In Part I we traced the beginnings of the ecumenical movement among the various branches of Christianity and within those churches embroiled in the liberal-fundamentalist controversies of the early 20th century. It was noted that the great difficulty in achieving ecumenicalism was the result of differences between the fundamental beliefs between Roman Catholicism and Protestant churches and also the doctrinal differences between the evangelical and liberal wings of the Protestant churches themselves. Part II will primarily address the efforts to achieve reconciliation and unity between the liberal churches and neo-evangelical churches which were mostly from denominations oriented toward the fundamentals of the Christian faith as found in the Bible.
By the mid-1930s, the intra-church doctrinal differences that roiled over the previous three decades had subsided as churches had taken on the character and beliefs of the victorious wing in the liberal-fundamentalist conflict. Generally, the losing parties were the conservatives who usually left to form new denominations. By the mid-1940s there was a clear line of demarcation that separated liberal churches from the more conservative evangelical churches, both in matters of doctrine and cultural engagement.
Following the end of World War II in 1945, evangelical Protestantism emerged from the shadow of their fundamentalist forebears, and these neo-evangelicals became a substantial force in American life. As a result of this new cultural engagement, the period from 1945 to the early to mid-1960s was an era of great promise for the evangelical churches. Even Catholic writer Ross Douthat, a severe critic of much of Protestantism, called evangelical Protestantism a “…postwar revival of American Christianity, which ushered in a kind of Indian summer for orthodox belief.”[1] Nancy Pearcey in her book Total Truth stated that these neo-evangelicals still held to fundamentalist views of the Bible but sought to escape form their separatism and engage the culture with a “redemptive vision that would not only embrace individuals but also social structures and institutions.”[2]
Rise of ecumenicalism in Protestant America
There were several key players that led the revival of American Christianity during this period, but the most important of all was Billy Graham. Launched by an eight-week tent meeting revival in Los Angeles in 1949 that attracted 350,000, Graham’s meteoric rise in the nation’s consciousness had begun. By the time he conducted his now famous 1957 New York City crusade that reached millions, Graham had become the most celebrated evangelist in America, a title he would retain through most of the remainder of the 20th century.[3] Douthat described the magnitude of Graham’s accomplishment.
…by the early 1940s revivalism itself seemed to be on the verge of dying out…But Graham almost singlehandedly revitalized the form, using it to carry an Evangelical message from the backwoods tent meetings to the nation’s biggest cities and arenas—and then overseas as well, to Europe and the Third World and even behind the Iron Curtain…Billy Graham had done the near-impossible; he had carried Evangelical Christianity from the margins to the mainstream, making Evangelical faith seem respectable as well as fervent, not only relevant but modern.[4]
By 1957 there had been a marked change in Graham’s fundamentalist thinking. Graham accepted an invitation to hold a Manhattan crusade, but the invitation was from the Protestant Council of New York City which meant “cooperation with a group that was predominantly non-evangelical and even included out-and-out modernists. It also meant sending them back to their local churches, no matter how liberal these churches might be.”[5]
On the surface, Graham’s decision to accept the invitation appears to have followed the example of C. S. Lewis who also engaged the culture of the unchurched world through his World War II radio broadcasts later published as Mere Christianity.
The reader should be warned that I offer no help to anyone who is hesitating between two Christian ‘denominations’…I hope no reader will suppose that ‘mere’ Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions—as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted (in writing Mere Christianity). But it is in the room, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in…
You must keep on praying for light; and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling. In plain language, the question should never be: ‘Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?’[6]
As I wrote in Evangelical Winter, “Like Lewis, Graham was engaging the culture and bringing them into the hall…His mission was to win the hearts of his audience to Christ and deliver them to the door of a local church.”[7] But upon further reflection, this conclusion appears to be at odds with one point of C. S. Lewis’ stated purpose which was to get them into the hall but not to the door of a particular church. It is understood that Graham’s methods of mass evangelism were different than Lewis’ model because Graham’s crusades had been working with fellow evangelical laborers in the vineyard. However, in the New York City crusade and thereafter Graham wrongly departed from Lewis’ model at one key point—the agreement with his hosts required Graham to deliver respondents to Graham’s truthful presentation of the gospel back to the doors of their local churches which included many whose fidelity to biblical truth did not exist.
The answer to the seeming paradox of “be ye separate” and “go unto all the world” is often not easy to decipher. As we consider the seeming conflict in Graham’s actions and fidelity to biblical truth, we see the larger conflict between the demands of ecumenicalism and evangelicalism’s faithfulness and loyalty to biblical truth. The answers are not always clear and simple. But there are answers, and on occasion Christians must use an exceedingly fine scalpel to rightly divide the Word while their hands are guided by the steadying influence of the Holy Spirit. Given the advantage of hindsight over six decades since the 1957 Manhattan crusade, Graham’s inclusion of non-evangelicals and liberals in the Manhattan crusade promoted ecumenicalism in America and lessened the resistance of evangelicals to its corrupting influence.
