An Anglican Evangelical Identity Crisis

An Anglican Evangelical Identity Crisis - The Churchman-Anvil Affair of 1981-1984 by Andrew Atherstone

The Churchman – Anvil affair of 1981-84 is a cause célèbre in the recent history of the Anglican evangelical movement.

For more than a century, Churchman (founded in 1879) had been the leading scholarly journal amongst evangelicals in the Church of England. Then the journal’s owners, Church Society, sacked the editorial board and replaced them with a new team. In response, the sacked board and their friends went on to pioneer a new rival journal, Anvil (launched in 1984). These traumatic and polarizing events were of great significance for the development of the Anglican evangelical movement in the decades after the Keele Congress, yet they remain shrouded in myth.

Using previously unstudied archival material and newspaper correspondence, this booklet explores the historical background to the dispute for the first time. It sheds light on the theological and ecclesial issues at stake, which continue to dominate Anglican evangelical discourse today.

Andrew Atherstone is tutor in history and doctrine, and Latimer research fellow, at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. His main area of research is Anglican evangelical identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

His publications include Oxford’s Protestant Spy: The Controversial Career of Charles Golightly (Paternoster, 2007), The Martyrs of Mary Tudor (Day One, second edition 2007), and Oxford: City of Saints, Scholars and Dreaming Spires (Day One, 2008). He is also editor of The Heart of Faith: Following Christ in the Church of England (Lutterworth, 2008) and Such A Great Salvation: The Collected Essays of Alan Stibbs (Mentor, 2008).

Read a review: reviewed in Evangelicals Now - August 2009

First Published 2008: 92 pages

ISBN: 978 0 946307 64 7

Price: £3.50

Other booklets by the same author:

LS60 I Absolve You: Private Confession and the Church of England

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