REUNION
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—In discussions on Reunion the emphasis seems to be laid at the wrong end, for it concerns itself with results rather than with causes, with patching on severed limbs rather than with the removal of the causes of accidents. It is obvious that it were better to remove the cause of friction in a home between husband and wife than to try to reconcile them after divorce court proceedings. When we discuss the Reunion of the Churches, we go for all our worth for reconciliation, for- getting that new sects and denominations are being formed almost weekly by the same causes that produced the present denominations and sects. It is the friction in the home circle of the Church that has to be tackled if the problem is to be solved amicably and finally.
Take an average church. It is not divulging any secrets to say that there is hardly a church that has not two or more antagonistic sections or cliques that are opposed to each other on grounds of doctrine, order, method, personalities or emphasis. Section A is naturally fond of liturgy. Section B hates it. Section C likes the modern interpretation and the new method of -presenting the Gospel. Section D believes very warmly that it is of the devil. Section E likes a minister who is a priest and a despot. Section F likes a puppet. One section wants business kept absolutely out of the Church, another believes that the Church should have much more to say about and to business. One clique insists that politics should be heard from the pulpit, and another that politics should be confined to the platform.
These differences are not merely accidental ; they are temperamental. People look at life from different angles, and the viewpoint makes all the difference It is not the essentials that divide us, but the small things. It is not a question of fundamental beliefs, but of interpretation when the problem is looked at from the standpoint of the single Church.
Then there are the quarrels that arise from the respective station of people in society and business. John Jones is manager and William Williams is a working man. The autocrat and the democrat meet and disagree ; the Socialist and the Conservative get into difficulties with one another.
And there are few denominations that cannot be traced to one or more of these characteristics seen in the solitary Church. Denominations and sects originate in viewpoints rather than in fundamentals, and in viewpoints that become exaggerated and magnified, viewpoints that have lost true perspective. A viewpoint is not always a vantage point, nor even a safe point.
Churches of the same faith and order very frequently have no fellowship one with another because collectively they are temperamentally different. The leader of a new and growing sect known as the Elimites told the writer that they were Baptists with a plus. They believe the same as the Baptists with a very intense belief in the Second Advent and Faith Healing in addition. But as is true in other cases, these good people have made Faith Healing and the Second Coming everything. The result is that they have no fellow-. ship with Baptists who are regarded as heretics.
The first step in Reunion surely is the step that will bring like to like, Baptist to Baptist, Presbyterian to Presbyterian, Anglican to Anglican. Until Anglican can at least suffer Anglican and Baptist have fellowship with Baptist there is little prospect of any larger Reunion. Denominations within their own boundaries must learn to suffer the other point of view. When the broad shall have fellowship with the narrow and the scholarly with the ignorant, the day when denominations will have fellowship with each other will be nearer. But everything in its own order, the Church should begin to have union within its own immediate walls.—I am, Sir, &c., 18 Alexandra Road, Merthyr Tydfil. E. EBRARD REES.
Previous page
