How churches divide: 3-13-12

The phenomenon I'm about to describe here today is not new. But I think its prevalence is increasing -- sometimes at warp speed.

It's a phenomenon that Emergent Church Movement leader Brian McLaren (pictured below) mentioned the other evening when he spoke at Village Presbyterian Church in suburban Kansas City. Brian put it this way:

". . .the differences between denominations are no longer as big as the differences within denominations."

My friend Fr. W. Paul Jones talks about this phenomenon, too, in his book Theological Worlds.

I suppose you can find these differences inside any denomination, but at the moment, my own, the Presbyterian Church (USA), seems to be a prime example.

We Presbyterians have been fighting over many things in recent years, but the most public battle has been over whether to ordain as clergy otherwise-qualified gays and lesbians. Last year we finally changed our constitution to allow such ordinations (it was the right thing to do), but the aftermath is that a number of churches are leaving the PCUSA.

Some are joining the Fellowship of Presbyterians, which in turn recently started a whole new denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians, or ECO-Presbyterians.

Not all of this struggle is over the gay-lesbian issue, but that's certainly a primary symbol. In the end, the differences have more to do with how the Bible is read and interpreted.

But I'd say that the differences between Presbyterians who belong to the Fellowship of Presbyterians and those who would never belong to that group are much wider than the differences between your average Presbyterian and your average United Methodist, say.

And it's another reminder that labels -- even proper names -- often hide much more than they reveal. Life is complicated, nuanced -- though you'd never suspect that listening to much of talk radio these days.

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A DEATH-OF-GOD RESPONSE

The recent death of one of the 1960s "God is dead" theologians has prompted this good piece from journalist Jon Meacham, an excellent thinker, speaker and writer. Oh, for more people who understand that not everything about faith is nailed down -- nor is meant to be.