White or Black Shoes

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     For several years I have been impressed by those members of the Dunkard Brethren Church whom it has been my privilege to meet. They are gentle, humble and unassuming. Like myself, they prefer the plain life, and this carries over, as it should, into their public expressions of praise to God. They have frequently attended my meetings in which instrumental music was not employed, since they deplore it, as do certain Presbyterian congregations. I have recently read a book Purity of Worship by M. C. Ramsay, M. A., containing a stern denunciation of instrumental music. It is distributed by the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia.

     The Dunkard Brethren are one of the segments of a fragmented restoration movement and have their roots in what historians refer to as "the radical reformation" to distinguish between it and the one which Martin Luther helped kindle. They publish a paper called Bible Monitor, under the auspices of a Dunkard Brethren congregation located on a rural route out of Converse, Indiana. I have been a reader of this little periodical for many months.

     I am intrigued by its motto which reads: "Spiritual in life and scriptural in practice." The purpose is stated thus: "Be it our constant aim to be more sanctified, more righteous, more holy, and more perfect through faith and obedience." I am sure that my own readers

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would label this as a worthy objective. The writers for the little paper are not journalists. They, like those in most religious parties which are exclusivistic, know all of the other adherents and recognize immediately the faithful and loyal.

     I am also an heir of an attempt to produce unity by a restoration of the primitive order of things, but our forebears were principally from Scotland and Ireland. Those who sired groups like the Dunkard Brethren came primarily from Germany and the Low Countries. They were serious in their attempt to reproduce the way of life in the first century and thus made the love-feast, foot-washing, and the prayer veil for female communicants, part of their recognized approach to God. Our brethren, when confronted with these matters, arbitrarily decided they were simply cultural customs and threw them out as having no relationship to restoration.

     Every restoration movement always has two barrels at hand while studying the scriptures. One is labeled "To be retained" and the other "To be discarded." As men study the word, which is so plain that a wayfaring man even if he is a fool cannot err therein, they throw in one barrel what is binding, and in the other what can be left out. The trouble arises because they cannot all agree on which things should go in which barrel. Even after they get the party barrels filled to their satisfaction with the right assortment, someone always gets itchy fingers and lifts something out of one and throws it into the other. Then a fight breaks out, a new faction is spawned and a "loyal paper" is started to resist the encroachments of the apostates.

     No restoration movement ever has an easy time. Although their divergent groups always debate and argue, each one is "the Lord's church" and "faithful to the Book." In some Texas cities there are as many as ten different groups called "Church of Christ." Every one of them is "faithful to the Book" as they describe themselves, while all of the others are disloyal. They may be more nearly correct on the latter statement than on the first.

     Even humble folk like the Dunkard Brethren have problems. It is difficult to "hold the line" against innovations. This comes to light in the October 15 issue of Bible Monitor. A good sister is writing about certain conditions which she evaluates as "Satan perching on the front benches of our churches today." Her chief concern is the mode of dress. In order to preserve what is called "gospel plainness" the Brethren have always worn unadorned black suits with no coat lapels. They have rejected neckties and wrist watches as symbols of pride and worldliness.

     The women have always worn drab looking dresses with black shoes. The head covering is a plain bonnet, an indispensable part of the costume. There is no jewelry or hair styling. All of this is fairly well maintained in a rural setting with its isolationism and clannishness. But the world does not remain static in order to accommodate our faith. People tend to travel more in times of affluence and the Brethren are not immune to this tendency.

     So the good sister "humbly submitted" an article detailing her concern. She decried the wearing of white, pink, yellow, or blue shoes, in place of black ones. She was agitated about those who were beginning to wear colorful prints "instead of the plain modest dress" and who added insult to injury by styling their hair high, while setting the covering half-way back on their heads. She knew that some had even worn a watch on the wrist.

     In her inner agony of spirit, she asked, "Where is our church going to end at? Will there be a sharp turn that we will have to take or will the church keep going, hoping that some day these poor souls will wake up? Will there be such a church as we so-called Dunkard Brethren people in twenty years from now? It makes me wonder."

     Some of my readers will be inclined to smile smugly at the quaint, old-fash-

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ioned things regarded as visible symbols of holiness by good people. I do not share that feeling at all. I find myself filled with compassion because I have been associated all of my life with people who have projected other things as symbols of that same quality.

     The word of God enjoins modesty in apparel, but it was uninspired men who decided one was a better person if he wore black shoes rather than white, or squinted at the sun or looked at a pocket watch rather than one strapped about his wrist. The Dunkard Brethren are right to urge modesty but they are wrong in thinking it can be obtained by arbitrary selections bound upon others by human dogma. These things are not indicative of Christian discipline but of party subservience, and they are enforceable only so long as men check in their intellects and abdicate their right to think or question.

     Certainly one can be pure in heart if he has lapels on his coat. He can also be immoral in a coat without lapels. To paraphrase the scripture and take some liberty with it, "Neither a creased gray hat availeth anything, nor a plain flat black one, but faith which works by love." But let those who read this paper not look with disdain upon our friends in other groups for we share the same hangups and often judge the worthiness of others before God by their conformity unto us and our traditions.