Home » Christian » Reflections on growing up in the Church of Christ

Reflections on growing up in the Church of Christ

posted in: Christian 0
[3 Sep 2023: I edited the post to remove references to clarify and smooth it; in particular I removed all uses of the word ‘progressive.’ When I wrote it in 2006 I was not sensitive to the baggage that ‘progressive’ entails.]

I grew up in the Church of Christ, with most of its impact in my formative teenage years in the 60s. My father was an elder, and we were what would be called a ‘faithful’ family, meaning that we showed up at every meeting. While still in that church I spent two years in Italy from 1971 to 1973 on a youth mission program. Thirty five years later, after having left the Church of Christ in 1974-1975, I recently passed a weekend with some of those with whom I was in Italy. Since then I have had ongoing dreams about that event and much more distant history as well. That occasion is behind this post. While it will be an ongoing process, after a few weeks I think I can begin to evaluate how I respond to the Church of Christ over a distance of thirty years.

It was strange hearing the old hymns in Italian again. Singing and hearing them again after thirty years is rather strange. Every so often I find that one is running through my mind, and I recall all the words in Italian as well.

From the songs that came up that weekend I noticed that some of the newer praise type choruses have been translated, perhaps with a few originals. In general I was disappointed to find that over thirty years later there still does not seem to be a significant corpus of new music by Italians.

That seems to indicate something of an ongoing American influence, which is not surprising, given what I know of those involved. Exportation and enforcement of a particular form of American doctrine and culture is not healthy for the long run. It does not honor either the Italians or the Holy Spirit to be able to sort out the message of the Gospel within their own context, as Paul and others did in the early church. That is why Paul’s letters were so different to each church. For many years, everywhere there was an American presence there was subtle pressure to maintain practice and thought as it has been exported to Italy; after the American presence was removed the churches ofte went through various crises because different people wanted to do things differently. Those disputes turned up that the Italians had never absorbed the theology of the American church, and they did not know how to resolve the theological differences. In an extreme example one guy wanted to set up a local radio station to push for political independence of that city. In one city I know the church more or less scattered; in another it ceased to exist altogether after a prominent leader ran off with the wife of another member.

It seems that the Church of Christ defines itself as much by what is not discussed as much as by what is discussed. No one seems inclined to openly acknowledge or address some pink elephants in the room.

A central one is the argumentative fractiousness of so many of the churches. A friend there told me than in the east Texas town of Mineola, a small town, there are five Churches of Christ. Five. All the result of arguments and squabblings and pride and pharisaical nit-picking.

Traditionally no one seems to much discuss political or social questions. While these can be some of the most corrosive, divisive issues within a church, the tendency as I knew it was to simply not talk about them. Partly one’s chosen lifestyle is less threatened by choosing to see and not perceive. More particularly in that setting I think one doesn’t have to face situations in which there simply are no sufficient pre-fabricated answers; the rigid doctrinal shell isn’t broken if we don’t tap too hard on it. That said, I find it encouraging to know at least peripherally of movements within the Church of Christ that do in fact take these matters seriously and act within their context. I remember well that in the mid 60s there was a deliberate involvement in the poorest areas of the black community within our city; I went on a number of occasions to gospel presentation studies (Jule Miller filmstrips and clear red plastic LP soundtracks) in some very poor homes, and they have influenced my life in subtle ways since. I honor the courage of several men to counter the racist separatism of that time.

No one seems to be able to openly address the reasons for the loss of disaffected young people, of which I certainly am one. Granted, that is not limited to the Churches of Christ; it crosses all denominational lines, kids seeing the duplicity, compromise, self-interest and lack of integrity of the adults. Yet, the older members seem incapable of considering that they might be part of why kids are leaving. They are so sincere in what they believe and how they live, how could they be the reason that kids would leave?

I was profoundly affected by a special congregational meeting when I was about 17 in I watched a preacher turn most of the congregation against my father and his co-elder. After a couple of hours they had no option but to resign, as it was clear that the group was against them. These sorts of divisive conflicts by and large go unaddressed in all churches, at least in my exposure to things, yet these matters of the heart are what God most radically wants to change. Very few in that meeting probably ever considered that they had engaged in the sorts of acrimonious squabbling that Paul had so cautioned Timothy and Titus to avoid.

To admit these things openly seems to me to require questioning some foundational matters about the destructive consequence of trying to define rigid, reductive doctrinal positions, and about holding themselves apart from others as if they were unique. Understanding that the Church of Christ is far from a homogenous group, and acknowledging that significant changes are happening in some groups, in general it prides itself on this idea of ‘restoring’ the early faith and practice, without any understanding that were they to be able to observe first hand the practice of the early Christians they would find it more foreign than most contemporary Christian practices.

The early church in Jerusalem was thoroughgoingly Jewish! Paul himself did not live by Torah, but he still took a vow and deliberately pushed toward Jerusalem to be there in time for a feast; this was what he knew, and it was profoundly significant to him.

Many, though not all, in the Church of Christ seem to approach the last 2000 years as if no movement between the death of the last apostle and the emergence of the Campbell-Stone movement had a valid place in the Christian heritage. How preposterous… who carried the Gospel through the centuries that there should be a church of any sort around by the time of Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, and others? Yet to admit that others could genuinely, intimately know Jesus without having conformed to Church of Christ doctrine and practice is to question the most basic tenets of the hardliners, and that is too threatening to personal identity and security.

Some time ago I saw this from the Center for Restoration Studies at Abilene Christian University (at which I studied for one year); the original web page no longer exists, but it said this: “In 1986 the Center acquired the 200-year old pulpit from the Ahorey Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland, from which Thomas Campbell preached for 10 years before migrating to America.”

Given the typical abhorrence by the Church of Christ toward Catholic practices, I doubt that they see the irony of what they did. In the desire to stay connected to our roots, many of us look for causally connective tokens that remain of those that we honor. In my reading, this is precisely the sort of practice that eventually led to the panoply of saints and relics of the Roman church. That process may well have begun in the Church of Christ with the purchase of Thomas Campbell’s old pulpit. What is so special about it that they would presume to buy it and move it to ACU? Those that have established the Center won’t live long enough to see the same process develop in its contemporary expression; were they to see it in a couple of hundred years, assuming it survives, they might well be horrified at what will have become of it. It will not look Catholic, but I expect it will have its own version of holy relics.

Leave a Reply