Evangelicals Now and the Stephen Sizer Antisemitism Scandal
In December 2022, Stephen Sizer was found guilty of antisemitic activity by a Church of England tribunal. The tribunal banned him from “exercising any of the functions of his Holy Orders” for a period of twelve years. Sizer’s antisemitism had been tolerated for more than a decade by his fellow evangelical leaders.
This article is part of a series about the failure of evangelicals to address the Sizer scandal. Previous articles have focussed on Church Society, the Church of England Evangelical Council, and Christ Church Virginia Water.
The news periodical Evangelicals Now (EN) played a twofold role in the Sizer scandal: both its board and also its editorial team contributed to the failure of evangelicals to take action against one of their own.
The Role of the EN Board
EN’s governing board was the very first group of evangelical leaders to see the evidence of Sizer’s antisemitism. They were given information in 2011 about Sizer’s visit to Malaysia earlier that year. Malaysia is a Muslim-majority nation where antisemitism is rife, and in his speaking engagements and interviews, Sizer had told outright lies likely to intensify hatred of the Jewish people. One example was Sizer’s totally false and preposterous claim on Malaysian TV that in Britain “the Zionists” were collaborating with neo-Nazis against Muslims.
Other examples of Sizer’s activity were also brought to the board’s attention, showing that his conduct in Malaysia was in keeping with a pattern of antisemitic behaviour. The board of EN ought to have recognised that Sizer had very obviously crossed a line into unacceptable conduct. But the board neglected to take any action in response.
What action could the board have taken? They could have encouraged the editorial team to publish a letter sent to them about Sizer, with Sizer invited to respond. They could have asked a reporter to verify the information they’d been given. The board could also have privately expressed alarm to Sizer himself, and if his replies were considered inadequate, the board could then have liaised with other evangelical leaders and published a statement of concern about Sizer’s activity. Instead of pursuing any of these avenues, the board apparently sat on the information they’d been given, without taking any of the responsible steps that Christian leaders ought to take when confronted with evidence of “bad fruit” that signifies a “bad tree” (Matthew 7:17). When presented with easily-verifiable evidence that Sizer had told an antisemitic lie on Malaysian TV, EN’s board chose to look away.
In its correspondence with Jewish evangelicals in 2011, EN’s board set out the following rationale for ignoring Sizer’s antisemitic conduct:
“We felt that it is a very different situation to that of the Steve Chalke controversy and at this point should not be something which EN takes up. In the case of Steve Chalke, he was making a direct attack on central truths of the gospel … and as such had to be countered. This is not the case with Stephen Sizer. … May the Lord give you grace and wisdom and enable us all to bear in mind Paul’s injunction to ‘make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.’”
As was pointed out in 2020, EN’s assumption that racism isn’t a gospel issue compares unfavourably with Ligon Duncan’s famous analysis (at T4G in 2018) of historical racism in American churches: “In America, Baptists and Presbyterians decided that slavery was too divisive an issue and therefore shouldn’t be addressed in the church — for the sake of ‘unity.’ For the sake of preserving the ‘Spirituality of the Church,’ matters of ‘politics’ and ‘social life’ were ignored. In reality, however, these church leaders and pastors were evading the second great commandment.”
The board also gave the following advice to their correspondents:
“The issue is something which needs to be addressed fully at a personal level with face to face meetings between you and Stephen (Matthew 18:15f) and resolved within the Church of England. We can only suggest that, if you are getting nowhere with Stephen’s own Parish Council, nor with the local Bishop, it might be profitable to contact an evangelical Bishop like Wallace Benn to ask for his advice as to the way forward.”
In this advice, the board misidentified Sizer’s public sin as a personal dispute between their correspondents and Sizer. Insofar as the matter had any wider significance, the board was evidently content for that to be handled by the largely non-evangelical Church of England. The advice exemplifies what would become a theme of the Sizer scandal: the failure of evangelical leaders to see that an evangelical pastor’s public sin is a problem for all evangelicals, regardless of denominational alignment. The New Testament teaches that God’s people should guard against wolves in the flock (Matthew 7:15), and since Christ’s flock isn’t restricted to this or that denomination, evangelicals must have the courage to issue cross-denominational warnings about wolves.
Four members of the 2011 board are still serving on the board today: the Rt Revd Wallace Benn, Revd Mark Burkill, Revd Gareth Lewis, and Revd Hugh Palmer. In 2023, the board apologised for EN’s role in the Sizer scandal; their apology is discussed below.
The Role of the EN Editorial Team
In the decade that followed 2011, there were multiple opportunities for EN to tell the evangelical community about the nature and severity of the antisemitism allegations against Sizer. EN chose not to take those opportunities. If a movement’s “newspaper of record” deliberately keeps its readers ignorant of scandalous behaviour, that silence can justly be characterised as a cover-up.
During those years, Sizer’s activity was publicly condemned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Community Security Trust, the Jewish Leadership Council, and the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities. None of their allegations were reported by EN.
From 2012–13, Sizer was the subject of a Church of England Clergy Discipline Measure brought by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It was resolved pragmatically when Sizer agreed to a monitoring arrangement, but the Board’s allegations against him were never withdrawn. This was reported in detail by The Times, but not by EN.
In January 2015, Sizer used Facebook to promote an antisemitic article titled “9/11 Israel Did It”. This was covered quickly and at length by BBC Online, The Times, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Independent and the Guardian. The incident came to light at the end of January, after EN’s February edition had already been published, but EN made no mention of it in its March edition. In its April edition, EN covered the incident in two brief paragraphs. It set out the facts of the case without saying anything about the antisemitic nature of that 9/11 conspiracy theory. Crucially, EN also failed to say anything about the relevant context — the fact that Sizer had already been accused of antisemitic activity on many occasions prior to that Facebook link. (If it had been Sizer’s first offence, it would likely never have attracted so much publicity, because the link could have been explained by naivety or ignorance.)
