16 Church Discipline

Church Discipline: The Missing Mark1 R. Albert Mohler, Jr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is President What is pure is corrupted much more quickly Evangelicals have long recognized disci- and Professor of Christian Theology at than what is corrupt is purified. pline as the “third mark” of the authentic The Southern Baptist Theological Semi- —John Cassian (A.D. 360-435) church.2 Authentic biblical discipline is nary. He is the author of numerous not an elective, but a necessary and inte- scholarly articles and has edited and gral mark of authentic Christianity. The decline of church discipline is perhaps contributed to important volumes on How did this happen? How could the the most visible failure of the contempo- theology and culture. Dr. Mohler’s writ- church so quickly and pervasively aban- rary church. No longer concerned with ing is regularly featured in World maga- don one of its most essential functions and maintaining purity of confession or life- zine and Religion News Service. responsibilities? The answer is found in style, the contemporary church sees itself developments both internal and external as a voluntary association of autonomous to the church. members, with minimal moral account- Put simply, the abandonment of church ability to God, much less to each other. discipline is linked to American Chris- The absence of church discipline is no tianity’s creeping accommodation to longer remarkable—it is generally not American culture. As the twentieth cen- even noticed. Regulative and restorative tury began, this accommodation became church discipline is, to many church mem- increasingly evident as the church acqui- bers, no longer a meaningful category, or esced to a culture of moral individualism. even a memory. The present generation Though the nineteenth century was not of both ministers and church members is a golden era for American evangelicals, virtually without experience of biblical the century did see the consolidation of church discipline. evangelical theology and church patterns. As a matter of fact, most Christians Manuals of church discipline and congre- introduced to the biblical teaching con- gational records indicate that discipline cerning church discipline confront the was regularly applied. Protestant congre- issue of church discipline as an idea they gations exercised discipline as a necessary have never before encountered. At first and natural ministry to the members of hearing, the issue seems as antiquarian the church, and as a means of protecting and foreign as the Spanish Inquisition and the doctrinal and moral integrity of the the Salem witch trials. Their only acquain- congregation. tance with the disciplinary ministry of the As ardent congregationalists, the Bap- church is often a literary invention such tists left a particularly instructive record as The Scarlet Letter. of nineteenth-century discipline. Histo- And yet, without a recovery of func- rian Gregory A. Wills aptly commented, tional church discipline—firmly estab- “To an antebellum Baptist, a church with- lished upon the principles revealed in the out discipline would hardly have counted Bible—the church will continue its slide as a church.”3 Churches held regular “Days into moral dissolution and relativism. of Discipline” when the congregation 16 would gather to heal breaches of fellow- of the early twentieth century—an era of ship, admonish wayward members, “progressive” thought and moral liberal- rebuke the obstinate, and, if necessary, ization. By the 1960s, only a minority of excommunicate those who resisted disci- churches even pretended to practice regu- pline. In so doing, congregations under- lative church discipline. Significantly, stood themselves to be following a biblical confessional accountability and moral pattern laid down by Christ and the discipline were generally abandoned apostles for the protection and correction together. of disciples. The theological category of sin has been No sphere of life was considered out- replaced, in many circles, with the psy- side the congregation’s accountability. chological concept of therapy. As Philip Members were to conduct their lives Reiff has argued, the “Triumph of the and witness in harmony with the Bible Therapeutic” is now a fixture of modern and with established moral principles. American culture.4 Church members may Depending on the denominational polity, make poor choices, fail to live up to the discipline was codified in church cov- expectations of an oppressive culture, or enants, books of discipline, congregational be inadequately self-actualized—but they manuals, and confessions of faith. Disci- no longer sin. pline covered both doctrine and conduct. Individuals now claim an enormous Members were disciplined for behavior zone of personal privacy and moral that violated biblical principles or congre- autonomy. The congregation—redefined gational covenants, but also for violations as a mere voluntary association—has no of doctrine and belief. Members were right to intrude into this space. Many con- considered to be under the authority of gregations have forfeited any responsibil- the