmly commend it to you.