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Secularisation and the Ministry of John R. W. Stott at All Souls, Langham Place, 1950–1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2005

ALISTER CHAPMAN
ALISTER CHAPMAN
Affiliation:
Department of History, Westmont College, 955 La Paz Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108, USA
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Abstract

This article uses the parish ministry of John R. W. Stott as a case study of the resilience of evangelical churches in England in the postwar period. It situates Stott's experience at All Souls in the context of the debates over the reasons for the resilience of conservative Protestantism in the western world, and argues that closer attention to particular historical facts is necessary in order to understand this phenomenon properly. The article suggests that in England in the 1960s secularisation theory became a part of the story it was trying to tell, as it generated anxiety among Christian leaders, like Stott, who were committed to reversing the decline in church attendance in England.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 496 - 513
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

D–S transcripts=Timothy Dudley-Smith interview with John Stott; LMA=London Metropolitan Archives; PP=Parliamentary papers
I wish to thank Dr Eugenio F. Biagini, Dr David M. Thompson and this JOURNAL's anonymous reviewer for comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Revd Dr John Stott and the Right Revd Timothy Dudley-Smith for special permission to quote from documents in their possession. The transcripts of Dudley-Smith's interviews with Stott are now housed at Lambeth Palace Library where they are under a thirty-year embargo. Stott's personal papers are still in his possession and not available for public access; they will pass to the libraries of Lambeth Palace and Oak Hill Theological College on his death and then be placed under embargo. The Revd Dr Bruce Winter, Warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge, has kindly allowed me to use archives relating to that institution.