The End of Denominationalism

            Most of us are suspicious of institutions. They’re big, out of touch, impersonal, pushy, and so on. Our gut says, “less government.” We don’t see bank tellers or develop relationships with them anymore. Kids get lost in today’s factory schools and are too often bullied by peers. Facebook changes privacy settings without asking us about it. Security breaches allow hackers harvest our personal data from Target and many other corporations—sometimes even from the government. And at church, we want spirituality rather than religion. This does not bode well for denominations.

            Denominations—like many religious institutions—have been in trouble for a long time. I thought I’d sit down and try to list a few reasons why.

1.  Historically, and still theoretically, denominations coalesce around theological distinctives. Where there was choice, long ago, matters such as predestination or the nature of Jesus’ presence at the Lord’s Supper or children’s baptism played a part in helping people to join different, competing camps. Of course, long ago there often was less choice than we imagine now. You joined the church of your sovereign, or your nation, or your village. And if you didn’t, you were in trouble. My own Mennonite ancestors fled persecution in Reformed Switzerland to find religious freedom in somewhat more liberal, but still Reformed, Netherlands. Their children mostly married Reformed spouses. The truth is that most people actually belong to the church they do due to accidents of birth, race, location, and even war even if the denominational roots of those churches are in ancient doctrinal conflicts. Churches have never really examined the causes (simpler) and consequences (much more difficult) of this reality, and what it means in light of its own story that it is all about distinctives. Unfortunately for denominations, the big “accident,” of history these days is secularism and religious relativism.

2.  These days, however, people know about as much about that history, or theological distinctives, as they know what is in those User Agreements you click in order to download new apps. For most people, the “original” doctrines are anachronisms. It isn’t necessarily that they disagree with them. The vast majority of denominational members don’t know much about them. If they do, they know the content of their own doctrines, but have never seriously wrestled with alternatives. The reasons for this lack of understanding in the pews are complex. The issues that led to the formation of denominations don’t seem very relevant anymore—so much junk DNA. We don’t go to war with Mennonites or Catholics. Most issues that separate today’s denominations seem irrelevant, abstract, or are not at all understood. Not nearly as many people read theology as in the old days—say from about the seventeenth century till about fifty years ago. So people are poorly informed.

3.  In the absence of deep understanding of theological distinctives, people sometimes coalesce around moral issues instead: abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, corporate crime, the environment, poverty and so on. They find communities on the Internet, and in media, that loudly trumpet particular moral positions on these issues. These virtual communities are like silos—all filled with a single point of view, and separated from other communities with different points of view. People become very emotional about their perspectives. In this environment, denominations find it hard to keep everyone on the same page. People would rather stick with their virtual community’s perspective on these issues than bow to 

what the denomination (tries) to insist on.

4.  One of the largest groups of leaders and paid employees in most denominations, the seminary faculty, is understandably deeply engaged in doctrinal distinctives. They seem unable, unwilling, and always unimaginative when it comes to helping denominations deal with this massive shrug of the shoulders when it comes to what they as theologians care deeply about. Few know their names, look for their opinions on the internet, or can understand the relevance of a life spent trying to understand Rupert of Deutz on the sacraments.

5.  Denominational bureaucracies (including most seminaries) are deeply committed to the status quo. You can hardly blame them. Fundamental change is always controversial, and that risks (at worst) schism and (at best) the slow erosion of dissatisfied members elsewhere (or more often than not, out of church altogether). Holding the line on budgets and staff while churning out more and more memos and workshops and reports is safe, but inspires no pastor or member in the parish.

6.  You have to do the Exegetical Twist to justify denominations or their central concern for doctrine Biblically. Churches were named by the city they were in. Theoretically faith, hope and love are the most important realities. While much in the New Testament over time morphed into a thousand theological views, doctrine itself is rarely presented there as, “you must believe this version of the truth,” rather than, “that version.” I realize this oversimplifies things. But it is hard to imagine anything other than a friendly “maybe this, maybe that,” discussion between the apostles about words such as “begotten,” “virgin,” “catholic,” “descended into hell,” never mind whether or not women could preach or whether Mary bodily ascended to heaven, or the practice of naming saints. Ironically, one doctrinal matter they probably all agreed on—the immanent return of Jesus—was something they were all wrong about.

