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Stephen W. Angell, Earlham School of Religion
What do the terms “radical Christianity” and “Believers’ Church” mean?
The term “Believer’s Church” is often taken to be roughly equivalent to “Free Church” or “nonconformity.” In fact, “Believers’ Church” does not appear in any edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, including the most recent. “Nonconformity” is the only one of the above terms that appears, suggesting a strong link to the old dissenters’ traditions of seventeenth-century England, as well as the sectarian half of Ernst Troeltsch’s “Church/sect” dichotomy.
However, we have two theological seminaries working in partnership here, and influential emeritus faculty from both seminaries have been staunch advocates of bring life to the term “Believers’ Church.” Wilmer Cooper of the Earlham School of Religion, as Callen notes, arranged for our school to host one of the earliest ecumenical gatherings to consider the “Believers’ Church” idea (although “Free Church” was still the predominant label given to the tradition), in June, 1964. Donald Durnbaugh of Bethany Theological Seminary has written a compelling interpretation of the “Believers’ Church” concept, published as The Believers’ Church: The History and Character of Radical Protestantism in 1968.
What, then, is the “Believers’ Church”? Why have so many of our colleagues, including Cooper and Durnbaugh, taken such an interest in the idea?
Callen draws from a definition by Earle W. Fike, Jr., a former moderator of the Church of the Brethren. I have augmented Callen’s and Fike’s discussions with some points drawn from a similar definition delineated in the book by Durnbaugh that I just mentioned. The Believers’ Churches can be distinguished by the following five marks:
The Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Corinthians addresses “those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.” Members of Believers’ Churches are dedicated to realizing the truth of this form of address, in a strong and robust form. In other words, members of Believers’ Churches strive to live holy lives, or as Durnbaugh puts it, “as regenerate Christians they will be expected to maintain a higher level of life” than ordinary human beings. Durnbaugh sums up as follows: “The Believers’ Church is the covenanted and disciplined community of those walking in the way of Jesus Christ. Where two or three such are gathered, willing also to be scattered in the work of the Lord, there is the believing people.”
Callen defines the term “radicalism” in a similar way. “What makes the church ‘radical’ is that it knows Jesus, and the world does not; and it intends that Jesus will really be Lord of the church and all of life, while much of ‘Christendom’ intends this lordship only with significant reservations.” (Page 59) In other words, what makes churches and church people radical is a consistent honesty, a simple, uncompromising persistence in following all the way one whom many have called a savior but have only followed a part of the way. This kind of radicalism is not far from a consistent Christian conservatism.
Which Christian churches meet these criteria? Which ought to be considered part of the Believers’ Church? The answer to this rather simple question is quite unclear. Of existing denominations, Durnbaugh talks extensively about the Baptists, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, Plymouth Brethren, and Quakers. His most fully developed modern examples are the German Confessing Church which protested against Hitler and the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., although he makes a nod in the direction of the Pentecostalists. There tends to be a bias in the literature toward including those denominations which would welcome the chance to be included in ecumenical discussions on the concept of the Believers’ Church, although it is not clear on what theoretical basis one would make ecumenism as a qualifier for Believers’ Church status. The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) hosted a Believers’ Church conference, focusing on the topic of Believers’ Baptism, as early as 1984, and it is surely one of Barry Callen’s distinctions that he is dedicated toward bringing the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) more fully into Believers’ Church deliberations, as is evidenced by this fine book we are examining today.
Where are the believing people to be found in the two thousand years of Christian history? That is closely tied to another question: How is Christ manifested in Christ’s church, two thousand years old, two thousand years young?
Before we look specifically at Believers’ Church views on this question, let us survey some other Christian views.
First, let us begin with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox view. Here, the view of the locus of Christ is tied very closely (but not exclusively) to the institutional church, to the actions of councils, bishops, and (in the Roman Catholic view) popes. There are slightly different formulations. Vincent of Lerins’ view is often cited. (That which is Catholic and Christian is “what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all,” a monolithic vision that encouraged top-down views of the Church.) John Henry Newman formulated a view of Catholic doctrine that allowed more opportunity for evolution, but one that still recognized a pope’s declaration as decisive and binding. Catholic and Orthodox views generally allow room for renewal. The desert Fathers of the 4thcentury, and a succession of religious orders from the Benedictines to the Cistercians to the Franciscans to the Jesuits and beyond have helped to renew and revive the church. But there is little or no room for the concept of “reformation” in the Catholic or Orthodox view. The Orthodox will point out particularly that the Iconoclasts attempted to reform the Church during the eighth century, and (at least in their view) quite properly failed in their attempt. There was and is no need for reformation, because the church can renew itself.
