Baptist Revival Fellowship

ABSTRACT

This book explores the history of the Baptist Revival Fellowship (or BRF), from its foundation in 1938 as a movement to promote spiritual renewal in the Baptist Union of Great Britain (or BU) until it withdrew from its affiliation in 1972. Drawing upon denominational records, press reports, some writings of its leaders and the archive of the BRF, it aims to redress the comparative neglect by Baptist scholars of this significant movement. The BRF is placed within its historical context in relation both to the BU and to evangelical life in England between 1900 and 1972, paying special attention to Baptist life. The role of its founders is considered, Theo Bamber (1891–1970) and Geoffrey King (1908–1986), who sought to promote among Baptists conservative evangelical beliefs and Keswick-style ‘Higher Life’ teaching. The movement is shown to have three phases of development, to each of which a chapter is devoted. The first is its early development between 1938 and 1960 when it mainly emphasized personal spiritual renewal and prayer for revival but in the late fifties moved into more fundamentalist territory. The second phase consists of a period between 1960 and 1966 when the older emphases were diminished by the influence of early charismatic renewal and Reformed theology, resulting in renewed impetus and serious engagement with contemporary Baptist debates. The final phase was between 1966 and 1971 when the BRF adopted a policy of secession from the BU. The significant influence is shown from the late fifties onwards of the prominent Free Church evangelical D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981). The final two chapters deal with the process by which the BRF finally seceded from the BU in reaction to a Christological controversy in the BU between 1971 and 1972. These chapters provide the first comprehensive analysis of this significant controversy.

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Focus and Method

Relation to Existing Scholarship

Terminology

Denominational Background to the Founding of the BRF

Conclusions

CHAPTER TWO

THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF BRF VISION AND STRATEGY (1938–1960)

The Origin and Early Development of the BRF

Post-war Evangelicalism

The Free Churches and the New Conservativism

The BRF and Post-war Baptist Life

The Carey Hall Dispute

Conclusions

CHAPTER THREE

THE PROBLEM OF PAYNE: BRF RESPONSES TO A NEW BAPTIST AGENDA (1960–1966)

The BRF and Liberalism

The BRF and Ecumenism

The BRF and Denominational Centralization

‘Liberty in the Lord’

An Evangelical Alternative to Ecumenism

The BRF and Denominational Loyalty

The BRF and Charismatic Renewal

Conclusions

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ROAD TO SECESSION (1966–1970)

The 1966 Evangelical Alliance Assembly

The Impact of Lloyd-Jones’ Message on the BRF

The Marginalization of Denominational Loyalists in the BRF

Hesters Way Baptist Church, Cheltenham

The BRF and ‘Baptists at the Crossroads’

The ‘Baptists and Unity’ Debate

The 1969 BU Assembly

The 1969 BRF Conference and the Adoption of Secession as a Definite Policy

Denominational Approaches to the BRF

BU Consideration of a New Confession of Faith

Conclusions

CHAPTER FIVE

‘HOW MUCH OF A MAN WAS JESUS?’: THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY OF 1971

The 1971 Assembly and the Beginning of the Controversy

The Development of a Denominational Policy

The Emergence of Protest Among Baptist Loyalists

Tension Begins to Mount as Moderates Reconsider their Loyalties

The BRF Strategy

Peter Masters and the Metropolitan Tabernacle

The First Official Attempt to End the Controversy

The Loyalist Campaign for Orthodoxy

The Second Attempt to End the Controversy

Conclusions

CHAPTER SIX

‘WE CANNOT IN CONSCIENCE REMAIN’: THE SECESSION OF THE BAPTIST REVIVAL FELLOWSHIP AND THE RESOLUTION OF THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY

The November Council and Its Aftermath

The November BRF Conference and the Decision to Secede

Sir Cyril Black’s Campaign Against Russell’s Policy

The March Council and the 1972 Baptist Assembly

Conclusions

CHAPTER SEVEN

CONCLUSIONS

Reaction to Wider Trends in British Church Life

BRF Reactions to Trends within Evangelicalism

The BRF as Keepers of a Baptist Heritage

The BRF and Exclusivity

The Failure of the BRF

Bibliography

Primary Sources

APPENDIX ONE

THE ORIGINAL DOCTRINAL BASIS OF THE INTER-VARSITY FELLOWSHIP (IVF)

APPENDIX TWO

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE BAPTIST REVIVAL FELLOWSHIP ADOPTED AT THE BRF ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 1964

APPENDIX THREE

LETTER FROM THEO BAMBER TO BT, FEBRUARY 29, 1940: ‘A CLARION CALL.’

