Michael O. Emerson: Why are Protestants still Protestants?
I was recently asked to prepare a paper for a local Christian unity event to be held at an African American Baptist church. I presented the contours of my paper, “Give Us Unity or Give Us Death,” before responses by an influential pastor of a local black megachurch, and the Houston area judicatory heads of the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of American, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the Cardinal archbishop of the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese.
My paper started with the lone recorded prayer of Jesus for future believers. Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20 and following is clear: that all believers might be one. He prays for this unity so it will be the testimony to the world that Jesus is real, and that God loves all creation.
I then jumped ahead 2000 years to look at the church in the U.S, where for the past 150 years or so we have organized our local congregations by race. These divisions are hurting the church, which is now in decline not just in the mainline, but as a whole.
Something kept nagging at me while writing the paper, something I didn’t mention. But I will get to that in a moment.
Each member of the panel praised the paper and said we must work toward more racial unity in our churches. Each, that is, until the Cardinal took his turn to speak.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo first said we must realize there really is evil bent on keeping us separate. Second, throughout Christian history, in the name of Christian theological purity, people and groups were essentially put out of the churches.
Then it got really interesting. The Cardinal discussed the very point that nagged me while writing the paper. If we want to talk about Christian unity, then perhaps the Protest-ants should cease their protest and come back to the church. The Roman Catholic Church, that is.
Now I want to be clear. The Cardinal did not make this point directly. But he made it just the same, and gently and deftly so. I talked to several Catholics and Protestants in attendance in the days afterward, and they told me this indeed was his point.
So I simply want to ask, why aren’t we all Catholic? Why are any of us Protestant?
I know why the Protestant church was formed. But 500 plus years later, what is now being protested? With now well over 1000 denominations, it is mind-boggling to determine what the issues are any more. And whatever is still being protested, does it justify the divisions, the seemingly anti-answer to Jesus’ prayer?
I have a friend who has been Protestant all his life. But he and his family are now strongly considering converting to Catholicism. He shared this story with me:
Once there was a large and handsome mansion on a hill that was beautifully kept and full of activity and life. Over time, divisions among the people in the mansion began to build, though always worked out. The head of the mansion, however, became corrupt. Some of the others in the mansion wanted to stop the corruption. Eventually they concluded they were not able to, and so made the unprecedented decision to leave the mansion. At first they built a much smaller, but still nice home of their own just at the outskirts of the mansion’s land. Those in the new home then had issues with one another, and over time, smaller groups left to build their own homes.
Now, all around the outskirts of the mansion’s estate are thousands of small homes. With some work, those in the smaller homes have been able to convince a few of those still living in the mansion to move out, to one of the homes on the outskirts. And many of the homes on the outskirts have people moving back and forth between themselves, trying to find the best home.
Meanwhile all the people on the outskirts of the estate look up the hill occasionally. The mansion has become more rundown. Shutters lay astray, much of it is in need of paint. Rumor is that inside much is rundown too: piping in need of repair, floors cracked. They say, “We are glad we left that mansion. Look how rundown it is. We would not want to live in such a place.”
Of course, the irony is that the mansion became rundown as these people left. Now they simply stand afar and criticize it, not doing anything to help improve the mansion, not thinking that they have skills and talents that could bring it new life.
You get the point I am sure. Protestants, in their many, many much smaller denominations, stand from afar and criticize the Catholic Church and its problems, never thinking that at least some of those problems may be because the talents and gifts they possess are not being shared within the larger Church.
I end this post by asking a question: in light of Jesus prayer for the unity of believers, why are Protestants still Protestants? I am looking forward to your responses, for, as a Protestant currently, I truly want to know.
Michael O. Emerson is the Cline Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is the co-author of “Divided by Faith” and “United by Faith.”
Catholics or Orthodox?
I have heard this point made several times. The question I am then led to is that the Roman Catholic Church is NOT the living successor of the original church. While some Protestants argue that they are the living successor, the best case could be made for the Orthodox community. It was the Roman church that first split with the rest of the Christian community of the day. So, one may continue this question by asking why doesn't the Catholic Church return to the Orthodox community.
Whither
Michael I've thought about this a good bit (http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=2290), and love what you say here. The argument I've used is that as Protestants we can be more catholic than the Catholics, since we can recognize their full legitimacy, but they can't ours. The issue of women's ordination seems bigger than just who gets ordained too--it speaks to what we think baptism does, and whether Gal. 3:28 is true.