The leaders of the magisterial Reformation, the Martin Luthers, the John Calvins, the Ulrich Zwinglis, took a somewhat more critical stance vis-a-vis the historic church. Their principle of sola Scriptura might seem to have made church tradition superfluous for them, but such was not really the case. From their point of view, there could be no denying that the church of the late medieval period was quite corrupt. On this point, they would have been joined by some humanists who remained Catholic, notably Desiderius Erasmus. The “Babylonian captivity” of the Church (in which the pope became virtually a wholly owned subsidiary of the French monarchy), the Great Schism (in which, for a period of almost half a century, two or even three popes were thundering against each other), and the Renaissance papacy (in which the popes’ material or temporal concerns clearly had taken the upper hand over their spiritual concerns) were each a great scandal, as was the practice of selling of salvation through indulgences which sparked Luther’s revolt. Under extraordinary conditions, then, a reformation of the church became necessary. But their protests clearly were limited. The later Luther, for example, seemed to have little complaint about the extraordinary entanglement of church and state that had been represented by such emperors as Constantine in the fourth century and popes as Innocent III in the thirteenth century, especially since Luther himself urged the German princes to take a strong role in governing the new churches formed by the Protestant Reformation. They generally accepted the results of the seven Ecumenical Councils from 325 to 787, although Calvin, favoring the iconoclastic view, had some qualms about the seventh of these. In sum, then, the church had been in good and acceptable shape through most of the centuries, and only in the most extraordinary of circumstances was a reformation of the church conceivable or desirable.
The historical vision of the Believers’ Church is somewhat more diffuse. It is not always the case that a clear stance was taken on every issue concerning the history of Christianity, nor could it be said that the various denominations who make up the Believers’ Church always agree among themselves. But the following points are ones that are commonly made:
First, the first generation of Christians represented a level of purity, simplicity, and integrity of witness that clearly should be emulated. William Penn emphasized this theme in one of his tracts entitled, “Primitive Christianity Revived.” Different denominations feature different aspects of the early Christians’ witness, but all harken back to this period. One common deduction of all branches of the Believers’ Church was a rejection of infant baptism as a practice not found in the New Testament nor practiced, to our knowledge, by first-century Christians.
Second, that the joining of church and state represented by Constantine was a very large mistake for Christianity. As Callen puts it, “the Roman Emperor Constantine helped to join the cause of the Empire and Christianity, an unnatural synthesis making Christians key threads in the very fabric of mainstream Roman society.” The church always needs to maintain a critical level of detachment vis-a-vis the state and the wider secular society.
These two basic points of agreement, while illuminating in and of themselves and provocative of a wide range of fruitful discussions, do not constitute a wholistic view of Christian history. It is clear, looking at the literature, that it is possible to fashion a wholistic Believers’ Church view of Christian history, but that view once formulated might well not be accepted by all of the constituent denominations.
The clearest version of Believers’ Church history is the one developed by Baptists as part of the Landmarker movement. The Landmarkers insist that there have been manifestations of the Believers’ Church throughout the two millennia of Christian history, sometimes hidden, sometimes manifest. Despite the hidden character of the movement, the movement has always been there. These are a couple of expressions of the Landmark Baptists, gleaned from Durnbaugh’s book: “We Baptists began at the Jordan River, and have had a continuous existence ever since!” “If I see a white horse in a pasture, and he disappears for a time in the woods, then I see a white horse coming out from the woods on the other side, I can be fairly sure it is the same white horse, even though I could not see him while he was in the forest!” (Page 37)
This view has something of an a priori nature to it that will not be acceptable to the careful historians in the audience, who will want to base their judgments on Christian history on actual historical evidence rather than Christian conviction, no matter how deeply held. Nevertheless, this vision of a constant stream of dissidents has power. It was the basis, for example, for one of Rufus Jones’s books, The Church’s Debt to Heretics, which celebrated the contributions made to Christianity by such controversial thinkers as Pelagius, Abelard, John Wyclif, Luther, Calvin, and George Fox.
