Book Review: Sinking the Church?
Review of Steve Donald, How the Inconceivable was Conceived: Sinking the Church? Leominster: DayOne, 2024. In 2022 Steve Donald retired after 34 years as an Anglican minister in England. […]
Review of Steve Donald, How the Inconceivable was Conceived: Sinking the Church? Leominster: DayOne, 2024.
In 2022 Steve Donald retired after 34 years as an Anglican minister in England. This has opened up more opportunities for him to write. In his sights in this book is the decision of the General Synod of the Church of England in February 2023 to continue to look at how same-sex blessing could be introduced, and to authorize a trial period of same-sex blessings in the church.
Events have unfolded quite quickly. In 1984 David Jenkins, the bishop of Durham, denied the bodily resurrection of Christ – not that he was the first bishop to do so. In 2005 Gene Robinson was consecrated as the first homosexual bishop in the American Episcopal Church. Three years later, GAFCON (the Global Anglican Futures Conference) was set up to combat the anti-biblical drift. In fact, a huge part of the problem had been identified back in the nineteenth century by Bishop J. C. Ryle: ‘We have thousands of jellyfish sermons preached every year – sermons without an edge or a point. They are as smooth as billiard balls – awakening no sinner and edifying no saint.’
It is fascinating that the New Statesman on 8 June 2023 listed Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as number 27 of the top fifty left-wing influencers of society. He had promised to do the ‘woke’ thing, and deal with priests who prayed that those with same-sex desires would adhere to celibacy. History has moved on, and Welby has since resigned. The revolution eats its own.
Donald writes gloomily that ‘The Church in the West has virtually been lost.’ But he recognises that it is growing where there is not a dependence on techniques and experts, but rather on prayer and the Holy Spirit. In a world of ‘soft authoritarianism’, says Donald, the Church is simply aping its enemies. Hence he finishes: ‘It now seems inevitable that there will be a major split in the Church of England.’ I am not so sure. There may well be a shaking of the foundations across all denominations, and perhaps a resultant coming together. All in all, Donald is not Carl Trueman, but this is a compelling account from a Christian vicar with the best gospel interests of the Church of England at heart.
– Peter Barnes
