1 * WHAT IS A "FREE CHURCH"?*

There are two misunderstandings of the church which are very widely encountered today, misunderstandings which confuse almost ©very discussion of the church, her discipline and Indiscipline. Indeed, to raise the very question of church discipline in some circles Is to invite the charge that one represents the "sect-type" or favors the "sectarian

Protestant" view of the alternatives, Hear the way in which Professor

Max Weber defined the alternative church t$?pe8i

"The church is an institution, a sort of establishment

of faith ... for the saving of the soul of the individual.

The individual is born into it, and is dependent upon it

because of the dispensing power of Its office and position.

In contrast, a sect is a voluntary association of individuals

qualified solely by religious traits, in which the individual

freely decides to become a member and the group freely de­

cides whether to accept him or not."*

We are reminded immediately of the typology which Weber*s colleague,

Professor Ernst Tree Its eh t popularized in The Social Teaching.of the.

Christian Churches.

*The first of five addresses on this general theme» delivered as the H#ff Lectures at Bethany Theologies! Seminary, Lombard, Illinois , October 15-17, 196 3, by Dr. Franklin H. Littell, Professor at Chicago Theological Seminary. —2

The "church type" represents a kind of continuum of Christ and culture, in which "the church" and "the world" speak the same language. There is no discontinuity of social and educational and religious and polit­ ical values. In effect, the church has consecrated the high places and now serves as one of the mainstays of society. As the German Christian

(DC) statement of faith put it, in Hitler*s late empires

"The basic aim of all religions and church politics

of the union must be the erection of the fifth pillar,

the church, however it may be named, beside the four

remaining pillars of the party, the government, the

military and industry. They are all only functions of

the nation (¥olk). From the nation they derive their

justificationj in their proper function they express

the life of the nation."2

True^ this was a perversion of the sacramental order and the authority of the teaching office| hut equally true, it was a perversion against which the concept of the "church" as the neo-Idealist Troeltsch understood it - offered no real safeguards*

The "church-type" wast moreover,'further weakened by an extension of Luther*s distinction between the "visible" and "invisible" church to a degree which the great Reformer - who castigated princes as well as peasants for misbehavior and betrayal of the Lord ©f the Church - would hardly have approved. For precisely this break between "visible" and

"invisible", bridged over in a way which Luther understood as almost sacramental, was used in the Third Reich by Confessional Conservatives -3

to justify their failure to sustain the Barmen Confession (193*0 against

Nazi heathenism,

Troeltsch conceived the "sect-type" as a kind of fortress, out of

communication with the world, seeking its own purity of life at the

sacrifice of responsibility in the social order. The "sect" took the

"counsels of perfection" seriously as a program of life, a Lex Christi,

to replace the Mosaic code of an earlier covenant. Repudiating the

Natural Law philosophy of the high Middle Ages, and out of sorts with

the territorial establishments with their lay bishops, the "sect" seemed

to represent a new type of monasticism - in the world, but not of it.

In addition, Troeltsch had a "third type" which he scarcely

elaborated in detail, perceiving only that an emancipated individual

like Sebastian Franck - to whom the Christian church was only an inter­

national club of religious p%o pals - represented a type which was en

the increase in the modern age, The question may fairly be asked whether, with the widespread confusion of natural freedom and Christian liberty,

the real choice today lies between religious community of any kind and

the spiritualizing thrust of type three. There is a kind of "non-church

religions" abroad in the land today, not unlike that of Franck or Bunderlin

or Caspar Schwenckfeld. Schwenckfeld, in his famous exchange with Pilgram

Marpeck and the Anabaptist elders, opposed all outward forms and disciplines,

camps and partisanships* He considered infant baptism, though non-Biblical,

a matter of indifference and counted himself a member of none of the dif­

ferent contending groups. The Anabaptists replied that he wouldn't have been satisfied with the Christian church when Christ himself was on earth

leading itj3 they could not resist the plain duty to gather a believing -if

people and institute Mew Testament ordinances in the congregation.

It is worth delaying for a moment with Type Three, for there has recently been a good deal of talk in some circles about "the world come of age", about our supposedly "post-Christian era," about religion without the burden of institutionalism. It would be wrong to identify Dietrich

Bonhoeffer*s prophetic criticism of organized religion, accompanied by his hearty affirmation of God's providence for the world, with such a movement as the "Non-church Religion" of post-war Japan. Bonhoeffer*s concern remained inearnational even after he was finally disappointed by the apostasy of the German churches. His emphasis was like Daniel Jenkins* in his recent book Beyond Religion, "...to show how this attempt to cut religion down to size at the very place where it becomes most sure of itself provides the only reliable basis for the criticism of the self-righteousness, with its allied conservatism, displayed by institutions bearing a Christian label, which is one of the chief hindrances to the free movement of the Spirit in our own time."**

That "faith lies beyond religion" and that outward conformity may mask an inward unbelief are, after ail, evangelical perdeptions which our fathers well understood.

This perception is, however, a fundamentally different thing from the resolute rejection of all the bonds and disciplines of Christian community. Prophetic criticism is jf different from emancipation. The

Spiritualizes (Splritualisten), a type of the Left Wing of the Reformation so carefully distinguished from the Anabaptists by Troeltsch - in reliance upon the original research of Dr. Alfred Hegler of Tubingen,5 resist church discipline based on a voluntary covenant just as vigorously as they reject the meddling of secular authorities in the things of the faith. —5

They were forerunners of that radical individualism, that privatized religion, that personal "spirituality" - so neglect ful of the universal

Lordship of Jesus Christ - which plagues our undisciplined congregations today. Peter Taylor Forsyth has written most perceptively of that un­ buttoned condition which the modern spirit professes to find to congenial,

"The idea of discipline vanished from church life; and an extravagant idea of personal liberty, imported from the natural democracy, took the first place, vacated by the obedience of faith."

He then goes on to discuss how the notion that the church "exists to be an era of unqualified theological liberty, and a cave of all the religious winds, is hardly worth discussing, as it does not seem to be put forward by any who are familiar with the genius of the gospel, the nature of a church, or the history of our churches. Unqualified religious liberty is but love in a mist, and it ends in the conviction of ghosts, the energy of eccentrics, the anarchy of egoists,"$

At another place we shall consider the way in which Religious Liberty is falsely conceived and misapplied when the discussion of It begins with political freedom and the nature of the state, rather than with appreciation of the nature of high religion. At this point it is only pertinent to indicate how a faulty notion of individual freedom, brought over into the church from the sphere of political liberty, dis­ solves any meaningful understanding of the church or the nature of Christian witness. The liberty of a Christian man is obedience to the yoke of Christ, the Head of the Church, and submission to the Governor and Guide of the Christian peoples God the Holy Spirit. A spirit with­ out a body is a ghost. The Biblical view of personality is an animated body and not (as in Greek thought) an incarnated spirit,7 Christians cannot, therefore, discuss "education" and "witness" and "proclamation" and "love" apart from the history of the community called to bear the Kama and obey God's will. -6

What we are saying is that all questions of the nature of the spiritual life, of morals and ethics, of personal and professional morality, cannot be brought into focus for Christians apart from the understanding of the Church and her work and witness. Thirty years ago Professor

William Adams Brown, in one of his still vital books, warned of the spirit­ ualizing thrust which makes religion without roots or history. He was commenting on John Dewey's A Common Faith (193H)j

"Only recently a book has appeared by a well-known American philosopher in which the thesis is main­ tained that institutional religion in all its forms is negligible, not to say deleterious. What matters is religion, and the only thing that matters, the writer says in effect, is not what we believe or how we worship in detail, but the sincerity and idealism which we carry into what­ ever we do. In saying this he is expressing a conviction which is shared by many of our con­ temporaries. Nevertheless with full recognition of all that is true in Professor Dewey's criticism of the faults of the church, I believe that in his central thesis he is wrong and that those who follow him in hid indifference to the symbols and Institutions of historic religion are destined to a painful disillusionment."®

Some of us have seen the "sincerity" and "idealism" of emancipated religion end in the fanaticism of open apostasy; in Nazism and Communism and in other modern creeds it has flowed out into the sandy wastelands of a purely individual "spirituality". The objective tests of the faith are important! And our brethren who have passed through the purifying fires of the church struggle admonish us also, that the verbalization of pulpiteers and conference rooms is utterly scandalous unless it is made a matter of disciplined witness.

The principle which we have been enunciating, that Christian teach­ ings are quite fruitless apart from a community of witness to carry them, -7

has been fully articulated in recent years by social psychologists and students of the sociology of knowledge. If we hesitate to hear the tradition in this respect, perhaps the "unbaptized" evidence of the social sciences will be persuasive. Professor J, L. Moreno, who pioneered in these fields forty years ago, pointed out in numerous studies that social experience ia a dimension of personality - not one expression of it. Wrote

Moreno, in language which sounds like some of the new theologians, "the principle underlying all forms of inter-personal and social experience is

Begegnung (the encounter)". Discussing the dependence of each person upon psycho-social networks, he concluded, "a man dies when his social atom exes ,

For the Christian, the "social atom" is the church. It is astonish­ ing to reflect upon the degree to which our churches are still under the impress of the idealistic philosophies of the 19th century, and still in­ fatuated irith the notion of the worth of disembodied ideas, while scholars in the social sciences have come to repudiate the notion that "values" have any significance whatever apart from a community of discipline.

Karl Mannheim put it this way: "In every concept, in every con­ crete meaning, there is contained a crystallization of the experiences of a certain group."^ He went on to discuss the way in which ideas or values reflect group consciousness and identity, and he set up certain sociological rules governing the acquisition and retention of learning. 11 Kurt Lewin, in a famous essay on "Conduct, Knowledge, and Acceptance of Hew values," drew up his own list of rules governing the learning process. 12 Both

Mannheim and Lewin agree with Moreno's premise, that a person is only intelligible in his social matrix and that his whole being is developed and changed only in that context. In the language of theology, there is neither being nor becomeing without life in the church, without use of the means of grace, apart from the life of the Spirit whose residence is in the com­ munity of brethren.

To give the matter pointed formulation, "character building", in­ struction in "values", and the like, are fruitless and feckless apart from the life of renewal in the church. The implications of this truth for

Sunday School and adult education curricula should be obvious to all but those most resolutely committed to the spinning of words,

Cne of the contributions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyr, is precisely at this point. He had a permanent aversion to what he called 13 the "phraseological" approach to religion. In the midst of the fight with Nazism he urged the rediscovery of the church and her integrity of witness, and tried to get the ecumenical conference at Fano (193*0 to redefine "heresy" in modem terms. Later he proposed that a systematic theology be written which begins with the doctrine of the church, rather than in the traditional way with the doctrine of God, in order to document what actually happens in our spiritual life. It is not amiss to date the modem "rediscovery of the church" with Bonhoeffer As Sanctorum Comraunio,

m in • mi • i in II i umi i • • n nim* just as the modern rediscovery of the Bible is commonly dated with Karl

Barth*s The Epistle to the Romans (1919, 1923). Even though he later, in distress with the fortress mentality which seemed to corrupt even the

Confessing Church and its leadership, used the most radical language about the church's dialogue with the world, Bonhoeffer sealed with his own life his conviction that religious teachings - however high level, and religious principles - however finely drawn - have no meaning until they become of the earth, earthy, of the flesh, fleshly. Our fathers knew this, John Wesley said that to win men to a religious profession without relating them to a community of discipline was "but to breed children for the Murderer". And two hundred years before him, the pioneers of the Free Churches bore scandal, oppression and death because they insisted that the Great Reformation principles of lay witness, loyalty to Biblical understandings of man and history, and personal ap­ propriation of the gift of faith, should not only be professed with the lips but witnessed in a style of life appropriate to those who bear the Name.

To return to Types One and Two of Troeitsch, it is marvelous to behold how this not uninteresting sociological typology has been used of late to darken counsel as to the nature and responsibility of Christians, Following Troeitsch, American writers have portrayed for us how small "sects" have begun as disciplined brotherhoods of low social estate| then, as they have moved up the social and economic ladder and become institution­ alized, "they have relaxtd their standards of discipline, accomodated to the spirit of the times, and become "churches". It is astonishing to think that just as some Europeans have been accustomed to define "church" in terms of legal privilege and status, some Americans should define "church" in terms of social establishment. By this rule, as soon as a religious movement abandons covenant, pilgrimage and separation, and settles for a status as two-dimensional culture-religion, It Is worthy of being called "church". There lingers the'memory that it was precisely this promiscuous and uninteresting assembly which the Lord will spew out of his mouth (Rev. 3iI6).

One oignt think that the definition of "church1' should be a Biblical-theological, rather than a sociological, enterprise. Surely, there -10

Is something faulty in a set of definitions by virtu® of which the Early

Church was a "sect", the Constantinian use of religion a "church"* the

"magisterial Reformation" a "church" because It retained the medieval

parish system - but the radical Reformation a "sect" because it insisted.

on voluntaryism, and by which today restitution movements can start as

"sects" and have only to "go over to the world" (as our fathers would

have.put it) to become "churches"! In truth, as illuminating as the

Troeltschian typology Is for understanding the development of certain

religious movements, for coming t© a better grasp of "church" in the sub*

stantive sense It Is worse than useless. Both the "church-type" and the

"sect-type" are static patterns representing basic misunderstandings of

the church.

When we turn to the Bible to find out how "church" shall be con­

ceived in her mission In the world, we find that "church" is defined In

motion, in mission, in functions - not as pattern.

Fortress Continuum Ecclesia Diaspora "sect-type" "church-type" "gathering up" "scattering" 1. pattern (static) 1. function, mission 2. no dialogue 2. eschatology ai

.The proclamation, whether verbalized or communicated in another way, involves both "gathering up" and "scattering" functions. That is, the elect are called out and disciplined by the Spirit | - but not for their own sake* Their mission is not to please themselves, but to perform God's will for the world - especially in witness and in service (diakenia). On the on® hand, the Christians are a "holy nation", a "royal priesthood", a "city set on a hill", a light which is not set under a bushel - the meek, the peacemakers, the pure in heart. On the other hand, they are sent forth, beyond the tribes of Israel, to preach the gospel to every creature; they function as leaven - which penetrates the whole lump to give it life, as salt - which preserves the rebellious order fro® destruction, as a grain of mustard seed - which fills the heavens. These two emphases must both be maintained. If the "gathering up" function is stressed exclusively, the church may become a fortress, ox* even a social fossil. If the "scattering" function Is stressed alone, the church may become a continuum of pale culture-religion.