The Jealous Groundskeepers
This is a great and thought-provoking post, and one that reminds us of the need we Protestants have to remember our connection to the catholic church and our guilt in the scandal of schsim. Perhaps one of the most persuasive points is the metaphor from the author's friend. And yet there are some key figures missing from this metaphor, the jealous groundskeepers. These groundskeepers see that there are cracks in the mansion, as well, but insist that it can only be repaired by those who are already within the mansion, despite the fact that it was those very people who botched the repairs in the first place. These groundskeepers, who are represented in the real world most fully by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, also play an important role in keeping protestants pushed towards the edges of the estate, for they rebuff many attempts at repairing the mansion as corrosive, deride all structures but the mansion as "not true churches," and in the eyes of many even among their own flock, deny the full humanity of half of those both within the mansion and without by forbidding women from participating in the priesthood. My goal here is not to defend protestants from their deep guilt in the scandal that is schism. But we ought to recognize that it is not only protestants or the long-dead head of the mansion that are responsible for that ongoing scandal.
Is not the simple recognition
Is not the simple recognition that the Holy Spirit works in our respective loacal Church proof that we believe in the unity of the Church? Why would all have the part of the same "institution?"
A way forward
While I think the schismatic Church that we all find ourselves in is problematic, I wonder if the analogy of the mansion has a hint of a way forward in it. If you have a bunch of people that leave the mansion angry and build their own houses and keep splitting over and over again, that is certainly not Christlike. However, it seems like if you could get the people in the houses and the mansion to relate to each other in a new way, perhaps we could get to the place where we do not have a bunch of atomized houses and a mansion, but instead we have a neighborhood for people to live in together. I think nice neighborhoods with different house designs, but built with solid core structures can be quite beautiful. And perhaps there could even be a decent neighborhood association and not one of the crazy ones like many people have.
Okay, I will stop the analogy there. I may have just taken the analogy in some flakey cheesy direction, but maybe not. Maybe a neighborhood is okay as long as it sees itself as a neighborhood.
Do we have to share the same
Do we have to share the same name or the same building or the same thoughts to be in unity?
Why would we assume that we would all think alike and want to worship the same and 'be' the same when our Creator has created us all different?
I believe we are coming to unity when we accept each other within our worship and theologies; when we can come together to celebrate the same Christ. I think that in the hearts of most congregants we are already there. The divisions are still in the institutional thought, which is always behind the times...
Unity
With others who have posted, I believe the essential unity of the Church lies in our mutual recognition and common mission, not in the building (or repairing) of mansions. I believe the essential unity of our faith lies in our common trust in Jesus Christ rather than the continuity of administrative structures.
As a Protestant, I am hardput to agree that the differences between Protestant and Roman Catholic are no longer important.
Just this morning, I woke up to discover that the RC Bishop of Providence RI has publicly accused our congressman of being "erratic" because the two disagree on the centrality of absolute agreement with the bishop of issues of faith. It's part of a dispute the two are having about health care, abortion, and whether or not the representative can present himself for Communion in his denomination.
My theology says that it is not appropriate to bar anyone from the Table of the Lord, and I cannot imagine any Protestant mainline denominational official taking to the pages of a newspaper to attack a member of their church. Accepting a church that engages in such behavior as the most visible representative of the unity of Christ's church boggles the mind.
Catholic - Protestant Unity
Surely we are missing a rather significant anachronism that is explicity at play here: defining 'unity' in John 17 as institutional religious identity that did not emerge until, at the very least, decades after John penned the words and probably a couple hundred years after Jesus lived - when the 'Roman Church' split from the 'Eastern Church.'
Unity of the Church
Three factors are key here, greed, power an humility. The first two sins preclude us from any possible thought of renouncing our right to our "own" "little mansions". When Christ looks at all our "small mansions", What does he sees? Are we separated from each other in His heart? by no means. The divisions are ours of our own making. We consciously and deliberately continue to divide what in God's heart is together. There is the visible scandal. A scandal that hurts our witness to the all inclusive love of God and God's desire to bring all to a real and visible reconciliation. All of this will change when we make the conscious and deliberate decision to take the basin and the towel, just like Jesus did.
