Ever since N.T. Wright undertook the ambitious task of writing a biography on St. Paul, a surprising number of people keep asking him the same question: What would Paul focus on today?
Professor Wright’s answer is that nothing would disturb Paul more than the 40,000 different, sometimes vociferously opposed, denominations. Not same-sex marriage, or Calvinism vs. Arminianism, or Christian Universalism vs. ECT, or worship styles, or any of the myriad issues that divide Christians today. No, Paul would churn out his signature feverish epistles on unity.
Wasn’t that, after all, one of the burdens in the epistles he did write?
Sometimes I think about Jesus’s prayer during his last days on earth: “I pray that they may all be one, Father!” And then the next verse, which is the thunderbolt, maybe even the climax of Jesus’s whole ministry: “So that the world will believe that you sent me.”
As individual churches, we can evangelize until we are blue in the face. Yet until we who profess Christ acknowledge each other, work with each other, and celebrate each other, we haven’t even set the stage for the real evangelistic act. Our demonstration of unity is not a bauble, it is the centerpiece.
It strikes me that among the 40,000+ Christian denominations today, each embraces one of three modus operandi:
- We are the only church.
- We are the best church.
- We are a viable church.
Believe me when I say this, because I speak from experience: It’s very hard to find a church that doesn’t cling, albeit very subtly at times, to the first or second position. But if it is God’s heart to save the cosmos, would it not make sense to join a church humble enough to say they are one of many legitimate expressions of the faith?
As I see it, our marching orders are nothing more or less than this: get to know the people in our neighborhood who profess Christ; nurture the areas of overlap in our belief and practice; begin the exciting journey toward greater commonality; and generously bless people, believers and unbelievers alike, in the name of Jesus.
“Notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretense, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice” (Philippians 1:18, KJV). Surely if Paul had the generosity of spirit to say it, we can do the same. In fact, according to N.T. Wright, the worst heresy would be our failure to do so. (Oh, and Jesus and Paul seemed to think so too.)
There is another angle on this discussion: we must not settle for cheap unity. I often think of the old maxim, “On the essentials, unity. On the nonessentials, liberty. In everything, charity.” While the tone of this quote advocates for unity, it also reminds us that essentials do exist; sometimes people are doing a different gig, dancing a different dance, and we are left to mourn the lack of common ground.
I have to wonder, though, which happens more frequently: settling for cheap unity, or never even trying to find it. Somehow I fear the latter is more prevalent. Don’t the 40,000 (and counting) denominations lend strong evidence to this?
I leave us with a quote from John Calvin: “Those who disrupt the body of Christ and split its unity into schisms are quite excluded from the hope of salvation, so long as they remain in dissidence of this kind.”
Sobering words indeed, especially when one thinks of the role Calvin himself may have played in the splintering of the Christian faith. But I have to think he’s right in his basic call, i.e. for the church to end its nuclear fission.