The church: Locke and the Heidelberg Catechism

North American denominationalism seems to owe much to John Locke's definition of church in his Letter Concerning Toleration:

A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such manner as they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls.

I say it is a free and voluntary society. Nobody is born a member of any church; otherwise the religion of parents would descend unto children by the same right of inheritance as their temporal estates, and everyone would hold his faith by the same tenure he does his lands, than which nothing can be imagined more absurd. Thus, therefore, that matter stands. No man by nature is bound unto any particular church or sect, but everyone joins himself voluntarily to that society in which he believes he has found that profession and worship which is truly acceptable to God.

Contrast the Lockean view to that of the Heidelberg Catechism (Q & A 54):

Q. What do you believe concerning “the holy catholic church”?

A. I believe that the Son of God through his Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. And of this community I am and always will be a living member.

Historic liberalism is predicated on the assumption that all communities can be reduced to mere voluntary associations of sovereign individuals uniting with each other for specific self-chosen purposes amendable at their own discretion. This is behind the contractarian vision of the state, and it also obviously has relevance for the institutional (or not so institutional) church. Is it mere coincidence that North America, whose culture has been deeply influenced by Locke, is disproportionately populated by churches with voluntaristic polities and a commitment to what has been called "decisional regeneration"?

What if we were to take seriously St. Peter's words concerning the church and the seriousness of God's sovereign call to us as its members?

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9).

How would this change our attitude towards the church as corporate recipient of God's grace?

Worshipping together

In the churches in which I grew up sunday school for every age always preceded the church service proper. The small children continued with a separate children's church up to the beginning of school age, at which point they joined their families for "big people's church." However, since coming to Canada I have not seen this pattern, which seems unfamiliar to the people I know. Generally adults and children worship separately, sometimes even into adolescence when they ought to be assuming their places in an adult world.

Betsy Hart addresses this issue in an article very much worth reading and pondering: Why send young away during church services? Here's Hart:

[T]he belief seems to be that it’s more likely kids will stick with church over their lifetime if it’s more geared to them when they are young. But the evidence is that this isn’t what happens.

Two decades ago, Christian education expert James W. Write showed in his book, Intergenerational Religious Education (Religious Education Press), that studies reveal that children who worship regularly with their parents are more likely to consistently worship as adults than children who grow up primarily attending “children’s church.”

I have not infrequently wondered whether the lower rate of church attendance in this country relative to that in the US might have something to do with breaking up families on sunday mornings rather than keeping them together, which is the pattern I grew up with. There is undoubtedly more than one causal factor at work here, but keeping our older children in church with us has to be a step in the right direction.

Tragic conflict

This is a sad testimony to the world: Orthodox groups clash in Church of the Holy Sepulchre. One expects more from Christians preparing to celebrate Christ's resurrection.

Midwinter snippets

• Some weeks ago, during our family's evening prayer service, we read Luke 4:1-13, about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Afterwards our Theresa spoke up, noting that in Luke's account the last two temptations are in a different order than in Matthew's account. I guess nine years old is not too young to discover the Synoptic Problem.


• Today at evening prayer we continued our lectio continua reading through the gospel of Luke, reading the account of the Transfiguration in chapter 9:28-36. Coincidentally we read of this event in church this morning, as the Transfiguration is traditionally remembered in the western church on the last sunday before Lent.
  


• My wife broke her arm two weeks ago in an ice skating accident. Today was the first time all three of us were in church together since then. Her arm is in a sling, though not in a cast. Coincidences seemed to abound today, for as we were singing the final hymn, Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus, we both chuckled when we came to these lines: "The arm of flesh will fail you,/ ye dare not trust your own."


• This afternoon the three of us watched Disney's High School Musical, mostly of course for Theresa's benefit. After this I am now inspired to write and score my own production, provisionally titled Graduate School Musical. It should be a big hit. In certain crowds, that is.


• I've recently learnt of a christian university located in, of all places, the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan. The King's College was founded in 1999, reviving an earlier institution located up the Hudson River in Briarcliff Manor prior to 1994. In 2005 a member of the New York State Board of Regents objected to its using Columbia University's original name. However, because Columbia relinquished this name in 1784, I doubt very much that anyone is still around who will confuse the two.


• Thanks are due to Steve Pypker, Willem de Ruijter and Matthew Vandervecht for digging us out from under the accumulation of friday's snow storm. May God bless them for their kind beneficence.


• It seems evangelicals are rediscovering monasticism: The unexpected monks. Could this be a case of trying to reinvent the wheel? I think others got there first.

Church 'shopping'

I am entirely with Anthony Sacramone in his struggle with the extreme fissiparous character of North American protestantism: My Church, My Strip Mall. The necessity of having to wade through the competing fragments of the church catholic is certainly not something to be celebrated or defended.