Sins of Luther

Well really not Luther per se. I'm talking about something larger that started with me researching elections for the upcoming BGCT conference and subsequently coming upon Ken Coffee's blog. Now, I profess that I know very little about Texas Baptist politics, or, well, Baptist politics in general. But I do know that the language out there, and among other current denominations is that we are preparing for possibly a whole bunch of schisms.

And then last night in Christian History we learned about Luther and I can't help but think that he's partially to blame for all of this. Admittedly, Luther was calling for reformation within the Roman Catholic Church- AND the western/eastern schism and various other reform movements predated 1517- but, I think Luther is when we stopped trying to get along with each other and just threw our hands up in the air and basically said that if we don't like what the big church is doing, by golly, we'll just go out and start our own. Of course out of this came a lot of good. Changes that needed to be made were made and people generally were given the ability to find a style of Christian belief that suited them. But is this good?

When did we decide to sacrifice unity for individuality? I'm not calling for everyone to be Baptist or Lutheran or Catholic or Methodist- each exists for its own reasons; but I am calling for us to actually stop and try to talk with each other before the denominations continue to splinter. We're useless when each person is his or her own denomination- useless at the expense of doing good things. How great would the world be if instead of 17,000 missions organizations, there were fewer that could provide more aid and assistance to those called to missionary work? Where are the great decisions being made for all of Christendom that came out of the early synods? Couldn't we at least try to get together and play nicely?

If, in Christ, there is no male or female, Jew or gentile, free or slave, then certainly there is not Presbyterian and Anglican and so on and so forth. We get so caught up in our own politics that we leave the majority behind. Suddenly I wake up and find out that I'm no longer Southern Baptist because I think women should be ordained as ministers and a small group "representing" the whole and whom may never actually have to work with a female pastor has decided that I'm wrong and therefore can't be part of that group anymore. Obviously this isn't a real example for myself because I'm too young to actually have been conscious of all of this, but the question is still there- in matters of faith, why do we keep narrowing the criteria for who is in and who is out? Shouldn't everyone be able to be in? If your particular church doesn't like a denominational ruling, is it really better to leave? Particularly if that ruling would be not applicable to that church? We've already defined what we believe. Miraculously 1700 years ago leaders were able to come together and make decisions and keep the Church in tact.

At some point, we just stopped trying.