It is absolutely shameful how Bishop Adams has misused Jacques Ellul's book Subversion of Christianity. He has so misused Ellul that I suspect he hasn't read the book. I would call Adams' use of Ellul the subversion and perversion of Ellul, just as Ellul speaks about the subversion and perversion of Christianity, which Adams is also doing. This is what Ellul says in the first chapter of that book:
"The whole revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob incessantly comes back to the point that those who keep the commandments of God will live...Jesus takes up the same decisive importance in almost the same words. True believers are those who hear and practice what they hear." (p. 4)
In this passage Ellul even references the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Adams points to the beatitudes in his convention address. After speaking about the Sermon on the Mount, Ellul quotes Paul, "the theologian of salvation by grace" on this same point of doing what the law requires from Romans 2:13-15.
Ellul summarizes this point saying "For Paul as for Jesus, practice is the touchstone of authenticity. We are in the presence here of something that is constant across the centuries." (p. 6)
Adams also missed Ellul's critique of the church in his time on page 8: "The church has simply adopted wholesale the ideas and manners of modern society as it did of past societies."
I can understand why Adams would pass on this gem. His approach is to attack those he perceives to be his enemies and ignore his own shortcomings and those of pecusa. He is the master of the cheap shot and he'll even misuse the Bible, the desert fathers, and Jacques Ellul in the process. He won't admit that pecusa has "adopted wholesale the ideas and manners of modern society;" he'd rather draw a dishonest and hideous picture of those who disagree with him.
How did Adams so misconstrue Ellul? I am guessing that he heard some other liberal quote Ellul and he just picked it up for his own misuse.
Here's my suggestion to Adams: Read the book.
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