The only question for Christians is to know who they are, and where they are, and to what they are called, to know which of these two emphases shall be given priority. For groups which have wintered through a long period of outward pressures balanced by inward discipline, perhaps re­ inforced by a foreign, language cultus, the priority may be the scattering, the penetration of unbaptized centers of human existence. For movements which have flattened out, which have devoted theisselves for long years to the dialogue with the world, the priority may be the "gathering up", the recovery of discipline, the raising up of a new generation of "salty Christians", -12

My own denomination abandoned structures of discipline over fifty years ago, and is now in most respects indistinguishable from the land* scape of middle class propriety? it must learn, particularly with the moment of truth thrust upon it by the race issue, the standards of thought and behavior appropriate to a Christian people - or it will blend into the background and die. In its death it may be very "successful" - as the world counts success --in the role of sanctifier of the high places of our civilization| but, In the Pauline sense» it,will die. If this should happen,, it will not be any more of a "church" because it took on protective coloration and sacrificed the claims of Christiaa diseipleshipf Where are the Brethren is this processw today? That is the question you must settle, and a friendly "out-grouper"' can suggest the problem but not presume to giv© the answer.

It should be evident by now that Troeltseh*s "church-type" and "sect-type" are both misconceptions of the church. The concept of the church must begin with Biblical understandings of the Word and the com­ munity Informed and shaped by it. The* question of what Is "church" and what is "sect" is a Biblical-theological priority. It isuseful to note that as the ecumenical discussion has widened and deepened in recent years, and as the implications of the wholesale apostasy of communicants of so- callad "churches" have begun to sink in# many leaders and scholars of the Eruopean establishments are just as dissatisfied with former definitions as we are. For example, Br* Kurt Hqtten* the leading authority In Germany on sect movements, has In his. writings carefully distinguished between "free church" and "sect".111 -13

The authentic mark of a sect is not sociological, but theological! I.e., a "sect" is a religious body which adds some special revelation to that which is revealed in Christ Jesus. "Christua und" Is the mark of

the sect,^5 and this special revelation is,presented in the form of an exclusive possession which denies the reality of the universal church.

The "sect" thus adds to the gospel some later secret insightt and It also. rejects the dialogue with fellow-Christians - with all those an every- generation and in every place who have borne the name of the Lord Jesus. But we Free Church men confess the faith which the church confesses* and gladly honor all "brethren." and "Christians" regardless of party name!

What then are the authentic signs of the "Free Church", if we have no longer simply to swallow the opprobrium of not enjoying the legal and/or social privileges by which established churches have set such great store in the $mt2 To answer this query, we follow- the line of distinction which Professor George Williams presses in the Introduction16 to his massive work, The Radical Reformation. He has suggested that the rediscovery of the primary sources of the Anabaptist aoveasnt is as revolutionary'for the think-. ing of informed church historians as are the Bead Sea Scrolls for New Testa­ ment scholarship.

It ha© now beeo« possible to distinguish in the breakup of Latin Christendom in the sixteenth century, two main types of Reformation: 1) the "magisterial -Reformation»H which achieved a measure of doctrinal and sacramental purification, but held to the medieval territorial view of Christendom; 2) the'"radical Reformation," which pursued a purification of church order and discipline as well, as doctrinal and cultic clarification. In if own writings, I have cone to distinguish between "the Church of the- -!«•

Beformers" and "the Church of the Restitution," The point is the same*

.we must clearly distinguish twcjmain. directions in the sixteenth, century

Reformation and subsequent Protestantism.

Professor Robert Frieomann has distinguished the position of the

Biblical Anabaptists, who sought to restore the genius and style of the

Early Church, from the individualism and mysticism of those later pietists

who ** believing the outward ecclesiastical forms to be a matter of In­

difference - retained a "double membership" within the established Protes­

tant churches.^7 And one of the notable contributions of Professor

Durabaugh's study of the origins of the Brethren was carefully to distinguish

between the pietists who submitted and the Separatists who pressed for a

to thorough going Mew Testament restitution* . The latter stood in the line of the pioneer Free Church men, just as did the American liethodlsts -when they broke away from the fellowship of the Anglican communion. Many of those who, in a land which .enjoys Religious Liberty, function as Free

Churches ar@# of course, quite unaware of the full logic of their position - just as they appreciate but vaguely the high price which was once paid for the practice of a voluntary covenant of believers, and perceive but dimly that liberty will not long endure unless supported by voluntary commitment. The restitutionists were those who held that the great church had fallen when it abandoned the way of suffering witness of the Mew Testament and Early Church and accepted the privileges of state sponsorship and control In the "Constantinian era". They repudiated the "marks of the fall": union of church and state, warring among Christians, hierarchial rule and lay docility, automatic church membership (via infant baptism), abandonment of church discipline and Mew Test assent church order. They -15 undertook to .restore a Christian style of life uniformed by Biblical standards. They Included in the fall, In their periodization of church history, not only the Latin and Greek establishments but also those

Reformation churches that continued to live as part of a legally enforced

"Christendom.". They saw that good .government did not coerce in religious natters-} more fundamental-, however: they knew that high religion was heartfelt and voluntary.

Being ©issionary-ainded, and stressing voluntaryism, the Free

Church men usually repudiated infant baptism and accented believers* baptism. By this act the.converted man entered the covenant, became sub­ ject to the disciplinary standards, and pledged his life to the general ministry shared by all the oaptized.

Being offended by the warring among Christians, and the savage way in which Christianity was corrupted to serve the purposes of dynastic ambition and military conquest, they took the Sermon on the Mount for a rule of life. The oath, which supported the whole feudal military ordert was uascriptual; they rejected it. (The whole agonizing question of the

FShrereid, which signalized the collapse of religious virtue and civil courage among most of the baptized during the Third Reich, lies outside their ken.) They rejected military service and the feudal cult of honor.

They found in the Acts of the Apostles reasonably specific in­ structions as to how Christian! conducted their affairs ia the selection of deacons, elders, missioners, teachers, and others entrusted according to their gifts with special church-offices. Accenting the general ministry, they kept authority and decisions as much as possible at the level where ordinary members could participate in decision-making. Theirs was a "lay -16 apostolate" and a "group ministry" - long before these became acceptable concepts in Christendom. It has sometimes been said of these pioneer Free Church men that they had no ministry, no sound respect for the Amt (church office). A better way to put it would be to say that they had no laity - at least none of the traditional sorts docile, silent and obedient to their religious superiors,

Stressing the ministry of the whole believing people, the men of the Free Churches restored the practice of church discipline, Mo community can exist without structure, order and discipline. As they repudiated the governance ofj.• princes and town councils In the area where Christ alone is

King, they found in Matthew 18:15-19 sufficient authority and guidance as to how the wandering were to be restored, the- falling brought upright» and the obdurate disfellowshipped If they refused to hear the church. Strictly speaking, they did not excommunicate* As Ifenno Simons put it,

"Wherefore, brethren, understand correctly, no one Is excommunicated or expelled by us from the communion of the brethrent but those who have already separated and expelled themselves from Christian ' ' .m either by false doctrine or by. improper conduct*"^ The one who breaks away .excommunicates himself, and the church - if un­ successful in restoring him to- his promises - simply declares what has occurred. The alternative to a politically imposed order in the church Is not* for the faithful, unrestrained Individual freedom; it is voluntary

disclplines soundly maintained. At a time when violent and murderous men are disgracing the name of Christianity, It is certainly timely to recall that our fathers used the Ban to rebuke public sin.

Finallyt they rejected the union of church and state which had obtained since Constantino and Justinian and Theodosius, and affirmed -17 voluntary membership, support and obedience. This did not derive from political views which we now call "democratic"§ but from a vision of high religion and Its implications. At first they simply begged leave to practice their religion undisturbed. But as their movement survived and attained self-couasciousness, they began to perceive that voluntary pro­ fession and practice produced far finer fruits than any mixed system of outward observance and inward faithlessness. They moved from petitioners of tolerance to champions of leligious Liberty, And in this w@ perceive one of their major contributions to human freedom at large.

Today, in the United States, the logic of the constitutional sit­ uation is that all religious bodies should function as Free Churches, It is no longer politically necessary§ or even desirable, that churches conceive their function to enforce a uniformity of cultic practice for the sake of the general society* There are still, of course, those who can only think of religion in that capacity which it served for so long: as the adhesive, the cement of the social order and political program and even military purpose. But in fact our churches have been freed for their true purposes to serve a higher calling, in obedience to their Lord, It may be that in this American exodus from old civilizations we can yet put behind us the style of Canaanite religion - where m CQiapel the gods to serve us and our way of life* and advance to serve the God of the Covenant - who called a people into being to serve him

If this is to be our future, however, it will be necessary for us to understand what a fundamental departure the Free Church represents from the previous history of man's religion * even from the history of much that goes by the name of "Protestantism", la spita of the popular demand, what this goodly land needs is not religious bodies that will revert to some style of establishment (social if not legal), but churches that will value -18

their liberty for what it was meant to be: a charter of obedience to God, without regard to the unbaptized purposes, for which cynical men seek to use religion. The Free Church affords the finest channel for the Christian witness, md such disciplined witness is the highest service which the True

Church can perform for the world. • ---

Footnotes

2. Cited in Beckraann, Joachim, ed,, Kirch.llches Jahrbuch, 1933-19UH (Gutersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag,' vftwi» p." Ws. 3. "Pilgraxa Marpeck und Schwenckfeld," in Heff# Christian, ed., | •" .chrlft & z,umr„iOQ.i„ Jahrigen Jub-illum der MennoniteB ojer 'fJu^~7^K^SZ~~T~' _-"• 725 (Ludwigshafen; Konf» 'der" sfadeutschcn •• Hennonxten, 1925), p. 150, «*• Jenkins, Laaiel, Beyond Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press * 1962), p. 16. 5. Hauler, Alfred* Geist und Schrlft.bei Sebastian Franck (Freiburg; J. C.; \» M6hr^* 1892), pp".""' 262-63 et*j | j|£ 8. Forsytht Peter Taylor, Faith» Freedom^ and th^Futmrs (New York 6 London: Kodder £ ' Stou^iton,'" nTd*'5'»'' pp." 2 ^,"7206, ?. cf. Robinson., H, Vheeiar, "Hebrew Psychology"* in Psake, A. S.f ad,f ,l s —,-L-l-. ^- „.:',1L-.. .:.r:.- „..:' J . ' ** '' ^ Clarendon Press, 1925). 8. •'-:• . ! ' _*""_ uircn 1 Catholic, and Protestant (Mew York £ London:'' Charles ^cribner's Sons,"" 193,5j",'"p?. ix-x, 3. Moreno, J, L, , ed., The Socionetry TBeader (Glencoe, 111; Free Press, I960), "pp.'W§'%&,' 10. Mannhein, Karl, Ideology and Utopia (few York: Harcourt, Brace § Co., 1936), p. 22. 11. Ibid.. pp.' 287-60. 12. iSwin, Kurt, Resolyin^ ,'/!4 Conflicts, (New York: Harper 6 Bros., 1948), pp. 87-66. 1 13. . On Bonhoeffer, sec "Bonhoeffer s Church, Worldt and History," in. .,- Marty, Martin E*, ed,, The,Place_ of Bonhoeffer (Mew York2 Association Press, 1962Y+ pp.""27-VTY " $** Hutten, Kurt, .Die GK...... -.welt &s, Seictierers (Hamburg! , rr 1 Fur^e-Veria£t''l9~57 y, pp'. isf j cf,' also Kunz, Uirich, .Viela.. ' Glieder - Einhe.it (S tutt gart 1 Que u-¥e r lag , 1953), Pre £&®ST"' 15. cf, B lanttV"'fri!tz7Tpns slnd Sekten?" - reprint from Per FQlirerdicnst (Zurich 1 2wiylj|veriagt n.d,)t p. U. 16. Williams, George Huntston, The Fad 1 cal Fc,-'. - - at i on. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press$ 1362). V 17. rviedirttivr., Hobert, Hennonltc Fiaty Ti-rough the Centuries (Gvs efu Indiana j Mennonite Historical Society, 19*43). 18* • Dumbaugb,. • Donald F,., European Origins of the Brethren (Elgin 1 111. 2 . Brethren Press, -ISs'lT, ""'"'' ' ' """" *m'""" ' " 'amm^aamM 19, ffennp Simons, The Complete,, Writings „,pf »•,«. t Scott dale 9 Pa. I • "'^"Ikira'icl1" Press, 1356), p. 413, II - ips CASE FOB RELIGIOUS UBBRTT

Of all the issues now subject to public dispute in our society, none has more complexity than the maze of questions aroused by different under­ standings of what constitutes "free exercise" and "the establishment of religion" within the meaning of the First Amendment to the Federal Con­ stitution. Originally restricting only the power of the national govern­ ment, for there were established churches in three of the original thirteen states until 1817, 1S19 and 1833, these terms of reference are now applied to actions of state and municipal governments by virtue of the "due process of law11 clause of the Fourteenth Amendment* Those who would reduce the whole discussion tsgr a strict construction, to eliminate all teroad-guaged interpretation of the Constitution, would do well to remember that the very

Amendment - 14th Amendment - which now secures Americans in their liberties

- at whatever level threatened - is the one upon which the entire corporate structure of our ecoito^r rests. Certainly the fiction by which business corporations have come Into existence in the Waited States as "legal persons" is Just as free an interpretation of what the "Founding Fathers" intended as is the free reading by which the Bill of Rights has been applied in a more protective sense than originally intended. Just as certainly, it is in Hue with American tradition that the rights of religious minorities should be jealously protected as that Republic Steel and A.T. & T. should enjoy a legal status in our society which they could never have under the

Code Hapoleon!

nevertheless, the matter of church-state relations has become a focus of heated debate in recent years - a debate which discloses all too clearly that neither t&e American people nor their courts of law are agreed as to the practical meaning of the liberty which is secured ia onr basic charter. In spite of the extreme sensitivity of the race Issue, there are today more Issues before the federal courts involving the relations of church and state than on racial justice. And we are closer to consensus as a people on the race issue than in that thorny area which we shaH now discuss - an area in which, incidentally, most of the offenses are com­ mitted by Protestants rather than Catholics or Jews. A momenta reflec­ tion will help us to see why the problem Is so difficult. After aU, racism is a comparatively new evil in the governance of human affairs | Indeed, there is considerable reason for thinking It uniquely a failure of modern West European civilisation.2 But the abuse and misuse of religion is as old as government itself. It is Religious liberty Itself which is new. As a matter of fact, it was first articulated as a matter of goveraiteatal policy by the Great Bill of Religious freedom in Virginia less than two hundred years ago. This was the first time in human history that a representative government, possessing the constitutional authority to maintain an established church, deliberately separated the political covenant from the religious covenants.

Toleration had, t© be sure, been practiced before that time. The first act signed by William the Silent, when he became StaatnaXter in the Low Countries, was to guarantee that subjects should remain undisturbed in their religious beliefs. In 1689 the British sovereign established a similar charitable grant for dissenters from the (BinFeh ©f B&gland - which did not alter the fact, however, that until the 1870's no one but a member of that cowunioa could take a degree at Cambridge or Oxford. Toleration was, after all, a wise and pragmatic public policy when a government could no longer successfully use religions conformity to hold things together. Religious Liberty Is a far different thing from toleration, however, and -* it stems from different premises. Toleration is not the opposite of persecution, but the other side of the coin. Religious Liberty, by con­ trast, is something new - and still comparatively rare - in human experience.

