Christian Unity?
by Donald Devine

“One flock and one Shepherd” was Jesus’ command. Yet, as Easter 2007 approaches, the Apostles Creed’s “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” seems remote and almost duplicitous.

At the heart of Christianity is a paradox. There is a One and a Three, one God and three Persons--Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christianity cannot compete with Islam on the matter of unity. God is One, Allah is everything. Curiously, when Christianity rejected trinity in the case of Unitarianism, the unity view finally rejected God altogether.

When one looks at actual Christianity, one confronts the world’s largest value system, with one-third of its peoples claiming adherence. But disunity is the rule. The denomination that claims catholicity, the Roman Catholic Church, can boast a majority of Christians but barely at 1.2 billion out of 2 billion worldwide. Historical Protestantism totals 340 million in scores of denominations, Orthodoxy has 225 million adherents, Pentecostalism claims 120 million, Anglicanism has 73 million and a large number of other sects hold 40 million more. Of course, even religions that claim unity are also divided. Islam has 1.2 billion but Sunnis hold only 86 percent of Muslims, with Shiites at 14 percent, and with other divisions too. Judaism has organized into Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and even secular designations.

Moreover, nothing about these divisions is static. At the beginning, there was the sense of Christian unity but little central church organization, with the main control exercised first by Roman, then Byzantine and, after the fall of Rome, Frankish monarchs. As early as 431 the Assyrian Church moved away and in 1054 the great eastern and western churches split. During the Middle Ages Roman Catholicism held most Christians in the West, although even then there were dissenting sects and “heretical” branches. With the rise of Protestantism under Martin Luther in 1517, a multiplication of sects began that has not ended until this day.

As the 21st Century dawned, things were changing once again. The most obvious has been the decline of the historical Protestant denominations. In Europe this has been most dramatic in the dramatic drop in church attendance into single digits but even identification with such denominations has fallen to bare majorities or less, although most still consider themselves nominal Christians in some sense or other according to polls. In the U.S., secularism and conversion to other denominations from the once dominant mainline sects has been the major dynamic of the past half century. Orthodox Christianity has remained rather stable in terms of identification and church attendance (at least outside of southeastern Europe).

Christian growth has centered in the Pentecostal Protestant denominations, especially within the U.S. While well funded attempts have been made by them to evangelize the Third World, especially to challenge Catholics in South America, conversion has been only marginally successful in total numbers, although the percentages of increase have been impressive (and some Pentecostals dispute the statistics, claiming even greater growth). Catholicism, again with the major exception of Europe, has been growing too, by keeping reproduction rates up in the developing nations, lower than in the past but high relative to other Christian denominations, although not compared to Islam’s much higher rate.

While Pentecostalism has attempted growth by conversion, Catholicism has given more emphasis to attempts at reunification and rejuvenation. Being closest to Orthodoxy in doctrine and liturgy, most endeavors have been made in that direction. Interestingly, given that the major challenge to Catholicism in Europe has been from rationalistic secularism, the problem from the Orthodox point of view is that Catholicism is too rational and not spiritual enough. Indeed, both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have re-emphasized the synthesis of reason and faith as a central principle. In explaining the lack of progress in unification, Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I, emphasized that “modernism, a paradigm that came out of the Enlightenment” was the core ideology eroding Christian culture. The problem is that this Enlightenment rationalism was a “descendant” of the medieval philosophy that still lies at the core of Roman Catholicism, although he promised to continue unity discussions.

With the crisis of Anglicanism emanating from the consecration of women and an openly practicing homosexual as bishops in the U.S., the American Episcopalian branch is faced with exclusion from the world Anglican communion and with an internal schism in the U.S. Already the American Episcopal Church has seen conservative parishes accept the leadership of sees in Africa rather than submit to bishops considered heretical. A meeting of the archbishops of 38 Anglican provinces was recently held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to consider how to avoid schism as a result of the U.S. consecration of the bishop and blessing of civil unions of homosexuals, the ordination of women and other liberal doctrines in the West. Many traditional bishops there refused to share communion with the Americans. A final warning was issued to the American episcopacy and there was even a reaching out to the Catholic Church, from which it had split under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

Even more remarkably, a 42-page statement has been prepared by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission outlining how both churches could reunite. The document, leaked to The Times of London, is now at the Vatican, where its bishops are preparing a reply.

The document “Growing Together in Unity and Mission” acknowledges the difficulties but recommends members of each denomination attend each other’s synodical gatherings and pilgrimages, write common teaching resources for children, develop protocols for movement of clergy between churches and even each praying publicly for the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury! On the key issue of Papal authority, there is the unprecedented proposal: “We urge Anglicans and Roman Catholics to explore together how the ministry of the Bishop of Rome might be offered and received in order to assist our Communions to grow toward full, ecclesial communion.” On the other hand, 400 years of division will not be healed overnight.

In the meantime, Christian disunity is the norm. Forcing unification has been rejected by all but a few fringe groups in recent times and is not an option. Most Christian denominations have even rejected force formally, as did the largest denomination at its historic Vatican II Council during the 1960s. It is rather clear anyway that the justification of force in the past actually reflected a fundamental Christian misconception. It was based on Jesus’ declaration, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” He says “me” not a “you” addressed to some denomination of his followers. For a church to enforce what is an injunction about “me” is equating the denomination to Jesus, or God, which is surely blasphemous for a Christian.

Jesus did have something to say to Christians about “you” as opposed to “me.” But it had the opposite meaning, declaring, “Whoever is not against you is with you.” This declaration of tolerance took a long time to digest. The historian Lord Acton said it was not enacted into law by a Christian government until Maryland’s Act of Tolerance in 1649—not that anyone else did it sooner (although Lord Baltimore and Roger Williams had earlier set an informal policy), and even that was overruled by the British parliament in 1689. Christian tolerance was not adopted widely until the late 19th Century, and by no means fully even then—or today.

With the acceptance of freedom of conscience, however, full unity will almost certainly remain elusive until love and reason meet. In the meantime, Christians are commanded to work for unity within the bounds of tolerance; but they would be wise also to have some patience.

Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.