Orthodoxy and Reform

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     History is a stern, unbending mistress who keeps a universal school attended by all of us. Few of us sit under her firm gaze or eye her chastening rod with pleasure. We have to be dragged reluctantly and against our angry protests to the place where we will listen at all, and after having heard, we resent the lessons and bitterly deny their application to our own life and times. In no other field of human existence is this tendency more manifest than in the religious, and someone has cynically said that "the only thing we learn from history is that no one learns from history."

     For example there are certain facts connected with the history of reformatory movements which are unyielding and undeniable. These facts are so hard there is no way of softening their impact, and so cold there is no way of warming them up to make them more acceptable. They simply have to be admitted. Every reform began as an attempt to find relief from a situation regarded as intolerable and had as its aim a way of life more presentable unto God. But every such movement in spite of its noble ideals in the beginning, has terminated in the formation of another sect or faction, often more intolerant and exclusive than the original. It may prove profitable to analyze the reason behind this seemingly inexorable tendency.

     All religion is motivated by a sense of dependency and all sectarianism by a sense of fear. While these are not necessarily related they are often confused. Under the impulse of the first, man seeks to come closer unto God; under the impulse of the second he constructs forms and fences as part of the truth, and often fights harder to preserve the forms than to defend the truth. Losing his sense of values and with his perspective clouded by partisan antagonism, he regards those who question the forms as enemies of religion and deniers of God.

     The religion based upon faith in the claims of Jesus of Nazareth is ageless and timeless. It is obvious that it must be expressed, and it is just as apparent that such expression must be in a form adapted to the age, the culture and the place, but within the pale of God's revelation. It is a vain assumption and a myth that this revelation was intended to provide a meticulous and detailed method for meeting every need or expressing every passion for righteousness. Christianity is the relationship to a person, and through that person to God. The purpose of the divine revelation is to demonstrate how that person would react to the situations which confront us, and to develop within us that divine nature which will enable us to automatically and spontaneously respond as He would if present. Indeed He is present in every situation for He dwells in us.

     It is inevitable that the forms through which faith is expressed must be flexible and expansive or they will become a

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straitjacket which confines and restrains Under such circumstances repression is actually confused with expression. This chokes out all further reformation and those who arrived at their current position only because of daring changes made by their fathers, become complacent leaders of the status quo and brand all further change as compromise. They seem never to realize that the philosophy they espouse would have doomed them to continue in the same sectarianism from which their fathers extricated themselves.

     The task of every true reformer is to breathe new life into a people who have stupefied themselves by inhaling over and over the fetid atmosphere created by their own confinement. Every sect or faction becomes inbred in its thinking and this tends toward sterility and impotence. Those who once were able to meet the challenge of another day are no longer capable of measuring up to the demands of a new era. But all of us resist change. We feel secure in the old worn ruts which our traditions have created. We are frightened by the untried and fearful of the unfamiliar. We cling to the old phrases and cleave to hoary cliche's long after they cease to communicate anything to those about us. This is the spirit which results in sectarianism, and like so many other things in the spiritual realm it is hard to tell where good ends and evil begins. Certainly we should be careful, cautious and concerned, and yet faith is not certainty, but a bold adventure into the unknown.

     Reformers tend by nature to become impatient. They see those whom they regard as brethren held captive behind walls which have grown upward with the passing decades. They behold those whom they love building the walls higher in the mistaken notion that this is the way toward freedom in Christ. All true reformers are radicals for this word means "root." A radical is one who gets to the root of things. He is not concerned about superficial details or lopping off twigs. Reformers are also non-conformists and this is a second strike against them, making impossible the attainment to any measurable degree of success during their lifetime. No society can stand radicals and non-conformists for these call attention to their own sins and shortcomings. The world must get them out of its sight as witness what happened to Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, Jan Huss of Bohemia, Jerome Savonarola of Italy, and an innumerable company of others who were gadflies in their day as was Socrates in his day in Athens.

