PARTY TRUMPETING
Robert R. Meyers

Anyone who regrets seeing any Christian group go promotional, with gimmicks galore and razzle-dazzle advertising, will wince in pain at sight of the May 15 Christian Chronicle, a news organ of the Churches of Christ. For in that issue readers are regaled with stories of the World’s Fair triumph of that church in language which approaches sheer blatancy.

A headline shouts: CHURCH SHEDS ‘INFERIORITY COMPLEX’ AT WORLD’S FAIR. Although this is not explained in detail, it apparently means that in terms of TV and newspaper coverage, dollars spent, and lavishness of surroundings, the sect which considers itself the only true church of the Lord has finally arrived. No need for any of its members, even in the Texas and Tennessee strongholds, to feel inferior any longer.

Thirty years in this group have convinced me that any inferiority its members have must be because of material poverty and lack of public recognition. Certainly there has been no feeling of inferiority about the group’s doctrinal correctness and standing with God. Often, instead, the world has observed an assurance bordering on arrogance. So the headline must refer to a feeling through the years that we were not quite as good as other religionists because we hadn’t their buildings and their reputations.

Now we have arrived, having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a slick promotional stunt. And the proof of our arrival lies in our having been mentioned by newspapers, radio and television. The editor fairly chortles as he notes that “the big news media took notice too.” He is inordinately proud of the 2800 who gathered in the Pavilion and twice gloats over the fact that “a university chorus the night before drew only 300!”

With what sadness and regret must thoughtful men read such comments. One keeps hoping that the old habit of comparing ourselves to others, to their disparagement, has at last yielded up the ghost. But it lingers on. The editor informs us that our exhibit was better than anybody else’s, that only the Seventh Day Adventist exhibit could compare with it. The New York Times covered the story as it related to the formal dedication of the Protestant Center, which, the editor boasts, “didn’t draw a fraction of the crowd our services did.”

The climaxes of partisan pride remind one of some second-rate Madison Avenue huckster’s sales pitch. “It was a big time, brethren,” we are informed. “Afterwards the Fair grounds were almost like one of our lectureships... but not quite. However it was wonderful for a change to see a fellow Christian every once in a while instead of never at all.”

It has to be seen in print to believe it, and even then there will be many who love the party so much more than they love the Kingdom of God that they will suppose my words to be only a cold, uncaring sneer at success. If so, it is a pity, because one’s eyes ought to be wide open to the egotistic exclusiveness of such words. “A fellow Christian” is clearly one who is a member of the party. It excludes even the immersed believers who might be walking around from the Baptists, the Christian Churches, and others.

I can remember when Church of Christ ministers scoffed, from pulpit and press, at the antics of our Southern Baptist neighbors as they went through this razzle-dazzle stage. We lampooned their gimmicks (rightly) as unworthy of Christianity and as an affront to the dignity of religion. But times have changed. The Baptists have gotten a bit more dignified, strengthened greatly the academic standards of their schools, and upgraded the reverence of their services. And we are now happily laying hold on every promotional device we can think of to make the world sit up and notice us.

There is no point in asking what is the matter with us, because the answer has already been given by the editor. We have felt inferior all these years because our buildings were not so nice, nor our press relations so warm, as those of our religious neighbors. Now we feel on a par with them, having outdone most of them in our World’s Fair exhibit.

I am in no laughing mood. I feel sad. We have forgotten what New Testament Christianity really is, we who have talked so much of going by the Book. We no longer remember that the Kingdom works silently, like leaven in the loaf, and grows quietly, like the blade of corn and the developing ear.

We are so far away from all that now that we forget to imagine how inferior the twelve apostles must have felt. Only a dozen of them. No building, no advertising, no enormous crowds, no stunts, no glossy coverage, no applauding world. How they ever managed to survive at all, with so vast an inferiority complex, defies the imagination.

But the picture is not altogether dark. The Church of Christ is full of decent, intelligent folk who are much wiser than many who make their talks and write their papers. They will pass on through this stage of horn-blowing and party elation. It is only another phase of growth, like that one in human development when the adolescent suddenly finds ro his astonishment that he has muscles as big as the other fellow’s. And when it is over, the good people who work for the Kingdom within the Churches of Christ will quietly and cooperatively find ways to spread the influence of the Divine Community.