Church Unity : A Layman's View
By J. T. CHRISTIE (Principal of Jesus College, Oxford)
THIS pamphlet on re-union, "Church Relations in England "• has not, at first reading, much to offer the ordinary layman ; probably it was never intended that it should. It is a report of conversations between representatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury and representatives of the Evangelical Free Churches in England, and it strikes the layman as being written by theologians for theologians. The conference numbered thirty-eight in all, and, of these, thirty-seven were divines, twenty from the Church of England and seventeen from other Churches. There was one layman. And yet this is a subject on which the layman in his own muddled and ignorant way holds strong views when he comes to reflect on them.
If he is not by now well aware of the forces arrayed against the Christian tradition today, it is not for want of telling. He hears froni philosophers, historians and divines, in books, in the Press, on the wireless, that the one hope of the world is to strengthen our Christianity, personally and collectively, against the powers of unbelief. He believes this profoundly, and as he looks round on his own side of the battlefield he sees many weaknesses. Among the most obvious is disunion among the Christians themselves.
To the layman this seems not only calamitous, but unnecessary and even absurd. He takes a walk round his own home-town with a population, say, of three thousand, and he finds there a large, old Parish Church, a small new Roman Catholic Church, a Chapel for Baptists and a Chapel for Methodists. He knows a little of their differences, but, as far as he can see, what they have in common is far greater and more weighty than what divides them. Why on earth, he wonders, cannot they " get together," not for regular worship, but at stated times in the year, and why not have a far freer interchange of pulpits, congregations and forms of worship—" more freedom of circulation " to use the Archbishop's phrase ? And from what he reads of the mission-field there appear to be the same weakening divisions there too. Is this the moment, he wonders, to press our differences, when the enemy is at the gate ?
If he puts his point of view to a clergyman or ordained minister, he does not get much syMpathy. The High Churchman is frankly shocked ; others will tell him, no doubt truly, that he does not understand the difficulties or realise the barriers erected by centuries of oppression and discord. Even so, he feels, there is perhaps some- thing to be said for a crude and unprofessional view which does not see all the difficulties and is centred only on the disastrous disunion that has overtaken the faith in which he, still deeply believes. Theological barriers may be as high as ever, but those other secular barriers have largely vanished even in his own lifetime if he has by now reached middle age. He remembers from childhood fierce discussions raging round " Church " and " Chapel," not of a religious kind at all, but social, political, educational. In a respectable Anglican home—so it seemed to a small-boy listening at the breakfast-table—these people who went to Chapel were politically radical, socially unreliable, and educationally—well, he did not quite understand that, but apparently they were awkward about Sunday School. He was a little older before he heard the compliments returned about the pride, exclusiveness and supersti- tion of those who went to " Church."
These secular barriers of snobbery and prejudice have practically disappeared, and that surely is a great step. The obstacles of theology and Church constitution still, it seems, remain. Are they insuperable ? Here the layman feels his ignorance acutely. But as he ponders on his own fragmentary religious knowledge and experience, one or two things strike him. Certainly Scripture gives no warl'ant whatever for such divisions. Those who cried, " I am of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Paul " were warmly rebuked by Paul himself. Again, he may recall a " united service " on a Good Friday may be, or on some great national occasion, and it has * S.P.C.K. 2s. 6d. remained in his memory among the truest hours of worship he has ever spent. If, further, he happens to have been a master at one of the public boarding-schools, he remembers the School Chapel, where sons of Anglicans high and low, sons of Baptists, sons of Presbyterians--accustoMed to very various forms of worship at home—join with sincerity in one and the same service. At half- term even parents might be found doing the same thing.
This would strike the layman as a hopeful sign, and one Sunday evening he might raise the question with the visiting preacher, some busy Bishop who had just given an excellent address to the boys.
Again, he is told that laymen cannot understand the grave difficul- ties, and he is laughingly reminded that an undenominational Christian is a " poor sort of fish." But, of course, the layman is not asking for a " merger " of denominations. He has his own tradi- tion and probably prefers it. There are plenty of differences within • the Anglican tradition itself. But why not, he still asks, more understanding of each other's liturgies, more going into each other's churches; more listening to each other's sermons ? Such a sugges- tion is anathema to many well-instructed Christians. But the layman remains obstinate and unconvinced. Perhaps, like many English Protestants, he feels he is Christian first and Churchman afterwards. He respects the views of those who set great store by the Apostolic Succession, but he does not feel cut off from those who, with Dean Inge, regard it as " a mere legend." Above all, he wishes there could be more give-and-take between the Churches. He turns again to study this Report. He knows it is the joint product of learned men of goodwill, trying to approach one another across the embers of old controversies and still finding almost insuperable obstacles in the way. Most of these obstacles mean little to the layman ; he is hot for more unity and more freedom of circulation, and from this Report he gets only a "dusty answer," as it seems to him. What are the differences. that' prevent us Christians of various denominations from coming , together in worship ? Differences over questions like these: whether, where justification by faith is isolated from sanctification; there is a departure from the theology of St. Paul and the Reforma- tion (page 29); whether there is ground either in Scripture or in human experience, for the view that infant baptism, while not cleansing from natural sin, removes the taint of original sin (page 31) ; whether the " intention " of the Ordinal of the Church of England, as distinct from the " intention " of Free Church forms of, ordination is that the Anglican priest shall be thereby qualified td offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist (page 33). These no doubt are vital questions in their context, but nowadays they no longer touch the layman on the raw, as they might have done his great grand:, father, and the modern layman feels he would like to express his own point of view.
It is not that the layman (though he is sometimes accused of it), wants to substitute a vague " Sermon-on-the-Mount " ethics for , Christian theology. On the contrary, as far as an uninstructed man may be, he is deeply concerned with " the doctrines of God the Father, the Person and the Work of Christ, the Person and Mission of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity and the Life Everlasting." These words are quoted from the Report (page 26) and describe precisely those subjects in which, according to the interim report of 1949, " we find nothing which separates any one of these Communions from another."
If this is common ground, thinks the layman, what a pity that there cannot here and now be more freedom of circulation between the different parts of Christ's Church; to the enrichment of all. No
doubt doctrinal differences, rooted in the past, are slow to clear:. " the history of the past three hundred years cannot be wiped out "
(page 38). The layman is no expert on ecclesiastical disputes, but he may feel less impressed by the appeal to the " long course of the Church's history " (page 6) in this or that denomination, when he reflects how widely the Church as a whole seems to have changed ground in the last one hundred years. Have not many of the orthodox tenets of 1850—e.g., six-days Creation, verbal inerrancy of Scripture, eternal torment—have not these been quietly dis- carded in deference to science or common sense ? But the theo- logical walls which divide the sections of the Church still remain. It is a pity.
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