APPENDIX FOUR

CHRISTIAN UNITY – A PAPER BY THEO BAMBER

UNITY URGENTLY NEEDED

WHAT BAPTISTS REQUIRE

THE PRELIMINARIES

THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE

THE TRINITY

SOME CONCLUSIONS

APPENDIX FIVE

STATEMENT APPROVED BY THE DENOMINATIONAL CONFERENCE HELD AT SWANWICK, MAY 23–26, 1961

APPENDIX SIX

OPEN LETTER OF 1964 FROM THEO BAMBER TO ERNEST PAYNE REGARDING RE-UNION AND ISSUES CONCERNING DENOMINATIONAL CENTRALIZATION, FOLLOWED BY PAYNE’S REPLY

APPENDIX SEVEN

STATEMENT OF THE BAPTIST REVIVAL FELLOWSHIP REGARDING THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT AGREED AT THE BRF CONFERENCE OF 1967

APPENDIX EIGHT

‘HOW MUCH OF A MAN WAS JESUS?’

APPENDIX NINE

THE RESOLUTION AND ADDENDUM AS AGREED BY THE BAPTIST UNION COUNCIL OF NOVEMBER 1971 FOR PRESENTATION TO THE BAPTIST ASSEMBLY OF 1972

APPENDIX TEN

THE RESOLUTION OF THE BRF CONFERENCE OF NOVEMBER 1971 CONCERNING WITHDRAWAL FROM THE BAPTIST UNION

APPENDIX ELEVEN

BRF LETTER TO DAVID RUSSELL: THE FINAL PLAN FOR A NEW BAPTIST BODY

APPENDIX TWELVE

‘THE CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY IN THE BAPTIST UNION’

APPENDIX THIRTEEN

THE 1972 ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION ON ‘THE ASSEMBLY ADDRESS’

APPENDIX FOURTEEN

MARTYN LLOYD-JONES’ PREACHING ENGAGEMENTS IN BAPTIST CHURCHES BETWEEN 1950 AND 1973

APPENDIX FIFTEEN

BRF BOOKLETS AND PAMPHLETS

APPENDIX SIXTEEN

BRF CONFERENCE THEMES AND SPEAKERS

APPENDIX SEVENTEEN

BRF OFFICERS AND COMMITTEE MEMBERS FROM 1938–1972

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Focus and Method

The Baptist Revival Fellowship (or BRF) was a movement founded in 1938 to work for spiritual renewal and biblical fidelity within the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (or BU). This book examines the history, policy, and doctrinal beliefs of the BRF up to the time that it withdrew from its denominational commitment in 1972. The final year of the BRF’s existence will be covered in detail, in view of the interaction between the BRF and the BU over a Christological controversy which began at the 1971 Baptist Assembly. A detailed analysis will be provided of conservative evangelical reactions to the controversy in general and of the BRF in particular.

The purpose of this research is to chart the course of a significant but neglected Baptist movement, to review its place within the wider evangelical scene, to evaluate its influence on Baptist life and to consider its relationship with what was possibly the most difficult crisis the Baptist denomination in Britain has faced since its inception. It will be argued that the BRF began as an attempt by a prominent London minister, Theo M. Bamber (1891–1970) to preserve the pietist spirituality and biblicism that dominated conservative evangelicals in the first decades of the modern BU, emphases especially championed by the internationally famous Baptist minister F. B. Meyer (1847–1929). Alongside these commitments, Bamber developed a fundamentalist tendency in the 1950s in reaction to the growth of ecumenism and his perception of the increasing influence within the denomination of centralizing policies and liberal theology. In the 1960s the BRF became dominated by a younger generation of leaders whose inspiration was the Calvinistic and anti-denominational, the most prominent of whom was minister of Westminster Chapel, London, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981). Jones’s openness to the early charismatic movement was accepted by many BRF members. His secessionist message became its official policy in the late sixties, leading eventually to the resignation from the BU of a significant number of ministers after the Christological Controversy of 1971. It will be argued that the BRF provided a much-valued rallying point for conservative evangelicals in the Baptist Union and preserved important aspects of Baptist identity, but nevertheless failed in its original vision to influence the denomination.

