Is a church split inevitable?
Our world says disagreement means division. Our faith says ‘not so fast.’
The Christian Reformed Church (CRC) is in the throes of a pitched battle. Our denomination appears to be on a bee-line towards division. One side “stands on God’s Word,” advocating that the historic Reformed confessions remain the unifying standard for today’s complex sexual ethics and the other side stands on the “right side of history,” advocating for the affirmation and full inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons. In our fear and arrogance, we begin to mischaracterize each other’s motives and resign ourselves to polarization. It’s an impasse where neither can see a way forward together. We are “imaginatively gridlocked.”
We’re being played
However, our stunted biblical imagination is even worse. While the presenting issue concerns human sexuality, this isn’t about Christian sexual ethics. For sure there are important questions to discern, about the nature of humanity, how we interpret and apply scripture, and how confessions function wisely in the life of the church. We need to discern these important matters well.
Yet what remains out of sight, beyond our imagining, is that the Church is being played. We are unaware of a larger battle going on, one not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities. Synod and its proceedings, all the overtures, special interest groups and projects are not the only actors on the stage. More importantly, there is a spirit of the age that is binding and blinding the church, influencing all towards destructive and divisive ways. We live in an age of rage. Strife and anger are the air we breathe. The church’s ways of working out disagreements are all too often indistinguishable from the world’s.
Maybe reformed folks shy away from talk of spiritual warfare (a little too woo-woo for some, I realize), but scripture is very clear on the reality of these principalities (Eph. 6:12; Col. 2:15). Scripture doesn’t trouble to identify these powers but instead looks to their effects – destructive and divisive collective patterns that energize suspicion and stir up antagonisms.
Whenever someone lays down the ultimatum, “If Synod does this, I’m leaving,” you’re likely engaging with someone who is bound to the terms of engagement set by our world. Whenever you hear someone say “there is no other way,” that’s often someone blinded by the powers.
Doesn’t this make sense of the church landscape littered with the hulks of shipwrecked denominations that have imploded over this? It’s a repeated pattern of division that we remain woefully blind to. Perhaps the most damning sign we are being played by the powers and principalities: that the unity of the body of Christ becomes the inevitable collateral damage.
Who has bewitched us? How easily we’ve been co-opted by these divisive antagonisms. How comfortably we’ve allowed the cultural binary (affirm or hold firm) to set the table for Christ’s people.
Our best witness
In his high priestly prayer of John 17 Jesus could not be more adamantly clear about unity in his Church. And according to Paul, this unity is not a mythic unicorn, not an inspiring but unattainable metaphor but a gospel truth. “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3).
The unity of the church is not a goal to strive after but an ontological gospel reality. Bringing together disparate people, reconciling them in Christ through the cross, is the accomplishment of the cross. Through the cross, we are united with Christ and with those saved by faith in Christ.
This unity is beautiful, holy and already exists.
According to Jesus, the Lord of the Church, this is our witness to a watching world. Our best witness to the world won’t be a particular stance on sexual ethics, whatever your position might be. At any time, but certainly in this moment of fracture and antagonism, the church’s best witness is a practiced unity in the body of Christ visible enough to a watching world. It’s the humble, patient, reconciling community working out our union with Christ together. That’s something rare and unique, in our world and in our history.
We need to channel a little less Luther and a whole lot more James.
Jesus’ prayer has a somber warning in it. Twice in his prayer, Jesus ties our mission to our unity (John 17:21, 23). If the CRC divides over this matter, according to Jesus we will have lost our witness to the gospel. We will witness to something, but it won’t be the gospel.
As for me, I’m still hoping for something better – a community of Christ that wrestles with how to live out its differences together. That will be a hard cross to bear, perhaps even agonizing, especially since we Protestants have a divisive gene that runs deep. Honestly, the odds are not in our favour. So we need to channel a little less Luther and a whole lot more James. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry . . . the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness” (James 1:19, 3:17-18). That sounds like a timely denominational agenda for the next few years.
Following The Way
A call to unity like this should never stifle healthy debate or paste a happy face on genuine conflict. And please don’t mistake this for a third way – I’m calling for us to follow the Way, the person of Jesus Christ, to whom we are united, trusting that in the ongoing struggle to patiently honour our Lord and live out our gospel unity, the Spirit of God will give birth to something new that we cannot imagine, a way where we see no way.
Don’t mistake this for a third way. I’m calling for us to follow the Way.
In our world of wheat and weeds, this muddled middle is holy ground. It’s the narrow path that’s been found difficult and rarely trod because we don’t know what Jesus will demand of us.
But I’m setting my stake here anyway, with this simple prayer recorded by Phyllis Tickle: “Help each one of us, gracious Father, to live in such magnanimity and restraint that the Head of the Church may never have cause to say to any one of us, ‘This is my body, broken by you.’”
Read more
In The Church of Us vs. Them: Freedom from a Faith That Feeds on Making Enemies, David Fitch offers up wisdom for every Synodical delegate and follower of Jesus Christ. Fitch shows how easily the church falls prey to the dynamics of antagonism and becomes an angry, squabbling “enemy-making machine.” He calls the church back to being a people of reconciliation.
Principalities and powers? Indeed. And sometimes they fool me/us with claims purity or righteousness.
As someone who has said “if Synod does this, I’ll leave,” it’s not because I’m ignorant of the powers and principalities. Quite the opposite. There is an active movement years in the making to cleanse the denomination of people who think different. Since my unity is first in Christ before any institution, I feel called to make a space for everyone. The CRC as a collective has allowed the cleansing and propped it up by giving the movement’s pundits power, as evidenced by some leaders being given positions in the executive of this Synod. I hope we can take a posture of compassion for the grief those who are forced out are facing for the loss of their deeply loved communities before we make assumptions about any spiritual ignorance.
Thank you. Great insight for us at this time.
Then check out that little read and seldom preached on epistle of Jude. Since “coming to” North America, the CRC has held positions on women in office and sex outside the marriage of a man with a woman. Then these positions were challenged and there was a break in that unity. I am not here advocating for either position, simply observing. One could easily, rightly or wrongly, see this as precisely what Jude is addressing. With all due respect, Phi’s words are nice and in principle I agree with them, but how does, how might, how will this actually work out? There is the reality of the unity that is not of our making. How do we maintain it? Right now it seems that there will be winners and losers. Is it possible to have a win-win? I would suggest that if we are serious about unity, then we out to table all motions and engage in intense prayer seeking not what we ant but what the Lord wants. Only when this is made clear, do we move. This, however, will not happen. Too many are anxious for change so we’ll fight it out and take a vote believing that it reflects the will of God. That didn’t work so well for the people of Israel did it. Dead. Not in the water but in the wilderness.
Agree that we need a different forum to discern the mind of Christ. Synod 2023 displayed how the parliamentary mechanism of Synod no longer provides the church with the capacity to discern the mind of Christ. The system is fragile and susceptible to fear and anxiety (and by its very nature, is adversarial, setting up division simply by the voting mechanism). The system can work when compromise is not understood as an evil but as a good, an expression of faithful witness in a world of wheat and weeds.
In a previous CC article, I argued for a different forum for discerning these matters. Synod can work on operational matters, but these larger matters require another way.