     It is after the present generation which has stoned its prophets has died, and another generation, and a third has arisen, that men can look back and see that there was a prophet among their fathers. This does not argue that the approach of the reformer is always the best or that in prosecution of a justifiable purpose he always employs justifiable means. Reformers are human and while non-conformity is essential to their very nature, impatience should not necessarily be so. There is little to be gained by an intolerant attack upon intolerance. Reformers are also driven by fear. When they see their lifetime approaching the sunset and glance behind to see how lengthy the shadows have become, they occasionally become frantic and end up by destroying that which they set out to save. They would be helped by a realization of the truth that their responsibility is to plant or water and God will give the increase. Sometimes a man may die before he can harvest the crop from the seed he has planted, but those who remain after him can "enter into the fruit of his labors."

     Reformation, in its initial stages, does not consist of tearing down walls from without. It is difficult to rescue those who do not regard themselves as being captives, and especially when they have been conditioned to believe that safety lies only inside the walls they have built. All reformation is from within and it consists not of chopping away at walls but of prying open rusty windows so that a fresh breeze may be wafted in to revive the fainthearted and weary. Men who have lived inside of walls for years are not

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qualified for sudden exodus to a world of greater freedom and may dash themselves to pieces in wild abandon.

     It is enough if one can open up a window so that eyes long accustomed to gloom can adapt themselves to greater light. Man is not by nature an aquatic being, and water is not his natural habitat, so when one has been working in marine depths he must be brought back slowly to his normal environment lest he die from the effect of the sudden change. It serves little good to rescue a man from an abnormal condition only to have him die the moment he reaches his proper state. While it is true that all reformers are radicals, not all radicals are reformers. Many become both defamers and deformers!

     Every generation is destined to see a struggle between the forces of reform and those of orthodoxy because reformation is a continuous process. It is not confined to one century or to one age. Orthodoxy seeks to maintain the form, reformation seeks to admit new and greater light. It is no wonder that reformers of the past have actually been designated "New Lights" on several occasions and within different movements. It is unfortunate that, in times of war, men often act intemperately upon both sides. While it is true that the orthodox confuse the truth of heaven with their partisan forms adopted to express it, it is just as true that reform forces often regard all such forms derived from past experience as evil and viciously attack them in an attempt to wipe them out.

     There is a fallacy manifest on both sides of such a controversy. The orthodox defenders err in assuming that their forms for expressing the will of God, or the machinery created to enable them to implement the will of God, are part of the will of God. This drives them to seek for "a pattern" in the revealed will of God for the machinery they have already contrived, and as bad as some of that machinery is, it cannot be as absurd or ridiculous as some of the arguments made "from the scriptures" to justify it or find precedent for it. Actually, the forms of expression are an outgrowth in each generation of the anxious concerns of honest men for serving the needs of their generation, and whether they are the best or are inferior may be a matter of human judgment, but the binding of these upon men as part of the will of God, and demanding that they be supported as a test of faithfulness to the Almighty intrudes upon the divine prerogative and is an unwarranted usurpation of authority. It is astounding that those who search the scriptures for what they have developed in seeking divine authority for it, have no hesitancy in binding it upon the consciences of other saints contrary to all of the authority in God's Word.

     At the same time the forces of reform may err by assuming that because certain ones confuse the will of God with the forms devised to express it, that all forms should be abandoned and thrown to "the moles and the bats." While the forces of orthodoxy regard their forms as the will of God, these others regard them as idols and the works of men's hands. Both are wrong, and because of this division has resulted in almost every case of reform and a new party has been born. The truth is that religion is emotional and rational, philosophical and practical. While it is true that the prime essential is to sustain a proper relationship to Cod, this must manifest itself in a proper relationship to mankind in its various phases as they touch an individual life. Religion must seek expression to be valid and it will do so in those forms which commend themselves unto us as being in harmony with God's program for us in our situation. Those forms may or may not be right, but they will not be wrong simply because they are forms of expression.

