Naomi Walters, D. Min.
Rochester University
Chair of the Department of Theology and Ministry
Professor of Religion
CHURCHES OF CHRIST: “CHRISTIANS ONLY”
In 1804, Barton W. Stone and five Presbyterian colleagues dissolved the Springfield Presbytery of Kentucky they had only recently formed in 1803, in a declaration of independence, entitled the “Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery.” It reads, “We will, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling…We will, that preachers and people cultivate a spirit of mutual forbearance; pray more and dispute less.”
A few years later in 1809, another former Presbyterian in Pennsylvania – Thomas Campbell – penned the Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington, expressing similar sentiments:
Being well aware, from sad experience, of the heinous nature and pernicious tendency of religious controversy among Christians; tired and sick of the bitter jarrings and janglings of a party spirit, we would desire to be at rest…Our desire, therefore, for ourselves and our brethren would be, that, rejecting human opinions and the inventions of men as of any authority, or as having any place in the Church of God, we might forever cease from further contentions about such things; Impressed with these sentiments, we have resolved as follows: That we form ourselves into a religious association…[and] that this Society by no means considers itself a Church.
That same year, Thomas’s son Alexander came to America from Ireland, and – being both younger and more impassioned than his father – he “emerged as the pivotal leader of the movement his father had begun.” The two distinct movements led by Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell formally united on January 1, 1832.
In these early founding documents, as well as in the many other written artifacts by Stone, Campbell, and their colleagues from the early nineteenth century, it is evident that they desired visible Christian unity. Stone’s commitment to unity was inspired by his experience with the beauty of ecumenical unity in the Cane Ridge Revivals of 1801. However, for both Stone and Campbell, this desire for unity was also borne of their own experiences of disunity and division – both personally and in the American pluralist context more generally.
NONDENOMINATIONALISM
In those founding documents, it is also clear that early leaders attributed the division and dissension they were experiencing to the existence of different denominations or “parties.” With this diagnosis, therefore, their proposed solution – the path to unity – was to become nondenominational. Thus, Stone and Campbell, and those who followed them, desired to be “Christians only,” neither affiliating with any particular denomination nor creating a new one.
Stone-Campbell Movement historians Leonard Allen and Richard Hughes share this illustrative story:
In 1860 the Kentucky ‘Christian’ preacher John Rogers admonished his cohorts in the Churches of Christ not even to speak of themselves as another denomination. ‘When we speak of other denominations, we place ourselves among them, as one of them. This, however, we can never do, unless we abandon the distinctive ground – the apostolic ground – the anti-sectarian ground, we have taken.
CHURCHES OF CHRIST: THE ONLY CHRISTIANS
Recalling the 1804 bequest of Stone and his five colleagues “that preachers and people cultivate a spirit of mutual forbearance; pray more and dispute less,” the 1837 emergence within the Stone-Campbell Movement of a journal entitled the Heretic Detector comes as quite a surprise. The editor of this journal, Arthur Crihfield, “regularly engaged in onslaughts on Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Universalists, Deists, and anyone else not of his tribe.” How did this happen? How did a movement go from “Christians only” to “the only Christians” in just over thirty years?
Primitivism
In part, this shift occurred as a result of the tactic the movement utilized to achieve unity: primitivism. In place of the doctrinal (creedal) and organizational structure offered by “the denominations,” Stone and Campbell urged a return to primitive or original New Testament Christianity: “the Christian faith as it was believed and practiced in the first century.”
Given the many divisions caused by the doctrinal systems and organizational structures of the denominations, Campbell argued:
To us, it appears, the only practicable way to accomplish this desirable object [unity], is to propound the ancient gospel and the ancient order of things in the words and sentences found in the apostolic writings – to abandon all traditions and usages not found in the Record, and to make no human terms of communion . . . a union amongst Christians can be obtained only upon scriptural grounds and not upon any sectarian platform in existence.
Those who sought unity would need to skip over the generations of human history that had caused division, and unite on the New Testament alone. One early restorationist explained it this way: “the Bible came from Heaven, [while] human creeds came from London, Westminster, and Philadelphia.” Therefore, according to historian Douglas Foster, although “unity was a major component of [Campbell’s] agenda,” restoration of the primitive church absorbed his attention, as the only sure means to that end.