Relation to Existing Scholarship

The BRF has received little attention from Baptist historians. American Baptist historians have produced a number of world surveys of Baptist life and thought,¹ including a professedly comprehensive survey of Baptist movements in the Historical Dictionary of the Baptists, but this does not even mention the BRF.² Only one of the American works which I have been able to consult mentions the BRF, where it is referred to simply as a ‘strongly evangelical’ voice of opposition to liberalism in a discussion of the ‘Christological controversy that began at the British Baptist Assembly of 1971.’³ Nor has the BRF been covered by most European scholars. Ernest Payne does not mention it at all in The Baptist Union: A Short History,⁴ and no articles have been published specifically about the BRF in the Baptist Quarterly (hereafter BQ). In 2009 a survey was published of European Baptist life as A Dictionary of European Baptist Life and Thought.⁵ Although several conservative evangelical movements are included in it, the BRF is overlooked. The BRF has received notice from three British Baptist scholars, however. David Bebbington refers to it in his Evangelicalism in Modern Britain.⁶ He notes the BRF as an early supporter of charismatic renewal,⁷ as an example in Baptist life of conservative evangelicalism,⁸ and as an opponent of ecumenism.⁹ Brian Stanley, in his historical survey of the Baptist Missionary Society (or BMS) acknowledged the role of the BRF in British Baptist debates about re-baptism in the Ceylon scheme for a united church, reflecting widespread suspicion among Baptists of the ecumenical movement,¹⁰ while Ian Randall has paid more systematic attention to it, both in his English Baptists of the Twentieth Century and in some other writings.¹¹ Randall noted particularly its significance in calling for spiritual renewal and in the defense of traditional Baptist values in the 1960s (when it had in membership a quarter all the BU accredited ministers), and its development into a platform for conservative evangelicals wishing to secede from the Baptist Union in the late sixties. I have built on this material by investigating mainly four primary sources: The Minutes of the Baptist Union, the Archive of the BRF, some published writings and sermons of its two leading figures, Theo Bamber and Geoffrey King (1908–1986), and reports concerning the BRF in the religious press, especially in the Baptist Times (or BT). Alongside this, I evaluate the BRF within the wider context of evangelical thought and practice.

Terminology

In this book, the so-called ‘Bebbington quadrilateral’ will be followed in regarding evangelicalism as having four key indicators: conversionism, activism, Biblicism, and crucicentrism.¹² Although Bebbington’s thesis has recently been challenged, especially his view that the origins of evangelicalism lay in the Enlightenment,¹³ the quadrilateral remains widely accepted with regard to the movement as a whole. Bebbington will also be followed in his identification of four main strands within evangelicalism during the mid-century: liberal (characterized as ‘eager to welcome fresh light from modern thought and other Christian traditions’); centrist (those who ‘tried to minimize the divide that had opened in the 1920s between liberals and conservatives’); conservative (a grouping which ‘inherited its moderate conservatism from the inter-war debates’ especially over the authority of Scripture); and fundamentalist (typically characterized by upholding the inerrancy of Scripture together with rejecting the theory of evolution, and denouncing those who disagreed with fundamentalism).¹⁴ In order to avoid needless repetition, the term ‘evangelical’ will not normally be added when referring to the four sub-groups.

Use will be made of the term ‘pietist’ to refer to the early message of the Keswick Convention, founded in 1875 to promote the ‘higher life’ of receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit in response to total consecration to God, entailing a stress on high moral standards—usually referred to as holiness teaching—but also a typical rejection of involvement with ‘the world’ of high culture and politics¹⁵ and frequently of denominational involvement.¹⁶

Finally, the term ‘secessionist’ will be used to delineate rather than denounce the policy, or those who held the policy, of renouncing an existing denominational affiliation as an act of protest.

This introductory chapter will set out some essential background concerning Baptist Union life prior to the founding of the BRF in 1938. Chapter Two will explore the period 1938–60: from the founding of the BRF as a movement for spiritual renewal along well-established pietist lines to its forming more fundamentalist views in opposition to increasing liberal influence in Baptist thought and practice. In the third chapter, the period from 1960–1966 will be covered as a distinct phase marked at the beginning by the ascendancy of a different evangelical ethos influenced both by Reformed theology and by early charismatic renewal, and at the end by calls for evangelicals to leave the BU in favour of a more uniformly conservative Baptist structure. In between those two turning points lay a brief but important period of engagement with denominational debates about liberal trends, greater centralization of structures, and involvement with the ecumenical movement. Chapter Four will consider how secession became adopted by the BRF as a public policy, a controversial move which resulted in some of the founding members and leading figures leaving in protest. In the fifth chapter, the course will be traced of the Christological controversy of 1971 from its beginnings at the BU Assembly until the summer months of that year, when a circle of Baptist denominational leaders attempted unsuccessfully to defuse the confrontation. In Chapter Six, the final denouement of the BRF as a denominational society will be traced through its own failure to address the denomination effectively, largely because the BRF had already committed itself to secession rather than reform and so had lost its credibility within the BU. The BRF began as a vehicle for renewing Baptist life but ended as one for leaving it. These two chapters provide the first comprehensive analysis to be written of the Christological controversy.

