Andrew Atherstone

Church Society Three decades ago, in January 1984, the Church Society’s theological journal, Churchman, was relaunched under new leadership. At a moment of crisis within the Anglican movement, when confusion reigned about the authority and interpretation of Scripture, some were beginning to ask: ‘ When does neoevangelicalism become simply a new form of the old liberalism?’ (CEN, 6 May 1983).

The Church Society council turned to a young tutor at Oak Hill College, Gerald Lewis Bray, to take a lead as Churchman’s new editor. An expert in patristic theology, with a doctorate from the Sorbonne and a monograph on Tertullian already to his name, Bray was a rising star in the evangelical firmament. He was determined to bring new vigour to the journal: ‘orthodoxy can and should be held and proclaimed with passion; it should stir the blood of the faint-hearted and awaken new resources of spiritual life which sleep for want of the sound of the trumpet’ (CEN, 6 May 1983).

In his first editorial he laid out Churchman’s theological priorities under his tenure – it was to be clearly evangelical, scholarly, ecclesiastical (speaking ‘to the church’) and evangelistic: ‘ we believe that Bible-based Christianity is as relevant today as it has ever been’.

Thirty years on, Gerald Bray is still in harness and has managed to outlast even Sir Alex Ferguson. In the meantime other theological journals have come and gone. Anvil was founded in 1984 to express the views of anyone claiming the title of ‘evangelical’. It survived until its Silver Jubilee in 2009, but subscriptions dwindled: it wobbled and fell, to be revived instead online – instant blogs, like Fulcrum, have stolen its market.

But Churchman

continues