Belief Barriers or Bridge Builders?

The 16th century Great Reformation promised to free the Christian world from a religion of laws, rules, regulations, orders and orthodoxies. In many ways, the Reformation served as a recovery of the theology of grace and the awakening of a powerful and innovative spirituality. It's potential was unrealized, however. Within a century of its advent, the Great Reformation backtracked into denominationalism. It divided the Protestant world. It fractured the unity of spirituality in the brokenness of minute differences in orthodoxy, rule, regulation and practice. The Great Reformation fell far short of its potential as a theological recovery and a spiritual reawakening.

Far worse, the Great Reformation resulted in a religious tradition that is marked by fractured belief and divided religious opinion. Methodists do things differently from Episcopalians. The Congregationalist do things contrary to the practice of the Presbyterians. The United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ, despite being engaged in a decades-old attempt to unify, are divided by subtle, some would say silly, differences. Each argues with the other that their particular way of belief and practice is superior to the other. Since the Great Reformation, the Protestant world has been constructing belief barriers that have divided and separated what could have been unified.

If you want a review of the influences that led the Protestant world to revert to the divisiveness of belief barriers and sectarian practice, you will have to ask Reformation historians. Ask Adam Wirrig. If you want to understand the result of such division and separation, look no further than the Progressive Church alternative to Protestant denominationalism.

The Progressive Church invites us to focus less on what we believe, how we practice the Sacraments or rites of the faith, how we worship, what and how we sing, how we look at and recite ancient liturgies, how we shape upcoming generations to accept the faith as we have designed it, and to focus more on the outcomes of our belief and practice. What do we do? How do we live? How are we impacting those around us? How are we serving our communities?

Whereas belief builds barriers, focus on what we do unifies and universalizes. If the attention of the Progressive Church is drawn toward being like Christ instead of simply believing rightly in him, then it is the actions of the church-in-community that matters. Because ministry and mission is carried out in the name of Christ Jesus, and is therefore a service to every person in every place, without restriction or exception, a focus on what we do builds bridges across social, economic, political, racial, gender, age or life-style chasms.

The Progressive Church movement is building bridges instead of constructing belief barriers. Service to others crosses the divide and is not limited to how persons act, how they live, what they think, how they look, from whence they come, what religion they practice, if any, or their success, position or power in society.

Christ's servanthood is blind to divisiveness. So might ours be. But we have to drop the notion that the practice of our faith is an intellectual exercise or based in belief. It must be grounded in the ministry and mission of Christ Jesus, where we see ourselves as representatives, agents and ambassadors of his mercy, grace, love, compassion and forgiveness. When out attention is on how well we live up to Christ's standards of servanthood to all persons, regardless of what might otherwise divide us, we are faithful to him. Nothing else matters.

The question for today's congregations is whether we want to continue to construct belief barriers or if we are willing to be bridge builders. Can we allow our service to reach beyond a type, kind, class, race, gender, life-style, orthodoxy, rule, regulation or practice? Can we serve the needs around us, as Christ did, without distinction or division?

It is time that we move on from the denominationalism of the Great Reformation, with its resulting belief barriers, to an age of Christian servanthood. It is time for us to build bridges instead of constructing barriers.