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Ecumenical Church Renewal: the Example of the United Reformed Church

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Ecumenical Church Renewal: the Example of the United Reformed Church ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY ECUMENICAL CHURCH RENEWAL: THE EXAMPLE OF THE UNITED REFORMED CHURCH Martin Frederick Camroux A Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Submitted January 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing this thesis has been a delightful oasis of quiet and peace in the midst of a busy life. I am grateful to my family, my wife Margaret and my wonderful children, Eleanor and Michael, both for the practical help they have offered checking my manuscript for the seemingly endless grammatical errors and for their willingness to forego our normal discussions at dinner over the relevance of Kant’s critique of the ontological proof for the existence of God (or the like) for rather more arcane discussions such as the distinction between qualitative and quantitive research. I am especially grateful to my son Michael, the historian in the family, for his willingness to share his dissertation on Seebohm Rowntree with me. Anglia Ruskin University’s system of external supervision has enabled me to benefit from the endless encouragement and encyclopaedic understanding of the Revd. Dr. David Cornick, General Secretary of Churches Together in England, and before that Principal of Westminster College Cambridge and General Secretary of the United Reformed Church. Without David’s gentle support this thesis would not even have been conceivable. It has been a pleasure too to confirm that behind the façade of David’s Barthian exterior lies a genuinely liberal spirit. My supervisors at Anglia Ruskin, first Dr. Mary Abbot, and then, for most of the degree, Professor Sarah Brown, were both hugely helpful. I was continually amazed by the alacrity with which Sarah responded to my e-mails. I am also grateful to Dr. Shaun Le Boutillier for his involvement in my annual assessment and the office staff at Anglia Ruskin for their help in the face of my bemused incomprehension at the university’s administrative requirements. Beyond that a number of friends gave me invaluable support. Dr. David Peel, formerly Principal of Northern College, Manchester, read some of my chapters with a rigour which reflected the sharpness of his mind and his great personal kindness. The Rev. David Lawrence gave me huge encouragement to take a critical view of the United Reformed Church. Professor Malcolm Payne also kindly looked at my manuscript in the midst of a busy life. I am grateful to Margaret Thompson at the Reformed Studies Library at Westminster College and the staff of Dr Williams Library and Lambeth Palace Library, at all of which I spent many happy hours. At Dr. Williams Library it was good to meet on occasions with Dr. Alan Argent, whose spirited advocacy of independency helped confirm my commitment to the United Reformed Church. I am grateful also to the Rev. John Proctor of Westminster College, who first put me in touch with Anglia Ruskin when I began enquiring about the possibility of a PhD. Vital to this degree has been the interviewing of many of those involved in the United Reformed Church and the wider ecumenical movement. Apart from some of those mentioned I am therefore grateful to the Rev. Dr. Brian Beck, Professor Clyde Binfield, the Rev. Ronald Bocking, John Bradley, Dr. Stephen Brain, the Rev. Tony Burnham, the Rev. Graham Cook, the Rev. Christine Craven, the Rev. Martin Cressey, the Rev. Michael Dales, the Rev. Michael Davies, the Rev. Michael Dunford, Bob Fyffe, the Rev. George Gibson, Dr. David i Gooch, the Rev. Dr. Kenneth Greet, the Rev. Donald Hilton, the Rev. Michael Hopkins, Dr. Diana Jones, the Rev. Ernest Marvin, the Rev. Sheila Maxey, the Rev. Dr. Stephen Orchard, the Rev. Alan Paterson, the Rev. Dr. Roger Paul, Norman Pooler, the Rev. John Reardon, the Rev. John Richardson, the Rev. Dr. Alan Sell, the Rev. Dr. John Sutcliffe, the Rev. Dr. Colin Thompson, the Rev. Dr. David Thompson, the Rev. Tony Tucker, the Rev. Ernesto Lozada- Uzuriaga Steele and Mrs Margaret Williams. Not the least of the pleasure in talking with them were the lunches some of them provided and in other cases the shared meals in restaurants. In the light of the history of the ecumenical movement the fact that some of the best of these meals were at the Athenaeum Hotel seemed linguistically appropriate. I am grateful to the Coward Trust, the United Reformed Church Ministerial Education programme, and Trinity United Reformed and Methodist Church Sutton, for entirely funding my research between them. ii ABBREVIATIONS ACTS Action of Churches Together in Scotland AEE Areas of Ecumenical Experiment BCC British Council of Churches CCBI Council of Churches in Britain and Ireland CCLEPE Consultative Committee for Local Ecumenical Projects in England CICCU Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union C of E Church of England CTBI Churches Together in Britain and Ireland CTE Churches Together in England CUS Congregational Union in Scotland CYTUN Churches Together in Wales EFCC Evangelical Federation of Congregational