A Product of the System

Last night I watched a Frontline program on PBS about BP, the oil company responsible for the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and several other disasters.  The theme of the program was that BP is and was an irresponsible company because it put profits ahead of safety.  There is simply no doubt that this charge against BP is true.  BP put profits ahead of the safety of its workers and ahead of protection of the environment.  Fair enough.  BP was, and presumably is, a bad company.  A greedy company.  A company that values increasing return to shareholders above all else.

All that's true, and it's easy to take shots at BP; but there is a much bigger truth here that I haven't heard anyone talking about.  Frontline certainly didn't mention it in its piece on BP.  That truth is that BP's approach of putting profits over safety is not an isolated case.  It isn't an aberration.  BP isn't a deviation.  It is nothing more nor less than a typical and perfectly predictable product of the capitalist economic system as it is currently constituted in the United States and other so-called advanced economies.  American culture tells corporations that their purpose, their reason for existing, is to make profits, is to return value to the shareholders.  American law tells corporations and their officers and directors that their purpose, their reason for existing, is to return value to the shareholders.  American law allows shareholders under various circumstances to sue officers and directors who don't do a good enough job of returning value to them.  Corporations routinely replace management that doesn't do a good enough job of returning value to the shareholders.  American corporate culture and American corporate law embody the capitalist ethos that making money is the highest value in a particularly stark and un-nuanced way.  With us, making money is a corporation's reason for existing, essentially its only reason for existing.

It wasn't always thus.  The purpose of the corporate form of business is to allow investment in a way that limits the investors' liability to the amount of their investment.  Originally a corporate charter was granted by a legislature, and originally getting a corporate charter from a legislature required a showing that the purpose of the corporation was in some significant way in the public interest.  It could be and usually was in the public's economic interest, as when corporations were formed to build railroads; but the work of the corporation had in some significant way to benefit the public and not merely the investors and others involved in the operation of the corporation.  The corporation acting in the public interest was the trade-off for the limited liability that the charter gave the investors.  The public benefited from the work of the corporation and the investors benefited from limited liability.  That was the social bargain that justified the corporate form of business organization.

No more.  That ethos has been lost.  Today all that is required to create a corporation is the filing of papers and the paying of a fee to the state.  The corporate charter is automatically granted, and it is automatically renewed upon the filing annually of a minimal report with the state.  No showing of public interest is required.  Not only does a corporation not have to make a showing that it is operating in the public interest, it doesn't actually have to operate in the public interest.  That is no longer it's purpose.  It's purpose is to make money.  Period.  Investors still get limited liability.  The public is likely to get nothing--or worse.

The ethos of profit above all else that characterizes the current capitalist economic culture here and in many other places around the world inevitably produces companies like BP, companies that put profits above public safety, protection of the environment, or any other value that is truly in the public interest.  We can perhaps shut down BP, or force them to do a better job of complying with workplace safety and environmental protection laws.  We can perhaps strengthen those laws, although in the current political climate that is unlikely.  None of  that addresses the fundamental problem.  None of that will eliminate companies like BP.  The only thing that will eliminate companies like BP is a change in the culture and the law that says that a corporation's purpose is to maximize return to the shareholders.  The only thing that will eliminate companies like BP is a return to the economic ethos that says that profits are a value and limited liability is justifiable only when the operations of the company serve the public interest.  An ethos that says that managers of companies are fired not only when they fail to make money but also, and more so, when they do things that harm people and the environment, even if they make money doing it.

The only thing that will eliminate companies like BP is a fundamental change in the assumption behind the current capitalist economic system that making money is a value in itself.  Making money is not a value in itself.  Making money is a value only when it serves people.  Only when it truly serves people in a broad sense, in an authentic sense, not in the narrow, selfish sense of only making money for a few economically powerful people.  The ethical change that is required to eliminate companies like BP is a radical one.  It is one that I'm afraid not many people are willing to make, one that few people are even aware must be made.  Until we know it that the change is needed, and until we're prepared to make the change, we'll get what we ask for.  We'll get more BPs.  We'll get more companies that are just products of the system we refuse to change.  More workers will die as they did at BP's Texas City refinery when cost cutting led to an unreasonably unsafe work environment.  More habitat will be destroyed along with the livelihoods that depend on that habitat as they were in the Gulf when BP caused a massive discharge of oil that it had no idea how to stop.

Frontline accuses BP of engaging in cost cutting.  Of course BP engaged in cost cutting.  Cost cutting increases profits even when the cost cutting reduces worker and environmental safety, and the system tells BP that making profits is what it's all about.  We can and we should blame BP; but, much more than that, we should blame--and change--the system of which BP is merely a product.

God in America, Part 4

This week PBS showed its three part series "God in America."  Although as a whole it was a worthwhile project, I found the third and last part of it profoundly unsatisfactory.  That part dealt with religion in the United States from the end of World War II to the present.  From that presentation one would have the impression that Evangelicalism was the only thing happening in American Christianity since the 1940s (other than the very significant involvement of the Black churches in the civil rights movement.).  The major emphasis was on the political activism of conservative Evangelicalism beginning with Billy Graham and running through Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed, with a brief mention of Rick Warren.  Jim Wallis, with his more socially moderate Evangelicalism, got a brief mention.  The segment ended with Barack Obama, although Jeremiah Wright wasn't mentioned at all.  PBS thus gave a one-sided and incomplete picture of Christianity in America in the last sixty years.  There is a profound movement under way in American Christianity of which PBS gave not a hint.  I want here to say something briefly about that movement.

