ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

My protests in this article are not likely to stop the source of my consternation, but I must speak my mind nonetheless. Like Jeremiah I am weary of holding it in. The latest issue of Firm Foundation had still another one, and I suppose I have read a score or more in recent years.

I am referring to those announcements by Marvin Bryant that still another Christian Church preacher has changed or been converted and has “become a part of the churches of Christ,” small c of course. Occasionally the convert is a Baptist minister or a preacher from some other denomination, but more often than not he is a brother from the Christian Church.

This is a concerted effort on the part of Marvin Bryant and those who support him. Marvin spends most or all his efforts in this direction —“converting denominational preachers.” The usual approach is to invite the clergy of a given area, along with their wives, to some such place as the Holiday Inn for dinner. By inviting a large number there is usually a respectable response, providing Marvin with a good audience of preachers. He presents his plea for unity, based upon the ancient order, which is subject to varying interpretations. One Christian Church minister, who attended such a dinner meeting in Dallas, complained to me that he felt Marvin’s whole pitch was to the effect that the problem of division is solved by everybody going over to the Church of Christ. He thought he had been invited to a unity meeting!

Marvin has at least some success. He comes in contact with preachers who for one reason or another are attracted to his plea. They leave their churches and join ours, and Marvin seeks to make this a reasonably easy transition for them. The writeups indicate that the converted preacher hopes to move from the pulpit where he has been to one of ours with little or no lost motion. This latest announcement of the Christian Church minister has him resigning his pulpit with a two month’s notice, after which he expects to be employed by a Church of Christ somewhere.

This appears to be no problem even in our most orthodox circles. One Sunday these men are “digressives” or “false teachers” who would not even be called on to lead a prayer in our assemblies. The next Sunday they are in our pulpits in “full fellowship” (one of our odd expressions that leaves me wondering what partial fellowship would be) with no questions asked. Marvin is not always clear in his announcements as to the measure of the subject’s repentance, whether he has confessed the error of his way or whether he supposes he’ll fair better among Churches of Christ.

It looks a bit hypocritical to me. Not only are the dinner meetings on the beguiling side, suggesting that the Church of Christ has a conciliatory attitude toward denominational ministers that it certainly does not have, but this whole matter of moving a Baptist or a Christian Church preacher over to us without missing a lick indicates that we don’t really believe what we have been saying about them. If they are really sectarians as we charge, does this change all that much by their coming over to us? This would mean that all sectarian preachers would cease being sectarian preachers if they crossed over to the Church of Christ. If we are all that right and they all that wrong, it would seem that the transition would have to be more compelling. Should they not have to go to purgatory for awhile so that this deep-seated sectarianism might be burned out of them before they take a place in our pulpits? If not to purgatory, then surely to Lipscomb or Abilene for a period of cleansing and indoctrination. Holy ground somewhere, surely. If not, we ought to take back what we have been saying. Marvin makes it too easy for men who have been so corrupt in doctrine. It leaves one to wonder just what motivations Marvin uses in attracting these men. It is clear enough that with the announcement of their change there is a call for their immediate employment. They are changing jobs, at least that.

Since preaching is now a profession among us and we have a clergy like everybody else, it follows that our pulpits would be subject to this kind of exchange, under ordinary conditions that is. Disciples sometimes take over Congregational pulpits and Methodists sometimes hire Presbyterians. But not so among the Roman Catholics, for if you serve at one of their altars you must become one of their priests. And this is where we come in. Like the Romanists, we presume to be the church and only our ministers are truly gospel preachers. So we don’t hire Disciples, Baptists or Pentecostals, unless of course they undergo a conversion at one of Marvin’s dinner parties.

It would be interesting to take a poll of these new breed of Church of Christ ministers as to whether they believe they were not Christians until they joined us and were not gospel preachers until they crossed over to our side. I do have some light on such questions. I met one of these new preachers at an Abilene meeting who had come to us from the Christian Church. “But were you not my brother when you were with the Christian Church?,” I asked him. He assured me he was. “And were you not a preacher of the gospel then?” He nodded that he was, but then added something like, “But I can’t put it just that way with these people, for they don’t see it like you do.” Marvin’s latest writeup tells how this Christian Church brother “has resigned from the Bell Garden Christian Church, Bell Garden, California, to become a part of the churches of Christ.”

I love and admire Marvin Bryant (and I love this Christian Church brother without yet having met him), but I must say in all frankness that this is lousy sectarianism. It does not serve the cause of unity to move a man from one sect to another. What does Marvin mean when he says this brother is to become “a part of the churches of Christ”? I thought the “churches of Christ” are the Body of Christ. Is not the California minister already in the Body of Christ by virtue of believing Jesus to be the Christ and by being baptized into him? Already he is in Jesus. What else does Marvin want him to be in?

What Marvin is really saying is that this brother is now in our party, so let’s nail down this sectarian victory by giving him a job. This only aggravates the sordid mess that we are in, our Movement “to unite the Christians in all the sects” (as Campbell put it) divided upteen different ways as it is. A work designed to “convert” preachers within the Movement, moving them from one party to another can only be a work of the flesh. And we have the aplomb to announce it in our press, not unlike an Indian brave adding one more feather to his trove after a scalping raid. Numerous preachers among Churches of Christ have gone to the Christian Church, but as a matter of courtesy these instances are not paraded in their news columns.

Haven’t we done enough of this sort of thing? Must our sectarianism be so blatant as this?

The zeal of Marvin Bryant and his dinner meetings with preachers can be more constructively directed. Surely we have some important things to say to the Christian world and Marvin may well be able to say them better than most of us. But the implication does not have to be that a preacher must leave where he is and cast his lot with us in order to be on God’s side. If a preacher is impressed with the Restoration ideal, why not encourage him to stay where he is, laboring for the ancient order of things among his own people, for they may be the ones that need him most? If he chooses to work among us, we should of course welcome him, but he doesn’t have to be received as a convert. If he loves Jesus but has not yet been immersed, we should urge him to perfect his obedience by being baptized. If he has been immersed, we should recognize that he is as much a part of the church of Jesus Christ as any of the rest of us, regardless of what sectarian fence we find him behind. I see little value in simply moving him from one party corral to another, unless indeed the object is to build up one sect at the expense of another. —the Editor