COMMENTARY: Christianity: America’s deepest divide

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com) UNDATED _ The envelope was thick, the letter inside carefully written by hand, 10 pages in all. The writer, a woman in Indiana arguing for a particular view of […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com)

UNDATED _ The envelope was thick, the letter inside carefully written by hand, 10 pages in all. The writer, a woman in Indiana arguing for a particular view of God, cited Scripture after Scripture, moving from Ecclesiastes to 2 Peter, from the Psalms to Mark to James. I pictured her sitting before a Bible concordance, doing a word search and extracting relevant verses.


To her, the selected verses added up to insight, and I honor that.

But to me, her citations seemed like leaves picked up from a field, remnants of something (a tree? a shrub?) but not that thing. The tree itself requires perspective and seeing the whole.

I don’t disparage my correspondent or her way of seeking truth. But I recognize how different it is from my own. And that difference, I think, explains the unique contribution Christianity seems to be making to our nation today, namely, division.

For all the worry we devote to gaps between black and white and between male and female, the deepest division in America today may be within the Christian community, says a pastor in Winston-Salem, N.C. Beneath meaningless labels like liberal and conservative are vastly different ways of perceiving truth, God and the human condition.

In the search for truth, some believers collect sayings on a question and see what the verses add up to. Other believers, no more or less faithful, seek glimpses of the whole.

Thus, the truth of the Last Supper, for example, might lie in the specific words Jesus spoke and the order in which he spoke them, or the truth might lie in the whole event, the pouring out of life.

The truth about homosexuality might lie in a few scattered verses, or in the tendency of Jesus to embrace all persons and to ignore sexuality issues.

The truth about witness might be that Christians are called to venture out for evangelism, then withdraw from the world, or to engage the world and transform it through servanthood.


The truth about authority might arise as Christians form alliances with other traditions, like Judaism and Islam, or might demand rejection of any view not centered in Jesus.

Women might be called into full participation in Christian leadership, or asked to accept a subsidiary role.

I’m not talking about stylistic differences like musical taste, architecture or Sunday morning vestments. I’m talking about people looking at each other across deep divides with distrust, disdain and animosity.

Can we find common ground? To my mind, that is the question Christians need to be asking. Can we embrace different ways of seeking truth? Can we find mutual acceptance, not through labored rewording of creeds, but through an admission that the other person might have a piece of the truth?

If we can’t, we will collapse in”bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander and malice,”as Paul put it.

A local pastor and I have become friends. We share meals, sports, and worries about parenting. We want to engage each other on the ground of faith, too. So we have decided to reflect on critical issues, respond to each other’s thoughts, and search for common ground.


We start far apart. So far, we have only named the issues we each want to address. Our lists reveal deep divides.

His six topics are: the nature of sin; the nature of faith; interpretation of the Bible; what is false teaching; are there core doctrines; and how are people saved.

Mine are: how does God reveal himself to us; what does God ask of us; how does God respond when we miss the mark; what is the Body of Christ and what is it called to do; what is God’s role in human affairs; and what is our hope.

A friend read those lists and said,”You aren’t even asking the same questions.” The challenge facing us is emblematic of the dilemma facing a divided church. At the moment, the walls are high. Absolutism reigns. If anything, Christians are pulling farther apart. Our rancor is reshaping national and local politics _ and not in a helpful way.

Our starting point, I think, is simple and yet difficult: the admission that one could be seeing only part of the truth.

MJP END EHRICH

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