What was accomplished by the Virginia Bill, and by the First Amendment which followed on It, waa the separation of the political from the religions covenants. This had been anticipated, among other places, in the Mayflower

Compact. The Pilgrim Fathers, aa separatists, had learned to make the necessary distinction between the political and the religious spheres; but when the intense pressures came - starvation and disease, war with the

familiar ways of doing things. The distinction between the two covenants was anticipated to© in the gradual loosening of political privilege which occurred in Massachusetts Bay Colony with the Great Awakening* 0* 0. Goenfs splendid new study3 has pointed out that nearly one hundred Baptist congre­ gations ©wed their rise in Hew Khgland to the Great Awakening, and that the dissolution ©f the Standing Order was already well advanced before the Unitarian schism (with the Dedham Case, 1819) and the coming ©f the Catholic immigrants made the establishment impossible to ssaintain. But both Mass­ achusetts and Connecticut first attempted a pluralistic Protestant establish­ ment, with members ©f approved groups enjoying political liberty, befere they reluctantly abandoned the effort t© maintain a Christian cosmonwealth at law. It ia interesting to note that the dynamic tension which helped to make Jonathon .Edwards'1 theological contribution so massive derived in good part from his effort ©n the one hand t© &m£m& the claime ©f the fathers* establishment of a state church and on the other hand from his appreciation of the v©luntaryistl© implications ©f the revival ©f religion in the Great Awakening. As we have come to prize religious liberty in America, historians ha#e attempted to trace its ©rigin as far back as possible. Roger Williams, rediscovered by Whig historians in the early nineteenth century, comes readily to mind. But R©ger Williams in his own time was the founder of a little nest of a few hundred families, affording but a minor footnote t© an American scene dominated by Massachusetts, Mew Xork, Virginia and South Carolina. Pennsylvania was a typical for a time. William Penn had caught the true vision of Religious Liberty, perceiving that that service only Is pleasing t© God which is voluntary and uncoerced. He founded Pennsylvania as a haven ©f refuge for victims of religious intolerance ©n the Continent. Through the Frankfurt Land Cempany he brought many from the Continent who had suffered from the wars of religion and longed for a land where they mi#it quietly exercise their faith with©ut the alternation ©f persecution and toleration. Thia they found in Pennsylvania fer a time, under the protection of the greatest private land holder of the age. But Peim's sons were um*orthy of him, and the Quakers in the legislature were unable t© withstand the pressures of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians ©f the western frontier, lot only was there later a reversion to the traditional way ©f treating the Indians, Including the dreadful massacre of the unarmed Indian

Chrt.Uan, of th. Moravia • ****** ** region also to th, traditional way ©f using religion fer political purposes. In the last generations before the Revolution, Pennsylvania also discriminated at law against Jews, Unitarians and Catholics.

It was in fact with the Great Awakening, the first ©f the long series ©f mass revivals and appeals t© voluntary profeasien ©f faith which have been the most iis^jertant shaping force in American church history, that mm ~5~ began to perceive an alternative to coerced and legislated conformity. It was with th© Great Bill of Religious Freedem in Virginia and the first

Amendment in the BiU ©f Rights that this perception ©f the nature of high religion became part of ©ur constitutional tradition. Above all, it was the achievement of the mm who introduced the **new methods** ©f mass •evangelism in the home missions ©f the nineteenth century that they made the Free Church a viable alternative t© establishment. They made Religious

Liberty workable, and in ©ur history - as distinct from the radical anti- clericalism which the European established churches have spawned in such amplitude - voluntaryism In religion and Religious Liberty cannot be discussed apart from each other.

The European pattern of coercion, relieved by the ©ccasl©nal gracious toleration ©f an enlightened government, has continued in some areas to the present day. It lingered long after the Reformation had, some say, brought liberty. In a 1720 exchange between the Imperial solicitor of the Holy

Roman Aspire and an official of the Wittgenstein chancery there is an in­ teresting phrase referring to wthe three tolerated Christian faiths established by the Peace ©f Westphalia*1.^ This was as far as moat s©-©alled Christian nations had coma, even two centuries after the beginning ©f the Reformation, and decades after the savagery of the wars ©f religion had ruined central

Europe and robbed France ©f its ablest classes. As late a*11855, the

Eisenach Conference of the Evangelical Church in Germany was still defining

Mseets*T as

^associations which in th© organization of their own teaching

office and order, or in separation from to© churehly govern­ ment and teaching office, find themselves in doctrine and confession in agreement with none ©f the churches offi­

cially recognized in Germany by the Peace of Westphalia

and afterwards and have separated from the confession of

faith of these churches."*

"Church*' thereby becomes a political definition, sided by the traditional escape hatch of a radical distinction between "visible** and invisible** church. The price of religious coercion in Europe, which continues in some measure in Sehleswlg as well as Spain, England as well as Czechoslovakia,

Is twofoldf 1) the intellectuals and proletariat have been lost to other

Ideologies or to nihilismi 2) militant anti-clericalism has become a perma­ nent force in religious politics, with a radical doctrine of separation of church and state part of the platforms of many popular parties. In

America, however, we have so far been spared this burden, chiefly thanks t© our developing tradition of Religious Liberty and voluntaryism.

The case for Religious Liberty begins, therefore, with the nature of the church and of true religious service - net with the nature of the state.

This is precisely the meaning of the arguments which went Into its recogni­ tion as a "right** of Virginians and later of all Americans. According to the "contract theory", man lived in a "state ©f nature" before the frame of government was established. There were certain ,5fnatural rights" which were antecedent to the frame of gcverfiment, and which eould not be surrend­ ered. Among these were freedom ©f speech, press, assembly and religion.

Later affirmed, in the Dartmouth College Case (1819)» was freedom ©f associa- ti©nfc> perform a public purpose without governmental let ©r leave. With the rise of Ideological views of the state, views which invest it with personality and existence apart from fallible human creatures, it has beccsie -7 fashionable for learned professors in some quarters to poke fun at the contract theory. How naive these men nest have been t© believe that men ever lived In such a state of nature! How romantic and non-historical is the notion that such a state of nature were paradise-like, when every

evidence from the history ©f th® race is that primitive man lived in the jungle and not in Men I But such arguments, surrounding th© organismic view of the state, demolish a stgtaw raan. The contract theory embodied not a chronological fact, but a logical truth. As such it was a Mythical" representation of a profound trutht that there are rights so fundamental t© a sound view ef man, his limitati©ns and prospects, that they ought not t© be u^pendent upon governmental limit ©r permission at all* Among these rights is th© free exercise of religion.

T© begin at the wrong point in the discussion, with th© nature of the state, distorts and ©©rrupts the whole argument. A% its worst, it leads to the notion that the purpes© of religion is to serve the statej therefore, those whc are ruthlessly consistent, whether they belong t© the sehoei ©f Tor<|Qemada or Luther, Hitler or Stalin, feel n© embarrassment in persecut­ ing dissenters. At a fflore moderate level, to start at the wrong point may result in a policy ©f toleration - which is a rerj different thing from Religious Liberty. A wise government may decide t© tolerate religious dissenters as a matter of expediency, even though it possesses the con­ stitutional right t© enfore© upon every citizen the ©©ligations of a state church. Thus the British House of Comaons ©r the French Chamber ©f Deputies could, if they s© desired, quite legally abandon l©ng years ©f liberality teward dissenting groups and individuals, and require attendance upon Anglican ©r Roman Catholic services, without moving beyond its constitutional authority. That t©lerati©n is practiced lay enlightened governments is net a sign of nobility ©f spirit but rather prudence of mind. Much ©f the discussion of the "privilege of tax exemption" enjeyed by religious bodies derives from a similar mistaken notion ©f the prierity ©f the state t© th© church, ©f the political to the religious Issue. "The state grants tax exemption to the churches" - s© the argument runs. "What then are the churches doing ©f political or s©eial value to justify this "con­ tribution* to their budgets?" As though that were the purpose ©f churches! Perhaps it is even argued that such tax exempticn should be eliminated as a special privilege t© which the churches are not entitled at all*

But the whole line of argument is wrong from the start* The tax exempt status ©f religious bodies is not a grant from an all-powerful state, for which s©m© quid pro ago must be tendered* (Me may properly hope, ©f c©urse, that a religious body will - among ©ther secondary and incidental benefits - make a genuine social contribttti©n* But it d©es n©t exist for that purpose* And its rights are antecedent t©, and not derivative from, the frame ©f government. Indeed, the very use of the word "state" rather than "government" may fee questioned* For "state"

(Staat) is a i^rtholcgical word, carrying in the age ©f ide©l©gie8 the nimbus of personality, of body - of an entity (gejtajjj) which has an existence separate from the structures and discussion ©f mere mm* Much t© be preferred is the term "gevernment", a word suitable to th© Comaon Law tradition. For "the government" Is not "It" but "theyw$ and "they" are men - creatures like us, fallible, mortal, capable ©f error, deserving ©f correction. And since "they" wield powers which are likely to be misused, -9 there are certain fundamental liberties which are based antecedent to their offices and placed constitutionally beyond their authority• Churches and synagogues, foundations and eleemosynary institutions, colleges and seminarii - all enjoy rights wMeh are not derived from governmental grant but from a decision which was made when ©ur government was established.

Ihat decision was not that an "absolute waH of separation" was to be erected between church and state, but that since the best kind of religious service is voluntary and uncoerced it is no business of government at all* It is for government neither to persecute nor to favor, neither to outlaw dissent nor t© support ©rthodoxy. Our fathers listed a new and magnificent experiment, something utterly unknown before in the history of mankind, the proposition that men might be good fellow-citizens even though they went to different churches.

Implicit in this experiment are fundamental insights as to th© nature ©f true religien - insights which only slowly made their way even in Christ­ endom, which won sufficient acceptance to be given constitutional status only because mm had demonstrated - especially in the Great Awakening - that voluntary religion was a possibl© alternative to the old state-church system. The insights are these (and none of them derives from a view of the "state")!

1* The best level of religious dev©ti©ns is voluntary and uncoerced;

2* Th© beet church is that which bears no political burden, and the best g©v©r*si©nt is that which carries no ecclesiastical weight|

3* The us© of religion for political purposes, however high-minded, is blasphemous?

4* Sound religion needs no governmental support t© accredit it; 5# Ken can be won t© membership, attendance and support fcy the merits of the case, and without punishment for non-observance* -10

Much ©f th© confusion which now obtains in the area of church-state relations is due to the fact that these insights, which derive from a certain view of th© church, have been lost sight of* Many well-meaning people are starting at the wrong end of the discussion* Some, especially among the intellectuals, are starting with th© presupposition that the best state is a secular state - and rerj often their language ©f radical separation rings with the same pitch as the Nazi administration in the

Warthegau or the (ksmiaanlst administration in the DDR. Ms Is certainly not a deliberate personal hostility tc religion, in most cases; but anti- clericalism has become part ©f the air we breathe in the modern age - like the sa»ke from factory ehianeys or th© carbon monoxide gas from automobile exhausts. This whole line of ideological thinking is, however, like the smog which disgraces ©ur great cities, utterly unnecessary in our situation.

Anti-clericallam may be a useful, even necessary, attitude of some men of conscience© who are trapped in the midst of a callous and corrupt state- church situation* Bat anti-cleriealism has no creative significance in an

America which is learning t© practice religious voluntaryism. Other well- meaning people, and some Hativists not s© well-meaning, are starting with another false view ©f the American nationi that w© are a "Christian nation", were founded as such, and that every instrument of law and public policy oust support ©ur commitments t© "non-seetarlan" Christian religion* Usually this "religion" means Protestantism, although some Catholics - notably

Cardinal Spellman - seem to have fallen for th© Prot©stant Hativlst myth

©f Americafs past history and present prospects.

To follow the logic ©f th© Spellman© and the Pikes and th® Polings means t© accept the idea that it is essential that constitutional premises -11 and governmental action be kept "Christian** in ©utward appearance. Protestant prayer and Bible reading are to be kept in the public schools, if necessary by constitutional amendment, lest our public life become "secularized". A

Protestant public liturgy is to be supported in many state universities, because this Is the way it was don© In th© days when w© were a predominantly

Protestant people. Th© thought seems not to have occurred to these gentle­ men that, across the centuries, the enforcement of public religion of this kind has at least as frequently been the mask of cynical unbelief as it has been the expression ©f true devotion.

Are we now, for the sake of an outward posture of public piety, to sacrifice the whole experiment In Religious Liberty and voluntaryism?! Is the cause of true religion nou no precarious that Its outward form must be shored up by the coerced observance from which ©ur fathers quite rightly averted their faces? Religious Liberty, to be sure, is not something which we have "had" - and which is now in danger. Rather it is a standard which has been raised; or, better yet, it is a direction in which we have been slowly and painfully moving* Are we now to turn away, anxiously to revert to old ways of doing things, forgetting that public manifestations of orthodox religion in the past have been all too often but a thin covering for widespread unbelief ®M apostasy? Even in formsr times, when ©oercion in witters religious was widely accepted, the systems of establishment produced the bitter fruit of anti-religion and disenchantment with the church* Today, when the style of persuasion is far more widespread in public life, such an approach cam only discredit the cause ©f religion aiaong the curious or wise.

Those who seek t© do God a favor by maintaining th© old forms ©f Protestant culture-religion begin at the wrong points not that they are illogical, -12

granted their premises, about that which is best for the body polltic; but that they have failed to begin with the nature of high-level religion.

Thus they are led to defend unsound practices, culture lags which in no way represent either sound religion or valid politics.

The case for Religious Liberty thus begins with an appreciation of the nature of high-level religion, and the very real political benefits which derive in consequence are secondary - though very precious. And the defense of Religious Liberty begins not with a political argument at all, but with the renewal of that vital religious conviction which can only finally express itself in voluntary sacrifice and service. He who would sustain religious liberty mast begin with the renewal of the church, of her life and her witness. Very few indeed are those who will suffer jailings or suffering for an ambiguous political proposition; but the very pages of history are illuminated by the life and death of those who were prepared to suffer all things that the authority of the Lord, and only the Lord, might be glorified in the church.

Our fathers cleared the congregations of faithful people from the imposed and presumptuous authority of princes and town councils and lords of manor for one reasons that Christ the King might reign supreme among

His people. They were prepared to pray for government (obriffteit). and especially that those who governed might protect the good, punish the evil, and keep their hands from innocent blood. They professed to obey the government in all things indifferent to faith, even though It sometimes dealt unjustly with them. But in the area of faith, no unbaptized power was to have sovereignty or even a voice. This was precisely where the

Free Church began, as a coBasainity of discipleship - and not as a band of political visionaries. -13

If we clearly understand our heritage of Religious Liberty, then, we are pressed to examine how faithfully we have maintained a sound doctrine of the church. Do we take joy In the yoke of Christ which w© have voluntarily assumed, or do we still long for the good old days when we could jaanipulate government to serve supposedly religious purposes? Have we perhaps, however consciously we affirm our independence of political coercion in things religious, nevertheless grown to embrace the chains of a social and cultural establishment no less subject to challenge? For only a people - a people which looks for the city which hath foundations, only a covenant people - a people which has replaced external and unbaptized controls with voluntary internal discipline, will remain consistently devoted to an understanding of the relation of religion to culture in which the latter is constantly brought under judgment and the former never finds here a continuing city.