A common alternative to this view is one that is put forward by Callen and Durnbaugh. They tend to see the Believers’ Church movement as in evidence some centuries before the Reformation itself. It can be seen in the activities of such small dissident groups as the Waldensians, the Hussites, and the Lollards. But then it achieved its height in the Anabaptist movement of the sixteenth century. Martin Luther could have been a Believers’ Church spokesman. Many of the Anabaptists were clearly inspired by Luther’s statement of the ideal of “the priesthood of all believers,” and thought that his later dealings with German princes compromised the purity of his movement. But what Anabaptists such as the Swiss Brethren, Menno Simons, and Jacob Hutter absolutely insisted on was reforming the Christian Church entirely and uncompromisingly along the lines of New Testament ideals. (We are omitting some messy Anabaptist history here. An early Anabaptist community in Muenster insisted on such practices as revolutionary violence and polygamy, based, of course, largely on the Old Testament. After these Old Testament Anabaptist movements were violently suppressed, the remaining Anabaptists focused more clearly on the example of Christ to distinguish themselves from those who had been discredited.) One way to talk about the Believers’ Church, Callen and Durnbaugh tell us, is that the Believers’ Church adherents are those who see the Anabaptist movement not as a curious footnote to sixteenth century history, but as absolutely central to understanding what the Christian vision and the Christian witness is all about. In other words, after the first generation of Christians, the peaceable Anabaptists of the sixteenth century are the Christians that many Believers’ Church adherents most want to emulate.
Durnbaugh tells us that after the sixteenth century, the church revival movements represented by Puritanism, Pietism, and New Testament Restorationism deepened and strengthened the main channels of the Believers’ Church stream. Durnbaugh is certainly convincing in the examples that he chose for his 1968 book, but we may well want to add some others.
Still, even if we add others, it is clear that the Durnbaugh-Callen version of Christian history is something less than the holistic view offered by the Landmarkers. There are some historical questions that the Believers’ Church movement has never achieved entire clarity. The notion of a Constantinian fall raises as many problems as it solves. The doctrine of infant baptism - rejected with almost perfect unanimity by Believers’ Churches - for example was first enunciated clearly by Bishop Cyprian on behalf of a gathering of bishops in 252, more than a half-century before Constantine’s reign, during a controversy over how Christians who had compromised with Roman persecution should be treated, and it had been in widespread use among the downtrodden Christians of the Roman empire for some decades before 252 and was in a process of solidification for centuries after 252. Still, we cannot blame the compromise of state involvement in the church for that questionable doctrine.
Furthermore, what is the Believers’ Churches’ position on the statements from the seven ecumenical councils, accepted by the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and most Protestant churches issuing from the magisterial reformation? Since the first of these ecumenical councils was convened by the Emperor Constantine, and they all occurred during a time of close collaboration between the state and the church, one might suppose that the Believers’ Churches would repudiate, or at least critically question, the results of these Councils, including the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds. But this has generally not been the case. The non-creedal nature of Believers’ Churches, Durnbaugh writes, “is not to be understood as disbelief in or rejection of the Nicene or Apostolic creeds. Most Free Churchmen were quite orthodox in this respect. The point was rather their conviction that formal adherence to creeds tended to make Christianity a sterile matter of intellectual assent.”
Of course, scholars of the Radical Reformation do generally understand Socinianism, a tradition which eventually led to Unitarianism and the rejection of most early Christian creeds, as one of the strands of the Radical Reformation. Durnbaugh is correct that few Believers’ Church adherents were or are Unitarians, but we should recognize that there was some Socinian influence upon other Radical Christians, especially in the seventeenth century. For example, while seventeenth-century Quakers and Baptists, with their questioning of the Trinity, did not go so far as the Socinians, they did go far enough with their criticism of Trinitarian doctrine to get into legal problems. In one of William Penn’s celebrated debates with Puritan pastors, he and George Whitehead attempted to demolish the Nicene formulation of the Trinity. Penn’s record of this debate, published in 1668 as The Sandy Foundation Shaken, resulted in several months’ imprisonment for Penn in the Tower of London, as well as imprisonment for his printer, John Darby. (His printer was released quickly, but Penn was held until he wrote another tract, Innocency with Her Open Face, which affirmed Christ’s divinity.) Quakers strongly believed in the divinity of Father, Word, and Spirit, but resisted attempts to talk about these manifestations of the divine as distinct persons or hypostases. To bolster his rejection of such unscriptural terms, Penn made explicit and detailed references to fourth-century debates to show how violent and hence undirected by the spirit of Christ they often were.
