- RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
Rev. Joel Edwards: Our mission is to be an evangelical movement that rehabilitates evangelicalism as good news.
Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter
EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE is the name of one of the United Kingdom's most powerful church-based organisations which has been highly influential in articulating a Christian worldview in the public square.
The organisation has had some success in rallying the Christian and other faith-communities to defeat certain bills presented in Parliament.
Yet, it has been careful to suggest to the State; agendas, which they argue, are not only Christian-based, but expedient for the Government to pursue in its quest to create a just and caring society.
Founded in 1846, the organisation is headed by the Rev. Dr. Joel Edwards, who was born in Jamaica in 1951 and who spent his early years in Jones Town, Kingston. Then, in 1960 he moved with his mother to live in the U.K. The Rev. Dr. Edwards ended a short visit to the island earlier this week.
He was here primarily to speak at the graduation ceremony for the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology (CGST), which was held Friday, June 23. At that event, he was also conferred with an honorary doctorate for his services to evangelicalism.
He also met with church leaders at a breakfast meeting and shared his perspective on how to effect transformation within the Jamaican society.
Speaking with The Gleaner, the Rev. Dr. Edwards said the Evangelical Alliance has a constituency of 1 million persons and includes about 3,000 local churches, 750 parachurch organisations, 30 denominations and 32,000 individual members.
WANTS CHANGE
Dr. Edwards explained, "Our vision statement is 'Uniting to change society'.We want to see change."
"Firstly, our mission is to present a Christ who is credible for the 21st century; a Christ you can be confident about, who has relevance and who has contemporary things to say to society; a Christ who has His place credibly positioned within a multi-faith setting; a Christ with a credible Church, which appears credible to the rest of society, that is, everything between what we say about Him to what we do in His name.
"Secondly, our mission, is to be an evangelical movement that rehabilitates evangelicalism as good news. The word 'evangelical' carries a lot of baggage, particularly in the last two years in the United States.
"In the minds of many, including some in the press, 'evangelical' is a synonym for bigotry, fundamental, mindless and Republican. What we are saying is that we want to move away from the politicisation of the word and simplify it to its most radically meaning. It means good news.
"We want to say to the people we are working with, 'You are good news!' Think about what that means for the priorities you set yourself, and what it means in your locality as an individual Christian and as a local church.
"Thirdly, our mission is to be a movement for change especially for spiritual and cultural change on a long-term basis."
A one-time probation officer, Dr. Edwards is one of the founders of the African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance, and was its general secretary for the period 1988 to 1992. He came on board as a director of the Evangelical Alliance in 1992 and was promoted to general director in 1997.
WATCHDOG ROLE
The EA performs a watchdog role over some of the bills that are presented in the U.K.'s Houses, of Parliament. Earlier this year, the Evangelical Alliance collaborated with other Christian groups and even non-Christian organisations to defeat Tony Blair's Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. This draft legislation was seen as a threat to free speech.
The former engaged a group comprised of both Christian and non- Christian organisations committed to addressing a common concern over the dangers posed to free speech by the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill.
Another piece of legislation being developed and which concerns the Evangelical Alliance is the Equality Bill, which takes effect in February 2007. The organisation has already made its submissions about the bill and is confident that its concerns will be seriously considered.
Dr. Edwards explained, "The concern that we would have is that the Equality Bill is pulling together a number of very different bodies, which have varying levels of responsibility for equality and diversity. The more than 40-year-old Commission for Racial Equality that deals specifically with race, will be conflated into a human rights and equality commission.
"Elements of the Equality Bill, which looks at how the Government responds to public services, could have some very contentious concerns for us. So if you are conflating issues of human rights, equality, employment with issues of human sexuality and sexual orientation, a lot of that could be quite challenging for the Christian community.
"For example, how the bill will affect Christian organisations and Christian churches that may not want to employ people with a gay orientation in some areas of work, or levels of employment, is a concern for us.
"How the Church does its work in offering public services could also take some very careful scrutiny, to ensure that churches are not obliged to employ people with a sexual orientation, worldview or value system that we don't support or appreciate.
"We are really trying to hold two things in equal tension. Firstly, how do we ensure that we are a just society that people are not discriminated against on the basis of their race, colour, sexuality, religion?
"Secondly, how do we avoid the Government, legislation, employers, the gay lobby, putting the church in a position where we have to employ certain people or we are challenged to?"
On the matter of civil partnerships, which became reality in the U.K. last year, the Evangelical Alliance was strident in opposing this piece of legislation. The Alliance said at the time that it regarded the Civil Partnership Act as constituting 'gay marriage' in all but name.
The Alliance warned that Parliament was stepping on a 'slippery slope' of piecemeal legislation progressively undermining the socially valuable institution of Christian marriage.
The Alliance worked in partnership with other groups opposed to euthanasia and acted to defeat the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill earlier this year.
A frequent guest on talk shows, Dr. Edwards is often asked to comment on church life in the U.K. He told The Gleaner that England is more a spiritual nation today than it was 30 years ago. The reason for this, he said, was that people are "tired of materialism".
The U.K., he said, has two realities existing side by side. On one hand, there is much hedonism and latent materialism. But on the other hand, there is hyper spirituality diffused in diverse ways.
SPIRITUALITY
"People have discovered that materialism really does not work. That is reflected in a number of ways, for example, in the current level of spirituality. Just walk into any decent book shop, and there is a plethora of books on spirituality and spiritualities. On the television, one of the strongest series has been The Monastery.
"People come to the monastery to live for a while and the cameras plot their spiritual journey. It would have been hard to conceive of that programme 20 years ago. This year from Easter to Pentecost weekend, we had plethora of positive of television programmes related to the church."
Government statistics, he noted, point out that six per cent of the 60 million living in the U.K. regularly go to church. There has been, he acknowledged, a rapid decline in the numerical growth of historic churches such as Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians.
NUMBERS DWINDLING
"It is inaccurate to believe that it is only the white churches that are on the decline as black congregations are also seeing their numbers
dwindle," he said.
"Some black churches are still singing songs of the 1960s and going nowhere very fast. This is noticeable moreso in older Caribbean churches. That decline is in part influenced by the return of the diaspora -the first generation immigrants of the 1960s who have not really adapted to the new landscape. The Caribbean in demographic terms is the only shrinking population in the U.K.," he said.
Concurrent with this decline, has been the emergence of a number of what he described as "incredible evangelistic enterprises" which do Christian ministry in creative ways and which are having a wide and strong impact on many.
He cited the case of On The Move. On The Move seeks to erect a tent in a town and offer barbecued food, while they tell people about Jesus. That ministry, which began in the U.K. 10 years ago, is now in 17 countries.
He told the CGST graduates and the church leaders breakfast, that as the world becomes increasingly degenerative, attempts to bring transformation to Jamaica necessitates a rethinking of how to communicate God as relevant and indispensable for nation-building and that Christians need to be more focused on influencing persons to embrace the lifestyle and principles of the Kingdom of God.
Send feedback to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com.