To revert to a continuum of culture-religion, in which the church conceives

Eer function to be that of blessing and sanctifying prevailing social norms - whether by legislation or by unconscious Identification - is to betray the Free Church and the Religious Liberty which is Its constitutional con­ text.

Does this mean that the Free Church must ignore political and other public issues, confirming itself to personal and familial dimensions of religion? Our early fathers were forced into this position by and large.

The Biblical Anabaptists kept their distance from government for good reason, and were happy for those few periods of peace when left to develop their Christian coMunity undisturbed. Their descendents were sometimes persecuted, sometimes tolerated; in the new world, in Pennsylvania, they found themselves for the first time possessed of political strength and -14

a corresponding responsibility. The more conservative groups have held in the past that members should not hold ©ffice or even vote, for to participate in waking public policy means to accept the moral responsibility for it. Moreover, government cannot exist without the exercise of power and - in case of necessity - the exercise of the power of life and death.

Governments were necessary, but Christians did not join them*

Earlier governments were despotic rather than representative; they were often prideful and brutal rather than responsive; they waged war rather than peace, and served the interests of small cliques rather than the people as a whole; moreover they misused religion. What is the responsibility of the members of a Free Church, however, where government

Is representative, response to the public*s need and popular will, where effort is made to control the police and to keep armies inactive? Is the

Christian then free uncritically to identify democracy with religious ultimates, to participate with abandon in the exercise of a sovereignty popularly based? Son* argue this way. But how then does the style of a

Free Church differ, if at all, from the slow Christianizing of public life through the infiltration of public posts by Christian individuals, and the penetration of social structures and institutions by Christian values?

How does it differ, in short, from the manners and style of an established church?

But suppose we successfully avoid identifying Christianity and democracy, does the Church then abandon th® public arena? Is there no other choice between a purely personal and private religion, or the one which functions in the public area like an establishment - with ultimate cooperation and mutual assistance between church and state? Apparently the Supreme Gourt -15

has come to believe that there is not, for in recent decisions it appears to embrace the doctrine that sound religion is a purely private natter.

Professor Clyde Holbrook of Oberlln, who has recently submitted the Court*s decisions in ehueh-state cases to critical scrutiny, has concluded that

"the Court has wandered into an area where its competence is highly question­ able". He saysi

"It appears that the Court has operated with several

presuppositions about the nature of religion itself...

In some parts of the decision the Court seems to have

taken the position that religion is primarily a personal,

individualistic and subjective matter."7

In spite of the wisdom and historical perspective of Mr. Justice

Brennan, whose Concurring Opinion in the Seheu^p Case Is a masterpiece of judicial reasoning, nor© vocal member® of the Court seem to have embraced the secular argument drawn from Continental rather than Coraaon Law experi­ ence. The dograa of an historical "wall of separation", which mythologiz®s

©ur history and errs philosophically by beginning the discussion of Religious

Liberty at the focus of th© state rather than the focus of sound religion, inevitably drives toward privatized and individualistic religion rather than toward protection of the Free Church and vigorous voluntary religious life.

Just as Troeltsch*s famous "church type" and "sect-type** patterns in the history of Christianity each signifies a misunderstanding of the church, so too the false alternative between privatized piety on the one hand and established religion on the other. In those societies where men are citizens -16

rather than subjects, and where the rights of conscience are respected, It is important for the Free Church to develop its own style of action on public issues. That proper style is characterized by a single principleI that before the free Church and Its occasional allies puts forward a certain discipline for the society as a whole, to be fixed fey public legislation, it shall have "talked up" the discipline within and made it a matter of internal discipline sustained by consensus* The leaders of an established church have felt no embarrassment in urging upon kings and parliaments actions upon which their own baptized could not agree*

But Free Church movements have always begun with the question of collective witness, of consensus within the congregations.

When Free Churchmen come forward urging legislation to enforce a certain social discipline, as in the case of the Quaker anti-slavery testimony8, their words are backed up by the witness and example of a eojsaunity which has paid the priae of incarnating this position in its own body, this Is the fundamental difference between Free Church and establishment type of politics. There is no necessary difference in subject matter. The Quakers came to the same conclusions in regard to

Hie wickedness of slavery as Wilberforce and Way of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England. But Wilberforce fought th© issue on the floor of the House of Commons without the support of the Anglican ©ossiunion, even with substantial opposition. As a result of th© work of John Woolmaa and Anthony Bene^et and other Friends, by contrast, the Quakers mounted their abolitionist work on a solid foundations by 1774* after three gen­ erations of "talking it up*', no Quakers held human beings anymore as chattal property. -17

The shift away from a Free Church mindset to establishiaent can b© perceived in such a thread of development as the following. Opposition to use of strong drink has long been a Methodist commitment, and abstinence was long maintained as part of the internal discipline of the brotherhood.

The alliance of Methodist leaders with the Anti-Saloon League, and the shift to the whole hearted emphasis upon Prohibition, came precisely at the time when internal structures of discipline were breaking down. The stance of an established church is precisely thiss to attempt to achieve by govern­ mental action what could not be done ©n the basis of voluntary spiritual discipline* It is wrong to suppose that the subject of concern distinguishes

Free Church from established church s it is rather the method by which the problem is approached.

In short, as A. D* Lindsay and Daniel T* Jenkins have shown in brilliant o writings, the Town Meeting derived from the church meeting.7 And in the self-governing society the very discussion by which a piece of legislation is prepared for enactment also prepares people to accept it and obey it once it is made law. Those churches which have a creative understanding ©f the dialogue, of the importance of full, free, and informed discussion on major matters of decision, have a special relationship - in history and in political philosophy - to th© open society and its genius* That relationship

Is in nothing so shallow or superficial as a supposed identification ©f

American "values" or "way of lif©" or "democracy** with Christian ultimates*

Rather the affinity resides in the approach to problem-solving Itself and to the achievement of order and discipline in human affairs.

In political terms, we cherish liberty for the sake of truth - because -18

w© know that th© public policy will be more sound where each concerned person has had his say in making it* In religious terms, we cherish liberty for the sake of th© Church*s faithfulness to her true mission* Mo church can truly serve her Lord if she is beholden to other masters and high places*

In a most remarkable way the Free Church, whieh sought liberty for the sake of Christian obedience alone, has proved to be a benediction to society as well. A new style of human relations within the community of grace has produced a new understanding of right human relations within society at large.

Religious Liberty, truly understood, does not begin with some idea of limiting the church and her mission. It begins rather with the question of how the church may best perform her work* It points toward voluntaryism, not suppression or privatization. Both religion and politics have benefited in consequence, as we learn to make Religious Liberty and voluntaryism work in America. FOOT NOTES

1. For an excellent sumsary of the courts* interpretations see Kauper, Paul G., Ohurch and States Cooperative Separatism, Lx Michigan Law Review (1961); reprint.

2. For example, note the essay by Samuel E. Stokes, Jr.s The Failure of European Clvil^zal^pn as a World Culture (madrass 3. Ganesan Co, 1921).

3. Go©n, C.C., f^viyeMsm and Separatism in Hew /ftftljpd* 1740-1800 (New Haven k Londons Tale University Press 1962)

4. Durnbaugh, Donald F*. European Origins of the Brethren (agin, Ill*s Brethren Press, 1958), p. 290.

5. "Sektenwesen in Deutschland" (by Kawerau), XVIII R©§1*3 (1906) 157-66.

6. Se© From State Church to Pluralism (Haw Yorks Doubleday Anchor Books, 1962), Chapter II.

7» Holbrook, Clyde A., "Religious Scholarship and the Court", L30QC Christian Qejjtury (9/4/63) 26*1077-78.

8. cf* The free Church (Bostons Starr King Press, 1957), pp. 62f.

9. Lindsay, A* D., The Essentials of Democracy (Philadelphias U. of Penn. Press, 1929); Jenkins, Daniel D., Church Meeting and Democracy(LondonI Independent Press, 1944)* Ill - TKL MINISTRY OF ThL LAITY onli iru—i »n,».,!•• m i» »HIIII.I .m.'. .•mi n,,,,,, .rr.1.1., •.IIIIIMIII. n..^

Paper No. 12, ("Study and Lay Training Centers," August, 1963), prepared for the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches roasting at Rochester, Hew York, aads an important point about the relation of lay training to the life of the congregatloss:

"The training of the laity ought to take place within

the normal life of the church. This point cannot be

over~©aphasi»cU Specialised institutions like laj

training centres sad evangelical academies cannot

replace the work of the family end the congregation

in training and equipping Christians for their

ministry in the world. To© effective work done If

academies and lay centres in Europe during the un­

settled sociel setting of the poet-war period on the

Continent does not justify the perpetuation of this

pattern as the ideal for all tilUB md places, though

much needs to be learned by ell £ro» their experience »l!

If this Is meant to underline th© responsibility of the churches to adapt their institutional programs to the new j&oveoents, to make use of the MS* netheds, to capitalize on the new experiences, it is true. If, on the otter hand, it Is a voice from ta© establishment warning against taking the institutional crisis too seriously, it is false. Mo one needs to fall -2

into the error of supposing that some new pattern is good "for all

tines and places" just because he is perfectly clear teat the old patterns are both obsolete and increasingly dangerous to the Christian movement. Taken as a whole, and learning on the implication of the phrase which refers, to "the unsettled social setting of the post-war

5 period on the Continent' 1 this statement reflects the spirit of "res­ toration*' rather than fliiWil - the kind of restoration of normalcy which repeals a failure to take with radical seriousness the wide­ spread apostasy in Christendom which has mm a distinguishing mark of Giristian history in the 20th century.

Ilor does the admonition to docility sufficient If regard &s strenuous opposition of the mov® calcified Institutional power structures to the *ewi**»ti of renewal. Both the Kirchentag and th© Evangelical

Academies have been ©pposed by Wttsm church leaders end their impact braked by others; no good is served by outing this fact. In th® USA, a significant ©Kperisent like the Austin Faith-aod*U.fe Comssunity has suffered a® much fro» th© failure of teany denominational leaders to understand and relate to it as from the public attacks of racists and

Know-Mothinge in the Texas legislature. In sou© areas of the Methodist

Cnurch - and presumably the same defense Bechanisns obtain in other denominations - orders have been issued against giving attention to the movements of mnewai and th© stress on lay training* One story vmy be taken as representative I in one countyseat town an imaginative and devoted minister md his wife led a lay acadsity for three yaarst develop­ ing an unusual Is vel of literacy and devotion aeong a significant section •3

of the town's younger leadership. In January> 1963, the bishop moved him to a (larger) suburban church * one "large enough to keep hi© busy"* "This lay training may be all right," said the bishop, "but the trouble is it interferes with the program of the church!"

The truth is that large sections of Christendom hav© apostatised in our- ti«tt and that faulty structures have contributed to the be­ trayal of the church and her Lord* Further betrayal sod apostasy is intending. And no structure has been nor© faulty - both as to Biblical disorientation and practical consequences - than the "aortal** local church sitnationt with its undisciplined ne&bership and its excessive stress on ministerial verbalization. It is tiws that we recognise that change is imperative • basic change - and that the church of the future way bear little resemblance to the institution we have known In the past, What Is needed is daring ©Kperimentation, sustained by a resolute awareness that the church institution ©ay have to dies as did her Lord, for the world's salvation*

Paper Mo. 12 goes on to list as the first objective of lay train­ ing that laymen be equipped "to take an active and intelligent part in the worship of the church.**1*; among types of centers, that for "the traingin of lay church workers" is listed first. And, although it is clearly perceived that "this kind of training should not be confused with the training of the layman to fulfil his Christian vocation in the world through his occupation", even this dimension is defined as "train­ ing the laity for intelligent worship md mission in the world*" the sense of motion, where it breaks through, is all from "church" to "world". Of th® ^dialogue between church and world," as between -.**

equally "entitled" areas, there is no thought. Aad certainly there is not the slightest thought that the disorientation of the church qua institution and the radical emancipation of the "world cos« of age" feay be so advanced that only the most thorough-going types of ex* perinentation can serve to open th© way for a fundamental renewal of th© Christian ffiovt&ent. To be blunt, one would be tenpted to conclude from this working paper that the lay ®oveeents are beginning to slow down and calcify before they fairly begin t© novo at all*

There is no spirit of repentance at all, no agony over the way In which the faithlessness of Christians and the indiscipline of the churches has allowed - Ml in sot® cases abetted - the rise of Iasis«f C©B®unist8, Nativisn, and other apostate creeds and style of life. ; There la no spirit of recklessness and liberty, of realization that in so®© places at least sots© Christians aro rediscovering the sheer joy of the renewed Christian life* Above all, there is insufficient attention to the realities of the broken world which the Christians are called to serve. For the true end of lay training is not theological literacy ^©r. sol nor© literate and. better disciplined laynan are needed to the end that the I*aat Brother aay be b®tt@r served.

I have raade this much of the "normalizing" process revealed in Paper Ho* 12 not for the sake of argu&eat, nor out of disrespect* It was prepared by persons whoa I know and admire. But as a document it shows more readily than my secondary arguiwint the way in which renewal cannot occur* It neither takes the present crisis seriously enough nor docs It shine with th© Spirit which can Koveiran to go forth to serve* it is too reflective, too rational, too passive. Discussion of the lay -5

apostolate must itself be a call to apostleship or it Is frivolous.

Several of the men and women who helped to rebuild post-war

Europe have commented on visiting in America that the European and American discussions of lay training tend to go two different paths. Diaaussions in America often end up with a new program of instruction; discussions in the European centers usually end up with some new venture of Christian service, of diakonia. In a sense this ecrresponds to the two main directions of lay trainings 1) to serve the church in a literate and effective way; 2) to serve the world in the spirit of stewardship and sacrifices* loth of these goals must be kept before us* Between them, no choice can be made. One of th© things we learned in th© W^ school of the 1930's was that a program ©f Christian action which has no supporting community of discipline has neither strength to move mountains nor inward integrity* The ©Id social action lacked the dimension of the

Church* Certainly we are just as aware that we are not here to please ourselves, and that lay training is not an end in itself: the purpose of drill and discipline and training is to serve move effectively as

Christians in the world* Hie church which centers on loyalty is above all the church that God wants her to b©--not the M"*1^ lazy, self- serving institution as an end in Itself*

the world in which we are called to serve is coming apart at th© seams, and in for more desperate need of binding word and compelling example than commonly supposed. For our churches ia America, the crisis of Race and Racism affords a "moment of truth" very like that which has confronted ©ur European brethren in NasisiB and Communism. For a long time we have asked ourselves whether American Christendom, which has lingered so long in the pleasant assumptions of the 19th century culture- religion, could possibly understand or interpret the agony of self-searching which faithful Christians In Europe have gone through. Today th© crisis of the American churches is just as real and just as imperative as that of the German churches under Hitler, And the basic issue is very much the semes "The struggle for the church, against herself, to be the church.wi I in—lime *m ml m nil It should not be necessary, with anarchy and murder being en­ couraged by public officials who boast of their churchmanship (and are net relieved of it), to stress the need for disciplined witness in the Protestant churches. To date, although our verbalization is generally good2, there is little indication that outside the Roman Catholic communion racism is being treated for what it truly is: blasphemy against God and rebellion against the church* Shortly before he was murdered by a coward's bullet Mr. Medgar Evers commented on the spinelessness of the white Christians ©f Jackson, Mississippi. "As far as speaking out," he said, "we don't know they exist."

