A brief look at single “heroes of the faith”

“I want to talk about sex and relationships” said Dr Helen Roseveare as we interviewed her at the Keswick Convention as part of the 19-24s stream back in 2011. She continued. “Being single is a gift from God and we can use it to serve Him. We don’t need to go chasing a life of romance and sex”. I found that deeply challenging in a world that was telling me otherwise. I’ll come back to Dr Roseveare. 

This is an article on the history of single church leaders.  I obviously can’t expound on every single one, and I acknowledge there are others who I could have written about. Not all of these are church leaders, but are single people who left a legacy in one way or another. 

Defending the faith 

We begin with Irenaeus who was born around 130AD and was a student of Polycarp. Polycarp was a Bishop in Smyrna, where he passed on to Irenaeus what he had learnt from the apostle John.  It is believed they travelled to Rome together, where Irenaeus met Justin Martyr, who was a big influence on him. It is well documented that both Polycarp and Justin were martyred probably within 10 years of each other.  After those significant deaths,  Irenaeus released his popular works “Against Heresies” and “The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching”. It is believed that Irenaeus was also martyred in 202AD under a wave of persecution by the first Severen Dynasty Emperor of Rome - Septimius Severus. 

Irenaeus’s “Against Heresies” was a work criticising Gnosticism, which had infected the church in the 2nd century. The most popular of these heresies was Valentinianism, which believed 30 angelic beings made up the spiritual realm. 

Irenaeus held 3 things in defence of biblical truth: Scripture itself, tradition and the teaching of the apostles. Irenaeus held to Gospel truth, commended it and used it against heresy. He was bishop in Lyon and was an advocate of the worldwide church, including asking Pope Anicetus not to ex-communicate churches in Asia Minor. He was one of the first people to hold all 4 gospel accounts of Jesus’ life as equally important and was one of the first people to explain Jesus as the new Adam, taken from the apostle Paul’s writings. 

He truly was a good example of a single church leader who put Christ first and defended truth. It’s not known why Irenaeus remained single, but it is documented that the friends he had spurred him on to experience all that God wanted to do with his life as a single man. 

Bible translator

We move on to the 1300’s and to one of Britain’s most important figures in church history, John Wycliffe (statue in the picture).  Wycliffe was a forerunner of Martin Luther, a pre-Reformer. He was an educated man and, for a brief time, was Vice-master of Balliol College, Oxford. His writings reveal that he both professed caution about clerical marriage and articulated a culturally traditional theology of sexuality, which he lived out as cleric himself. Wycliffe realised that the medieval church was going seriously astray. He spoke out against 3 things: transubstantiation; the hierarchy of the church, as regards not needing to confess sins to a priest but directly to God; and finally, and possibly his legacy to us today, he translated the Bible in a way that lay people could read for themselves, knowing that they didn’t understand Latin. This caused major upset within the church. Thankfully Wycliffe had a friend who protected him, John of Gaunt, a younger son of King Edward III. 

Wycliffe was a big influence on the Czech, Jan Hus, who also followed and believed what Wycliffe had said on various Reformation points that later would be picked up by Martin Luther.

Wycliffe also survived the Black Plague, which is said to have a had a lasting impression on him, leaving him gloomy. His reformed theology is best summed up by these words “Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on his sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation.”

Wycliffe’s desire for people to be able to read the Bible for themselves started a whole movement that 200 years later led to Martin Luther’s 95 theses and the beginning of the Reformation.

Mission and Grace 

Next, we jump to the last 100 years or so and 3 leading women who have impacted mission around the world, Gladys Alyward (1902-1970), Corrie Ten Boom (1892-1983) and Dr Helen Roseveare (1925-2016). 

Gladys Alyward was a missionary in China. In the 1930s, she travelled the trans-Siberian railway, where she was arrested by Russians before being allowed to continue to China. Gladys was not one to give up easily and was driven by a compassion for human suffering. In 1938 she helped take children to safety over the mountains as the Japanese invaded China, despite being wounded. Although she fell in love during the Sino-Japanese war she never married, but she did adopt one of the Chinese children, called Gordon. She always told the children about Jesus and many came to faith.

Corrie Ten Boom is well known for her book “The Hiding Place”. It tells the story of the Nazi occupation of Holland, the way her family hid Jews and were caught and what life was like in a concentration camp for her and her sister Betsy. Finally, after her release, she came face-to-face with one of her captors, for whom she had to pray for God to help her forgive. Corrie spent the rest of her life telling people about Jesus and forgiveness. She believed she was set apart by God to be single to do his work. Her life centred on Christ, who kept her balanced and able to follow Him.

Dr Helen Roseveare worked in Congo as a missionary and helped set up a hospital there. She struggled with male leadership at the hospital and put this down to her being single. Having met someone who she hoped she would marry, it never happened. From then on, she learnt to see God in the details of her life and to trust Him more fully.  She was taken prisoner by rebels who held her captive for 5 months, beat and raped her. After coming home, she then went back to Congo and rebuilt many of the hospitals that had been destroyed. At all times, she displayed the fact that Jesus was enough for her life, witnessing to Him at every turn. She had bouts of depression, but used her experience to minister to those who feared they would lose their purity in the mission field. Helen helped them see their relationship with God would not be damaged, as was true for her.

These three women were dedicated to their mission fields. Their sacrificial service for the gospel is a great example of how we can serve Christ both at home and abroad. Roseveare’s book “Enough” is a great reminder that Jesus is truly all we need.

The advocate of singleness

John Stott was renowned for his singleness. He believed that both marriage and singleness were a gift from God. Unlike some early church fathers, Stott never wanted to exalt singleness over marriage and was helped by 1 Corinthians 7:7: “I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.”

Stott recognised that he wouldn’t have been able to do the things he did, writing or travelling to speak, if he had the responsibilities of a family. Although he struggled with loneliness, his advice was to develop as many friendships as possible, with various ages and both sexes, knowing it wouldn’t deaden the occasional pangs of loneliness, but would help. He was well aware that single people are exposed to sexual temptation, but also spoke of the danger of being self-centred. He lived his life in service of God and wrote many books, including “The Message of Thessalonians” where he wrote: “Alongside a natural loneliness, accompanied sometimes by acute pain, we can find joyful self-fulfilment in the self-giving service of God and other people.”

Conclusion

There is much that could have been said about other single figures in church history, such as Patrick of Ireland, Amy Carmichael, Augustine and Charles Simeon. We can learn much from Church history and be inspired by those who have gone before us. We can see how they contended for the faith, stood firm and held onto the truth. Some you could argue “changed the world” for God’s glory.
 

This article was originally published in the Spring 2023 edition of the TFT magazine, Ascend. Click the button below to download your copy.