What Holds us Together?

I was reading this story about American Episcopal bishops and their response to the Anglican communion, and it struck a cord in me because of my own experiences. Here we have a conservative Episcopal bishop providing a response to a challenge that primarily resulted from the actions of liberal bishops.

What is making the Episcopal Church USA hang together? I could, however, just as well ask the same thing about the United Methodist Church, of which I’m a member. Why do we all hang around and duke it out year after year and General Conference after General Conference?

I recall a study that suggested that there were really four camps in the UMC on the issue of homosexuality. There are those who believe homosexuality is a sin, and who do not believe we can remain as a unified church with disagreement on this issue, there are those who believe homosexuality is sin and yet think we can get along. On the other hand those who believe homosexuality is not a sin are similarly divided between those who think we can co-exist in a denomination that with those who believe the opposite, and those who think we can’t. Yet year after year the debate goes on.

But I’m wondering again just what keeps us working together. How many of the goals of my local church here in Pensacola match those of more liberal churches in the Northwest, for example? Are we really in community or is it just on paper? Those who know me may be surprised to realize that the congregation of which I’m a member is really quite conservative, for a United Methodist Church. It’s not at the hard right, but it’s right of center. I think I’m somewhere in the center range of United Methodist belief right now myself, and I feel that I could work together with some reservations in most of the churches I know. I’m afraid I would have to make an exception for the one church that I know of that removed the cross as a symbol of death.

I’m thinking that a great deal of the glue is simply tradition, whether for the Episcopal Church, with a somewhat longer tradition, or the United Methodist Church, which has certainly had enough history to become respectable. Denominational loyalty goes a long way for people who have lived in a community and gone to a particular church for years and years, or been multigenerational members of the same denomination.

But the current generation isn’t buying that, whether they are liberal or conservative. They want a church community that is going where they are going and in which they can be wholehearted, active, members if they want any church at all. “We’ve always been Methodists” or “We’ve done it that way for years” doesn’t really work for them.

I know I keep revisiting this topic, but it seems still to be a very live one. The membership of the United Methodist Church seems to indicate that we’re not finding the popular answer to these questions whether or not we are finding the right answer. The Episcopal Church has a similar problem.

I think we need to find the glue, on a personal, congregational, and denominational level. If we can deal with the glue, we should be able to deal with the rest. For me, the central message of the love of Jesus who came and died for me is a driving force. I’m interested in social activism because I think Jesus called us through the incarnation to the ministry of reconciliation. Simply being redeemed drives me to want to be with others who feel the same way. That drives other issues into the background.

But I think the question of whether even Jesus and his mission are the central position of our faith is subject to serious debate in many places. I find people both to my right and to my left who, redeemed by the blood of the lamb want to go out and share the gospel through word, deed, and sign as led by the Holy Spirit. Others, well, not so much. I’m not referring to different theories of the atonement. I’m referring to various views that make the atonement less than a central topic.

If it weren’t for the atonement, I’d be carrying out whatever social action I have through a civic organization. I wouldn’t need a church. A church doesn’t just need to serve the community; they need to serve the community driven by Jesus Christ and filled with his Spirit.

When I first thought of writing this I was thinking of a kind of moderate split–let’s take everyone who can exist together out of the center instead of continuing to head toward a left-right split. But I don’t think even that would put together the right combination. I’m looking for a community that wants to carry out the “royal law” and do so driven by and in the name of the royal person–Jesus Christ. So far, in spite of disagreements I have found that I can do that in three different United Methodist congregations. The denomination as a whole? Well, not so much.