Inclusive Evangelicals: Why They Still Exist in Britain—and Not in America
David Runcorn writes: The name 'Evangelical 'in the United States has become so strongly identified with narrow ology, right right wing nationalism and President Trump that many Christians are finding it unusable. There is a growing and flourishing post evangelical movement in the States. David Gushee teach theology and ethics around the world. He is a prolific blogger and book writer and a significant consultant and resource in the Post Evangelical movement. You can follow him on his substack: https://davidpgushee.substack.com
He has growing links with the church in this country and it has been a pleasure to begin to correspond and discuss common interests and concerns. I am very grateful to him for engaging with our book 'Evangelical and Inclusive' - and for his permission to post it here.
Those familiar with my work will know that my decision to publish a book that ultimately argues for full LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church — Changing Our Mind (2014) — led to fierce pushback in the evangelical community in which I had served since at least 1990. My painful experience of rejection by that community sent me off into a kind of ecclesial wilderness, and in the end was a major factor that led me to identify as “post-evangelical.” It is as a post-evangelical that I have written my last several books. It is with post-evangelicals in the US that I do a significant part of my work now.
And it is as a post-evangelical that I have now read this fine collection from David Runcorn, called Evangelical and Inclusive: A Future and a Hope (Canterbury).
As I read, however, I gradually realized that this book is not just significant for its treatment of inclusion. It reveals something very striking about the difference between British and American evangelicalism, and why post-evangelicalism as an identity and movement has taken off in the US while not yet really doing so in the UK; even though, ironically, the first book on post-evangelicalism was actually published in the UK in 1995 by David Tomlinson.
ENGAGING EVANGELICAL AND INCLUSIVE
I was indeed quite interested when I heard from David Runcorn, a British theologian, who asked me to take a look at a new book that he had edited. Evangelical and Inclusive offers a collection of essays entirely from and for the UK church context, representing the perspective of the Inclusive Evangelicals network.
Here is an overview of the content:
In the introduction, Runcorn describes the context for the birth of the Inclusive Evangelicals (IE) network, which is the intractable debate about human sexuality in the church — by which he mainly appears to refer to the Church of England. He makes clear that the evangelical identity of his group is central, and that the IE network rejects any idea that evangelicals must embrace a traditionalist posture on LGBTQ+ inclusion. Runcorn instead argues that the “renewal” of the evangelical tradition is IE’s goal, with full inclusion part of what renewal looks like. He notes that over 2000 people have joined the IE network, and they are attempting with this book to articulate what an inclusive evangelicalism looks like.
In Chapter 1, Mark Vasey-Saunders, who teaches at St. Hild College, defends the idea that one can be both evangelical and inclusive, by working through the definitional issues around what it means to be “evangelical.” He reviews and — like other authors in the book — appears to accept the famous Bebbington quadrilateral, which defined evangelicalism through four characteristics: biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. He positions inclusive evangelicals as fully sharing these commitments, and thus refuses contemporary moves to add an anti-inclusion posture to the list of beliefs and practices that define evangelical identity.
In Chapter 2, Nikki Groarke, who is an Archdeacon in Dudley and serves on the Church of England’s General Synod, focuses on how churches and church bodies deal with difference and disagreement. She says there are differences visible in the Church of England not just over the inclusion issue, but also over the perceived “level” of the disagreement and thus the proper response to addressing it. She argues that the church ought to be able to move ahead in unity even if people are unable to agree about LGBTQ+ inclusion. She expresses hope for this, even while grieving the broken relationships and strained religious communities that she has experienced.
Chapter 3 is written by Phil Groves, who served the Church of England in Uganda and Tanzania and was the facilitator for the Listening Process on Human Sexuality for the Anglican Communion. In this feisty chapter, Groves addresses the global dimensions of the conflict over inclusion, especially focusing on how evangelical Anglicans in Africa, and their allies elsewhere, have positioned themselves. He describes a “global culture war” on sexuality issues, and decries how LGBTQ+ people living in a number of countries are “dehumanized, victimized, and criminalized.” He says that in Africa the division in the Anglican churches is between those who favor the “deep criminalization of LGBTQ+ people and who are separating from the Anglican Communion,” vs. those who “do not support equal marriage or the ordination of LGBTQ+ Christians but who oppose criminalization and are willing to remain in the Communion with those who disagree with them.” That is not much of a spectrum, and he laments it deeply.
