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2012-02-01 issue:

NEWS ANALYSIS: Naming what divides us

by John D. Rempel

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The heart of the Christian life is aligning ourselves with God’s love. We squander love and then turn to the Spirit to fill us with it again. Even harder than that, especially as we try to make sense of our church’s current struggles, is what to do with the sinking feeling that our problem might be that we understand God’s love in different and contrary ways. “Conservatives” in our church wake up at night worrying that the boundaries set up to keep us faithful may not hold. “Liberals” wake up at night worrying that the boundaries may replace the center as the basis of faithfulness. Two different ways of looking at the church and the world have arisen among us. On the one hand, we struggle to pinpoint the source of our disagreements; on the other hand, we fear naming what most deeply divides us because the breach may be too big to bridge.

Such a fundamental difference of worldviews is the only adequate explanation I can find for the visceral character of debate that has accompanied changing positions on defining practices of the church such as divorce, women in leadership and homosexuality. Today in Menno­nite Church USA and Canada, homosexuality is the most emotionally laden stand-in issue for a profound set of differences in belief and practice. It is the scapegoat for much of our confusion, fear and anger about the shaking foundations of our faith. Whether or not the gospel blesses the love of gay people is a troubling issue, but it is only one expression of a wider and deeper contest between conflicting sets of assumptions by which we live. No one issue can bear the weight of all our confusion, fear and anger. Only if we find ways of identifying the underlying assumptions of our strife can we hope for reconciliation. Here is one attempt to name what is at stake.

Let’s look at four realities that shape how we see the world.

1. The tension between the authority of the Bible and the authority of the Holy Spirit
The Bible is a written record of God’s revelation and our response. The Old Testament (OT) describes such events as the Hebrew exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Ten Commandments. The New Testament (NT) describes such events as the coming of Christ and the community that arose in response to him. We want to live out what Scripture teaches, but doing so always involves applying an old story to a new setting. This is where the Holy Spirit comes in. For example, in the Gospels we read that Christ came to redeem Israel. In Acts we read that Christ’s redemption also includes the Gentiles. Through the Spirit’s prodding, the apostolic church realized that there was room in Israel’s covenant with God for the Gentiles. In his farewell discourses in John 14 (11–29) Jesus promises his disciples “another Advocate,” a Presence of God who will teach them how to live a life of love after their Teacher and Friend has gone.

This means that the Bible can be the final authority for the church only when it is illuminated by the Spirit. But who is to say where the Spirit is leading? For Mennonites, confessions of faith have been models of discernment in applying the Bible to the hard questions of the day. When the church accepts the articles of a confession of faith it is saying that they come as close as is possible to describing Christ’s way. Because we always “know in part,” grappling with our beliefs and practices continues. This grappling has led groups across the spectrum to question and reject parts of the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective. Here are some examples. As regards the status of women and men (Article 6), the Confession asserts that the rule of man over woman is the result of sin and that in redemption they are both restored to the image of God. The Confession concludes that God calls leaders from both genders. On the practice of Communion (Article 12) the Confession states that only those who are baptized are invited to the Lord’s Table. On the question of sexual union (Article 19) the Confession asserts that it belongs only within heterosexual marriage.

The only issue on which conformity to the Confession is called for by our denomination has to do with the implied rejection of same-sex marriage (Article 19). One of the few departures from the Confession that is disciplined is when a minister presides at a same-gender union. Nothing is done when members or ministers publicly reject a Trinitarian understanding of God (Article 1). Nothing is done when members or ministers publicly reject the peace teaching (Article 8 & 22).

What is happening here? Individuals and groups are at odds about the Confession’s discernment of where Scripture interpreted by the Spirit leads. To be sure, no single process of discernment in a single period of time is absolute. But without the Confession as a referee, as a document in its own right and as a symbol of the tradition, there is no agreed-upon way of measuring faithfulness. Yet sincere people disagree about which issues in the Confession adequately express the leading of the Spirit today and which issues are of a church-dividing nature.

The dominant historical position has been that confessions identify those things that unite us and that must unite us to remain faithful. Our current confession stands in that tradition. It offers a permeable orthodoxy in which historic positions are affirmed but with respect for a range of interpretation. For instance, the Confession asserts that Christ died to save us (Article 8), adding that each of the classic ways of making sense of Jesus’ death (Christus victor, substitutionary, moral influence) shed the Spirit’s light on biblical teaching. Our confession seeks to set forth the essentials of the gospel as Mennonites have understood it while making room for diversity of interpretation that remains accountable to the core.

What do we do when a significant part of the church finds the discernment set forth in the Confession inadequate to the needs of the day and the leading of the Spirit for the day? Do we resort to congregational autonomy? If so, are there no positions on which we must be of a common mind to faithfully live the will of God? Another approach is to say that it is relationships of trust, respect and patience that are called for to hold our denomination together. These virtues are indispensable. But can the full weight of community be carried by relationships? Aren’t we accountable to truths of the sort that are interpreted in the Confession, which we accept at baptism?

