Before I go on to share the article I wrote for Christian Today I have to share from a really heavy heart. This has turned out to be far more significant than I thought. I listened to a man who denies the Gospel, preach a Gospel that was no gospel at all and wrote an article about it. As a result I received a barrage of comments – many positive and many negative. As an example of the latter take these from my fellow evangelical Christians.
“Rancid envy – David is full of testosterone and harshness is his middle name- the gospel was there your standards of expository perfection were not – nitpicking – you are setting yourself up as the Pope of the evangelical church – moaning – carping – hurt and disappointed – Mean-spirited tortuous drivel! I think you should repent and ask God to forgive you for being so mean-spirited and encouraging dissension –
It has been a really strong reaction and I am struggling to understand why. Steve Timmis wrote me and offered his explanation:
“The endorsement of evangelicals of that sermon is remarkable & disturbing. I think it reveals something about our desire to be mainstream. We feel safer now because so many applauded him. His personal warmth and enthusiasm gave permission for us to disregard his doctrine & read into what he said.”
I am glad that Steve has allowed me to quote him publicly because to be honest there are those who agree with what I have said but would prefer to keep it private. The silence of those in my own denomination is deafening!
Here are some other comments that need to be dealt with:
- ” Bishop Curry is very for the Gospel of Christ. It’s a great evangelistic message. Its pure biblical orthodoxy. “The lack of discernment in these comments is deeply worrying.
- “God can use it”. Of course God can use it. God can and does use many things that are not good. God can use cancer, a donkey, a pagan king and destruction of the temple to help spread the word. I don’t doubt that the fuss about this sermon will provide many opportunities and we should take them. But we must be careful to make sure that we communicate the Gospel of Jesus, not the gospel of Bishop Curry.
- “You shouldn’t have said it”. Or at least you shouldn’t have said it now. I was even criticised for making my criticism of the sermon public. The irony is that this criticism of me was not sent to me privately but made in public! People seem to think that I should critique a heretic preaching a false gospel in private; whereas they feel free to critique me publicly for pointing out heresy! As for the timing – I’m afraid I don’t agree. I believe that Bishop Curry teaches a false Gospel and that he is being used to undermine faithful brothers and sisters in the Anglican communion. He is suing those who stand for biblical faith and seeking to take away their property from them (is this how ‘love’ shows itself?). I believe that there is an enormous danger that the evangelical church (including my own denomination) is being tempted to accommodate with the world and adopt a more ‘broadly evangelical’ approach. I regard that as fatal to the cause of the Gospel – and because I love the Lord and love his Gospel, I will continue to oppose that view. I realise that there are others who love the Lord and his Gospel who disagree. Let each be fully persuaded. As for me…Time is short….I really can do no other.
A completely unforeseen way is that the Lord is using this to show up fault lines within evangelicalism. Within Independents, Charismatics, Sydney Anglicans, the Free Church and the PCA
It’s the Anglicans I feel especially sorry for- as David Ould explains – the appointment of Bishop Curry as the wedding preacher was a real blow to those Anglicans who are seeking to uphold the Bible and keep the Anglican communion together. Several of them have been in touch to express thanks – as they are the ones who are especially under attack.
If you doubt that this fault line has been exposed just go to the Christian Today website where, as I write, the most read article is “The Royal Wedding: How it preached the Gospel to the whole world”. The second most read is “The Royal Wedding: How it distorted the Gospel to the whole world”
The text for this is below:
It was a great occasion. One of those public spectacles that the British seem to do so well. Such joy. Good weather. Great music. An interesting sermon. Two people in love. What’s not to like?
Even here in Australia the Royal wedding hysteria was palpable. TV stations sent over full crews to London, parties were held in restaurants and even the Christian conference at which I was speaking had a late night session where people could watch the joyful event.
Back in the UK churches from Stornoway to Southampton helped host screenings and parties. It seemed that, apart from a few curmudgeonly old-style republicans, everyone was on board.
The wedding itself was in many ways wonderful. My colleague Mark Woods has written an excellent and positive Christian perspective on the nuptials. There was much that was good and joyful about the whole occasion. Perhaps for me I was most moved by Prince Harry’s face and the memory of him as a 12-year-old boy walking behind his mother’s coffin. After what The Sun called ‘a VERY modern service’ and what they called an ‘eccentric’ sermon from Bishop Michael Curry, many Christians were pretty excited as what they saw as a great gospel opportunity, if not occasion.
But as I have reflected on the whole occasion over the weekend, and at the risk of losing my prospective knighthood and my invitation to Lambeth palace, I want to suggest an alternative point of view.
The press: This was a worldwide media event. Many millions of people in the UK were totally absorbed by it, but many millions were not. This was a very British event, but I wonder if it were even more a world media event. I suspect there was more interest in America than in Scotland. Royal weddings are tailor-made for the ‘Hello’, 24/7 news, soundbite era.
The patronage and privilege: Although it was entitled ‘the people’s wedding’, let’s not kid ourselves; this was primarily for the privileged. The cameras focused so much on the celebrities (just how many times did we need to see Mr and Mrs Clooney?) that we didn’t really notice the other wealthy and entitled people gathering. This was royalty meeting celebrity. The Queen of the UK meets Oprah, the Queen of Media. A very modern wedding, indeed, celebrating wealth, meaningless truisms and the joy of the privileged and powerful. And if you don’t agree it was the most loving wonderful thing, you are a heretic. The symbolism of the beggars being cleared from the streets of Windsor to make way for the royal carriages is not without impact.
The patriotism and pomp: It was a patriotic occasion and no one does pomp as impressively as the British. It certainly adds to the colour and variety of our world.
The preaching: In one sense the sermon was wonderful. Bishop Curry was passionate, articulate, humorous and he even mentioned Jesus, the Bible and the love of God (55 times!). And people loved it. Piers Morgan tweeted: ‘Wow. Still reeling from Rev Curry. What a moment. What a guy!’ Ed Miliband – ‘Rev Michael Curry could almost make me a believer.’ As predicted on Christian Today, it seems as though the British really did fall in love with the loveable bishop. And it wasn’t just the public, nor the liberal Christians and LGBT activists who loved him. Those of a more conservative bent were quick to join in. The conservative blogger Archbishop Cranmer tweeted: ‘When the Church is liberated from staid sermons and formulaic motions to spontaneous expressions of joy and heart-bursting love, the world sits up and listens. God bless you, @BishopCurry, for proclaiming the love of Christ so passionately to two billion people.’ Many other conservative evangelicals from Krish Kandiah to Amy Orr-Ewing, from Scottish Free Church Presbyterians to Sydney Anglicans were equally commendatory. It was, and is, as many pointed out, an opportunity to talk about Jesus and to share the Gospel. So what’s the problem?
There are some people who objected to the showmanship of the whole sermon, feeling that it kind of took over and took away from the dignity of the occasion. The cameras showed the somewhat bemused contempt that some of the royals seemed to have for the message. Personally that was not my problem.
My first difficulty is that everyone loved it. It was so post-modern that everyone could take their own meaning from it. Atheist, agnostic, or Christian – it didn’t matter. You could take that sermon ‘all you need is love’ and quote it in support of your own views. So I read of those who argued that the good bishop was the LGBT champion; the Guardian saw him as the champion of ‘blackness’ (why this continual obsession with skin colour? Have we not grown out of that?); I even saw someone tweeting that this was the man who could save us from Brexit! Some just heard two young people being given advice about love and many evangelicals heard it as a clear presentation of the gospel (although I suspect no one else did). We hear what we want to hear. When the Guardian, the Daily Mail, Pink News and evangelicals are all praising you, either revival has broken out or there is something very wrong.
Mind you not all evangelicals loved it. The Queen’s former chaplain Gavin Ashenden for example was not impressed and wrote this excellent review.
It was self-contradictory. The service was wonderfully orthodox. We were told that marriage is ‘a solemn, public and life-long covenant between a man and a woman, declared and celebrated in the presence of God and before witnesses’. But Bishop Curry does not believe that. Not only does he believe in same-sex marriage, but he has led the American Episcopal Church to go against the rest of the Anglican Communion (including the archbishop of Canterbury) so that it is now in the process of removing references to procreation and husband and wife so that the marriage ceremony can be non gender-specific. This was a traditional ceremony conducted by a man who seeks to undermine the theology, liturgy and practice of that ceremony.
It was too conventional. In a fascinating interview afterwards with the archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Curry it was stated that the sermon was ‘unconventional’. In one sense it was, in another it was the most conventional sermon you will hear in that it reflected the values and conventions of our culture. It was a little amusing to see two men dressed in the traditional garb of their powerful positions talking about being ‘unconventional’. If Michael Curry had dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and preached the gospel – that would have been unconventional!
It was not the gospel. This for me is by far the most important thing. And yet many evangelicals will be utterly puzzled at the statement that this was not the gospel. He mentioned Jesus, the cross and the love of God as the basis for everything. Is that not the gospel? No, it’s not. Because it all depends on what we mean by the words ‘love’, ‘Jesus’, ‘God’ and ‘gospel’.
Bishop Curry rightly cited 1 John 4:8, ‘God is love’. And he spoke of the power of that love. But, and this is easily done, he soon slipped into ‘love is God’ – ‘any form of love’ (again without defining what love is). Even when he mentioned Jesus’ death as a sacrifice he did so in much the way as we would mention soldiers in war ‘sacrificing’ their lives. Jesus’s death was an example of love. He did not speak of it in the way that John does – as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
John speaks a great deal about sin, the danger of false teachers (anti-Christs), that love for God is not some amorphous feeling but is rather seen in obeying his commands and the fact that the world hates Christ and his teaching. Bishop Curry ignored all of that and spoke as though the Bible was just saying all we need to do is love one another and live lives of love so that we will live in Nirvana. He didn’t mention that we can’t do this without Christ. The gospel is not that we need to follow Christ as the most perfect example of ‘love’. It’s rather that we need forgiveness for our sins and that we cannot love without Christ. If he dared to say what John says, I suspect the reaction to his message would have been somewhat different.
As one atheist tweeted:
‘I admired his enthusiasm but, humans are perfectly capable of expressing this level of emotion and love without any of the 100’s of gods invented over the years.’
And that is precisely the message that the world took from it. You don’t need God. All you need is love. And you are perfectly capable of love. The redemptive power of love in his message was not about the redemptive power of the cross, but rather the redemptive power of any love. Equating my love for my wife, children, friends, society, self with the redemptive love of Christ, takes away from the power of the cross. We preach salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, through the cross of Christ. We don’t preach salvation through our own redemptive love copying that of Christ.
I don’t deny that God could use this sermon to reach people. A sovereign God, who has used a donkey and a pagan king in the past, can surely use even the smatterings of his word that were part of the bishop’s sermon. But we need to be realistic. Nobody heard the gospel – except those who already knew it. Nobody (except evangelicals) is talking about Christ – they are all talking about Bishop Michael Curry and Meghan’s dress. The evangelical response in grasping at the crumbs from the bishop’s table shows how desperate we have become – and how wedded we are to our own culture. We are not walking on the water of our culture. We are drowning in it. Little wonder that we are so wet and ineffective.
Bishop Michael Curry’s Sermon – A Distorted Gospel Divides the Church