THE GHETTO CHURCH OF CHRIST
CLOYD ANTHONY

Every man is, in some respects, like other man, like some other men, like no other man—Clyde Kluckholm

In the above quotation the late anthropologist of Harvard University expressed a truth which, if understood by people everywhere, might reduce the antagonisms which fragment our world. I elect to paraphrase Kluckhohn’s statement as a basis for discussing some cultural factors which account for religious differences. Thus, “Every professed Christian is, in some respects, like every other professed Christian; like some other professed Christians; like no other professed Christian.”

In my judgment, in matters of vital importance, the similarities among professed Christians, regardless of their stated, denominational or non-denominational affiliation, so overshadow their differences that proselyting and bickering about who will be “saved” become childish, anti-Christian activities. Of course, the problem is to agree on the irreducible minimum of “vital matters.” The anti-instrumental Churches of Christ, alone, are splintered into numerous “anti” and “anti-anti” sects each with a peculiar subculture of “important matters” that are of no consequence to other people or to God.

Gerhardt Siegler, who was purged by Hitler, once told me that Nazism was a system in which “everything that is not required is automatically forbidden.” Siegler’s statement may be overdrawn but it expresses a general truth that has broad application. That was the condition of Jewish seers when Jesus arrived on the scene, and this state of affairs prevails in many contemporary churches including those Churches of Christ that have fallen prey to authoritarian power structures and personalities.

Another conference at “Jerusalem” similar to the one reported in Acts 15 is needed. If all contemporary “apostles and elders” including key personnel from our colleges, editors of the “sound” papers, and the “great preachers,” who are loyal to their respective parties (Paul, Apollos, Peter, or Christ)—if all were to assemble, could they agree on the minimum essentials of the good news about Christ that the entire world so desperately needs? Could they be as reasonable, as humble, and as brief as were those who attended that first conference? Could they (and the Holy Ghost) agree “to lay upon... (the brotherhood) no greater burden than these necessary things” in belief, practice and doctrine? If so, this would refocus attention on The Way that draws all men to Christ. It might reduce the petty legalisms, personal rivalries, and institutionalized pressures which separate brethren. Which church will play “Antioch” and call for a conference? Which “Jerusalem” will attract all factions?

Every professed Christian is, in some respects, like some other professed Christians. Religiously speaking, we closely resemble the other members of the local church with which we are affiliated. As a youth I was immersed in icy, running water near the meeting house where the Pikes Peak (Indiana) Church of Christ has worshiped for a century. I accepted the religious subculture of attitudes, values, form of worship, doctrine and Biblical interpretations that prevailed in that Church of Christ. We were “the people,” God’s preferred ones. We were different from “denominational” church folk: “Digressives,” Baptists, New Lights, Methodists, United Brethern, “Holy Rollers” and the few Roman Catholics. We of the “Lord’s Church” rated the denominations in terms of how far they were from the “truth” (as we conceived it). The “Digressives” and New Lights stood closest to us; “Holy Rollers” and Catholics at the bottom of the pile. However, aside from our observance of “be ye separate” in worship and organization, I was not aware of much overt hostility among churches. As an ignorant, ethnocentric boy I often wondered why the “Lord’s people” could enjoy so much wonderful fellowship with the “lost” in every place except—in a church building.

In all honesty, I must say that the Church of Christ folk whom I knew as a youth were not abrasive, conceited, or extreme in their ethnocentrism as so many are today. None boasted that we were the only Christians, nor did they gleefully assign the “denominations” to the underworld. Neither was there the hostile prohibition against fraternizing with other churches that I have observed in recent years. Other “denominations” were in “error,” more or less, but not regarded as alien to the universal Church of God. The Book-Roberts debate at the Beck’s Grove Church of Christ did rekindle some fire between us and the “Digressives” but not for long. In fact, the kind, Christian demeanor of Dr. Books, debating under irritating circumstances, won the hearts of many of our people even though they still opposed instrumental music in worship.

Fifty years after leaving my native hills, I am thankful that my early life was fashioned among the independent-minded hill folk who refused to become slaves to the institutionalized, standardized, rigid Biblical interpretations which have emerged from the “Bible Colleges,” “Schools of Preaching,” authoritarian papers and professionalized clergy. I am thankful that I was taught by parents, neighbors, and shepherds (bishops, elders) and occasionally by evangelists, rather than by hirelings who “care not for the sheep.” Above all, I am thankful that the subcultures of my childhood community, though ethnocentric and binding in many ways, nevertheless never closed my heart and mind to an eternal search for truth.