2. More is at stake than the issue itself
We are reluctant to admit that it is not only a particular issue on which we disagree; we fear that the assumptions underlying it may be at stake. Most of us have a haunting, gut feeling that more is at stake than the issue itself when we see the passion our disagreements provoke but we can’t put that gut feeling into words. Take the explosive issue of abortion. Conservatives oppose it with a passion. Part of what drives them is that they’re against the taking of human life. But a pro-life position is equally a symbol of a deeper moral imperative: It is a line in the sand drawn in defense of “traditional values” as defined by right wing Republican ideology. Liberals defend abortion (sometimes on demand) because they want a way for women to get out of desperate circumstances. But they also defend abortion rights because it symbolizes a deeper moral imperative: It is a line drawn in the sand in defense of “individual rights” as defined by left wing Democratic ideology.

We fear that if we identify the depth of our differences (within families, congregations and church agencies) they will become truly unmanageable. Sometimes these debates are perpetuated by ongoing reactions by one side of the issue against the other.
To illustrate, people on the left decry the abandonment of the peace position by some people on the right. On the surface, the leftists have the authority of the historical Mennonite interpretation of Jesus’ teaching on their side. But some people on the right are also reacting to a pacifist position in which belief is often reduced to ethics. The nonviolence of some Mennonites grows out of skepticism about revealed truth; all that remains for them of religion is its morality. Because the need for peacemaking initiatives is so urgent, arguments for peace and justice that are not theologically grounded have been shielded from criticism in our denominational culture. This unwillingness by centrists and leftists to make theological judgments in this realm only fuels the conservative fear that it is ultimately not the peace teaching but belief in God’s self-revelation that is at stake.   

3. Privileging different parts of the Bible  
The third reality grows out of one of the riches of our tradition. Mainstream Mennonites of different theological vantage points have done probing and respectful work on the Bible, both on a scholarly and popular level. Most of us would agree that the preaching of the OT prophets brings us closer to the reign of God than the detailed prescriptions of the law found in Leviticus. But each school of thought goes on to privilege parts of the Bible in more contentious ways.Regarding the NT, some claim the heart of the gospel is found in Matthew, Mark and Luke (ethics); others assert that it is found in Paul and John (spirituality).

Every approach to the Bible makes use of a hierarchy of truths. Interpretations that see the ordering of society as one of God’s greatest gifts privilege passages like Romans 13:1-7 (“Let every person be subject …”). People who see the radical reordering of society as a greater gift privilege passages like Acts 17:1-8 (“… there is another king named Jesus.”). We need clearer criteria for why we claim that some passages are more central to God’s purposes for the church and the creation than others. Otherwise we will continue to talk past one another. For example, a convinced conservative may reject the binding authority of Matthew 5:38-48 (“Do not resist an evildoer …) yet insist on the authoritativeness of Paul’s condemnation in Romans 1:18-32 (“… men were consumed with passion for one another”). A convinced liberal can do the opposite. A starting point for honest discernment would be to admit that we hold different readings of the Bible, to lay out how we decide what is authoritative and how we live in response to it.

4. Mission: changing individuals and/or structures?
Finally, there is the question of mission. It is of defining importance because it refuses to let us solve the problems before us simply with words. The mark of the follower of Jesus is “the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26). Being a faithful believer, being the faithful body of Christ grows out of taking a chance on God, taking the risk of living as if the kingdom has come near (Mark 1:15). Everything else is “noisy gongs and clanging symbols” (1 Corinthians 13:1).

Risky living is the level playing field on which all contenders for rightly understanding the gospel meet. It does not mean, however, that truth claims are irrelevant. Let’s simplify the two contending visions of mission for the sake of discussion. Is our calling to witness to Christ as the Savior of the world and to build up a church of those who confess him as Lord? Or is our calling to make common cause with all who put themselves on the line for peace and justice? Many Christians (and people who staff our church agencies) work hard to transcend that polarity. For a long time, one of our predecessor mission boards had the motto, “The whole gospel for a broken world.”

Nevertheless, in our agencies, schools and congregations, people tend toward one of the extremes. On the one hand are believers who know the tyranny of sin in their own lives and have been set free from it by Christ. They know of no higher calling than witnessing to amazing grace. These people sometimes become so preoccupied with personal conversion that they forget it is only the entry point into God’s purpose for the creation.

On the other hand are believers who know the tyranny of sin in the life of ghettoes and nations and are convinced that God’s reign can free the world from oppression and war. They sometimes become so preoccupied with systemic change that they forget that only individuals who have been made whole by Christ can stay the course in bringing wholeness to the world. If people across the spectrum can acknowledge that what they are called to (changing structures or individuals) concerns only a part of the gospel, their ministries become complementary and mutually affirming.

These emphases become divisive when each side insists that only its way is faithful.
Those who make personal conversion all there is to the gospel—and insist that work for justice is a distraction from the church’s mission—have only half a gospel.
Similarly, those who see evangelism as an offense against other truth claims—and have no heart for seeing lost people find themselves in Christ—have only half a gospel. This is where the debate about mission needs to start.

When we risk speaking and praying truthfully and charitably about how we understand the Bible and the Spirit, when we risk unpacking our unspoken, underlying assumptions, when we risk facing the selectivity with which all of us approach the Bible, when we risk a deeper understanding of evangelism and justice in the coming of the kingdom, then we will have found our way back to the path that aligns us with God’s love.

John D. Rempel is professor of historical theology and Anabaptist studies and associate director of Institute of Mennonite Studies at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind.