The story went out across the internet two weeks ago: Chan Chandler, the pastor of a Baptist church in Waynesville, North Carolina had engineered the expulsion of nine members of the congregation for voting for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. 40 more resigned in protest.
Some folks on lefty blogs saw conspiracy in this church rupture. They were sure the Republican party was behind it all, trying to cleanse American churches of any possible political resistance. Others saw the hand of the Religious Right, pushing its narrow view of faith on unsuspecting churchgoers.
I didn’t. I saw a church in trouble. Baptist or not, a congregation that can’t agree to share communion for months on end has problems.
While conservative leaders of late haven’t exactly inspired confidence in their ability to separate politics and religion, there’s another story at work here: A pastor comes to a church, decides that it is insufficiently led by the Holy Spirit, and pushes the congregation through a series of new initiatives to rectify the situation. Sometimes they succeed in bringing new members to the church, as Chandler did.
But change comes slowly to the church. So when the pastor meets the inevitable resistance, he declares that the members must decide if they are for God or against. This of course only intensifies the conflict–a declaration like that is the church equivalent of pouring gasoline on a fire–and when the heat becomes intolerable, the pastor resigns, leaving behind a divided, wounded congregation.
It is not wise, experienced pastors will tell you, to try to force the hand of the Spirit.
It happened to a friend and colleague a few years ago. The church did everything it could to help him. They even gave him some paid time off to regroup and return to them, but it didn’t help. He resigned, and hasn’t returned to ministry since.
Ironically, it also happened to a church he’d once served. One Sunday morning, the pastor before my friend had called all those who stood with Jesus to join him in prayer at the altar. Those he deemed insufficiently supportive of Jesus were turned away, told to have a seat in the pews. And when he had them all assembled, he turned and strode out of the sanctuary, out the front door, without a word, never to return.
The church was devastated. Everybody thought they were dead. A decade later, they’ve almost recovered, but the memory lingers.
The central issue in these cases is often but not always political. The pastor of that dramatic Sunday morning thought our denomination was too liberal, and wanted the congregation to leave under his leadership. My friend, though himself a deeply conservative man, wanted his church to sign on to a progressive agenda to help a struggling inner city.
It’s good to keep all of this in mind as we mark Pentecost Sunday, the “birthday” of the church. Agendas count for nothing in the body of Christ. The reading from Acts is a veritable riot of non-partisanship: at the original Pentecost, members from the four corners of the Roman Empire sat together and set aside their differences. The differences were still there, to be sure, and Luke doesn’t discount them. The Pentecost story is a miracle of both unity and diversity, of hearing and being heard.
It’s mostly politics, not region or language, that divides us in this country. All kinds of churches have all kinds of litmus tests for deciding who’s in and who’s out. In keeping those tests, they risk more than just the harmony of their community.
For as that same friend told me before his own departure, we won’t be asked if we’re a Democrat or a Republican when we get up to the Pearly Gates. We won’t be asked which side we stand on abortion, same-sex marriage, support for Israel, prayer in school, or any of a hundred other issues.
In fact, there won’t be any questions at all–and it won’t be St. Peter we meet. Instead, we’ll be standing face-to-face with Christ himself, and he’ll be saying: “Ah yes, I know you. You were the one who fed me at the homeless shelter.” Or, “I recognize you: you came to see me that one time I was in jail.” Or, “You gave me your coat last winter.”
Or: “No, sorry. I don’t think I know you.”