Churches FIEC Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches GEAR Group for Evangelism and Renewal IVF Inter-Varsity Fellowship LEP Local Ecumenical Project or Local Ecumenical Partnership PCE Presbyterian Church of England SCM Student Christian Movement URC United Reformed Church WCC World Council of Churches WSCF World Student Christian Federation YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association iii ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ECUMENICAL CHURCH RENEWAL: THE EXAMPLE OF THE UNITED REFORMED CHURCH MARTIN CAMROUX JANUARY 2014 Background to the Research In his enthronement sermon as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1942 William Temple famously declared the ecumenical movement to be ‘the great new fact of our era’. For much of the twentieth century it was the major metanarrative of Church renewal. By the end of the century however the enthusiasm had largely dissipated, the organizations which represented it were in decline, and the hoped for organic unity looked further away than ever. Surprisingly little has been written on the attempt to achieve organic unity in England, what it hoped to achieve and why, at least in terms of its expectations, it failed. I propose to come at this major topic by focusing on the creation of the United Reformed Church, which was formed in 1972 by a union of the majority of congregations of the Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church in England and saw its formation as a catalyst for the ecumenical renewal of the British churches. Methodology This thesis, which is mainly resourced by documentary evidence and interviews, comes into the category of qualitative research but also uses statistics where they are relevant, for example when dealing with Church decline. Since I am a United Reformed Church minister, and have worked ecumenically, my role here draws upon the perspective of an observing participant. Conclusions The research revealed that the hopes of the United Reformed Church to be a catalyst for church renewal were illusory and that the effects of its ecumenical priority were partially negative in the Church’s life. With the failure of its ecumenical hope the Church had little idea of its purpose and found great difficulty establishing an identity. It suffered from severe membership loss and the hoped for missionary advantage promised by its ecumenical strategy did not materialize. The thesis will analyse the reasons for failure, while noting that what failed was not ecumenism as such but a particular model of ecumenism. KEY WORDS: Ecumenical, Church, Reformed, Congregational, Presbyterian. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Abbreviations iii Abstract iv Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Impetus and Rationale for the Research 1 Historiography 1 Methodology 3 Literature Survey 9 Societal Context 12 Chapter 2 Ecumenical Renewal 14 Ecumenical Motivation 15 Ecumenism and Liberal Theology 16 Models of Unity 19 The attempt to achieve organic unity in England 22 Chapter 3 The Formation of the United Reformed Church 26 Congregationalism 26 Presbyterianism 32 Decline 33 The Ecumenical Option 34 Chapter 4 Happy Union Once More? 40 The Union 40 A Provisional Church 42 Structural Decisions 43 The lessons of Ecumenical History 45 A Church created for Unity? 48 Chapter 5 The Great Disappointment 52 Uniting with the Churches of Christ 52 Towards Wider Unity 55 Coming to terms with failure 65 v Chapter 6 Local Unity 75 Local Ecumenical Partnerships 75 How effective were Local Ecumenical Partnerships? 83 LEPs and the United Reformed Church 95 Chapter 7 Other Ecumenical Initiatives 99 Swanwick and the new Ecumenical Instruments 99 The changing dynamics of English Church Life 106 Union with the Scottish Congregational Church 108 Free Church relationships 112 Chapter 8 A Church in Decline 120 Comparative Patterns of Decline 122 The state of the United Reformed Church 125 United Reformed Church: Character and Identity 129 Chapter 9 Why did Organic Unity Fail? 144 Receptive Ecumenism 145 A lack of a critical and realistic appraisal of the task 148 Organic Unity can lead to new divisions in the Body of Christ 150 The changing nature of the churches 151 The value of diversity 155 Ecumenism in the post-denominational religious market 157 Concluding thoughts 158 Bibliography 161 Appendix: Interview consent form 172 vi CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Impetus and Rationale for the Research In his enthronement sermon in 1942 William Temple famously declared the ecumenical movement to be “the great new fact of our era” (Temple, 1944, p.2) and for much of the twentieth century it was the major meta-narrative for church renewal. By the end of the century, however, the enthusiasm had largely dissipated, the organizations which represented it were in decline, and the hoped for organic unity looked further away than ever. In this thesis I want to study this ecumenical failure through the prism of the United Reformed Church, which was formed in 1972 by a union of the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches, and saw its formation as a catalyst for ecumenical renewal.
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