What's Good About the Church?

In many ways, today we appear to be headed toward a post-Christian era. One indicator of this turn of affairs is the large number of people who have joined the “Church Alumni Association” (CAA). People who are part of the CAA have either quit the church or their participation in regular formal religious activities has taken a far backseat in their lives. They might claim to be spiritual, but are not formally religious. This is not something new. Even at the dawn of the Christian era there were those who, for one reason or another, abandoned what we know traditionally as the Christian community.¹ Church leaders labeled such people apostates (Heb 6:4-6), but we do not know how they thought of themselves. Were they apostates or heretics?² A few of them are named in early Christian texts. For example, a certain Demas is mentioned positively as a companion of Paul (Col 4:14; Philemon 24), but he is also remembered negatively as having “forsaken” Paul and the Pauline church (2 Tim 4:16).³

The situation of the CAA raises the question: how does one maintain a connection to the Christian tradition when one no longer considers oneself a traditional Christian in terms of the fourth century confessions and creeds of the church, which are still universally used to define post-reformation Christianity? Naturally, there is a prior question: why would one even want to stay connected to the traditional Christian community, when one acknowledges that one is no longer traditionally Christian in terms of the modern church’s confessions and creeds?

Pondering an answer to the “why” question leads me to three personal observations in defense of staying connected to the post-reformation church. In my case the church is my heritage. I grew up regularly attending church, and it has played a major part in my adult life. No one ever completely escapes their own history. I can no more shake the church out of my system, than I can shake off my southern accent and Mississippi upbringing. Church, southern accent, and the Mississippi Delta in part define who I have become. For good or ill I will always be a Baptist “Delta boy,” although I have been exposed to strange and novel ideas, traveled a bit in the Western world, and lived for a spell in some exotic places.⁴ Even “progressive Christians” who, in their more extreme forms have abandoned traditional Christology and theology, have remained traditional in terms of their ecclesiology—that is, they still hold to the idea of the church as a positive social institution for housing their activities; however, they reorient the significance and meaning of the ordinances (baptism and Eucharist). In a sense progressive Christians are still a part of the ecclesiastical scene in society as churches that compete with traditional Christian Christology and theology.

As a responsible citizen of these United States, I have an interest in seeing the traditional church succeed. For all its ills, imperfections, warts, and blemishes, it aims to be a positive force in human society. The Gospel of Matthew (5:13-14) cites Jesus as telling his followers “You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world” (Gospel of the Savior 1:4; compare Matt 5:13-14). Salt is a well-known preservative that enhances the flavors of the ingredients of food—it makes food tastier. And light is essentially necessary for life in a world that becomes dark about every 12 hours. This directive of Jesus is frequently interpreted as humanitarian service that is quite apart from their primary functions. Who would not want to be associated in some way with an institution that aims for the betterment of human life, society, and culture, even if it often misses the mark? A major focus of many progressive churches is “justice in the social order”—something progressive Christians learned from the traditional Christianity from which they have emerged.

As a retired educator, what I find best about the church, however, is that as an institution it sets aside one day a week for pondering, among other things, human values, ethics, and life’s eternal verities (if such there be).⁵ At its finest, it encourages church members to reflect on societal issues and on what one might consider life’s “enduring mysteries” (that is to say: things beyond the material aspects of life). There is no other institution in society that makes such focal points a weekly event. To be sure, one can also find a similar focus in university classes in philosophy and religious studies, but classes end every quarter or semester—and not everyone is able to go to the university. The church, however, is open every week. Because of the iconic role of the Bible in Western culture, weekly Bible study provides a focus for reflecting on such issues.

What, in your view, is good about the church that you can express in non-confessional “secular” language?⁶

Charles W. Hedrick
Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹By this I mean to indicate the communities of those authors whose writings have found their way into the New Testament. There were also nontraditional communities in the earliest period who claimed the term “Christian” for themselves as well, although they were very different in thought from those who called themselves the “Orthodox”—like the author of the Gospel of Philip, for example.

