Students who opposed this broadening trend were labeled “bigoted…narrow-minded…and trouble-makers.” Fortunately, for the witness of the gospel, a few Christian groups didn’t worry about what they were called. One of these, the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU), began to write letters to SCMs leadership, expressing their dismay at the theological developments within the SCM.

The General Secretary of the SCM, Tisington Tatlow, visited Cambridge and advised the CICCU to disaffiliate with the SCM. He complained that the Cambridge group did not seem to understand that “theology is dynamic, not static … The history of theology has been the history of man’s growing, and therefore inevitably changing, insight into the true interpretation” of the basic facts on which Christianity is grounded. Sadly, in Tatlow’s view, the CICCU held tenaciously to “the literal, verbal inspiration of the Bible, the penal view of the Atonement, and the near return in physical form to the earth of our Lord.”

So, in 1910, the CICCU split away from the SCM. However, only four years later war descended on Europe, and most of the British universities emptied, including Cambridge. The CICCU was able to maintain their Daily Prayer Meetings throughout most of the war years (1914-1918), but things were fairly slow. After the war a number of vibrant Christians made their way back to Cambridge either to begin or resume their studies, and the CICCU was rejuvenated.

The spiritual dynamism of the CICCU was evident to all, and the SCM couldn’t fail to notice. So the SCM tried to see if they could join forces again. A meeting was arranged between the two groups. Here is the summary report of the CICCU’s Norman Grubb, future missionary to Africa and son-in-law of missionary pioneer, C.T. Studd:

“There were ten of them and two of us. After an hour’s talk we appeared to be getting nowhere, so I asked their president point blank – ‘Does the SCM put the atoning blood of Jesus Christ central in its beliefs?’ He hesitated and then answered, ‘Well, we acknowledge it, but not necessarily as central.’ [We] said that this really settled the matter for us in the CICCU.”

The two groups would not join forces because they were not united in doctrine. For the CICCU, everything turned on the atoning blood of Christ. It was not enough to simply allude to it. And it’s the same way with us. It has to be central, in our faith, in our prayers, in our marriages, in our friendships, in our evangelism, in our churches. Keep the atoning blood central.

- Quotations and summary from Douglas Johnson, 1979, Contending for the Faith: A History of the Evangelical Movement in the Universities and Colleges (Leicester: IVP), especially pages 68-93.