John Stott dies at 90

By Fred Clark, July 27, 2011 5:19 pm

Anglican theologian and author John R.W. Stott died today in London. He was 90.

Stott wrote and thought and spoke with great clarity and his books were influential and widely respected among American evangelical Christians. And those who had the privilege of spending time with him know that he was also, in person, a gracious and lovely man.

I spent a decade as a member of the staff of the nonprofit parachurch organization Evangelicals for Social Action. Stott’s writing and influence were enormously important for our work. In many ways, John Stott gave the churches we were trying to reach permission to listen to what we had to say. “Social action” was something viewed with suspicion by many evangelicals, but Stott had the stature, the patience and the passion to convince them that it was something to be embraced rather than avoided. His book Christian Mission in the Modern World greatly helped to make our mission much easier.

Timothy Dalrymple has a good remembrance of Stott here.

And Christianity Today’s obituary of John Stott is here.

This is from the latter, written by Tim Stafford, describing a single incident in which Stott laid out a case for something he spent decades teaching evangelical Christians. In 1974, evangelicals from all over the world were gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland, for what was called an “International Congress on World Evangelization.”

… the relationship between evangelism and social concern was an emotional hot button. According to some, Christians were called to preach the gospel, full stop. For others, particularly those in countries where poverty and injustice were inescapably obvious, such a stance amounted to callous indifference to people. Lausanne could easily have divided between these perspectives.

Stott had been asked to give the opening address on the nature of biblical evangelism. He began with characteristic humility, calling for “a note of evangelical repentance.” And he spoke head-on — with a lucid exposition of Scripture — to the issue on people’s minds.

“Here then are two instructions, ‘love your neighbor’ and ‘go and make disciples.’ What is the relation between the two? Some of us behave as if we thought them identical, so that if we have shared the Gospel with somebody, we consider we have completed our responsibility to love him. But no. The Great Commission neither explains, nor exhausts, nor supersedes the Great Commandment. What it does is to add to the command of neighbor-love and neighbor-service a new and urgent Christian dimension. If we truly love our neighbor we shall without doubt tell him the Good News of Jesus. But equally if we truly love our neighbor we shall not stop there.”

Stott was, as Stafford says, a gentle and diplomatic speaker and author. But he was also adamant that love for our neighbor must never be regarded as a means to an end, as a strategy in service of evangelistic efforts. His gentleness and diplomacy were a bit strained when it came to combatting that notion, as he wrote in Christian Mission:

In its most blatant form this makes social work (whether food, medicine or education) the sugar on the pill, the bait on the hook, while in its best form it gives to the gospel a credibility it would otherwise lack. In either case the smell of hypocrisy hangs round our philanthropy. And the result of making our social program the means to another end is that we breed so-called “rice-Christians.” This is inevitable if we ourselves have been “rice evangelists.” They caught the deception from us.

Our “social work,” Stott argued, should be an end in itself, an independent, uncontingent, unconditional “expression of unfeigned love.”

Much of John Stott’s long, faithful life could be described in just that phrase — an expression of unfeigned love. We were blessed to have him.

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  • MikeJ

    Nice to see evangelicals that believe in helping in this world.  Pity Patheos sticks people like Stott in the “progressive Christian” ghetto instead of letting you interact with the people who need to hear it.

    Why not put all the evangelical christians together?

  • chris the cynic

    You misunderstand.  Fred and Stott aren’t Real True Christians.

    They’re just weirdos who call themselves Christians because they try to follow the teachings of Jesus (who they believe is Christ) as recorded in the Bible.

    Real True Christians don’t care about any of that.  They know that what really matters is outlawing abortion, making sure that marriage is only allowed between one (Real True Christian) man and one (Real True Christian) woman, and that evilution is never taught in school.  I’m probably leaving something out, but that whole social work thing is dangerously communist.

  • chris the cynic

    More seriously, John Stott sounds like a great guy.

  • Bob

    Wow. I just heard that Stott went on to see His savior face to face.
    I have valued his insights and published works very much.
    I appeal to those of us who would comment to do so in a way that would honor Stott’s values and commitment to Christ. 

  • Mike

     IVP associate publisher for editorial Andy Le Peau said that Stott’s works were embraced for their “clear, balanced, sound perspective on Scripture and life. He was filled with a grace and strength that will be dearly missed in this era of extreme viewpoints and harsh rhetoric.”

  • Hawkmo1

    Chris, you now that old saying? It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool…….

  • Hawkmo1

     Chris, You know that old saying? It is better too keep silent and be thought a fool…….”