²http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=apostates+or+heretics

³Three others are Hymenaus, Alexander, and Philetus (1 Tim 1:20; 2 Tim 4:16).

⁴The term “Delta boy” was coined (so far as I know) by the Rev. Dr. Buddy Shurden, another Mississippi Delta boy.

⁵http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=why+go+to+church

⁶This essay first appeared five years ago, Dec 20, 2019. It appears here edited, updated, and expanded.

How do I describe myself?

How do I describe myself if I come to regard aspects of the fundamentals of the Christian faith inherited from the orthodoxy of the fourth and fifth centuries as mythical constructs defying reason? Those fundamentals of faith, as formulated by Christian conservatism in the twentieth century, are belief in the:

• Inerrancy of the Bible

• Literal nature of the biblical accounts—the miracles of Jesus and the Genesis account of creation

• Virgin Birth of Christ

• Bodily resurrection and the physical return of Christ

• Substitutionary atonement of Christ on the Cross (i.e., Jesus died for me)

On the other hand, one may still share many other ethical and religious concepts from the Christian tradition. Nevertheless, questioning any of these particular “fundamentals” is certain to compromise one’s relationship with traditional Christianity in the twenty-first century in one way or another.

            The church through the years has evolved certain terms for those it regards as being outside the household of faith. In antiquity orthodox Christianity regarded those outside the church as pagans; that is, they were non-believers or “civilians” who had “not enlisted through baptism as soldiers of Christ against the powers of Satan” (Fox, Pagans and Christians, 30-31). Today a pagan is thought to be one who has little or no religion or an irreligious or hedonistic person, neither of which may fairly describe you.

            Another term used by the church through the years is heretic. The term describes someone who holds a religious opinion contrary to church dogma, or who dissents from some accepted belief or doctrine (see Hedrick, “Heretics and Apostates,” Wry Thoughts about Religion, 4/26/2018). So a heretic might be regarded as an errant member of the faith community, who nevertheless still identifies with the faith community, but whose views are rejected by the faith community.

            Another term used by the church to describe those outside the household of faith is apostate. An apostate is one who has renounced a particular religious faith (Hedrick, “Heretics and Apostates”). Hence apostates by their own deliberate decision are no longer members of the household of faith; they have completely given up the faith.

            The question is: should one simply accept any of these church terms as a self designation, or should one find other ways to describe oneself if one questions the “fundamentals” of the faith? There are other terms that one might use without becoming too specific: for example, free thinker, seeker, atheist, agnostic, etc. These terms might even be used of oneself even while participating in a Christian community of faith, if the community is tolerant of diversity to some extent.

            What later became Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries was in earlier centuries a “big tent religion,” meaning that in earlier centuries it was characterized by diverse views and theologies. There was no successful standardization of the faith until the fourth and fifth centuries, when it became Christianity. Jesus, to judge by the early Christian gospels, was not a Christian and hence did not share the so-called fundamentals of the faith drafted by conservative Christianity in the twentieth century. Jesus was a Judean man whose religion must be understood in contrast to the Judean temple cult of the first third of the first century. It was only later in the faith of the Church that he was made into a dying and rising God.

            The temptation for many is to react negatively against the church, when they discover its “feet of clay,” but the truth is that most of us reared in the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries in America have learned religion either directly or indirectly through the cultural influence of the church. We are, therefore, in a distant sense “Christians” by cultural tradition. And, truth be told, we still find some redeeming social and religious value in the Christian Church when considering all its manifestations and history.

            In describing oneself one should not hesitate to draw upon one’s roots in the traditional church if some aspect of church history, faith, and ethics allows an accurate statement of where one is religiously. For example, I might call myself Baptist by conscience, Jesusite¹ by religious tradition, critic of religious convention by training, skeptic by confession, humanist by disposition, reason’s servant by profession.² How would you describe yourself?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹Compare the designation “Jesuit,” (i.e., one who is a member of the Society of Jesus in the Catholic tradition).