Rationalist Hermeneutic
Inherent in this emphasis on restoring the New Testament pattern is a biblical hermeneutic that assumes at least two things: first, that the New Testament is primarily a book of facts, and second, that all rational readers would understand the New Testament to be saying the same thing, at least about matters that were essential. Indeed, Campbell did assume that through Baconian Common Sense Rationalism, one “could establish the precise meaning of scripture…By means of such certainty, people could be persuaded to give up their theories and embrace spiritual ‘facts.’” Because he believed “all Christians could read and understand the Bible alike, Campbell imagined that once the people took matters into their own hands, Christian unity could not be far away.”
Implications
This Campbellite perspective ultimately won out in the (so-called) Stone-Campbell Movement. The primitivist emphasis among Campbell and his followers meant “they routinely conceived of the restoration task as one of pruning and negation…They viewed their task, therefore, not as one of positive construction, but rather as one of elimination: they would prune the traditions of history and remove the encrustations of time.” This theology by negation became, ultimately, a combative theology. Campbell himself wrote, “the prince of Peace never sheathed the sword of the Spirit while he lived” and “there are no winter quarters in the good fight of faith, neither is there a truce nor an armistice in the war between truth and error.”
Despite his emphasis on “the freedom of each individual Christian to understand Scripture…Campbell’s rational bent led him to systematize the teachings of Scripture in a way that moved inevitably toward uniformity and orthodoxy.” In this way, “Campbell seemed not to grasp…that restoration and unity were, in many respects, mutually exclusive terms.” Ultimately, this led Stone himself to lament, in 1836, that:
Some among ourselves were for some time zealously engaged to do away [with] party creeds, and are yet zealously preaching against them – but instead of a written creed of man’s device, they have substituted a non-descript one, and exclude good brethren from their fellowship, because they dare believe differently from their opinions, and like other sectarians, endeavor to destroy their influence in the world.
Campbell’s Response
Eventually, Campbell himself also became disillusioned with the increasingly sectarian followers of his own movement, joining his lament to that of Stone: “This plan of making our own nest, and fluttering over our own brood; of building our own tent, and of confining all goodness and grace to our noble selves and the ‘elect few’ who are like us, is the quintessence of sublimated pharisaism.” He came to realize the incompatibility between restoration primitivism and unity, and founded Bethany College without the requirement that its trustees be members of the Stone-Campbell Movement.
However, the seeds that had been planted continued to grow without him in the leaders who came after him. “Those among Churches of Christ who continued their strong and strident attacks against other sects and denominations were acting out a script that Campbell himself had abandoned.” The sectarian spirit had been “caught,” if not “taught.”
A Sectarian Denomination
By the 1840s, people outside of Churches of Christ considered them to be a discernible and distinct denomination. Despite their own protestations against this denominational status, the Heretic Detector began keeping track of numbers of people in the fold, counting “four hundred and thirty members who have united with the church of God in this county.” Notice, the collapse of this group with “the church of God,” indicating that they were no longer “Christians only” but now considered themselves truly to be “the only Christians.” Having refused to admit they were a denomination, they became a sect: a “segment of the universal body of Christ that regards itself as the total body of Christ.”
Between 1804 (the date Barton Stone and others published the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery) and 1837 (the first year of publication for the journal, the Heretic Detector), the early emphasis on unity gave way to a more exclusive, sectarian spirit – focused less on unity and more on uniformity, or at least unanimity. In the following decades, this posture gained traction and the Stone-Campbell Movement – formally united in 1832 – had divided by 1906 into what are now called Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ, and the ecumenical impulse left with the Disciples. Therefore, still today: “It is to the young, brash, and swashbuckling Alexander Campbell…that Churches of Christ principally belong.”
ROCHESTER UNIVERSITY
Leaving a more detailed history of the intervening years to the historians, let us jump ahead to the 1950s, when Rochester University (RU) entered the Church of Christ story. An early brochure outlining the case for a Church of Christ school in southeast Michigan or northern Ohio observed that “members of the Lord’s Church have established several excellent colleges in the southern part of the United States” and it was high time the north had such a school too. In 1959, their hope came to fruition in the form of North Central Christian College (NCCC).
