Wycliffe Hall under attack

Britain’s leading evangelical college is at a breaking point.

Wycliffe Hall, a private seminary that matriculates its own students through Oxford, has seen the resignation of eight of it’s 13 faculty members since a new principal took over last year and allegedly began narrowing the school’s focus to a more conservative theological approach.

Adding to the pain, a review by the University of Oxford published this fall found that Wycliffe and the six other private halls were not providing an education in line with Oxford’s liberal ethos. What happens next, God only knows. But I’ve got a short news piece about it in this month’s Christianity Today.

“If the turbulence that is currently going on does settle down ... [then] this may be seen as a turning point at which Wycliffe went from one approach of evangelicalism to another approach that is just as well,” said Justin Thacker, head of theology for the U.K.‘s Evangelical Alliance. “When Paul and Barnabas split over the issue of John Mark … there were two missions instead of just one. There have been divisions—and they have been painful divisions—but I hope that at the end of the day, each group that splits off goes to do so in the service of Jesus Christ.”