In 2017, in another two-paragraph article, EN reported that IVP had withdrawn Sizer’s books. Once again, there was no reference to antisemitism. Four years later, in a May 2021 article about Church Society, Church Society’s director made an oblique reference to Sizer in connection with antisemitism allegations. The article, attributed to EN staff, did not provide any further clarification.
In August 2021, the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism (JCA), the leading academic journal on that subject, published an article on the Sizer scandal. The article, which included criticisms of EN, was titled “A Lesser Bigotry? The UK Conservative Evangelical Response to Stephen Sizer’s Antisemitism”. Its appearance was reported by the Jewish Chronicle, and by Premier Christian News, but it was ignored by EN until it received a brief mention about a year and a half later in January 2023, after the CofE tribunal had found Sizer guilty.
EN turned a blind eye to the JCA article deliberately. When EN published a letter that mentioned the JCA article in its June 2022 edition, the letter’s reference to the JCA article was surgically removed by EN on the grounds of “legal advice”. As the editorial team should have known, the legal risk was tiny, especially if they had added the common rider disclaiming responsibility for the content of external publications. It’s true that Sizer had threatened legal action against Premier Christian News for its report on the JCA article, but unlike that Premier report, the letter redacted by EN didn’t include any of the JCA article’s content. EN’s refusal to face the possibility of such a feather-light legal threat is revealing. It shows that EN was not willing to stand up and be counted during an evangelical racism scandal.
EN’s deliberate lack of coverage of the JCA article is a particularly serious feature of its long-running blackout on the Sizer antisemitism allegations. If EN chooses to shield its readers from carefully-substantiated moral criticism from a reputable source on one occasion, we can only assume it will do so again on other occasions. Such conduct would be expected from the in-house publication of a cult; it’s deeply disturbing to see it in the UK’s leading evangelical news periodical.
EN’s first article about the antisemitism allegations against Sizer appeared in May 2022, more than ten years after EN’s board had received information about Sizer’s antisemitic activity. That May 2022 article was a report about a new Church of England disciplinary process following further allegations by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It’s doubtful whether EN would ever have covered the Sizer antisemitism scandal if it hadn’t been for the actions of non-evangelicals — the Church of England hierarchy and the Board of Deputies — who made it impossible for EN to keep covering up the scandal. In sum, EN conducted a shameful decade-long blackout, deliberately keeping its evangelical readers ignorant of this evangelical antisemitism scandal. EN’s non-coverage of this developing scandal, in stark contrast to the reporting done by the secular press and the Jewish Chronicle, amounts to the toleration of antisemitism.
Inadequate Apologies
Since the CofE’s December 2022 verdict, the EN board and its editorial team have issued separate public apologies concerning EN’s role in the Sizer scandal.
The board said that EN “accepts that coverage of this issue in the preceding decade should have been better.” In a further statement, they apologised for the rationale given for their inaction in 2011:
“Our attention has rightly been drawn to correspondence with the board in 2011 regarding the reporting of this matter. On reflection, we accept that the wording in that correspondence, and the sense it conveyed, was neither helpful nor expressed rightly. We are sorry. Any implication that matters of primary importance can be reduced to doctrinal truths alone and ignore how these are applied was incorrect.”
That apology was commendable and gratefully received. However, it must be noted that it’s one thing to apologise for an unhelpful and incorrect rationale for inaction. It’s another thing to apologise for the inaction itself. The board still haven’t apologised for the lack of any godly activity in response to the well-substantiated information they were given. This was pointed out in January 2023 to Revd Adrian Reynolds, the chair of the current board, but at the time of writing (nine months later) he hasn’t yet replied. Apologising for a lesser offence counts for little when the far more serious offence remains unadmitted.
EN’s board can’t be expected to follow up every allegation of ministerial wrongdoing. But this case was about public offences with public evidence — the board were sent, among other things, a video clip of a conservative evangelical pastor telling an antisemitic lie on Malaysian national TV! EN’s board have not yet done enough to win back the trust of Jewish evangelicals. In the opinion of this author, the four remaining board members from 2011 should now be relieved of their duties.
The editorial team added its own apology: “We are sorry where we ourselves have not got things right in this area, and we are resolved to learn and to do better.” This apology is also inadequate. The use of the word “where” implies that the editors aren’t quite sure when (or even if) they didn’t get things right. It’s a classic example of a certain kind of unpersuasive apology: apparently comprehensive, but on closer inspection ambiguous, and therefore ultimately meaningless. It’s impossible to have confidence that EN will avoid the same failings in the future unless it humbly identifies precisely where and why it went wrong.
The obvious explanation for the disparity between the coverage of Sizer’s activity in EN (zero articles about the antisemitism allegations from 2011 to May 2022) and the Jewish Chronicle (56 articles about Sizer in that timeframe) is that EN chose to tolerate antisemitism rather than expose it. If that explanation is correct, EN’s editors should humbly confess that specific sin and repent; if it is incorrect, EN should provide a persuasive counter-narrative to explain its non-reporting. Repentance isn’t accomplished through an unspecific apology.
If EN had exposed the allegations about Sizer to its readership, more evangelicals might have rallied to the side of the Jewish community. That could have had the effect of bringing the scandal to a much swifter conclusion. If evangelical organisations had begun distancing themselves from Sizer, he would have lost credibility among his fellow evangelicals, possibly including his own congregation. As it was, EN remained silent, and the Sizer antisemitism scandal went on for more than a decade before finally being resolved by the actions of the Jewish community and the largely non-evangelical Church of England. EN is a big part of the explanation for this sinister chapter in the recent history of modern British evangelicalism.
