“There is no fear in love,

but perfect love casts out fear.”—1John 4:18

“It seems to me that the church has lost its influence. Nobody pays much attention to it any more, except some of its own members; and they don’t seem to be interested in anything except their own activities. The time was when the word of the minister carried weight. Some may not have agreed, but when the church spoke they paid attention. It’s not true now, though.”

Mr. Clarke eyed the others in the group as if he were testing their reactions to the statements he had just made. The church had always given him a sense of security, and now he was both worried that it seemed to have lost its power, and resentful that people no longer listened to its teaching.

He was one of a group of leaders of a local congregation who, at the request of their minister, were meeting to re-examine the purpose of the church. Not all of the group had arrived as yet, and the minister of the congregation, Mr. Gates, had been detained in his office by an emergency call upon his pastoral care.

Within the minute after Mr. Clarke finished, Mr. Wise spoke up. He was a thoughtful and compassionate member of the congregation who often raised the kind of questions that carried the discussion to deeper levels. When his questions were ignored, as they often were, he would smile good-naturedly and continue both as a contributor and as a question raiser. Turning to Mr. Clarke, he said: “I think I know how you feel. The statements of our ordained spiritual leaders are important, but do you think we should equate their words with—”12

As usual, Mr. Wise’s comment was interrupted, and this time by Mr. Churchill who, with evident irritation, protested against any concern over what others thought about the church. He said: “The church has got to be the church, and the world is different from it. I don’t like this ‘return to religion’ business. Christianity and the church aren’t supposed to be popular movements. If people want to join the church, that’s fine; but if they don’t, that’s their lookout. Let’s be the church and leave the world to itself.”

“But why was Christ born into the world—” began Mr. Wise.

“I don’t agree,” exclaimed Mrs. Strait, responding to Mr. Churchill’s comment and not hearing Mr. Wise. “I think we should be concerned about the world; concerned enough, at least, to set a good example, so that people will know what they’re supposed to live up to and to do. After all, Jesus told us how we should live, and He did so in such simple words that even children can understand them. All we have to do—and it’s written there for us to read—is to keep the commandments, imitate Jesus, and live a good life for ourselves and others.”

“Yes, but if it’s that simple, why don’t church people live better—”

“Not at all! Not at all!” pronounced the stately Mr. Knowles with some disdain. “I don’t agree with any of you. Our difficulties today result from the ignorance of our people, and the answer to the problem is education. We need to teach, and teach again. Church people must know their faith and know why they believe in it. When I was a child I was drilled thoroughly in the knowledge of the Bible, and I once won a prize for knowing more Bible verses than any other child. We need more adult education, and our children must be filled with the truth so they can recite it forwards and backwards. In my estimation, there is too much emphasis now on persons and not enough on the content of the faith.”

“But didn’t Jesus say, ‘For God so loved the world—’”

“It seems to me,” interrupted Professor Manby, “that all of you are in too much of a hurry. Some scientists estimate that13 man has been eight million years coming to his present state of life. In contrast, civilized man is only four thousand years old. This being true, we should be more patient. Given time, man will solve his problems.”

“But has man’s character developed in pace with his knowl—”

At that moment the Reverend Mr. Gates, with several other members of the committee, came into the room, and after greeting everyone he said: “Now let’s get down to business. As you know, I’ve called this meeting in order that we may consider the purpose of our church in this community. I think we need a clearer understanding of why we are here. I wish we could be surer that we are serving God’s purposes and not our own. I wish we all would assume as true that God’s purposes for His church and for us are greater than anything we may think they are, and that we would hold our opinions and beliefs open to His correction and renewal.”

“How can we be any clearer about the purpose of this church than to keep it open and its organizations going, so that people can come to it if they want to,” exclaimed Mr. Churchill abruptly.

Mr. Wise now got to his feet, and with a twinkle in his eye began speaking: “You’ve all interrupted me several times, but now I’m going to speak my piece. I think Mr. Gates is right. We do need occasionally to rethink the reason for our existence as a church, lest it become a private club that caters to our own special needs. Our discussion so far tonight suggests that we want the church to be what we need it to be. We want God cut down to our own pattern and size. It may be that our church is too small for God, and that we’ll turn out to be a religious, but godless, club.”

“But how could that happen to us?” protested Mrs. Strait. “If we do what’s right, God will love us and use us as His obedient servants.”

