HOW RELIABLE IS UKIP ON TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE?

Though he did not mention UKIP in his now famous declaration against the same-sex marriage bill on BBC Question Time on Thursday,  Defence Secretary Philip Hammond articulated very clearly the reason why Mr Farage's outfit is providing such an attractive alternative for conservatively-minded voters.

But how reliable is UKIP on marriage? Or, to phrase the question another way, how passionate was the Conservative Party of the 1980s about restoring the institution of marriage after the ravages of the 1960s?

In January 2012 Cranmer's Curate was curious about where UKIP stood on the redefinition of marriage, so he rang a press officer at the party's headquarters in Devon. The gentleman told cc:

We are at heart a small-state organisation and we don't feel we should be interfering in people's private lives. We believe wholeheartedly in the married persons' tax allowance. We feel there are other ways of strengthening marriage that are not necessarily morally discriminatory. Ten years ago sitting here I would have been very happy to support a position of no gay marriage but that is no longer the case. The party has become broader

Then in March of that year UKIP released its statement coming out clearly against same-sex marriage and pointing out that Mr Cameron's innovation was alienating traditionally-minded voters and upsetting religious groups. Its stance has proved electorally profitable, contributing to its previously unthinkable by-election results towards the end of 2012 and latterly its stunning results in the local elections. 

But if UKIP were to form a government or to become a significant force in a future government, would it work to make divorce more difficult? Would it work to restore the civilised concept of human fault in marital breakdown? Would it work to strengthen the access rights of fathers to their children after the tragedy of divorce? The track record of the Conservative government of the 1980s, still less that of John Major in the 1990s, was not spectacularly impressive in these respects.  

Furthermore, apart from marriage, on a range of issues from re-invigorating the educational system to getting our young people into work to reducing abortion to tackling drug abuse to restoring law and order, can UKIP be relied on determinedly to reverse the destructive legacy of the permissive society, consolidated through a raft of laws under New Labour?

Nigel Farage is a winsome and courageous political leader whose electoral success would appear to be in many ways thoroughly deserved because of the spiritual and moral capitulations of the Conservative Party to Blairism. But his spiritual home of the 1980s would appear to have too much room for the 1960s.

If its leader did communicate more of a sense that he had the words of Jesus stamped on his soul - "In the beginning God created them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife" (Mark 10v6-7 - NIV) - then that would help to dispel the whiff of libertarianism that hangs around UKIP.

This piece - Inter-faith Coronation is contrary to Church of England teaching - appeared on The Commentator. A version also appeared on Christian Today.

FIRST BAPTISM AT GAFCON-BACKED SHEFFIELD CHURCH PLANT

The ordination of its minister in the Anglican Church in Kenya in February may have been controversial, but the first baptism at Christ Church Walkley in Sheffield was a great gospel occasion.

The man baptised on Sunday May 12th in the Walkley library, the venue for the new conservative evangelical church planted by Christ Church Central in October last year, gave an honest and moving account of how he came to Christian faith.

The minister, Pete Jackson, preached very clearly and edifyingly on 1 Timothy 6v2b-10. The songs were theologically good, supported by high quality musicianship. Mr Jackson appears to be a calm and godly pastor, who enjoys the confidence of his leadership team.

Unfortunately, the prayers of intercession were somewhat inward-looking - they often are in new church plants. Political leaders were not prayed for at Walkley and they should be.

The Walkley plant has not yet cut the apron strings from Christ Church Central - it does not have its own trustees and independent charitable status - but hopefully that will happen in time. Like other UK church plants rooted in Reformed Anglican spirituality, it could form a partnership with Anglican evangelical mission agency, Crosslinks, giving it greater connection with the wider church.

There is already the relationship through GAFCON with the Anglican Church in Kenya, which should be taken seriously by way of accountability, because one of its bishops, the Rt Revd Josephat Mule, ordained Mr Jackson as deacon in Kitui cathedral. The new church has been pro-actively supported by the Archbishop of Kenya, the Most Revd Eliud Wabukala, chairman of the GAFCON Primates' Council.