²See Hedrick, “Who am I,” Wry Thoughts about Religion, 6/26/13.

Apostates and Heretics

Recently I had another unsettling conversation in a crowded public space with a now angry man. The conversation was overheard by others, and his ire was directed toward me personally. Several months earlier we had talked about religion in a more amicable way.¹ On this most recent occasion, he began, abruptly and rather confrontationally,

"Do you believe in Hell?"

"No."²

"Where do you go to church?"

"First Baptist."

"Is that what they teach you there?"

"No; I assume that virtually all members of my church believe in Hell."

The conversation continued apace and then he left the area, returning momentarily to assert:

"You know what you are? You are an apostate. Do you know what that is?"

"Yes; and you seem a very angry man."

The conversation continued briefly in another room where I told him, "the term 'apostate' is not correct; in the past some have called me 'heretic," which is likely more appropriate." After a moment he said, "The reason you write those newspaper articles is to call attention to yourself."

            Here are the definitions of the terms. Apostasy is "renunciation of a religious faith." With respect to the conversation above the accusation was that I had renounced the Christian faith. There is a passage in the New Testament that describes the circumstance of the one who commits apostasy: Hebrews 6:1-6 (using in Heb 6:6 the Greek word parapesontas, falling away, making a defection). In the view of the author of Hebrews, those who defect from the faith cannot be renewed again to faith. The actual word "apostasy" is used in Acts 21:21, where Paul is accused of teaching apostasia (apostasy, making a defection) from Moses; that is, Paul was accused of teaching that Jews should not circumcise their children and follow other Jewish traditions. It appears also in the deutero-Pauline letter, Second Thessalonians, where the "man of lawlessness" is revealed in the apostasia (the rebellion or defection, 2 Thess 2:3).

Heresy, on the other hand, is "adherence to a religious opinion contrary to church dogma; or dissent or deviation from a dominant theory, opinion or practice." Hence a heretic is "one who dissents from some accepted belief or doctrine." The word "heresy" (αἳρεσις; transliterated hairesis) is translated by the word "sect" in Acts 24:14, "factions" in 1 Cor 11:19,  "party spirit" in Gal 5:20, and "heresies" in 2 Pet 2:1.The word is used to identify various factions in a given religious body, as for example in Acts 26:5 where Paul refers to the Pharisees as "the strictest party of our religion (compare also Acts 5:17; 15:5; 24:5; 28:22). The word "factious" (or it could be translated sectarian) is used to translate the Greek hairetikon in Tit 3:10.

It appears then that heretics are regarded as erring members of the faith community, and apostates, on the other hand, are no longer members of the faith community but have completely given up the faith.

There were in the early period no generally accepted standards for judging Christian beliefs, until in the fourth and fifth centuries one group from among the early competing factions in the Jesus gatherings achieved an ascendency in the ancient world. The ascendant group called themselves "the Orthodox." They adopted a canon (our current Bible more or less³) and creeds (the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed⁴). Then they judged others by the beliefs they developed for their own religious communities, and called those in other Jesus gatherings who had different views, "heretics." Of course those that the Orthodox declared to be heretical had a name for the orthodox—it was "heretic." In the game of right belief and wrong belief with respect to religion, the correct answer depends on whose argument one finds most persuasive.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

1 See Hedrick, "Did Jesus Believe in the Christian Hell?" Wry Guy Blog, September 9, 2017.

2 See Hedrick, "Does Hell Exist," Wry Guy Blog, August 29, 2015.

3 See Hedrick, "When did the Bible become the Word of God?" Wry Guy Blog, January 26, 2015.

4 See Bettenson and Maunder, Documents of the Christian Church (3rd ed.; Oxford, 1999), 25-29.