“I wish Mr. Gates would set us straight on these matters. Were you going to say anything more, Pastor?” inquired Mr. Clarke.

“Yes, I’ll have more to say,” replied Mr. Gates slowly, “but14 this is not my problem only. That’s why I called you together. We need to help each other think this question through. But to do that, we all shall need the spirit of Christ to help us. We need to look at the concepts and meanings that we bring out of our lives in the light of Christ’s teachings and example. He brought the gift of God’s love, but He brought also a judgment that was most disturbing to religious people. Instead of our judging what is good for Christ, I pray that He will judge us, and help us to be the instruments of His love.”

“But you’re our minister and teacher, so why don’t you tell us what you think the job of the church is in this community? I’m sure we’d all support you in whatever you might suggest,” urged Mr. Clarke.

“Mr. Clarke, I am not the church. I appreciate your confidence in me, but I am only one member of the church. The fact that I am ordained does not make me any more responsible for the church than you are, and I refuse to assume your responsibilities for you. Instead, I want to use my role as an ordained member of the church, and such training and experience as I have had, to help you find your role, so that together we can carry on the functions of the church in ways that will serve God and His people.”

When Mr. Gates finished speaking there was silence. The reactions of his hearers were varied, showing anxiety, irritation, confusion, and blankness. And no wonder! The spontaneous discussion that had gone on before Mr. Gates’ arrival had revealed how little their understandings of the church had prepared them to hear the question he was raising. The viewpoints they had brought to the meeting now closed their minds to the meanings he was trying to open to them.

What, then, were those concepts and meanings that made it so difficult for them to hear and understand their minister? Each of them represented a point of view that is widely prevalent in the church today and which keeps the church from being fully relevant and effective.15

Clericalism

When Mr. Clarke thought about the church, he did so in terms of the clergy and their work in the church. We might call him a “clericalizer”; that is, one who thinks that only the minister does the work of the church. This idea is the basis of clericalism, the disease which saps the strength of the church because one part of the body, the ordained minister, is made to do the work of the rest of the body, the unordained members. In the discussion Mr. Gates took exception to this idea, and rightly so, for it results in a clergy that is overworked and frustrated. Indeed, they find it impossible to do all that needs to be done. And yet the idea has a hidden appeal for many of them, for it feeds their professional pride and arrogance. But the damage done by this disease does not cease there. It also makes for church people who are lazy, who feel that the church belongs to the clergy, and who are not themselves instruments through which God works in the world. God is kept from doing what He would do for them, because He cannot do through the clergy what He would do through the whole of His church.

Clericalism blocks the ministry of the church, because it tends to make lay members second-class citizens who feel incompetent on matters of religion. When the ordained member makes religious interpretation and action his professional monopoly, the lay member responds by exhibiting increasing ignorance and incompetence. Sometimes it seems as if lay people show less intelligence in the church than in their world. It is as though the practice of religion had a stupefying effect on them, whereas in other areas of living they are intelligent, informed, and perceptive. This clericalizing of the church’s ministry produces in lay members the sense that religion is separate from life. They are heard to say to their ministers, “You stick to religion and leave the affairs of the world to us.” Religion thus becomes a Sunday business, and Sunday business is kept separate from weekday business.

Still another and related ill effect of clericalism is that it keeps laymen from discovering the religious significance of their work.16 Parents, for example, are not only parents entrusted with the physical, psychological, and social care of their children, but also are the teachers, pastors, and priests of their children. A teacher may serve God in his teaching, a doctor in his practice of medicine, a businessman in the conduct of his business, a milkman in the delivery of milk, and the garbageman in the collection of garbage. It is the business of the church to help these members find their ministry, but clericalism never allows them to make the discovery.

Clericalism, like any other concept, is more than a set of ideas. Mr. Clarke didn’t just happen to hold that notion of the church. He held it because he needed it. His need grew out of his dependency, his timidity, and his fear of assuming responsibility. He needed to exalt the clergy. He wanted to be told what to believe and to do; and his “doctrine” of the ministry, namely, clericalism, justified him in his need. People who want to be told what to believe and to do inevitably will develop or drift toward a doctrine that is authenticated by their need.

