Who Is Sectarian?

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     A good brother in Arkansas takes exception, in a rather pointed and scathing letter, to my intimation that the segment of the restoration movement of which he is an affiliate, is a sect. He affirms that he is a member of the Lord's church, the body of Christ, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. He resents deeply my lumping that church off with narrow and insignificant groups of "antis" who oppose cups, classes, and the support of orphan homes. But above all else he wants it known that members of what he quaintly refers to as "The First Christian Church" are not his brothers in Christ. They are apostates and can only get to heaven by renouncing what they are in and returning to the "true church."

     The letter came as somewhat of a surprise, like the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew. It has been a long time since I have received this kind of epistle and I guess I thought that those who wrote such venom about their brethren had all died off. Much as I feel compassion for one who has to use rash statements to work off steam when he is in high dudgeon, the letter served to arouse a feeling bordering upon nostalgia. It took me back along memory's lane a few decades, to the time when such letters were in vogue, and the one who could write the meanest was always head of the debating class.

     In the old days things used to get pretty rough when members of the divergent "true churches" met to discuss their differences in the spirit of Christ. Once at Sedalia, Missouri, two brothers in the flesh and in the Lord, got into a shoving match across the Lord's table, and one swung a haymaker at the other. If a deacon had not separated them they would have scattered the emblems all over the floor. It ended up with two "loyal" congregations in town, the members of which would not even pass the time of day with one another when they met in the post office.

     I don't think that we were any worse than most of the other religious organizations around us in that day and time. I remember an old saint down in the hills who was trying to tell me the seriousness of an argument which broke out among the brethren who met in a district schoolhouse. He said, "Before

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the fracas ended, they fit like Missionary Baptists!" By and large, I think the Baptists as well as the rest of us have overcome that sort of reaction, and most of us are glad of it. Occasionally, however, someone feels called upon to come to the front and battle for the pride of the party.

     I grew up in one of two dozen parties in the church of Christ which does not use instrumental music in its expression of public praise. There were really not that many at the time I was immersed, because the number has grown at about the rate of two for every ten years since 1906 when we were set free by the United States Census bureau and became the one holy, apostolic and catholic church of God upon earth, a matter which the Roman Catholic Church always contested. Really we did most of the contesting because the Catholic Church didn't know we even existed.

     I know exactly how our brother feels, for I once felt the same way, although I was in a different faction than the one he is in. I grew up believing that it was the house of God, the kingdom of heaven, and the bride of Christ, and I quoted scriptures which proved that we were the flock of God, while brethren in other segments were all goats or wolves in sheep's clothing. When one of them dropped in on our meetings we would not grant him any public recognition or call upon him to pray, although we were glad to see him come so he could see how "loyal" brethren behaved. We hoped that by giving him the cold shoulder he might see the error of his ways and come into the warmth of our fellowship.

     Not many ever returned, and those who did were often in trouble somewhere else. They were not so much fleeing to us in refuge as they were running from a mess they had helped to create. We depended for growth mostly upon the children we reared and upon those from outside who married our members. Growth was a little slow because when some of our young people became old enough they "went over the hill." They were baptized at the age of twelve and were subsequently brought by their parents until they became too big to whip, and then stayed away.

     That was not true of all of them because some remained "in the fold" and succeeded their fathers in the work, to help perpetuate the party. They never attended a place which had a preacher who was not "faithful" to the factional plea. They never read another journal besides the orthodox party organ. Sometimes they did not even read it. They knew they were safe and they did not have to read anything else, often not even the Bible.

     I remember how sorry I felt deep down inside for members of the Christian Church. I regarded them all as doomed for having forsaken the faith. We had restored "the faith" and anyone who was not with us was not with God. If one of our girls married a boy who was in the Christian Church we knew she was lost. Her father and mother felt a sense of shame like they would have felt if she had run off with a sideshow freak from the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

     When you have been beguiled into believing that your group is the elect of God, chosen before the foundation of the world, and you are all that God has left upon earth, the final hope of mankind, it makes you a little heady. There is something exciting about the realization that you alone possess the key to glory and that everyone else will be turned back at the pearly gates, while you sweep past into the New Jerusalem with all of the angels there to greet you with a friendly slap on the back and the right hand of fellowship.

     It provides a real sense of confidence and assurance if you have been hoodwinked into thinking that when the Son of man comes in his glory and all the holy angels with him, he will immediately start culling out everyone who has attended where they had a piano, Sunday school classes, individual cups, or a Herald of Truth announcement on the cork board in the foyer. It is a glorious contemplation that you can stand off to

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one side with your arms folded while the poor dupes who wouldn't listen to you when you tried to tell them, are herded off, and you can then hear the voice saying to you, "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." When you step up to the throne to receive congratulations for having pressed the right button on all of the issues, even the goats will realize how important it was to be right on everything.

     I can personally testify what an inward shock it is when you suddenly are made to realize what you have actually been doing is defending a sectarian image couched in a nonsectarian plea. I know how it jolts you to see, for the first time, that the body of Christ is greater than any faction, including your own, and you have actually been opposing God's purpose by your bigotry and intolerant attitude. When you've lugged around in your inside coat pocket a signed challenge proclaiming that the church of which you are a member is scriptural in name, origin, doctrine and practice, it sort of knocks you cold to have to face up to the fact that the church of which you are a member is actually one of about a couple of dozen splinters in a historical movement which started out to "unite the Christians in all of the sects."

     That is why I know exactly how our Arkansas brother feels. He has come to equate the particular segment of "The Church of Christ" with which he is affiliated as "the Lord's church," lock, stock and barrel! It is the one body for which Jesus died, the genuine authorized new testament church restored in its fulness as at the beginning. It is so because it is right on instrumental music, cups, classes and colleges. It is the right church because it is right on the right things, the important things, the things that count. Anyone who is not right on these things is not right with God. Regardless of one's faith, hope and love, he is out of Christ if he is out of step with our brother.

