Tim Dieppe reports on the launch of Jeremy Thomas’ latest book and reflects on Thomas’ excellent insights into the influential history of St Paul’s church
Last week saw over 100 people attend the launch of The Nation’s Gospel Volume 3: Revival to Reports.
This is the third volume of Jeremy Thomas’ much lauded series on the history of evangelism in Britain. This volume covers the years 1900-1945 which includes the Welsh revival, and the First and Second World Wars, and how the church sought to evangelise in the period.
The launch event was held in St Paul’s, Robert Adam Street in London, which is the successor church to St Paul’s, Baker Street (Portman Square, until 1901 known as the Portman Chapel) which was originally built in 1779. The new church was built in 1970 as a replacement for the previous building and moved to Robert Adam Street from Baker Street.
Author Jeremy Thomas gave a superb lecture highlighting some of the history of the period through connections with St Paul’s, Robert Adam Street.
Lord Shaftesbury attended this church and is credited with helping to shape the direction of Christianity in Britain in the early twentieth century. He was a great promoter of evangelistic work and the use of the law to protect workers. He also furthered education and care of lunatics, the poor and orphans.
Sir George Williams also attended this church and a plaque commemorating him can be seen in the main sanctuary. Sir George founded the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) – the oldest and largest youth charity in the world. YMCA’s original object was to arouse “converted men in the different drapery establishments in the metropolis to a sense of their obligation and responsibility as Christians in diffusing religious knowledge to those around them.” To this end, the YMCA held prayer meetings, engaged in open-air literature distribution, and hosted broad educational activities. Sir George himself personally encouraged what we would today call ‘friendship evangelism’. Sir George was a very successful draper who was knighted for his services and was called the ‘last of the Victorian philanthropists.” He was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral.
William Henry Griffith Thomas was a rector of St Paul’s, Portman Square before going on to become principal of Wycliffe Hall, and then of Wycliffe College in Toronto, and then co-founder of Dallas Theological Seminary which is today the largest non-denominational seminary in the world. He published twenty-six books and many influential articles. I myself have a copy of his very helpful Outline Studies in Luke which is the first book I look at whenever I am preaching on Luke.
John Stewart Holden succeeded Griffith Thomas as vicar of St Paul’s, Portman Square from 1905 to 1943. There is a plaque commemorating him which states that during his ministry 64 members of St Paul’s became foreign missionaries! He established Sunday evening evangelistic services and organised a well-attended Bible school. Providentially, he was unable to take up his first-class ticket on the Titanic to preach at a US convention due to his wife’s illness. He was home director of China Inland Mission, and President of the Missionary School of Medicine.
His successor, Colin H. Kerr was vicar of St Paul’s, Portman Square from 1935 to 1964. He founded the Campaigners for Youth Movement which arose out of Kerr’s concern that the Scouts and Guides were treating Jesus as no longer divine, but only as a good man, and so “steadily undermining the faith of the rising generation.” He went to the United States in the 1950s to explore bringing Billy Graham to the United Kingdom, before the latter’s Harringay Crusade.
Thomas outlined the wider history of the church’s efforts during the period, including the great success of the Welsh revival, and various mission campaigns. Sadly, these campaigns failed, and the anticipated national revival was replaced by reports, the first being a report by the Church of England in 1918 entitled “The Evangelistic Work of the Church.”
Sadly, post the First World War, influential church leaders were shifting their theology away from orthodox biblical teaching. In the process they abandoned in turn belief in hell and then belief in penal substitution. This served to massively undermine the gospel, as a different gospel was taught, and led to a shift towards the promotion of a ‘social gospel’ rather than a gospel of conversion.
Disbelief in God was also furthered by the work of prominent atheists such as Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, and Julian Huxley. By contrast, C. S. Lewis rose to prominence as a voice of Christian reason and became nationally well-known through his influential wartime BBC radio broadcasts.
Much more detail on the history of evangelism in the period is found in the book, which is over 700 pages long, with over 3,000 footnotes, and indices. It will surely stand as a standard reference work on British Church history of that period for decades to come.
The book is available on Amazon or at Equipping the Church for £25 – incredibly good value for over 700 pages of illuminating history. It would make a great Christmas present for your church leader or pastor.