Ministers also contribute to the prevalence of clericalism. All men have a very human and understandable need to be centrally important and indispensable, and ministers are tempted to exploit this need in the conduct of their work. It is only natural for them to think of the church as “my church,” of the people as “my people,” and of the ministry as “my ministry.” These images cause them to function as if everything depended upon them, and as if they wanted everyone to depend upon them. Indeed, they may even measure the success of their ministry by the number of people who depend upon them for guidance and support, rather than by the number who are achieving mature self-sufficiency. As a part of this same picture, some ministers are unable to accept suggestions, much less criticism. The clericalized image they hold of themselves is that of an “answer man”; that is, one who has all the answers to human problems, and always right answers.

Thus, clericalism is a condition contributed to by both the17 ordained and the lay members of the church, and it tragically diminishes the power of the church. It is a symptom of Mr. Clarke’s fear and of our own. It shows that we are afraid to trust God and to let His Spirit work through the whole of His people.

Churchism

Mr. Churchill’s ideas, on the other hand, represented a different concept, one which may be called churchism, or pietistic otherworldliness, a concept which encourages the church’s retreat from the world. It creates an artificial distinction between the religious and the secular, the religious being thought of as worship and all the other activities that go on in the church building, and the secular considered to be everything that goes on outside the building. In its local version churchism is parochialism, or total preoccupation with the church as an institution at the level of the local community.

The tragedy of such parochialism is that the creative thought and energies of people are consumed in the mere maintenance of the church as an institution, and in dead-end religious activity and worship. Mr. Churchill, and thousands of others who are like him, think of the church only as “gathered,” as a congregation. They think that the church is most truly the church when its members are assembled in the church building and engaged in church work. They think of the church in terms of “going to church,” of working for its organizations, of planning for its promotion, and of meeting the needs of the church as an entity separate from the rest of life. What is even worse, these people think that only when they are doing this church work are they serving God. Theologically, their concept means that Christ died for the church.

Instead, Christ died for the world! The purpose, then, of the church is not to meet its own needs but to serve God’s purposes in the world. This forces upon us the position that not only should we think of the church in its gathered sense, but also in its dispersed sense. This means that church people should think18 of themselves as members of the church when they are out in the world, and that their work in the world is the means through which God may act through them in the accomplishment of His purposes. Therefore, in terms of the gathered church we can speak of “church work,” but in terms of the dispersed church we must think of the “work of the church in the world,” the work of the instrument of God’s purposes there.

The relation between the gathered church and the dispersed church should be complementary. The church, as the people of God, comes together in a conscious way from out of the world to be renewed, instructed, and equipped for the purpose of returning, as the body of Christ, to its task in the world. Then, out of its work in the world, the church gathers again to worship, to make its offerings, and to be strengthened anew for its work in the world. Elsewhere I have likened the church to an army that has been sent on a mission. In order to accomplish its purpose, it must have a base. In order to have a base, it must assign certain troops to the task of building and maintaining that base, so that the rest of the army may be free to accomplish its mission. We tend, however, to forget the “mission” and wastefully assign most of our people to building and maintaining bases, with the result that we do not accomplish our true purpose. More members need to be assigned to and trained for the mission, where the conflict between life and death goes on unceasingly.

Contrary to the opinion of Mr. Churchill, therefore, a complementary relation exists between the church and the world. The world is the sphere of God’s action, and the church is the means of His action. The church must be found at work in the world, where it will encounter the tension between the saving purposes of God and the self-centered purposes of man.

As in the case of clericalism, so it is in the case of churchism. There is a human reason for the existence of the concept and for its prevalence in the church. The reason, in Mr. Churchill’s case, was to be found in the conflict that he felt between his human interests and his church membership. He had certain real estate19 holdings and other investments from which he was making an excellent profit. Some of these, however, were exploitive and in contradiction to the faith which he professed. It was necessary, therefore, for him to keep the church and the world separate; and his doctrine of the church made it possible for him to rationalize the split between his faith and his life. We must not think that Mr. Churchill engaged in this contradiction deliberately. In part, his action was the unconscious means by which he held on to two conflicting values without suffering from the conflict between them. We must not think that Mr. Churchill is alone in this kind of separation of belief and practice, of splitting the church from the world. We all have our own individual forms of it.

It is because of our insecurity and fear that we develop these defensive attitudes of parochialism and churchism. We huddle like frightened children behind the doors of the church, whereas, as soldiers of Christ, we should be struggling courageously on the frontiers of life where the conflicts between love and hate, truth and prejudice, are being waged.

Moralism

The next member of the group who spoke up was Mrs. Strait, and she voiced for herself and for millions of other church people the moralistic understanding of the faith. Moralism is perhaps the most widespread of all the concepts that we are now discussing.

