Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:19:10.717Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Christian Family, Christian Nation: Raymond Johnston and the Nationwide Festival of Light in Defence of the Family

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Andrew Atherstone
Andrew Atherstone*
Affiliation:
Wycliffe Hall, Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

‘We reject that morality – death to the family!’ So interjected a young female heckler during the inaugural rally of the Nationwide Festival of Light (NFOL) in Westminster Central Hall on 9 September 1971. Although press coverage of the event focused upon more dramatic interventions, such as the attempt by a group of bogus nuns to storm the platform, it was this stark proclamation of ‘death to the family’ which revealed the primary ideological battleground in the NFOL’s morality campaigns of the 1970s. Six months later, Bishop Maurice Wood of Norwich told the follow-up ‘Land Aflame’ rally in March 1972 that ‘in this day of synthetic substitutes there is no substitute for the family’. NFOL was sometimes accused of fighting simultaneously on too many fronts, ranging from pornography and blasphemy to religious education and Sunday trading, but Eddy Stride (rector of Christ Church, Spitalfields, and chairman of the NFOL executive committee) summarized the movement’s purpose as being ‘to actively promote the values of human dignity expressed in the Biblical view of family life’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 50: Religion and the Household , 2014 , pp. 456 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Capon, John, And There Was Light: The Story of the Nationwide Festival of Light (London, 1972), 43 Google Scholar.

2 Nationwide Festival of Light Archives [hereafter: NFOLA] (in possession of the author), ‘Land Aflame ‘72’, press release, 20 March 1972.

3 NFOLA, Minutes of the Nationwide Festival of Light Executive, 21 December 1976. Most of the executive minutes are lost, but I am grateful to Penny Howell, the former secretary, for copies of the few which survive.

4 Amy Whipple, ‘Speaking for Whom? The 1971 Festival of Light and the Search for the “Silent Majority’”, Contemporary British History 24 (2010), 319-39; Matthew Grimley, ‘Anglican Evangelicals and Anti-Permissiveness: The Nationwide Festival of Light 1971-1983’, in Atherstone, Andrew and Maiden, John, eds, Evangelicalism and the Church of England in the Twentieth Century: Reform, Resistance and Renewal (Woodbridge, forthcoming 2014)Google Scholar.

5 For a brief introduction, see Holloway, David, A Call for Christian Thinking and Action: The Life of Raymond Johnston (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2004)Google Scholar; ODNB, online supplement (2012), s.n. ‘Johnston, (Olaf) Raymond (1927-1985)’, at: <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/101341=, last accessed 20 September 2013.

6 London, CARE Trust Archives, Capon, John, ‘Festival Flashback’, Nationwide Festival of Light broadsheet, 1979 Google Scholar.

7 Capon, John, ‘Back to Square One’, Crusade, September 1976, 19–22, at 21.Google Scholar

8 Brown, Douglas, ‘How the Light Burns 10 Years On’, Church Times, 11 September 1981, 10 Google Scholar.

9 ‘Is It Well with the Child?’, Nationwide Festival of Light Bulletin, no. 6 (1979), 3-5.

10 Daniel, Margaret, ‘Stopping the Rot’, Church Times, 13 July 1979, 6 Google Scholar.

11 Johnston, Raymond, Who Needs the Family? A Survey and a Christian Assessment (London, 1979), 14, 30, 39 Google Scholar.

12 Johnston, Raymond, ‘Christian Morality and the Church of England’, in Kilmister, Anthony, ed., When Will Ye Be Wise? Vie State of the Church of England (London, 1983), 99–122 Google Scholar, at 112.

13 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 99, 112 Google Scholar.

14 Johnston, Raymond, Caring and Campaigning: Making a Christian Difference (London, 1990), 106 Google Scholar.

15 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 52, 55 Google Scholar.

16 Johnston, Raymond, ‘Creation, Culture and Charismacics’, Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 2 (1984), 23–31 Google Scholar, at 29.

17 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 85–6, 111 Google Scholar.

18 Johnston, , Caring and Campaigning, 70 Google Scholar.

19 Johnston, , Wlxo Needs the Family?, 84 Google Scholar.

20 Johnston, , Caring and Campaigning, 115–6 Google Scholar.

21 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 87.Google Scholar

22 Ibid. 63, 68-9.

23 Johnston, Raymond, ‘Homosexual Relationships’, Reformed Anglican 5 (January 1980), 16–26 Google Scholar, at 24.

24 London, Latimer Trust Archives, Raymond Johnston Papers [hereafter: RJP], Raymond Johnston, ‘Must Britain Rot?’ (typescript, 1973), 1.

25 Johnston, Raymond, Christianity in a Collapsing Culture (Exeter, 1976), 3–4 Google Scholar.

26 Johnston, , Caring and Campaigning, 121–2 Google Scholar.

27 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 61 Google Scholar.