     I do not want to hurt our brother. I would not be gross or gruff or crude. But I must be honest, and I must be plain. I do not believe that any faction or party in the non-instrument Church of Christ is the body of Christ in its magnificient fulness. I do not believe that all of the divergent factions taken together exhaust the body of Christ. For that matter, I think the family of our God is greater than any movement within it, including the restoration movement. The kingdom of heaven over which Jesus presides transcends every corral in which men seek to confine it. We have not boxed God in.

     I also hold that, in the fair meaning of the term, my protesting brother is a member of a sect. His very letter of protestation demonstrates a sectarian spirit and proves beyond doubt that he is guilty of partisan exclusivism, the first and chief symptom of sectarianism. Actually, our parties may be quite right about some things, but they are wrong about the right things. They are cruelly mistaken about their attitude toward fellowship, brotherhood and the family relationship in Christ Jesus.

     Any group which bases its reception or rejection of brethren upon an opinion about instrumental music, the millennium, the indwelling Spirit, or support of orphan homes has invented and adopted another creed than Christ. Faith in Christ Jesus as the Messiah of the prophets and the Son of God, goes for nothing with such a group. It is the thing one is against and not the Christ he serves which makes the difference. To set at nought a brother because he cannot conscientiously support a method of financing a television program is blatantly sectarian.

     Those who make tests of fellowship out of things God has not made conditions of salvation are not Christians only. They are a special kind or brand. As far as they are in Christ and follow him they are Christians, but in areas where they create tests of fellowship based upon opinions they are not Christians. And many have more tests of

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fellowship than they have a real depth of Christian love and concern for their blood-bought brothers.

     What our good Arkansas brother overlooks is that by setting aside and creating a special segment of "antis" he automatically puts himself in a special segment of "pros" and becomes as sectarian as those whom he wants to separate and segregate. A ghetto of "pros" is as partisan as a ghetto of "antis." Jesus did not die for a clan or tribe but for a body composed of those who believe into him on the basis of the apostolic testimony, the good news, or gospel.

     When God's word finally got through my sectarian shell, hard as it was to crack, it became a foregone conclusion that I must receive, recognize and respect all of my brethren, simply because they were God's children. It did not mean I would agree perfectly with any of them. It by no means meant that I would endorse their every concept and action. My reception of them as my brothers was an endorsement only of their reception by the Father through the shed blood of his Son. They belonged to God, so I belonged with them. It was Just that simple, and it still is.

     Whether they were pre-millennial, post-millennial, or ignorant of the millennium, had nothing whatever to do with my recognition of brotherhood in Jesus Christ. This concept of the one body is so majestic and wonderful it is frightening to those who parade always under party labels. But it is not a threat to any particular party. It is a threat to all of them because it denies the fleshly spirit which gives them birth.

     Once I saved every scrap of material about this faction or that, filing it away carefully for use in debate. Now that I have been delivered from the party spirit in my own heart I no longer keep such files. Being free from the factional attitude I am no longer concerned about members of one segment triumphing over the members of another. What I am concerned about is the triumph of my Lord over the wisdom of this passing age. I want to help bring about that glorious consummation of universal history when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ. I am not too sure that being right on whether to have classes or not will either help or hinder in the majestic design of the ages.

     I am in the one body with every member of the Church of Christ or Christian Church who is in Christ Jesus. I am also in it with a lot of folk who are not in either one of the parties created by the "great divide" in our particular restoration movement. I do not sit up nights worrying about what any of them think about me or write about me in partisan journals. I just go on loving them whether they count themselves as my friends or enemies. In the only organism to which I belong there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, premillennialist nor post-millennialist, instrumentalist nor non-instrumentalist, for Christ is all and in all.

     In that wonderful body neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which works by love. Faith and love! What a difference they make when you cease to trust in your own righteousness which is by works of law and trust only in His. What a terrific change takes place when you can truly love all of your brethren and can stop pretending.

     I would not want to judge my Arkansas brother, but based on my personal, experience, I suspect that he wrote his recriminatory and antagonistic letter more for his sake than for mine. He was trying to prove to himself that he was still loyal after having read my writings for several months. I doubt he thought it would rescue me from the freedom with which Christ set me free, and return me again to the yoke of bondage. What he was doing was clanking the chains to be sure he was still confined and restrained by his "loyalty."

     We should not give up on brethren like this: Jesus never gave up on me, even when I was debating and "skinning" other brethren and trying to cut their opinions to shreds. Quietly, but

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persistently, the Spirit pursued me until I waded out of the factional muck so God could "lift me up and let me stand, by faith on heaven's tableland." It is not that I grew mellow with advancing age, for I was really not that old when I learned better. Instead, the Spirit became real, and when I opened my heart, he poured the love of God into it.

     My brother may even now be on his way out of the partisan antagonism which has enslaved him. If so, it will be sometime before he will be able to openly admit it. He will first try to convince himself that his congregation is becoming less sectarian and is more open than others. One who has been factional all his life and trusted in the institution for his identity and salvation is afraid to make the break and stand alone with only Jesus at his right hand to help and strengthen. But if he is honest, the glad day will come!

     It came for me when I was able to admit publicly that I had been wrong, seriously wrong, about fellowship, all of my life. I was not only mistaken but my error was such that I was actually defeating God's eternal purpose when I thought I was advancing it. Now I know what grace really is, the quality of grace which brings forgiveness and the peace that passes understanding. It is this I crave for my brother in Arkansas, and for every other brother and sister on this terrestrial sphere!