Denominational Background to the Founding of the BRF

The modern BU was founded in 1891 by an amalgamation of the General and Particular Baptist bodies as an evangelical denomination tolerant of moderate theological variety. In 1904 a succinct but theologically distinctive ‘Declaration of Principle’ was drawn up to express this identity. Its first article, as amended in 1906 to make explicit reference to the deity of Christ, stated:

That the Lord Jesus Christ our God and Saviour is the sole and absolute authority in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and that each church has liberty to interpret and administer His laws.¹⁷

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the BU Declaration of Principle was its Christological focus, whereby the nature of authority for Baptists was traced to Christ himself, with the Scriptures providing a subordinate yet authoritative witness to him. Stephen Holmes has remarked that, ‘When compared to other Evangelical statements of a Scripture principle, this is strikingly Christological; the Bible is a mode of transmission of the authority of Christ.’¹⁸ The evangelical ethos of the Baptist Union was thereby given a more existential basis than the traditional Protestant assertion of the final authority of the Bible, while at the same time maintaining a high view of Scripture. This expressed the evangelicalism not only of less doctrinally precise Baptists but also of the two leading Baptist conservatives in the generation that gave birth to the modern BU: F. B. Meyer and C. H. Spurgeon (1834–1892). Ian Randall summarizes F. B. Meyer’s theological outlook with a quote from Myer himself, who said that Christianity was, ‘not a creed but a life; not a theology or a ritual, but the possession of the spirit of man by the Eternal Spirit of the Living Christ.’¹⁹ Likewise, Spurgeon’s spirituality has been analyzed in great detail by Peter Morden, who concludes that, for Spurgeon, the Christian life was ‘a journey with Christ and to Christ’²⁰ because of which, as a contemporary who knew him well observed, he had ‘two loves, Christ and his church.’²¹

The Declaration of Principle combined popular Baptist reverence for Scripture and evangelical experientialism with cautious openness to new trends in theology and biblical studies. Furthermore, the liberty given to local churches provided for differing views to be expressed corporately.²² From the outset, therefore, the Union understood itself to be evangelical in ethos, but open to differences of opinion about matters such as the precise nature of biblical inspiration and authority. The Baptist scholar Leonard G. Champion (1907–1997) provided an insight into how this was understood at a popular level in a survey of Baptist life in the twentieth century delivered to the Baptist Historical Society in 1982. He considered that Baptist faith in his Edwardian era childhood was based on two pillars: the inner authority of Christ and the external authority of the Bible. He regarded these as constants in Baptist life throughout its history:

The structures of Baptist church life built up during the seventeenth century were based on a firm and definite theological foundation. The inner Lordship of Christ and the external authority of Scripture constituted the basis on which were formulated patterns of worship in which the ministry of the Word was pre-eminent, an understanding of baptism was developed as the personal commitment of faith involving specific forms of personal behaviour, and an emphasis was made upon the obligation of membership in a gathered community of believers. Here was coherence of belief and practice.²³

However, the existence of the Declaration of Principle did not prevent the occurrence of considerable debate in the early decades of the last century. Four areas of debate and discussion should be noted. Two of them constituted enduring paradoxes about Baptist Union life, and two reflected changing patterns of church life as the twentieth century progressed.

