Tuesday, February 14, 2006

musing

i was reading ryan bolger's why emerging churches are non-violent on next-wave when it hit me. adherents to the stone-campbell tradition (for the uninitiated that's the Christian Churches, Churches of Christ/Church of Christ Acappella/Disciples of Christ crew that i am a part of), who readily claim a primitivist desire to re-create the first century church, should be pacifists by definition. from my perspective, if campbellites choose to embrace the "just war" (has a more tragic oxymoron ever been coined?) tradition - that did not develop until the fifth or sixth century - they are willfullly ignoring the original impetus of our rich tradition.

of course, by this logic southern baptists should be the last folks who are interested in breaching the wall of separation between church and state, but still...

4 comments:

Agent B said...

As someone not born, but bred in the coc/stoned campbell thing...I never understood the hang up with trying to immitate the first century church. Especially since we were far from selling all we had so that none in our midst were without, etc.

And anyway...wasn't the first century church a colossal failure? Like Paul having to go raise money for one of the commune-like churches because they stupidly gave up their jobs to live this way? Who'd wanna be like that?

W. Wilson said...

I'm not in a position to advocate for every single element of the first century church. But I wonder that if it were such a colossal failure, would there be any resemblance of a true community of believers that could exist today? What I mean is, it may not be the most perfect of all foundations... after all, it was a whole brand new way of living life and following God. But it is a solid foundation, one that has helped orient/correct ourselves in the midst of a vast, diverse, and ever-changing culture.

g13 said...

b,

i'm going to have to agree with wes on this one. the early churches, while far from perfect, were remarkably committed to the missio Dei, compassionate towards their brothers and sisters in the faith and, by most accounts, the most hospitable communities in the Mediterranean world. i find those values laudable and worthy of imitation. however, unlike my forbears, i do not think that we find a uniform church structure in the NT that we can, or perhaps even should, replicate.

in the end, the point of this one point post was not to defend or to critique the primitivism of our forbears (which is actually quite understandable in light of the ad fontes - lit. back to the sources - impulse that permeated the early enlightenment), but to simply point out that earnest Stone-Campbell adherents should consider conforming to the pacifism of the early church. i think that would be one incredibly positive way that "campbellites" could honor the primitivist tendencies of our tradition.

now that i'm through fashioning a mountain out of a mole hill, i will finish my coffee.

pax.

Agent B said...

I saw the message of the post.

Just wanted to chase this small rabbit 'cause I never understood the modern church's fixation with the 1st cent body...when nobody was about to live in anything close to resembling a commune...

And truthfully, I agree w/ Wes too. But again, my rabbit trail. Why go back to "the way things were" when they weren'tall that perfect to begin with. But maybe they were better than what we have now...? I don't know.