The sectarian posture of Churches of Christ is a founding aspect of our story, if not obviously in the desire to establish a college associated with “the Lord’s church,” then certainly in the Articles of Incorporation for the NCCC Foundation, which required that members of the board also be members of the Churches of Christ. These Articles stated: “The school will be managed and controlled…by the Board of Directors, each of whom shall be a member of a congregation of the Church of Christ, which takes the New Testament as its only and sufficient rule of faith, worship, and practice,” a quotation once cited in a college newsletter in response to the question, “What assurance will be given that the school will be free from divisive doctrines, influences, and ‘isms’?” One such board member was described as “working to establish the Cause of Christ in Upper Peninsula of Michigan,” a statement which indicates a belief that there were not only no Churches of Christ but no Christians in the Upper Peninsula at this time.
However, the student body appears to have been ecumenical from the start, with the “Aims of the College” in the first course catalog emphasizing only a Christian education and environment. But in 1965, now under the name Michigan Christian Junior College, the “Aims of the College” section of the course catalog was updated in a way that makes this ecumenism sound begrudging, at best: “Since the college was founded and is supported principally by members of churches of Christ in Michigan and nearby states, the college primarily supplies education for this clientele; however, the student body is not limited to this constituency.”
Future course catalogs reveal an ongoing tug-of-war between these two perspectives. In 1971, having dropped the word “Junior” to become simply Michigan Christian College, the “Aims of the College” were updated once again, removing any mention of a “primarily Church of Christ” student body, and adding a philosophical reflection on the importance of exploration to a liberal arts institution.
The college is aware of extremes facing a [Christian liberal arts college]: first, that religious attitudes may be so inflexible and rigid that students are merely catechized, in which case the purpose of a liberal arts college is defeated; and conversely, that the religious philosophy of the college may be so nebulous and ill-defined that the college is not distinctively Christian. The task of Michigan Christian College requires it to steer a course between these two extremes, and the college does, in fact, generally succeed in doing so.
Despite this public statement regarding the importance of religious inquiry and curiosity, in this same year the institution faced – in its inner life – a controversial instance of “heretic detection.” Academic vice president and beloved faculty member Dr. Joseph Jones (voted best by students in 1969) was dismissed as result of pressure from local congregational leaders from Churches of Christ who disagreed with some of his theological views. Perhaps this is why the 1973-75 course catalog dropped from its “Aims of the College” the phrase “…and the college does, in fact, generally succeed in doing so.”
In 1985, the course catalog changes its section heading from “Aims of the College” to “Mission of the College,” which reads:
While having neither legal nor formal ties with any church, the college is under the control of a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees who are themselves members of Churches of Christ. The college is active in the support of activities which aid these churches such as lectureships, workshops, and choral programs. Michigan Christian College, however, has always welcomed and served qualified students regardless of their religious faith.
This course catalog also adds that “students have the opportunity not only to study in class with faculty members who have the appropriate scholarly training but also to associate with them as committed Christians active in local Churches of Christ.” This public emphasis on employee affiliation with Churches of Christ remains the same until the 1993 course catalog, at which point employees are referred to as simply Christian. It is surely more than coincidental that this change follows shortly after the start of Dr. Ken Johnson’s presidency, since he was a key proponent of the university’s transition to a more ecumenical posture.
Once again, this public emphasis on a more ecumenical posture was followed shortly by another interior conflict related to theological freedom. In 1997, Lynn Anderson – a prominent and progressive Church of Christ minister and author – was scheduled to speak at the college’s annual ministry conference. Anderson had just written a book entitled Navigating the Winds of Change, in which he encouraged people to become “change agents” in the Churches of Christ, attending to which parts of Church of Christ practice might be traditional or cultural but not actually mandated by scripture. Again, local congregational leaders in Churches of Christ pressured the institution, and the board counseled President Johnson to rescind Dr. Anderson’s invitation – or at least delay it until the current name change to Rochester College was completed – which President Johnson did.
This incident prompted President Johnson – first privately with the Board in 1997 and then more publicly in 1998 in a position paper that eventually circulated throughout American Churches of Christ – to advocate for a more ecumenical atmosphere among the college’s campus community. In the position paper, Johnson appealed to the Church of Christ theological heritage this way: “We recognize that the early years of the American Restoration Movement were dominated by a call to unify all Christians, explicitly recognizing not that denominational membership precludes salvation but that the creedal requirements of denominationalism hinder the cause of Christ, making a nondenominational situation preferable.”
