WHEN LOVE OBSTRUCTS PARTY ACTION

There is a sad but interesting story coming out of the “Conservative” Churches of Christ, the term they use to describe themselves. The other Churches of Christ often caricature them as “the Anti’s” or, less judgmentally, the “anti-Herald of Truth” churches. “Institutional” and “non-institutional” are also used in making distinctions. These labels! They probably say more about the one using them than the one they are used on.

This “Conservative” wing represents a group of sisters and brothers that are now completely separated from the “mainline” Churches of Christ, and there is no longer any fellowship between them. They have their own college, lectureships, journals, mission programs, and their own list of “faithful” churches. And of course they have their own elite leadership, along with a few patriarchs that were around when the group first began to emerge in the early 1950’s. These patriarchs were once leaders in the mainline churches, but when the fallout began they came out on the conservative side, for conscience sake of course. The sad story I refer to concerns one of these patriarchs, if not the patriarch of the clan, a beloved brother named Homer Hailey. There is no reason for me to withhold his name since he has recently attained ubiquity in their own press as a controversial figure, even as an unfaithful brother and a false teacher.

I knew Homer Hailey, now 87, as a professor at Abilene Christian and as minister to the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene in the early 1940’s. That was before division came that created liberals and conservatives. I suspect Homer would say that he believes about “the issues” (having to do with church cooperation) what he has always believed, that he has not changed, that it is the “liberals” that have changed by introducing innovations such as the Herald of Truth cooperative radio-TV program. The mainline left him; he didn’t leave it. It is ironic, however, that the very church where he was once the minister became the focal point of the controversy in that it was the sponsoring church of the Herald of Truth project.

The dispute has been over methodology, the conservatives insisting that “the sponsoring church” (with hundreds of churches working under the aegis of one church and one eldership) is an innovation and unscriptural. They are of course right as conservatives always are, if right means opposing innovations. At one time Churches of Christ had no “Sunday School” churches. When the Sunday School was introduced, it was an innovation. The “conservatives” this time became our non-Sunday School churches. Instrumental music was an innovation, as was “lesson leaves,” plurality of communion cups (which old J. W. McGarvey adamantly opposed), the one-man pastor, and on and on it goes.

I recall how stunned I was by a charge laid on me by one of my professors at Harvard, who considered me quite conservative, “If you ever meet anyone who is to your right, you should examine his position.” That could be translated to say: Don’t ever debate with anyone who is more conservative than yourself. He will win!

There is nothing wrong in the church having its liberals and conservatives, for we always have had, even from the beginning. The issue is not as much who is right as much as how we are going to treat each other when we differ. Both sides or all sides could be right, depending on conscience. Paul seems to be saying this in Rom. 14. We are to embrace each other in the loving fellowship of the Holy Spirit in spite of differences over methods and opinions. It is in the essentials of the faith, particularly in the person of Christ, that we find our oneness.

This means we should never have divided over Herald of Truth or Sunday Schools or instrumental music, and all the rest. We can have churches that support Herald of Truth (and never watch it!) and those who are opposed to it (who never miss it!). We can have Sunday School churches (half of whom never attend!) and non-Sunday School churches. We can have churches that use an instrument and those who are opposed. All such diversity is possible in “the unity of the Spirit” if we hold forth the Head who is Christ. Even if we are in separate congregations for conscience sake, we can still love and accept each other and work together in areas of agreement. We all agree much more than we disagree!

Now that I have declared my position on this controversy that now reflects a half-century of party strife among our folk, you will understand that I view Homer Hailey as I always have, a beloved and respected brother in the Lord, and I couldn’t care less what his position is on “this issue” or “that issue.” That he holds forth the Head, which he has always done, is what matters to me. I don’t take sides. I accept as part of the fellowship of the Spirit all those who are in Christ- and we don’t have to agree on everything in order to be in fellowship.

But the fact remains that brother Hailey ended up, intentionally or otherwise, on the conservative side of the “institutional” issue. For upwards of forty years he has worked tirelessly among these churches, always a great preacher and teacher among them, and loved and respected as such. His has had a deserved popularity. He would have been equally appreciated among the mainline churches if lines had not been drawn. The evil of partyism!

That forms the basis of the tragedy that unfolds. All these years Homer Hailey has been a kind of patriarch among the conservative segment, loved, admired, and widely used. But he is now in his old age rejected by a substantial portion of their leadership. He is written up in their papers as unfaithful and as a false teacher. The editors and preachers are after him, some urging him to recant, others challenging him to debate. The problem is that he has changed his mind—or has only recently made plain in a book what he has always believed—on the divorce and remarriage issue. This is another line-drawing issue among our conservative brethren.

What is happening to brother Hailey is typical of party religion and party politics. A person is seldom loved for his own sake but because of his loyalty to the party. A party loves only its own. It is true in politics. I have often laughed at the joke about Texas’ own LBJ. When some Disciples of Christ suggested that the former president be honored as a luminary in the Christian Church, some demurred, saying, “But LBJ is an S.O.B.?” “Yes,” the others conceded, “but he is our S.O.B.!” In our sects that kind of language may not be used, but the spirit is the same. A man can have questionable ethics, but he is loved, accepted, and defended so long as he is what the party calls “sound” and “faithful”—which refers not to the person’s Christlikeness but to his loyalty to “the issues.”

