Evangelical Dissentients and the Defeat of the Anglican-Methodist Unity Scheme

Abstract During the ecumenical heyday of the 1960s and early 1970s, evangelicals within Methodism and Anglicanism played a major part in helping to defeat the proposed Anglican-Methodist reunion scheme. This article examines the rhetoric of two groups of dissentients, one from each denomination—the Voice of Methodism, and the Calvinist circle around Anglican theologian J. I. Packer. It demonstrates that although their objections to the scheme were broadly similar, focused upon its Catholic ecclesiology, they had less in common theologically than they assumed. Although they portrayed themselves as close allies, there was little dialogue across the denominational divide nor any agreement about the nature of the evangelicalism they reputedly shared.