The issue of abortion will always be close to the hearts of us as evangelical Christians – and many others of course too.
How can it not be? The slaughter of so many millions of unborn children in the West in the last few decades is one of the great blind spots of our decaying culture. (Of course, there are always situations – for example rape, incest and imminent danger to a mother’s life – where we cannot be so black and white, but they should not distract us from the wider tragedy where no such contingencies apply.)
The recent ‘commissioning service’ at St Helen’s Bishopsgate has attracted predictable criticism.
In that bastion of Church of England liberal thinking, the Church Times,Angela Tilby decried ‘the voice of the angry Puritanism that has been channelled down from the Reformation,’ before adding (oddly): ‘Today’s Puritans find it as hard as their ancestors to live with the creative ambiguity that, many would claim, is the lifeblood of the Church of England and defended by canon law.’ Er, come again? Many would argue that the ‘lifeblood of the Church of England’ is the 39 Articles with their insistence that ‘it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written’ etc.
How do we foster evangelical unity? Where do the boundaries of ‘unity’ fall? And how does the New Testament emphasis on unity apply to evangelicals in the Church of England in its current dire state? Some of these questions are helpfully tackled by Andy Mason (see his article). And one terrific example of healthy evangelical unity is the Keswick Convention, ongoing at the moment.
But how should such unity be manifested organisationally elsewhere the rest of the year? Ongoing discussions about a Gospel Coalition UK are an interesting part of this debate. The role of the Evangelical Alliance is also key.
Editorial
Abortion matters
The issue of abortion will always be close to the hearts of us as evangelical Christians – and many others of course too.
How can it not be? The slaughter of so many millions of unborn children in the West in the last few decades is one of the great blind spots of our decaying culture. (Of course, there are always situations – for example rape, incest and imminent danger to a mother’s life – where we cannot be so black and white, but they should not distract us from the wider tragedy where no such contingencies apply.)