By Clive Calver and Rob Warner
Hodder & Stoughton. 178 pages
ISBN 0 240 64237 8
A 'seething pot' is how Jim Packer paints current evangelicalism and his Foreword commends the two authors of this book in their attempts to monitor and direct its UK scene. He goes on to contrast the church routines of his own youth with the 'wonderful ... new vitality' he sees today. This celebration volume for the 150th anniversary of the Evangelical Alliance is, as Packer rightly observes, a warts-and-all snap-shot of how things really are. 'The tidiness of sedate death is giving way to the untidiness of immature life.'
Individual chapters are not credited to one of the two stated authors and the use of the first person sometimes leaves the readers wondering about his identity. It is ironic then that the earlier chapters address the fact that 'Evangelical Christians have largely been passing through a 20th-century identity crisis' (p. 14). When they trace the biblical and historical roots of our rich heritage they do, however, descend into caricature, as when 'organisational' unity is contrasted unfavourably with 'relational' unity (p. 13) or 'fundamentalists' are contrasted with 'evangelicals' (p. 20).
