1922 (And 2022) And All That

Kenneth Brownell

Every year provokes reflection on what happened of any significance a century before and the changes that happened in between. 2022 is no exception. However, I contend that what happened in 1922 is of particular significance for the state of evangelical Christianity in the world today and has much to teach us about how God works in the world to advance his kingdom. So, before 2022 ends I want to offer these reflections on three significant events that happened in 1922.

But before we do that it is worth recalling what happened more generally in 1922. In his chronicle of that year, 1922 – Scenes from a Turbulent Year, Nick Dennison makes the case that 1922 was a particularly significant year in the course of history [1]. He argues that 1922 was the year that the shadow of the First World War and the overlapping ‘Spanish’ flu epidemic that that killed even more people began to fade in the public consciousness, particularly among younger people who survived and those who were coming of age. As he writes: ‘The only aim many of the members of this generation in Europe was to enjoy themselves’. And so, the ‘Roaring 20’s’ was given birth with its ‘dance crazes, Hollywood excesses, illicit drinking and relaxation of sexual morals’. That is the popular image of the period, but, of course, there were deep changes happening in the culture and by the end of the 1920s economic and political challenges all of which fed into the upheavals of the 1930s and the Second World War. In this the year 1922 was crucial. Dennison again:

The determination to party was only one aspect of the 1920s. It was also a period of upheaval and change. Of the years of this dramatic decade, 1922 was the most turbulent. It was the first that altered the map of the world…. In society, already changed by the trauma of war, the conventions and morals of the past seemed increasingly outmoded; new ways of thinking and behaving were making their appearance.

With good reason, Dennison suggests, the writer Willa Cather wrote: ‘The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts’. 

When we consider what happened in that year we see her point. Dennison chronicles these events month by month through the year. Among many things that happened:

• The Ottoman Empire finally fell after 700 years with huge implications for the Middle East.
• Thousands of Greeks and others were slaughtered by the Turkish army in Smyrna (Izmir). 
• Walt Disney began his career in Kansas City and all that would mean for entertainment.
• The southern counties of Ireland were separated from the United Kingdom as the Irish Free State and thus began the breakup of the British Empire.
• The Soviet Union (USSR) came into being after the Russian Civil War.
• The BBC was founded.
• James Joyce published his revolutionary novel Ulysses and TS Eliot his equally revolutionary poem The Wasteland, changing modern literature.
• Benito Mussolini led his Blackshirts on a march to Rome and became the first fascist dictator when he was appointed Prime Minister of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel II.
• Howard Carter discovered Tutenkhamen’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
• Diabetes was first treated with Insulin. 

At the time some of these things may have seemed not all that important but in retrospect we can see how important they were. The same is true, I suggest, with three other key events. The first one made the headlines in the United States, but its outcome has been far different than was expected at the time. The latter two, both in the United Kingdom, were largely unnoticed at the time and are still largely overlooked, but I believe have great significance for the kingdom. All three show that with the onslaught of modern culture that the gospel advances and the stand our spiritual forebears took is being vindicated.

Harry Emerson Fosdick’s sermon, ‘Shall the Fundamentalists Win?

Who was Harry Emerson Fosdick? Born in 1878 and dying in 1969, in 1922 he was well on his way to becoming probably the best known minister in the United States. Mark Noll suggests that he was the best known one between Dwight Moody and Billy Graham [2]. But unlike those two great evangelists, Fosdick was a theological liberal. He had studied for the ministry at Union Seminary in New York City which was one of the bastions of theological liberalism in the United States. Later he would be the minister of the huge neo-Gothic and non-denominational Riverside Church in upper Manhattan which John D. Rockefeller had purposedly built for him. There until the early 1960s he preached his liberal theology which largely consisted of applied popular psychology and the social gospel. He was very popular, especially in the 1950s when a visit to New York had to include a service at Riverside Church. 

But before all that, back in 1922 Fosdick was the Stated Supply (temporary minister) at First Presbyterian Church in lower Manhattan even though he was a Baptist (of sorts). It was there that on 22 May 1922 that Fosdick preached his notorious sermon, ‘Shall the Fundamentalists Win?’. The background to this was what has become known as the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy that was raging in the old, ‘mainline’ denominations in the US and particularly the northern Presbyterian church. Theological conservatives were increasingly concerned with the drift towards theological liberalism in the denomination – in some of its seminaries, in many pulpits and on the mission field. There were several conservative leaders pushing back, but the one who was coming to the fore and making waves was a relatively young professor at Princeton Seminary, J. Gresham Machen. I would love to write more about Machen who is himself a hugely significant figure. Suffice it to say that as well as being a brilliant and theologically orthodox scholar, he was also a very able communicator and polemicist. Supporting conservatives in the New York presbytery who sought to have Fosdick removed from the church (which they did), Machen took up Fosdick’s challenge. The following year Machen published his brilliant book, Christianity and Liberalism in which he contended that theological liberalism is not Christianity but another religion altogether [3]. This is one of the most significant books of the 20th century and still speaks to the fundamental issue when orthodoxy faces false teaching that poses as Christian. Machen and others continued to fight but in the Presbyterian church as well as the other denominations the liberals gained the upper hand and ever since have held the levers of power. Machen eventually left Princeton and founded Westminster Seminary and, after being expelled from the Presbyterian church, founded what is now the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Other evangelicals such as Clarence Macartney stayed in but left the field of battle and focused on their local churches and ministries. Something similar happened in other denominations. 

