I’ve argued at some length, that we need institutions to unite us in UK evangelicalism. What we have may well serve good purposes, but it isn’t managing to unite us, and they aren’t forming us well.
There are two, contradictory, impulses to consider here. First, institutions, as Yuval Levin argues, mould us. This can very much cut both ways but can be a positive effect. When well designed, institutions act as an imprint to form us in a particular way.
Of course, and second, it’s easy for that mould to run away from us and change until the formation goes awry, and its easy for that to be changed deliberately by others who would like to twist an institution to their own ends. Here I would think particularly of Friedman’s insistence that changing systems, especially in institutions, is impossibly difficult and requires a non-anxious presence to cut through the noise and remould the place in their wake.
In other words, good institutions are good, bad institutions are hard to turn, one can shift to the other without active work to keep the mould in its particular shape.
I’ve tried my own hand at a bit of institutional dabbling with Eucharisma (in the smallest possible way), and the building is very hard without a strong coalition who want not just to cheer you on but to put their arm to the plough.
I’ve recommended multiple kinds of institution: those that help us learn, those that encourage us to think deeply and help thinkers think with each other, those that bind us with other orthodox Protestants in own towns and cities, and those that bind us within looser confessional groupings across our denominations and networks.
As I write, there’s been some news that TGC UK is going to be a thing. People are cross about it on the internet. Months have passed since I wrote this so they will be cross about something else today. Some of them have some valid concerns that need at least thinking through, especially around accountability. Some of them just don’t like the original TGC, and that comes with attacks from both the theological ‘right’ and ‘left,’ though those are very imprecise terms. Of course, being attacked on both sides is not evidence that you’re in the right place—despite what people say about the BBC—truth is truth wherever on a spectrum of opinion it comes.
A lot of the other noise has been about whether or not we ‘need’ something like this in the UK. It’s a fair question, I’m not going to go into bat for it being what we ‘need,’ but I must admit that I have less time for those making this argument who suggest that we already have what we need. UK evangelicalism is deeply siloed. We only get united by American figures who can speak across our constituencies, like Keller could. People point to the Evangelical Alliance, which does great work politically but doesn’t really unite people other than providing a certain kind of legitimacy. The theological tent is orthodox—and they’ve been good at keeping it orthodox with clear statements on gender and sexuality—but very broad with it. Generally speaking, the smaller the tent, the easier we find it to talk to each other and work together. When the tent gets too small its just mates having a natter and giving it a name because having a club is cool. Institutions that aim to unite need to cut across more than one group in order to achieve anything, but it’s a question of balancing where the walls are. Institutions with broader or narrower walls will have different uses.
I generally like TGC, which is going to colour my opinion, but it strikes me that something that brings groups that don’t talk to each other together might be a good thing. I am someone who could happily sign their forms of unity. My network is involved to some degree, a friend is on the new UK council, so I have some biases here. It may or may not achieve these ends, but an attempt to bring together the chino-wearing ‘con-evos’ with others who are conservative and evangelical but not culturally ‘conservative evangelicals’ (some of us wear jeans) with those who have traditionally been very sniffy about us seems on the face of it a good thing.
I’m aware that plenty of evangelicals who might call themselves conservative are not calvinistic complementarians and so wouldn’t join in with such a gang. ‘Conservative’ in a very liberal denomination might just mean ‘believing the Bible.’ Nevertheless, I’m open to the idea that things that let us play together might help us out. I have very little sense of the structures and people involved in the conevo world because we’re so siloed. I know more names on the US TGC council than the nascent UK one. Those who point to existing structures don’t tend to realise that over here in the reformed charismatic world we haven’t even heard of a lot of those things and they are culturally dissimilar enough to us that we’re unlikely to join in even if there are huge similarities in doctrine. Culture really matters. The jokes about what kind of trousers we wear nod in the direction of a wider cultural gulf.
Institutions which allow those from similar but distinct cultures that do not communicate with each other to find out that each other exist and that we can work together is a good thing. TGC UK may or may not achieve that. I think it’s probably worth a go.
The biggest risk I see is this: those in the sort of world like mine that get excluded from certain circles might see this as a chance for legitimacy. I have little desire to be included at those tables—they don’t look that fun—and yet I can sense that same niggly desire in myself. We should be wary of that. This particular thing might not be a solution at all, but if not this we should ask: then what? We need to build things. We need to build lots of things. May the Lord at strength to the arms of institution builders of all stripes and streams.
Photo by Korng Sok on Unsplash
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