1. cf. Cochrane, Arthur C., The Church's Confession Under Hitler CPhiladelphias Westminster Press, 1962), p. 310; also, Zahn, Gordon, German Catholics and Hitlar's War (New York* Sheed S Ward, 19635^ 2. cf. Campbell, Ernest G., and Pettigrew, Thomas F., Christians in Kacial Crisisi A Study of Little Rock's Ministry (Washingtons Public Affairs Press, 1959), pp. 137-70* 3. Dallas Horning News (12/16/62), sec. 3, p. 1. -7

Shortly after four children were murdered in a church in

Birmingham by a coward's engine ©f destruction, a white lawyer spoke the truth about it:

"Four iittl© girls were killed in Birmingham yesterday. A mad, remorseful, worried community asked, 'Who did it? Who threw that bomb? Was It a Negro or a white?' Mid the answer should b©, 'We all did it.'"

And then he went on to comment:

•Birmingham is the only city in America where the police chief and the sheriff in the school crisis had to call our local ministers together to tell them to do their duty* The ministers ©f Birmingham, who hav© done so little for Christianity, call for prayer at high noon in a city ©f lawlessness and, In the same breath, speak of our city's 'image*.

"Did these ministers visit the families of the Negroes in their hour of travail? Did any of them go to the homes of their brothers and express their regrets in person or pray with the crylag relatives? Do they admit Negroes into their ranks at the chapel?"**

**The New York Times (9/17/63), p. 2** i»i'—— .iKi.m ..»i i II i m IMII.UI i. iu i * m In America, as elsewhere, the most heart-breaking factor In this half-century of church history has been the toleration of public wickedness by so-called Christians. Some hav© openly apostatized, end attacked the church for holding t© a thin thread of truth; most of the baptized, however, including the clergy, have betrayed their faith by standing aside, by adopting the stance of spectators* Most of the baptized in Russia have net, even yet, gone over to dialectical materialism: they have simply eliminated the prophetic note and Biblical eschatology fr©m their faith, and concentrated on mystical experience* Host German Protestants and Catholics saw no conflict at all between their loyalty to Hitler and practice of family religion at life's high -8

liturgical moments: birth, marriage, death* Meet whit© Baptists and

Methodists In Mississippi or Alabama have even yet to see that toleration of a totalitarian state regime is unworthy of Americans and that racism practiced in the church is a simple heathenism unworthy of Christians.

W« are brought again to the question of the training of the

laity—but not in the context of new methods and new devices for doing better what we already are committed to. If men and women are t© be moved t© new life, if the emphasis on renewal is to be something more than a passing program emphasis, then lay life and work must be discussed in its true setting—against the background of widespread rebellion, disobedience and apostasy throughout Christendom, against the setting of flaccid indiscipline in our churches, in the midst of a society which approves of low-demand religion and resents and resists the Lordship of Jesus Christ. If a genuine renewal of the lay apostolate is to come, it must come through voluntary lay initiative. It cannot be

"programmed" and uniformed, for we are "between the times", and a wide variety of experimental projects is necessary before we begin to dis­ cover some new and proven ways of expressing Christian concern. At present, it can only be said that whatever efforts are made must a)show

genuine repentance for past laziness and sin; b) express a genuine lay initiative; and c) reflect the insight and dedication of Christians met in face-to-face groups.

Of the three major areas ©f breakthrough In lay initiative,

American experience is largest with the "koinonia group". (The other two are the Festival of Faith or Kirchentag and th© vocational conference, but time prohibits extensive discussion of them now.) -9

"Koinonia"—a New Testament w©rd signifying "sharing"—is a term largely identified with the Yokefellow program, made current by the excellent writings of Elton Trueblood, Samuel Emerick and Robert Raines.5 Other terms are well known. The Methodists once knew the "class-meeting", an instrument of Instruction and discipline* The early religious awakenings In America had the "Societies of inquiry", the"Society of of Brethren"; home missions to Illinois, Iowa, the Daketas and else­ where were mounted by "bands", students who worshipped and studied together in seminary and then went out to th© field in a group ministry* Th© British Student Christian Movement in the 1930's had dozens of "fellowship groups", as had also the United Christian Youth Move­ ment In the USA during the same period and the Young Peoples' Union ©f the United Church of Canada* "Tans for Christ", "prayer cells", "twelves"—all are more or less familiar terms covering the same phenomenon* Again and again, in places and times of renewal there is a throwback to the intimate, "house church" pattern of the Early Church.

There is, of course, danger that such groups may become too subjective—unrestrained in emotional sharing* This happened in seme places with the Oxford Groups Movement which preceded Moral Rearmament. But such danger can be averted by two simple rules: 1) bringing before the group only such matters as are susceptible of conscientious de­ cision; 2) raising high the objective standards of the Bible and the church's confession of faith. (In this connection, Edwin H. Robertson's

5. Among others, cf. Trueblood, B. Elton, Foundations for Reconstruction (New York: Harper 6 Bros., 19 ),The Company of the Committed (Ne~ York: Harper & Row,, 196 ); Raines, Robert A., New life in the Church (New York: Harper & Bros., 1961), Chapters VII and IX. -10

excellent Take and Read should be mentioned as an aid to Bible study in lay groups.) Emil Brunner once pointed out in a splendid book relating his own experience with the small group: "It is not fanatical enthusiasm but lack of faith which is the chronic disease in the church. The church has not believed her Lord's saying that he would do even greater things through his disciples than he had done himself. Only to© ©asily has the church been content with believing that the time of miracles was once and for all past. But as long as real miracles happen, and wherever they happen in the church, then it is obvious that men will speak about them.6

It is even possible to be a successful theologian without being a pro­ fessing Christian, and this is perhaps more common among the churches of the Protestant establishment today than is excessive emotional enthusiasm.

The difficulty in writing about the "Koinonia Group" is this: like all primary experience, it is communicated from person to person rather than by the printed word. He who writes about love does not normally communicate love. Love is only known by the on© who loves or is loved. The tremendously creative experience of the Christian small group can only be reported in writing: the writing cannot itself communicate the experience and neither can it show the reader "How to Do It". The movement spreads, therefore, by the face-to-face encount©r of persons—each of whom can relate something he has personally ex­ perienced. If a spark is struck in others, and they desire to learn,

6. Brunner, Emil, The (fcurch and the OKford Group (London: Hodder € Stoughton, 1937), pp\ 60-61* 7. cf. Bultmann, Rudolf, "What Sense is There to Speak of God?"— Translatad In XLIII Christian Scholar (1960) 3:213. -11

one who has himself participated in a group is able during a period of consistent meeting to train them in the ways of fellowship* The most that writing about the primary group can do is this: 1) communicate the writer's personal conviction as to the importance of the approach;

2) define certain problems end potentials that on© who has enjoyed or is enjoying a like experience will find helpful to confirm or challenge his own life.

As for the first point, I am convinced both by the study of church history and by my own experience that any genuine movement of renewal in the church will be accompanied by a recovery of the primary religious experience md the resultant voluntary discipline which is possible only in primary groups. "If anyone professes to know Christ and yet loves not the brethren, he Is a liar*" If anyone professes

Christian conviction but is content with the promiscuous and debased level of popular religious assemblies, he is a deceiver. A frequent and ardent use of the means ©f grace is one of th© marks ©f a live faith, and ©f th© several means of grace none is more important than tfe* "koinonia group". In fact, so far as structures are concerned, nothing contributes more generously to the luke-warmness of the

Protestant establishment than the fact that in many parishes and sections all of the groups that meet are big—big enough s© that the relationship between communicants is undistingulshable from that which blesses the PTA, the country club, the service organizations—and considerably less dynamic than that which often graces the Great Books

Study Seminar. -12

It is quite possible in America today for a facile verbalizer to have a "successful" preaching record without once moving above and beyond the level of entertainment. Two historical factors combine to make this a rather common thing about us. First, during the century end a half of mass evangelism which won the people back to the churches on a voluntary basis, the priority for the Christian cause in the North American missions field was to "get it said", at least once, as loudly and dramatically as possible, to as many people as possible* And this Image of th© proclaiming preacher has carried over into our own time, when—with the people in fact in the churches— what is now primarily needed is instruction* Second, ©ur churches have coafus©d liberty with license, voluntaryism with "clubblness". The members have popularly confused two areas of decision. Membership in the churches is, indeed, voluntary: it is the peculiar genius of our

American religious practice to combine voluntaryism of membership with the constitutional right of religious liberty. This a vastly different thing from the anti-clericalism from which state-church situations suffer, with a "wall of separation" urged as the only way to free the government from ecclesiastical cabals and the churches from political manipulation. Our system moves toward voluntary initiative in religion, not toward indifference of hostility to religion. And it will only function so long as sustained by a vigorous and voluntary membership, attendance and support* To this end, the congregation has as active a role in the "translation" of the preached Word as has the proclaimer himself. -13

Seme years ago, when the foundations were being laid for th© present renewal ©f th© lay apostolate in the European churches, a university preacher adopted the following procedure for training generations

Q$ student worsh+ppers. Each Sunday be passed out a printed card carrying the topic and text for the succeeding Sunday service. In addition, the card carried two or three questions for reflection and meditation in preparation for the next service. Texts were given also for each day, to b© used as part of daily devotions. The following Sunday the service would be planned as a whole, with prayers and hymns and the other liturgical moments related to the sermon's theme. Then, when the service was completed, the genedlction given and final hymn sung, the preacher would coma down out of the pulpit and complet© the

"translation" with the help of an active congregation. Standing in the center aisle, he would call those forward who were moved to stay; and then and there—with questions, responses, conclusions—the listeners would become participants in making the sermon "edifying" in the New

Testament sense. Sometimes this has been called a "talk-back" session, but that is not the best way to put it. What happens is that the congregation completes the translation of the Word, preparing for the critical rote which is theirs In carrying it Into action in the world.

How much Irrelevant sermonizing might be improved and re-directed if this simple practice were regularly observed in our churches! Then the

Word would again become what it Is intended to be: binding, compelling, moving. And the congregation would again assume its active role in the liturge—no longer spectators of a program, but the whole people

(Laos) under the Impress of the living Word* -14

The implications of a renewal of the life of the whole people are just revolutionary for seminary education as for lay training. The simple truth, which Brethren should not have difficulty facing, is this: the special ministry properly serves as the chaplaincy of the

Laos In their work in th© world. A changed church requires a changed leadership. Professor Kraemer put it this way, in speaking of what was central in the Early Church:

"All the stress was on the dlakonia, the ministry of the whole membership, because the church as a whole stood under the same token as its Lord, i«e., 'servantship'."8

Luther translated It into his own context, urging the princes to decisive action:

"...there is really no difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, 'spirituals' and 'temporals', as they call them, except that of office and work, but not of '©state'; for they are all of the same estate, - true priests, bishops and popes, - though th$y are not all engaged in the same work, just as all priests and monks heve not the same work."®

Schleiermacher started to follow the same line, relating it to the distinction between "experts" and "laymen" with which we are generally familiar in society at large.

"But where...Is that distinction between priests and laity to which you are accustomed to point as the source of so many evils? You have been deluded; there is no distinction of persons, but only of office and function. Every man is a priest, insofar as he draws others to himself in the field he has made his own and can show himself master in; every man is a layman, inso-

8. Kraemer, Hendrik, A Theology of the Laity (Philadelphia: West­ minster Press, 1958), p. 140. 9. Luther, Martin, "An Open Letter to the German Nobility", In Works (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1943), II, 326. -15

far as he follows th© skill and direction ©s another In the religious matters with which he is less familiar* That tyrannical aristocracy which you describe as so hateful does not exist, but this society is a priestly nation, a complete republic, where each In turn is leader and people, following in others the same power he feels in himself and uses for governing others*"10

The tragedy was that Luther enunciated a grand principle, the general priesthood, but provided no structures to implement it* He looked instinctively, in an emergency, to the princes, tod Schleiermacher, confusing the fellowship ©f Volk with th© fellowship which is in Christ, generalized the principle in a way to bless the prevailing social order, its vocations, and the exercise of natural responsibilities in the world's work* Along this line the general ministry will never be realized, nor will the church be able to act as the conscience of a society* For instead of creating the needed new structures the Christians are thereby led to adjust themselves to given forces origi­ nating outside the immediate realm of redemption.

The Free Qiureh line was both more disciplined as to what expressions of ministry were worthy,and more revolutionary as to th© impact ©f the church upon society and existing social functions. Of relationships within the covenant community, Peter Taylor Forsyth was able to say this:

"Independency erased the distinction between the theologian and the layman more completely than any other* No church was so little a church of its ministers, influential as these were. It was influence that they had, and not power. The priesthood of all believers here first became practical and effective for church life... the voluntary principle became the whole prin­ ciple of English Nonconformity.Hil

10. Schleiermacher, Friedrlch D* E*, On Bellgions Speeches to its Cultured Desplsers (New York: Harper & Bros., 1958), p. 153. 11.Forsyth, Peter Taylor, Faith. Freedom, and the Future (London: Independent Press, 1955), p. 324* -16

Here we see the ministry which all share by virtue of the ordination of their baptism leading to a new vision of democratic congregational

Hf®$ to the virtual elimination of class distinctions within the church- something which did not happen at all in Lutheranism.

Rufus Jones stressed another aspect of the radical Puritan line of lay initiative, in writing of the Quakers'

"contribution to the spread of lay religion, by which I mean a form ©f religion dissociated from ecclesiasticism, and penetrating the life and activities of ordinary men. The real power of Quakerism lay in the quality of life produced in the rank and file ©f the membership... The real glory of this movement was the 'leveling up' of an entire people. Farmers, with hands made rough by the ploygh handle, in hundreds of rural localities not only preached messages of spiritual power on meeting days, but, what is more to the point, lived daily lives of radiant goodness in simple neighborhood service. Women who had slight chances for culture, and who had to d© the hard work of pioneer housewifery, by sheie subtle spiritual alchemy, were transformed into a virile sainthood which made Its power felt both in the Sunday gathering and in the unordained care of souls throughout the community* It was a real experiment in the 'priesthood of believers', and it was an incipient stage of what has become one of the most powerful spiritualizing forces in our country - the unordained lay ministry of a vast multitude of men and women who have attacked every form of entrenched evil, and who, in city and country, are taking up the 'cure of souls' with insight and efficiency*,,:L2

The point is, and it cannot be emphasized to much, that if the general priesthood is to mean anything in the renewal of the church and the renovation of society there must be clear structures

12. Jones, Rufus, M., The Quakers in the American Colonies (London: Macmillan 6 Co., 1911), p. xxx-xxxi. -17

for its articulation. The "magisterial Reformation" did not afford

such structures, by and large, and the principle died stillborn—except

for the Christian image of occasional princes, town councillors,

captains of the army, or business entrepeneurs. It was only with the

Free Churches that the ministry of the laity was of such fundamental

impact as to modify the relationship of fellow-Christians and give

rise to new social institutions at large as well. The Free Churches

produced not so much the occasional lay (i.e., unordained) activist as

the witnessing Laos.