Early Quakers, however, did tend to blur any distinctions between Father, Word, and Spirit, identifying all three with the light of Christ within each human being. Penn’s 1693 tract, A Key Opening a Way shaded the subject in a slightly more conservative fashion, stating that Quakers “believe in the Holy Three or Trinity of Father, Word, and Spirit, and that these three are truly and properly one: Of one Nature as well as Will. But they are very tender of quitting Scripture Terms and Phrases for Schoolmen’s.” Penn’s understanding of the Trinity may owe more to the obscure third-century theologian Sabellius than to Athanasius or any of the champions of Nicene orthodoxy. Sabellius “probably denied all distinctions within the Godhead, which he called Son-Father, and affirmed that the Son and the Spirit were simply modes in which God appeared — much as the sun appears in its rays — for the purposes of redemption and inspiration.” (Gonzalez, I, 148) Hence, even the later Penn refused to use the word “consubstantial” (or homoousios) to describe the relationship between Father, Word, and Spirit. Perhaps theologians from other Believers’ Churches, if they wish to pursue the principle of a Constantinian fall of the church more consistently, need to go further in critically examining the Nicene formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.
I would like to look briefly at questions related to two special moments when persons who were instruments of God’s grace had a notable reviving or reforming effect on Christians, individually and corporately, thus helping to shape our historical vision. One such question has to do with the nature of the origins of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The other would be the effect of the Holiness Revivals in such midwestern states as Indiana during the late nineteenth century.
What was the nature of the Quaker movement that burst into full flower in the North of England in 1652? Alexander Parker, a traveling companion to George Fox, described the early Quaker experience this way: “So Friends, when you come together to wait upon God, come orderly in the fear of the Lord; the first that enters into the place of your meetings, be not careless, nor wander up and down, either in body or mind; but innocently sit down in some place, and turn in thy mind to the light, and wait upon God singly, as if none were present but the Lord; and here art thou strong. Then the next that comes in, let them innocently and in sincerity of heart, sit down and turn in to the same light, and wait in the Spirit; and so all the rest coming in, in the fear of the Lord, sit down in pure stillness and silence of all flesh and wait in the light . . . a few that are thus gathered by the arm of the Lord into the unity of the Spirit, this is a sweet and precious meeting; where all meet with the Lord. . . . In such a meeting, where the power and presence of God is seen and felt, there will be an unwillingness to part asunder, being ready to say in yourselves, it is good to be here; and this is the end of all words and writings, to bring people to the eternal living Word. . . .
“And if any be moved to speak words, wait low in the pure fear, to know the mind of the Spirit, where, and to whom, they are to be spoken. . . . Thus, my Friends, as you keep close to the Lord, and to the guidance of his good spirit, you shall not do amiss; but in all your services and performances in the worship of God, you shall be a good savour unto the Lord; and the Lord will accept of your services, and honour your assemblies, with his presence and power.” This kind of spiritual practice has remained at the core of Quakerism since its founding, yet while it has its roots in former Puritan and Anabaptist practices, it is substantially different than nearly any other worship practice found in a Believers’ Church or other Christian context. How, then, do we account for it?
This is a matter that has been grist for a substantial controversy for more than 100 years. One group of scholars, led by the Haverford College Professor of Philosophy and eminent Friend, Rufus Jones, insisted that the origins of the Religious Society of Friends belonged in the mystic or spiritualist camp. Mystics, seeking an immediate illumination by God, were ready to dispense with all, or nearly all, ecclesiastical ritual. This interpretation, in a simplified form, was characterized by Donald Durnbaugh as follows: “A flippant way of summarizing the course of English church history in the sixteenth century begins by subtracting from the Roman Catholic Church the papacy, the mass, and five sacraments, to achieve the church of England. If the rule of presbyters is substituted for bishops, and the liturgy simplified, the Presbyterians emerge. Independency (Congregationalism) comes by replacing the national church by autonomous congregations. By removing infant baptism and making membership conditional upon regenerate church membership, the Baptists are revealed. Take away all church sacraments, all liturgy, all church offices, and what is left - the Quakers.” The vital connection between God and the individual soul, and with God manifested somehow in the individual soul, was what was left, and that is what the Quakers, as mystics, celebrated. To the extent that the Believers’ Church was characterized by a strong group discipline and other needful aspects of ecclesiastical organization, it would seem doubtful that a strongly individualistic, mystical religious tendency would fit in, and such an individualistic tendency is what the earliest Quakers appeared to be according to the Jones thesis.
