Denominationalism Represents Moral Failure

[Randy_Carson]

“Denominationalism thus represents the moral failure of Christianity. And unless the ethics of brotherhood can gain the victory over this divisiveness within the body of Christ it is useless to expect it to be victorious in the world. But before the church can hope to overcome its fatal division it must learn to recognize and to acknowledge the secular character of its denominationalism.”

---

H. Richard Niebuhr, Protestant Theologian

(The Social Sources of Denominationalism, New York: The World Publishing Co. / Meridian Books, 1957; originally 1929, 25)

 

[Catholic_Dude]

It all comes down to what St Paul calls “itching ears” theology (2 Tim 4:3).

 

[Della]

There’s an old joke that I think apt: A man was driving the family car with his wife sitting by the passenger window in the days when car seats were benches, not individual seats. The wife turns to her husband and says with a sigh, “Remember when you used to drive and we’d sit holding hands? Why don’t we do that any more?” His answer? “I haven’t moved.”

If groups of people wish to be separate from the Church we cannot compel them to rejoin us–we can invite them and show them why they should, but they have to decide to do that for themselves.