Loss of Denominational Identity
 
PUP is legally, word-for-word conservative, as it should be. The PUP report is legally conservative. The constitution reads well-enough, but the function of the PCUSA in relation to its constitution has been given an official, authoritative loophole in recommendation #5. For evangelicals, this is a hole in the boat; for liberals, it is progress. I for one don’t care to be in a boat with someone who keeps pulling the plug every time you turn your head to fish, but we now spend more time replacing the plug and bailing than we do fishing. We could reform and reorganize–some already have and others are planning to do so–in the hopes that the next generation will build healthier denominations, or we could just continue on in our very flawed, very divided and double-minded denomination. Denominational identity is obsolete; it is like product loyalty to your old brand of cigarettes. Being a Presbyterian, up and against being a Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran or Catholic gains us nothing in either mission or evangelism. Its former, elitist, “ivy league, upper-middle-class” appeal is long dead, which is too bad, because at least that appeal drew people into the pews. The Presbyterian identity is gone, either lost or otherwise transformed. The “appeal” is now lost in a flurry of mixed messages, and whatever people are hearing, it just isn’t working; it hasn’t worked for 20 years. Denominationalism per se is dead, at least for the PCUSA. Most younger already Christians get it–these are same ones who have never seen a cigarette commercial. To them, Presbyterians means “deeply flawed, deeply conflicted, but with a really interesting past.” We’d have as much luck getting them to join the local Lions’ Club. The Shriners have more drawing power with those red fezzes and little go carts they braid around in local parades. Compared to the PCUSA, the Shriners are really cool. Something big is happening to the Church–not just the PCUSA–but worldwide Christianity. An explosion of growth with an expansion of diversity of form. It includes forms unseen or disregarded since the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Gnostic Christianities that worship God as the Father of Jesus Christ who is The Light, radically-applied koinonia on the small scale in small groups and house churches, independent congregations willing to live and die in a natural institutional life-cycle–these are spreading the world of denominations (and denominationalisms) into obscurity and obsolescence. Wildly varying communities of faith organized according to their preferred interpretations (many of them bad, in our opinion), yet seeking to follow Jesus at the center, remain on the increase, not the decline, as with the old mainlines. I suspect we will see an increasing fragmentation of “acceptable” interpretations–an explosion of micro-denominations in the small group and house church movements that will have less and less in common with each other and the rest of Christianity other than the true essentials. Why should we expect the Church to grow into unanimity? We may have had a dream that Jesus would unify His Church by combining denominations in growing consensus (and by the way, what an utter joke our ecumenical groups have been, WARC, NCC, etc.), but it seems more likely that God will unify us by spreading out our denominations so thin that they cease to exist. What remains will be a world of Christianity unified by essentials-in-practice. It doesn’t matter what we say we believe; what matters is how we serve, how we do outreach, how we worship, and how we organize ourselves. Putting it in the Book of Order doesn’t make it happen: that’s a lesson we Presbyterians know by heart. The PCUSA can lead in this change. We have no consensus. We have no ideological unity, just a few points in common. We do the most drastic ecumenical work every year within our own walls. The PCUSA is an ecumenical body. We are all about ecumenism because we can’t agree on anything. We are two, or four, or a dozen denominational spirits under one moniker. If the denomination doesn’t really matter (and let’s be crystal clear here: it doesn’t matter), then there is no better reason to break away than to just stick it out in spite of disagreements. By breaking away we simply risk the repeating denominational history when we ought to be busily shaping the wildly-diversified, post-denominational, wirelessly-connected Body of Christ. The history of doing church by denominations is closing quickly; we must invest aggressively in the new ways Church will be done in the next generation. Being divided and double-minded as we are, we are off to a good start. The move is not to purify the PCUSA (which isn’t worth purification), nor to preserve its better qualities only to ossify them in new denominations (which will be equally flawed within ten years), but rather to get out of the denomination business altogether. The PCUSA should coordinate and strategize for its own deconstruction. “But wait,” you say, “that is what we have been doing for 20 years!” No, the fault of the church is that it has been working so hard to preserve its own life, it can only lose it. Perhaps all hope is not lost; perhaps God wants us to become the first denomination to become more than a denomination: a mission-enabling, worship-enabling, study-enabling network. Do we need to break away to make that happen? No, we are on that course already, albeit too slow for some and too fast for others.
Monday, September 18, 2006