The Jensen brothers


Julian Mann on an important Australian contribution to British conservative evangelicalism which shook up its complacent tendencies


T


he brothers Jensen – Peter, Archbishop of Sydney and Phillip, Dean of St Andrew’s Cathedral – continue to exercise an influential ministry within the Anglican


Communion from their conservative evangelical stronghold in Sydney Diocese. As a British conservative evangelical ministering in the Church of England, I would like to explore how much our constituency owes under God to Australian evangelicals such as these. Australia


shook British conservative evangelicalism


out of its bourgeois complacency through the ministry of the Jensens, among others, at Proclamation Trust (PT) conferences in the Eighties and Nineties. Te PT grew out of the preaching ministry of Prebendary Dick Lucas at St Helen’s Bishopsgate in the City of London. Instrumental in its establishment in the mid-Eighties was a former curate of Mr Lucas, the Revd Jonathan Fletcher, vicar of Emmanuel Wimbledon. As with all of us, they had their faults and their excesses.


But their rigorous evangelicalism and magnificent biblical exposition did us a power of good. Tere is a whiff of gunfire about the Jensens’ contributions. Without that, we in British conservative evangelicalism are inclined to be too Home Counties, too Oxbridge, too safe.


What they got right It is instructive to consider what the Jensens have been


right about since the Eighties; firstly, the complementarity of the sexes and male headship – if British evangelicals had taught this more rigorously in their churches, the ordination of women to the presbyterate may never have got through General Synod in 1992. Secondly, they were right about the dangers of experience-driven charismatic theology.


of the Church. This, as we know, can pose a nasty problem. The manager of Manchester United cannot also be in charge of the Premier League. To be specific, everyone may have an opinion of any imaginable sort, as long as they do not put that opinion into action against the State. Extremist Moslems must surely be permitted, for practical reasons, to believe they live among heretics who need severe punishment. The law prevents their doing anything about it. If they do, in the monarch’s temporal capacity they must be restrained or punished. If Prince Charles means he will make


sure his representatives do not invade men’s minds, it is hardly worth saying,


Tey were aware of the need for more thoroughly


evangelical theological training. UK evangelicals were oſten more knowledgeable about critical theories of the Bible than they were about the wealth of evangelical theology. Tey also realized that liberalism is geting ‘incarnated’ in the older denominations through measures such as the ordination of women and the need to take structural steps to protect evangelical pulpits. Tey have also been right about the need for proacive


church planting; the need for biblically-shaped evangelism, modelled in the ‘Two Ways to Live’ tract; the fact that the focus on biblical exposition meant church people could miss out on necessary doctrinal framework; and the priority of the local church and the need for church-based ministry training schemes.


Too comfortable? Tere are also two things they have been wrong about;


firstly, the homogeneous unit principle – i.e. targeting secific demographic groups for rapid church growth, which pandered to the elitism already latent in British conservative evangelicalism; and secondly, writing off small churches in the older denominations as no hopers for the Gosel. With support from larger evangelical churches, and in some cases without that support, they can be recaptured for Christ and can grow. It just takes time. What they have been right about vastly outweighs what


they have been wrong about. If Phillip Jensen is not invited to seak at a PT conference within the next two years, that may be a sign that we are geting too comfortable with a consensus agenda and need to be shaken up by the call to radical discipleship. ND


because as matters are they cannot. He cannot mean he will defend any faith, however damaging its effects. How about Cannibalism? As it stands, the Queen in her spiritual capacity is the defender of the Christian faith, as handed down by our forefathers. She has promised to uphold it, and splendidly she does. That this involves something called the Establishment brings us to that mighty complicated subject. This could be a good time to thrash out its rights and wrongs because in future we could have a ruler not as gentle as Prince Charles, in whose reign the matter would become more prejudiced against than it is now prejudiced for.


Edward VIII put us in a pretty pickle, and Henry VIII and George IV might well have done so, if they had had a more powerful and vengeful Press. To them, we can apply the Article that the personal unworthiness of the Minister does not hinder the effectuality of his ministration. Establishment is a subject I shrink


from attempting, because so many better theologians and constitutionalists can hammer at it. Like many others, I want the Church self-governing. Our present attitude is ‘If it works, don’t fix it.’ The question is: ‘Does it work?’ How much of our present trouble is due to Establishment? Or has it perhaps made our position easier?


October 2010 ■ newdirections ■ 25


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