Chapters 4, 8, 11, and 14, are storytelling chapters, and Chapter 13 is also mainly in that genre. We hear from Simon Butler (ch. 4), rector of Holy Trinity & St. Mary’s Guildford, Alison Oxborrow (ch. 8), a therapist, Malcolm Chamberlain (ch. 11; in this case, a straight ally) who is Bishop of Wakefield, and Hope Lawrence (ch. 14), a trans Christian who has led an inclusive service called SAFE in Oxford. Chapter 13, by Baptist minister Rachel Humphrey, is called “How Being Gay Made Me a Better Evangelical.” Each of these authors reflects the evangelical paradigm of offering personal testimony, related to their (indisputably) evangelical faith journeys, their sexual identity and development of inclusive beliefs, and the challenge of navigating uncertain and conflicted church contexts.
In Chapter 5, Mark Vasey-Saunders returns, treating inclusive evangelicalism as fully consonant with the trajectory created by legendary evangelicals John Stott and Lesslie Newbigin. His move here is to treat inclusion — his title focuses on acceptance of same-sex marriage — as reflecting “an incarnational and dialogical engagement” with culture, and thus, in a sense, as a cross-cultural mission strategy. Essentially, the argument is that since Stott, UK evangelicals have understood that mission requires a “double listening,” to both “the word of God” and “a changing world.” Mission takes place within culture, and cannot be effective without careful listening to culture. For inclusive evangelicals, the commitment to an appropriate engagement with our own cultures has contributed to the conclusion that the church should support same-sex marriage and full dignity and inclusion for LGBTQ+ people.
Chapter 6, by David Runcorn, pivots off of the crisis created for faith in the early 19th century “when doctrine me[t] dinosaurs.” The church then faced the choice as to whether to treat the Bible as a “barricade” against new learning, or whether to look forward and humbly be open to new learning and the implications of such. This, he says, is another such moment.
In Chapter 7, Steve Hollinghurst (a researcher and teacher on mission, culture, and the environment) and Charles Read (a theologian and educator in East Anglia ) rethink atonement theology. Why is this chapter part of an Inclusive Evangelical book? The authors suggest that blood and sacrifice language, tied to the Cross, have been used to “call on the believer to participate in suffering,” “as justification for abusive behaviour,” and to justify the prohibition of same-sex marriage “as the Cross [LGBTQ+] people have to bear.” This somewhat theologically adventuresome chapter tracks with something I have seen here in the US, where many post-evangelicals are rethinking the meaning/s of the Cross.
Perhaps not surprisingly, then, another author in this collection, Paul Roberts (a recently retired Tutor at Trinity College, Bristol), in chapter 9 explicitly rejects any need to reconsider atonement theology (p. 80). This is a side note in his overall examination of the lessons to be learned from the “historic sexual abuse cases” in the UK. These cases were shattering in their scope and impact and forced the resignation of the last Archbishop of Canterbury. Roberts concludes that only an evangelicalism that is “open, explorative, connected, collaborative, and diverse” can create church contexts less vulnerable to abusive behavior. So here the church abuse scandal is at least indirectly tied to the LGBTQ+ inclusion discussion.
My favorite chapter in this book is chapter 10, by Alison Oxborrow, on shame. She offers a devastating account of how shame is endemic among LGBTQ+ evangelical Christians, because their churches preach and hold to a doctrine that inevitably evokes shame. She then offers a persuasive biblical account of how Jesus lived unashamed and “subverted the categories of shame whenever he encountered them” (p. 89). She concludes: “Our inherited evangelical theology is the seedbed of shame for LGBTQ+ people. Only an inclusive theology of sexuality and gender can lead all God’s people into the freedom of love” (p. 92).
In chapter 12, Kate Massey (Canon for Arts and Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral) treats the issue of “being a woman and evangelical.” She demonstrates that patriarchal theology is still alive and well (ill) in evangelicalism, that it violates gender justice and silences women, and that “much of the work we are doing in seeking to unlearn bad theology around sexuality must inevitably also address some of the unhelpful theology we have internalized about women” (p. 102). In essence, the takeaway from this essay is that gender egalitarianism and LGBTQ+ inclusion are both essential commitments and they go hand in hand.
Finally, in chapter 15, Alex Huzzey (vicar of St. Luke’s, St. Albans, organizer of the annual Fruitful conference) uses the “good fruits” test — one of Jesus’ teachings, of course — to tell stories of “inclusion, growth and flourishing” in three LGBTQ+ inclusive faith communities in the UK. His conclusion makes for a good coda to the book as a whole. It begins with a sharp rejection of the idea that those affirming LGBTQ+ inclusion are “fundamentally unevangelical and unevangelistic," and claims that those churches that are “opening up to the gifts and ministries of LGBTQ+ Christians” are bearing good fruit in “lives and communities transformed by the grace and love of God” (p. 124).