With regard to Baptist life, the first paradox concerned its evangelical identity. The affirmation of Christ’s real and absolute authority located the BU firmly within the evangelical tradition, yet no extended set of beliefs was required of members. This created a number of theological disputes about core evangelical convictions, especially between the two world wars. A small but vocal fundamentalist element accused the Union of tolerating loose views of Scripture and mounted campaigns against those who were judged guilty, notably the BMS missionary and Serampore College Principal, George Howell (1871–1955) because of his rejection of biblical infallibility.²⁴ In 1930, the Cambridge classicist and leading Baptist layman, T. R. Glover (1869–1943) caused major controversy by ridiculing traditional evangelical opinions, especially the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement, in a BU study booklet.²⁵ A third major problem arose in 1933 about the description of Jesus as ‘our God and Saviour’ when E. J. Roberts, an accredited Baptist minister and sometime tutor at the Midlands Baptist College, resigned his personal membership of the BU to protest against having to accept in the Declaration of Principle the phrase ‘Jesus Christ our God’ because of his rejection of the deity of Christ as traditionally understood. As his ministerial accreditation also required acceptance of the Declaration, his position was referred to the Ministerial Recognition Committee and Legal Committee. The matter eventually entered the public domain when these committees advised the BU Council to withdraw his accreditation. Although he consequently withdrew his objections, his case stirred a debate through which the Declaration of Principle was altered in 1938 to speak of Christ somewhat more elastically as ‘God manifest in the flesh.’²⁶

The second paradox regarding Union identity concerned the tension between independence and denominational structures. The BU affirmed that ‘each church has liberty to interpret and administer the laws of Christ’ but at the same time created a complex system of committees and procedures. This led inevitably to disputes when local church independence seemed threatened. The same issue, together with a concern to maintain a witness to credo-baptism, underlay controversy about reunion and the place of Baptists in early ecumenical life. The most notable example occurred when J. H. Shakespeare (1857–1928), General Secretary of the Baptist Union from 1898 to 1924, advocated ecclesiastical re-union based on episcopacy in his 1918 book, The Churches at the Crossroads. Shakespeare envisioned what he called ‘a United Evangelical Church of the Empire’ that would ‘end the divisions created in 1662.’²⁷ He was effectively censured at the 1919 Baptist Assembly when T. R. Glover, seconded by the venerable Baptist leader John Clifford (1836–1923), achieved unanimous support for a motion calling on the BU to reject ‘any basis of union which implies the irregularity of its ministry long blessed by God, or is inconsistent with the priesthood of believers.’ Peter Shepherd, in his study of Shakespeare’s role in Baptist life, believed that after 1918 ‘the mood among the churches, including the Baptists, swung increasingly against him, and his lack of realism was increasingly evident as the issues were explored in greater depth.’²⁸ The Baptist minister and eventual President²⁹ of Bristol Baptist College, W. M. S. West, believed it also created a decade-long backlash against ecumenical engagement by the Baptist denomination, resulting in the BU declining to send a deputation to the first Conference on Faith and Order in 1927.³⁰

Michael Walker noted the two changes in church life during the period under review in his survey of Baptist worship in the twentieth century. The first was the decline of the great preaching centre churches. Walker described the nineteenth century as ‘a golden age of preaching, in which Baptists shared to the full.’ It declined ‘not because the men necessary for it were no longer to be found. It was the congregations that died, not the preachers.’³¹ The second change to which Walker drew attention was a greater interest in liturgy. He identified as significant M. E. Aubrey’s Minister’s Manual, produced in 1927 and Taite Patterson’s Call to Worship, first produced in 1930. An older Baptist view was, he said, that ‘there could be no dissembling between catholics and nonconformists.’³²

In the two years prior to World War Two, an unfortunate but remarkable confluence of all the above issues occurred in the Baptist Union. In 1937, the BU approved an official delegation to the Second Faith and Order Conference whereas ten years earlier Baptists had declined to participate. The same year, a ‘Baptist Polity Committee’ advocated ‘some kind of connexional organisation for the payment of ministers from a common fund.’³³ In 1938, an Outline of a Reunion Scheme between the Church of England and the Evangelical Free Churches of England was published which appeared to have (though he denied it subsequently) the backing of the General Secretary, M. E. Aubrey (1885–1957).³⁴ The same year, the BU altered the Declaration of Principle as noted above. And alongside that change there was a concerted attempt to create a joint headquarters for the BU and BMS, suggesting a new phase of denominational centralization.³⁵ Though the BU as a body responded negatively to reunion, the central payment of ministers, and the idea of a joint headquarters, the proposals indicated how some leading voices in the denomination saw the future. Opposition to this vision was widespread and strong. For many Baptists, the Congregational nature of the church and the survival of the credo-baptist tradition were at stake. Nor was Baptist energy limited to conducting internal debates about identity and structures. There were significant programmes for social engagement, discipleship, and evangelism, as well as great interest in revival during the early 1920s. However, it is undeniable that the two decades after the end of the Great War witnessed enervating disagreements.