According to the media statement Christ Church Central put out at the time of Mr Jackson's ordination, the father of its senior minister, Tim Davies, was Provost of Nairobi cathedral in the 1970s and Mr Davies himself is an honorary canon of All Saints' Cathedral, Nairobi. It is very important for the new church that the link with Kenya is based on a shared spiritual commitment to Anglican orthodoxy, rather than being dynastic in nature.

Conversations with members of the church family evidenced humility and realism in the face of the challenge of reaching the community of Walkley for the Lord Jesus Christ. Though there were some older people present, the congregation is mainly in their 20s and 30s.

The church looks like it will soon, God willing, outgrow Walkley library, necessitating new premises. With imaginative outreach to its local community as well as within its demographic network, this new church family could by God's grace be a real force for the gospel in a tough region for Christian ministry.

An adult male baptised in the name of God the Holy Trinity is certainly a positive sign of a social trend being bucked.

This piece about shifting evangelical attitudes towards legalising same-sex marriage appeared on VirtueOnline in the US.

CHURCH EMPIRE-BUILDING: SERIOUS ALLEGATION

Surely the charge of empire-building against a church leader is a very serious allegation. But experience shows that it is made rather too lightly.

The allegation is terribly serious because using God's church for an ego-trip is idolatry. It is in the worst sense a form of self-worship. It is an appalling abuse of the Body of Christ.

In 2 Timothy 3, the Apostle Paul describes the spiritual and moral state of non-Christian people in the 'last days', i.e. in the period between the Lord Jesus' ascension and his second coming. So this is talking about our time. Paul's description aptly describes the Christ-rejecting human race in general but then Paul narrows the focus down to the false teachers whom Timothy was up against in 1st century Ephesus, demonstrating that they are no better than non-Christians: 

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,  treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—  having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people (2 Timothy 3v1-5 - NIV).

So, to describe a fellow evangelical as effectively a lover of self in the way he approaches his pastoral leadership is to describe him as on a spiritual par with a non-Christian and, by association, with a false teacher.  If the allegation is untrue, then the person making it is of course included in Paul's description of humanity in the last days, because that person is 'slanderous'.

The charge of empire-building to describe the motivation of a fellow church leader is so serious that there needs to be well-attested evidence for it in action and behaviour, rather than the charge being based on an impression.

The possibility of ever using the Body of Christ for an ego-tip should have every church leader quaking in his boots.

MEMORABLE SERMON IN ELSENHAM VILLAGE HALL

A sermon for a Church of England congregation in an Essex village hall illustrates how good illustrations make a sermon memorable.

It was preached on April 7th (the Sunday after Easter) to a congregation belonging to the Henham, Elsenham & Ugley group of conservative evangelical churches. The Revd John Richardson, who blogs as the Ugley Vicar (see top blogs), serves as associate minister in the team.

A gentleman called Ronan Wade (his name is not included on the contacts' list - is he a ministry apprentice?) preached on 1 Corinthians 15v50-57. Having begun with a quiz about the proper names of various phobias, Mr Wade made the clear point that Christians should not be those who suffer from thanatophobia (fear of death), for the risen Jesus Christ has defeated it.

It would appear from the recording that Mr Wade produced a theatrical fight with a shark, using volunteers from the congregation, to illustrate Jesus' victorious emergence from his battle with sin and death. He also produced an apparently manky bunch of grapes to illustrate the nature of perishable things.

The sermon should have explained more fully the biblical link between sin and death, why it is that the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law (v56). It would not have required a lengthy explanation, but the biblical reality needed to be stated that the Lord God puts us under the power of death as a just punishment for the things we think, say and do - our sins - which are exposed by his perfect law for our lives.

A vivid illustration of the impact of a poisonous sting would of course have been well within Mr Wade's capabilities but hopefully not one involving live bees.

