Dear Editor,
The sad death of that giant of Reformed faith, Eric Alexander, has brought back sad memories for some of us ancient enough to have been members of Westminster Chapel many a year ago. In 1968 he won the majority of votes to succeed my grandfather Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel, including mine. What a magnificent and suitable successor he would have been! But a blocking minority scuppered his coming, on the basis that he was a member of the Church of Scotland, a theologically-mixed denomination. Then again in 1977 he gained the votes of most of us to succeed J. Glyn Owen (who had moved to Canada), and again a faction prevent his appointment, on the same grounds.
A nasty irony is that J. Glyn Owen’s successor, R.T. Kendall was also a member of a theologically-mixed denomination, the Southern Baptists. But what was fatal for Eric Alexander was overlooked by the hard-liners with Kendall, who was duly elected – no criticism of R.T. in all this.