Meanwhile, church attendance was known to have been in continuous decline since the end of the Great War.³⁶ Some Baptists believed that a United Free Church was the rational answer to a shrinking constituency over-provided with local churches which shared the same fundamental ethos across their denominational boundaries. On the more conservative wing of the Union, however, another analysis existed, identifying the fundamental problem as spiritual decline within Baptist life.³⁷ A leading speaker representing the conservatives was Theo Bamber, pastor of Rye Lane Baptist Church, Peckham. When he began his ministry there in 1926 the church already boasted 793 members and in the intervening twelve years it had grown to 1137, making it the third largest Baptist church in London.³⁸ Bamber’s stature was early recognized by Spurgeon’s College, where he had trained. He was the student speaker at the 1917 College conference, and only nine years after his ordination he was chosen to represent former students as ‘a speaker at Principal McCaig’s farewell from Spurgeon’s College in 1926.’³⁹ At the beginning of 1938 he expressed his concerns about re-union schemes in a letter to the Baptist Times [or BT], roundly declaring:

our supreme need at this critical moment is not what are the conditions upon which we may unite ecclesiastically but what are the conditions in which God the Holy Spirit will visit us again in a mighty revival.⁴⁰

Bamber was articulating the standard Keswick message. Bebbington has noted that the Keswick experience of receiving ‘entire sanctification’ by faith provided also a new spiritual power.⁴¹ Ministers who underwent such an experience testified commonly to having a new spiritual authority in their preaching. Bebbington gives an example he regards as typical. A Mr. Grane of Shanklin attended the ‘Oxford Conference’ that led to the annual Keswick Convention. He testified that ‘I came here because I felt a great want in my ministry. Crowds came and went, and yet with small result. I could not believe that all was right, and I came to see what was the secret of spiritual power which some of my brethren possess.’⁴²

Yet Bamber was not likely to be branded an obscurantist or troublemaker for providing such an analysis. F. B. Meyer has been previously noted as a leading Baptist figure of his time famous for his advocacy of the Keswick message. He had made similar judgements himself about Baptist life. He founded a ‘Baptist Ministers and Missionaries Prayer Union’ as early as 1887 to meet the very need which Bamber identified.⁴³ Randall states that ‘Meyer was determined to bring Keswick’s spirituality into Baptist life.’⁴⁴ The Prayer Union initiated regional structures, an annual three-day conference and fringe meetings at the Baptist Assembly, a pattern that Bamber repeated in the BRF. Within ten years of starting, the Prayer Union had a membership of 770 out of the 2000 ministers in the Union. It was entirely an authentic Baptist note struck by Bamber when he raised the same question of spiritual empowerment on the same terms as Meyer had a generation before and only months later initiated a renewal movement using the same strategy. ⁴⁵ In fact, Meyer had died only ten years before Bamber began the BRF and it is probable that Bamber was influenced by hearing Meyer speak and perhaps by a more personal acquaintance with him.

Conclusions

The Baptist Union belonged firmly within the evangelical tradition of Britain. It was founded on a balance of authority between the living Christ and the written Word of God in which life was ordered by a spiritual relationship with Christ whose Lordship was expressed in both the teachings of the Bible and personal guidance from His Spirit. As a denomination, therefore, it was at the evangelical centre, but it had a large conservative presence to the right, as well as a small liberal one to the left. As members of a new denominational grouping, dating from 1891, the first generation of BU leaders faced occasional controversies while the boundaries of acceptable belief and practice were established. From this process, the denomination emerged as evangelical in spirit and defensive of its independent ecclesiology, whilst at the same time remaining within the mainstream of British theological and ecclesiastical life.

However, the mainstream churches began visibly to decline after the 1914–18 War, so that as well as having to refine its identity as a denomination, another kind of uncertainty grew about the effectiveness of the Baptist denomination in mission. It responded to this especially by producing literature and various schemes for evangelism and discipleship, and by exploring closer relations with sister denominations, as much for theological reasons as practical ones like rationalizing resources. A different answer to decline was proposed by Theo Bamber, who saw the need for ‘a divine visitation’; a call which struck a chord in his generation as it had fifty years before among the more conservative evangelical members of the Union.

CHAPTER TWO

THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF BRF VISION AND STRATEGY (1938–1960)

In this chapter, the early vision and strategy of the BRF will be considered and related both to the wider