I-YOUniverse

Drew Smith’s insightful piece James Dobson Misrepresents Barack Obama’s Views on Religion gets me. (You’ll find it at CC blogs.) Having lived all my professional life as Southern Baptist clergy in the warlock’s cauldron of “The Conservative Resurgence” or “The Controversy” (which it is depends on whose side you’re on like the War of Northern Aggression or the Civil War), I have strong unhealed emotions about schism.

Lose-Lose Lose-Lose

The first is my profound belief that nobody wins, everybody loses. In denominational schism everybody’s a loser, especially outsiders who are weighing whether Christ makes a difference or not. Mike Warnke asks, if a 1000 member church splits in two, how many people will go to the two churches? Not 500 each, but maybe (if God forgives us) 100 each. Net loss of 800 little lambs and mothers with child, for each of whom we will give account to God.

Is there Any Sorrow like my Sorrow

The second is a feeling of sorrow. Dr. Ben Bruner, my deacon at First Baptist Church Richmond, was married to the great great granddaughter of one of the women who founded the Woman’s Missionary Union. She said, “It’s like an unending funeral.”

My wife Sandy and I went to only one annual meeting of the SBC, Dallas 1985. The news photographers were lined up to film the moderates walk out, if they lost the presidency. The moderates lost, and all the paparazzi got was a handshake.

R.I.P. S.B.C.

But that year the SBC died for us.

People crammed in the convention center two hours before the meeting began, shoulder to shoulder at 6:30 a.m. Someone began to sing “Amazing Grace,” “What A Friend,” all the old songs we loved. Then, the doors opened and we did a hardball political hatchet job or hated those who did it.

My parents gave money they didn’t have. They went to church every time the doors were open. Baptist churches raised my mom from alcoholism. My dad started a church in our home. I was baptized at age five. (Good thing we know we don’t practice infant baptism, or it might get confusing.) I got my college education at the Baptist Student Union, and two seminary degrees at SB institutions, much of the cost borne by the SB Cooperative Program.

Fifty Ways to Leave

Cut us, my wife and I bled Baptist.

From the national denomination, to the state conventions, to the regional associations, even to individual churches: whether you were liberal or fundamentalist mattered more than whether you were saved. Pastors’ get togethers were consumed not by prayer but by the latest rendition of who did whom.

At last, Sandy and I walked away. Left the only fellowship of men and women we’d known. Left the institutions we believed in, and were willing to give our lives to.

We couldn’t fight any more.

Not soon enough for our son, who now speaks of religion, if ever, with disgust.

Wherever You Lead, We’ll Go

I had to pray, “Lord, those who built the SBC built it for you: the foreign and home mission boards, the seminaries with their magnificent libraries, the colleges, the conference centers–all of it–even the Annuity Board. I took out my retirement savings and put the rest in God’s hands. I hope God knows how to deal with true believers. I never will.

But I prayed, “God bless them and use them  as you will for your glory.” It still is a very hard prayer, especially if them is specific, not general.

Now, Lord, I prayed, wherever You lead I’ll go. I never dreamed You would send me away from Southern Baptists. My wife is a United Methodist elder in full connection (I have rehearsed that, so I can say it easily).

My Church Membership’s in my Boots

Me? My heart belongs to Jesus. My church membership’s in my boots. That’s where the 16th century Anabaptists kept lists of scriptures that they knew by heart because carrying a copy of the Bible around could get you killed.

The Schleitheim Confession (1527) is one of the earliest Anabaptist confessions. A significant theme is Vereinigung, which John Howard Yoder notes can mean union, atonement, reconciliation. As a past passive participle it means, “to be brought into unity.”

Thus, the same word can be used for the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, for the procedure whereby [sisters and] brothers come to a common mind, for the state of agreement in which they find themselves, and for the document which states the agreement to which they have come.

trans. John H. Yoder (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1977), p. 20.

Vereinigung is Good Enough for Me

John 17 records Jesus’ prayer that all who believe (belive and belove) in His Name may be one as Father, Son and Spirit are one. I repeat His words, may all be one.

I offer a prayer for my Anglican sisters and brothers, who are heading into the abyss. I ask God to forgive me the part I played, for it takes two sides. I’m not important enough to have done much damage. But if I did any, it’s way too high a price to pay for being right. And only God knows who’s right and who isn’t.

I believe, as we see one denomination after another cannibalize its own bleeding flesh, that we are watching the death throes of a way of life God has used in the past, and could use again.

If only we put God in the driver’s seat, and our love of power and preeminence and doctrinal purity in the trunk under the spare. But if we must do that, we’d better not have a flat. The spare will be eaten to bits in no time.

Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.