| Feature Article – October 2005 |
|---|
If one was asked to choose one word that most clearly describes the current state of our national church at the present time "conflict" would be the word most likely to be chosen. Whether we choose to acknowledge the present situation and enter into the conflict, listening to one another to get as clear a picture as possible of what we are dealing with, or if instead we choose to be the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand, it does not change the reality of what is happening in our church.
It is not my intent in this article to delve into the particulars of the current dilemma that we are facing and which threatens the very existence of our church as we now know it, but rather to talk about an underlying misconception that appears to be creating such a level of fear in people that they just want the problem to go away – which if we are truthful with ourselves we know will not happen. This misconception is that conflict in the church, at any level, be it in the local parish or in the world wide communion, should never happen, or, even worse, never has happened. Maybe it should never happen, but if we were to hold up the past two thousand years of church history – from the creation of the church with the fulfilling of Jesus' promise to his followers with the sending of the Holy Spirit upon his church at Pentecost – and hear what history has to say to us we would soon see that there has never been any age where the church, when it is being faithful to the Word of God, has not embroiled in some kind of conflict or controversy.
One of the earliest recorded testimonies of conflict in the church we hear of is to be found in Saint Paul's own account in his letter to the Galatians of the circumcision controversy in which he was embroiled. This controversy, which addressed the question of whether or not male Gentiles must undergo the rite of circumcision and thus become Jewish before becoming a follower of Christ, ultimately was a question of the sufficiency of Christ's atonement for our sins on the Cross. At the time it threatened to tear the fledgling church apart only a few decades following our Lord's death and resurrection.
Mercifully, this conflict was resolved without ripping the early church in two, but sadly what we hear of in Galatians is only a foretaste of what was to follow over the course of the next two millennia, often with far more serious results. From the controversy regarding the "filioque" clause in the eleventh century, which was a contributing factor leading to the Great Schism between the Catholic church of the West and the Orthodox churches of the East, to the posting of Martin Luther's 95 Theses on the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg refuting J. Tetzel's preaching on indulgences, to Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's leadership in the Confessing Church and its opposition to the German-Christian Church movement sponsored by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, our history clearly tells us that conflict has always been part of the life of Christ's church on earth. And until Christ comes again chances are there will be more conflicts to come.
So rather than bemoaning the current situation, or trying to avoid our conflicts by turning a blind eye to them, let us instead be willing to stand and deal with our problems honestly, seeking God's will and at the same time, in the words of the Great Litany, raise our voices in supplication and pray God deliver us "from all sedition, conspiracy, and rebellion; form all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word and Commandment". Amen.