We must not forget to stress, too, that a new kind of iMty

requires a new kind of preacher and pastor. Above all, the represen­

tative ministry which takes seriously the general ministry must be

schooled to listen as well as speak—I.e., to lead the church in that

life of dialogue which Is its true nature. It is In this context that

a seminary is a school of prophets. "He who speaks in tongues edifies

himself, but he who prophesies iedifies the church." (I Cor. 14:4)

We are not, then, training clergy to govern laymen in the

"normal" life of the churches. Rather we are seeking diligently the

new and dynamic ways of raising up a whole people who will live in

anticipation of the Kindgom; and who will be schooling themselves to become fit citizens of it. /hs* HAfjr

i^'MuiL

1. Gordon, Hurray A., "The Unconstitutionality of Public Aid to Parochial Schools", in Oaks, Dallin H., ed., The Wail between Church and State (Chicago % London: University of Chicago Press', I9o3), p. 9*4. 2. The U^ York Tlfses (3/28/6%): p. 21.

3. Shea, J. fc., Jr., "Hemo from a Dallas Citizen"t xXVJIX Look (ISbU) 5;38f* Mr. Suea has aaaa subsequently been dismissed I by Petrofino, Inc. **•» Kraemer, llendrik, "Over ce moglijkheiil van dialoof net dm •ongelovi^'," XIII lending'(1953) Us72*~*6«

5. cf* wc-n^, uut, .••!• c •• • j - --Uiehte in Okuraeniacher Sicht J (Leiden & Kola :*""" E. 'J. iirill.' "IVb'l)' f~*~T~

6* In Carrillo ue Ali>orooa, A* F. , The r.bi.i.:j c:_ ..:.•;:. ..;;.- ,.?•'-'.*££, (In York: Associated Press, ,iy6l)',' p. lu'i* 7. cf* Hutten, Kent,, and Kmrtaiicxbcn, ^ic^ Iricvi y©nt «©• f Asien missioniert im /sbendland (Stuttpart: Kreuz-Verl.itf. xoeirr—-————— IT - HE mamw QF CHRISTIAN msarum

It is stimulating to real Professor Donald P* Durnbau#i's suomary of Spener*s program for the renewal ©f th© church, the program which - along with the parallel thrusts of August Hermann Francke, Gottfried Arnold .and Hochmann von Hochenau - was so iBfxrfcant in the formative period of Pietism and the Church of the Brethren. The six points, following on a strong erlticis® of th© lajcness of the cler^r and the short comings of the church, Spener set down as follows: , 1. iaor« intensive Bible study; 2* more lay activity} 3* Osristlanity to be practiced in daily life} 4* no coercion in religious iratters} 5, reform of theological training} 6* more edifying preaching.* If one understands points two and three to include an eisspanded lay apostolate expressed in dJak.orda, this -very program affords a model for the conteaporary renewal of Qiristian witness* More, than that* in the larger groups of American Protestantism thme who sense the requlreiients of the times are in a situation not unlike that of Spener and our other fathers* Protestant culture-religion in America is enamored with the spirit of the tines, and displaying increasing resistance to criticism or correction. Although the eouplalnt .is frequently heard that the spirit of ^secularism® has led to m indifference to churchly matters, a truer report would be that Secularism" - i.e., love of the present age - is prevalent in the institutional churches as well as "outside"* For exanple, there is no objective evidence that the state universities, the courts, th© public schools, and other public insti­ tutions are any more "secularized" in their real cofMtments than many of the; boards and agencies of the major denarii nations. Of the spirit of the times, we have information enougi. &i Bible is generally neglected, even by those who profess to honor it as a totem or fetish. A lastly symbol of this is the Governor of Alabama, who ~ having unsuccessfully attempted to defy the law of the land by preventing the enrollment of Negro citizens in the state schools - now proposes to defy th® law by requiring a ritual, reading of the Protestant Bible in th© public schools. So much for "the outside of the cup"! But if the God of the, Bible were really honored, the God whose will is justice and right­ eousness and peace, the God who requires above all a hureble heart and ser­ vice to the Least Brother, where would then be the violent, the Insolent, the murderers of little children, in the Day of Judgnsnt?! We had a comical illustration of the fraudulent exterior last spring at SMI, when the students Invited to the canpus a wicked and disloyal individual who had just been on TV attacking what he called the "Anti- Christ Supreme Court" and calling upon th© mob to rise up to take us back to what he called "Christian America". During his rambling discourse, he referred repeatedly to that "great Christian, Daniel, who had stood courage­ ously by his principles in the lions1 den*" Afterwards, one of the theo­ logy students managed to ask, "General, since when was Daniel a Qiristian?" The poor addled soul never even got the point of the question* He sinply flustered, "Why he was a Christian from his boyhood on*.."(!) In viewing -3

America's spiritual underworld, a second glance is often sufficient to dis­ close that those to whom the Bible is a fetish cannot even distinguish the Old Itestament from the New, let alone think Biblically about th© will of God for this nation! But is is not only in the stagnant polls, in the spiritual backwash of our culture, that the Bible is neglected. In how many of our church homes is the Bible a closed book, a book "sealed with seven seals"? How many of our youth come to college, and even to seminary, without that elemsntary knowledge of the Bihle which once shaped our oral tradition, - which once gave even those HfeS had not attained a literary culture a rich and sustaining understanding of life! How badly we rmed to learn from Edwin Robertson aid Suzanne de Dietrich and Ross Snyder, for exauple, to read the Bible "until it reads to us", to translate the living Word into the life of a spirit-filled community! 1&© elimination of coercion In religious matters, already treated in more detail in the discussion of Bell^ous liberty, is by no means a finally achieved liberty. Many of the lop ligations must yet be explored* 'What our fathers were affirming was the ^andeur of a religious eaai&taent sufficiently compelling of spirit to inspire voluntary devotion, support and service. How often today, even in America, do we fall back upon the public use of r©li^.em as a bulwark of our way of life I How often do we flee from the claims of th© church covenant, which we must sustain vol­ untarily if at all, to worship at the high places of a new manifestation of Canaanite religion! How often, indeed, do we seek throu^i direct government assistance - in the public schools, in some state universities, by special privilege or legislation - to sustain those religious positions which we evidently feel cannot win their way on their own merits* The American experiment In Religious Liberty is today being tested as never before, and the tragedy is that many men of the churches - who should be the first to acclaim high-level j, voluntary religion - are less ready to support the Supreme Court on its necessary "holding action" against in­ justice to dissenting minorities than are saw of the non-religious. , In our churches nothing is more needed than a reform of theologicai education - the 5th point in Spenerfs program. \m have settled far too quickly for the outfitting of a class of specialists, equipped to handle the irtellsctuai and cultic mysteries vie led from the common membership, trained to talk the esoteric "church language" which Is virtually unin­ telligible to modern man, when th© real task is to develop our seminaries as 'the centers of Christian intellectual discipline for the whole believ­ ing people* What is the seminary experience to Bean for the churches if the young pastors singly issue forth with a new - and finally just as Irrelevant « orthodoxy, with a new idiom which Is never translated into the bread for the hungry? What is ©ur preaching, our verbalization from the pulpits, if it never becomes incarnate in the disciplined witness of a faithful people? Then surely our latter case will be pMt pitiable than our former, when Latin was the church language - unintelligible to the masses to be sure, but much wore precise and generally servicable than the more degenerate and less universal idioms •subsequently developed to secure the status of ruling classes in our divided churches* In truth, preaching which Is not edifying in the Hew Testament sense Is not preaching of the Word at all ~ however devoted it may seem to be to timeless truths and sweeping generalizations. Our seminaries - and the preaching of our representative ministry - must serve and strengthen the general ministry of the whole Christian people} otherwise, we would be truer to our heritage sluply to cultivate a simple and direct translation of the Word by devout laymen and heads of families* In the Iree Church tradition we have, I taloe it, been moved to wquip an educated ministry not that the laity may be efficiently xuled, but that they may have the assis­ tance of able chaplains as they carry the essential mission of the church in the world* .- How timely then, is this classical program of renewal - especially when we set it against the background of the present' apostasy of Protestant > culture-religion, when we seek to discern the path along which a new style of Christian thought and life must emerge! Above all, the renewal can only occur on a foundation of revived Christian faith and voluntary commit­ ment* fhere is no possible way for Oulstian discipline, once it has been lost, to toe restored by fiat or by the decree of church authorities* Not all the conventions, ©aneral conferences, assemblies and synods can, voting unanimously, enforce standards of discipline which a serrated and motley membership no lon^r understands nor appreciates* The way of x^enewal can only be throuji small, voluntary, "house churches" - colie|gia pletatls*lf you will, or "class meetings" - in which devout people give vitality and form to a new covenant of discipline* That we have abandoned discipline, and confused a natural political freedom with the liberty of a Christian man, seeoa to me beyond dispute* - There are, to be sure, those who take comfort In the popular religiosity of the day and resist any call to repentence and renewal* %ey are Ufee the prophets of a false peace who in a more direct age perished with the destruction of the high places of the Baals they worshipped. But moving today among the churches, and with little visible reference to present denominational llf§*» there is a Spirit who Is gathering His own unto Himself*. In many uanu&ered places - in fellowship groups, Bible study groups, work camps, inner city experiments* lay academies and institutes, service teams - lay people and cler^ (and also seirdnari**ris) are meeting mmlMrly to learn what may be done that Christians again carry taenselves in a way wortliy of their Lord's Kame* I cannot help but feel that the Peace Churches* those who carry moat directly the tradition of the Institution and the beginnings of Pre© Churches - that is, churches freed for Ojrlstlan obedience - have a special contribution to make to all of the Lord's scattered people who are earnest­ ly seeking a new way* The discussion itself r&^es with increasing intercity in all denes*- in&tlons, but we say take the Baptists and fethodlsts as representative of th© American religious estabUaheent mid as Illustrative of the problem* With the Baptists, the tern "establlshiaaot" fens very real connotations in several states •» although it refers here to social status more than legal privile^s in the saslm Four out of il¥t Megro Christians in this country is a Baptist, and they are organised in two of the largest denominatXonsi S)f National Baptist Convention and the f-latlonal Baptist Convention, Inc. But Xt we count only white Baptists for the moment, this'

faking their own classical positions as a standard of measurement, the process of acculturation is best illustrated by modifications and re­ laxation in believers1 baptism and church discipline. In part due to the influence of "(Mid Evangelism", the baptism of children has spread widely among Baptist churches* Traditionally, of course, no one was admitted throu#i "the doorway Into the sheep-stall" until he had reached the "age of ac­ countability*" The Christian life was no child's plays it once led to martyrdom and under the best of circumstances might mean social ostracism. Today it Is not at aU unoOBKion to see children of 8, 9 or 10 years come forward for baptism "on profession of faith". Mow this may be a fit pro­ cedure for Methodists, but it is a denial of the very cornerstone of Baptist polity and confessions of faith* The nam process of accomodation is evident in the abandonment of standards of church membership, both for admission and retention*

In recent years, scholars such as W* R«-Estep, Jr.* of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Janes Leo Garrett of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary have attempted to renew awareness of the Anabaptist heritage of voluntaryism and discipline* Lay renewal is fostered in centers such as Laity Lodge in Texas and the Lay Academy locally sponsored in -8

cooperation with other denominations at Anderson, S* C. Moreover, just a

few weeks ago the official publishing house of the denomination$ Broa^aan Press, issued a fine new book by Professor Findley B* Edge of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which devotes major attention to the problem of recovering Baptist standards and achieving a regenerate church member­ ship^ The case of the Methodists is even more acute* During the nineteenth century they were the most rapidly growing church in America; from i860 to 1900 they increased the number of their congregations by 3^*000. Shortly after the turn of the century, however, classical Wesleyan practices were abandoned in the training of membership and maintenance of a Oiristian style of life* Until the 1908 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Qiurch, and a few years before In the.Methodist Protestant Church and M*E. Church, South, at least six months of probationary membership was required before a person could be recoraoended for a&alsaicn to- full status* In­ volved were weekly meetings "in class", with training in Wesleyan standards of belief and practice* In 1908 these practices were eliminated, and with them any real effort to train the laity steadily disappeared. One result of relaxation was that nearly twenty movements of earnest people split to form smaller churches with some measure of discipline, in protest against the promiscuity of the lar^r body* Among these were the Church of the Nagarene, the Gjurch of God, the Assert)lies of God, etc* whatever we may think of the particular doctrinal Issues chosen to symbolize the separation, these churches were certainly rlgit in feeling that the laxity of standards In the larger body was a disaster. With the abandonment of Christian discipline, the popularity which was sought did not come - although th© Methodist Church is wore nearly a national church than most* with substantial numbers in every state (but preeminence only in Delaware and Maryland* and in some counties of Ohio and Kansas). Since 1900 the Baptists have leapt ahead., having a polity which lends itself better to spontaneity, and they have founded 27,000 new con­ gregations while the Methodists have stood almost still in that regard* More revealing still, and in spite of total statistical gains accomplished largely by reunification of the three major branches (1939)* the Methodists have fewer men entering their ministry than before World War I* fewer missionaries in the field than in 1923, and have remained committed more stubbornly than most to the nineteenth century theology which preceded the whole sequence of ecumenical rediscoveries (of Bible, church and laity). The ffgSTA survey, staffed by a team from Boston University School of Theology, has covered in four volumes the prevailing mood of the laity and clergy of the denomination at strategic points* Most remarkable is the loss of any real sense of purposeful discipline* For example, on the matter of use of alcohol: $0% of the Methodists feel that the negative against it should be kept in She Discipline, although only fj| say they will keep the pledge If It is - and of course the actual slippage is graver yet*11 Mi exchange which I had with a Methodist woman in Cedar Rapids, Iowa following my paper at the national Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago last January is as revealing as anything that has come to hand* I had urged that the question of church discipline be raised In the cases of' racists guilty of defying church standards. In the exchange, the real core of the problem came to the fore* Jtang other things, she wrote as followsi -10

