Evangelicals and the bible - loving and honouring the scriptures for what they really are

New Year Resolutions for Inclusive Faith

Paul Roberts.

Paul is a Convenor with Inclusive Evangelicals. Until his recent retirement he lectured at Trinity College, Bristol, teaching Church History, Doctrine, Anglican Studies and Worship.

Inclusive Evangelicals (IE) exists to be a place where evangelicals who affirm LGBT+ relationships can find somewhere where they can be themselves – avowedly evangelical and fully affirming. It was made necessary in part by the insertion of a new clause in the CEEC doctrinal basis that made taking a non-affirming position essential to CEEC’s definition of an ‘evangelical’ (1). A prominent feature of evangelicals’ distinctive identity is our commitment to scripture both as an authority source and also as something that lies at the heart of our spirituality. Scripture fires the heartbeat of evangelical faith in our thinking, our acting and our praying.

A prominent feature of evangelicals’ distinctive identity is our commitment to scripture both as an authority source and also as something that lies at the heart of our spirituality.

The word ‘evangelical’ is struggling with a massive PR problem at the moment. In the USA, it is usually associated with a form of ‘cultural religion’ marked by right-wing, nationalist politics. Many of the things supported by American evangelicals – gun-bearing, anti-immigration politics, support for the death penalty, etc. – would be rejected by many other evangelicals elsewhere in the world. The USA situation warns us of the danger of putting culture in the driving seat of faith rather than Christ himself.  This has partly come about because of the tendency for evangelicalism to ‘package’ itself into a tidy set of off-the-shelf beliefs, without exposing those beliefs to the critique of thinking scripturally. Within IE, we journey with many who have never been encouraged, in their home churches, to think matters of faith through by reading the bible for themselves. Many evangelicals have inherited an approach to the faith that differs little from a conservative catholic model whereby people believe things ‘because the priest told us to believe it that way’.  Again, we come across considerable fear from evangelicals who are starting out on this first step of scriptural freedom and openness to the bible.

Six resolutions for evangelicals and the bible

1.     We will submit ourselves to God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Evangelicals are Christians. This may seem an absurdly obvious statement, but it’s important because it sets certain things at the top of the list which have to be there at the top: we believe in One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Our first point of belief is not the bible, it is the living God.  Our second point is that we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the saviour, the Lord.  Again, our commitment to Jesus, as the divine saviour of the world must come before whatever we believe about the bible.  Placing these two obvious points of belief at the top distinguishes evangelical Christians from other groups, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose beliefs tend to start with the bible and move from the text to their own understandings of God which most Christians would say fall short of the Christian faith and the Gospel.  For Christians, any view of the bible must flow from what we believe about God and about Jesus Christ. Only Jesus is Lord, although of course, this is exactly what the bible says too! This ‘ordering of the list’ is also what happened in the life of the early Church: the books of the New Testament were not regarded as ‘bible’ as soon as they were written – that coalescing of the books of what we now call the New Testament began around a century after the founding of the Church, but prior to that belief in God, belief in Jesus as God’s Son and Lord, were the distinguishing mark of Christians. This credal ‘list order’ preceded the existence of anything understood as ‘Christian scriptures’ – even though the books themselves were in existence. The reason I’m making (and even labouring) this point is that I think without a core commitment to God and to Jesus himself, who called this God ‘Father’, there’s a danger of evangelical Christianity becoming swayed by other ‘lords’ and ‘gods’, leading to behaviour and belief which is inconsistent with the character of God as uniquely revealed by Jesus Christ.  Hence the first of our ‘new year’s resolutions’ about scripture, but there is also a second.