  • Ralph

    Chris, you don’t know what you are talking about, I’m afraid.  John Stott was a saint and a friend.  He loved God and loved his neighbor which is what Jesus said were His greatest commandments.  You calling Stott a wierdo is like one of your kids calling you mentally ill, which might not be too far from true.  Please stop talking about someone about which you know nothing.  Dederick

  • Skraal

    I’m pretty sure that Chris was just being sarcastic…

  • http://twitter.com/FearlessSon FearlessSon

    I concur with Skraal.  Chris was using sarcastic hyperbole to communicate a concept as to why people like Fred and Scott are often (and unfortunately) ignored by other members of the Evangelical community. 

  • Rikalous

    Chris, you don’t know what you are talking about, I’m afraid.  John
    Stott was a saint and a friend.  He loved God and loved his neighbor
    which is what Jesus said were His greatest commandments.  You calling
    Stott a wierdo is like one of your kids calling you mentally ill, which
    might not be too far from true.  Please stop talking about someone about
    which you know nothing.  Dederick

    You are very unlikely to find anyone on this board use “Real True Christians” to mean real, true Christians. It’s our sarcastic term for the kind of Christian who focuses on, well,

    outlawing abortion, making sure that marriage is only allowed between
    one (Real True Christian) man and one (Real True Christian) woman, and
    that evilution is never taught in school

    or a particular type of Rapture theology (see the Left Behind discussions) rather than loving their neighbors.

  • chris the cynic

    I wasn’t trying to derail John Stott’s thread, and I’m sorry that I have.  If I’d known that there would be more stuff in the thread about what I said than about Stott, I certainly wouldn’t have posted it.  And, obviously, I thought the term RTC was an almost universally understood part of our common vernacular here, which I guess it isn’t.-Apparently some explanation is needed.Searching for the term RTC is tedious at best.  Most people capitalize, some do not.  Fred seems to be one of the people who doesn’t always.  Some put a comma after the “real”, some a dash, some a space.  Going on the, potentially wrong, assumption that Fred started using the term describing Left Behind what I’ve done is search through the archives page by page looking at every instance of “RTC” (most of which are found in the word “shortcut”) and every instance of the word “real” (mostly realize, really, real-world.)There was a mention of “real-true-genuine Christians” previously but given the context of that I’d say that RTC can really be said to be introduced as terminology in the post on the twelfth of November 2005 titled “L.B.: The Nonattenders”.In it Fred Wrote:

    This story gives the authors an opportunity to clarify the central distinction at the heart of the book: the difference between Real, True Christians and false ones.Chapter 11 is thus a very important chapter for L&J. This is the chapter they want readers to photocopy to give to their unsaved friends. This is the chapter they would point to for people like me and — if you’ve been reading along thus far here — you. It begins their answer to the question that the rich young ruler asked Jesus: “What must I do to be saved?” (Rest assured, they do not answer, as Jesus did, “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”)…Apparently, attendance counts toward our final grade. Chloe is a “nonattender,” and therefore is doomed. But Bruce, an attender, is also doomed. We can thus surmise that church attendance is a necessary, but not sufficient, element in being an RTC. As we get into Chapter 11, we will see that there are many such elements for L&J, and we’ll consider whether these many elements are compatible with the sola fides of justification by faith.[Rayford points out that Bruce is still there, Bruce says he'd prefer to discuss it in person.]That discussion is theologically significant, as L&J begin drawing bright lines between the RTCs and the ersatz believers like me and Bruce. But these theological distinctions occur within the larger context of this story: the “tribulation” in which all those left behind receive the torment and judgment they richly deserve.

    It might not be the best description of what RTC means, but it does appear to be the first Fred gave, RTCs are the people who get raptured, not people like Fred or us, his readers.

    -

    Doubly sorry for derailing in a way that needed a follow up post this long.  So, sorry everyone.

    The thread should be about the departed Stott and instead it’s been about me.  Sorry.

  • http://attitudevicissitude.wordpress.com/ Andrew

    While I understand your chagrin, be consoled by the fact that the problem of the RTCs and the UUCs (unreal, untrue?) is absolutely relevant to John Stott’s legacy as a Christian leader.

    Stott caused a fuss at long distance in 2004 when he inspired David Brooks to write a short column honoring him for being a not-stupid evangelical Christian.  (The “Gee, maybe Christians aren’t as stupid as we always thought” category is one that deserves its own catchy acronym – maybe you could come up with one!)  There were some angry letters to the Times saying, in effect: How can you praise John Stott as a moderate?  Is he down with the queer Christians?  Does he favor the ordination of women?   Is he a universalist, or by some other means does he repudiate the notion that all human beings need Jesus?  Then what good is he??

