Voices: Threats to Christian unity

In my last article, I discussed challenges all Christians face when they try to live in unity. These challenges undermine the “solidarity” necessary for a collection of individuals or congregations to become a cohesive whole.

In this article, we will examine threats to Christian unity in our context. These threats undermine the “consensus” necessary for truly united congregations and denominations.

Intellectual, social and moral change

It is difficult to overestimate the amount of change societies in the West have experienced since the Protestant Reformation.

The Enlightenment challenged traditional understandings of how knowledge is obtained and how authority is mediated. In its wake, new traditions developed, revolutionizing the practice of science, medicine, economics, politics, philosophy and theology.

In turn, these intellectual developments accelerated changes in social structures, political institutions and moral outlooks that already had been in the works since at least the Renaissance and created new, previously unimagined social and moral dilemmas.

The church has been a full and active participant in this vibrant intellectual and cultural environment, but that does not mean it always has been a healthy participant.

Some have adopted uncritically the perspectives of an increasingly secular intelligentsia, while others have longed uncritically for a less complicated and less contested past. This binary approach to analyzing the situation, however, never has captured fully what is happening to the church.

A complex array of often conflicting forces has conspired to unravel Christian unity one thread at a time. Moreover, the average follower of Jesus—whether radical, liberal, conservative or fundamentalist—is profoundly unaware of how far her or his perceptions, priorities and values are from those espoused by the earliest Christians.

Competing gospels

It is not surprising, out of such a variegated intellectual and cultural environment, we would see different assessments of the human problem and different solutions to that problem emerge.

In their book How to Think Theologically, Howard Stone and James Duke rightly characterize these differing matrices of theological and ministerial priorities as alternative definitions of “the gospel.”

As Paul makes clear in Galatians 1:6-10, it is bad enough the church has lost consensus with respect to its core message, but what makes matters worse is lay persons, and even clergy, often are unaware of the presuppositions they bring to their construal of the gospel.

Much ink has been spilled on how some have redefined Christian theology, ministry and discipleship in terms of a revisionist—often Marxist—agenda, while others have reacted against such revisionist agendas by demanding adherence to an ever-narrowing orthodoxy.

Discussions of such theological options are important, for although fresh insight on Christianity is always welcome and recovery of neglected doctrines is always necessary, there are also serious threats to orthodoxy, orthopraxy and orthopathy (right affections) posed by both of these alternatives.

We should not, however, restrict our attention to the war between liberal and conservative impulses within the church. Doing so will blind us, not only to other “gospels” vying for the affections of the church, but also will blind us to the questions raised by those “gospels.”

Failing to attend to such questions not only neglects important intellectual, socio-emotional and moral concerns, but—perhaps unintentionally—it robs those who feel those concerns most deeply of the dignity of being heard, which, in turn, sows the seeds of disunity.

Toxic ecclesiology

According to Michel Hendricks and Jim Wilder, our post-Enlightenment context has done more than proliferate doctrinal confusion. It has distorted the way church works.

In their book The Other Half of Church, Hendricks and Wilder argue the Enlightenment elevated the mind at the expense of the heart and the body.

This imbalanced anthropology led churches to place an ever-increasing value on doctrine, to over-emphasize the importance of individual choices, and to privilege measurable success—what we whimsically might call “nickles and noses”—over spiritual, emotional and relational health.

Hendricks and Wilder do not believe orthodoxy is unimportant, nor do they suggest practical, measurable standards of institutional health are bad in and of themselves. What they do argue, however, is these emphases have supplanted other, more important, concerns.

They argue too many churches have little interest in actually being the church—in developing stable, affectionate attachments among members that embody the robust, enduring love of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 12:1-13:13).

In other words, too many churches dispense with the work of true discipleship—the work of becoming like Jesus in our emotions and reactions, as well as in our thinking and doctrine—in favor of tasks easier to accomplish and easier to measure. The result of that kind of church leadership is a spiritual environment where attachments among members are weak and where joy cannot be found.

If Hendricks and Wilder are right—and I think they are—we should not be surprised unity is so difficult.

Our churches are not structured to produce spiritually healthy, emotionally mature disciples of Jesus, and without that maturity, we struggle to handle conflict in a way that will preserve the mutual affection, common vision and cooperative effort of the group.

What is even more sinister is Hendricks and Wilder draw a direct connection between low-joy, low-love ecclesiological contexts and the infiltration of narcissistic leaders into our congregations and denominations.

Dire consequences

When faced with threats like the ones described above, we are tempted constantly to jettison the Bible’s emphasis on the church as a family in favor of a “church as tribe” mentality. We no longer identify ourselves in terms of commitment to specific people. Instead, we find our meaning and purpose in loyalty to a cause.

Causes almost invariably make people expendable. But people never are expendable in the kingdom of God. So, treating them as such deprives our churches of their fidelity to Christ and our doctrines of their integrity.

We must find a different way to be human, a different way to be the church, a different way to follow Jesus. That is what I hope we can begin to do in my next article.

Wade Berry is pastor of Second Baptist Church in Ranger and resident fellow in New Testament and Greek at B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.