OUR TRAGIC FALLACY
(and the way out!)

Ouida and I were in Athens (Texas) during part of a recent weekend to visit with her devout mother. She is one of the most respected women I have ever known, and she is something special to me since she conned me into marrying Ouida. But she is not the subject of this essay, certainly not one entitled as this one is! Mothers-in-law may sometimes be tragedies or fallacies, or both, but not this one. It is rather about her preacher, the minister of the Church of Christ only a few blocks from her apartment, where she has been a member as long as I’ve known her, through thick and thin. But even the preacher is not the tragic fallacy, but is rather part of the answer to what I consider our most debilitating hangup: our sophomoric notion that we can’t have anything to do with other churches.

Larry Davidson is his name and he did a “first” in the history of the Church of Christ in Athens on a recent Sunday night. As a part of the local ministerial association, Larry was the opening speaker in a week-long “union meeting,” designed to bring some of the great truths of Scripture to the attention of that little East Texas town. His subject was the creation, and he showed that God’s love was demonstrated in the things He made for man’s good. He was followed on successive nights by ministers of other churches in town, though some would not participate. There is another mainline Church of Christ in town, representing a division some years back, part of the thick and thin referred to above, that did not participate, but neither did they oppose it, which is something. The affair was held at First Baptist, which was enough to gain the frowns of some of the dissenting Baptists. We are not the only ones who do little or nothing about the unity of the church. We only talk about it more than the others do!

It is not yet evident how much flak this will bring Larry, but the important thing is that he has the approval of his own congregation. All others would do well to mind their own affairs, a lesson that our folk are dull of learning.

The tragedy that I refer to is that such an event as this, calculated only to foster goodwill and cooperation between believers is virtually non-existent among our folk. We are separatists and exclusivists, supposing that such a cooperative endeavor signals an endorsement of all the errors we have always associated with “the denominations.” That is the fallacy. And as fallacies go, we are woefully inconsistent.

If we can check in at a Methodist hospital, do business with a Baptist bookstore, and sing hymns composed by Roman Catholic bishops, why can’t we visit our neighbors at the Baptist church for a few nights and allow some of the local ministers to share with us their findings from God’s word? If I can allow a Roman Catholic nun to empty my bedpan and bathe my sick body at a hospital without endorsing Roman Catholicism, why can’t I sit with a priest of that church and listen to what he has to say, and with the same kind of love that nun shows me in her ministry?

But we are told that the hospital is not a “doctrinal” matter, and that when we go to a “denominational church” and hear them preach we are partakers of their evil deeds. But are not the hymns we sing “a doctrinal matter”? And a look at our preachers’ libraries will reveal rather heavy dependence on the likes of Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes, and the Pulpit Commentary, if not Elton Trueblood, William Barclay, and Keith Miller. Do our preachers endorse everything that these men stand for when they draw from their writings? And not just the preachers, for we are all dependent on those we uncharitably call sectarians, not only for the hymns we sing, but for our books and Bibles as well. Most every translation we use was a labor of love of some denominational organization.

Indeed, the very culture that we prize, which is usually referred to as our Jewish-Christian heritage, is ours only because of the sacrificial labors of other Christians. We are benefactors of all of church history and are a part of its victories and defeats, particularly of the American church. Even our own Church of Christ-Christian Church forebears realized this debt and were at the forefront of cooperative efforts. We have in our Movement one of the first church mergers, between the Stone and Campbell churches, and that between groups that had rather substantial differences. Our folk were among the first to issue a modern version of the New Testament, which was basically the work of “denominational” scholars. When the ecumenical movement was born our folk were among the pediatricians who assisted in its birth, without supposing they were endorsing everything “ecumenical.” Except perhaps for the most recent past, in “Church of Christ” history, our heritage is not one of exclusivism, isolationism, bigotry, and sectarianism. In coming to this position we are guilty of a tragic fallacy.

The fallacy defies all logic, and I here and now challenge the whole cockeyed argument. Pray tell me by whose logic are we guilty of other people’s sins and errors simply because we cooperate with them in areas where we agree. A reference to such injunctions as “Come out from among them and be ye separate” only reveals our abuse of the very Book we claim to uphold, for that refers to paganism and not to a meeting at the Baptist church where all the speakers hold forth Jesus as the Savior of the world. We are no more guilty of their erroneous views by cooperating with them than they are guilty of our false views in their willingness to be with us—and we do have our shortcomings, do we not? We must pray for those among us who presume our infallibility, which is surely a far worse sin than joining in a prayer session with Roman Catholics and Episcopalians.

What a perversion it is, not only of logic but of all that is Christian and decent, for us to talk about unity, preach about unity, write about unity, pray about unity, and then adamantly refuse to have anything to do with other Christians. What a glaring inconsistency it is for us to be part of a unity movement and yet isolate ourselves as much as if we were alone in a vast desert. If we were truly unitists, our first concern would be the church nearest us, which may well be across the street or in the same block, be it Presbyterian, Episcopal, or even Mormon. If we were truly unity conscious, we would look for some way to cooperate, if not in preaching the gospel then in feeding the poor and clothing the naked, or in the war against crime, pornography, and the drug traffic in our cities.

What kind of logic is it that says that if we cannot cooperate in everything then we can cooperate in nothing? The demons of hell have sold us a bill of goods when we buy the line that in loving and accepting Presbyterians and Pentecostals we love and accept everything Presbyterian and Pentecostal. There is a great deal that is eminently Christian in all the churches about us, and there is far more that we share in common, particularly with mainline Protestants, than we have been willing to admit. We must even come to the stubborn truth that some of our neighbors are more Christian than ourselves and are more committed to what is really vital than we are.

The way out? The first step is to want out, to realize that our isolation from other believers is a serious and aggravated wrong, as well as an insult to those who are in fact our sisters and brothers in Christ. We are only to be pitied so long as we suppose we are the only Christians. When we get our want-to fixed, the opportunities to correct our wrong will be abundant. There is good news from Athens only because somebody wanted out. I am convinced that the vast majority of our people want out, but lack the leadership to express it.

It pleased me to learn that our people and the Baptist folk, as well as other believers, were gathering at the Baptist church to hear one of our preachers expound the Scriptures. And then to hear other preachers. They mixed and mingled with each other, as sisters and brothers ought, in church as well as at the grocery store and the bank. They sat next to each other, touched each other, and shared a common faith, which is what Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ (all these were in on it) and Church of Christ folk ought to do, not because they are so many denominations, which the God of heaven doesn’t care about anyhow, but because they share the greatest truth ever conveyed to man, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

It is surely the most important thing that has happened in Athens, Texas since Mother Pitts asked me when I was visiting her church, if it would be too much trouble for me to deliver a typewriter to her daughter who was in college in Denton, for Denton is not all that far from Dallas, is it? What a beautiful contrivance that turned out to be!

Never sell short the glory that was Athens!—the Editor

Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: viz., avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.—Petrarch

Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful.—Schiller

In His will is our peace.—Dante