7.  Denominations have always been about doctrine, in theory. But in truth, the glue that holds people in denominations is usually ethnicity or community. Modern culture, on the other hand, is increasingly multicultural. Every new generation has a harder time understanding why they ought to go to mom and dad’s church with other Dutch or Scots or Lithuanians than the previous generation.

8.  Denominations, while having a semblance of unity and homogeneity based on their shared dogma, are ironically much less homogenous than they seem. When I worked as editor for a denominational magazine I travelled from one end of the denomination to the other. I was constantly amazed by how dissimilar the churches I visited were. Many were aligned with right-wing evangelical politics and attitudes. Others were most definitely not. Some were still very focused on doctrinal distinctives, while most were not. Some were deeply committed to being ethnic islands (though few admitted it). Others were cosmopolitan. Some leaned charismatic, others Baptist, others to piety, others to political activism or social justice, and others again to nothing much of anything. When so much substantive difference exists between different congregations in one denomination, the unity they share is more imagined than real.

9.  People might care about doing something with the Baptist or Catholic congregation down the street, but could care less about national or international ecumenical organizations. All politics, and nearly all church, is local. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but it doesn’t bode well for denominations because the lack of interest for stuff happening beyond the town line is the same lack of interest people have for denominations. This is doubly so when being on the boards or being sent as a delegate to these ecumenical organizations is usually understood as being a reward for especially well-connected clergy or church bureaucrats. It just doesn’t get traction in the pews.    

10.  Pastors are often stuck with their denominations for very practical reasons--pensions, denominational jobs, the trouble that goes with convincing a congregation to change course. And of course, there is legal recourse that denominations use to keep congregations on board, too. But pastors resent these practicalities, and congregations don't like the coercion.  
          

          So, as I noted above, people are suspicious of institutions: their coercive ways, their fine print, their focus on what seems irrelevant to life here at home. This distrust is easily projected on church doctrines and documents and rules and regulations and bureaucracies and old boys’ clubs and national personnel. I sympathize with some of these objections but worry about others. The bottom line, however, is that it is hard to imagine that much time or energy ought to go into preserving a largely unresponsive, tone-deaf, sixteenth-century, nexus focused on less than strategic realities. Real church, basic church is congregational. If we could undo the ties that bind us into denominations, I’m pretty sure we’d soon develop new ties for community and education and mission that make a lot more sense, would be far more responsive, and much less coercive than what we have now.

           Or maybe a few denominations will pioneer new ways of being denomination. The United Church of Canada is floating ideas for a radical new structure in a document called “Fishing on the Other Side” ( http://tinyurl.com/p5u9vdy ). It offers a vision for a great strategic retreat from the structures that bind us today, and bears careful examination—even by people who belong to other faith communities.

Why (Many) People Really Go to Church

This morning, while walking the dog down a switchback trail from the G. Ross Lord reservoir to the West Don River, I came upon an elderly woman dressed in many layers of Middle-Eastern garb, including a headscarf. Her clothes were old and drab. She walked with a limp and a pronounced stoop. No one else was around.

She was bending over and rising, bending over and rising, putting something that she was finding down by her boots into a plastic bag. As I approached her, I said “Hello! What are you collecting?”

She looked at me with real fright. I smiled, tried to disarm her. I pointed to her bag. She showed me—still, with real fright in her face. The bag was full of young dandelions, not yet flowering. She put her free hand to her lips and said, “Eat.” But she was also completely unnerved.

Maybe she was scandalized by meeting me alone, a man. Maybe she was afraid of me because it was a desolate place. Maybe she was worried about how to handle conversation, her English being nonexistent. Maybe she was ashamed to be collecting dandelions, or ashamed of seeming so out of place, or maybe it was all the above.

Walking home, it struck me that it can be very hard to be an immigrant, a stranger in a strange land. No wonder so many immigrants stick together in whatever places they can find to do so. When I was a teen I worked in a chicken processing plant where most employees were either of Portuguese or Dutch extraction. When I used to go for a walk in the park in Cobourg I was always amazed that so many Pakistanis beat me there, especially since I didn’t think any of them lived in town. But then I remembered meeting the Dutch clans, as a kid, on the beach at Niagara-on-the-Lake, also on Saturdays.