     With the kind indulgence of our readers I should like to make a direct and positive application to our day of the principles I have been discussing. In order to do this I shall use as an example the one group of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ with which I am most familiar, the noninstrument churches of Christ. What I

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have to say will be generally applicable to most other groups for neither our problems or attitudes are at all unique or different. When I speak of "one group" in this connection, I am using a relative expression. Actually there are some two dozen divergent factions among us in spite of the fact that we are heirs of a movement, the avowed purpose of which was "to unite the Christians in all of the sects."

     The intensely partisan members of each faction regard their own party as "the faithful church," but there is a growing recognition among many of the more sober and intelligent thinkers in all of them that this entire branch of the restoration movement has not only entirely lost its original purpose but has become sectarianized. It is a denomination in that it has selected a specific title by which to designate itself and to distinguish it from other parties and the Christians who may be in them. It has developed its own missionary, charitable, journalistic and educational organizations, and these vested interests exist to propagate and perpetuate the traditional interpretations and attitudes.

     In reality the non-instrument brethren have at least three distinct major sets of vested interests. The more elaborate is maintained by what may be called the main line orthodox segment; another is supported by those who hold that the return of Jesus will be pre-millennial; a third, with the exception of missionary and charitable organizations, has the allegiance of a faction opposed to such institutions. All of these are rivals. Some of them carry on an almost continuous campaign of pressures against the others. In addition to these, practically all of the other factions have their own journals which serve to hold the members "in line" and to help discourage fraternization across the lines and prevent defections from the parties. All of these are bound in loose federation by mutual regard for immersion and mutual opposition to instrumental music, which is considered as giving them exclusive right to the title "Church of Christ." Most of them resent infringement of the title by those who use instrumental music. They regard this as an attempt of aliens to steal the name of "the Lord's church."

     However, it is in the development of orthodoxy concocted from traditional slogans, opinions and interpretations, and mistaken for "the one faith," that the real sectarian spirit is manifested. Those who cannot, in good conscience, subscribe to all of the tests and shibboleths are rejected as being unworthy of Christ, while those who pay lipservice are accepted as "loyal." This means that conformity rather than character, becomes the criterion for measuring the validity of profession. Nothing is more deadening to the spirit than such lethal legalism.

     At the risk of offence, which is wholly unintended, let me mention some of the forms which our orthodoxy has developed by which to express itself. Symptomatic of that over-simplification which frequently characterizes the more legalistic sects is the reduction of all religious experience to simple formulae. Examples of these are our "five steps to salvation" and "five items of worship." Neither of these expressions is scriptural nor is the idea they are intended to convey expressed in any other scriptural language. What they do to the majestic concepts of "salvation" and "worship" is evidenced in the frightful dearth of understanding of these noble terms in the hearts of many who have taken the "steps" and engage in the "items."

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     The "access to this grace wherein we stand," the acceptance of atonement and effecting of reconciliation, the reception of sanctification and justification--this is hardly to be confined to a little "kitchen stepladder process" as commonly illustrated upon sermon charts. One does not do a hop, skip and jump into the communion of the saints nor enter the New Jerusalem by a system which requires him to leave "the step of faith" in order to repent of his sins, or cease to repent in order to confess. The fact is that the "public confession" as a specific step may have been inserted into this "five finger exercise" without any scriptural warrant as demonstrated by the warping and wresting of unrelated Biblical passages to sustain it.

     The grave danger involved in this kind of orthodoxy is that persons possessed of profound faith in the Lord and who have been immersed in implementation of that faith may be rejected because they did not take the "steps" in order or approved sequence, or because they were mistaken as to the exact point in the process or program where the remission of their sins was granted by a gracious God. It is not enough that one enter the relationship with the Father and Son but he must express it in the very words which have become the traditional pattern of our particular segment of a particular restoration movement. Yet it is not necessarily the form which is to be deplored, for unquestionably thousands of humble and contrite souls have entered into "the fellowship of the Spirit" and expressed their trust in God's Son by taking the five steps in "the plan of salvation."

