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J.B. Phillips
John Bertram Phillips (September 16, 1906 – July 21, 1982) was an English preacher, Bible translator, and Anglican clergyman whose calling from God transformed how millions encountered Scripture through his modern English translation of the New Testament, spanning a ministry of over four decades. Born in Barnes, Surrey (now London), to Philip Phillips, a civil servant, and Emily Maud Powell, he grew up in a middle-class family, losing his mother to cancer at 15—a loss that shaped his sensitivity to human struggle. Converted in his youth, he graduated with honors in Classics and English from Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1929), and trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, ordained as a deacon and priest in the Church of England in 1930. Phillips’s calling from God unfolded during World War II as vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lee, London (1940–1944), where he began translating the New Testament into modern English in bomb shelters, starting with Colossians, to make it accessible to youth who found the Authorized Version unintelligible. His sermons, calling believers to a living faith, were amplified by his 1947 Letters to Young Churches, endorsed by C.S. Lewis, and the complete New Testament in Modern English (1958), praised for its freshness. He pastored St. John’s in Penge (1936–1940) and Redhill (1944–1955), preaching with clarity despite battling severe depression, which he openly addressed in The Price of Success (1984) to aid others. Author of over 25 works, including Your God Is Too Small (1952), he married Vera Jones in 1939, with no children, and passed away at age 75 in Swanage, Dorset.
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J.B. Phillips addresses the degeneration of Christianity into churchiness, attributing it to the worship of an inadequate god who aligns with the worshipper's own denomination, leading to a narrow view of the Gospel. He highlights how one's behavior reveals the true object of worship, cautioning against unconsciously shaping God to fit personal preferences. Phillips emphasizes the folly and sin of viewing God as a partisan leader of a specific viewpoint, rather than the Almighty above all differences.
Your God Is Too Small
There are doubtless many reasons for the degeneration of Christianity into churchiness, and the narrowing of the Gospel for all mankind into a set of approved beliefs; but the chief cause must be the worship of an inadequate god -- a cramped and regulated god who is a 'good churchman' according to the formulas of the worshipper. For actual behaviour infallibly betrays the real object of the man's worship. All Christians, whatever their Church, would of course instantly repudiate the idea that their god was a super-example of their own denomination, and it is not suggested that the worship is conscious. Nevertheless, beneath the conscious critical level of the mind it is perfectly possible for the Anglo-Catholic, for example, to conceive God as particularly pleased with Anglo-Catholicism, doubtful about Evangelicalism, and frankly displeased by all forms of Nonconformity... The ultra-low Churchman on the other hand must admit, if he is honest, that the God whom he worships disapproves most strongly of vestments, incense, and candles on the altar. The tragedy of these examples -- which could be reproduced ad nauseam any day of the week -- is not difference of opinion, which will probably be with us till the Day of Judgment, but the outrageous folly and damnable sin of trying to regard God as the Party Leader of a particular point of view.
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John Bertram Phillips (September 16, 1906 – July 21, 1982) was an English preacher, Bible translator, and Anglican clergyman whose calling from God transformed how millions encountered Scripture through his modern English translation of the New Testament, spanning a ministry of over four decades. Born in Barnes, Surrey (now London), to Philip Phillips, a civil servant, and Emily Maud Powell, he grew up in a middle-class family, losing his mother to cancer at 15—a loss that shaped his sensitivity to human struggle. Converted in his youth, he graduated with honors in Classics and English from Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1929), and trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, ordained as a deacon and priest in the Church of England in 1930. Phillips’s calling from God unfolded during World War II as vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lee, London (1940–1944), where he began translating the New Testament into modern English in bomb shelters, starting with Colossians, to make it accessible to youth who found the Authorized Version unintelligible. His sermons, calling believers to a living faith, were amplified by his 1947 Letters to Young Churches, endorsed by C.S. Lewis, and the complete New Testament in Modern English (1958), praised for its freshness. He pastored St. John’s in Penge (1936–1940) and Redhill (1944–1955), preaching with clarity despite battling severe depression, which he openly addressed in The Price of Success (1984) to aid others. Author of over 25 works, including Your God Is Too Small (1952), he married Vera Jones in 1939, with no children, and passed away at age 75 in Swanage, Dorset.