There
could be no question of providing in this brief article a complete study of the
cultural and social factors influencing division between the churches. The
description I propose to give will be not exhaustive but illustrative.
Two
limitations should be noted right at the start. First of all, I am taking into
consideration mainly the French situation. The churches are placed in very
widely-varying circumstances in the different countries of Europe; we cannot
employ the same analytical methods in examining the Spanish-Italian-Portuguese
bloc (where Catholicism is the official religion and tends to exclude all
others), the German-Scandinavian bloc (where the population as a whole is
Christian, but is split into mutually-opposed churches), and France (mainly
lay, with a 70% majority of non-church members). This figure has been contested: it represents the average between
the number of those baptised, which is as high as 70% -- though the percentage
is showing a constant drop: in Paris no more than half the children born are
now baptised – and the number of communicants, which is about 10% of the
population. Church members are divided into approximately 25% Catholics and 1%
Protestants. It is not, therefore, certain that what can be observed with
regard to France is applicable to other countries also.
I
shall, in addition, leave on one side, in dealing with factors influencing
division, all problems of temperament, psychological differences,
terminological lack of understanding, distinctions of liturgy and form, and
diversity of ethical and cultural conceptions.
I
shall concern myself solely with analysing two factors which appear to me to be
essential ones – conservatism and the political situation.
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When
we speak of conservatism, it means that we are studying a situation actually
existing in fact. (In the same way, when we speak of administration, this
concerns only the administration which is definitely in existence, not the one
which ought to exist.) Again, our purpose is not to explain the origin of these
church divisions, only why these divisions are still with us today, why they go
on and on. In the oppositions between churches, conservatism plays a
fundamental part.
We
may note three forms of conservatism. Firstly, there is psychological
conservatism: the members of a church are accustomed to certain religious
forms. They have not as a rule any very definite views, from the religious
point of view; they simply remain attached to a familiar system, to familiar
habits, and shrink from any innovation. Anything new in the religious field is
regarded as, in varying degrees, sacrilegious. Since, furthermore, people have
no very accurate grasp of their faith, they do not see why they should change,
or why they should make it up with the others. Their tendency is to stay where
they are, because they will not take the trouble to make comparisons between
themselves and other people. This is a serious matter in so far as it is the
expression of an unavowed conviction of being in the right. It is a refusal by
the faithful to place themselves in submission to the Cross.
A second aspect of this conservatism is the
historical one: people continue to be attached to one particular religious or
ecclesiastical form out of respect for their forefathers and fidelity to the
past. This attachment to tradition is found more frequently in minority groups
such as, in France, Jews and Protestants. There are in France many nominal
Protestants to be found who are no longer Christians but still assert that they
are Protestants, and when asked what that means to them they invariably have
recourse to history: a Protestant is one descended from the Huguenots. People
thus continue to belong to the Protestant Church out of opposition to
Catholicism, which in turn arises from the Catholic persecutions. They may be
defined sociologically as belonging to a historical group by basing themselves
on the past and opposing a former enemy.
This
leads to startling consequences: many of the most ruggedly anti-Catholic
Protestants in France are among the least faithful members of the Church, and
no longer adherents of the Christian faith. What matters for them is thus to
distinguish themselves from the Catholics.
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And
anything appearing to tend in a Catholic direction, even something wholly in
line with the Revelation, is rejected. I know Protestants who will not accept
the Miraculous Birth of Christ because it is “Catholicism.” Such rejection is,
therefore, purely historical in character. The same applies to certain
antagonisms towards ecumenism in the local churches: it is in the name of
fidelity to tradition that people seek to remain apart. For only a closer
understanding of their own faith can enable them to detach themselves from the
past and attach themselves to ecumenism.