A second, seemingly very different interpretation was advanced in 1946 by English scholar Geoffrey Nuttall and strengthened in significant ways by Earlham College’s own professor emeritus, Hugh Barbour. The Nuttall-Barbour thesis is that the Quakers were essentially and overwhelmingly Puritan. Part of what Nuttall and Barbour were arguing for was a broadening of the meaning of the word “Puritan.” Nuttall, in particular, saw Puritanism as a spectrum of belief, and both Nuttall and Barbour demonstrated substantial continuities between the rituals and beliefs of Quakers and (as they would have it) other Puritans. One effect of their scholarship was to demonstrate that Jones and other advocates of the thesis of mysticism had overemphasized the individualist aspect of Quaker origins. Hence they were able to plant the earliest Quakers, with their sectarian and Puritan emphases, with their condemnation of sin within themselves and their embrace of a Christian discipline more securely in the “Believers’ Church” camp.
A third body of scholarship has argued very strongly for middle ground between the Jones thesis on the one hand, and the Nuttall-Barbour thesis on the other hand. Careful scholarship by Philip Gura, Larry Ingle, Rosemary Moore, Barry Reay, Christopher Hill and others, has showed certain strong connections and likenesses between the earliest Quakers and mystical and spiritualist groups such as the Antinomians, the Familists, and the Ranters. It is also clear that Quakerism evolved in a sectarian, “Believers’ Church” direction away from the extreme individualism of the origins. Moore, for example, explores the beginnings of church organization among Quakers in the 1650's, only a few years after their founding. However, some Quaker practices (or should we say, lack of practices) such as the disuse of water baptism and of the eucharist or communion continue as markers that distinguish us from most of our Believers’ Church brothers and sisters. It seems to me that the case for including Quakers in a Believers’ Church context can be state as follows, that our mystical openings are set firmly enough in a disciplined sectarian context so that occasional minor anomalies such as disuse of sacraments can be overlooked.
The recognition of this complexity is not a unique accomplishment of modern scholars. Callen, for example, refers to the distinction made between “church” and “sect” by the German sociologist Ernst Troeltsch, and states that Believers’ Churches fall into the category of “sect.” (Page 79) While this may be enough of Troeltsch to account for the other denominations and movements that Callen is exploring, I would point out that this is not all that Troeltsch has to say about Quakers. Troeltsch sees Quakers as falling not entirely into either the “church” or the “sect” category, but partially into the third category of “mystic.” “In the widest sense,” Troeltsch tells us, “Mysticism is simply the insistence upon a direct inward and present religious experience. . . . Mysticism is a radical individualism, very different from that of the sect. While the sect separates individuals from the world by its conscious hostility to ‘worldliness’ and by its ethical severity, binding them together in a voluntary fellowship, established upon mutual control and penitential discipline, laying upon individuals the obligation to follow the example and submit to the authority of Christ, increasing individualism by placing it within the mutual influence of group fellowship and worship - mysticism lays no stress at all upon the relation between individuals, but only upon the relations between the soul and God. It regards the historical, authoritative, and ritual elements in religion merely as methods of quickening the religious sense with which, in case of need, it can dispense altogether.” (II, 730, 743) While Troeltsch places Quakerism in the “mystic” rather than the “sect” category, he rather quickly goes on to modify this judgment by stating that Quakerism is really a mixed form of “sect” and “mysticism.” (II, 780)
Although there has been a torrent of scholarship on Quakerism in the nine decades since Troeltsch’s work was first published, and some of the details in his text are dated, I see no reason to modify his basic conclusion that Quakers are a combination of the sectarian and of the mystic, and that these are two fundamentally different forms. Durnbaugh, in his 1968 work, seems to have followed Troeltsch closely in his portrayal of Quakers, and this understanding is portrayed helpfully in a diagram to be found on page 31 of Durnbaugh’s book. That diagram shows Quakers as on the boundary line between the Believers’ Church and mystics.