28 RJP, Raymond Johnston, ‘The Moral Battle: The Turn of the Tide?’ (typescript, 1976), 1.

29 Johnston, , Caring and Campaigning, 104 Google Scholar.

30 RJP, Raymond Johnston, speech at the ‘Land Aflame’ rally, 16 March 1972 (typescript), 3.

31 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 129 Google Scholar.

32 Ibid. 25-8.

33 Johnston, , Caring and Campaigning, 23 Google Scholar.

34 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 70–1 Google Scholar.

35 Ibid. 131.

36 NFOLA, Nationwide Festival of Light broadsheet, Autumn 1976.

37 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 118 Google Scholar.

38 Ibid. 133.

39 Johnston, , ‘Land Aflame’ speech, 4 Google Scholar.

40 Johnston, ‘Must Britain Rot?’, 8.

41 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 136 Google Scholar.

42 RJP, Raymond Johnston, ‘How to Torpedo the Family’ (typescript, n.d.).

43 RJP, Raymond Johnston, ‘The Exploitation of Youth’ (typescript, 1975), 12.

44 Johnston, , Caring and Campaigning, 116 Google Scholar.

45 Johnston, , ‘Land Aflame’ speech, 6 Google Scholar.

46 Johnston, Who Needs the Family?, 136; Raymond Johnston, ‘The Power of the Media’, in Bruce Kaye, ed., Obeying Christ in a Changing World, 3: The Changing World (Glasgow, 1977), 41-63.

47 RJP, Raymond Johnston, ‘Language Today’, News Extra, September 1975.

48 Johnston, ‘Exploitation of Youth’, 16.

49 Johnston, ‘Land Aflame’ speech, 2-3. See further School Broadcasting Council, ‘“Where Do Babies Come From?” and “Growing Up”: Two Radiovision Sex Education Aids’, in Rex S. Rogers, ed., Sex Education: Rationale and Reaction (Cambridge, 1974), 239-50.

50 Johnston, Who Needs the Family?, 122.

51 Johnston, ‘Land Aflame’ speech, 5.

52 Raymond Johnston, ‘Media Corruption and the Christian Conscience’, Catholic Herald, 17 January [975, 3. See also RJP, idem, ‘The Effects of Film’, paper for a meeting at the House of Commons, 14 May 1975.

53 Johnston, ‘Must Britain Rot?’, 10.

54 Johnston, ‘Creation, Culture and Charismatics’, 23. See also Johnston, Raymond, ‘The Moral State of the Church of England’, in Samuel, David, ed., Concern for the Church of England (London, 1985), 7–12 Google Scholar.

55 Johnston/Homosexual Relationships’, 25.

56 Johnston, ‘Christian Morality’, 120-2.

57 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 137, 144 Google Scholar.

58 RJP, Raymond Johnston, ‘The Family Today: What Should the Christian Voice be Saying?’ (typescript, e. 1971), 4.

59 Johnston, ‘How to Torpedo the Family’.

60 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 138 Google Scholar.

61 RJP, Raymond Johnston, ‘Land Aflame’ speech (draft), 10.

62 Johnston, , Collapsing Culture, 22 Google Scholar.

63 Johnston, Raymond, ‘Now is the Time for Pressure’, Church of England Newspaper, 16 January 1981, 5 Google Scholar.

64 Schaeffer, Francis, A Christian Manifesto (Chicago, IL, 1981; London, 1982)Google Scholar. On the significance of this book, see Hankins, Barry, Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Grand Rapids, MI, 2008), 192–227 Google Scholar.

65 ‘Festival of Light?’, Evangelical Times, October 1971, 1, 9; ‘The Lessons of the Festival of Light’, Evangelical Times, November 1971, 2; ‘NFOL: Falling Between Two Stools?’, Evangelical Times, September 1976, 13.

66 RJP, Raymond Johnston, ‘The Way of Salvation’ (typescript, 1976).

67 Nationwide Festival of Light broadsheet, Autumn 1976.

68 NFOLA, ‘For the Love of God and Neighbour’, publicity flier, September 1976.

69 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 140 Google Scholar.

70 Johnston, , Caring and Campaigning, 116, 125–31 Google Scholar.

71 RJP, Raymond Johnston, interview with Peter Meadows, 16 September 1976 (transcript).

72 Johnston, ‘Exploitation of Youth’, 16.

73 Johnston, ‘Must Britain Rot?’, 12.

74 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 145 Google Scholar.

75 Poulton, John, Dear Archbishop (London, 1976), 19 Google Scholar.

76 TlwTimes, 31 December 1975, 12.

77 Johnston, , Who Needs the Family?, 116 Google Scholar.

78 Johnston, , Collapsing Culture, 18 Google Scholar.

79 Johnston, , ‘Christian Morality’, 122 Google Scholar.

80 Johnston, , Caring and Campaigning, 118, 128 Google Scholar.