The only excuse for including this bit of personal history is to illustrate the culture-binding influence in the life of any person who is born and reared in a small world circumscribed geographically and/or culturally. At birth, each of us enters a small world not of our own choice or making. Our only exposure is to the pattern of culture and subcultures that exists in the family and other neighborhood groups. Religiously speaking, we accept the faith of our parents. If we live always in isolated groups and sub-cultures, separated from the main stem of human influences, we do not change very much. However, in these times of rapid mobility and mass communication in mass society, exposure to strange ways and alternative choices is inevitable.

For more than 500 years the term “ghetto” referred to isolated, segregated Jewish groups in urban communities in Europe and America. Today, the term refers to many types of racial, ethnic, cultural or religious groups that are, in some ways, isolated. I believe that Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined the expression “ghetto church” in referring to those religious groups that emphasize the “sacred” rituals in a meeting house and meticulously avoid “secular” involvement with the “social gospel,” or the vital issues of the times. The geographical location of the church building is not related to the concept “ghetto church.” The building may be a million dollar structure and stand atop “quality hill.” On the other hand some churches located in the slum or in a racial-ethnic ghetto, would not be classified as a “ghetto church.”

Whereas racial segregation is usually imposed upon people, most religious segregation is self-imposed. The group withdraws from the “world” or from the “adulteration” of other religions. Historically, most religious groups manifested some degree of separateness. The Ancient Jews and modern Amish are examples of extreme cultural isolation. The ecumenical movement and other efforts to establish a bridgehead of fellowship among churches has made little headway among the militant churches including most Churches of Christ. Our segregation and “disfellowshipping” each other has resulted in numerous ethnocentric, spiritually deprived religious ghettos on the outer fringe of the great City of God. Of course, we all favor “unity” on one and the same premise: move into our ghetto! Which one? Sometimes I wish other denominations would do just that—simply flood our little world so overwhelmingly that our few “sound” men could not immerse and indoctrinate the new “Christians” with our peculiar subculture fast enough to prevent the inflow of fresh spiritual insights. To me, it is tragic that the segments of believers who call themselves churches of Christ have become so ethnocentric, ghetto-like that we cease to be a vital, effective force in the universal kingdom of Christ.

No matter what name the ghetto church appropriates, it symbolizes the very antithesis of God’s purpose in Christ. The subculture of the ghetto church is self-serving, self-perpetuating. Extreme ethnocentrism generates conceit and bigotry among members; intolerance and hostility toward those without. While this attitude “converts” some personality types, it establishes barriers that offend many members and non-members.

The “Organization Men” in the ghetto church strongly support institutionalized rules, roles, and relationships. This maintains power over persons and preserves the appearance of solidarity. While denying any claim of infallibility, they profess absolute and exclusive correctness in interpretation of scriptures, in teaching and preaching. They equate their own voices with the will of God. They attack the popes and clergy of other churches while assuming the same roles, power and exemptions disguised under different nomenclature.

Loyalty and “faithfulness’ of members in the ghetto church are reinforced by perpetual indoctrination in petty “commands” about regular attendance at the meeting house, “giving money to the Lord,” doing everything “through the church” and under the elders. Statistics of baptisms, attendance, and monetary contributions are the chief criteria of an active church. There is need for some devil to attack: “modernism,” “liberalism,” “denominationalism;’ “evolution;’ “communism” and others. Nothing cements in-group loyalty so much as a community of hate for some real or imaginary enemy. (Nothing, that is, except a community of love). Every totalitarian system knows this. While attacking “modernism” as a terrible evil the Organization Men use the most questionable modern promotional schemes to support programs of doubtful value. Weightier matters of command—love, mercy, justice, kindness, and humility are neglected. Personal salvation has been depersonalized, standardized, institutionalized, ritualized, legalized, dispirited and tied exclusively to a collective (herd salvation) organizational establishment.

Jesus came to build a universal spiritual kingdom, a world brotherhood of man. The ghetto church can not contribute significantly to the messianic promise because it can not see beyond its own walls. It has no vision of what the Kingdom really is and, since it mistrusts other people, other cultures and religious views, it isolates itself from cross-cultural contacts that might provide a new point of view. Since the ghetto church thinks it “possesses all truth” its primary mission is to peddle its own little bag of cliches.

