An Anglican Evangelical Identity Crisis: The Churchman-Anvil Affair of 1981-1984

The Churchman – Anvil affair of 1981-84 is a cause célèbre in the recent history of the Anglican evangelical movement.
For more than a century, Churchman (founded in 1879) had been the leading scholarly journal amongst evangelicals in the Church of England. Then the journal’s owners, Church Society, sacked the editorial board and replaced them with a new team. In response, the sacked board and their friends went on to pioneer a new rival journal, Anvil (launched in 1984). These traumatic and polarizing events were of great significance for the development of the Anglican evangelical movement in the decades after the Keele Congress, yet they remain shrouded in myth.
 
Using previously unstudied archival material and newspaper correspondence, this booklet explores the historical background to the dispute for the first time. It sheds light on the theological and ecclesial issues at stake, which continue to dominate Anglican evangelical discourse today