Divisive Party Loyalties

W. Carl Ketcherside

     The party spirit is a work of the flesh, an. activity of the lower nature. It is so designated by the apostle Paul in Gelatins 5: 20. In that context it is associated with moral impurity and indecency, with idolatry and sorcery, and with drunkenness, orgies and things of like nature. It is distinctly said that those who behave in such ways will never inherit the kingdom of God. The saint has a clear choice between the Holy Spirit and the party spirit, between intolerance and inheritance. He cannot have both. That which is grave enough to exclude from glory deserves our consideration lest through ignorance we forfeit our share of the heritage.

     Why is the party spirit, or sectarian attitude, so heinous that it must stand before the judgment bar of God in the company of word felons of vice and depravity? Of what infamy is factionalism guilty that its presence will slam the door in the face of one under its influence? In this brief presentation I hope to suggest to you some of my very serious and sincere feelings as to why the Holy Spirit offers this stern indictment of a sin which is all too often condoned by us rather than being condemned among us.

     Strangely enough, among the Greeks the original term had no evil connotation. Nor did it have an inherently bad reputation when used in a Judaistic framework in the gospel records. It is only when we come to the letters addressed to the communities of the ransomed ones that it becomes a word of obliquity and is never again used by a sacred writer except with demerit and disapprobation. We must look for the offense involved, not in the nature of the word, but in the nature of the community planted by Jesus on the bedrock fact of his own Messiahship and Sonship. Our question is not what there is about the term that is vicious, but what there is about the Way of life which makes the attitude expressed by the term so unseemly and improper.

     Nothing else is more emphatically taught by Paul than the singularity and uniqueness of the body created by God with Jesus as head and those who are incorporate with him as members. On this point there is no room for doubt or disputation. "There is one body and one Spirit, as there is also one hope held out in God's call to you; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in you all" (Ephesians 4:4-6). "For just as in a single human body there are many limbs and organs, all with different functions, so all of us, united with Christ, form one body, serving individually as limbs and organs to one another" (Romans 12:4, 5).

     There are two enabling ordinances provided by divine wisdom. Both are directly related to this oneness. The first of these

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is initiatory and introductory. It furnishes entrance to the one body, and thus is enacted but once. The second is repetitive and continual, serving to exhibit to the world that unity into which we were born. The first is baptism, and I read, "For indeed we were all brought into one body by baptism, in the one Spirit, whether we are Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free men, and that one Holy Spirit was poured out for all of us to drink" (1 Corinthians 12:13). The second is the Lord's Supper and I read, "When we bless 'the cup of blessing,' is it not a means of sharing in the blood of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, many as we are, are one body; for it is one loaf of which we all partake" (1 Cor. 10:16, 17).

     Now we are ready to enunciate a principle which must be corollary to the truths which we have read in the new covenant scriptures. Since it was the divine purpose and will to gather all of the called ones into one body, and through that one body to exhibit the unity of all things in heaven and on earth, any action taken or spirit manifested by the called out ones, which indicates or implies that the body is not a unit, is in direct contravention of the divine purpose and can be maintained only in opposition to the divine will. Factionalism is a rebellion against heaven, a revolt of the citizens against the will of their King. The division and splintering of the family of God into rival tribes and clashing clans is a sin of such deep dye as to forfeit the heritage of heaven for the factionalist.

     It is here that the Arch-deceiver does his most deadly damage. With his cleverness and cunning he convinces us that we exhibit loyalty to the Father by separating from his other children. Every sect in the Christian spectrum was born of pure motivation. Every party was produced with the announced purpose of preserving truth. The fallacy lies in the fact that we have not been raised up to save the truth, but the truth has been sent down to save us. Truth existed before we were born; it will still be here after we are dead. It will not perish with us and may actually thrive more because of our funerals. Truth can no more be confined behind our little partisan walls than new wine can be contained in old skins which have lost their elasticity. You might as well try to can up the atmosphere as to bottle up universal truth.

     But now I trust that you will allow me to present to you some of the reasons why I think that the party spirit is so heinous in the eyes of God.