But
the third and most serious factor in conservatism, as the bulwark of division in
the Church, is administrative conservatism. It comes into play not, like the
other two factors, at individual but at organisational level. Every church is
and must be organised; there could be no denying the validity of an
organisation which embodies and should be the instrument of the Spirit. For
this reason the Church has its administrative and financial structures, its
ministries, its hierarchy, its synods and charities and accounts. But when the
Church organises itself in this way, we must not forget that in so doing it
ceases to become a purely spiritual body and becomes an administrative one. It
becomes an organisation. Now the whole action of the life of the Church
is to succeed in remaining faithful to its Lord although it is an organisation,
to succeed in subordinating that administration to the Spirit of God. But that
is no easy matter. For as soon as the Church becomes an administration it
becomes subject to the sociological claws governing administration: it is
overborne by the weight of its integration into the world, and any hope that it
might evade these sociological determinatives is wholly vain and idealistic. If
it is to succeed, it must be all the time reviewing in the light of faith the
validity of its organisation, and renewing it the instant it comes to represent
a danger of immobility.
Now
it may be noted that organisation is an element of conservatism tending to
maintain separations between churches (considering the situation as it actually
is). This is part of the inherent character of all administration. This
character, as I see it, comprises the following features.
(1)
Administration is of
its nature rigid: its tendency is to lay down fixed patterns and
definite, coherent rules difficult to amend and render flexible. It likes to
manage and foresee everything, and to establish statutes and regulations; it
transforms human relations into legal ones. All this comes up against one of
the spiritual temptations of the Church,
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the temptation to turn simple living by faith into a moral law. For this reason the Church very readily accepts that administrative rigidity which grows to be the encouragement and expression of its spiritual bankruptcy.
(2)
Administration is of
its nature rational: it does not give way to the impulsions of the
irrational. It seeks to produce the most effective organisational or financial
formula, and in so doing it gives its allegiance to mathematics and technology,
and ruthlessly excludes flights of fancy in any shape or form. In the Church,
administration lays down exact lines of demarcation as to what one particular
church is in contradistinction to the rest; it carries out statistical
inquiries; it lights upon financial methods which yield a good return; et
cetera and so forth. It works to establish an outward coherence of the
Church, holding together by human means elements more or less dissimilar, and
finds in its rationality its justification: it alone is able to reduce to order
the sphere where spiritual efforts can (from the point of view of organisation)
only sow disorder.
(3)
Administration is of
its nature a stablising force, in a dual sense. First of all, it is
stablising in that it seeks to establish exact rules, and to enclose all
movement within these patterns –– spiritual movement along with the rest. It
sets up barriers between groups in order that it may function more efficiently:
thus it strives to fence off its own special field, because it can only work
properly in a stablised setting. Secondly, its nature is to endeavor to
perpetuate itself. Any administration which considers itself justified at all
seeks to maintain itself, to continue, even when it has no longer any reason
for doing so. Administrative patterns last longer than any other, longer than
the political or sociological or economic systems which gave them birth. And so
it is in the churches also: one particular spiritual life, one particular
theology are embodied in one administrative form (it could not be otherwise, in
the beginning), but after the religious and spiritual bases have disappeared
the form of the organisation still continues, so that there is a simulacrum of
life with no reality to it. Such administrations, which at a specified moment
were of value and expressed legitimate religious divisions, are so no longer
after certain developments, and serve only to maintain divisions which often
possess only a shadow of reality. That is the position as it exists at present
in many churches.
Now
the more conscious an administration is of a threat to its foundations, the
more rigid it becomes. Whether it is the men in it
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or
the organisation itself, both of them strive to maintain and justify
themselves: the administration is stricter and stricter the less justified it seems.
Ecclesiastical administration frequently deepens the gulfs which the Holy Ghost
works to fill in. We must always, for instance, take care not to do what the
Roman administration did at the Council of Trent, and stand foursquare on
positions previously indeterminate and antagonisms potentially resolvable.
Whenever
the Church seeks to be perfectly organised, it tends towards hardening and
unjustified separatism.
A
further deep-seated factor leading to rupture is nationalism. Nationalism not
only provokes division between the different denominations, cloaked to a
greater or lesser degree by national feeling, but prevents union between
churches of different nations but the same denomination.
