"Christians Only"—The Attitude of the Christian Church Toward Unity
There are many ways to talk about beliefs and values. The ancient church used a creed. It was a formal statement of confession that later became debated and eventually, for some, discarded. The churches that we see from the very beginning of the Christian movement have always been galvanized and strengthened under extreme persecution or the threat of false doctrine. Whether due from threats outside the church or from the threat of division within the church, God’s chosen leaders stood strong and loved the church no matter what kind of adversity the church faced. The New Testament pastoral letters of the apostles were painstakingly and scrupulously written to begin the hard work of maintaining unity in the early church and are a witness to the care and discretion by which these early church leaders passionately shepherded the people of God.
The early centuries of Christianity continued to deal with heretical teachings and a loose organization of ecclesiastical structure. Disorganization, disunity, and disagreement continued to threaten the universal mission of Christ, and so various arms of the church of the first few centuries convened to establish a consensus concerning Christian doctrine. Because of politics, some sacred and some secular, the church was never able to reach a full consensus and very early on became divided along political lines into two great churches, the church of the east and the church of the west. The Western Church (originally the Roman Catholic Church) are the progenitors by schism (reformation movement of the sixteenth century) of what would later become the protestant church, out of which our own restoration movement was born.
The restoration movement, as the name implies, was begun by a group of conscientious early American settlers who saw the splintering of Christianity as a detriment to the mission of God and an obstacle to evangelism. Early American frontier values infused into the worship of the early American church are part of the story of success that the restoration movement has enjoyed over the last two centuries as the free church has offered the church the flexibility and autonomy to do church according to local custom and context. At one and the same time as the autonomous nature of independent Christian churches has been emphasized and consequently allows for the freedom and flexibility of the individual personality of the local churches to be expressed, it again presents the problems associated with the early church of disunity and a need for consensus.
A term has arisen in our movement that tries to honor and respect and hold in balance these two seemingly competing or polemical ideals. Thus the term “free church catholic” is used to characterize and honor the ideals upon which the restoration movement was formed by pointing both to the need of the local church to be free to organize according to the needs of the individual personality and shape of a community, but also to be held accountable and to be deferential towards the mission of God which Jesus himself said in John 17 would only be possible if we were unified in Christ. Therefore unity does not mean uniformity. But that liberal freedom that we enjoy as a church doesn’t come without the responsibility to work to build one accord with the church catholic (or universal). This is a tall task which calls restoration churches to build bridges in the community to other faith traditions, and to do the hard and humble work of finding consensus about what makes us Christian.
One of the great statements of Christian unity that we have gained from this work over the centuries is that “we are not the only Christians, but we are Christians only.” This attitude is one that helps us to seek the positive and unifying traits of Christian worship with our brothers and sisters in Christ across denominational lines. The truth is that there are many great practices and beliefs that we share with those from other faith traditions, like Methodist, and Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, and many pentecostal and Baptist traditions; the greatest of these being that we share the same savior Jesus Christ. Though this sounds quite challenging, our answer is to practice meeting around the Lord’s table every week to encourage this kind of fellowship. You will often hear our church leaders say these words at the table: “We invite all Christians, whether you are a member of this church or not to participate in the Lord’s Supper.” And it is this communion table, this table of common-union through which we both imagine and believe in the hope for the unity of the church of Christ. And from this table we participate in the forgiveness, love, and peace of Christ that reconciled us to God and that can also reconcile us to each other...even across denominational lines!
