Lest you suppose that I consider myself an authority on this subject, I tell you one of my favorite stories. A Japanese tourist guide was showing a group of Americans about his country. They just had to see a volcano. He found one that they could not only draw near to, but look down into. As they were gaping into its bowels, one of them said, "Wow, it looks like hell!" The guide said, "You Americans have been everywhere!"

I haven’t been everywhere and I don’t know everything – certainly not about Christian unity! But I do come to you as one concerned about our troubled and terrorized world – about world peace or the lack of it. It has been 2,000 years since the Prince of Peace came to planet earth, and we appear to be as divided as ever. Nations seem not only to distrust each other, but to hate one another.

German theologian Hans Kung, an astute interpreter of world affairs, says there can be no peace among the nations of the world until there is peace among the world religions; and there can be no peace among the religions until they can talk to each other. But they can’t talk to each other because they hate each other!

The problem is that the religions don’t practice what they profess to believe. Take the Golden Rule, which appears in some form in most of the world religions. In Confucianism it appears in the negative – "Don’t do to others what you would not want them to do to you."

This principle of respect for human dignity – present in all religions in one form or another – can be made the basis of a "global ethic." And, as Hans Kung puts it, while the world religions can never unite on dogma, they can find common ground in a global ethic.

But where is the Golden Rule – even among Christians? Take "the Most Christian Nation," which is Rwanda in Africa. Until recently it was held up as an example of modern missionary success, with some 90% of the people accepting the Christian faith. But in 1994 Rwanda was caught up in a civil war, a genocide of incredible dimension. Within a 91-day period 800,000 men, women, and children were brutally murdered – neighbor against neighbor, Christian against Christian – as if they had never heard of the Golden Rule.

The mystery is not that the United Nations’ peace-keeping forces in Rwanda could not prevent the genocide, but that the nation’s profession to be followers of Christ had no apparent effect on their behavior whatever.

We might look at the "Most Christian City" -- Nashville, Tn. With its 100 Churches of Christ and being the home of the Gospel Advocate and Lipscomb University, we refer to it as "Jerusalem" (Abilene is "Antioch"!). With its 1,000 churches altogether, along with numerous Christian schools, publishing houses, denominational headquarters, gospel music and Grand Ol’ Opry, along with the largest Christian nutrition and diet business in the country, it is sometimes called the "Protestant Vatican."

The 1,000 churches in greater Nashville have not exactly had a peaceful history. The two largest denominations – the Baptists and the Churches of Christ – have had a long history of mutual enmity, exclusiveness, and debating over dogma.

There is even something of Rwandan Christianity in Nashville’s history. Back in December, 1864, only a few months before the end of the Civil War, there was the Battle of Nashville in which 4,500 were killed in just two days of fighting, with many more maimed and wounded. In the War as a whole 600,000 died. Again a case of Christians killing Christians.

David Lipscomb, a preacher and prominent citizen in Nashville who afterwards founded the university that bears his name, would not take sides and urged his people not to take part in the fighting. General Nathan Bedford Forest, commander of the Confederate forces, sent an aide to hear Lipscomb preach, to ascertain if he was disloyal to the Confederacy. The soldier reported that Lipscomb wasn’t for or against either side, but simply believed that Christians should not be killing Christians!

The Baptists and Church of Christ folk, along with some other Christians, found something they could do together -- they erected a monument in honor of Nathan Bedford Forest, the famed Confederate general. To honor a brave soldier is in itself heroic. No problem there. But after the War Bedford Forest went on to become a co-founder of the infamous Ku Klux Klan. (To his credit the general resigned and sought to disband the Klan when it became violent.) There in a prominent place, alongside highway 65, welcoming visitors to the "Most Christian City" stands a memorial to a founder of the Ku Klux Klan!

But there is good news in the Nashville story. Across town, between Music City and Vanderbilt University, on south 19^th street stands another monument. It is in the garden of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society, whose library is the largest depository of historical material of the Restoration Movement of any place in the world.

This memorial honors the four founding pioneers of our heritage -- Barton Warren Stone, Thomas Campbell, Alexander Campbell, and Walter Scott. As one walks around this cenotaph, as they call it, one sees not only the likeness of these men engraved in marble, but quotations from them, also cut in stone, that reflect the principles of unity that they forged on the American frontier.

From the front of the cenotaph is the likeness of Barton Stone (died in 1844). The attending quotation reads. "Let Christian unity be our polar star" – a quote easy to remember and one that goes far in revealing what the Restoration Movement was about – it was born of a passion to unite the Christians in all the sects.

Stone’s "polar star" motif was inspired by our Lord’s prayer for the unity of all his followers in John 17 : 21: "that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they may be one in Us, that the world may believe that you have sent Me."

Stone realized that Christian unity is not an end in itself, but the means to a greater end, the salvation of the world. And he saw that a divided church could not win a lost world. He likened the church to a ship at sea carrying out its evangelistic mission around the world. To stay on course, to reach the ports of call, it must keep its eye on the polar star – the oneness of heart and soul of all those on board.

Moreover, Stone saw the nature of that unity as revealed in the Lord’s prayer -- "may they be one, even as we are one, I in you and you in me." The apostle Paul puts it this way, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). True unity – based on love one for another – has reconciling power. Here our heritage has an answer to the problem raised by Hans Kung, the irreconcilability of world religions. When the world sees the love that binds God and Christ together in the modern church it will have reconciling power. We can see why Paul would say, "Above all, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony" (Col. 3:14).

But the Lord himself said it best: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, in that you have love one for another" (John 13:35) . Dogma will not do it, modern missionary techniques will not do it, as per Rwanda. Only the dynamic of love will bring Christian unity and world peace.

Will the prayer for the unity of the church and the conversion of the world to Christ ever be answered? What do you think? Paul seemed to think so. He wrote to the Philippian church: "God has highly exalted Christ, and has given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God" (2:10-11).

Sooner or later every knee will bow to Christ as the Lord of the universe. Will every Buddhist knee bow to Christ? Every Hindu knee? Will every Muslim tongue confess? Perhaps while still Muslims? Already they confess Jesus to be a prophet. Are they destined one day to confess him as the Lord of glory?

This does not appear to be a judgment scene, and no suggestion that the confessions are coerced. Since the apostle says, all this will be to the glory of God, he appears to place this conversion scene within human history.

So, from Barton W. Stone we have the principle of Christian unity based on the oneness that exists between God and Christ.

Note

This essay and others to follow were my Henry E. and Emerald Webb Lectures at Milligan College in Tennessee, March 14-16, 2006. They were prepared for the students at chapel. Milligan College is associated with Christian Churches. Henry E. Webb, now retired, was for 40 years professor of history at the college.