It is hard to be an immigrant. No wonder, then, that so many also stick together in church or mosque or temple or synagogue. One thing that many of us—the Muslim woman picking dandelions, my many Jewish neighbors near Toronto’s Bathurst St., and I as a child of Dutch immigrants have in common is that ethnic religious services and communities play a huge role in helping us adjust to life in the diaspora.

At the same time, as children and sometimes even their elders adjust, the role such faith communities play in immigrants’ lives usually plummets. The faith communities themselves slowly wither away, usually while trying hard to deny their ethnic reasons for being, and while spinning off conservative splinter groups that continue to deny they’re ethnic groups in part by yelling louder and louder about their doctrinal distinctives.

But ethnic churches usually do go into decline. Since I’ve left the Christian Reformed church I’ve started noticing others who have done so. I have realized I can make lists many, many names long. These lists include family, friends, people I grew up with, people I went to parochial school with, and readers of my book, blog, and Twitter feed. My guess is that less than half of the Christian Reformed kids I grew up with still belong.

But it isn’t just the Christian Reformed Church. When I drive through my mother’s neighbourhood, in Brampton, just outside of Toronto, I’m struck by how many Sikhs walk the streets. They’ve mostly done very well. Of course, there have been racial and ethnic tensions along the way, but people are finding ways to get along. They’re a part of the landscape now.

How do I know they are Sikhs? Well, there were newspaper articles about how and why Brampton has become a favourite destination. There is a Sikh temple around the corner of my mother’s home. But mostly, Sikhs look like Sikhs: turbans and flowing robes and hairnets for younger men and great majestic beards and long hair and no earrings. Sikhs are hard to miss, and their dress is definitely a lot less boring than most of ours!

But last time I was in Brampton, it struck me how many people in my mom’s neighbourhood also looked like lapsed Sikhs. These were mostly younger men and women, who had the same beautiful olive complexion and dark hair, who often walked with other Sikhs, but who also wore miniskirts and t-shirts and jeans, colored hair highlights in many styles and bling—people who were obviously not participating in anything like Sikh orthodoxy. Many, many younger Sikhs must be leaving their temples and striking out on their own. Not so different than in my old Dutch Christian Reformed community.

What does it mean? Well, to the degree a temple or church or mosque relies on ethnicity to thrive (whether this is acknowledged or not) it probably will, but only for a generation or two. The thing is, like sticky notes, ethnic glue is not strong and dependable for the long term. Many who belong to such ethnic communities will leave when the protection and support such communities provide is no longer needed. Their leaving will also demonstrate that the spiritual convictions that were supposed to be at the heart of these communities are not and were not nearly as compelling as the spiritual leaders, professors, and teachers thought they were. Most people belong to spiritual communities for reasons other than what those communities teach from their pulpits or podiums.

Don’t get me wrong. I now belong to a denomination that has been bleeding members for nearly as long as my previous denomination has been in this country. Deep-seated conviction about theological confessions of any kind is not much in favour anywhere these days, in almost any faith community—again, except among the professors and professionals.

I’m reading a just-published (fascinating, too) book by United Church historian Phyllis Airhart. She describes how in the face of massive foreign immigration into Canada of non-Protestant people over a hundred years ago, part of the motivation for the United Church’s founding was the idea that it would missionize these people in order to help the Canadian state build a unified Christian society. The book is titled, A Church with the Soul of a Nation. It turns out to have been a lofty Constantinian-type goal that was never achieved. But it goes to show, once more, that the intersection of faith and ethnicity—in this case fear of new immigrants and what they meant—has a long history.

At the same time, this real function of many churches—being a safe place for immigrants and their children and (hopefully, they think) their children’s children—this actual function reveals the hubris that most denominations display in teaching that their way is the best way. That sort of confessional bluster is just smoke and mirrors for the real reasons churches succeed, sometimes, for a while. Or, at the very least, this confessional bluster is just a small part of why some churches succeed for a short time.

