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| Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouvert (1852-1929), The Last Supper |
Not being able to work things out, of course, is never our fault. It just that other people are either too carnal and too contrary to do and believe the right thing.
Due to our responsibility to remain faithful, we've come to affirm that churches have every right to separate from those who are in error. Or at least ours does, as long as we follow Roberts Rules of Order or a similarly civil process in coming to our decision.
And all of our decisions, in contrast to those who differ from us, are legitimate and justified. Our one and only desire, after all, is to be faithful to Scripture, the whole Scripture and nothing but the Scripture. And isn't the Bible, as we understand and interpret it, absolutely clear on everything faithfulness to Jesus requires? So why don't all of the folks we are separating from--or who are separating from us--see things the right way? It's baffling.
Of course we do regret having so many divisions. But as the Good Book says, "Good wood splits easily" (or something like that). And somewhere it is also written (or if it isn't, it should be), "Better to separate amicably than to have unresolved differences and disagreements."
End of satire.
On a more serious note, the Mennonite Church USA, already representing only about .00045% of the total number of the world's professing Christians, is about to experience a new round of church separations and divorces that will create even more and ever smaller sub-groups.
If Jesus were alive and were acting as Head of his beloved body and bride, the church, would he approve?
Ironically, we keep affirming every Sunday that he is in fact not only alive, but that he is our One and Only True Lord and Lover.
But has anyone bothered to ask him how he feels about all this?
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"With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering,
forbearing one another in love;
forbearing one another in love;
Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body, and one Spirit,
even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;
even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;
One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all,
and in you all."
and in you all."
- Ephesians 4:2-6 (KJV)
Here's a link to other posts on church unity: http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/search?q=church+unity
6 comments:
You could always correct a 480-year-old mistake. The Bishop of Rome is a pretty remarkable source of unity among Christians.
In our modern day context, have you considered that Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who "hated" the deeds of the Nicolaitans (Rev 2:6) two centuries ago, is not exactly pleased with contemporary immorality even when it is codified? Amorphous love and calls for unity just do not cover unrepented immorality. Maybe the call should be "come out from among them" rather than let's be unified with our differences. Does it work to pass conflicting resolutions so everyone on both sides will be pleased? I think not.....
You make a good point, though I still find no precedent for New Testament churches separating themselves from whole congregations, be they Laodicean or Corinthian. The separating needs to happen at a congregational level with individual believers who "will not listen to the church." But we major in the former kind of "excommunication" but don't seem to have the grace, tough love or courage to do the latter.
Thanks for your response. It's actually a point I make in another post http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-fervent-prayer-for-church-restoration.html. I think of the early Anabaptist minority not as setting out to "leave the church" but as simply practicing following Jesus as they felt led and having the Reformed and Catholic churches excommunicating them.
And are you the Dan Lehman I once taught at EMHS? Best wishes either way!
So the early Anabaptist could say, like Ronald Reagan said of the Democratic Party, "I didn't leave the Catholic Church. The Church left me"?
I don't know about that: there was plenty vitriol flying both ways in those days, and I seem to recall plenty being said of the abominations of Rome and of the pope in early Anabaptist writings (and plenty of bad about the Protestants of the day, too). No, to my ears it sounds like a justification of an historic schism.
All schism has its roots in good intentions, wouldn't you say? Nobody sets out to create a truncated Body of Christ. Those early Anabaptists were not worried about separation from the mystical Body. Their concern was purification, of removing the tares from their wheat field: a good intention, perhaps, but to my mind sadly misguided. History, it seems, shows us that to be separated from the Bishop of Rome--the "Kepha" upon which Christ founded His Church--inevitably leads to further sad divisions among Christians.
I did not attend EMHS, and I don't believe we've ever met. The title of your post appeared in my Facebook feed for some reason and so I clicked it to see what it was about...and then I decided to open my mouth and start commenting :)
Best wishes to you as well!
I'd love to have some historians weigh in on this. I was basing this on the fact that the young followers of Zwingli (Grebel, Blaurock and Manz) who baptized each other January 31, 1525, were a part of a Reformed Swiss state church that had already separated from the Catholic church some years before. And they weren't together to form a separate movement, but were still pushing for public forums in which the idea of a free church based on voluntary baptism and membership could be formed. I'm not aware of any anti-Catholic diatribes on their part. Also Menno became a hunted man after he began teaching the same.
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