Moralism is usually identified as belief in good behavior as a source of life. A group of church people, many of them leaders of their respective parishes, were asked to describe the Christian. It would be no exaggeration to say that their descriptions of a Christian made it difficult to distinguish him from a Jew, because, according to their statements, a Christian is one who achieves his status as such by obeying the commandments of God. He must live a good life by keeping the law. The imitation of Jesus is the method, illuminated by a study of His teachings, especially the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. And, as Mrs. Strait20 indicated, they agreed that a Christian should set a good example for other people.

When asked how they felt about this concept of the Christian life, many of them admitted that they were not too enthusiastic about it, because it was hard to achieve. They admitted that they failed often and miserably. One man put it rather well when he said that he felt that trying to be a Christian was like whistling in the dark. They all admitted that their concept was widespread among their fellow church members and that it had little appeal. When they were asked why such an unappealing concept of a Christian was so prevalent, they replied that it was due to people’s feeling that they ought to be better than they are. Their discussion revealed further that they were unable to accept themselves as human beings, and that they felt they had to justify themselves by doing good works and by moral living.

That is the reason why Mrs. Strait holds to the moralistic concept of the Christian life. Separated from her husband and feared by her children, she feels acutely vulnerable and guilty. As a defense, she has built for herself a fortress made up of precepts, ideals, and rules, all based on a foundation of righteousness, and this has made her a formidable and rigid person. Like all self-righteous people, she tirelessly dispenses obvious truths, and keeps her own life and that of others narrowly proscribed.

Mrs. Strait is in no way an exception. The lives of moralistic people are not beautiful to behold. They are apt to be conventional, legalistic, and maintainers of the status quo. Because they have no sense of deliverance themselves, they are apt to be ungracious in relation to others. Because they live by the law, they do not show the fruit of the Spirit: namely, the love, joy, peace, and long-suffering which should mark the followers of Christ. They reveal how impossible it is for a human being to be a Christian by himself. He needs the spirit of Christ to live in him and to remake him. As we shall see later, there is available to us the spirit of Christ, who accomplishes in us the righteousness of Christ which is of the spirit and not of the law.21

Moralism also is a sign of our fear and defensiveness. We reduce life to the dimensions of a moral code, because we are afraid to trust the Spirit and to risk the dangers of love and its communication. As one person said, “Let’s be proper so we won’t need to pray, for there is no knowing what God might ask us to do if we really listened to Him.” In other words, moralism is a way of “playing it safe.”

Intellectualism

A fourth concept sometimes held by church members about the faith was exhibited by Mr. Knowles. Its name is intellectualism. This intellectualism, sometimes called gnosticism, claims that knowledge is the source of life, and that the possession of knowledge delivers us from the power of evil. This is an ancient heresy that lives on in every generation. The desire to know and the achievement of skill in the use of knowledge are indeed commendable. But to know is not justifiable as an end in itself. Knowledge about God and man, about the Bible and the Christian faith, about the church and its history, is good and necessary for informed Christian living, but it can in no way substitute for our dependence upon Christ and the work of His spirit in us. We need to know about Christian faith, but it must not replace the need to love and to be loved. Knowledge about God must not become more important than our knowing God.

When religious and theological knowledge becomes an end in itself, the church is apt to become coldly intellectual and sophisticated. I am reminded of a group of laymen who became avid students of Christian theology, and who became so prideful in their achievement that they exhibited in their relations with one another, as well as with their other associates, a spirit of pride, arrogance, and competitiveness. They had acquired the knowledge of Christianity, but they had lost the spirit of the Christ.

The work of Christians is not so much to hold and transmit a knowledge of the faith as it is to be the personal representatives and instruments of Christ in the world. To be sure, Christ’s22 representatives should know what they are talking about and intellectually be able to enter into dialogue with all men. But their knowing should incarnate them, both as persons and in their capacity to represent God and His Christ to men.