Apart from that, being short, well-illustrated and clear his sermon was ideally suited for its informal setting as part of an all-age morning service in Elsenham village hall. An unchurched person, Cranmer's Curate believes, would have found it winsome and engaging.

It also gives the lie to the claim that conservative evangelical preaching is turgid and verbose.

PSALM 73 & LE CARRE'S COCAINE BOAST

If author David Cornwell (alias John Le Carre) had admitted that he had voted for Ukip, socially liberal journalists and publishers - the mainstream of those worlds - would have been affronted. Mr Cornwell might well have suffered financial consequences or at least some professional ostracism.

But his boast in an interview for The Times Magazine (4/5/13) that he has 'done' cocaine will cost him nothing because taking an illegal Class A drug is perceived by the politically correct establishment as a matter of no consequence.

Unlike the displaying of biblical texts on commercial premises. When a Christian cafe owner in Blackpool did that in 2011, he received a visit from the police after a customer complained about 'homophobic' statements.

Psalm 73 expresses a righteous Israelite's lament that, in a fallen world, the wicked prosper. He admits that his faith in God almost faltered in the face of that reality until, v17, he entered the Lord's sanctuary and contemplated the ultimate destiny of the wicked.

The Psalmist's ancient words sound so contemporary when one contemplates the high social standing of the pushers of amorality over illegal drugs:

They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men.  Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth (Psalm 73v5-9 - King James Version).

The drug culture or cult, to be more precise, glamourised by 1960s' rock stars now bearing knighthoods, has devastated the lives of many millions of people who have chosen to worship at the altar of this latter-day Molech. Like the disgusting god of the Ammonites, this deity of death is hungry for the sacrifice of children who suffer terribly as a result of the moral choices their drug-abusing parents have made.

Combating this evil through vigorous law enforcement should be much more of a focus of Christian social concern than it is, for Christians worship the Lord of life, Jesus Christ.

ANGLICAN EVANGELICAL DILEMMA IN NEW BOOK ABOUT THE ROUND CHURCH

This book review first appeared on Anglican Mainstream in the UK and on VirtueOnline in the US:

Though it could have done with a shorter appendix, Persistently Preaching Christ, Fifty Years of Bible ministry in a Cambridge church (Christian Focus, 2012, pp192), is a high quality book.

Superbly compiled and edited mainly by Mrs Mary Davis, it is a collection of reflections on the godly and fruitful evangelical ministries of successively Mark Ruston and Mark Ashton, who chalked up 55 years between them as vicars at the Round Church in Cambridge from 1955 to 2010. In 1994 the congregation moved to a larger building, St Andrew the Great, and became known as StAG   

The first chapter contains Mark Ashton's 'Eight convictions about the local church', penned shortly before his death from cancer. The book is worth buying for that chapter alone but there are other gems in it, including Christopher Ash's reflection on 'Serving the local area - church plants and grafts'.

Mr Ash, now director of the Proclamation Trust's Cornhill Training Course in London, was StAG families curate from 1993-97, then rector of one of its church grafts, All Saints, Little Shelford, from 1997-2004. He writes very perceptively about the right motivation for church planting - no empire building:

We were very concerned that the church-planting projects should avoid any danger of magnifying St Andrew the Great. We saw that it was all too easy for an influential city-centre church to plant in such a way as effectively to increase its own sphere of influence, to build its empire by planting imperial outposts and to end up creating its own denomination. St Andrew the Great bent over backwards to avoid these dangers. From the moment the leaders and planting group were commissioned and sent, the apron strings were cut. 

And herein lies the dilemma that Bible-believing Anglican evangelicals are facing within the institutional Church of England. The book reveals the extent to which StAG has been working within the denominational structures and indeed has depended on them for its growth. For example, Mr Ash himself brought a group from StAG into an existing Anglican parish church that led, under God, to its spiritual revitalisation.