Whatever the case with the earliest Quakers, the holiness revival of the late nineteenth century planted the vast majority of Quakers in the Midwest firmly in a Believers’ Church category. The same revival marked the origins of the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) to which our main speaker at this event belongs. I confess to knowing little about the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), but in this brief portion of my remarks, I will attempt to address both of these manifestations of the Believers’ Church.
Tom Hamm, in his book The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800-1907, states that the Midwestern Friends’ revivalists taught that “faith in the efficacy of the atoning blood of Christ, when confessed publicly, brought first salvation and then holiness - nothing more was needed, and nothing less sufficed. From that vantage point, the revivalists applied a merciless critique to contemporary Quakerism, which they saw as ‘swallowed up in dead formality and ceremony.’” (page 85) It is perfectly clear that for many Midwestern Friends, the revivalism was enormously exciting and brought a huge draft of fresh air into Midwestern Quakerism. The revivalists dispensed with many Quaker distinctives, some of which, such as the plain dress, were probably on the way out anyway. But for many Midwestern Friends, there was a strong sense that the revival saved a religion (the Friends) that was on its way to dying out, and that the revivalism and the changes that it brought about, including for the first time a formal system of pastors among Quakers, had saved the Friends for future generations.
Moreover, regardless of its downgrading of certain Quaker distinctives, in its placing holiness front and center many Friends believed that it was returning in a vital way to the original genius of Quakerism. There were dissenters - both those who argued for traditional ways, and those who argued that traditions needed to change, but not in this fashion - but they were unable, for the most part, to dent the enthusiasm of Midwestern Friends for their experiential confirmation of a set of religious practices that were more joyous (sounding a joyful noise unto the Lord) and rejecting what had felt like a dead silence. One change that proved more controversial than most was David Updegraff’s proposal that Friends’ churches open themselves to voluntary celebration of water baptism and communion. A Richmond Declaration of Faith, approved by representatives of many branches of the Society of Friends in 1887, affirmed much of the theology of the revivalists, but not a change in the Quaker understanding of sacraments. Ohio Yearly Meeting (Damascus) instituted the changes that Updegraff proposed, but no other Yearly Meeting did so. Still, one result of the holiness revival was the evolution of a Religious Society of Friends to a Friends Church. It would not be going to far to say that Midwestern Friends were placing themselves in the mainstream of the Believers’ Church tradition.
In 1877, Daniel Sidney Warner, for twelve years a converted Christian and for five years a minister in the General Eldership of the Churches of God of North America (Winebrennerian), experienced entire sanctification, similar to that which many Midwestern Friends were experiencing at the time. As among the Quakers, this aroused controversy, but the result was somewhat different from that which the Quaker revivalists experienced. In January 1878, Warner was ejected, after a trial from the Winebrennerian church. Aspiring to be a Holiness evangelist, he at first affiliated with the sympathetic Northern Indiana Eldership of the Churches of God. However the Northern Indian group did not accept Warner’s ideas about pastoral licenses and church membership, so in the early 1880s he organized a new Church of God. He published a holiness periodical which became known as the Gospel Trumpet, which was also called a “flying scroll.” He spread his new movement by sending out “flying messengers,” or evangelists who traveled very widely. The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) is the result of this movement.
Callen has written only slightly about Warner in the book that we have read, but he has written extensively about him elsewhere. I would simply note at this time, based on my limited reading, how similar Warner’s ideas were to those of many - or possibly most - Friends. Like Friends, the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) is a non-creedal movement. It has no creed but the Bible. Like Friends, the Church began by Warner was from its beginning open to female ministry, and it has had many notable women who have served as ministers very acceptably over the past 120 years. I can report, on the authority of David Johns, that “Warner almost made the Church of God into a peace church, but it didn’t quite get there.”