He also observed, as a caution:
The American Restoration Movement, however, did not generally preserve this openness. Instead, Campbell’s followers soon began to reduce theological freedom in favor of an unwritten creed…After nearly two hundred years…the movement does not look like its primary roots. Profitable and open dialog known at times in the nineteenth century became lost by the twentieth century as powerful voices assumed control of restorationist publications and ultimately separated from or silenced other voices
The present article has already recounted this history and shared a similar caution.
Throughout his presidency, Johnson advocated for a more ecumenical posture on campus, based on freedom in Christ as a return to an important aspect of the Stone-Campbell Movement heritage. His perspective was central in shaping many of the university’s current policies.
In a 1999 presentation to the board, Johnson went on to emphasize the importance of articulating this ecumenical posture publicly, reflecting:
We say that we are a Christian college. There are perhaps 500 different identifiable Christian religious groups with varying doctrines and beliefs. New acquaintances ask, “Which one are you?” I and our recruiters get the question often. We answer, “We are the Church of Christ,.” They say, Oh, now, is that the same as Church of Christ Scientist? Is that the United Church of Christ? Is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? Is that the Church of God in Christ? Are you the International Church of Christ?…I cannot sit down and explain to every one of them…Our 21-year-old recruiters [cannot fully] address the question, Who is Rochester College, religiously speaking?…There is insufficient time and inadequate knowledge to do it orally. We must do it in writing, or we miss opportunities.
The college did so that year, in documents entitled “Presenting Foundational Concepts of Rochester College” and “The Religious Affiliation, Spiritual Emphasis, and Theological Understandings of Rochester College.”
That fall, in a presentation to academic deans from other Church of Christ colleges and universities, Johnson summarized his past several years at Rochester College and the changes it had been making, including the various public documents that had been produced articulating a more ecumenical posture. He posed to them a question:
Two hundred years ago, there was much diversity among the men and women whose dream it was to call all Christians out of denominationalism to be ‘Christians only.’ Over time, however, that diversity gave way to increasing uniformity…At Rochester College, we want to be true to our ownership group, the Churches of Christ. But what does being true to them mean? When are we true to our heritage in Churches of Christ? Is it not when we are most true to the ideals of Churches of Christ? Shouldn’t we be looking at an ideal rather than an actual present-day model?
Nearly a quarter century later, in many ways, this current institutional identity project is wrestling with much the same question.
Echoes of Dr. Johnson’s encouragements and cautions can be heard in the statements of our current president, Dr. Brian Stogner, such as:
One key adaptation in the life of Rochester University has been to become a more religiously inclusive institution. RU was founded by members of the Church of Christ and for most of its history, all of those who led the institution, including administrators, full-time faculty, key staff members, trustees, and primary supporters were from that religious group. Students from the Church of Christ were the primary prospects for admissions counselors. We still owe, and always will owe a great debt of gratitude to those founding visionaries. However, as the institution developed to face a changing world, it became an organization less exclusively led by, taught by, and attended by individuals from the Church of Christ and, across the spectrum from trustees to students, became more religiously diverse within the context of the broader Christian community. This evolution has allowed RU to grow and prosper in ways that it otherwise never could have, but it has left some feeling confused and unmoored from the traditions that guided us, defined us, and formed our identity…It is clearly time now (perhaps past time) in the life of the institution to be more intentional and strategic in addressing, clarifying, and communicating our identity.
Church of Christ membership has long since ceased to be an employment requirement, and our student body has long since ceased to be primarily – or even noticeably, at this point – affiliated with Churches of Christ. Our course catalogs no longer waffle about these realities from year-to-year. These things are rightfully and beautifully so! As Dr. Johnson wrote many years ago: “exclusivism is neither practically nor morally acceptable.” Yet, we still find it difficult to articulate clearly who we are, religiously: if not denominationally, still theologically.
There are some who would argue, in fact, that the very act of articulation is itself exclusive, saying something along the lines of: “As soon as we say who we are, there will be someone who disagrees. So it would be better not to say anything, but just to quietly get on with things internally.” Is this true? Is the best way to be inclusive to be vague? Is the only way to be ecumenical to attempt to be nondenominational?
