Pilgrim Soldier

One of the things I find most difficult within the Church is the divisions that exist within the Body of Christ. The various denominations have so much to offer each other in terms of our understanding of God and how to be effective Salt and Light in a fallen world. It is a shame that we concentrate far too often on the things that divide the different expressions and not enough on the things that unite us together.

The thing that brought this to mind was a conversation about exchanging pulpits that I was involved in the other night. The particular area that this coversation was about is a pretty good model of how the Church can work together in unity, across the spectrum of denominations, to improve the community of the whole area. However, when it comes to an exchange of pulpits there are so many barriers in place over who can preach in which church that the divides are highlighted.

This highlighting of the divisions is possibly nowhere more strongly felt than between certain areas of the “Evangelical” tradition and Roman Catholicism. Over the years I have seen a disturbing trend in some circles to write off all those who belong to the Church or Rome as at best non-Christians and at worst the very spawn of satan himself.

Now, personally I have some real problems with some Roman Catholic theology, but to write off everything because of these issue is just plain stupid. I’ve recently seen Roman Catholicism lumped together with Mormonism in an article on one blog and this suggests ignorance of both groups on the part of the writer. Anyway, if we want to face up to the truth, those of us in the Evangelical arm of the Christ’s body find it difficult to agree on some pretty fundamental stuff ourselves and are well and truly divided over it. So who are we to cast stones at other parts of the body?

When I look around at the significant influence that many Roman Catholics have had over the past century, I would suggest that more than one Christian from other denominations would have something to learn. Mother Theresa, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Fr Maximillian Kolbe, and countless other unknowns show us what it means to live out Christ’s call to live out his teachings.

But its not only across denominations that we feel this division. I’ve known Salvation Army Corps in the same town who have a spirit of rivalry rather than one of unity.

To my mind this rivalry between denominations and within them is an unmentioned aspect of how we in the Church have bought into modern western society. In a world that is dominated by a sense of competition in which winning is all that counts, we are absorbed by numbers instead of depth, quality of sound instead of a heart of worship, beating our competitors instead of church unity.