So what? I’m not sure. I’m thinking that someone, somewhere, needs to think creatively about what is going on when churches say they’re all about their confession or teachings or dogma, but the truth is that they fill quite a different social function.

And, given that community and love of neighbour gets so much stress in scripture, maybe that is something that should be more openly and strongly embraced, while doctrine ought to be given the public place in churches that it actually has in our hearts.

Premillennialists Buck the Christian Knowledge Crisis

            When I was editor of The Banner, magazine of the Christian Reformed Church, I sat on a small committee of leaders who guided Faith Alive, the publishing arm of the church. Faith Alive regularly published Bible studies, Sunday School curriculum, and other religious material. Our responsibility was basically two-fold. We had to publish good material, and it had to earn money. We couldn’t run Faith Alive on a deficit—at least not forever, though we tried.

            Achieving these goals was no small task. The basic problem was that with one or two exceptions (Don Postema’s Space for God being a notable one, some hymnals the other), the people buying our material rarely bought enough to make any publication profitable.

            To make matters worse, we were constantly being urged to publish more and more basic theology and doctrine books because of the widespread perception that people in the church just didn’t know as much as they used to. I think the perception was right on. The problem, however, was not—never had been—a shortage of good doctrinal primers. The problem was that most people sitting in the pew wouldn’t ever buy doctrinal books, because they simply didn’t read, or were not interested, or wanted doctrinal fantasy like the Left Behind series of novels, instead. So we’d sit there, with some denominational committee or seminary professor begging us to publish something that would address the lack of knowledge in the pew, knowing full well that if we did, we’d fail financially. It was not a nice position to be in.

            While this probably isn’t true of those reading this blog, it is true of the church at large. We’re suffering through a time of increasing ignorance in the pews. People don’t know the Bible stories like they used to. Kids don’t go to catechism like they used to. Few people read as much as they used to. Even seminary education has become much less rigorous in nearly every denomination. Everyone has something other than study of doctrine to do: skiing, cottages, soccer camps, TV shows to follow (usually a season at a time, in massive binges), and of course, the internet to browse. Bible studies that actually require study, rather than just sharing how you feel about some text, are rare to nonexistent. 

            And yet, isn’t it interesting that one of the more successful branches of contemporary Christianity—the Premillennialist crowd—asks for, and usually gets, a lot of knowledge from its adherents? Premillennialists—of whatever persuasion—can often offer up detailed descriptions of the end of the world—pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, it matters not. They can describe how today’s news events are prophesied in scripture (they think). They can offer up obscure texts in Daniel and Revelation in breathless support of their views about when and where and how Jesus will return. And they seem to be able to do so, ad infinitum, even though none of their predictions has ever come to pass—never.

            What gives? Why is it that in an era generally marked by less and less interest in and energy for study of doctrine that this group of failed prognosticators seems to be bucking the trend?

            I don’t know, for sure. Others have drawn parallels between the Gnostics of the early church and today’s Premillennialists. The parallels are pretty easy to see. Both groups promoted arcane—almost secret—knowledge that served as a key to escaping the toils and troubles of this world. Both saw this world as basically evil. And so on.

            The apocalyptic fervour of these groups, as well as the mental and exegetical gymnastics needed to justify that fervour, speak to a profound sense of unease about contemporary culture. Not only is the world evil, but its getting worse. They feel powerless to do anything to change things, and so they look to a dramatic deus ex machina solution, and find it in their tortured exegesis.

            Among some of these groups doctrinal knowledge is the bar people need to rise to in order to really belong—sort of like speaking in tongues was the bar that some of my Pentecostal friends had to rise to be considered premium members. The more social control a community exerts over its members, the more likely it will require specialist knowledge or experience to be part of the community. Think Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses, for example.

            The mastery of the airwaves that these groups have shown is another reason for their popularity. Christian Radio stations offering a menu of preachers breathlessly predicting one disaster after another, relating all of it to today’s headlines, and promising the thread that will make sense of it all are just, well, fascinating. Like late-night radio shows chronicling all sorts of conspiracy theories, or Discovery Channel shows about aliens who visited the earth in the distant past, or even right-wing political commentators who have their own spin on conspiracy and how things really are—these radio preachers appeal to people who want answers.

