AGAINST CHURCHMANSHIP
SIR,—One can sympathise with Patrick Rodger in his lament over party lines in the Church. But, as Principal of an evangelical theological college, I do not think that the problem can be easily solved. Theological training must centre round a doctrinal pattern, to which practices in Church must be integrated if they are to be proper aids to worship; the training cannot be merely the imparting of unrelated truths.
During his time of training a student is not served up with a 'take it or leave it' system; but he has to understand other forms of Church- manship and the grounds for them, while his own thinking is guided intelligently by the doc- trinal and practical principles of e.g. Evangelic- alism. Without some real pattern of teaching the result is likely to be a vagueness which was summed up by an ordinand 'We spent so long learning the views of others that we had no time to find out what we believed ourselves.'— Yours faithfully,
Tyndale Hall, Bristol 8 I. STAFFORD WRIGHT
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