     The wrong lies in the dogmatic spirit which binds this form of expression, even verbally, upon others as the will of God. This would un-Christianize the great army of those who were among the saved of all those centuries before members of a certain group "discovered" the "steps of salvation" and reduced the approach to the divine nature to a systematic sequence of actions taken by man. Not one of the twelve apostles would have understood what one was talking about if he had questioned them about "the five steps to salvation." This is the language of crystallized orthodoxy in a certain age of the Christian era and among the heirs of a specific segment of a restoration attempt.

     By the same token we have coined another expression of "Church-of-Christism" in our usage of the term "five items of worship." It would amaze the average person among our various parties to learn how many debates have been held, how many divisions have resulted, and how many factions have been created by orthodoxy, rather than fidelity to the revelation of heaven. In each protest against orthodoxy a new party has been created and a new species of orthodoxy has been born to further confuse and confound, and to foster antagonism and rivalry. We become so attached to our forms that we cannot conceive of them as being other than the expressed will of God.

     We are shocked when someone suggests that a congregation could "scripturally worship" on the Lord's Day if the brethren merely met and observed the Lord's Supper without any other religious exercise. Or, if it is suggested that "congregational singing" as we practice it cannot be shown by the scriptures to have been a part of the public "worship" in the days of the apostles. It would startle a great many of us to realize that such things as "the treasury" and "the budget," and a lot of other things which are such sources of controversy in our day, were wholly unknown in the primitive community of the saints. The fact is that, of all the words translated "worship" in the new covenant scriptures, the term is never applied to what we do on Lord's Day, and the expression "the worship" is not in the Bible. The sacred oracles know nothing of "the five items of worship."

     Confronted with such unscriptural jargon and such a conglomerate mass of orthodox opinion and dogma, a reformer among our brethren might be tempted to strike out in all directions. Such intemperate action would only aggravate the sit-

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uation. Since our forms are an outgrowth of a sincere effort to please God we must grow out of them by a continued effort to please Him. Merely ridding ourselves of the forms will leave us helpless in our effort to express the will of God. Our task is to restore a proper sense of values which will enable us to distinguish between the will of God and the form of expressing it. This is part of a maturing process and such a process is always educative in nature. But all education is slow and methodical. One does not become educated over night. We must "grow in grace and knowledge of the truth."

     When a person falls fully clothed into a stream and is dragged from it in an apparently drowning state, it is not necessary to divest him of all his clothing before efforts at reviving him can begin. It is only necessary to loosen the clothing in those areas where it would hinder breathing. So it is with a body of believers whose corporate life is threatened by inhalation of the smoke screen of traditionalism. Such believers need not be divested of all outward forms in order to breathe new life into them. It would avail but little to save one from drowning or asphyxiation only to have him die from exposure because of your hasty and ill-advised procedure.

     All reformatory movements as they develop into exclusivist sects suffer from addiction to the drug of their own orthodoxy. They must have regular shots of it injected into their corporate veins or they lose their inability to function. No food, regardless of how palatable, can satisfy their need for "a fix" and they lose their power of locomotion until they have a "revival" and are exposed once more to the familiar opiate which for a brief period thrills and exhilarates until its effect wears off. Yet, the only effective cure for an "addict" is by slow and supervised withdrawal, with decreasing amounts of the drug being allowed until the unfortunate victim is free. Too sudden withdrawal results in a state of shock which may be as dangerous as the drug. Men must be led out of orthodoxy, not jerked out of it. Reformers need to be leaders, not drivers.

     There are growing indications that those in all areas of our own restoration movements are starting to outgrow their particular brands of orthodoxy. Even those in the more extreme and exclusive factions are becoming aware that their forms and methods of containing and expressing the will of God are not adequate to the needs of our day. Much of this can be attributed to an increasing educational stature which enables us to see more clearly the truth revealed in the scriptures. We are coming to realize that expanding horizons do not necessarily betoken an increasing broad-mindedness, which is often a synonym for shallowness, but are rather the result of climbing higher on the mountains of faith. This enables us to give proper credit to all of our fathers in all of the factions who did their best in the age in which they walked. One is not expected to see as clearly in the grayness of approaching dawn as when the sun climbs to its meridian. One may appreciate what his father's hand wrought without allowing the skeletal fingers to reach out from the grave to deter his own further progress.

