Creeds and reconciliation

Justin Welby tweeted:

It's Written on Your Face

Jeannette Sirois for

 the City of Vancouver, 2014

Genuine reconciliation is not only about agreement, but about how we love one another in deep disagreement. @JustinWelby

Which is undoubtedly true and which also raises certain challenges - even accusations - for Christians.

History relates that Christians have been appalling bad at showing compassion to other Christians - never mind to those outside their own walls.

In fact - for all the committed Christians and Christian groups committed to reconciliation - I think there are structural aspects of Christianity which make it very difficult to find ways to "love one another in deep [or any other] disagreement."

Specifically the credal character of Christianity - self-definition and self-authentification by statements of belief - is in practice a mechanism for building walls and making enemies.

Creeds, even fragments of creeds, become the tests by which Christians tell themselves who's in their camp (and thus righteous, blessed, and Godly) and who is not (and so is polluted, accursed, ungodly). Creeds simultaneously bind together and alienate. A credal culture mediates this public structure into individual Christian attitudes and behaviour.

Locally too, the presupposition that members of a particular church community agree with one another is very powerful. It can be very hard for people to express spiritual and theological doubt, never mind dissent. Those who speak off-key find they cannot be heard. They are out of tune and they must leave the choir. The desire for harmony can make people wilfully deaf to other tunes. Faithful searchers and questioners may (wittingly and unwittingly) be edged out the door.

It's Written on Your Face

Jeannette Sirois for

 the City of Vancouver, 2014

Political parties, by contrast, begin with the presupposition of internal disagreement. Therefore their structures are designed to accommodate difference and disagreement. There are mechanisms by which differing internal groups seek to persuade the majority of their views. In practice multiple minorities are able to co-exist, collaborate and contend in ways which may contribute to the vitality of the party as a whole. Sometimes they break too, but on the whole public disagreement is evidence of strength.

But churches set on a foundation of presumed agreement, have all too often become rigid, breakable, friable. An inability to listen and unwillingness to accept difference all too easily result in individuals leaving unnoticed and conflicts escalating rapidly into division. Christian truth is conceived as credal statements which demand assent. Expressions of faith in ambiguity and ambivalence, fluid spirituality, historical flow - not to mention a divine refusal to be locked into small verbal boxes - are all threats to the established order.

And yet as Christians we preach reconciliation. We have largely been unable to reconcile older churches to one another and new Christian denominations proliferate like weeds. But we all think we can tell other people to love one another.