    Today I would tell them: a man who can be sincerely missed on both sides of the RTC line gave a tremendous gift to a world wracked by rudeness and contempt between followers of different traditions. 

  • Kogo

    Um, yeeeeeeeaaah . . . there’s problems with Stott.

    In his 1998 book “Same-Sex Partnerships” (http://www.amazon.com/Same-Sex-Partnerships-Perspective-John-Stott/dp/0800756746)–reprinted in expurgated form in several later “greatest hits” books and separately in pamphlets–Stott goes on at great length and nuance to explain why everything Teh Gayz do is wrong, wrong, wrong.

    This includes *really* ugly stuff, albeit couched in Lewisian/Cambridgesque tweed-speak that makes it sound halfway reasonable.

    Highlights:
    1.) Gay sex is physically harmful (Yes. Really. He goes there.)

    2.) Gay people don’t actually want sex: They’re just lonely and need celibate friendships rather than sex.

    3.) Half of gay people aren’t actually gay, they’re “inverts” for whom gay sex is just masturbation. (Yes. Really. He goes there too.)

    4.) Although he grants that being gay might be something one is inborn with, he says that “doesn’t excuse” (Yes; he says that. Verbatim: “doesn’t excuse”) having gay sex.

    5.) He says gay people aren’t really oppressed because they have no actual rights that are being infringed upon: They’re only being properly looked-down on for their immorality.

    6.) He says that the [can't remember name of] British law passed in 1967 that was interpreted as ‘decriminalizing’ homosexuality really just ‘removed criminal sanction’. This is probably factually/legally true, but I can’t help but think the implication is, “And we can thus recriminalize your love any time we want, gayz. So watch yourselves.”

    Stott also had stuff to say about abortion and euthanasia that lands him pretty firmly on my shit list, too.

    And on top of all that, I’m colossally unimpressed by Stott because:
    1.) He wrote books and gave lectures. That’s it. He didn’t actually *do* social work: Cups of water did not physically pass from his hands to those of others. He didn’t even do the regular rector work he was supposed to do–he basically bought himself out of such prosaic responsibilities (using church funds) so he could devote himself to ‘other projects’. Whatever those were.

    2.) In keeping with this sort of sinecured lifestyle, Stott was basically a courtier: Whatever truth he might have spoken to power, it never seemed sufficiently loud a whisper to interfere with his being appointed a Chaplain to the wealthy court of Queen Elizabeth II. And I dunno: maybe sometime in history there have been decent men attached to royal or imperial courts. But I can think of nary a one, myself.

    3.) Stott was supposedly celibate his entire life. I’m willing to credulize that–maybe he was. I nurture a creeping inner feeling that celibacy is the other side of the coin one finds when one flips over promiscuity (viz. a dysfunction). But even if I’m wrong about that, I *do* pretty firmly feel that celibates are not to be taken seriously as commenters on anyone who *does* have sex.
     

  • http://attitudevicissitude.wordpress.com/ Andrew

    This is kind of a quibble, given the overall thrust of your comment – namely, that you don’t find Stott worthy of any glowing eulogies – but w/ respect to Stott’s celibacy – it makes at least as much sense for the celibate to comment on sex as for the sexually active to comment on the celibate.

    I happen to think that’s quite a lot of sense.  So, in a way, I don’t think sex is private, just because we do it (typically) in privacy.  Whether or not Stott ever had sex, and what that means about his psychological health, is, in a way, rightfully your business.  And where gay men put their penises was (strange as it may sound) rightfully Stott’s business.  (This is not, of course, to affirm his conclusions about the proper placement of penises!  Only that his commentary should not be dismissed out of hand, merely on that basis…)

  • http://attitudevicissitude.wordpress.com/ Andrew

    This is kind of a quibble, given the overall thrust of your comment – namely, that you don’t find Stott worthy of any glowing eulogies – but w/ respect to Stott’s celibacy – it makes at least as much sense for the celibate to comment on sex as for the sexually active to comment on the celibate.

    I happen to think that’s quite a lot of sense.  So, in a way, I don’t think sex is private, just because we do it (typically) in privacy.  Whether or not Stott ever had sex, and what that means about his psychological health, is, in a way, rightfully your business.  And where gay men put their penises was (strange as it may sound) rightfully Stott’s business.  (This is not, of course, to affirm his conclusions about the proper placement of penises!  Only that his commentary should not be dismissed out of hand, merely on that basis…)

  • Kogo

    Totally. Given the abject failure of religious people to follow the dictum to Do Unto Others, etc, etc, I agree that Turnabout Is Fair Play seems the next-best alternative.