So, it seemed that the answer to the question that Fosdick posed in his sermon was that the Fundamentalists won’t win. Liberalism seemed triumphant and for several decades that appeared to be the case. However, today things look very different. Liberal Christianity is in crisis. In the United States the liberal dominated denominations are in serious decline. Since the 1970s there has been a resurgence of theologically conservative evangelical Christianity. Admittedly much of that has not been of the churchly, thoughtful, confessional kind that Machen advocated, although he himself saw much to admire in a popular and somewhat over-the-top evangelist like Billy Sunday. More recently evangelical Christianity has had some enormous challenges in the face of the increasingly secularism in the US as well as the divisions caused by political and cultural pressures. The old, broad evangelical coalition is fragmenting and may be beyond repair. Nevertheless, as far as Christianity is concerned the future is with orthodox Protestantism. That doesn’t mean that everything will be easy-going; indeed, just the opposite is likely. The heirs of Fosdick, liberals, and liberalising ‘evangelicals’, will continue to accommodate to the prevailing culture and seek to please the ‘cultured despisers’ of Christianity, while spiritually vitalised orthodox Protestants (i.e., genuine evangelicals) will be pushed to the margins of society. But there is where God, as in the early church, will be at work advancing his kingdom. For sure, God may and can reverse things by sending revival as we long and pray that he will. But until he does, we do the work he has given us to do where we are.

The founding of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches

On this side of the pond the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy was played out with much less noise and with little significant impact on the main denominations, at least in the short and medium term. In the interwar period evangelicalism was in a weak state in all denominations with the exception of the Brethren and Strict Baptists and the small Pentecostal groups. As in the United States, theological liberals ruled the roost and filled many pulpits. Things were somewhat better among the Baptists in England with notable leaders such as Geoffrey King at East London Tabernacle. In Scotland the Free Church with its college in Edinburgh was stalwartly orthodox but was relatively small and at its strongest in the Highlands and western isles.  And although he was becoming better known beyond Wales, DM Lloyd-Jones was not a national figure until after the Second World War. 

CH Spurgeon had warned people of this theological declension during the Downgrade Controversy towards the end of his life, but few took his concerns seriously. One who did was E. J. Poole-Connor. Poole-Connor was 20 when Spurgeon died in 1892. After training for ministry, he served as pastor in several churches, but most notably twice at the Talbot Tabernacle, a non-denominational church in Notting Hill in west London. (This magnificent building is sadly no longer the meeting place of a church but is now a community arts centre that previously had been a rehearsal space which hosted among others the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd.) For a time, Poole-Connor served as the director of the North Africa Mission (now Arab World Ministries). He was also involved in the Bible League and was editor of its magazine. The Bible League has been founded in the wake of the Downgrade Controversy to defend an orthodox evangelical understanding of the Bible. Interestingly, in the Bible League invited Gresham Machen to deliver a series of lectures around the country in 1927. Poole-Connor’s other great interest was in in promoting premillennialism and as such was involved in the work of the Sovereign Grace Advent Testimony. In all he did Poole-Connor saw the need to contend for the gospel. In North American terms he was something of a fundamentalist with his commitment to separation from theologically compromised denominations and premillennialism albeit not of a Dispensationalist kind. After the Second World War Poole-Connor cooperated with the militant American Presbyterian, Carl Mcintyre, in setting up the International Council of Christian Churches as a fundamentalist alternative to the World Council of Churches. 

It was particularly in his work with the North Africa Mission that Poole-Connor became aware of the many evangelical churches and missions that were unaffiliated to any denominational organisation and formed a idea of a loose fellowship that would bring them together. So, in 1922 he established what is now known as the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC). Its original name was the Fellowship of Undenominational and Unattached Churches and Missions. After an initial spurt of growth, the FIEC continued to add churches over the succeeding years. When Westminster Chapel joined in the 1960s many others did as well, especially Baptists and Congregationalists disillusioned with their denominations. More recently FIEC has grown to some 700 churches around the country and some 50,000 people attending on Sundays. Having shed Poole-Connor’s militant fundamentalism, FIEC is stalwart in its commitment to the gospel he loved and has become the largest conservative Evangelical church network in the country. 