Perhaps the most significant similarity between the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) and the Religious Society of Friends was in its ecclesiology. Both the Church of God and Friends tend to question even the use of the word “church,” the Church of God preferring to call itself a “movement,” and Friends over the centuries tending to prefer the label of “society” over “church.” In fact, early on, the Church of God refused to capitalize the word “church” in its own name. Both of us are leery of seeing God as enfleshed in humanly mediated ecclesiastical forms. Thus, as I understand it, the Church of God’s concept of pastoral ordination is very close to Friends’ understanding of the recorded ministry; while we are each interested in seeing that ministers are qualified to do their job, we are both reluctant to see ministers as “divines” or “reverends.” Reverence is due to God only. Both churches have strong concepts of Christian stewardship, and have high expectations of moral and ethical conduct. On the issue of membership, the Church of God is more radical than the Religious Society of Friends in its refusal to draw up lists of members. Membership is not held in a formal way. Callen tells us that Warner deplored the divisive spirit in the Christian churches, and saw the experience of holiness as a way to overcome that divisiveness. There are some obvious differences, such as different views on the sacraments (the Church of God celebrates three, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and footwashing.) Still, both religious groups seem very close in their understanding of a Believers’ Church that works for Christian unity, models Christ-like humility, and upholds a Christian discipline.
Of course, while both the Society of Friends and the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), underwent either a founding or a major transformation during this period, they are both rather small, especially within the universe of American religious bodies. At times, during my reading of Callen’s book, I was wanting more about other formidable religious groups from this period. Where, for example, might the Salvation Army fit in our understanding of the Believers’ Church? What about other holiness denominations, such as the Church of the Nazarene, or Pentecostalist denominations that were founded during this period, such as the Church of God in Christ and the Assemblies of God?
What is it that Believers’ Churches have to be radical about? How can we be radical Christians in a twenty-first century world? What does the historical development of the Believers’ Churches tells about where we have yet to go?
Are the radical prophets, the Daniel Warners and the George Foxes of the world, strictly a past phenomenon? Or are we, too, called to be prophets - a term that Callen defines as “the pioneer position” in which criticizing rhetoric soon yields to “the constructive stage” devoted to “ the rigor of implementing what is envisioned as much better.” Are we, too, being called to be prophets in this sense?
It is always helpful to think about how the Christian churches can become ever more relevant and challenging to the modern world. In a secular context, Thomas Jefferson stated that he hoped for a revolution in every generation. In a religious context, Jefferson’s dictum may even be more applicable. Churches may in fact be most alive when they are revolutionized every generation. We do need to think anew how the varied and wondrous tradition that has been bequeathed to us by the prophets, apostles, and saints throughout the ages can be best applied to our own times. I say this in full recognition that what the phrase “our own times” mean has changed in the past few weeks. Discussing pacifism in my Quakerism classes has seemed to grow both more urgent and far more challenging since the semester began - long ago in August. Being for peace in times of peace is far more easy than being for peace in times of war.
As someone from the “Historic Peace Church” branch of the Believers’ Church tradition, I would submit that simply being a church during times of war confronts all denominations with the temptation to buy into the Constantinian compromise that as Believers’ Churches we seek to avoid. The cause of the Empire and of Christianity cannot be joined legally in the United States, as Constantine and his successors were able to do in the Roman Empire. It does occur informally in numerous ways. A term invented by the sociologist Robert Bellah, has been used to apply to this phenomenon: “civil religion.” When the United States is attacked, the tendency of the leaders and members of all American denominations is to rally around the American flag, not just the cross (in the case of American Christians) or other sectarian symbols. This may begin to bring about a subtle subversion of the Christian message, a reluctance to prophetically criticize our nation, when its people rely too much on the excellence of our weapons and not enough on the depth of our religious faith. One might think that Historic Peace Churches such as the Religious Society of Friends and the Church of the Brethren might be well-positioned to escape this pitfall, but in fact there have been significant involvements by members of “Peace Church” denominations in prosecuting wars, in each of the wars fought by the United States during the twentieth century. In fact, while the draft was in operation, only a minority of young men who belonged to Peace Churches sought out conscientious objector status.