Response
I can't speak for all Protestants, but I will answer the question for myself and for my specific Christian tradition. We are still Protestants because we believe that "the Mansion" is not and has never been the Roman Catholic Church. To continue appropriating the analogy, "the Mansion" is and always has been "the place of abode" that Jesus Christ established through the early church, founded upon doctrinal truth, which by God's grace alone generates the authentic love of God which is the only element that can legitimately hold together a Christian community in unity. To be clear, it is our opinion as Protestants that the Roman Catholic Church, in and of itself, is not the "place of abode" that Jesus established. This is why we are still Protestants. We certainly, however, love our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers....just as Jesus by God's grace loves all people.
what is unity?
Just a couple of questions:
Does unity mean that we all agree on interpretations of scripture and doctrine, on what is absolutely essential for salvation, on who it is that determines this for the rest of us?
Jill Raitt, who taught church history when I was at Duke, often spoke the latin phrase meaning "The church must always reform itself." Doesn't openness to reform mean openness to seeing where "I/we" may have strayed rather than always pointing to "you/they"? And isn't the straying from the heart of God as revealed in the Incarnation of Jesus rather more important than straying from human standards of who is in or out?
These are not academic questions for me--a UM clergywoman married to a former UM clergyman, now a Catholic layman.
We've sort of piled on
We've sort of piled on Michael here, so it's worth saying what he has in his favor. If one were starting from scratch, and asking which of the existing Christian bodies best answers Jesus's prayer, the Catholic Church would be it, not just in terms of being the biggest one, but having the clearest institutional commitment to continuity, universality, through time and space. The Orthodox have the latter, but seem so linked to their nations' culture that their various patriarchs can't even have a meeting. Protestant bodies are often linked in space now, but only to limited degrees (we Methodists are in Cotre Ivoire and the Phillipines but not everywhere).
But we're not starting from scratch. Each of us was presented the Christian faith in a specific body. For individuals or families to leave that body for Rome is not the best way to work for unity--it just weakens one currently separated part for the sake of the growth of another.
To complicate matters further, I remember reading David Novak as he listened from a Jewish perspective to a convert to Orthodoxy saying he'd come all the way home. And he thought, "Not quite yet" . . .
Re: A [catholic] Way Forward by Steinbrenner
Despite its tremendous contributions to perspectives and action of Christian social justice, the Roman Catholic church clearly continues to perpetuate a hierarchical model of church which is still oriented by power even if its mansion is crumbling. I sometimes wonder, with David Steinbrenner, if a local neighborhood association is not a way forward. In the analogy, we may not be able to perfectly remodel any of the old houses nor can we walk away from all of them and start over in Eden, but we may be able to pray for the Spirit, plant a garden, and work and wait for our Bride to culminate the work with complete healing and unity.
If Jesus accepted and gave hospitality from the broadest diversity of Jews, drew a few of the most diverse into a intentional community that represented that diversity, it may be that the contemporary Jesus-way is not longer wandering around (as a band of itinerate minister-disciples) to connect that diversity, but rooting ourselves in an urban community whose geographical diversity has already been created (by military displacement and “Christian” complicity with it). In other words, we celebrate/create gathering places where people from diverse classes, theologies, politics, cultures, ethnicities, “races,” and genders (sexual orientations?) can share meals, Jesus histories (Bible, church and personal), and prayer: a place where a black independent Pentecostal church member and Roman Catholic communicant can share life, Jesus, friendship, food, and maybe even economic resources or begin a house to assist ex-convicts who are trying not to get caught in the revolving door of the Prison Industrial Complex, or whatever care (beginning with practical care for each other).
I have been a Free Methodist pastor in Chicago and St. Louis. I’ve also been a member of a Mennonite and Afro-Pentecostal church. I am part of an ecumenical lectionary group of mostly Catholics and mainline pastors who study the Bible and pray (couldn’t find an evangelical group or ecumenical-evangelical group that met across denominations to study the Bible). And I’m sympathetic to both joining the Roman Catholic church and hosting and receiving hospitality among an intentional group that would follow Jesus, seek justice, and celebrate God’s abundance in a St. Louis neighborhood.
I celebrate that an African American Baptist church brought a black megachurch, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, and a church scholar together. And pray that the conversations continue.
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