Furthermore, the chapter by Peter Robinson, who oversaw the finances of the StAG building renovation, reveals that the Diocese of Ely lent the church £500,000, the final £20,000 of which is due for repayment next year. So, StAG was dependent on its Diocesan Board of Finance for this building project, very necessary to its future growth.

In StAG's case, belonging to the Church of England was hugely beneficial for its growth and its ability to proclaim the love of Jesus Christ on a greater scale. But twenty years on, would an Anglican evangelical church looking to expand its premises and plant new congregations really want to be so dependent on a denomination that is rapidly becoming like The Episcopal Church in the United States - politically correct and morally deviant?

And that is where church planting networks, such as the Co-Mission Initiative in London, which are not dependent on the institutional structures, are arguably becoming so important for the preservation of Anglican evangelical ministry in the UK. But can these networks resist the temptation to roll out an imperialistic church planting brand?

So, the book unintentionally raises important issues about the future of the faithful biblical ministry that the two Marks pursued by God's grace in Cambridge.

Now onto the appendix containing nearly 40 pages of testimonies from various people who knew the two Marks. The pile-up effect of these unfortunately made for something approaching hagiography, though the contribution on Mark Ruston from John Hutchison, chaplain of Sheffied Children's Hospital, is witty and that from Richard Coombs, vicar of Burford, very informative about his tremendous gift in teaching God's truth to teenagers. The extracts from personal letters to Mark Ashton, when he was diagnosed with cancer, are both edifying and moving.

The word 'strategic' appeared a few times in relation to the Round's ministry among university students. The truth, of course, is that Cambridge is no more significant in the light of eternity than Cleethorpes.

However, a growing Anglican evangelical church needing to expand its premises in the latter would face the same institutional dilemma as that faced by a biblically faithful city centre church serving a university.

Would they really want the denomination to own its building?      

THE JACKMAN GEMS - VALUE OF JOURNALISTIC DISCIPLINE

A quotation from David Jackman's Notes to Growing Christians in April's Evangelicals Now appeared to make a strong impression this week at the Annual Parochial Church Meeting of the South Yorkshire church Cranmer's Curate serves,

These articles by Mr Jackman, past president of expository preaching support network The Proclamation Trust, are gems for any English-speaking local congregation. They are the distilled wisdom of Mr Jackman's years of application to the demanding task of faithfully expounding the biblical text and equipping preachers to do it.

The Notes have the merit of being both substantial and concise, demonstrating the value of the journalistic discipline of limited-word press writing. Mr Jackman's efforts to adapt himself to this genre have undoubtedly paid off. The piece cc quoted from is called 'Without love - nothing!' and begins as follows:

‘If I do not have love’, Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, ‘I am nothing’ (1 Corinthians 13.2). He did not view its acquisition as an optional activity but the bedrock foundation of the Christian life — an absolute necessity. Not surprisingly, when he is describing what the transforming power of the Holy Spirit will look like in practice, he lists a string of qualities which each depend on and flow out of the greatest characteristic of godliness — love.

The part cc quoted at the APCM deserves to be included in one of those devotional compendiums prefaced by Dr J.I. Packer:

Our local churches are intended to be the locus of this divinely counter-cultural love in action, overflowing into our communities. It was my joy recently to visit a medium-sized, but gradually growing congregation, where week by week new people are coming to church and staying, primarily because of the demonstrable love between the Christians, which reaches out to them. Christian love is the ‘ultimate apologetic’, as Francis Schaeffer said, and this is the unarguable proof of the gospel’s truth to the watching world. Wherever there is pride, snobbery and coldness of heart, a critical and contentious spirit — and sadly there are plenty of examples in many congregations — whatever doctrinal orthodoxy and development programmes there may be, if there is no love, there is nothing. Nothing of eternal value, nothing to bring glory to God. By contrast, when Jesus is truly Lord and his Spirit energises our faith and discipleship, the fruit will inevitably begin to appear, individually and corporately. For love never fails.

This piece - Olympus has fallen & the rise of arbitrary power - appeared on The Commentator.