SOME OBSERVATIONS
I have not been a part of the UK LGBTQ+/Christianity inclusion conversation, so this book offered a valuable opportunity to listen in.
Certain aspects of the conversation, and of the positioning of the inclusive side, are familiar:
In both the US and the UK, many non-inclusive evangelicals have attempted and in many cases succeeded in taking institutional steps to define evangelical identity in a way that treats inclusion as heretical, unbiblical, beyond the pale.
Advocates for inclusion, including inclusive evangelicals in the UK, have fought this move tooth and nail, every step of the way. On both sides of the Atlantic:
We have argued that evangelicalism, historically, was never defined to include a doctrinal requirement on sexuality, and that it is a mistake to elevate sexuality statements to the level of core doctrine.
We have attempted to argue that sexuality can be viewed as a secondary issue, rather than a primary or “Gospel” issue, and that it ought to be possible to coexist in community with different views on this issue.
We have decried extremism, demagoguery, criminalization, and violence against LGBTQ+ people and argued that the church must never be an ally or participant in such behavior.
We have pointed to historical analogies or parallels, times where the church initially resisted changing its mind about something it thought the Bible “clearly taught,” and then finally did change its mind — after much delay and damage. I have often cited the church’s mind-change on women’s status and roles, on slavery, and on anti-Judaism/antisemitism as key examples.
We have pointed to the deep personal suffering the church’s historic traditionalist view has caused, sometimes describing this tradition as an example of religion-based trauma and abuse.
We have suggested that there are varying ways to interpret culture — both the cultures of the churches, and the cultures of the nations. We have argued that listening closely to cultures that have moved to drop discriminatory laws and attitudes can actually teach the church something, if we are willing to listen.
We have claimed that the handful of seemingly condemnatory biblical passages are not dispositive, either because they do not say what the tradition reads them to say, or because they are relatively insignificant compared to broader and more central themes and trajectories. (It is interesting that no author in this book even attempts the old strategy of battling it out over the reading of Romans 1, and so on.)
Finally, we have used the good fruit/bad fruit test — to describe the noxious fruit of the traditionalist teaching, in personal harms endured, gifted ministers blocked, church communities sundered — and to describe the good fruit readily visible in inclusive communities in which this debate is over, and all God’s children are welcome, on equal terms, full stop.
All of the foregoing content of Evangelical and Inclusive was familiar.
But this is what is different. For now, at least, there is a significant group in the UK, Anglican and somewhat beyond, that has chosen to retain the evangelical label and to go for “inclusive evangelical” as their moniker.
I can think of very, very few significant figures in US Christianity who still publicly claim both the evangelical label and a clearly inclusive position on LGBTQ+ people.
One conclusion seems hard to avoid: here in the US, the evangelical power structure, which I sometimes shorthand as “hegemonic evangelicalism,” has driven us inclusive types out. They have won. We have lost. This is especially the case at the pastor/scholar/musician/artist/leader level.
But it is also true that US evangelicalism has so discredited itself on many issues, and not just sexuality, that it has created a substantial exodus of its own people. Trumpist evangelicalism is probably the major factor here, and it has lasted over a decade and driven millions out of US evangelical churches and identity.
So here in the US, we are not “inclusive evangelicals.” We are inclusive post-evangelicals; or, to put it more accurately, we have adopted the label “post-evangelical” and have defined it non-negotiably as LGBTQ+ inclusive. See the statement of values of the Post-Evangelical Collective as an example.
In my 2+ years of part-time service in the Church of England (when we are in residence in the UK), I have learned just enough about the UK context to be probably wrong, but I think I know one other factor that might account for why there is a substantial “inclusive evangelical” movement in the UK but not the US.
The Church of England remains the dominant institutional presence in the English church landscape. It has a very long tradition of essentially holding three major strands within itself. These strands are usually labeled Anglo-Catholic, evangelical, and liberal.
In the several books I was given to read about the Church of England, this three-strand reality was always described, and I have experienced it some over the last two years. (Though not much in rural Gloucestershire, where I serve local churches; because whatever your church style preference might be in this area, you often have but one local Anglican option. In these very small local churches we must offer a Broad Church expression of Anglicanism.)
These three strands are like three political parties of long standing, a paradigm with which the UK is certainly familiar: Tory, Labour, Liberal Democrat.
My sense is that “inclusive evangelicals” are not willing to give up the evangelical label in part because it would render them homeless, party-less, as it were. They are not Anglo-Catholic and they are not liberal. They are evangelical, and they are not going to be pushed out without a spirited fight.
I find it hard to believe that they will be successful, but I admire the fight, and I commend this volume to the attention of anyone who cares about building a church that includes all God’s children, on equal terms, at last.
