Looking for the source of an implied quote

I am reading/listening to Martyn Lloyd-Jones' "Christianity-The Only Hope" - (in this resource: Acts: Chapters 1-8 (3 vols.) | Logos Bible Software he refers to an unnamed, but apparently well-known Christian leader who said:

he thinks certain things should be done at once, and the first is that the church must give up the foolish habit of having two services on a Sunday. “One is enough,” he says, “and let’s have it at nine o’clock in the morning so that having got that out of the way, we can then give ourselves to what we want to do.” He also says that if he had the power, he would decree that there should be no reading of the Bible at all for twelve months....

Lloyd-Jones doesn't name the person... I've tried a variety of searches to find the person he is referring to without any success - Has anybody got any helpful leads? Thanks in advance.

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GregW

I suspect that he was referring to John A.T. Robinson, who wrote a book called Honest to God around the time Lloyd-Jones was at the peak of his ministry. It sounds like the theme of a secular theology that was predominant in the book. In the mid-1960s the book had a wide circulation in the UK, particularly among liberal Anglicans (Robinson was an Anglican bishop). I can remember a copy on my parents' bookshelf. Secondhand copies of it are available online. Robinson drew heavily on Bonhoeffer's idea of "religionless" Christianity, so it is possible Lloyd-Jones was referring to Bonhoeffer, although if he was, he was seriously misrepresenting him.

How you'd source the quote I don't know, and Lloyd-Jones did quote very selectively from people he disagreed with, freely paraphrasing what they had said.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1241333#Comment_1241333

I suspect that he was referring to John A.T. Robinson, who wrote a book called Honest to God around the time Lloyd-Jones was at the peak of his ministry. It sounds like the theme of a secular theology that was predominant in the book. In the mid-1960s the book had a wide circulation in the UK, particularly among liberal Anglicans (Robinson was an Anglican bishop). I can remember a copy on my parents' bookshelf. Secondhand copies of it are available online. Robinson drew heavily on Bonhoeffer's idea of "religionless" Christianity, so it is possible Lloyd-Jones was referring to Bonhoeffer, although if he was, he was seriously misrepresenting him.

It's a book that should be available in Logos, since it was so important in its time. I have 128 books that mention it. I have a used copy of it in paperback somewhere. I've never read it, but now I'm curious to search through it to see if I can find any mention of what Lloyd-Jones was referring to.

I added a request for this book on the FeedBear site a couple of years ago.

https://feedback.faithlife.com/boards/logos-book-requests/posts/honest-to-god

It's available in Kindle. I bought it and have searched it for phrases like "two services", "church services", "nine o'clock", "9 o'clock", "one is enough", "out of the way", "no reading", "no bible reading", "twelve months", "12 months", and "one year", but found none of them. Unless it is a really loose paraphrase of something that was said much differently, then I don't think it's in this book.

But Robinson is a good guess. The excerpt Jeremy quoted from Lloyd-Jones begins, "A man who has held the highest position in one of the religious denominations and is well-known as one who speaks in the name of Christianity has recently said..." Robinson was only ever a Bishop, though. For it to have been someone in "the highest position in one of the religious denominations...who speaks in the name of Christianity" it would have been perhaps an Archbishop of Canterbury. I found through Google that Lloyd-Jones preached this series of sermons on Acts between 1965 and 1968. The Archbishop of Canterbury at the time was Michael Ramsey (1961-1974). Or it's possible that "recently" could have referred to the previous Archbishop, Geoffrey Fisher (1945-1961). The one prior to that was William Temple (1942-1944).

The quote from Lloyd-Jones goes on to say "And then he says that any preaching that is done in the one and only service at nine o’clock in the morning should, for at least a year, be on a political text alone."

That gives some more ideas for searching online. But I've been unable to peg any quotes about such things to any of those archbishops.

Good luck in your quest!

Jeremy White

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1241346#Comment_1241346

Thank you to you both. It does seem like Robinson is a prime candidate but I've yet to find "the smoking gun" in terms of an actual quote close to what Lloyd-Jones is suggesting this unnamed church leader advocated.

Some many thing to explore but not enough time

GregW

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1241402#Comment_1241402

If you've got access to a theological library containing older books, you might try Image, Old and New by Michael Ramsay (SPCK, 1963). It was his response when Archbishop of Canterbury to Robinson's Honest to God. Copies of it do appear on Amazon (one on the UK Amazon at the moment) but I don't think it is available electronically.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1241631#Comment_1241631

There's a blog post on Ramsey's handling of the "public furore" over Robinson's Honest to God here: https://peterwebster.me/2013/05/09/michael-ramsey-honest-to-god-and-the-edge-of-the-church-of-england/

There likely is more about all of that in Archbishop Ramsey: The Shape of the Church by Peter Webster, which is available in Kindle. (It would be good to get that entire The Archbishops of Canterbury Series in Logos.)