     The church of God must be adapted to meet the needs of those in all times and climes, for the simple reason that the church is composed of people, and those who compose it at any time in any part of the world, are those who are alive at that time and who live in that part of the earth. The church in the United States today is not made up of those who lived in the United States a century ago. Those who are the church now are exposed to different problems, tensions and fears. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ is adequate to fulfill our needs in all ages. The principles enunciated by the Son of God are unvarying and unchanging. But those who come to Christ now out of a sense of dependency must find "strength to help in time of need," and the need may be such as our ancestors did not experience at all. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, but the times in which we

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live today are not the same as those of yesteryear.

     The church in the United States is not composed of people in India or Africa, and we should be concerned that we do not think of Christianity as a white man's religion taken to other people. When the gospel is proclaimed in Japan we are not sharing with the Japanese that which is ours but simply calling attention to that which is also theirs. And they do not need to conform to all of our occidental traditions and forms to be the people of God.

     When we find indigenous groups who have discovered Christ we need not make them over into Texas-style or Tennessee-style "Churches of Christ" in order for God to accept them. They need not always be acceptable unto us to be acceptable unto Him. We are about as anxious to foist our interpretations upon others as we are to foster God's revelation among them. That is why all of our factions send their own brand of missionaries. We must not only preach divine love but peddle our American divisions. Few of us would be willing to immerse believers into Christ and simply commend them unto God and the word of His grace in their own language. The sincere hearts of honest natives might not discover our factional slant.

     Missionaries from among our brethren who use instrumental music can testify that they have planted congregations in numerous places where the instrument was not used and there was no indication it ever would be used in the corporate worship, but men whose partisan zeal exceeded their love for souls came into such areas and began propagandizing against instrumental music on the radio and by tracts circulated promiscuously. They simply had to be sure that the converts understood the grave "sin" of sitting at the Lord's table with those who had immersed them into Christ Jesus but who were supported by congregations in the states where a piano was played when the brethren met for public praise of the one God. Such factional tactics in a partisan attempt to plant a "South African Vocal Music Church of Christ" where only vocal music was used anyway, make about as much sense as an "Outer Mongolian Southern Baptist Church."

     Our factional tendencies have become so apparent they are nauseating and our sickness has caused brethren in all of the parties to abandon their self-prescribed home remedies and again consult the Great Physician. There is a great deal of hope for the future. Orthodoxy has worked its own rebuke. We need not castigate ourselves with the thought that our own orthodoxy is any worse than that of others about us. It Is of the same nature although manifesting itself in different forms. We need reformation but it must be rational while being revolutionary. Since no faction among us is the church of God, we need not switch from one faction to another as we learn new truths. Let us stay where we are for that is where we are needed. Let us leaven from within and not leave and attack from without. We are on the threshold of a twentieth century restoration movement that will be every bit as vital and important as the one launched in the nineteenth century by Barton Warren Stone and the Campbells. Just as their efforts did not alter the church of Christ but affected those of it who were in the sects, so this one will not affect the church of Christ but it will affect those in the "Churches of Christ"--all twenty-five of them!

     Orthodoxy creates new criteria of "faithfulness" with the passage of years so that one received as "loyal" while believing a certain thing in one generation would be rejected for believing the same thing in another and later generation. It steals into the throne room of the mind and carries captive conscience which was given the divine prerogative of judging the propriety or impropriety of our personal thoughts and acts, under the supreme Sovereign of the universe. As a rude usurper it enthrones itself and appropriates the combined functions of judge, jury and hangman. It has been the bane of all reformatory movements.