     1. It supplants the cross of Christ as the magnetic force which makes unity possible, and substitutes something else as the center around which men must rally to be considered worthy. Jesus said, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." The sect is willing to exalt something else in order to draw some men unto it. Our union is created by the blood of Jesus. We are blood brothers--his blood, not ours. "But now in union with Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near through the shedding of Christ's blood" (Ephesians 4:13). The party separates and ties men off from the rest of the body and it must be sustained as an artificial growth, and kept alive by intravenous feeding of factional pap, and regular injection of the prescribed partisan plasma.

     "This was his purpose, to reconcile the two in a single body to God through the cross, on which he killed the enmity" (Ephesians 2:16). The cross was God's chosen reconciling medium. It accomplished its purpose by welding two into a single body. It produced fusion where fission had existed. Mark it down that whenever and wherever a single body is divided into two, the enmity has not been killed. Something has become more important than the cross. Retaliation supplants reconciliation. Every faction among us today bears testimony to the frightened, trembling world that we pay lipservice to the cross while giving our lifeservice to the sect. We have forgotten the "cross purpose" of God and we are now at cross-purposes with each other.

     2. The party spirit reduces the majestic ordinances of God to mere factional rituals. Baptism is regarded as initiation into the party. It is a little like assuming

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that one who is born in the maternity ward of St. Joseph's Hospital, does not thereby become a member of the human family, but belongs to the hospital. Yet in all my experience I have never yet heard of one who applied for work in a hospital where he had not been delivered, being required by the personnel manager to enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born again in their own loyal maternity division--and I do mean division! In its final analysis what this kind of thing means is that one is saved by the grace of the party and not by the grace of God at all.

     No one was ever, by the Holy Spirit, baptized into the Methodist party, the Baptist party) or the Presbyterian party. Nor has any person, by that same Spirit, been baptized into the Disciples of Christ party, the Christian Church party, or any of the Church of Christ parties. If we are baptized at all under the influence of the Spirit we are all baptized into one body. The baptism authorized by the Holy Spirit is a key which fits no sectarian gate or creedal lock. The partisan administrator who baptizes a sincere believer in Jesus is like a blind obstetrician who can deliver the baby but cannot envision the great world into which he introduces the child. He is like a nearsighted shepherd who thinks that he is opening the gate into his own corral when he is letting down the bars into the Lord's abundant pasture.

     The table of the Lord can never be made a factional weapon of discipline without destroying the one who wields the weapon. The congregation at Corinth was fractured into four sects composed of the Cephasites, the Paulites, the Apollosites, and the Christites. These gathered in their little cliques to eat the love feast with each selfish clan separated and segregated from the rest. In such a state of affairs they could not eat the Lord's Supper because it was a fellowship of the body and blood of the Lord, portraying the one body by their joint participation in it. The apostle wrote, "To begin with, I am told that when you meet as a congregation you fall into sharply divided group...The result, is that when you meet as a congregation, it is impossible for you to eat the Lord's Supper."

     I do not gather from this that the various factions did not physically eat bread and drink the fruit of the vine. The indication is exactly opposite to any such conclusion. I have little doubt that each sect, in its exclusiveness, blessed the cup and broke the bread. But there is no spiritual significance attached to the mere physical act of eating and drinking aside from the divine purpose and motivation. So the record says, "It follows that anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of desecrating the body and blood of the Lord." What does "unworthily" mean? In this case, by the context, it means to regard the body of Jesus as having been killed for a faction, and the blood as having purchased only a part of the saints. To so reason is to desecrate the body and blood of the Lord. Jesus died for the whole company of the saints. He is the head of the entire body, the Shepherd of all the sheep, the Captain of all the enlisted men, the King of all his subjects.

     In view of this, one should scrutinize his inner consciousness before participating in the Supper to determine if he is doing so as a branch of the vine or as a splinter of a sliver. There is a difference between being a stone in the temple and a rock in a lean-to. "A man must test himself before eating his share of the bread and drinking from the cup. For he who eats and drinks eats and drinks judgment on himself if he does not discern the Body." Let me here commend C. H. Dodd and his fellowlaborers in production of the New English Bible New Testament, for capitalizing the word "Body." I once thought to "discern the Lord's body" meant to see mentally an image of the physical body of Jesus when the bread was passed, to have an inner vision of the scene at Golgotha while you ate. Now I know better.