congregation and accountable to ity to confront even the most public sins each other. of their members. Consumed with prag- By the turn of the century, however, matic methods of church growth and con- church discipline was already on the gregational engineering, most churches decline. In the wake of the Enlightenment, leave moral matters to the domain of the criticism of the Bible and of the doctrines individual conscience. of evangelical orthodoxy was widespread. As Thomas Oden notes, the confession Even the most conservative denomina- of sin is now passé and hopelessly out- tions began to show evidence of decreased dated to many minds. attention to theological orthodoxy. At the same time, the larger culture moved Naturalistic reductionism has invited us to reduce alleged indi- toward the adoption of autonomous vidual sins to social influences for moral individualism. The result of these which individuals are not respon- internal and external developments was sible. Narcissistic hedonism has demeaned any talk of sin or confes- the abandonment of church discipline sion as ungratifying and dysfunc- as ever larger portions of the church tional. Autonomous individualism member’s life were considered off-limits has divorced sin from a caring community. Absolute relativism has to the congregation. regarded moral values as so ambigu- This great shift in church life followed ous that there is no measuring rod against which to assess anything as the tremendous cultural transformations sin. Thus modernity, which is char- 17 acterized by the confluence of these tion.” Liberal Protestantism has lost any four ideological streams, has pre- sumed to do away with confession, moral credibility in the sexual sphere. and has in fact made confession an Homosexuality is not condemned, even embarrassment to the accommodat- though it is clearly condemned in the ing church of modernity.5 Bible. To the contrary, homosexuals get a special caucus at the denominational The very notion of shame has been dis- assembly and their own publications and carded by a generation for which shame special rights. is an unnecessary and repressive hin- Evangelicals, though still claiming drance to personal fulfillment. Even secu- adherence to biblical standards of moral- lar observers have noted the shame- ity, have overwhelmingly capitulated to lessness of modern culture. As James the divorce culture. Where are the evan- Twitchell comments: gelical congregations that hold married We have in the last generation tried couples accountable for maintaining their to push shame aside. The human- marriage vows? To a great extent, evan- potential and recovered-memory gelicals are just slightly behind liberal movements in psychology; the moral relativism of audience-driven Protestantism in accommodating to the Christianity; the penalty-free, all- divorce culture and accepting what ideas-are-equally-good transforma- amounts to “serial monogamy”—faithful- tion in higher education; the rise of no-fault behavior before the law; the ness to one marital partner at a time. This, often outrageous distortions in the too, has been noted by secular observers. telling of history so that certain groups can feel better about them- David Blankenhorn of the Institute for selves; and the “I’m shame-free, but American Values remarked that “over the you should be ashamed of yourself” past three decades, many religious lead- tone of political discourse are just some of the instances wherein this ers . have largely abandoned marriage can be seen.6 as a vital area of religious attention, essentially handing the entire matter over Twitchell sees the Christian church aid- to opinion leaders and divorce lawyers in ing and abetting this moral transforma- the secular society. Some members of the tion and abandonment of shame—which clergy seem to have lost interest in defend- is, after all, a natural product of sinful be- ing and strengthening marriage. Others havior. “Looking at the Christian Church report that they worry about offending today, you can only see a dim pentimento members of their congregations who are of what was once painted in the boldest divorced or unmarried.”8 of colors. Christianity has simply lost it. Tied to this worry about offending It no longer articulates the ideal. Sex is on church members is the rise of the “rights the loose. Shame days are over. The Devil culture,” which understands society only has absconded with sin.”7 As Twitchell in terms of individual rights rather than laments, “Go and sin no more” has been moral responsibility. Mary Ann Glendon replaced with “Judge not lest you be of the Harvard Law School documents the judged.” substitution of “rights talk” for moral dis- Demonstration of this moral abandon- course.9 Unable or unwilling to deal with ment is seen in mainline Protestantism’s moral categories, modern men and surrender to an ethic of sexual “libera- women resort to the only moral language 18 they know and understand—the unem- through Moses: “Be sure to keep the com- barrassed claim to “rights” that society mands of the LORD your God and the has no authority to limit or deny.

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