5 - The Cheltenham and Oxford Conference of Evangelical Churchmen

Summary

The Conference of Evangelical Churchmen met annually, first at Cheltenham, then at Oxford, throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century. Launched at the height of the First World War, it brought together Anglican evangelicals for three days each spring or autumn, for theological discussion and policy formation concerning the issues of the moment in the Church of England. It functioned in parallel to the Islington Clerical Conference, though with a high premium on discussion and action, rather than listening in silence to the teaching of the evangelical magisterium. The Conference of Evangelical Churchmen’s golden jubilee coincided with the Keele Congress in the late 1960s, which also marked its demise because the Keele agenda began to galvanise and absorb the energies of the next generation. This chapter focuses upon the formational days of the conference at Cheltenham in the 1920s, before examining its consolidation at Oxford in the 1930s and 1940s, and its surprising post-war resurgence. The history of the conference shines fresh light upon Anglican evangelical attitudes in the generation before the Keele Congress and helps to reshape the standard narrative of the movement’s twentieth-century development.

Cheltenham origins

During the mid-1910s there were repeated calls, especially among evangelical clergy in the northwest of England, for something to be done about the chronic lack of unity or common policy amongst evangelicals in the Church of England. Across the country there were a plethora of local evangelical associations, leagues and unions in different districts and dioceses, many dating back to the late-Victorian period, but little by way of national perspective. There were few opportunities for evangelicals to consult together in order to develop a corporate policy on contemporary issues facing the church and nation. Bernard Herklots (vicar of St Thomas, Kendal) appealed in The Future of the Evangelical Party (1913) for ‘a more comprehensive and statesmanlike organization and co-ordination of our forces’. He proposed a federation of evangelical unions under the auspices of the recently founded National Church League and that the small and scattered evangelical gatherings consolidate into major conferences in the north, west and southeast of England. This call was taken up by the Carlisle Evangelical Union in October 1913.