"If members were to join because of a commitment* it W&0& be proper to hold them accountable to the cnurch for their actions. But many « perhaps most - join because of a desire to conform to an accepted custom. ***SInee the prevailing opinion . among respectable people seems to be flt doesn't • smtter where you gp to church - just so you go', ; <• the choice of church is often governed by family custom, locale, 'friendliness1 of the congregation, personality of the minister, etc., rather than an ;v,' examination of the principles' to which the partic­ ular sect adheres. It seen© to me then that the purpose of the church is not only to seek conversion of members to the church, but also to seek con­ version of isefflbers in, the church." Explaining her opposition to "imposed discipline", the correspondent mentioned that she had talked with several ministers' about membership standards and "not one" agreed with my position* Perhaps this is related to her statement In the last letter she wrotei "I 6)0 not understand what you mean by *a practice of Biblical "separation" of the church from the world'*"5

In this context, it is ominous to recall that John Wesley once said that to win lip to a religious commitment without providing them with the means of grace - and he was speaking of group discipline - ia "but to breed children for the Murderer"! • • ,

The truth is that in American Protestantism we have become peddlars of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer' condemned as "cheap grace", that we have forgotten that the Gospel convicts^ of sin before it assures of forgiveness, that the Baptism of John (i.e., the Baptism of Rapentence) goes before any Baptism of the Spirit. In spite of the saving remnant, which is being renewed and re-created, our iar^ institutions are entering the Age of Dialogue - a period when internal, voluntary discipline is needed as never before - with little to give them identity but a memory of the days when Protestantism officially dominated the American, scene. This is precisely the reason why -11

Protestant culture-religion finds Anti-Semitism and Anti-Catholicism so attractive: it-affords a "cheap identity", when such is needed, without the spiritual wrestling and a&ny of an effort of real renewal. In the time of our fathers, a similar type of sectarianism was widely used to give emotion and intensity to confessional institutions when the occasion demanded some outward identity. Protestant scholastics of the period 1580-1720, who were bitterly resistant to any call for Christian renewal, could be counted upon for automatic responses to oc­ casional anit-Ixitheran, anti-Calvinist, anti-Roman Catholic drives* respectively. Today we are similarly placed, and It Is precisely the same type of leadership which bitterly opposes the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches* the National Conference of Christians and Jews* and Hit various levels of ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue, which also so anxiously defends the failing public privileges of Protestant culture-religion and resists the movements of evangelical renewal from within* The pattern is a consistent one, and goes a long way to explain why Free Churchmen have always hesitated to accept "party names" and pre­ ferred rather to ally with all "Christians" or "brethren" wherever the Spirit was found to be working. Today in America* the two alternatives are plainly fixed. One the one side there is the myth of the rood old days of "Christian America," of the tine of official Protestant hegemony when a distingolshed Con­ stitutional commentator could say without effective contradiction that America was a Protestant nation and Christianity part of the Cofflaon Law of the land* Qa the other side there''is the fact that our churches are vastly stronger as a result of the shift from colonial state-churches and legal -12 privileges to the practice of voluntary membership, attendance and support. One the one side there is the Imaipg of the USA as a "Christian nation", as part of West European Christendom* On the other side there Is the truth that at the end of the great century of home and foreign missions our true identity is now with the other Younger Churches - with the other "new Christians" of Africa, Asia, and the islands of the sea* On the one side, to be brutally specific, there are General Walker, Billy James Hargis, Sen­ ator Eastland and Governor Wallace; on the other Daniel T. Niles, Chief Albert John Luthuli, Bishop Pedro Zottele, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the one side, the white Citizens' Councils, the so-called Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the Circuit Riders, the Churchman's League, PQJtfJ; on the other, the Kirchentag, the Evangelical Academies, East Harlem Protestant Parish, the Ecumenical Institutes, the Yokefellow Institutes, and the other movements of renewal*

The future of the evangelical faith in this land depends very directly upon whether we believe with our fathers that truth, once unleashed, can over come all the alternatives; or whether we believe that coercion, violence, and suppression of evidence are the appropriate instruments of religion* If we follow the path of culture-religion, an outward display of generalised religion may be possible for a time; but eventually Pro­ testantism will become - and deserve to become! - a ^ettoissed, indeed fossilized, minority culture in the midst of a triumphant Catholicism (now rapidly being renewed). If we have the faith to dare an open-faced dialogue, to give witness in a lay apostolate recklessly committed to in­ ward renewal of discipline and outward service to the Least Brother, the next thirty years will see in America one of the Golden Ages of evangelical church history* -13

Whatever its focal point—the peace testimony, racial justice, Bible study, service to the wasteland of the inner city, fraternal work overseas, the evangelism of social structures or the restitution of vocational ethics and morals—the movement of renewal can only begin in face-to-face groups* Tne foundation of every significant recovery of Christian discipline is in what the New fteatament knew, as "house churches" and the sociologists call "the primary ©roup". In the history of the Brethren, the high points of separation and discipline have been 1) the witness against luxury and consplclous con­ sumption (the dress question), 2) the witness against violence and war (Biblical non-resistance), and 3) the accent on the general ministry Of the whole people (opposition to rule by a professionalized ministry).' All three of these points are as timely today as they were two hun­ dred and fifty years ago. Indeed, Catholics and Lutherans and Calvinists and Anglicans are joining to accent the importance of the latter enphasis (which also comprised points 2 and 3 in Spener's program) t the apostolate • of the laity. The books by Father Yves Cengar (Catholic)i Lay People in the Church and Professor Hendrik Kraemer (Ditch Reformed): AIheoloisiy.of the .Laity, the new volume of essays edited by Bishop Stephen Weill (Anglican) , and Br. Hans-Buedi Weber (Swiss Reformed): The layman in Christian History.. serve to remind us that a concern for which Free Church fathers once suffered persecution and martyrdom is now sweeping even the centers of the old "magisterial Information*" Ihe witness against violence and war has attained a new relevance in the nuclear age* when mankind has finally achieved the technical capacity to destroy all life on the planet* All apart from the evangelical si@ilficance -14 of a community of Christians unambiguously committed to the Prince of Peace, there are at least three areas where public policy Is over-extended unless sustained by the witness of organissed, vocal, peaceful opinion. One is the last-West conflict,•where actions of the government in Washington to prevent a worldwide holocaust have been hampered by the militance of organised hate groups in the country. With the Issuance of the magnifleant peace encyclical of the late Pope John XXIII, Pacem in gerrlg, it has be­ come more difficult for advocates of so-called "preventive war" to single out Protestant agencies concerned with peace as being "soft on Corrmunism", But for the upholding of a long-range national poHey of restraint and self -discipline, the contribution of a peace church resolutely committed to non-violence - regardless of temporal consequences - is invaluable* Second, althou#i the stand of the churches at large on conscientious objection to war is still ant>iguous, since the Amsterdam Assembly (1948) the witness of Qiristlans unconditionally bound by the peace testimony has been recognised as a valid one* Civilised governments now make pro­ vision for the conscientious objector, a notable ocample being provided by the German Federal Republic, where the recent draft law - in spite of the fact that Germany had no tradition in the matter - affords as enH^at- ened a procedure for conscientious exertion from military service as can be found any where in the world* To sustain this development, however, a moral equivalent for war is required. This the peace churches, with their allies from other denominations, have eIterated and supported in various programs of alternative service at home and abroad* The political significance of alternative service matches the religious meaning* Under a despotic regime it may be enou^i for the weaponless Christians -15 to try to secure exception from bearing arms* But in a democratic system, where all citizens participate to some degree in the work of the government (Gbl^ceit), it is essential that an optical alternative to military service be maintained - one involving risk, sacrifice and worthwhile service. It is idle to suppose that even the 0*S* government would long hold to the standard thus far reached without the work of the peace sections of the Brethren Service Commission, Mennonite Central Committee and American friends Service Committees. Third, and presently most crucial, in the great social revolution through which America is now passing, as the Me©?oes attain to first class citizenship, to date Qirlstian ministers like Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abexnathy and Fred Shuttlesworth have been relatively successful in maintaining a. non-violent program. Non-Violent Direct Action, as adopted from the Gandhi experiments by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Coraiittee on B&eial Equality (CORE) and the Students Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SMCC), is not the same thing, as Biblical non-resist­ ance* Yet, as the ©?@at Washington March demonstrated to a sceptical nation, there is a Spirit at work here for which all Americans can be profoundly grateful. We have only to reflect on what the struggle would be like if lit Me^o leadership were at the low level of Wallace, Barnett, Eastland, • Ellender and their ilk, to realise how thankful we can be that the Christian church still has an authority in the Negro community which It has long since lost in iarip sections of the white population* in the fact of ©pen wickedness - slander, physical, assault by mobs, police corruption* treason by public officials under oath to uphold the Constitution, bombings of homes and the murder of little children - our Negro brethren have shown astonish­ ing discipline. They are certainly entitled to the prayers and active -16 identification of all fellow Christians who profess to honor the universal church and Her Lord, who will one day judge us all - not as to our verbal­ ization but according to our actions In service to the least of these. His brethren* Finally, w© may refer to separation from the spirit of the times, as once systjolized by plain dress* Even the Methodists were once sensitive to this matter of witness against luxury and conspicious censunptlon, and some wore plain clothes as late aa the first half of th© nineteenth century. The matter of spiritual austerity, of counting as nought the things of this world, of resisting the blandishments of a luxury-oriented civilization, was confused from time to time by other factors. Plain dress tended to be­ come peculiar dress, revealing pride of group ratter than humility of spirit* Moreover, a religious regard for the original Christian pattern tended to become confused with technological primitivlsm - as thougi in emulating the spirit and style of the Early Church it were also necessary to hold to the technical level of an age without telephones, tractors, automobiles, radio and other modem inventions. The tension between the church and the world (or better, "the spirit of the times") is not the outward tension between the el#iteenth century and the twentieth century, but the discontinuity between the style of life of a Kingdom that is being created and a world that Is o>ing* One aspect of the world that is dying, of "secularism" ri^itly con­ ceived, ia conspicuous consumption* It is wrong for me to eat cake if my brother lacks bread* It is immoral for me to dress my family in mink if my nel#bor lacks a coat* It. is wrong for Christians to become so eoamitted to the pride of Hfe and Its evidences that they can no longer live joyfully -17

and recklessly in anticipation of the things to come. Here again we have an area of relaxation where earnest prayer, study and discussion certainly point toward the imperative of a style of life which authenticates a wit­ ness. It is worth noting that in their work in the wastelands of the inner

city, the p'oup ministry of East Harlem, Cleveland, and Chicago has found that plain dress is important, as well as practiced koinonia. If a hard­ hitting testimony is to be borne to the fragasnted* the broken, the shattered

of a society which esteems display and mode and has lost all hope of the

Kin.

The words of our fathers have, therefore, a real relevance to our present concerns* Tradition for us is not the dead' hand of the past weighing down the present* but the covenant of fathers and sons, imd our relationship to past disciplines of life Is precisely that which holds for past creeds and confessions (disciplines of the mind). As Philip Schaff put it, "What cannot be preached in the pulpit ou#t not to be taugit in

a confession of faith*.* On the other hand, what 'is tau#t in the con­

fession ou^t to be preached in the pulpit."8 W@ nii^it put it this way, speaking of the General. Riles of the Methodists or the traditional style

of the Brethren; "that which is in the Riles should be maintained, and that which cannot be witnessed should not be in the Rules."

.This Is what It means to be faithful to a living heritage: not that everything from the past is presently sound, and not that each of us is

free to react into a limbo of individual freedom, but that in dialogue with believing men of the past' arid of the present we continually seek and

articulate and is|>lement that form of sound words and style of faithful

life which will give tangible and optical evidence that there are those to

whom Jesus Christ is King above all kings, and Lord above all other lords* FOOTNOIES

1. Dumbau^i, Donald P** European, CM.^ns of the Brethren (Elgin* 111*: Ba-ethren Press, 195$), p.' 33'* ' 2# Gaustad, Edwin S*, Historical Atlas ofBellgjon in America (New York & Evansi'cn:" harper I 'tew*"' 1962;," pp."25&f* see also his very useful article, "The Geography of American Religion," XXX Journal of Bible .aria jn (1962) li3Mfc 3. Edge, Findley B.t*T"'Quest Jfor'T ^ igjoji;. (Hashvilles BroaSfik- KSi ljt3), esp* Part IV. 4* Stotts* Herbert E.* and Dtata* Paul Jr., I^ethodism and Society: . '. .^Ji.v;; fci ... ;_ ' . York & Nashville; Ahinsdbn'tress, l$o2), p* "aa. "' 5. Correspondence in'the writer's possession: 2/23/63, 2/27/63* 3/1/63* 3/12/63* 6. cf. "TSie Usefulness of Jteti-Cathollelsm," LXXVXI1 Coisaonweai (1963) 16:522-2^* " ' *"~~ 7. cf. Mallott* Ployd E.* fflfa dj _ . ... • ;:: iiistory. (Elgin, 111.: Brethren'i^Ushing''Hse.,~~l$5k)* p. 2%. 8. Schaff, David A., The.Life of Philip Schaff (New York: Charles Scribner»s ^cw^'l'o^'tyrp. 'fc .. V - THE CPRCK UHIYEESAL

Ton no doubt have become aware that in the process of developing this discussion I have used far more friendly language in reference to the men of the state-church tradition than was coasaon among our Free Church fathers, fhey did not believe that those who persecuted simple Christians could be Christians themselves! they belonged to the "fallen" period of the church, whether they were Catholic or Protestant, Because they would not exercise church discipline, the shame of the state churchmen was that on the one hand they made league with persecutors whose Turkish spirit was worse than that of Turks after the flesh, and on the other hand they failed to separate from Murderers, adulterers, drunkards and open loose-livers. Both the blood on their hands and the promiscuity of their eos^pany proved thai their claiming of the name "Christian" was hollow hypocrisy* there­ for© the True Church isast come out from their midst.

For this separation our fathers were accused of nourishing a divisive and sectarian spirit* Justus Menius followed Lather in proclaiming that they were "those who have gone forth from us but are not of our spirit", and remarked that where Christ builds a church the devil sets up a chapel.

The answer of the Free Church men has a©v©r been pxt better, I think, than by John Wesleyf when he replied to a critic that th© real dissenters are those whose disobedience and disloyalty disgrace th© Ham© of the Lord.1 The Ire© Church view ©f th© church was a high on©, and it was this that led then to separate fro® legal patterns of culture-religion which dis­ honored rather than honored th© Head of th© Church. There are still those of our ranks, notably th© Old Mennonites and th© Southern Baptists, who will not fellowship with th© state-churches for fear of being "unequally yok©d". This is th® basic reason why such groups shun 1*© ecumenical move­ ment.

