from the

General Secretary NEVILLE CALLAM

THE CASE FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY

Unity belongs to the very nature of the church. It is both a gift and a calling that God has given to the church. A church may not ignore the implications of this truth with impunity. Increasingly, the fullness of the unity of the Body of Christ is being conceived in terms of communion in faith, life and witness. Yet, churches continue to face a challenge in securing agreement on the proximate form or forms that this unity may take in the churches’ historical life.

Some speak of this unity in terms of reconciled diversity. This refers to the existence of genuine fellowship between or among churches that have diverse understandings of aspects of the belief and practice of the church, but no longer regard the diversity that exists as church dividing.

In some cases, this unity is conceived in organic terms as institutional unity. This is often the case where a presumption exists that a particular Christian World Communion uniquely possesses the truth of God’s revelation. In other cases, organic unity is often predicated on reconciled diversity that finds expression in a conversion of identities. Where do Baptists fall in the spectrum of beliefs concerning unity? Perhaps, they may be found right across the entire spectrum! And is it not sad that we spend so little time agonizing over our disunity? Indeed, we are prone to make jokes about our penchant for division.

Whatever the beliefs concerning the unity of the church that Baptists hold, many continue to insist that the primary location of the church and its unity is at the local, that is, the congregational, level. Yet, even among Baptists, the insistence on the local congregation as the primary expression of the church is disputed. The reason is that some Baptists are uncertain about the accuracy of the claim that the New Testament provides a basis for the priority of the local church, that is, the local congregation of covenanted believers, as the principal expression of the church. One notable Baptist scholar of yesteryear, Dale Moody, is among those who have raised important questions about popular Baptist attitudes toward the local church. Moody’s argument remains cogent: “Rigid distinctions between the local assembly, especially when the general assembly as the body of Christ is rejected, is a case of not being able to see the woods for the trees.” The New Testament affirms both the local and the universal manifestations of the church. Faithfulness to this teaching proscribes the exclusion of one or the other from our understanding of the church. Thankfully, many Baptists assent to this view without embracing a nebulous notion of spiritual unity. Yet, do not Baptists need to admit that the lived experience of the Baptist family is too often marked by a debilitating parochialism? On the one hand, this weakness threatens to deprive the Baptist community of the riches that inhere in the traditions

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of the other Christian World Communions. On the other hand, this parochialism tends to drain the energy from any effort at the international level to give expression to the oneness in Christ that Baptist Christians share.

All too often, the tendency exists to exalt local and regional perspectives above emerging shared perspectives that derive from a representative Baptist body seeking to discern together the way the Holy Spirit is leading the worldwide Baptist community. Some Baptists are inclined to restrict the

practice of oversight in the church to the local level and they only very cautiously extend this to the regional level within a country, or even to the national level. This is partly a sign of our failure both to take representation seriously and to appreciate the reality that structures our shared life beyond the local level to be animated by the Holy Spirit. Besides, they can make a vital contribution in the service of the communion that God’s people share. Many Baptists who desire to guard the right of the Spirit of Christ to rule and reign in the life of the local congregation risk suffocating under a questionable presumption. They may feel that the will of Christ may better be discerned in the limited locations they inhabit than in the spaces where they gather with others who share their spiritual heritage on a much broader geographical plane. May our churches experience a deep longing to more fully participate in, and share, communion in God’s own Trinitarian life. And may this longing both fill us with concern over the scandal of our disunity and the imperative of resolute determination to seek to manifest the unity that God wills for the church.