The rise of ecumenicalism in the Church of England
The larger conflict between ecumenicalism and evangelicalism was also occurring in England in the Anglican Church and other mainline churches. Although Graham had not had crusade alliances with non-evangelical and liberal churches in North America until 1957, he had done so in 1954 when he held the hugely successful London crusade. The division among evangelicals over ecumenicalism that developed after the 1957 Manhattan crusade had already developed in the United Kingdom following the 1954 London crusade.[8]
Graham’s greater London crusade received large support from the Church of England. Many in the small evangelical faction within the Church of England were shocked that evangelical Graham could join with the leadership of the liberal Anglican Church in conducting the crusade. The evangelicals’ smallness of influence and comparative isolation within the church caused them to re-examine their opposition to ecumenical influences. These men had long felt it necessary to remain apart from the larger denominational influences and fellowship only with like-mined evangelicals within and without the Anglican Church.[9] Thirteen years after the 1954 London crusade, the Anglican evangelicals were ready to abandon their aloofness at the first National Evangelical Anglican Congress which met at Keele in April 1967. Prior to the Congress, this change of tactics was expressed by John Stott, chairman of the Congress.
It is a tragic thing, however, that Evangelicals have a very poor image in the Church as a whole. We have acquired a reputation for narrow partisanship and obstructionism. We have to acknowledge this, and for the most part we have no one but ourselves to blame. We need to repent and change.[10]
Anglican Archbishop Michael Ramsey was invited to give the opening address to the Congress. Murray wrote that in Ramsey’s address, he “…reminded his hearers that ‘experience’ goes before ‘theology’, and he made it clear to the congress that if evangelicals were really prepared to play a full part in the life of the Church of England they must turn their back on their old exclusiveness…” Effectively, the head of the Church of England was laying down the marching orders for evangelicals, and the essence of those orders was that unity must come before truth. The evangelicals at the Keele Congress went on to affirm Ramsey’s ground rules for ecumenical dialogue which in essence was that those confessing Jesus Christ as “God and Saviour” must be accepted as Christians in good standing. In other words, all who were engaged in ecumenism “have a right to be treated as Christians.”[11]
Looking back on what he considered was the main cause of the change of mind among the English evangelicals, ecumenism advocate John Lawrence wrote that, “…the Conservative Evangelical movement in Britain crossed the ecumenical watershed at Dr. Billy Graham’s Crusade at Harringay in 1954” [the London Crusade].[12] Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was an opponent of ecumenism but agreed with Lawrence that Graham’s London Crusade was the pivotal moment when England’s evangelicals succumbed to ecumenism.[13]
Dr. Lloyd-Jones was the only senior evangelical voice that sounded the alarm with regard to the dangers of ecumenism. Speaking at the National Assembly of Evangelicals in October 1966 (only months before the Keele Congress), Lloyd Jones warned of the consequences of ecumenism on evangelicalism. Iain Murray summarized the heart of Lloyd-Jones arguments.
…for evangelicals to gain ecumenical and denominational acceptance they would have to pay a price which would imperil the very legitimacy of their distinctive beliefs. If evangelical belief is, in essence, gospel belief, how can Christian fellowship exist independently of any common commitment to such belief? How can a right belief on fundamentals retain the primary importance which Scripture gives to it if, after all, it is not necessary to salvation? How can evangelicalism be said to represent biblical essentials if one regards as Christians and works alongside those who actually deny these essentials?…for evangelicals to be consistent with their doctrine, they should give higher priority to the unity which that doctrine entailed than to denominational relationships which required no such allegiance to Scripture.[14] [emphasis in original]
Also in 1966, Francis Schaeffer was a main speaker at the World Congress on Evangelism held in Berlin. Like Lloyd-Jones was to do in October of that year, Schaeffer warned of the dangers of ecumenism.
Let us never forget that we who stand in the historic stream of Christianity really believe that false doctrine, at those crucial points where false doctrine is heresy, is not a small thing. If we do not make clear by word and practice our position for truth as truth and against false doctrine, we are building a wall between the next generation and the gospel. And twenty years from now, men will point their finger back at us and say of us, this is the result of the flow of history…[15]
The 1950s and 1960s were crucial points in history in which much of the evangelical church embraced a false doctrine that gave priority to ecumenicalism over the truth of the Scriptures. As a result, efforts to achieve reconciliation through ecumenicalism continued unabated in the great majority of evangelical denominations and organizations through the remainder of the twentieth century and to the present day. Schaffer’s prophetic warning has come to pass. A wall has been built between succeeding generations and the gospel of Jesus Christ. The evidence is all around us and will be examined in Part III.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Ross Douthat, Bad Religion – How We Became a Nation of Heretics, (New York: Free Press, 2012), p. 21.
[2] Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth – Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004, 2005), p. 18.
[3] Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997), p. 839.
[4] Douthat, Bad Religion, pp. 35, 37.
[5] Iain H. Murray, Evangelicalism Divided – A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950-2000, (Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2000), pp. 28-29.
[6] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity from The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics, (New York: Harper One, 1952, 2002), pp. 5, 11.
[7] Larry G. Johnson, Evangelical Winter – Restoring New Testament Christianity, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2016), p. 107.
[8] Murray, Evangelicalism Divided, p. 40.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., p. 42.
[11] Ibid., pp. 42-43.
[12] Ibid., p. 43.
[13] Ibid., footnote 4, p. 43.
[14] Ibid., p. 45.
[15] Ibid., pp. 79-79.