There is something to b© said for this attitude, ©van though the church©© of Sweden, England, Hannover and Bern hav© long since accepted th© principl© of toleration. Hone of them would today countenanc© th© us© of th© sword to ©nforc© doctrinal or cultic conformity upon the sceptical or dissenting, they hav© also, sine© World War I, shared in th© growing reluctance of Christendom to identify military action with th© will of God. Some of th©ir leading theologians hav© ev©n declared thai Europe is a missionary territory ia th© same sens© as Asia or Africa, and that th® logic of th© situation calls for an emphasis upon believers* baptism rather than automatic membership from infancy. Ii is difficult to avoid the remark that in such cases, however, it clouds over but it never rains, there is now no great rash t© cut loos© from such residual privileges as exist, to go over to th© openly Fre© Church basis, wt&eh th® logic of the situation would seem to repair©. What th© European churches today need is to go through the experience which our churches went through at the ©nd of th© colonial state-church period* to accept religious liberty and voluntaryism, and t© develop "new methods" capable of accrediting the Qospel and winning support on the merits of th® case.

Only in th© areas of Communist repression, notably in th© B.D.R. (Com­ munist-controlled East Germany), is there an evident effort to r©-work the relationship of th® church to society and to government. In spit© of th® decline of church attendance and support in the west, which many of th® most -3

sensitive ref*r to as a "post-Christian siituation", men still cling to the images of "Christian nation" and "Christendom" with - I bellev* - pernicious consequences both religious and political. In Franc®, for example, a traditionally Catholic p®opl© has become a prime example of "baptised heathenism". A few years ago the Archbishop of Paris had the situation surveyed and released th© figures which showed thai only lo% of th© pop­ ulation, men and women, within 75 kllom©tr©s of Paris kept th® minimal requirements set by th® Fourth Laieran Council (1215 A.B.)j on© confession and on® mass a year. In Italy, a survey has showed thai only 11$ of Italian men perform th® same minimal exercises. In other words, 84$ of th© pop­ ulation of greater Paris and 89$ of th© mm of Italy - another of thos© great "bulwarks against atheistic Communism! - are by definition ©xcom- municai©. And certainly thos© requirements ar® minimal enough, even for the silent and docile and barely participative i

In the Pr©t®stant north th© case is no better. On the basis of popular statistics, Lutherans claim to be the third largest Christian confession in the world today, and they get their delegates to Amsterdam or Kvanston or Mew D®lhi on that basis. Of the peopi© of Sweden, 9®*% ar® reckoned communicants of the Lutheran state church. A bishop of that established church said a few years ago that the Church of Sweden was simply th® people of Sweden in iheir spiritual exercise - a definition of th© church like that of alchard Hook@rfs Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, still normative for th®

Anglican communion. By such reckoning Denmark eontributas over 4*5 million

Lutherans and Sweden 7 millions, fh© problem beneath the surfac®, however, is that their own steadies show only 3*o% and 3.436 of th© population in effective relationship. In England, the figure is 15$ effective, 30$ "friendly", 40$ indifferent, and C.15$ hostile to organised religion. On the very face of it, let alone when on© probes th© ©thical and moral and spiritual situation, the whol© pretense of "Christian nations" and "Christian civilisation" is an open fraud. And worst of all, ii stands as a barrier across th© path of a thorough going reformation and renewal of th© church!

Bui what is the situation in th© United States? fo what extent ar® our churches, as befits a land enjoying religious liberty and practicing religious voluntaryism, practicing a real, siyl® of devotion and discipline? I think simple honesty requires the admission that our major denominations are well on th® way i© social establishment*2 They even enjoy and expect, in some cases, legal privileges as well. Hi® point has been mad© often enoughf but at this juncture ii is Important to note thai many of the problems of the European legal establishments and the American social establishments ar© the same. They do not stem from th© same set of factors, nor do they point to similar solutions. Bui as to how we shall eoiteeiv© "Church", and whom w© shall include in fellowship, ih® situations ar® quite comparable. In emry European establishment there is a minority of concerned Christians asking the classical free Church questions and looking for a way out of the mas®. And in the IBA iher© is hardly an important

Christian issue which shapes up along denominaiional Haas. On both sid«s of the Atlantic, in short, where there is a Spirit moving, ii is cutting across denominaiional lines and calling into question old loyalties and institutional forms.

Lei ii b© emphasised thai in historical development and prospects the cases ar© quite different. In Europe, having largely lost th® intellectuals -5 and the proletariat - the two most important classes in th© Great City of our time - old Christendom is in a "post-Christian situation". Since the recent war iher® Is Utile organised hostility to religioni most people simply regard ii as Irrelevant and uninteresting. Christianity will remain in decline there until t&® churches go over to th® voluntary principle and launch the great offensives in mass evangelism which bring th© masses back to a willing loyalty. In America, after a century and a half of successful mass evangelism, most church members h©r© ar© "new Christians" f they ar© just beginning to catch a glimpse of what th® liturgical and ethical and moral content of faithful living must be. In the process of baptizing a whole population, standards of church membership - both preparatory and full - hav© been virtually abandoned. Therefore th® priority for our situation must be instruction in discipline, and if w® can make the break- throu#* at this point there is an enormous potential in our churches.

wlio then is to be counted our brother? Where are we to find allies in translating the word into th© vernaculars of the Great Giiyr Me can no longer draw th® lines where our fathers did. Among the men of th® Kirchentag and lay institutes, men of th® Lutheran and Reformed and Anglican establishments, ther® Is a vital seeking and questioning which can only be called "pre-Anabaptist". They talk constantly of the lerngomeinde - those who are th© hidden church, of th® Haushrels© - the small groups for Bible study and devotion wher® mm ar© learning of the faith, of Kirchenzuchi - the problem of disciplinary standards. In some places - particularly In the vocational guilds which hav© ©merged from the Academies and the fellow­ ship groups of th© German Student Christian Movement - fundamental structures of discipline hav© ©merged. In our own land, on th® other hand, th© large denominations show all th© major signs of establishments and discipline is but slowly being recovered.

Lei me give an example. Some months ago in Texas a Baptist preacher was caught with a parishioner's wife under compromising circumstances.

Even in this emancipated day and ag© this was going a little too far! Ii cam© before th© Ministerial Association for action. How We procedures in

Baptist discipline are clear and classicalt an effort is made to save the erring brother, to bring him through repentance to restoration in grace, or to cut him off lest his behavior poison th© church and disgrace the Ham©, what outsiders may think has no bearing on th© situation on© way or th© other. In this case, however, even before they had met with the straying brother, th© Ministerial Association published a public apology to th® ciiy because on© of their number had not done his duty in maintaining accepted moral standards. Inisort, th® brethren thought like an established church - which in thai area they are - rather than Ilk® a pilgrim people. The first thing thai occurred to them was public relations, not Matth. 18tl5-19.

I do not see how w© can fairly draw th© lin© between ih® old establish­ ments in decline, wher© sora® are moving toward covenanted discipleship, and th© free churches in accomodation, wh©r© all too often the instinctive r®spoas@s betray our tradition and muffle our messag©. I cannot really see thai Bad Boll, a iax-supported lay center of the church of Wurttemburg

(which, incidentally, has free churchmen on lis board and in lis leadership from time to time), is anything but a blessing to th© Christian cause; while th© voluntary misbehavior of a Methodist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, is a witness to low-grade culture-religion if not outright heathenism.

This means, I think, that w® must go and seek our brethren wher© they t©nd -7

their flocks, and that the delineation of "sheep", "goats", and "slavering wolves" will be different la some respects from what they were in th© 16th and 18th centuries.

We are brought then to openness to one of th® foremost testimonies of the Church of the iiesiltution, reserved from earlier discussion. Thai is the imperative of catholicity, ecumenicity, Christian unity as jT marof the true Church. As the party strife raged during the breakup of Latin

Christendom, th® fathers of th© Fr©© Church sought to avoid party names.

Hany simply preferred ih© term "Christians" or "Brethren", to refer to all the faithful, whenever found. One of the marks of the True Church was unity, and ih© fr®@ churches have had to wait a long time for that part of th© Restitution program to come into proper focus. Bui we should not hesitate to proclaim thai the apostolic church was One, and thai ih©

Lord of the Church wiUs the unity of the brethren.

It might be helpful for us to learn to think of "church" as an escha- iological concept - not as something which, has been realised in the past, sometime, someplace; not as something existent today, in the institutional sense, where there is submission to the pope, or episcopal succession, or government by "twelve apostles". Those who have always found that church sL concept most congenial which magnifies the work of the Holy SpiriVshould not find ii difficult to look to things to come, to coming power and wonders greater than any of the past. We ar© not granted to say "lo, here" and

"lo, there" to God the Spirit, and ii is doubtful thai His work is limited or bounded by any political or geographical or institutional church lines thafc w® might car© to draw. Suppose w© put it this way! Christ had been working to make a church - a p®opl© such as God purposed all men to be - and one day He shall accomplish it. Most of the time the New Creator has been working with rather refractory material, ami scandalous rebellion at one point has often been found - simultaneously and In the same people - to glorious witness at another point. In facing the whole seal© of Christian order and discipline, with worship - theology - ethics - orals - brotherhood the major chords, some groups hav© done better on one concern and som© on another. If w© thought in this way ii would break down the walls between various groups today and also increase our mutual joy as w© look to what th® Creator purposes of and for us. This would mean thai "church", as a normative concept, would number all those who have h©ard the Word and ar© being gathered into faithfulness and anticipation.

Th© critical point her©, as in ih© whole Biblical setting, is that we should know who we ar®, and wh©r© w© are, and what iim® ii is, as w© s@©k to discover and implement Godfs purpose for us. A great d®al depends upon a sensitivity of timing. A few years ago ih® bishops of the Southeastern

Jurisdiction of my denomination mat at Lake Junaluska to deal with ih® imperatives of ih® hour. Th® Hegroes* march to ©quality was already well under way. Violent men were already organizing the conspiracy of the

Radical Right to undermine confidence in our Constitution, Supreme Court, our Presidency, our churches, our colleges, and seminaries. In this historic moment ihes© fathers in God declared to ih© church the purpose of the hour, th® critical word! the preachers should be urg®d to give up smoking. Bow that*© timing, brethren! Verily, the mountain hath labored and brought forth a mouse!

Bui equally distressing or comical irrelevance has been ©xp©rienc@d sometimes in ih© past, too. We must never allow the myth to stand that, -9

much as w© love and honor our fathers in the faith, they were any mor© than creatures prone to error, either, even as we. To draw from the records of my own denomination again, let me refer to a resolution passed by the Holston

Annual Conference in 1905* li read, in pari, as follows?

"We call attention to * coca-cola? I While ii commenced as an apparently innocent drink, yet ii is the coming ©nemy of our young men, for these reasons? First, li contains chiefly caffeine, or the elements of strong coffee, and therefor© k©©ps awake; second, It stimulates the whole nervous system; and third, it produces a habit almost as strong as the tobacco habit. Keep an average boy awake till two ©*cloek in th® morning, stimulate and turn him loos© in a town or city full of temptations, and his de­ struction is almost sure to follow. Mothers all over this land ar© bewailing the fact thai their boys' do not com© horn© at night and reilr© as they used to do, and 'eooa-eola' is on® of the chi®f causes of thie nocturnal r®y@l. W© warn our preachers against this subtle enewy*u®

In short, discipline is no ©nd in lis©lf, and ofi©n disciplines of ih© past or present reflect cultural momentum rather than deep spiritual commiiaeni. Men® of them is sacrosanct, beyond inquiring or discussion - although w® would b® frivolous indeed if w® treated lightly ih© testimonies of men who hav® sealed their words with their lives. Bui th® key question is timings what does God need of a faithful people here and now?

Wher®v©r they ar®, and whatever their heritage* those who s®@k to practice faithfulness ar® representing in iheir place the Universal Church and her Lord. What is li thai ih® universal Church hopes and prays may b® given priority by ih® hidden church la East Germany? * Is ii anything except thai they may f,wiist®r through", may be faithful in spirit and in practice, may not be penetrated or bemused by ih® obvious benefits of accomodation?

What is ii thai ih® universal Church hopes and prays may be given priority by ih® church in th® Southeaster USA? - Is it anything except that they may -10

resist th© pr©ssur@a of wicked men, the pleasures of cultural status, and serve - yes, id®ntir> with - the Least Brother? It is not "our" church, a club for which w© set the £ules. When a Presbyterian Church In Columbus,

Georgia or a Methodist Church in Jackson, Mississippi declares that they ar© going to run things th© way they want to, because after all it's "their" club, th©y hav© simply stated thai they do not belong to Jesus Christ and are not tc be counted in th© universal Church. They have opted for heresy

In plac© of faithful witness, and ih© fact thai they act like an establish­ ment and smell Ilk® lily whit© culture -r©ligion will not sav© them from th© Judgment. Hor, certainly, does ii make them a "church" Instead of a

"sect"!

But of course ih© key question for us is how, and wh@r®, within our own vocational commitments - as students, as professors, as wives and mothers, etc., - and in Gr@ath®r Chicago (not Leipzig or Birmingham) we can work out a r®fr©sh©d and renewed church lif®. lou may recall Soren Kierkegaard's reference to ih® philosopher who builds a vast and lofty cathedral of high ideals, so that w© are overpowered as w© read; but when we visit him w© discover thai he does not himself live in this high-vaulted plac®, but in a pig sty crouched besid© it* Elton Trueblood has drawn a parallel Hn® of thou^it in on® of his books s

distinguished men of l©it®rs, essayists, novelists, and poets, hav® recently asserted their conviction that the only thing which can sav® our sagging culiur© is a revival of religious faith, but many of these mm make no contact whatever with th® particular organizations in their own communities which are dedicated to ih© nourishment of the very faith they declare necessary for our salvation."*

This is th© thing about th© Fre® Church. Legal ©stablishm®nts can b® depended upon to operate as long as ther® are peopl® to pay taxes and civil -11

servants who prefer th© "church language" to the idioms of law or medicine.

Social establishments can be counted on as long as ther© ar© patrons who b@llev© that religion is a good thing (usually for somebody else), or cultures thai need religion to firm them up against tortion or tension. But th© Fr®e Church will survive only wher® ther© are awakened souls who respond

to the Word as matur®, responsible men and wom®n, to whom li on© day - in ih® midst of their reflections » becomes clear that th® Lord of History, who is also th® Lord of th© church, is also mj Lord and yours* FOOT NOTES

1. cf. Wesley's Journal for February, 1740. Ih© Works. I (Grand Rapidst Zondsrvan Publishing Hous©. offprint of 1872 edition), op* 262-63

2. cf. "Religious Freedom in America? A Protestant View", XIII Cross Currents (1963) 1:13-42.

3. cf. "Th© Recovery of Ministry in th® Hew Era", in Walmsl©y, Arthur E.t **•# Th® Church In a Society of Abundane® (Mew York? Seabury Press, 1963), pp. 152-69

4* cf. "Some Free Church Remarks on the Corrupt, the Body of Christ", in Pelton, Robert S. ©d., The Church, as ih© Body of Christ (loir® Dame, Ind.t U. of Notre Dam© Press, 19o3), V9* 127-38.

5* Quoted in Dabney, Virginius, Dry Messiah, th© Life of Bishop Cannon (H@w York? Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), p. 47

6. Trueblood, D. Him* Th® Predicament of Modern Man (New York & London? Harper & Brothers, 1944). 2nd edit., p. 71.