[6] Walking Apart: Conservative and Liberal Evangelicals in the Early Twentieth Century

The unity of Evangelicalism was broken during the 1920s. The movement had always been marked by variety in doctrine, attitude and social composition, but in the years after the First World War it became so sharply divided that some members of one party did not recognise the other as Evangelical-or even, sometimes, as Christian. Polarisation was by no means total, for co-operation between the two wings, liberal and conservative, continued in a number of organisations. Yet disagreement was sufficiently acute to cause schism in several Evangelical institutions including the Church Missionary Society. Many deeply regretted the partisanship. J.E. Watts-Ditchfield, Bishop of Chelmsford, wished to hear less and less of ‘Evangelicals with a label’, whether conservative or liberal.1 But it was not to be. When a similar hope was expressed by a writer to The Record in 1934, another correspondent pointed out the scriptural injunction to withdraw from those teaching other than the truth. Only lately, he continued in disgust, an Evangelical in the daily press had urged that the feeding of the five thousand was merely a sharing of lunches.2 Conservatives could not tolerate liberal views of this kind. The split became deep and permanent.