This brings us also to a controversy that exists in the field of Christian education. Many people feel that the purpose of the church school is to transmit the content of the Christian faith. Christian education, however, must be personal. It must take place in a personal encounter, and only secondarily is it transmissive. It is true, however, that Christian education is responsible for the continued recital of God’s saving acts, and for the transmission of the subject matter of the historical faith and life of the Christian community. The content of our faith was born of God’s action and man’s response—a divine-human encounter. It is neither possible nor correct to reduce this to subject matter and substitute the transmission of subject matter for the encounter, with the assumption that it will accomplish the same purpose (it cannot, it never has, and it never will). Actually, the relations of transmission and encounter are complementary. Both are needed. The church, as the tradition-bearing community, contains both poles and should not subordinate one to the other. When the content of the tradition is lost, the meaning of the encounter is lost, and in the end even the encounter itself. Then tradition becomes idolatrous and sterile. Both are necessary to the community of faith, and both are meaningless, even dangerous, if separated. Christian teaching is concerned with both.

Mr. Knowles, however, is not happy about the required complementary relation between the content of the Christian faith and his life. As Mrs. Strait uses moralism for a defense, so Mr. Knowles uses his emphasis on the content of the Bible as a way of protecting himself from the deeper and more personal challenges of life. He is estranged from his family, and he is regarded as austere and unfriendly by his employees and many of his business associates. Personal relations frighten him, but by mastery of knowledge he gains superiority and power over others.23

Intellectualism and gnosticism are not confined to the church. We see their influence in every walk of life. Many people talk much about the importance of love in human relationships, but they do not love. They use their knowledge about love as an evasion of their responsibility to express love. Man cannot be saved by what he knows, but only by the way he lives with his brother. “If any one says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.”¹ This is the stern but clear word of the Scriptures.

But we can be so frightened by the risks of expressing love that we may turn away from those who need our love and have a right to expect it from us. How much easier and safer it is to know about God and His love, and to confine this meaning to the sanctuary and the study group! Intellectualism, then, is another way in which we try to “play it safe.”

Humanism

Professor Manby speaks for humanism, another point of view in the church. He, with others, says, “Give man time and he will work out his own salvation.” Humanists, like Dr. Manby, often react against the religiosity of the church with the complaint that the search for truth is cluttered with obsolete myths and meaningless observances. On the other hand, the humanists, while splendid in their devotion to truth, have only their opinion of what is good and true to guide them. Because they acknowledge no life beyond this one, they become the servants of a closed system in which injustice frustrates the justice for which they plead and work. The plight of the humanists is pathetic. Since they accept no savior, they can draw only on their own human resources, and are put in the position of trying to lift themselves by their own power. They can only whistle in the dark. While man apart from God cannot save himself, God’s love for the world works in the world, and He has a part for man to take. In the relation between God and man, there is need for both the greatness of God and the greatness of man.24

Dealing with Conflicts

And so these five frightened friends, familiar types to us all, reveal to us how easy it is to get lost in our preoccupations and to distort or diminish the truth we would serve.

Mr. Gates, the minister, has his anxieties, too. He represents the ordained ministry of the church, which is caught between the demands of the theory of Christianity and the demands of the world; between the demands of the pulpit and the demands of the pew; between the church as an institution and the church as a saving power in the world; between the surges of the spirit and the sucking drag of tradition. And he himself is also trapped by the demands of his image of himself as a minister and the demands of his people’s image of him; by the idealism of his training for the Christian ministry and the realism of the demands on his ministry in the church and in the world.

He cannot resolve these conflicts by himself, nor should he try. These are not his conflicts. They are the conflicts of the church’s ministry, and he and the people need to deal with them together. Neither he nor they will be able to resolve the conflicts, because they are the inevitable tensions between the spirit and the Law, and between life and form. But Mr. Gates and all other ministers, together with the rest of the people of God, by reason of the Christian faith, must live through these conflicts and deal with them creatively.

Both Mr. Gates and his people need to accept conflicts as an inevitable part of life, especially of a life that is lived in response to a call or a loyalty. No growth or learning takes place at any depth without such conflict: conflict between the known and the unknown, between our need for security and our need for maturity. This is the nature of life. As for the gospel, let us not forget that its universally accepted symbol is the cross, a symbol of the conflict between love and hate, between life and death. As Christians, our only realistic expectation is that because of our Christian belief and practice, our conflicts will increase and intensify rather than diminish. The only peace we may hope to25 have is an irrational peace, an “in-spite-of” peace, the peace of the depths beneath the storm-tossed surface; in other words, “the peace of God, which passes all understanding.”² To suggest how this may be achieved in some areas of life is the purpose of this book.

Finally, Mr. Wise, the member of the group whose remarks were always being interrupted by the others, represents a Christian point of view which, in the church generally, is listened to no more than it was here. What he was trying to say will be explored more fully as an answer to some of the questions raised in this chapter.