RESISTING NONDENOMINATIONAL CHRISTIANITY
It is at this point that a return to the Church of Christ history with which we began may be instructive. Recall that the early founders of the movement had a commendable desire for unity, but a problematic method (restoration or primitivism), which ultimately led to a sectarian emphasis on unanimity or uniformity rather than unity. It is common to describe this historical reality as “ironic.” For instance: “These people increasingly identified the primitive church of the New Testament with the Church of Christ movement to which they belonged, and they defended that church against all comers. In this way, ironically, they build a sect on the foundation of the original vision of ‘nondenominational’ Christianity.”
However, it is my argument that this is not “ironic.” It is inherent. It is not unfortunate happenstance that the move toward the generic or the universal created a particularizing, absolutizing, exclusive sect. This is, in fact, precisely what happens whenever one attempts to abstract to a generic, universalized vision.
Therefore, the story of Churches of Christ is not just a story of a commendable desire (unity) but a problematic method (primitivism). Though primitivism certainly is problematic, there is problem further back than that, with the initial diagnosis that the very existence of denominations is what causes disunity. This inaccurate diagnosis prompted an ineffective prescription – nondenominationalism.
Nondenominationalism Is Impossible
To begin with, nondenominationalism is impossible. From their earliest days, Stone and Campbell and the people who followed them simultaneously needed and resisted names to refer to, or to “denominate,” those who shared their perspectives. Attempting to provide a label while resisting labels, they called themselves “Christians” or “Disciples.” In contemporary usage, the denial of denominational status in our naming conventions is indicated by the use of a lowercase “c” in the phrase “church of Christ.”
Also, those supposedly universal shared perspectives, themselves, were shaped by particular elements of nineteenth century American life. The unity impulse, though certainly theological, was also a product of the particular expression of pluralism in frontier America. The impulse to be nondenominational and free from clerics and creeds was an expression of the American concept of freedom and democracy, put most concisely by an early Stone-Campbell Movement preacher who said: “the motto of the patriot and the Christian is, Liberty or death.” The method of primitivism, or attempting to be ahistorical, was motivated by that particular historical moment. The hermeneutic by which the primitive pattern was attained was steeped in the rationalism of that time period.
Allen and Hughes put it this way: “All human beings are creatures of history and culture and, for that reason, cannot escape the constraints of time and place in their quest for the natural, primordial, or universal.” But, precisely because the early members of the Stone-Campbell Movement believed themselves not to be products of any particular historical or philosophical moment, they universalized their historical and philosophical perspective, and called it God’s.
Nondenominationalism Is Harmful
If one believes they have universal and particularity-free access to the mind of God, it does not take long to impose and enforce that view on all others. In what theologian Willie James Jennings calls “a flight to the universal,” when there is no regard for one’s own particularity, there is simultaneous disregard for the particularity of others. The assumption becomes that other people’s particularity is causing disunity or conflict, whereas one’s own particularity is not particularity at all, but is just the way things are or should be.
Using the example of a specific Anglican missionary in South Africa in the 1850s, Jennings displays the way an overemphasis on a universal or de-particularized account of the Christian story in fact enabled oppressive missionary practice – because God loves all people, there is no need to wonder what God’s love looks like among these particular people. Jennings concludes: “What looks like a radical antiracist, antiethnocentric vision of Christian faith is in fact profoundly imperialist, [undermining] all forms of identity except that of the colonialist.”
In other words: “neutrality” or “universality” always favors the majority. Allen and Hughes describe this reality in the Churches of Christ, specifically:
Indeed some leaders in the Churches of Christ by the early 1840s even threatened their religious neighbors with divine retribution if they refused the truth and continued in the errors of their way. That this spirit of exclusivism and even coercion surfaced soon is deeply ironic when one considers that the Churches of Christ were born of passion for freedom…But, then, the soul of this tradition was the conviction of its people that they had bypassed history with its constraints and limitations, that they were heirs to no cultural presuppositions, that their spiritual sights were clear and unclouded, and that they therefore stood squarely on the firm ground of the first Christian age.
Nondenominationalism Is Theologically Inappropriate
Not only does “a flight to the universal” or an “illusion of innocence” bear rotten, colonialist fruit, such a flight/illusion is not rooted in the soil of incarnation. A central characteristic of the Christian God is that this God works through what is particular for the sake of what is universal. This is what Jennings calls “the scandal of particularity.”