Jesus understood the binding, blinding influence which the ethnocentric subcultures of ghetto churches have upon personality. All of the Jewish sects were captives of this evil. Jesus came to free the Jews and all mankind from its satanic power. He came to reaffirm and reinterpret the basic laws which God established in the beginning and which will remain to the end of time. The ghetto churches among the Jews tried to circumvent the primary laws of love, mercy, justice, and humility by accumulating hundreds of petty “do” and “don’t” commands of their own invention, or erroneous interpretation of scripture. Jesus cut through all of this trivia and told them to “get with it.” When John the Baptist preached, “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” he meant repentance over violation of God’s law. He was no more concerned than was Jesus with the accumulated bag of traditional garbage which the Pharisees emphasized. And if our ghetto church leaders today would listen, Jesus has a similar message for them. Most of the so-called “commands” that we repeat week after week and year after year originated in the minds of our own men as they mis-read scripture. God is more concerned that every man be “born again,” converted, transformed all the days of his life than he is with the relatively inconsequential “commands” of bodily ritualistic gymnastics to, in, and from a meeting house. He is more concerned that we repent than in hearing us debate nonsense about things we do not understand. If we emphasize love, mercy, justice repentance and humility we will do well.

Mark 9 and Luke 9 record two incidents that are of special significance. First, the ghetto-minded apostles just could not endure anyone who “followeth not us.” And neither can we. Wouldn’t we love to close the lips of “denominational” preachers and our own “false” brethren who do not eagerly embrace our views and leadership—who do not enthusiastically dance while we play the pipes? But read what Jesus said to those apostles—and to us. The culture-bound, ghetto-centered mind can never accept an idea it did not invent.

Just prior to the above mentioned incident, Jesus caught the apostles arguing about who would be greatest. Our contemporary “apostles” worry about the same weighty question! Do you know the “great” men in the Church of Christ today? Heard their great sermons? Read their prophetic warnings about heretics and imaginary evils misunderstood? Read what Jesus said to those who really would be great. His prescription was from a universal point of view and a “hard” saying, indeed. So, having ears to hear we hear not, neither do we see.

Of all the apostles, Paul best comprehended the relationship between Christianity as a universal religion and the variability of cultures and subcultures. He understood both Greek and Jewish culture. No wonder Jesus hand-picked him for a special mission. If contemporary preachers were as well grounded in behavioral sciences as Paul was, they surely could avoid some of the serious blunders they make in interpersonal relations and in misunderstanding scripture. Why do we exclude anthropology, sociology, and psychology from our “preacher curricula” or, if we offer a veneer in these areas, why do we “doctor” the content to harmonize with our religious creed and doctrine?

Paul accommodated his personal conduce and teaching to the social-cultural conditions as he found them and he did so without compromising moral standards or truth. To Paul, the gospel was a pattern of eternal principles—universal cultural threads—which could be implanted in any culture anywhere and it would leaven the whole. Basically, Paul supposed the cultural norms of the communities he visited. When he condemned the moral practices of some Corinthians and the brazenness of some women, he was warning the church to abide by the norms of the larger society, and he was supporting the status role of women in most societies of that day. He was not establishing new “commands” uniquely Christian about sex morals, “bobbed hair” and women preachers. Failure to support the “best” norms of the larger society would have multiplied the difficulties of planting the good news in unreceptive cultures.

Paul was “all things to all men... that he might save some.” (l Cor. 9:19-23) Would that all ghetto churches had the vision Paul had. Even though Paul was a delegate to the Jerusalem conference (Acts 15), was party to the decisions that were made and carried the letter back to Antioch, nevertheless, shortly thereafter he circumcised Timothy at Lystra. (Acts 16). It was the intelligent thing to do to avoid unnecessarily offending Jews and especially Jewish converts to Christ. If a sincere, insightful brother were to behave similarly today he would be excommunicated by one or more of our papal authorities.

In some respects, no two professed Christians are alike. To a casual, superficial observer, all members of a local Church of Christ may appear to “speak the same thing” and hold identical, uniform beliefs, true to the party line which they are fed from the pulpit and reinforced by the party paper and rigid interpretations in Bible study. Even elders and deacons may happily assume perfect “unity” in faith and practice. This illusion can persist indefinitely if members are discouraged or prohibited from thinking or expressing their honest views. However, anyone who knows intimately and well, the members of a church—if every member knows that his honest, dissenting views will be respected and held in confidence—then wide differences of belief, conviction and Biblical interpretation will be found. Such differences will be in areas which the power structure considers “faith by hearing the word” items: water baptism; form of baptism; instrumental music; infallibility of the Bible; evolution; liberalism; and numerous less critical areas especially the statistical indices of “faithfulness.”

But I need not belabor a fact that every knowledgeable reader already knows from his own experience and observation. And many who know prefer to play games and remain in good graces with “principalities and powers.” If we are to have unity of spirit and love in the “One Body” (defined as inclusively or exclusively as you like) we must make allowances for diversity of cultural background and individual differences (as Jesus and Paul did) in all matters of “opinion” and some of us will have to transpose most items from our “faith by hearing the word” ledger to our “opinion” ledger. Can we bend our stiff-necked, uncircumcised hearts to do it?