The more we get together . . .
The efforts being made to re-unite the body of Christ.
“I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.”
– 1 Cor. 1:10
In November, my column provided the (lamentable) statistic that there are about 45,000 Christian denominations in the world today. The vast majority are Protestant. All this despite Jesus’ ardent wish that his followers would be unified in their mission to proclaim him as Lord and Saviour. This sad trend is also evidenced by the 14 North American denominations in the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of which Christian Courier is a part.
But what about the flip side of this history of splits and schisms in the body of Christ? What efforts have been made to re-unify the body instead of splitting it?
Ecumenical movements and mergers
There have been (and still are) many Christian ecumenical movements and organizations in the world. These are inter-denominational, cooperative movements that attempt to provide a unified Christian witness and response to various social issues. However, they generally do not endeavour to bring about denominational unity.
In Canada, a few examples of such ecumenical organizations are KAIROS, World Renew and the Canadian Council of Churches. But are there any examples of actual re-uniting of Christian denominations? Yes, there are some, though not nearly as many as there are of church splits. In Canada, the most noteworthy Protestant merger occurred in 1925. Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren Churches formed the United Church of Canada (UCC). The UCC has approximately 2 million members in 2,800 congregations.
There were many mergers of smaller related Protestant denominations in North America in the 20th century. Many of these mergers occurred for purely practical reasons of survival due to declining memberships. Perhaps the most significant of these mergers is to be found among Lutherans. In 1900 there were dozens of Lutheran denominations. By 1988 the process of merger reduced the numbers to two major groups: the Evangelical Lutheran Church of North America and the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. These two Lutheran denominations now represent about 95 percent of all Lutherans in North America. John Tietjen, a Missouri Lutheran Synod leader, argued in 1966 that the most compelling reason for Lutheran unions was that “a divided Lutheranism, like a divided Christendom, is an offense that . . . contradicts our witness to Christ as one who reconciles and unites.” (Amen.)
Samen op weg
In1999, Louisa and I attended a small Samen op weg church in Schaarsbergen, Holland. In 2003, after more than 20 years of negotiations, the Samen op weg churches, consisting of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, the Netherlands Reformed Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church, officially merged to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN). The PKN now has about 1.5 million members representing some 8.6 percent of the population. It is now the second largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands after Roman Catholicism. By the way, Samen op weg translates as Together on the same path. And isn’t that the point?
The statistics for the United Church need to be updated. Attendance is far lower, as indicated in this article: “The United Church’s numbers have dropped more than any other denomination.” URL: https://broadview.org/inside-united-church-decline/, published 9 May 2023.
“Canada’s largest Protestant denomination is shrinking the fastest. The latest census paints a grim picture of The United Church of Canada, which lost a whopping 40 percent of affiliates between 2011 and 2021, falling to 1.2 million people from roughly two million.
“’Affiliates’ are people who self describe in the census as having a United Church identity, but they may never go to church. In the same 10-year time period, the United Church tracked membership dropping from about 480,000 to roughly 350,000 people, and church attendance declining from over 165,000 to under 120,000 people.”
Not all church unions are successful, especially if they are based on a least-common-denominator approach that suppresses confessional differences amongst the uniting bodies. Such mergers are likely to be motivated less by a concern for Christian unity and more by a desire to cut losses. But they do nothing to reverse the decline. We should take lessons from such bodies and do our best not to repeat their mistakes.