     The body we are to discern at the Supper is not the body writhing and dying in the agony of the crucifixion. It is the whole body composed of every believer who has been made a part of the new

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creation. It is the one body. If I separate and segregate myself in self-righteous partisan pride, and regard as my brothers only those who side with me in some point of controversy, I drink damnation to myself when I touch the cup to my lips for I desecrate the blood which freely cleanses us all. If I slam a partisan gate to exclude God's other children I shut myself in. The others are still free. It is those who build walls around themselves who are in prison. Paul said of the meeting of those who were bigoted and intolerant partisans, "Your meetings do more harm than good" (1 Corinthians 11:17). The party spirit is frightening in its consequences because it transforms the sacred ordinances into spiritual pork-barrel projects to be administered in the behalf of their constituents at the whim of political theologians.

     3. The party spirit is reprehensible because it captivates our hearts which should be the sacred citadels of the Holy Spirit, and causes us to drive out the best Friend we ever had, or shall ever have, in the mistaken notion that we thus prove our fidelity to the cause of righteousness. Our relationship to God is not conditioned upon our being right about a number of things. If it were so, we would be saved by knowledge rather than by faith, and our hope of heaven would depend upon our intelligence quotient rather than upon our love tor the Father and his love for us.

     When I build a party around the pro or con of any opinion, view or interpretation, and demand allegiance to it as a test of loyalty to Jesus, I have substituted human judgment for divine will as a criterion. There is nothing wrong in having an opinion. There is nothing wrong in holding or expressing an opinion. Sin lies not in discussion of opinions but in division over them. Unity in Christ does not depend upon conformity in views. It does not demand that we all meet in the same building or do everything in identical fashion. A family is not divided when some of the children become married and live in their own homes. We are not seeking geographical proximity but spiritual affinity. It is essential that we grant recognition to all of God's children as our brothers. Division occurs when we conclude that we are God's children by brain instead of by birth, by grasp instead of by grace.

     The party spirit proposes and promotes tests of fellowship which demand that one be something else before he can be a Christian. This has been true since the very days of the primitive community of the sanctified ones. The Jewish element sought to bind circumcision upon the Gentiles who believed in Jesus. It was their contention that one must become a Jew before he could be in Christ. The sin of schism growing out of this unwarranted attitude was the first recorded error to threaten the body with disruption. Ananias and Sapphira operated only to their own destruction, but the schismatics who came down from Jerusalem threatened the very congregation at Antioch with their legalism. "Unless you are circumcised according to the law of Moses you cannot be saved."

     The kingdom of heaven has been riddled with these "unless you ares." Unless you are willing to do this or that, or unless you are willing to give up or divest yourself of one thing or another, you cannot be saved. This removes salvation and justification from. the realm of trust in Jesus as proclaimed by God and places them in the domain of the "unless you ares" pronounced by men. But these have no avail in Christ. "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which work-

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eth by love." There was really nothing wrong with being circumcised provided that one did not regard it as meritorious or essential to salvation, or bind it upon others as essential to their proper standing with God.

     When the dogmatic "Unless you are . . . you cannot be" was applied to salvation it virtually repealed the divine principle of justification, destroyed the bond of Christian union, and dethroned Jesus from his position of authority. It meant that faith in Jesus was not sufficient, but one must correctly pronounce the partisan shibboleth as bound by those who controlled the faction. It was not enough to be a Christian but one must also pledge himself to be a sectarian. He must be recognized by the official badge of the clan or the password of the exclusive fraternity rather than by the demonstration of love for others which Jesus said would be the criterion by which all men should recognize discipleship.

     After the garment has been cleansed by the blood of Jesus, and become "the fine linen white and clean which is the righteousness of the saints," it must again be dipped in the party colors which constitute the distinctive uniform of the school or sect, so that all will know what kind of a Christian the wearer is. He must be a Christian-and something else! And that "something else" means more to a sectarian than being a Christian. It is for this reason that I have resolved never to make anything a test of fellowship which God has not made a condition of salvation. If you are good enough for God to receive you are not too bad for me to accept. If he welcomes you with open arms it ill becomes me to approach you with a closed heart.

