The responses to Ross Douthat’s New York Times OpEd continue to roll in.
One of my favourite quotes from the responses comes from a piece by Frank Clarke at Patheos:
‘Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?’ or How Rudolph Bultmann is killing the city of Detroit
So when “liberal” churches decline, it’s due to their sinful liberal theology. When conservative churches decline, it’s due to a sinful culture turning its back on the truth. Heads I win, tails you lose.
Clarke exposes the heart of the self-serving rhetoric that characterizes so much of what passes for debate when people choose sides and trivialize the “opposition”.
It is imperative for Christians to find ways to remain in communion with people with whom they may not see eye to eye on every issue. Hanging around people who disagree with us, keeps us honest. It forces us to acknowledge our own challenges and to face our own blind spots.
I do not ever want to belong to a church in which everyone has to agree with me on everything I believe. Monochrome communities that demand conformist group-think condemn their members to emotional and spiritual immaturity. If there is no one around to challenge my ideas, why would I ever bother growing up?
The writer of Ephesians offers a recipe for maturity, encouraging his audience to
Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:31,32)
In a uniform community there is no need to get rid of “bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.” When everyone agrees on everything it is seldom necessary to work hard to “be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another.” These are the qualities that are necessary in the midst of diversity.
Look at the human race. Go for a walk in the forest. Examine any particle of material existence under a microscope. God delights in diversity. Variety lies at the core of existence. Creation is not tidy and uniform. The beauty of creation lies in part in its varied nature.
Describing the church, Paul wrote,
14Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. (I Corinthians 12:14-20)
It is time to rejoice in the reality that any community larger than one, no matter how much that community may require conformity, in fact embodies a range of beliefs and convictions. The truth in the church is that we do not all agree. We do not all understand the central realities of our faith in exactly the same way. We have a variety of convictions about how our faith should be lived and what it fundamentally means to live a life that is faithful to our true nature and to the God in whose image we are created.
Diversity is only a weakness when we pretend it does not exist. When we can embrace and celebrate our differences, they become a source of strength and richness. This is the key to the church’s survival.
9 comments
Comments feed for this article
July 18, 2012 at 7:21 am
jaqueline
brilliant.
July 18, 2012 at 7:28 am
Tress
Yes!
July 19, 2012 at 2:12 pm
John
Hi Christopher and all,
In glancing over your latest post, the statements that stood out to me the most were these:
“It is imperative for Christians to find ways to remain in communion with people with whom they may not see eye to eye on every issue. Hanging around people who disagree with us, keeps us honest. It forces us to acknowledge our own challenges and to face our own blind spots.”
I think I understand where you’re coming from here. I think many would say that this kind of approach to being Church is the authentically Christian way of being and doing. And on one level it certainly is. However, I also think a strong argument can be made – and based on multiple passages of scripture from the New Testament – that a Christian is fully within his or her spiritual rights – for lack of a better term – to dissent from this view, and to ultimately refuse to remain in communion with other Christians whose attitudes and actions toward others remain consistently and without remorse, unethical or unjust (I prefer these terms to immoral in this case). Right through the Gospels and Epistles and right up to Revelations, the human beings/the Church are constantly warned and admonished, by Jesus, St. Paul, and others, to be clear about their faith, to be clear about what is right. Indeed, we all still be Roman Catholics today had Christians not chosen to dissent and seek to create new spaces and new communities.
July 19, 2012 at 2:17 pm
John
Sorry, my last assertion needs revision. I should have said, I would probably still be a Roman Catholic today had Christians not chosen to dissent and to seek to create new spaces and new communities. I add this point because, of course, the Church had already long since split before the Reformation occurred. There was the Eastern Church, going back to the very beginning. It still remains a fully distinct realm today. And there were also others who went their own way from very early on – the Coptics, for example, and still others.
July 19, 2012 at 6:37 pm
jaqueline
I agree with you John…but what Jesus and St Paul describe as reasons for abandoning fellowship with others…are as you describe issues of injustice and immorality etc…there is always room for repentance to restore fellowship…but I think the sort of split we ought to guard against are those of doctrine and opinion of issues that can have multiple interpretations….I believe that Gay marriage issue as one such example. …that do not lead to injustice or immorality…these are the issues that often lead to splits that are less than ideal.
July 19, 2012 at 10:28 pm
M+
YES to the thoughts in this blog article.