In
the first case, for the average French Protestant (and it is the average people
who form the Church, so that their view is an essential one) Baptism is “an
American sect,” and Lutheranism a German church. It is most unfortunate that
this estimate (not necessarily a contemptuous one) should dwell so on the
national aspect of a confession.
In
the second case, the churches of a single confession are broken up by their
integration into the different national patterns. (This applies even to the
Church of Rome, despite an appearance of unity administrative in character.)
Thus the Reformed Church is split up into fragments by the fact of belonging to
England (and Scotland), France, Switzerland, Holland and Hungary. Each of these
fragments reaches its decisions independently, organises its debates and
researches in separation. It is impossible to be satisfied with a purely
spiritual and theological union – such union exists, but it must take definite
form. It is entirely abnormal for this nationalist rupture to subsist at all.
We cannot accept the consolation that union in Christ is enough. For these
decisions lead to oppositions imperilling that union.
The
rupture in question is based, in my view, on three foundations.
Firstly,
decisions by the State, as for example, in history, the decisions of the French
monarchy concerning the Gallican Church. At the present time, we have the
nationalist decisions of the People’s Democracies, forbidding union – and to
some extent even exchange – between
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churches
which belong to the same confession but to mutually-opposed political camps.
Naturally, these decisions crystallise on the outbreak of war: people become
traitors or collaborators if they have been on friendly terms with Christians
in the enemy country. These State decisions are not, however, constant, nor in
all cases determinative.
The
second aspect is more serious – nationalist feeling among Christians
themselves. It is a matter for great regret that in the churches the members
almost always feel more bound to their nation than to the Church of Christ.
Thus they will accept for the country and the State sacrifices, such as
taxation and war, that they will not make for Christ. Who would agree to pay
the Church a subscription equal to what he pays in taxes? Who would agree to
devote a year, or two years, or three years of his life to the service of
Christ, as he does to his term in the Army? But, even if we do not go as far as
that, we find church members rubbing along quite happily with the cleavage in
the Body of Christ; we write even on the highest official level, “Reformed
Church of France,” whereas the Church may in fact be in France, but can
only be of Jesus Christ.
We
should have a great deal to do, therefore, first of all by way of education,
and then in practice, to teach Christians that they blond to Christ before
their country, that everything is God’s and must be rendered unto Him, that
only after this total gift has been made have they the right to render
anything to Caesar. They must learn that a French Christian is, because he is a
Christian first and foremost, more closely linked to a German Christian than to
a French non-Christian. It is absolutely vital to create in this way an
international Christian attitude of mind.
The
third facet of division is provided by the national administration of the
churches. They are organised on a national level, and have constructed their
organisation within this pattern, i.e. their supreme authority is always
national in character. This dependent condition is laden with consequence, for
such administrations prevent any international union among churches: thus the
French National Synod would not be willing to restrict its sovereignty, and nor
would any of the other governing bodies. Hand in hand with this goes the financial
problem – would a wealthy national church agree to assume joint financial
responsibility with a church burdened under a mass of deficits?
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Here
again we are up against an anti-Christian obstacle. The principle must be
admitted that the normal administrative framework for a church is not the
nation but the world. And there we find ourselves confronted by an
institutional task which does not correspond exactly to the task of the
ecumenical movement, since it is at once more restricted (not being interdenominational)
and more coherent (presupposing a supra-national authority in a church). But if
we are not capable of overcoming these divisions, how are we to make others
believe that we genuinely belong to Jesus Christ?
There
are a great many other things I could say concerning further factors in our
divisions, but I think the two that I have indicated are the most important at
the present time. We are thus faced with two questions:
What
concrete action are we to take in order to make the administration of the
Church more flexible and subordinate it wholly to the operation of the Holy
Spirit?
What
concrete action are we to take in order to induce the administrations of
national churches to approve, and later to take part in, a supra-national body,
once the work of educating church members has been carried out (which can be
begun immediately)?
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