A church divided is a church confused

c. 1996 Religion News Service (UNDATED) If a Christian book-buyer were driving out Stratford Road in my home town, she could turn right into Zondervan Family Bookstore or left into Carolina Christian Supply. They are both excellent book stores, but they are emblems of separate worlds. Although they address the same issues, needs and eternal […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) If a Christian book-buyer were driving out Stratford Road in my home town, she could turn right into Zondervan Family Bookstore or left into Carolina Christian Supply.

They are both excellent book stores, but they are emblems of separate worlds. Although they address the same issues, needs and eternal verities, in the name of the same Lord, they have few books, tapes or art in common.


The bookstores serve very different constituencies. They look different, feel different, even smell different.

Parallel cultures are nothing new to American Christianity. Denominations have long had their own schools, publishing houses and supply stores, even athletic leagues. Division, and the distrust that accompanies division, have been a hallmark of Christianity since the days the Apostle Paul told us to stop it.

Lately, however, division had come to seem a relic, about to be overwhelmed by desires for unity. Lutherans merged and began moving closer to Episcopalians and Roman Catholics. Presbyterians and Methodists put the Civil War behind them. At the local level, church leaders began ignoring the guardians of orthodoxy.

When it came to sharing communion, for example,”Don’t ask, don’t tell”became the functional rule at many altars, even Roman. Clergy shared weddings, Lenten teachings, pulpit exchanges and vacation Bible schools.

Some of that sharing, to be sure, was an outgrowth of dwindling numbers. But the heart of it, I think, was maturity, moving beyond the need to be right. The search for common ground came to seem more true than the imperialist notion that only one path can lead home.

It is jarring, therefore, to realize that parallel cultures continue stronger than ever. It’s more than the familiar litmus tests: NIV vs RSV,”ay-men”vs”ah-men,”vestments or no vestments. The division between evangelical Christianity and so-called mainline Christianity seems deep and is growing deeper. And that’s just the white folks. African-American churches are yet a third parallel track.

Take the language of faith, for example. On any given Sunday, these parallel cultures experience vastly different music, different approaches to prayer, different uses of the Bible, different expectations of the worshiper, services of different length, and different emotional environments.

Outside church, the three cultures read different authors, listen to different spiritual music and, increasingly, belong to different groups. If purveyors of”Christian business directories”have their way, they’ll shop in different places, too.


This is more than the normal American diversity in tastes and loyalties. The former cry was,”We are different.”Hence, the intersection in St. Louis that had four Roman Catholic churches, each speaking a different language. There was pride in the difference, at times too much pride.

But now the cry increasingly is,”We are right!”Absolutely right, right without any room for compromise.

I find that cry frightening.

I have been mystified, for example, by the intractability of the dispute over abortion. It seems abortion has gotten caught in the maw of orthodoxy-as-weapon. If believers really wanted to express concern for women, they would target incest, which happens to one American girl in four and produces a lifetime of anger and shame. Or they would get serious about combatting rape.

But abortion has political potency, not only swaying politicians, but energizing pew-troops by the assertion that”We are right, absolutely right.”A concern for incest, by contrast, might lead to the less inviting message,”We are broken and confused.” Moreover, there’s big money to be made from division. It’s a marketer’s dream: parallel commercial cultures whose products carry the seal of utter rightness and whose enterprises provide a comforting cocoon in a world that seems unsafe.

I don’t take sides in the intra-Christian divisions. I think each track has much to offer. But, increasingly, the sides have no common ground _ and don’t desire common ground. How can people compromise when they have no bridges across the chasm?

And how can American democracy survive without a capacity for compromise? Our past experiences of absolutist fervor have been ugly.


This nation faces significant ethical issues, and not just about sex: fundamental changes in the workplace, serious deterioration of the well-being of children, the imminent mushrooming of the elderly population, and the widening gap between rich and poor, to name a few.

To address these issues, we will need a large capacity for trust and compromise. But the religious community, which provides at least some of our nation’s moral leadership, seems more divided than ever _ determinedly, aggressively, profitably divided.

KC END EHRICH

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