2.     We will read scripture in the light of the Person and Work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Scripture isn’t ‘flat’ and uniform. There are some parts which are more crucial to the whole story than others.  St Paul, for example, had to completely revise his understanding of the scriptures (in which he was an expert) after an encounter with the risen, glorified Jesus Christ. Those scriptures remained vitally important to Paul, but their meaning shifted when illuminated by the light of the risen Jesus – he re-read them in the light of something world-changingly new. His experience also shifted the focus of the various passages contained within the scriptures.  As we all know, the bible wasn’t written by a single person at a single point in time. The bible isn’t just one kind of literature – for example, law. The bible is a library, whose books interact and speak with each other.  This is so, even within the Old Testament itself, let alone when we bring the books of the New into consideration.  So if we’re hunting down ‘the message of the bible’ on some question or theme, merely reading one passage on the subject is not sufficient. We have to track it through. And some books completely shift the way other books are read. (For example, Job is probably written deliberately to challenge and qualify some of the assertions made in other parts of the Old Testament).  Within the library of the bible, some parts and some books, are more significant than others.  This is obvious if you compare the book of Esther with the Gospel of John (however good the book of Esther might be).  For most of Christian history, the gospels themselves have been the ‘most significant’ part of the scriptures. If we think about it: the gospels are unique, because they came about by the very earliest Christians treasuring and memorising the words of Jesus, sharing them amongst themselves and teaching new disciples. To be a Christian ‘disciple’ after the resurrection meant learning the teaching of Jesus passed on by others. Eventually, to be a Christian ‘disciple’ would mean learning the teaching of Jesus read aloud from a large book (known then as a codex) in which this teaching had been collected and written down. The gospels stand at the core of the Christian scriptures, because of what they contain – the precious record of what Jesus said, what he did, and who he was.  It is for this reason that the early Christian liturgies expected people to stand attentively when these gospel records were read, as they were in every main weekly service. Sadly, this sense of the particular importance of the gospels has been lost by many evangelicals. Many evangelicals read the scriptures from start-to-finish. The ‘bible in a year’ reading plan has the benefit of helping build a broad acquaintance with the scriptures, but it comes at the cost of focussing where the Christian scriptures themselves focus – on Jesus, his work, his person, his teaching. In many churches, a commendable attention to other parts of the scriptures serves to ‘crowd out’ the centrality of the gospels. Our reading and understanding of the scriptures must be shaped by the Lord Jesus above all if evangelicalism is to authentically maintain its uniquely Christian discipleship.

3.     We will read scripture honestly in our own world, attending to other sources of knowledge and truth claims – whilst being faithful to Jesus as Lord.

The nineteenth century was a difficult one for the bible. Discovery after discovery nibbled away at the prior assumption that everything that the bible said was correct. First it was the age of the earth: back in 1650, using an astonishing feat of scholarship, Bishop Ussher had brought together the various genealogies and datings in the bible to arrive at the conclusion that the universe was created in the year 4004 BC.  The use of scientific methods in geology and then in biology started to paint a very different picture, with a universe many billions of years old and life on earth thousands of millions of years old. Additionally, very precise dating of other events started to call into question other dating within the Bible. The theory of evolution challenged the method of coming to being of the human species. By the second part of the 1800s, many intellectuals had rejected the bible as a reliable book, and some, the whole Christian faith along with it. The bible thus became an intellectual battleground between science and religion. At the start of the 1800s, most protestants were agreed that the scriptures were completely and factually ‘true’. At the end of the 1800s, protestant opinion ranged from ‘completely and factually true’ to ‘highly unreliable’ (often with new suggested ‘core meanings’ being transplanted into the fundamental message of Christianity).  Evangelicalism had first emerged in the 1700s, but at that time shared its conviction about the scriptures with most other protestant Christians. It was only towards the end of the 1800s that it fixed its position at the more conservative end of the battle for the truth of the bible.  David Runcorn expands upon this important point in the forthcoming book, Evangelical and Inclusive – a future and hope, in a chapter entitled ‘When doctrine meets dinosaurs: reading the bible when the questions are new’.  We reject the division of human knowledge into ‘biblically based’ and ‘scientifically based’.  If something is true, then that is part of the world God has created – we aren’t going to play the game of creating an evangelical ‘parallel universe’ which refuses to acknowledge the way the world actually is.  All human knowledge is evolving: both the knowledge that we get a snapshot of in the writers of the bible, and also the knowledge which is cutting edge today. There’s something rather absurd in trying to pickle one of these as ‘truth’ and deny the fruit of human research thereafter. The bible speaks truth to truth: it speaks to our world as we understand it, as well as the world as it was understood at the time of the biblical writers.

