A WISE WORD FOR CHURCHES OF CHRIST

I was heartened to read the following letter addressed to the editor of Christian Chronicle, published by Oklahoma Christian college for members of Churches of Christ, which appeared in said journal.

Thank you, too, for being what you profess: “an international newspaper for members of Churches of Christ.” Readers are clearly alerted as to the context in and for which you exist. That should also free you to acknowledge, when appropriate, information regarding other believers who serve the Lord Jesus, who do not happen to come from the same historical roots as our 19th century, American Campbell-Stone restoration movement. Since we clearly are not the only people God has in this world, readers should not feel threatened when somebody acknowledges any of the rest. And surely our own desire at the congregational level to be “a true church” does not succeed or fail on the basis of our ability to disqualify others who also strive for the same goal but happen to disagree with us on how to reach it.

This letter is all the more significant in that it comes from one brought up in the “Conservative” Churches of Christ, sometimes known as the anti-Herald of Truth persuasion. So it is a call for a more open posture from a product of our far right wing. When these brethren publish their list of heretics, Edward Fudge usually heads the list. I too make the list, but I do not rank like Edward since he was once one of them. He now edits The Good Newspaper in Houston, a periodical that deals mainly with church news generally.

His letter is a word fitly spoken. Nothing would so liberate our people if his advice were heeded. And it asks so little, and the request is consistent with the heritage referred to in the Stone-Campbell movement. Our pioneers launched a movement to unite the Christians in all the sects, which, if there were no Christians in the sects, was nonsense at the outset. So they wanted to be Christians only and did not presume to be the only Christians, and they did not claim that what they started was “the one true church.”

So there is no reason, either from Scripture or from our own history, why we should remain exclusivists and ignore our brother’s urging.

That brother Fudge’s wise word is appropriate is abundantly evident, for our folk generally have the reputation of believing that we re the only ones that are right, or that we are “the restored church of the New Testament” and the answer to division is for everyone to conform to our way of doing and believing.

Even in the same issue of the Chronicle there is a gripping story of a man who was rescued from dope and crime to become a minister of the gospel. The story tells how a Church of Christ minister spoke to the judge about the man’s conversion while incarcerated. The judge had seen jailhouse “conversions” before and he was skeptical. Then the writer says, “But he had never heard a preacher of the true gospel.” That means of course, translated into our vernacular, that the judge had never heard a Church of Christ preacher before, which itself is unlikely since the judge sits in Texas.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how an attitude like that really turns people off. Our preachers are the only ones that preach the true gospel! It would be closer to the truth to say that those who presume to be the only preachers of the true gospel are the ones most likely to distort the true gospel. The apostle Paul seemed to suggest as much when he referred to those who “were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel” because they would not accept other believers as equals (Gal. 2).

This attitude has become such a part of us that we will overcome it and behave as Edward Fudge suggests only by repentance and studied effort. We should start by being ashamed of ourselves. We are at heart a magnanimous people, much more gracious than our exclusivism would suggest, and so we must show that magnanimity by reaching out to other believers as equals in Christ.

Edward speaks wise words when he assures us that we can be “a true church” without disqualifying other believers who happen to disagree with us on some things. There is nothing wrong in our believing that we are right, but there is something wrong in our believing that we are right and everybody else is wrong. The first is to be convinced and committed Christians, the second is to be bigoted sectarians.

The choice is ours, isn’t it? --- the Editor