“The Churches of Christ Salute You”

For decades now our people have scribbled it, painted it, embossed it, lettered it, engraved it, and drawn it on letterheads, calling cards, newspaper ads, billboards, signs, and bumper stickers. The churches of Christ salute you! That is in the Bible, of course, Ro. 16:16, and it is talking about us —not about us in general, but about us exclusively! That happens to be our name, the one we write, print, paint, letter, and engrave everywhere, and the only name we so honor. We really aren’t all that interested in saluting people, which means to greet or welcome, but since that is the context in which “Church of Christ” appears in the scriptures, in the plural at least, we’ll settle for saluting everybody.

Our folk have always liked the story of how one of our members was standing by while a neighbor erected a sign reading Baptist Church. “I’ll give you ten dollars if you’ll put underneath the words This is a Church of Christ,” he said to the Baptist, with what we may presume was with an element of our usual arrogance. “I guess I can’t do that,” protested the neighbor, “for this is a Baptist Church.” “Then I’ll give you ten dollars if you’ll put on it This is NOT a Church of Christ.”

The story nearly always brings a laugh. Nothing like being rightly named, you know. But the story has a sequel these days. The Church of Christ man was putting up his sign and the Baptist was standing by. “I’ll give you ten dollars to put under the name Church of Christ the sentence This is a Church of God,” said the Baptist, now having his turn at arrogance. When the brother demurred, the Baptist said, “Then I’ll give you ten dollars if you’ll put This is NOT a Church of God.”

The fallacy of this kind of in-fighting, as well as these rather naive references to Ro. 16:16, is to assume that the church is named to start with, that it has any kind of name at all. If the community of the New Covenant has any name at all, then it is a denomination, which is what that term means. It is a contradiction to say that it is named “The Church of Christ” or “The Church of God” and also say that it is not a denomination. My position is that the church of Jesus Christ has no name at all, and so I can also say it is therefore not a denomination.

Paul wrote to the Romans in about 57 A. D. from Corinth when he was well along in his missionary career. He had a vast knowledge of the young churches scattered over the Mediterranean world, many of which had begun from his own labors. At the close of the letter he is sending greetings from some of these churches to those saints in faraway Rome. “All the churches of Christ send greetings,” he wrote to them, which reflects his veneration for these brothers that he longed to see, having not yet met. The faith of the Roman church had been “proclaimed in all the world,” so it was appropriate for the other churches to pay their respects. It is a tender greeting from those struggling communities of saints to the church in the very heart of imperial Rome, all of them suffering for their faith together. He is saying something like All the congregations of Christ in this region of Corinth, Cenchrea, and all the province of Achaia, struggling in the faith just as yourselves, send their love and respect in the Lord.

Such a greeting was in the Lord, from one believer to another, just as Paul’s amanuensis did in the same chapter: “I, Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord.” It is hardly a greeting to be paraded before the world on signs and billboards. So, isn’t it a bit theatrical of us, if not asinine, to use Ro. 16:16 the way we have. It could well be interpreted as saying: See, our name is in the Bible; how about yours? The response could well be, from some denominations at least, “Well, ours is in there more times than yours, so there!” All I can say to that is that it is a good thing that Paul had Tertius write “the churches of Christ” or “our name” would have missed the scriptures completely. He had just written at least two letters to Corinth (from which he wrote Romans), and in both of them he addressed them as “the church of God,” and in that correspondence he refers to “church of God” or “churches of God” four other times. But that one time in Ro. 16:16 he used “churches of Christ,” which is as rare as “churches of the saints” in 1 Cor. 14:33. Even Clement of Rome, writing about 95 A. D., doesn’t help us a bit, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, which begins: “The Church of God which sojourns at Rome, to the Church of God sojourning at Corinth, to them that are called and sanctified by the will of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

If we were in search of a name, “Church of God” would be the obvious one, but that is hardly how it came about. Our pioneers from 1804 onward shunned any name at all for the church, calling themselves Christians. Disciples, Reformers, while their neighbors dubbed them “Stoneites,” “Campbellites,” and even “Reformed Baptists.” Church of Christ was rarely, but sometimes, used for their congregations. To this day there stands in Bethany the old brick building that housed the Brush Run congregation once it moved to Bethany in 1827, and bears in the stone above the door “Church of Christ.” As the years passed Disciples of Christ and Christian Church were the descriptions used by our folk mostly, but sometimes Church of Christ. There are some references to the old preachers as “Elder in the Church of Christ.”

When the “Church of Christ” as we know it today began on August 17, 1 889 (see our January issue on The Birthday of the Church of Christ), that was the name that had begun to emerge among those who were breaking away and rejecting the others as brothers, for it was the name least used by the others. So, once we had our own distinct faction we had our own distinct name, and we prooftexted our way to Ro. 16:16 —and finally to all the billboards and cornerstones.

But the most serious abuse of this scripture is to use it in such a way as to imply that we, our group of churches and ours alone, are “the churches of Christ” referred to by the Holy Spirit. The Church of Christ is the Body of Christ, and it is made up of all those everywhere who are in Jesus, washed by “the bath of regeneration” and renewed by the Holy Spirit. Surely many of these are in “Churches of Christ,” but many are likewise elsewhere. The Church of Christ in any given area consists of all of God’s children, whether they be found among the sects or where, and they are my brothers and sisters. They are not my fellow heirs because they are Baptists or Methodists, but because they believe in Christ and have been baptized into him just as I have.

To quote “the churches of Christ salute you” and apply this to but one group within our tragically divided Christian world is sectarian and factious. The billboard thing is bizarre and theatrical. If we want to erect signs welcoming folk to our assemblies, then we should do so, using “Church of Christ” as the denominational name that it is, and leaving Ro. 16:16 out of it. It would be more honest and less sectarian. To be undenominational in these days of a divided Christendom may be unrealistic. It may well be our ultimate goal, to be sure, but the emphasis now should be to be non-sectarian. And we can be denominational (which we already are —period!) without being sectarian. —the Editor