Unity, Purity, and Peace: Struggles in the Reformed Church in America: Unity by Matthew van Maastricht
Introduction
In the Reformed Church in America (RCA – the communion to which I belong), we find ourselves in a point of tension. This tension is not unique. It is one that is/was felt in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church and others. On the main level it is about human sexuality, and the place of LGBTQ folks in the life and ministry of the church. In medical terms, this is the presenting problem. But as with any complex system, there are other issues underneath that either strengthen or erode the foundations on which we stand.
In the debates and dialogues in the RCA there are three words that have become a flashpoint. These words are found in a couple of places in the Constitution. First, in the declaration for Ministers of Word and Sacrament,
“I promise to walk in the Spirit of Christ, in love and fellowship within the church, seeking the things that make for unity, purity, and peace.”[1]
And in the liturgies for the ordination and installation of elders and deacons, and for the reception into membership.
After the installation of elders and deacons, the minister addresses the congregation, and among others asks, “Do you promise to encourage and pray for them, to labor together in obedience to the gospel, for the unity, purity, and peace of the church…?”[2]
When an individual is being questioned by the minister before the elders for reception into membership, one of the questions reads, “Do you promise…to seek those things which make for unity, purity, and peace?”[3]
This triplex, then, tends to frame the narrative in the RCA, and it is so often used as weapons. While labels like “progressive” and “conservative” are unhelpful and unmeaningful, I use them here. Those on the progressive end of the spectrum are often accused of sacrificing purity for unity, those on the conservative end of the spectrum are often accused of sacrificing unity in pursuit of purity.
But the bigger question, I think, is what do these words mean? How are these values lived out? This series will examine the tensions in the RCA from the perspective of these three values, and most of all, exploring what these may mean and what implications it has for the ongoing tensions and divisions in the RCA.
Unity
Unity is a complicated term. The slogan on the Crest of the RCA uses the word eendracht, which is often translated as “unity.” However, the word itself is better translated as “concord.” It’s the term used for a team of horses. Not a singular unity, but a plurality pulling in the same direction. Of course, a slogan is not the center of our ecclesiology, but it is, I think, reflective of our ecclesiology.
But even beyond this, the term “unity” means so many different things to so many different people. To some, unity means being forced to stay in relationship with those who are harmful to them. For others, unity means institutional unity, that is, avoiding a church split. For others, unity is theological or ideological. In the context of the RCA, then, we either are wary of unity, want to maintain unity, or give up because we already lack unity.
Unity in the Reformed Tradition
We can begin to see the theme of unity, ironically enough, in the Reformation of the Netherlands. After the Reformed gained political advantage, they allowed only one public church. Now, the Reformed Church was never a national church, but it was a public church. Other traditions (e.g. Roman Catholic, Baptist, etc.) were allowed to continue worshipping, but they could not present themselves to the public as a church. So you have instances where there are church spaces that have the facade of a house so as to not make it look like a church.
The Reformed didn’t want to exist as a new church alongside the Roman Catholic Church, but they saw themselves as the continuation of the “true church.”[4] (Whether this is the case, or not, I will not debate here. I only reference this to show the thoughts of the people at the time.) And so for the Dutch Reformed, there was one church. Of course, there were also other churches that existed but not publically.
Similarly, even in the secession movements in the Church in the Netherlands during the nineteenth century, not everyone who disagreed with the Netherlands Reformed Church (NHK) left. Some were, and continue to be, immensely conservative, generally opposed to the trajectory of the NHK, yet do not secede, because while they believed that the church was wrong, it still remains the church. “Though the church was ill, she was still a mother.”[5]
But the importance of unity is certainly not restricted solely to the Reformed of the Dutch heritage. Indeed, the Heidelberg Catechism, which arose out of the Palatinate, and sought, among other things, to be a common doctrinal tool to unite the Protestant factions there. While this end may not have been realized, the fact remains that it was designed to be an irenic document. Unity, then, is not a new concept with which we wrestle, but is a historic concept which we have confessed since antiquity.[6]
Institutional or Theological Unity
One of the major disagreements in the RCA regarding the term “unity” is to what it refers. Does unity mean that we all pay our fees into the same pot? Does unity mean that we have to all gather at the same synod? Does unity mean that we need to agree on doctrine? Is unity institutional or is it theological or ideological? The answer, I am convinced, is “yes.”
Yet unity is not so much something you have or don’t, unity is “both a gift and an obligation”.[7] It is a gift from God, but it is also something for which we must work. Indeed, unity is never accomplished or present, but it is always in progress, in the state of becoming. Indeed, a denomination paying assessments into the same pot but having bitter conflict is not unity anymore than a denomination which divides and divides and divides over disagreements until only a handful of people remain in any kind of meaningful relationship but have the same understandings of doctrine and all points of biblical interpretation. And thus, on the one hand, unity is more than just agreeing to stay together yet having bitterness and condemnation toward one another. And on the other hand, it is not right to say that each disagreement, even significant ones, shows that unity has already broken down.
One of the standards of doctrine for the RCA, the Belhar Confession, speaks at length about unity—visible unity on this side of the veil. Unity, then, is not simply a idealistic principle or an eschatological hope, but it is a matter of confession that is to find lived expression in the here and now. Unity is at the core of how we understand the church. But the Belhar does not only speak of unity, but also reconciliation and justice. And in the context of the Belhar Confession these three go together. They cannot truly exist without the other. The Belhar is clear that the church must seek visible unity, but that striving toward visible unity goes along with reconciliation and justice.
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This, then, is a part of the tension. We cannot ignore unity, nor can we insist solely on institutional unity or solely on theological or ideological unity but must strive toward both. But what happens when there is not a consistent value of unity or what that means?
Matthew van Maastricht is the pastor at the Altamont Reformed Church in Altamont, New York, and a Reformed Church polity and standards teacher.
[1] Book of Church Order of the Reformed Church in America (BCO), p. 130.
[2] Worship the Lord: The Liturgy of the Reformed Church in America, “Order for the Ordination and Installation of Elders and Deacons”, p. 49.
[3] Worship the Lord, “Order for Profession of Faith,” p 35.
[4] Blei, p. 21.
[5] Van den Belt, Henk, “Forms of Unity or of Disunity: The Confessions in the Recent history of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands,” in The Unity of the Church: A Theological State of the Art and Beyond, ed. Eduardus van der Borght (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 158.
[6] See the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church”
[7] The Belhar Confession.