4.     We will reject any ‘doctrine of scripture’ which takes itself more seriously than it takes scripture itself.

In Britain, the evangelical movement itself had become split in the 1920s between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’. ‘Conservative’ evangelicals effectively barred the first group by introducing the use of the ‘doctrinal basis’ – a written set of doctrines to which all members of an organisation or group had to subscribe. These particularly focussed on the doctrine of scripture. Taking the lead from 2 Tim 3:16 (‘all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness’) a particular way of seeing scripture as ‘God’s word’ was written into the doctrinal bases: that every single word of the scriptures was ‘inspired’ and was exactly the word it should be. (Whether this is what 1Tim 3:16 necessarily means is debatable.) Then another logical step was taken: if scripture was directly from God, then it could not have any flaws in it – including scientific ones. So in most cases, an ‘infallibility’ clause was added – requiring the signatory to confirm that scripture was infallible (something which, again, scripture itself does not explicitly state). This gave the impression to non-evangelicals that all evangelicals rejected things like evolutionary theory and the geological record, and implied that you had to believe in a 6 times 24-hour period of emergence for the cosmos.

As evangelicalism moved in the middle of the 20^th century from its declining period to its growth period, young evangelicals found themselves straddled with this decades-old inheritance. The infallibility doctrine managed to keep the fundamentalist conservatives ‘on board’ but the matter was, and is, an embarrassment to many. I remember as a young theology student, sitting in a discussion with the renowned evangelical biblical scholar F.F. Bruce, when he was asked how he understood the ‘infallibility’ clause in the Christian Union doctrinal basis. His answer was, ‘scripture will never fail you’. I realised then that the whole matter was merely a political fig-leaf to keep everyone on-board the good ship Evangelicalism! It might have worked for a mature scholar like Bruce, but when young students who had converted at university were asked to sign the doctrinal basis, many found themselves effectively denying the theory undergirding their subject of university study. It also served to force many a young Christian to choose between what their intellect told them to be true and their faith. As a result, many found their young Christianity to be intellectually unsustainable. Infallibility also led to an implicit distrust of human sciences – including those of clinical psychology, genetics, and their contribution to ethics. The cost of holding the fundamentalists within the evangelical fold has been huge.  In the meantime, most intelligent evangelicals have worked out their own way of resolving the science vs scripture dilemma, recognising that scripture was written by human beings through the limits of their then knowledge. It is entirely possible for God to speak clearly through a person whose scientific viewpoint was constrained by their particular point in history, even if such a viewpoint is no longer generally accepted today. To assume the Holy Spirit who inspired the writers of scripture would also be bound to convey eternally-accurate scientific knowledge and data is actually an abuse of scripture since it doesn’t take the historical context of its writing seriously.  Yet few, if any, books from an evangelical stable ever grapple with this important matter in print.

A final effect of the commitment to infallibility (or inerrancy) was the way this theory forced the reading of particular passages to suit the doctrine itself. The early generation of post-war evangelical commentators went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that any inconsistencies within the biblical text (historical or scientific) were ‘ironed-out’, often through changing the plain, or more likely, meaning of the text to one which didn’t threaten the doctrine of infallibility. (An example is where extraordinary effort was given to reconciling the order of events in John’s gospel with those of the synoptics, at the cost of recognising the insights about Jesus that John’s distinct chronology is sometimes trying to make.) In this way, by trying to preserve an ‘infallible’ scripture - whatever that might mean - evangelicalism can be guilty of cloaking scripture in the interests of its own doctrinal position, rather than allowing scripture the freedom to speak, console, challenge and address people today in its own terms. This is why IE believes that scripture needs to be taken for what it is: God’s inspiration of people of particular times and particular places to write words that will guide the world and the Church through future ages. This ‘inspired word’ is not locked into the perspectives of one scientific world-view, or one particular culture, but through those world views, and cultures, speaks to us today. Yet to hear that ‘word’ from the Spirit, we must also allow for the differences between the readers and the original writers.  Besides prayerful reading, this also requires intellect, imagination, historical study and an awareness of ourselves. It also distinguishes the question ‘what is this scripture saying to us today’ from the question ‘what was this scripture saying at the time it was written’.  The Holy Spirit, in inspiring the writing of scripture, was not in the business of foisting one scientific outlook, or cultural outlook, on the rest of history. Indeed, just as scripture itself often challenges itself (as, for example, with the Book of Job) – God’s word has a way of challenging our inherited ways of understanding scripture with the divine logic of redeeming truth.

