In Depth:  Oliver Barclay

Academic Theology as it is taught and studied in university faculties (AT in future) has changed progressively over the last 100 years.

It was once seen as the best way to prepare people for ministry, but is now frequently acknowledged to be almost irrelevant to that aim. University theology today is just not intended for that purpose. A senior academic theologian in a university department recently told me that if people wanted training for ministry they should look for it outside the universities, in institutions that aim to provide just that. This is a big change, and churches have not always caught up with the situation. For instance, some Anglican proposals for improving the training of ministers recently urged that there should be more academic theology insisted on for ordinands.

Dr. Douglas Johnson, known as DJ, was born on December 31 1904. Because he was so self-effacing, few people realise just how important he was for the revival of evangelicalism in the last century, and how much we owe to his work. He was quietly behind many important developments that we take for granted.

The 1920s were the heyday of a thoroughgoing liberalism that had captured theological education and not only the student Christian movements, but much of the leadership of the churches in Britain. It was the lowest point of the status of biblical evangelicalism for over 100 years. Any confidence in the authority and reliability of the Bible was treated with scorn by many.

In this extract from Oliver Barclay's history of evangelicalism in the UK over a 60-year period, he draws lessons for today.

What, then, of the present and the future? The portion of history I have sketched suggests strongly that evangelicalism will not advance by cultural and intellectual compromise, as advocated in the Liberal Evangelical tradition. Nor will it advance by reliance on extrabiblical 'guidance', as in the Oxford Group/MRA.