Callen’s significant point about gender equality (unfortunately relegated to a footnote on page 31) will undoubtedly provide an arena for further ecclesiastical action in the twenty-first century. Seminaries such as ESR and Bethany provide excellent education for women as well as men, but when our female graduates venture out into the field, they still too often encounter glass ceilings and other obstacles placed in front of them because of their gender. Even for denominations with significant Believers’ Church affiliations, there is too much hesitance and backtracking. While advocates of women’s leadership in the Christian churches were heartened in the summer of 2000 by the consecration of Vashti McKenzie by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first of the predominantly black denominations to ordain a female bishop, we were, at the same time, dismayed by the action of the Southern Baptist Convention, the second largest denomination in the United States, to take away from women the aspiration of being a chief pastor in one of their churches. Of course, many of the most formidable obstacles to women’s leadership in the churches have been put in place by such establishment churches as the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Still, all of us have a ways to go until we realize the vision articulated by the apostle Paul 2000 years ago that there should neither be male or female, because we are all one in Christ. Nor should our focus be simply on equality of gender and race in the churches. We need to be thoroughgoing advocates of and activists for equality throughout the length and breadth of American society.
What about ecumenism? How should we relate to our Christian brothers and churches in the mainstream churches? Callen seems to tout separation from mainstream Christian churches as the preferred option. He writes that “believers should dare to be separate from the compromised positions of establishment churches which are defined as much by their accommodations to the values and structures of the world as they are by their relatedness to the ongoing incarnation drama begun in Jesus and now to be carried on by God’s Spirit through the faithful church.” (Page 46) Callen is not entirely wrong about the need of many Christians to separate from the mainstream. Many of the members of Friends’ meetings and churches are refugees from mainline Christian denominations, both Protestant and Catholic. Callen need not go far to ascertain this. He could simply conduct a survey of Friends in the student body of the Earlham School of Religion to arrive at this conclusion.
Yet, if we are completely honest, Friends - and, I suspect, other Believers’ churches - would find that the exchange between us and the establishment churches is definitely a two-way street. When our members get embarrassed with the radicalism of our stances, and seek a safer, less obtrusive form of Christianity that allows them to blend in a bit more, where do they go? They go back to the mainstream, establishment churches.
Callen finds the National Council of Churches slightly suspect also. Although formed with the laudable intent of “strengthen[ing] a united Christian witness,” many feared that “it was really trying to build one ‘super church’ that would force a uniformity on all believers, undermining the sovereign role of God in the face of all human structures, churchly or otherwise.” (Page 12) My sense is that Callen is trying to warn us that too much ecumenism will get us totally swallowed up by the establishment churches, thereby resulting in the loss of the vital witness of the Believers’ Church.
This fear is not totally misplaced. Patrick Nugent of Earlham’s Institute of Quaker Studies, David Johns, and I have been serving on an informal advisory board of theologians for Friends United Meeting to respond to a recent World Council of Churches draft statement on ecclesiology. Friends United Meeting is a somewhat uneasy member of the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches. The act of responding is a somewhat frustrating act, because our structures just don’t fit the structures of the mainline churches very well. Friends are very diverse in our ecclesiological positions (although all of us harbor views on some issues such as sacraments that are either mildly or wildly out of the mainstream), and trying to find how to fit ourselves into WCC statements about what all Christians believe can be a mind-bending task.
Yet I do find that leaders of other Christian churches do value a Friends’ presence in their deliberations. And they do listen to us - sometimes very carefully. My overall feeling is that working with ecumenical organizations is not a waste of time, but that in fact we can often strengthen the united Christian witness.
This said, I return to the issue of whether more establishment church members need to separate from their denominations to join Believers’ Churches. Of course, when Christians seek to leave the establishment church to join the Religious Society of Friends, we welcome them with open arms. The energy and commitment of such converts (or, as we would say, “convinced Friends”) to the radicalism of Believers’ Church positions is often outstanding. But I do not think that getting more members should be the main orientation of our relationship to establishment Christian churches. Our main emphasis must be strengthening a united Christian witness. The National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches have that right. I rejoice if I am able to communicate Believers’ Church positions to the members and leaders of the establishment churches, so that they can take those positions into their establishment churches and act as a leaven subtly bending their churches more toward a Believers’ Church position on an issue such as pacifism. Ultimately, both Christians as human beings and Christian churches as institutions need to be purified and brought ever closer to the Master of Galilee, and if that can be done through even a partial transformation of establishment institutions, then I would rejoice, and I would even see that as preferable to attracting more converts out of the establishment churches.