            To the degree that knowing about or believing such theories about how God is going to end the world as we know it is the entrance price to a church or denomination, they undermine the message of grace. The author of 1 Timothy—probably thinking of Gnosticism—puts it well: "Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wive's tails. Train yourself in godliness" (4:7). In other words, doing good is better than insisting on speculation. (I wonder if this advice is also good when it comes to speculation about the Trinity, divine substances, election, or Jesus' divine and human natures?) 

           Still, the contrast between the high “knowledge” commitment of many premillenialists and the cries of alarm about how most Christians don’t know much, anymore, is striking. What do we make of it? It may be true that for most of the history of Christianity, most Christians were illiterate, and did well to know a few key stories from the Bible and how to recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. But is that what we want to settle for now? I don’t think so.

            The bottom line is that Christianity is facing some huge cultural obstacles when it comes to inspiring its members to delve deep into the well of scripture, and the wisdom of its traditions. Figuring out what to do about this problem, however--if anything—is an interesting problem.

Why Doctrine Matters

            Over the past few years, I’ve become more and more curious about the fascination some Christians have with the minutiae of doctrine. Sometimes this doctrine is hoary ancient stuff from the sixteenth century or even earlier that defines the historic basis for denominations like the Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Presbyterians. Lately, however, the doctrines that fascinate tend to be about Jesus’ expected return from heaven to judge the living and the dead and all that.

            That any contemporary Christians care much about any but the most basic doctrines ought to surprise us. We live in an anti-intellectual popular culture where reading both widely and deeply has fallen out of favor. Shakespeare is someone we sample in college, not something many of us read or watch on stage anymore.

            When it comes to the Bible, things get worse. In one of his famous "man on the street" interviews, Jay Leno asks a college student, "What is one of the Ten Commandments?" "Freedom of speech," is the reply. Leno asks a girl when Jesus lived. She thought maybe about 30,000 years ago. Not a promising answer for someone who turns out to be an Art History student. The fact is, most people seem to think that everything related to religion—and especially its doctrines—is just stuffy and irrelevant. What does matter, if anything, are personal spiritual feelings and intuitions.

            And yet, some Christians continue to care deeply about doctrine—about the nature of Jesus’ presence at the Lord’s Supper (is he spiritually ubiquitous, thus always present, or is he really the bread and wine—transubstantiation?), for example. Or, will Jesus return to earth before, during, or after a literal seven-year period of persecution (the pre-, mid-, and post-tribulation camps among premillennialists)?

            Why? What is the drawing power of learning, holding, and fighting scorched earth battles for such doctrinal positions? Why do some people—people in the pews, people who never went a to seminary a day in their lives--nevertheless take the time to study, read, and argue about these doctrinal positions?

            As much as I wish that there might be a simple answer, there probably isn’t. People probably get engaged and excited about intellectually complicated doctrines for a whole host of reasons. It might be for the sheer intellectual delight of mastering difficult bodies of knowledge. Some people are indoctrinated to believe doctrinal change represents a slippery slope to perdition. Others teach in churches or colleges or seminaries where changing your mind—or even raising difficult questions—is not allowed if you want to keep your job.

            But there is one other possible answer. Christians sometimes concern themselves about historical doctrines, or esoteric, speculative interpretations of scripture about when Jesus will return as a way to avoid the heart of scripture. Such preoccupation is an unconscious avenue for not having to deal with other more serious matters of the law, and especially the heart of the law, love of God and neighbor. A focus on doctrine leaves little room for wrestling with practical questions posed by our wealth and others’ poverty, by our relationship to the environment, by war in the Middle East, or the ways gun culture or television violence poison Western culture. I’m reminded of how one of the Teachers of the Law, one who could even recite the greatest command, was judged by Jesus, in the end, to be “not far” from the kingdom of God while still apparently missing the point of the kingdom entirely.

            Which makes me think that whatever the point of holding to doctrines might be—and as I noted above, there are a few—the bigger issue is always going to be figuring out how holding them doesn’t get in the way of the main thing.