Denomination or Sect? . . .

WHAT MUST THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
DO TO BE SAVED? (13)

If the Church of Christ is to be saved for a meaningful ministry in the 21st century it must come to terms with its status as a distinct religious body, to wit, that it is at worst a sect, at best a denomination. This is imperative for one vital reason, self-authenticity. If we are to be a redemptive people in a troubled world we must be an honest people. We can’t play such games as “They are all denominations (or sects), but we are not” and have any viable impact upon a lost world. Ministers in other churches are “denominational preachers” while ours are “gospel preachers.” All other churches are “sectarian churches” while we are “the church.” It is understandable that our neighbors not only see this as arrogant, but it causes them to beg to be excused when it comes to having anything to do with us.

A case in point is a seminary professor’s review of one of our publications entitled I Just Want To Be A Christian by Rubel Shelly. He describes the overall impression the book made on him in these words:

At first reading I confess to some indignation at his distinction between “the sectarian churches,” by which he means everybody else, and “nonsectarian churches,” by which he refers to those “streams” that have emerged from the American Restoration Movement. In fact, the mentality is easy enough to understand: it is exactly the same as that found in the Roman Catholic Church.

The professor went on to explain his comparison between Roman Catholics and the Church of Christ: “Conservative Roman Catholics do not view them-selves as a denomination. They think of themselves as the one, true, holy, apostolic church. For them Christian unity does not have to do with getting denominations together, but on returning to the one, true, holy, apostolic church.” He said that this is precisely Shelly’s position except that in his case the true fold is the Restoration Movement. The professor goes on to express his astonishment that the Church of Christ could have such “an extraordinarily narrow focus” as to the number of Christians in the world—a view even narrower than conservative Catholics!

The professor could be advised that it is not as bad as he has been led to suppose, for the majority of those in Churches of Christ no longer hold such a narrow view. But they are not being supported by their leaders who continue to parrot the stale party line, “We are not a denomination like all the others.” For many years in this journal I have responded to that claim by asking, if we arc not a denomination what would we have to have to be a denomination that we don’t already have? In one article years ago I stated it in a syllogism:

By definition a denomination is a church with a particular name.

The Church of Christ has a particular name.

Therefore, the Church of Christ is a denomination.

There it is for those who want logic. Case closed.

But there are other recognizable features to a denomination:

It has its own agencies, such as schools, colleges, publishing houses, journals, conventions, missionary programs, retirement plans.

It has its own distinctive clergy, separate from those in other groups.

It has its own definable doctrines.

It has its own history and traditions that set it apart.

It has its own list of churches in a yearbook or directory. (This is considered the one sure sign of a fully developed denomination. Note: the Bible churches have not yet reached this stage.)

The Church of Christ clearly qualifies on each of these points. So, I ask again of our leaders who keep insisting, even in our more liberating books like Rubel Shelly’s, that we are not a denomination: What would we have to have to be a denomination that we don’t already have?

It might be argued that we are not a denomination because we have no national headquarters, no ecclesiastical hierarchy. But there are many denominations that are congregational in polity and have no ecclesiastical hierarchy.

There is really no contest. Our leaders know that the Church of Christ is a denomination. They just won’t admit it! Pardon my candor, but it is a case of not being honest with our people. And that is what we have to do to be saved, be honest and cut out the nonsense.

It is more serious than just nonsense, for we actually abuse the Bible in our resolve to avoid calling ourselves a denomination. We take a beautiful term like fellowship, koinonia, which in Scripture refers to all those who are in Christ and in “the fellowship of the Spirit,” and use it in a narrow, sectarian sense. We say “Our fellowship” when we refer only to Churches of Christ. A flagrant and inexcusable abuse of Scripture! We do the same thing with “the Lord’s church” or “the churches of Christ,” Biblical terms indeed, but we apply them to only part of the Body of Christ, ourselves only.

But, considering the state of the religious world, we have to have a name if we prevail as a separate church, and we chose Church of Christ, or Daniel Sommer chose it for us back in 1889 when he wanted to distinguish us from the Disciples of Christ or Christian Churches. I don’t know that it is all that bad to have a denominational name, considering that the state of things is not ideal, and “Church of Christ” is a good name, a denominational name. I am only saying that we should admit it. Go ahead and say it, “Our denomination.” It will do your soul good! That is better than resorting to euphemisms and far better than prostituting Biblical terminology. Of course, you can always say “Our movement,” one of our more sophisticated euphemisms. Anything but denomination!

Our aversion to that term is of late vintage, for our pioneers realized early on that they had added one more denomination to the world scene and did not deny it, even if it wasn’t their intention at the outset. This line from Alexander Campbell might surprise some of our folk:

We, as a denomination, are as desirous as ever to unite and cooperate with all Christians on the broad and vital principles of the New and everlasting Covenant” (Mill. Harb., 1840, p. 556).

We, as a denomination! Alexander Campbell! We might have to withdraw fellowship from him for that! Note also that he not only recognized that there were Christians in “other denominations” but that he was eager to cooperate with them. This shows that our exclusivism of having no fellowship with other churches is of more recent date than Campbell’s time, only the past one hundred years in fact.

But at the same time Campbell was quick to distinguish between a denomination and a sect, insisting that his people were not a sect. In his debate with Mr. Rice, who accused him of starting another sect, he retorted, “You can never make a sect of us,” and went on to emphasize the catholic (universal) nature of his plea for the unity of all Christians, such as a catholic name, a catholic baptism, a catholic plea. The distinction between sect and denomination is vital. One reason we’ve had such a hang up about denominations all these years may be because we have made it equivalent with sect. One is condemned in Scripture, the other is not. A sect presumes to be the whole of the Body of Christ, exclusive of all other believers, while a denomination recognizes that it is only part of the whole. Too, a people can be a denomination as a temporary measure, looking for the time when the ideal will obtain and there will no longer be denominations but only the one Body of Jesus Christ.

While the Church of Christ started as a sect back in 1889 in Sand Creek, Illinois when we rejected as brethren even those in Christian Churches, we are today somewhere on the continuum between sect and denomination. If the Mormons are a sect with some denominational characteristics, I would say the Church of Christ is a denomination with some sectarian characteristics. So, it is a worthy goal to keep on being more denominational and less and less sectarian. Our most sectarian trait is our exclusivism. One way to become less sectarian is to admit that we are a denomination! Those people who call all others “sectarian” are almost certainly sectarian themselves.

“A denomination in protest” is a defensible position. We can even say that we are a denomination because we can’t help being, and that we don’t believe in denominations as the ideal or the final end for the church, and that we will work for that unity that will one day cause denominations “to die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large,” to quote another of our founding documents.

I challenge the leadership of the Church of Christ to be as forthright as Mr. Campbell was. Who will be the first to step out and say, “We, as a denomination . . .”? This we can do without surrendering any truth we hold, and it will be an important step toward saving the Church of Christ.—the Editor