     You have been courteous and amiable in inviting me to share with you in this consultation. My vocabulary is too meager and sparse to express my deep feeling of appreciation for your fraternal welcome. And you have every right to question what my future will be insofar as attitude and disposition are concerned. And inasmuch as I have availed myself of your hospitality you have a right to query me as to how I propose to implement the things I have suggested here and in my writings. You are aware that I have grown up within that segment of the disciple brotherhood where opposition is voiced to the employment of mechanical instruments in rendering our corporate praise unto God. Once I was member of an anti-instrument party. At that time I judged your relationship to God by my understanding of this matter. In those days if you had been big enough to invite me to such a meeting I would have been too little to come.

     I thank the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who through the Spirit has purged my heart of such an unlovely, unspiritual and uncharitable disposition. I am ashamed of it! I am sorry for it! I have repented of it! I have prayed earnestly that I might now devote my life to plucking up the thorns of factionalism which I once helped to plant and sow instead the seeds of peace and tranquility among the heirs of this once great movement which began as "a project to unite the Christians in all of the sects." I find my position as to instrumental music unaltered and unchanged. If you receive me at all in such meetings as this you will need to do so in spite of that conviction. Yet I think you may well do so, for I predict that in this age of decaying values our future problems will not lie with brethren who have diverse convictions but with those who have none. And we dare not forget that when the day comes that "anything goes" everything that is worthwhile has already gone.

     I have resolved with the help of the Spirit, during my remaining days, to be simply a Christian and a Christian only. I do not intend to switch parties but I intend to renounce them all insofar as my own humble life is concerned. I can relieve the fears of those of you who may have been troubled as to what to do with me if I applied for membership with you. I am not leaving anyone; I am not going to anyone. I belong with all of you because I belong to Christ, but because I belong to Christ I belong to none of you. I shall move among all of my brothers as

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they allow. I shall share with them in love as they permit. I will thrust myself upon none, nor will I make myself purposely obnoxious to any. I will he cooperative among the Independents, and independent among the Cooperatives. I trust that I may be instrumental among those who are vocal in helping them see that the only instrument of our salvation is the cross of Jesus.

     Of course this will not solve all of the problems. For that reason I make no demands that others order their lives as I expect to order mine. Nothing will solve all of our problems so long as we are in the flesh. I expect to be beset by the questions which occupy the minds and fill the hearts of every group which I visit. What will you do about individual cups? What will you do about Sunday Schools? What will you do about institutional orphan homes? What will you do about Herald of Truth? What will you do about instrumental music? What will you do about restructure? What will you do about merger? What will you do about the ecumenical movement? Perhaps I shall be fortunate enough to die before these are resolved and new ones are introduced. If so, I trust that it will be my good fortune to enter that home where such questions will never trouble. I am not so sure but what in the other alternative available some of the brethren may continue to debate them, knowing the interest which the president of that realm must take in some of the current discussions about them.

     But what will I do about them? I am not sure that I am required to do anything about them except to keep them in proper perspective. All of these are means and methods which my brethren have devised to get where they are going, although in some instances, the prayer of the elderly colored preacher at the funeral service of one of the more reckless members of his flock may be in order--"Lawd, we hope this brother has gone where we think he ain't." I shall never confuse the means of locomotion which men have invented with their inventors. When brethren drive up to the meetinghouse I am not obligated to love only those who drive Fords. I shall distinguish between the men for whom Christ died and their means of transportation for which he did not die. Thus I can love both those who travel by Jaguar and jalopy-something imported, or something distorted.

     Jesus did not die for plans, programs or performances. He did not give his life for machinery, movements or monuments. He died for men, sinful men, hapless, hopeless, helpless men like me. And he did not tell me what my attitude must be to the things which mean so much to men, but he did tell me what my attitude must be to the men who mean so much to him. I am not obligated to love individual cups, Sunday schools, organs, societies, agencies, unified support or direct support. But I am obligated to love my brothers--all of them! And I do love them.

     You see, I did not renounce my faction for another. I renounced my factionalism. I am sick and tired of the whole sorry, sad and sordid mess. And I shall counter it with the only weapon with which I can wage effective war against it--love of my brethren. I love you all. I do not love you because of where you are any more than I love myself because of where I am. I love you because of Him in whom we are. You are all my brothers because you are his children. It is just that simple--and so am I!