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Christian Network

Ecumenism has long been a dirty word among conservative Evangelicals. It brings to mind images of the World Council of Churches telling us that the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection never happened, but we should all be happily united anyway. This kind of "unity" will always be rejected by Bible-believing Christians and rightfully so. However we also have the tendency to throw the spiritual babe out with the bathwater and one place that some Evangelicals have been guilty of this is in reflexively rejecting greater unity among Christians out of hand. The fact is our Lord prayed that His people would be united. Perhaps what is needed is ecumenism within orthodoxy. The confessing churches in America should move towards becoming the confessing Church.

Allegedly the biggest issue that prevents this from happening is the inability to corporately determine what is meant by "orthodoxy." I submit the possibility that this is a smoke screen for the real problem. The Bible itself tells us that the basic, unchanging cornerstones of right doctrine are the full divinity and full humanity of Christ, His death on our behalf, His resurrection and the atonement for our sins that results from that death and resurrection, and our need to appropriate this atonement through personal faith in Him. Beyond this are areas of debate that are not crucial to salvation and not worth breaking fellowship over. Could it be that the real reason behind runaway denominationalism is the pride of men, not the Spirit of God?

According to the World Christian Encyclopedia there are more than 8000 Protestant denominations in existence today. This reality points out possibly the greatest failure of the Reformation. While the Apostle Paul told us that believers would, indeed must, disagree to determine what actions are right in the eyes of God it is very doubtful that he had the creation of thousands of separate denominations in mind. The Body of Christ in America is rent with division at a time when genuine Christian unity is desperately needed to stand up to the forces of darkness that on the march in our national life.

Unfortunately we live in a country in which the philosophy of radical individualism has become so deified as to co-opt even the Bride of Christ. Today it is as if the word "unity" almost carries the same connotation as the word "Communist" once did in some congregations. There always seem to be a myriad of very debatable (and oftentimes minor) points being used to justify the continued existence of a multitude of Evangelical bodies. Real humility requires us to be very careful that our expressed opinions do not lead to unnecessary division, but how often is that kind of spirit being encouraged in our churches at the beginning of the 21^st Century? Is this the kind of Protestantism that the reformers had in mind 500 years ago? Yes, they broke from a corrupt and monolithic brand of Catholicism, but this kind of fragmentation could not have been a result they sought.

I knew a man who told me that he once prayed against the persecution of the Church in this country but lately had begun to pray for it. His reasoning was that such tribulation was the only thing that would unify Christians here. This may have been an overstatement yet perhaps not much of one. At the very least we need to pray against divisiveness for the sake of divisiveness and begin to challenge some of the conventional wisdom regarding denominationalism. This can only begin with a willingness to repent from factionalism across denominational lines and to embrace ecumenism within orthodoxy. Maybe only this kind of repentance will reverse the trend towards radical individualism that sometimes hides behind the defense of truth. It is a fact that the gates of Hell will never prevail against the true historic Church. This is the promise of our sovereign God. However if we who make up the contemporary church in America forever reject the call for a desperately needed unity, we may wake up one day to find that the World, the Flesh, and the Devil have won a terrible victory against us. And we will have only ourselves to blame.