The evangelicals are already here
Alan Wilson (Bishop of Buckingham) had a piece in the Guardian's Comment is Free yesterday . I've never encountered Bishop Alan in the non-digital world, but I have a lot of respect for his online persona, especially what he says on his blog . But this time I have to say he's hit a wrong note. Alan's theme is the future of evangelicalism, inspired by last's week's Lausanne Conference in Cape Town (see the previous post). As we'd expect, there's good stuff there, and some useful critical questions to challenge any thinking evangelical. But the piece is still horribly generic, adopting a tone too familiar to anyone of my background who follows Anglican affairs in the media: "those funny evangelicals". In the space of a short article, Bishop Alan suggests that evangelicals are culturally uptight, they don't like gay people very much (although they could if they tried hard enough), and although he is careful to say that he doesn't reall