The urge to separate

There’s a lot of fuss and noise in the Church at the moment about schism. Especially given the current tensions in the Anglican Communion over the ordination of women and gay people, and the possible separation between the Episcopal Church in the USA and the African churches over the Americans’ election of a gay bishop (and the election yesterday of a woman as Presiding Bishop – the head of the Episcopal Church). And it strikes me that the main problem isn’t homosexuality, or women’s ordination, or authority, or biblical exegesis, or any of the usual candidates. No, the main problem at the moment is arrogance.

Arrogance that says “I am right and you are wrong, and I will have nothing to do with you until you make an apology for all those things that I think you’ve done wrong,” is not a Christian attitude. There’s nothing wrong with believing yourself to be correct. There’s nothing wrong with wanting someone to apologise to you. There’s nothing wrong with seeking to convince someone that they are mistaken. However, there is something wrong with believing yourself to comprehend the entirety of God’s Truth. There is something wrong with demanding that everyone submit to your understanding of God. There is something wrong with refusing to admit the possibility of error. And there is something wrong with the belief that my understanding is complete and that anyone who doesn’t share it must be less saved than me and hence damned. (Even to spell it out like that makes clear how infantile, arrogant and anti-Christian it is!)

Most importantly, there is something wrong with using the Eucharist, communion, breaking bread, as a weapon. To refuse to share communion with someone is to say that they are not in Christ – or that you are not. Our doctrinal differences may be important (and may not be) but, however important they are, they do not affect in the slightest God’s love for the family and each member of it. It is not our place to judge another’s servant – and so it is not our place to judge the faith of another Christian. If we find ourselves so grievously out of fellowship with someone that we cannot talk to them or meet with them, then we should, ourselves, in humility, withdraw. To try to cast the other person out for any offense less than denying Christ is wrong.

And what applies to individuals applies also to churches and denominations. If certain people (in the Episcopal Church, say) find themselves unable in conscience to agree with the decisions of that Church and to remain part of that Church, the correct path for them is to leave it. It is not right for the minority (for plainly it is a minority) to seek to harm and demolish the majority, and to establish themselves in their place. If the minority cannot convince the majority that their view is correct then they must accept that they disagree and either live with it or live without it. To live with it is the traditional Anglican position – the Anglican Communion has a huge diversity of voices, and was itself founded on enormous tensions. To live without it means separating ourselves – but this must always be in humility, not arrogance. For it is always possible, no matter how unlikely we feel it to be, that it is in fact the majority who are hearing God’s voice correctly.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 1:27pm on 20 June 2006
Category: Faith, Struggling

John,
Without addressing the issue in dispute, are you denying that there is a Biblical command to exclude those who have demonstrated that they are unrepentantly rejecting true doctrine?

Hammertime () (URL)
3:05pm on 20 June 2006

I don’t think that believing yourself to be absolutely right about an issue necessarily infers arrogance. If it does then we must accept that Dietrich Bonhoffer may have been in error calling Nazism evil and we would also have to say that he was being arrogant by not allowing that Nazism may have been a better way of treating people than his Christian approach. You can agree to disagree on the merits of a piece of music or even over the nature of Christ in the bread and wine at the Eucharist, but on matters such as gay marriage, which involve bodies as well as thoughts, real people not just propositions, in the end there is never compromise – for example, slavery, women’s rights etc. Christianity and compromise, and for that matter, Christianity and the acceptance of the decision of the majority are not bedfellows (an apt phrase). Christianity and struggle, Christianity and no compromise are more like the traits displayed by Jesus in his earthly ministry. Otherwise, I agree with you entirely – just don’t be afraid to get angry and knock those money-lenders’ tables over if they get in in your way.

MadPriest (URL)
3:19pm on 20 June 2006

Hammer,
No, I’d agree that there is a place for this. But, it should be noted, this is the expulsion of a member by the majority. This is rather different to the rejection by a minority of everyone else!

It’s also worth noting that the biblical passage you’re referring to talks about expelling someone from the local congregation. It doesn’t talk about shunning them totally. The point is discipline, not isolation.

MadPriest,
As I said, there’s nothing wrong with believing yourself to be right. The arrogance comes not in the belief, nor in acting in accordance with it, but in demanding that everyone else share your belief in its every detail. So, with Nazism, acting in opposition to it is perfectly fine – arrogance would come when someone stops primarily doing what their beliefs demand and instead starts demanding that everyone share their own beliefs.

I’m not sure why you believe that gay marriage affects bodies when the Eucharist does not – after all, the Eucharist is a very physical act. Offensively so, in fact. As for “in the end there is never compromise, that’s simply not the history of the church, and particularly not the history of the Anglican Church. And for those cases you cite (slavery, women’s rights), it’s crucial to note that the rejected compromise was a partial or deferred recognition of the new thing that was coming, and that the eventual decision was that the old ways were wrong. I don’t know whether the eventual outcome of the current debates will be in favour of including gay people or not, but the history of the church is certainly that the Spirit leads us into new and unexpected truth, as well as protecting us from error. Which this proves to be will be interesting to see.

pax et bonum

[John] () (URL)
7:25pm on 21 June 2006