Brother Hailey is a special kind of problem to the conservatives in that he has not only been “faithful” to the issues but also Christlike—a combination all too rare in party leadership! In short, they love him, and how do you batter and bruise someone that you love? All these years the conservative editors have had no problem in putting down other brethren they have often named as heretics, whether Ketcherside, Garrett, Hook, or Fudge, because they don’t love these men. But brother Hailey they love.

So, our conservative brethren have a new “issue.” It is what to do with Homer Hailey, their own guru (a good word!) who has “betrayed” the party by taking a “liberal” view on divorce and remarriage. He dares to say that the divorced (and remarried) who would come to God (the title of his book) may do so without breaking up their marriage. This makes him a false teacher!

This statement by editor J. T. Smith of Gospel Truths is an example of what we in Churches of Christ have allowed partyism to do to us: “I am afraid that a number of brethren have allowed their love for brother Hailey to ‘color’ their judgment.” He goes on to say that if it had been him instead of Hailey teaching this “false doctrine” that he would have been rebuked and disfellowshipped. In other words, Hailey is loved more, and this spares him the wrath of some party leaders. Brother Smith is at least consistent. If one is a “false teacher”—and this appears to be anyone who does not agree with the party issues—he is to be disfellowshipped, whether you love him or not.

Others in this group have difficulty attaining brother Smith’s consistency. Ed Harrell, for example, insists that he can go on fellowshiping brother Hailey even though he disagrees with him on the divorce and remarriage issue. Ed has one category of differences where fellowship is possible, such as pacifism and the woman’s head covering, and another category where differences make fellowship impossible, such as the “liberal/institutional” issue, the party’s raison d’etre. And brother Harrell, unlike most of the group’s leaders, puts the divorce/remarriage issue in the first category.

But even brother Harrell is accused of allowing love to muddle his thinking. Another writer in the same journal, Dudley Ross Spears, tells how Harrell and others debated the Hailey issue at the recent Florida College Lectures, which appeared to be, he says, a contest on who loves brother Hailey the most.

We have here a unique problem for one of our Church of Christ parties. Love is a problem. It is keeping some of them from doing what they usually do—axe a brother when he veers from the party line. But some remain “faithful” and “loyal,” and they have no problem in branding brother Hailey “a false teacher” and drawing the line of fellowship.

We may learn several things from this sad episode. It may well be true that love does and should “hide a multitude of sins,” as the Scriptures say, and that if we loved more we would condemn less. One is tempted to conclude that if our conservative brethren loved the rest of us like they love brother Hailey there would be less rejection.

And yet Editor Smith has a point in that we cannot allow love to blind us to what would be injurious to the Body of Christ. But can’t we have different views on a question like divorce and remarriage without drawing lines and applying labels? Can’t a person be honestly mistaken without being a false teacher? In the Bible the false teacher is not one who is simply wrong, but one who is factious and bent upon dividing the Body for his own selfish ends. No person who is sincerely searching for truth is a false teacher.

If these brethren are right in the tight way they wind things, then there is no hope for greater unity and fellowship among our people. If each party demands that we see their own set of “issues” the way they do before there can be fellowship, then we are doomed to be forever divided. If the only “faithful” churches and “sound” preachers are those that toe some party line—and do we not have umpteen different parties?—then we will continue to have multiple sects, each claiming to be the one true church.

If on the other hand we recognize that the unity for which our Lord prayed, which is a reconciled diversity, then we can love and accept each other even as Christ has accepted us, like it says in Rom. 15:7. And how were you when Christ accepted you—right about every detail?

These brethren—indeed, all of us—must realize that sincere, intelligent people are going to see some thing differently, including our select issues. Editor Smith, in the same paper referred to above, says, “God has made plain His teaching on divorce and remarriage.” If this is so why do two good, smart men like him and Homer Hailey not see it alike? Why does brother Hailey have to write a book about it if it is all that plain, and why does brother Smith have to use half of an issue of his journal answering brother Hailey?

It may be that we can agree on what the Bible actually says, but we can’t always agree on what we think it means by what it says. It is our opinions, inferences, and deductions that are the problem. There is but one biblical answer to this: allow for differences, “forbearing one another in love.” That is the way to unity.

Finally, a word about what it should mean to love Homer Hailey, as well as every other sister and brother. Whether he agrees or disagrees with us should have no bearing upon our love for him, for we love him because he is our brother in Christ. We love him because Christ first loved us, and the Lord did not wait until we “got right” and “lined up on the issues” before he loved us. To love a man means to leave him free to think, to question, to grow, to be his own person in the Lord. It means to leave him free to be wrong, for we are often wrong in our search for truth, and it may be something we have to go through to be right.

To love him means to encourage him to publish a book and get his ideas out in the market place. If he is wrong, he is more likely to discover it if his ideas are allowed to have free expression. And, in the end, to love him means to help him find his way if he is wrong, “with all longsuffering and teaching.” And in all this we must make a difference in wrongs, for some wrongs are much more serious than others. Love hides of multitude of wrongs that do not matter all that much.

When we love like that love will not be a problem. And when we love like that we will find ourselves less sectarian. If to love like that means down with the party, then down with the party!—the Editor