5.     We will be humble in our use of scripture, and never use it as a tool of power to oppress others.

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’  (Matt 11:28-30)  These words, and others like it, stand at the interpretative heart of the Christian scriptures because of their position within the gospels.  Perhaps alongside the above verses, we could also place a more severe saying from the same gospel, with similar resonances: ‘[The scribes and pharisees] tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.’ (Matt 23:4) These two verses from Matthew, linked by the word ‘burden’ (phortos), contrast the ‘burden’ offered by the Word-made-flesh with those burdens which are ‘tied on’ by those who pastorally mishandle the words of scripture. Scripture, because of its authority, is a powerful weapon in the hands of those who want to use its power to ‘bind up’ those whom they want to control. Scripture, therefore, can be used to oppress by misapplication. This was the case for those who supported slavery. It is also the case for men who wish to oppress women, including their own wives. It is also – from our perspective at IE – the case for those who wish to oppress people of differing sexualities.  If you read the rest of Matthew 23, you can see how Jesus’ criticism of the scribes and pharisees was because of the application of scripture, rather than scripture itself. It is this that distinguishes us at IE from others who might see scripture itself as the problem. But we are aware that for many LGBT+ Christians, scripture has been weaponised in terrible ways to oppress and afflict. For many, scripture itself has been been ‘turned on the flock’ as a whip or flay, to dehumanise and place people into positions of debilitating fear.  We realise that merely turning away from using scripture as a weapon against the vulnerable is not enough – we need to find ways whereby scripture can become balm again, rather than poison. We sympathise with those people who are sensitive to any weaponised and abusive reading, or handling, or preaching of scripture from a long way off, and those who steer clear of any emphasis on scriptural authority due to damage done in the past.  As evangelicals, we feel it is our duty to call out any abusive application of the bible whenever we encounter it.  This is because the scripture is so important to us, because Jesus himself did this, and because we believe the word of God written will, naturally, conform to the approach and character of the Word made flesh.

6.     We will recognise that all understandings of scripture are provisional upon the final judgement of Jesus Christ when he returns as Lord.

Psalm 19 has two parts: the first half is a hymn of praise for God’s handiwork in creation. The second half is a song delighting in the law of the Lord, the core of the Old Testament scripture. It’s a beautiful psalm, which ends with self-questioning:

But who can detect their errors?

Clear me from hidden faults.

Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins

Lest they gain mastery over me.

Then shall I be blameless

and innocent of great transgression.

Although a lover of scripture and utterly devoted to it, the psalmist is also aware of his limitations and vulnerability. The scripture is not enough: only God can protect him from falling into error and self-blindness to his own faults. Too often, evangelicals are held to be (or experienced as) arrogant – and if there is ‘an evangelical sin’, then arrogance is it. We fool ourselves that our commitment to scripture somehow makes us better than other Christians, when in our hearts lie sin and evil – we are like whitewashed tombs! (Notice again the reference to Matthew 23 – if the cap fits: wear it!) 

A new year’s resolution for all evangelicals - starting with us at IE - is to recognise that none of us  fully exemplify scripture, nor indeed have a clear and full understanding of it, until the day of judgement, when Christ the living Word will expose the degree to which God’s word has truly abided within us. Such a realisation should make us grow in our love for, and commitment to, scripture – and to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it with prayer and growing humility.

1. The Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) was created in 1960 to co-ordinate and support the diverse world of evangelical organisations and churches in the Church of England. Recent changes to the constitution now restrict its membership to those holding conservative views on same-sex relationships.

Evangelical and Inclusive will be published by Canterbury Press, April 2026