The various denominations of the Christian Church are no different from Eatons or the Liberal Party of Canada. The message is ,”"Adapt, be relevant or die”. Perhaps this means being open-minded, accepting diversity, embracing new ideas and the possibility of not having all the answers?
In church, apply Victorian theology and practices [ "We are the authoriity and we have the only answers..."] and The Institution will die, whether Liberal or Conservative. Apply top-down practices of control and fear and the message will not be acceptable to large numbers of an enlightened, thinking 21st century people.
Provide an enlightened image of God and his will for us and fear not for the future of the faith community. Build a relationship of trust, love and hope to replace fear and control and then there is a future. The community may be small(er) in numbers… 6 digits instead of 7 in Canada, but what do numbers matter? Recall the passage, “When two or three are gathered in my name….”? Nobody has yet translated the passage to 2 or 3 “million conformists”!, nor has anyone translated the Biblical passage as requiring market share or commercial success at the institutional level.
Be relevant at the grass roots level and don’t worry about The Institution!
I am glad to be part of an enlightened, loving, open, accepting (of diversity) and small Liberal Christian community. It will thrive. It will more than survive.
July 20, 2012 at 12:46 am
jaqueline
well, that is St Philip’s for you…I do not relate to St Phil’s as liberal at all..
truly liberal churches have left me feeling almost downright…well, evangelical…and to many St Phil’s would look rather conservative theologically…I mean heaven forbid Jesus might actually be considered…divine, let alone God….
So maybe we already have a tiny bit of an idea of what a diverse church might look like…liberal to conservatives and conservative to liberals..?
August 1, 2012 at 10:02 am
Steve
I am reading this blog today for the first time. I think I was out of town when it appeared so I didn’t get a chance to weigh in. I agree wholeheartedly with what you are saying and I would even elevate its importance by saying, as I have more recently, the survival of the church depends on it. Jesus said love one another as I have love you. I just want to say to people, what part of that don’t you understand. If we can not love each other let’s don’t go out into the world preaching God’s love and His message of reconciliation, man to God and man to man. This may be the most important issue of the 21st century. Society and the world need us, we have an opportunity to spread God’s message of reconciliation. If we can by example demonstrate God’s love in our lives people will notice. As it is I think we laughing-stock and rightly so. But as conventional wisdom has it every problem is an opportunity (of course Jesus said as much 2,000 years ago).
Having said that, it still remains true that there is a dividing line. The crucified, risen Christ is where we part company. But that by no means we are to cut off fellowship with non-believers and Jesus made that very clear. Fellowship we must and we must do it without judging, moralizing, preaching, or proselytizing. Jesus taught reconciliation, and came into the world to be The Reconciler and we are His ambassadors. The first requirement is that we forfeit our rights and anything else that is self. This is a hard calling especially for contentious people like me but it is made possible only by the redeeming grace of God. As it stands, I say of the church the medium is not the message. I hope someday I can change that.
John questioned if we should “remain in communion with other Christians whose attitudes and actions toward others remain consistently and without remorse, unethical or unjust “. My belief is we have been given a procedure to follow (Matthew 18:15). I think the Christian community as a whole has ignored this admonition, bearing in mind I am referring to the group John refers to who are blatantly and obviously dishonoring God.
But this is where I get confused. What if the brother claims to be a believer, but their theology is contrary to what the Bible teaches or if they do not accept the divinity of Jesus and the basic tenets of the faith. Like the ones Jaqueline says make her look evangelical. I my estimation, these people pick and choose what they want to believe. The have got the relationship backwards. I have raised this question before. I know under any circumstances we should love them but should we worship with them? We have to maintain a common set of beliefs as in the Apostles Creed or we cannot remain united. I suppose that if and when that occasion comes up in my life I should believe God will give me wisdom to deal with it and that there are no simple answers or are there? It is Jesus that creates the divide and only He can bridge it.
As far as those who subscribe to the basic tenets but teach what some of us consider questionable I believe Jesus has also given us an answer, from the following verse it appears that there is a grading system of sorts: “Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven” Matthew 5:19
August 1, 2012 at 10:08 am
Steve
Duh, I made the brilliant statement “I would even elevate its importance by saying,…, the survival of the church depends on it.”. I just noticed the title of the blog “The Key to the Church’s Survival”.