Evangelicals in the Church of England are dangerously divided but God is still very much at work in England, said the Rev Hugh Palmer, Rector of All Souls Church, London yesterday at CMS Summer School.
Mr Palmer is in Australia teaching the Bible Studies at Summer School, but yesterday he shared his perspective on the "state of play' in the Church of England with a gathering of NSW and ACT members of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion (EFAC).
"The Church of England is a very varied scene,' he said.
"Our dioceses don't have a long tradition that guarantees succession, and in a number of them, an English sense of fair play takes place. If you've just had an evangelical bishop, next we'll have someone who's a bit more Anglo-Catholic. You don't tend to get dioceses that are traditionally evangelical.'
He is increasingly concerned about the growing division among evangelicals.
"The evangelical world has got more and more elastic in it,' he said. "I think Satan's had a field day with us in lots of different ways. We have not been robustly theological, just pragmatic.'
This division, he says, is making it difficult to find a clear way forward on the key presenting issues within the denomination.
These include episcopal oversight and ordination issues for the increasing numbers of Anglican clergy planting churches outside the Church of England system, as well as the question of making provision for conservatives who object scripturally to the denomination's move towards consecrating women bishops.
And the painfully divisive issue of the Christian approach to homosexuality, causing major fragmentation in the Anglican Communion worldwide, looms large.
Mr Palmer is uncertain about the immediate future for evangelicals within the Church of England, but he told sydneyanglicans.net that he is not despairing about God's work in the UK.
"There's undoubtedly gospel stuff going on, I can take you right around the country,' he said.
"I had an American come over to All Souls " he came to the right service, it was full of people. He said, "So Christianity's not dead in England. I'll have to tell them back home."'
"God's bigger than the Church of England,' he said. "But I haven't given up on the Church of England yet.'
