Considering the Disciples of Christ

There was a point back in 2003 and 2004 when I was constantly being invited to go to church with my family. I usually resisted because I was, shall we say, estranged from the Lord at the time. The reasons for that are too long to get into here but, to put it in evangelical terms, I was "out of fellowship".

Now and then though, I would attend their church. The main reason for that was to get them off my crank about it. When I was back in fellowship though, I knew I had to go to church somewhere. And their church seemed as good as anything so I visited a few times. And it didn't last.

I was extremely raw in and new to the faith at the time so I couldn't have put it into words then but I can now. Specifically I thought the entire thing was an incoherent mess theologically and intellectually.

It was a Disciples of Christ church.

Now, I was raised Church of Christ. I'm very familiar with a lot of their core beliefs and that's why it was so shocking to discover that the Churches of Christ and the Disciples of Christ were originally one and the same. And, in typical Church of Christ fashion, they split apart over instrumentation.

Right about the time of the split back in the late 1960's, the Disciples of Christ threw in with the liberal wing of Protestantism and pretty much joined up with the No Creed But Christ crowd. Basically all you need to do is affirm Christ as your Lord and Savior. Everything else, and I DO mean everything else, is on the table to believe or not believe as you see fit.

If you want to believe that Christ had a human father or that He never performed miracles or that He never rose from the dead or that He's one of millions of options to go to Heaven or whatever else, you totally can. They have no statement of faith, no catechism and they don't subscribe to any of the historic creeds. You need only confess Christ as Lord and Savior.

I wouldn't have been able to put it into words at the time but THAT was what turned me off even though I barely knew anything about what I believed after I started believing. But, then as now, I see it as a very big problem. If a group has no doctrinal unity, they're "united" in name only. Irrespective of which other Christian tradition someone may come from, they generally recognize (or be convinced about) the importance of a coherent catechism or statement of faith or SOMETHING to ensure that all members are more or less on the same page with one another.

This fosters REAL unity. And the Disciples of Christ denomination wants nothing to do with it. To them, I assume that a cookie-cutter Calvinist is welcome to sit next to a disciple of Jack Spong in harmonious "unity".

It's not surprising they can barely scrape together more than half a million members. With so much theological dissonance, I'd expect most of their parishioners can barely tolerate one another's presence. I mean, say whatever you want about the Emerging Church, at least they worked out a means to attract young people (for now). The Disciples of Christ can barely keep their membership numbers intact. But not to worry! They're not divisive! Their only creed is Christ!

Yeah, how's that working out for you?

More to follow.