Dear Boo and Bubble,
Captain and I have reached the age where our allotment of
free time allows us to opt for more scenic, interesting and (yes) leisurely
choices of route when we are traveling.
Quite frankly, we try to avoid the Interstates at all cost unless there
might be some looming deadline. Mostly
two-lane back roads, where the maximum speed limit of 55 inevitably gets
interrupted as soon as you achieve it by some organized unit of governance not
large enough to even be called a town, give the traveler an opportunity to
notice things that would only be blurs streaking past the window on the race
tracks of transportation we call highways.
Whenever we find ourselves going from one place to the next, it
fascinates me to engage in this exercise of observation……and one of the most
intriguing results is always the prolific number of churches that dot the
wayside.
For example, did you know that from the town of Banner Elk,
NC, to Elizabethton, TN, - a distance of some 30 miles – there are almost fifty
churches. I’ve counted them, or at least
their directional signs on the side of the road. They have one thing in common. They are all Christian and the preponderance
are some sort of Baptist. If you want to
find a representative of any other faith, you must go to a more populated
area. And so, having discovered this
phenomenon, I can’t help but muse on the question “How can it be possible to
have so many iterations of the same faith?”
It’s almost like the beam of Christianity hit a prism and fractured into
a thousand pieces, all of which are claimed to be the valid one. And, somehow, the common denominators of one
Christ and one Holy scripture have been splintered as well.
Having been funneled through the gristmill of the Bible and
spit out like just about everybody else I know, I find it very curious that the
Good Book might be a contributing factor.
How could there be so many disparate interpretations of its words? What else could “thou shalt not commit
adultery” or “thou shalt not kill” or “thou shalt not bear false witness” or
“when you’ve done it unto the least of these, you’ve done it unto me” or “do
unto others as you would have them do unto you” or “love thy neighbor as
thyself” mean other than what the words say.
And yet, somehow, a hundred people can read the same Bible and find
enough nuanced differences to even argue about them. These same words, with all of their various
elucidations, also seem to affect so many different outcomes in our society - everything
from perceptions of neighbors to perspectives on world views to political
preferences – that it’s hard to fathom all the branches of this tree could
possibly have the same tap root.
For anyone seeking a grounding in faith, this whole
conundrum can be quite unsettling. Your quadruple-great
grandfather Joseph Cottrell, who somewhat jokingly admitted that “he knew a
woman who loved her church so much, she couldn’t love her neighbor,” has, on
occasion, written about these matters. I
find his insights to be both enlightening and comforting.
In an article entitled “Christianity
vs. Churchianity,” published in 1873, he offers his opinion that one must
understand that churches, whatever form they take, are merely the conduits for
the faith and no one of them has exclusivity. It is in the character that Christianity is
defined.
“The various organizations denominated differently – Roman Catholic,
Protestant Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist – are scaffold upon which
men stand to build up the great temple of God, the world of mind, the human
race. All of them together are not the
Temple, much less any single one.”
And continues –
“There is nothing
modal, ordinal, or ritualistic that is of the essence of Christianity. That by which one is a Christian in one
Church, is that by which one is a Christian in any other. If any church has that which is essential to
Christian character that no other have, there can not be a Christian in any
other. But we find the highest Christian
character in all – Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian,
Congregational. This settles it; that by
which one may be a Christian, vital with all life and love and qualified for
heavenly ministries on earth, is just that which we have in common. Selah.”
However, later on he explores how the institutional church
is susceptible to human aggrandizement and very often cannot resist the
temptation to raise itself higher in importance than the faith it proclaims to
honor and, in doing so, can even drown out its own message.
“The Church crucified
Jesus Christ. Under the sign of the
Cross the crucifixion business has been continued. The virus of legalism has struck into every
organism. It is a mere question of degrees and modes of operation, and ever and
anon under the operation of the law of life and liberty and love there is a new
formation from elements within and without subjected to misapprehension,
misrepresentation, slight and persecution, until through trial and endurance it
comes into recognition as a Church; then – it goes the way of all the Churches.
ts ministers are expected to run the role of
Attorneyship on behalf of what is simply incidental and accidental – to glorify
what is peculiar to its form and method, lodging in the letter and losing the
spirit. Incident to this tendency is ambition
for the distinctions and offices, and men become arrogant and blusted greatly in
the nicer sensibilities of their nature, blinded by the flatteries that
continuously flow to them, unintelligently, from such as love the shadow of
authority. How perilous it is to
character to have office and power!
Christ’s criticisms, parables
and sayings in the audience of ‘the common people’ who ‘heard him gladly,’ cheapened
that by which the dignitaries of the Church at Jerusalem, who strutted about
the temple – the house they kept for themselves in the name of the Lord – had their
importance and their gains. They sought
to patronize and thus appropriate him, then to confute him and thus break the
charm of his influence with the people, then to frighten him off by telling him
that Herod was in pursuit of his life. Oh! Their paroxysm of piety and
patriotism! What to do with the reckless, imprudent, irreverent, radical young
man? That was the question.
His gracious words
lifted up from the dust the hope of the lowly ones, and assured such in high
places as were of a lowly spirit; his chivalry was an inspiration, and men
began to feel that they had life immediately from God. That doomed him. The decision of the Sanhedrin is
typical. The highway of ecclesiasticism
has been after the fashion of Golgatha.”
I’m not sure that I will ever find a satisfactory answer to
my original question, but I do take encouragement from Cottrell’s words –
especially that last paragraph – which helps me understand that, at the base of
it all, I have “life immediately from God”
and the church (however many thousands there are of them) are second to that.
