Baron Donald Soper is remembered for his London Hyde Park and Tower Hill soap-box campaign for a social gospel and his claim that Christians neglected the poor and needy. Whether this claim was just or not, Christians always need to be reminded that social responsibilities go hand in hand with practical religion. As James says (1:27), spotless saints are social workers. Seen from a brighter point of view, since the days of Ulrich Zwingli and Henry Bullinger, whose preaching served to ban poverty in their cantons, Reformed Christians have emphasised their social responsibilities to a high, but not over-balanced, degree. Indeed. from the sixteenth century to our present day evangelical Christians have shown what true religion is according to James, producing such social reformers as…

Matthew Parker was the first Reformed Archbishop of Canterbury after the Marian persecutions ended. His task was far from easy as Mary’s tyranny and popish superstitions had left a dirty stain on the entire country. Parker’s person, work, testimony and deep learning, under Providence, enabled England to sweep away the past and embark on a veritable Golden Age for the Church which lasted throughout Elizabeth’s and James’ reigns until brought to a halt in the middle of the following century. I have chosen the term ‘Golden Age’ carefully, not so as to deny the many problems both theological and political that faced England throughout this period but to affirm that hardly any other age since then, including even the Great Awakenings of the 18th century,…