The Old Testament or Hebrew Bible records a God who chooses the family of Abraham and Sarah so that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). God works through the people of Israel for the sake of all peoples. The New Testament records this same particularizing work continuing in a God who becomes flesh in a specific, historical person (Jesus), for the sake of all persons.
WHAT, THEN, SHALL WE SAY?
The history of Churches of Christ can be understood – at least in part – as a cautionary tale warning against the idea of a “generically Christian” denomination. Similarly, the history of Rochester University may caution us against the idea of a “generically Christian” university.
The initial Stone-Campbell Movement desire for unity is a commendable one. Similarly, the ecumenical and dialogical impulse in Rochester’s history has been – and continues to be – a beautiful thing, making possible my own education and employment here, at a time when many of our affiliated schools would not have trained or hired a female for ministry.
In the ongoing embodiment of those good desires, it is my hope that Rochester University can embody trinitarian unity in diversity (or unity in the midst of scandalous particularity), in which we aim not to be non-denominational, but inter-denominational.
Be Denominational
Being now aware of the historical reality that, “because [Churches of Christ] refused to accept the notion of a nondenominational denomination, they found themselves caught in the trap of belonging to a very particular denomination, all the while denying its denominational dimensions,” it will not do to deny or distance ourselves from the particularity of our denominational heritage. To be “ecumenical” does not mean being “less Church of Christ.” Ecumenism actually requires various denominations to know who they are and what good they bring to the table (and what bad they ought to leave behind). Henri Nouwen makes a similar observation related to Christian hospitality, defined as “the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.” He describes the importance of particularized presence as the pillars that actually hold space, saying:
To be receptive to the stranger in no way implies that we have to become neutral ‘nobodies’…Space can only be a welcome space when there are clear boundaries, and boundaries are limits between which define our own position. Flexible limits, but limits nonetheless…not hiding ourselves behind neutrality, but showing our ideas, opinions, and lifestyle clearly and distinctly. No real dialogue is possible between a somebody and a nobody.
Be “Creedal”
Nouwen’s encouragement to “define our own position” finds resonance with Dr. Johnson’s encouragement to say who we are, and to say it in writing – and President Stogner’s assertion that it is time to “clarify and communicate our identity.” In a sense, this is a call to be unapologetically “creedal,” insofar as we can use the word “creed” to mean a statement of a group’s current sense of where it stands. It may be useful to recall at this juncture that the original Stone-Campbell Movement rejection was of “enforced creedal uniformity,” not of creeds themselves.
Remembering the impossibility of avoiding particularity, enjoy the following anecdote, paraphrased from Dr. Johnson: When seated at a conference with a member of the faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary, Johnson introduced himself as the President of Michigan Christian College. The colleague inquired: “With which church is MCC affiliated?” Dr. Johnson replied, “the Churches of Christ.” His colleague replied: “Oh, I’m familiar with your group. It’s the group that refuses to write down their creed.”
Elsewhere, Johnson argued: “Our traditional resistance to expressing our core beliefs in written form has left us (Churches of Christ) defining ourselves by the few issues that separate us from others rather than by the overwhelming abundance of factors that contribute to the unity we claim to desire.” Recall Barton Stone’s consonant concerns that “instead of a written creed of man’s device, they have substituted a non-descript one.” A clear articulation of our theological postures would go a long way toward both internal clarity and external communication.
However, joining with our Church of Christ ancestors who desired the freedom “to think, to dialogue, and to search for fuller understanding of scripture,” we should consider that articulation to be a snapshot of a theological life in progress, not an end point. To whatever extent Churches of Christ were anti-creedal, this was as a “commitment to the task of theologizing, with the single qualification that no one’s theology or interpretation would ever be accepted as equivalent to the word of God. Put another way, the search for the ancient order was just that: a search. It was process, not accomplished fact.” Embodying humility, we avoid clenched fists – both as they indicate a defensive or combative posture, and as they indicate a sense of protectiveness or attachment.
CONCLUSION
In short, if the story of Churches of Christ is one that goes from “Christians only” to “the only Christians,” my proposal is not that we need to get back to “Christians only” again. Instead, I propose we become “Christians together.” The open table is not a table at which we serve a blended puree of various things that become indistinguishable from one another, but a diverse potluck, with many types of food represented and appreciated – “a feast of rich food for all peoples” (Isaiah 25:6).
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