And that’s the significance of 1922. Barely anyone noticed the founding of the FIEC. Barely anyone outside evangelical circles has acknowledged it ever the 100 years of its existence. With a few exceptions such as David Bebbington’s Evangelicalism in Modern Britain the FIEC is not mentioned in church history books. But in 1922 where was God working to advance his kingdom? Where has he been in the last 100 years? To be honest I think much of what has happened in the Church of England the Church of Scotland outside evangelicalism as well as in the mainstream Nonconformist denominations with some exception for the Baptist Union was irrelevant. Were all the ecumenical discussions and organisations and mergers such as that of Congregationalists and English Presbyterians into the United Reformed Church of any real spiritual importance? I don’t think so. Much of it was ecclesiastical posturing that looked impressive when everyone was dressed up, but as churches and chapels emptied looked pretty tawdry. 

Why was this? It was because the gospel of Christ was lost as confidence in the Bible as the verbally inspired and inerrant word of God gave way to religious unbelief. That’s not to say that there were not and are not many good Christians and godly ministries in the older denominations. There are, but the real action is not in the denominational structures and, sadly, far too many churches. No, back in 1922 and ever since God has been at work in FIEC as well as in the Grace Baptist associations, the Free Church of Scotland, the Evangelical Movement in Wales, the Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches, the Pentecostal denominations, independent evangelical churches of various kinds, ‘new’ church networks such as New Frontiers, the new Presbyterian churches, and many of the ethnic minority ‘diaspora’ churches (that among other things give London the highest church going rate in the country). Not only so, but there are parachurch organisations such as UCCF, Care and London City Mission and an array of mission societies. Much if not most of that along with Anglican and other mainstream evangelicals is under the radar as far as the world is concerned. Statistically it doesn’t add up to much compared to the need of the country. But as the institutional church declines, we need to remember that as in the beginning, God chooses ‘the foolish things of the world to shame the wise’ and ‘the weak things of the world to shame the strong’ and ‘the lowly things of the world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one can boast before him’ (1 Cor. 1:27-29). So, while we should be concerned at the decline of Protestant Christianity in our country and in Europe as well as the huge challenges from a post-Christian culture, we have every reason to be hopeful. While we long and pray for revival, we know that God is always at work, more often than not quietly and inconspicuously, to advance his kingdom. And he will continue to do until the Lord Jesus returns.

The founding of the Bible Churchman’s Missionary Society (Crosslinks)

It is not coincidental that in the same year that the FIEC was founded the Bible Churchman’s Missionary Society (BCMS) was founded. Today the BCMS is known as Crosslinks. It was founded in 1922 because conservative evangelicals in the Church of England were concerned about liberalising tendencies within the Church Missionary Society which historically had been evangelical. For some time, the evangelical party in the Church of England had been broadening with ‘liberal’ evangelicals questioning the inerrancy of Scripture, penal substitutionary atonement, and eternal punishment. The new society established Tyndale College as its training institution in Bristol which later became part of Trinity College. Today under the name Crosslinks, the old BCMS continues to facilitate the advance of the gospel in different cultures in the United Kingdom and overseas. 

Around the same time as the BCMS was founded another development helped to strengthen conservative evangelicalism in the Church of England as well as more generally. In 1919 the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union finally separated from the Student Christian Movement when Norman Grubb, then a student but later a missionary leader,  received a negative answer to his question to posed to SCM officers: ‘Does the Student Christian Movement put the atoning blood of Christ central to its teaching?’. Over the next few years other university Christian unions did the same and in 1928 they came together to form the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, known today as the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship or UCCF. These and other developments such as the founding of the FIEC were used by God to consolidate evangelical Christianity in the 20th century. He was also working in the life of a young doctor named Martyn Lloyd-Jones who in 1921 became the assistant to Lord Horder, the King’s Physician, and in 1927 would become minister of a small Presbyterian church in South Wales. He together with John R. W. Stott, who was born in 1921, would in their different ways do so much to shape post-war evangelicalism, not only in the United Kingdom but around the world, through their ministries in London at Westminster Chapel and All Souls, Langham Place respectively. And not to be neglected was the remarkable Douglas Johnson who less prominently but no less significantly did so much to advance evangelicalism as the first General Secretary of IVF and later of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students among other many other things. All of which is to say, as I have been saying in this post, that God works in ways we don’t expect or that many notice at the time. Who of us knows where he is working or who he is preparing or what he is doing today? In the week we get the news that the 2021 Census reveals less than half the population of England and Wales now consider themselves Christian in some way that give us hope. Knowing that, our job is to do all we can in our generation with the gifts, opportunities, and circumstances that the Lord has given each of us to advance his kingdom for his glory.

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1. Nick Dennison, 1922 – Scenes from a Turbulent Year (London: Oldcastle 2021)

2. Mark Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans 1992), pp. 383-4.

3. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans 2009)

Kenneth Brownell

Studied at Harvard University and the University of St Andrews. Former pastor (retired) of East London Tabernacle Baptist Church.