On College Christian ecumenism
Let me preface these thoughts by saying that I came back to Christian faith in a college Christian community and have been shown intense love over the past few years. And so it is with an equal love that I hope to think about some problems in how campus Christian fellowships relate to other Christians.
I perceive a mutual and abiding suspicion between liberal and conservative Christian forces on campus. It is grounded in a conservative perception of liberal Christians as flimsy and compromised and a liberal perception of conservative Christians as backward and fundamentalist. And to a certain degree, both are right about each other, even if only because they have, like water, conformed to the containers ready to receive them. We might say that they are filling the niches that demand (and fund?) them, but I don’t believe that such a situation is acceptable as a status quo. I recall one evangelical friend recounting how a freshman-year visit to Harvard’s Memorial Church left him feeling as though he had been “spiritually raped.” And a liberal friend spoke to me once with pretty shocking contempt for the hateful and disgusting “gay-basher fellowships.” I have worshiped Jesus Christ in Memorial Church and with several of those “gay-basher” fellowships; neither place is the barren spiritual wasteland that my friends would have me believe. But clearly both felt affirmed enough in their opinions to be comfortable speaking so ill of another body of Christians.
This is a problem. It is schism rearing its ugly head: Church organized around ideology rather than community allows conservatives and liberals never to mix, eroding any notion of Christians as people living together with Christ as the foundation. Schism has allowed us to erase the persistent tension that lies at the heart of community life, but it has done so at the cost of the community itself. It massages our bloated Pharisaic egos and gives license to our arrogant belief that We are the True Church. But it is wrong to train another generation of Christians to believe that “the Communion of Saints” is actually “the Communion of Saints who think exactly the way we do.” No! It is the Communion of all those people who find new breath in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who proclaim the Cross and the empty tomb in a world ravaged by sin and injustice and violence and pain. It is unconscionable to teach the members of one’s church or body that unless another Christian believes exactly everything that we believe, there is nothing worth listening to.
This is, I’m sure, a very common frustration, and it’s one that I do not have a solution to. But I read last summer about an ancient Christian tradition that may be relevant:
Another consequence of the growth of congregations was that it soon became impossible for all Christians in a particular city to gather together for worship. The unity of the body of Christ was so important that it seemed that something was lost when in a single city there were several congregations. In order to preserve and symbolize the bond of unity, the custom arose in some places to send a piece of bread from the communion service in the bishop’s church — the “fragmentum” — to be added to the bread to be used in other churches in the same city.
> The Story of Christianity, by Justo L. González – page 95
This fracture in the early church was caused by size rather than theological battle lines. But reviving this ancient tradition of sharing each other’s Communion bread could at least produce a moment of reflection in which a desire for Christian unity might be kindled in all who partake. Even symbolic steps are steps in the right direction.
Coming from a particular Protestant tradition (Restorationism) in which some people think I am not a “real” Christian because my church uses instruments in worship (no, that’s not a joke), I definitely agree that the Church should not be understood as “the Communion of Saints who think exactly the way we do.” However, I think that the two options you present are a sort of false dichotomy. Between saying that everyone who finds “new breath” in the Resurrection is in the Church and saying that no one who disagrees with me is in the Church, there are a lot of other things I can say about who is and is not in the Church.
That being said, I don’t even think that drawing the line in the right place is the most important thing. What is most important is a spirit of *charity*, pervading everything we do and say. I think the old maxim is instructive: “In necessary things unity, in doubtful things liberty, in all things charity.” I can have serious reservations about a congregation’s theology – to the point of questioning the standing of members of that congregation before God – without being disdainful or prideful.
Right now, we don’t agree on the theology; we never will if we don’t agree on the heart behind the theology.
Speaking closer to home, I definitely think the different Harvard fellowships should interact with each other a lot, *lot* more than they do (though, as someone who is not a member of any of the larger fellowships, I have little direct perspective on how much the different fellowships interact). There could be a lot of great dialogue among the fellowships with only a little bit of effort, and I think that would go a long, long way.
Of course, in my opinion, nothing has done more to catalyze such inter-fellowship discussion than The Ichthus!
Good thoughts, Samir and Joseph. I too find within me an ever-increasing passion for more tangible and authentic and purposeful demonstrations of unity within the Body of Christ (Newbigin’s little book “Is Christ Divided?” is absolutely wonderful here). In particular, I too yearn to see a much greater spirit of unity among the various Christian groups at Harvard (and yes, the Ichthus has amazing potential here by God’s grace!).
However, I would even go a bit further than Joseph–I think the “dividing line” is crucially important, even if a bit blurry around the edges at times. Unity doesn’t come at the expense of truth (nor vice versa, however!) in the New Testament, and the definition of a Christian in the New Testament is not calling yourself a Christian. It is faithful confession of and adherent to the gospel. Passages like Galatians 1 must be held ever in view along with John 17; I Corinthians 5 is as much a part of our canon as Ephesians 4. Of course, there is endless debate over the specific parameters of what this means (as C. S. Lewis helpfully puts it, one of the things Christians are perpetually disagreeing over is the importance of their disagreements!), and Joseph is right that we should always, always, always err on the side of charity (love believes all things). But John Shelby Spong (to give an obvious example) is, flat out, not a Christian, in spite of his insistence that he is. Does this mean I have licence to treat him, or others similar to him, in a mean and cruel fashion? Of course, not, but I do have to relate to him as an outsider who is called to repentance, not an insider already on the path of repentance and faith. If this offends the modern spirit–alas. But faithfulness to Jesus as Lord overrides any such concerns for his followers here.
However, with THAT kept in mind, what truly troubles me is the “third” category so many modern Western Christians have invented (for it is pure fiction): the Christian who, we grudingly admit, is probably “in”, but who is so theologically distant from us on secondary issues that we resolve to treat them as “out”. The way Protestants and Catholics have often related to one another here is a classic example; Calvinists and Arminians often come close to this level as well. To give a more recent and local example–namely, our intramural, in-house discussions about universalism–I am committed to two things: first, that this issue is really, really important and not to be swept under the rug of superficial ecumenical agendas, AND that it is not a dividing line between being in Christ or out of Christ. Thus, I am committed to interacting with Joseph (and, I hope, he with me!) on this issue as brothers in the Lord who desire to know Him and love Him as He really relates to world and church. However, if one were to deny that God raised Jesus physically from the dead or that Jesus died (in the body) for the sins of the world, then dialogue would still continue respectfully and intentionally and in love, but without the guise of pretending that it was an intramural conversation within the household of God.
P.S. Good, important article here on the “dividing line” and practical implications for today:
http://www.relig-museum.ru/ecclesia/pdf/heresy.pdf