Travel Letter . . .

THE “DIRTY DOZEN” IN ANTI COUNTRY

The term anti actually has little meaning since we are all anti in some things. Moreover I dislike pejoratives. They are often the creation of small minds and vindictive spirits. But in our generation among Churches of Christ the term anti is generally understood to refer to the several hundreds of congregations that oppose Herald of Truth and all such extra-congregational institutions and cooperatives. I’ve even heard them apply the term to themselves. So they as well as the general reader will understand that we intend no offense. As for the doctrinal posture of these brethren, including their anti concerns, this journal is sympathetic. It is in making a sect out of opinions that we take issue.

Anyway, during April I was in what is called “anti country,” the area in and around Tampa, Florida. It is so called because the majority of the Churches of Christ in the area are of this persuasion, and also because it is the home of Florida (Christian) College. I insert the parenthesis because originally the institution bore the full name, only to drop Christian some years age, which must be both a first and an only in our history. Many of our colleges have changed their names, and it is common these days to transform them into universities (presto! just like that), but the one in Tampa is the only one I know of to denominate itself Christian, and then years later by board action drop the name.

I may have had a small, indirect role in that little drama, but that is another story. It is enough to say that the name was dropped so as to bring the name of the school into closer conformity to the board’s position on the relationship that should exist between such institutions and the church, or something like that. They would probably say that there is no more reason to call an educational institution Christian when it is conducted by believers on Christian principals than to call an insurance agency or a grocery store Christian when it is conducted that way. The oddity is that they first took that name and then went to the trouble to drop it. We cite this strictly as a matter of interest. No criticism. I would come nearer criticizing the rather artificial transformation of colleges, that do well in being colleges, into universities.

This reminds me of the response made by old W. E. Garrison, the late dean of Disciple historians, when asked what he thought a Christian college should be. First of all, he said, it should be a college!

As for the other derogatory term in the title, dirty dozen, I make no apology, except that those I refer to are more than a dozen, for when folk get ridiculed, browbeaten, and excommunicated they can hardly be anything but dirty, to the Churches of Christ at least. They are now a new church, a free, open Church of Christ, though still strongly conservative. Free in that they assume the liberty to think and act for themselves, apart from party presuppositions; open in that they have a broader view of fellowship, no longer seeing themselves as the only true church. Both free and open in that Jesus is now the frame of reference instead of the traditions of a sect.

They are all under 30 except one retired couple and they are mostly from the anti churches, if not altogether, and several of them were students at Florida College. Since they knew me only as editor of this journal, I arrived at Tampa airport as a stranger to them, and they readily conceded that they did not know what they were getting themselves into, having so controversial a figure in their midst. In their college years I was a no-no, and here they were inviting me into both their home and assembly. That illustrates what I mean by open and free. But three days later I bade them farewell at that same airport with our friendship secure. We found each other in Jesus more than in doctrinal unanimity. As the escalator bore me down the ramp toward my plane and out of sight of their smiling faces, I realized that something uniquely significant is happening among our people all over the country. They are walking out on sectarianism without being sectarians themselves. The cry is, Let my people go!, but not to start another sect, but to be a free and open Church of Christ, such as was envisioned by our pioneers, where there is unity in essentials and liberty in opinions, the essentials being the seven unities of Eph. 4.

Our part in this story begins when we received a request for our bargain offer of 18 back issues of this paper for 3.00 from one Tiffany Crawley in Clearwater, Florida, who reported that she had just read her first copy and wanted to read more. A random selection included the February 1974 number, the lead article being “The Nature of the Assembly.” This is what got all of us into trouble. The “dirty dozen” were still a part of the Northeast Church of Christ, and when it came time for John Foster to give his lesson to the congregation on a Sunday evening, he chose to read this article I had written five years before.

“It was so clear,” he told me, “and expressed what I had been thinking.” He was confident they would accept it with the enthusiasm he had. But the essay would be disquieting to anyone with such an institutional view of the church as to suppose that “worship” begins and ends within certain prescribed hours at a building and confined to “five acts of worship.” The article notes that all of life is worship for the believer. I even dared to suggest that a woman is worshiping or serving God in the kitchen as much as in “the sanctuary,” and that a Christian is worshiping when playing with the kids at the park. But the most offensive suggestion was that one may be worshiping when she takes her dog walking.

John condensed and reproduced the article, and eventually gave it rather wide circulation in anti country. He met immediate opposition the evening he read it, some rising from their seats and branding it heresy. It did not help all that much when he revealed its author. What impressed him most was the intensity of their opposition. For at least eight months (months not weeks) they continued to discuss the article in their gatherings. During all this exercise, which appeared to the freer thinkers as an obsession - “The man doth protest too much!,” John suggested that they just forget the whole thing, that the article did not mean that much to him. But now that he had introduced it they were of no mind to forget it.

Once I re-read the article it seemed harmless enough and I was persuaded it was another case of the issue is not the issue. If their minister had read it, it would have passed muster, though they may have supposed he was reading stuff other than what comes out of Florida College or the Gospel Guardian. They were already after John for being different, and they had told him precisely that. You are different from us! A converted hippie, he had not cut his hair as short as theirs, he refused to wear a tie, and he was always talking about love, grace and Jesus. At Florida College they called him “Holy John”! Besides, and this was the rub, he thought for himself and did not buy the party line. This was the case with all the “dirty dozen,” so they were destined to go down (or up) together.

The most amusing part of the story to me (and partyism can be as amusing as it is tragic) was the way they treated my article in the private sessions. When John Foster, Clyde Crawley, and Bill Evans, the dirtiest of “the dirty dozen,” stated what the article meant to them, it was accepted as sufficiently sound. But that isn’t what the article actually says!, the leaders insisted, and they proceeded to discipline them on grounds of teaching false doctrine as they interpreted the article.

The minister at another nearby anti church, the Hercules Church of Christ, read the controversial missile, which had by now become a mail-out, and found it bearable. Since they were good church members, even if they wouldn’t wear ties, he invited the dissidents to his place, which made for peace for a time. But eventually, due presumably to the influence of the article, their home church withdrew from them. Charge: teaching false doctrine.

But why such a big deal over one little article?, they asked me. First of all, the party has to be right. No one dare question it. Too, the article challenged a basic premise of the anti position, which is that dollars become “the Lord’s money” when they go into “the church treasury.” If there is no scriptural precedent for a “treasury” to start with, it actually being our own arrangement, then why all the controversy over how that money is spent? If the notion of “five acts of worship” is only our tradition and not scriptural (and the article noted that not one of the five items is ever called worship in the New Testament), then the manner of giving, one of the five items, is left to our own discretion (there might be no treasury at all), then the bottom falls out of all the arguments relative to “the Lord’s money,” which ipse dixit becomes that when put into “the church treasury.”

It is understandable that the new church has no treasury. There is no “offering” on Lord’s day. Having no professional minister to pay and no edifice to maintain, assembling money is mostly for the needy. themselves as the need arises.

The dozen or so in Clearwater, as elsewhere, became dirty for loving Jesus more than any party and in being loyal only to him. All across the country I find our youth, who are often affluent as well as intelligent and spiritual, in trouble with their churches mainly because they are tuned in to Jesus and the grace of God, which do not mix all that well with Church of Christism. And churches are running off their most spiritual people, those who are most like Jesus.

This is encouraging, however, for it shows that something important is happening. Our people are on their way out of our crippling, debilitating, exclusivistic sectarianism. All the negative reaction is an indication that the change is substantial. After all, no one beats a dead horse! --- The Editor