A new Reformation is under way in Christianity, and American theologians are leading the way in the popular awareness of that Reformation.  The most widely read figure in this new Reformation is Marcus Borg.  John Shelby Spong also writes prolifically and has a significant following.  These popular faces of the new Reformation are not particularly profound theologians, but they are popularizing a renewed and re-visioned Christianity that is grounded in the work of more serious theologians stretching back at least to the advent of the higher Biblical criticism of the nineteenth century.  (The PBS series mentions the higher Biblical criticism in the second episode, and it looked like they were setting up a theme of the struggle between Christians who accept that criticism and those who do not for the rest of the series; but they dropped that theme as soon as they suggested it.)  The central figure in the new Reformation is Paul Tillich, whom PBS did not mention.  My book Liberating Christianity:  Overcoming Obstacles to Faith in the New Millennium is, I trust, a contribution to this new Reformation that, while having nothing like the audience Borg and Spong have, is more theologically substantial than their work is.

The thrust of the new Reformation is that literalism must be overcome if Christianity is to survive.  PBS's series did not even hint that such an issue exists, much less that it is the central issue in Christianity today.  Literalism renders Christianity, and any other faith, unbelievable and unacceptable to people in the emerging postmodern world.  Seeing the Bible and the classic doctrines of Christianity as symbol and myth rather than as literal fact breaks them open to reveal a depth and breadth of meaning that literalism cannot remotely approach.  Borg and Spong understand that truth, although in his appeal to a mass audience Borg insists on using the term metaphor rather than the more theologically correct terms symbol and myth.  My book attempts to give that understanding  an ontological, epistemological, and theological grounding that is lacking in the work of those popular authors.

I am convinced that the main reason the formerly mainline denominations, now more properly called old line denominations, are in decline is that they have been too timid and fearful in embracing the emerging non-literal Christianity.  Seminary students in those denominations have been taught the symbolic and mythic understanding of faith for decades at least, but when they have gone into the churches they have not taught that understanding to their congregations, probably out of fear of losing members who are not receptive to the challenge of a new way of thinking.  The result has been to leave people with a faith that is neither fish nor fowl, one that rejects the extreme literalism of the religious right and the social conservatism that it supports but puts nothing with theological depth and integrity in its place.

The PBS series "God in America" was of course only a three part series totaling about six hours of content.  It could not possibly cover every important aspect of religion in America, nor could it cover any aspect of it in real depth.  Nonetheless, the final episode of that series was inexcusably one sided and overlooked the central dynamic in contemporary American Christianity.  I was quite disappointed.

A Response to the Comment by "Jas"

Jas:  Thank you for taking the time to post a comment in response to my piece on the UCC as a non-creedal Christian church.  I recognize that what I suggest will strike a lot of UCC people as wrong.  As I said in the piece, I struggle with these things myself.  I intend my remarks to be a starting place for discussion not the final word, as indeed I said in those remarks.  Let me say just a few more things in response to your comment. 

First, let me say that a larger concern than the specific issue I discusses in my post that I have about the UCC is that we tend to be insufficiently critical of our own stated identity and the claims we make about that identity.  We tend to throw words and phrases around, including the phrase non-creedal Christian church, without having sufficiently thought through what they mean and what their implications might be.  I truly don't expect everyone to agree with me.  If the things I write can get some UCC folk thinking more critically and clearly about the denomination and the claims it makes I will have accomplished what I hope to accomplish even if, or perhaps especially if, that more critical thinking leads to conclusions other than the ones I have suggested. 

As to your specific comments:  First, I intended to say that agreement with me on core beliefs is absolutely not what I'm suggesting.  As I said, there are many different ways of understanding the core beliefs of Protestant Christianity that fit within that tradition.  I said that valuing individual freedom of conscience within that tradition is a core value that we must defend and preserve.  I sincerely believe that to be true.  But neither is Christianity a blank slate on which one can write anything one wants and call it Christian.  I’m looking not for agreement with me.  I’m looking for something that is meaningfully Christian, especially from those who seek authorization for ministry from the UCC.

Second, I apologize if  my suggestion that the considerations are different for those seeking authorization for ministry from the denomination seemed to you either unhealthy or patronizing. I certainly did not intend it to be.  I did not mean to, and I do not, disparage the role of the lay members of the church.  I said in my piece that they in a meaningful sense are the church and that the virtue of UCC polity is that it dares to let the people be the church.   The distinction I make between lay members and those seeking authorization for ministry from the denomination simply recognizes what the UCC has always said about ordination or other authorization for ministry.  The UCC’s understanding of ordination is that God calls some people to fill different roles and to perform different functions within the life of the church that require authorization by the larger church.  Those roles and functions are not superior to other roles, but neither are they identical to them.  They are different, and those different roles and functions entail a different relationship to the larger church precisely because it is the larger church that grants the authorization for a person to fill those roles and perform those functions. The UCC has relatively lax (and unclear) standards for the specific faith of candidates for ordination, among the laxest of any major Christian denomination.  Closely related denominations including the ELCA Lutherans and the PCUSA Presbyterians are much more rigorous with regard to a candidate’s personal faith than we are.  Are you suggesting that the denomination has no interest in the nature of a person's faith when that person seeks authorization for ministry from the denomination?  If that is the case, then I suggest that we simply eliminate all discussion of a person's personal faith position in the course of the ordination process.  I don't think that would be healthy for the church, I honestly don’t see how any church could do it, it would be inconsistent with the UCC Manual on Ministry (which our Conference as adopted as its official guide on matters of ordination) and it would be inconsistent with the theology and traditions of the United Church of Christ.  Yet if that is the direction in which the UCC wants to go, so be it.  One consequence would be to leave any assessment of a candidate’s personal faith up to the search committee of a local church from which the person is seeking a call with no gate-keeping function from the larger church.. That is not our tradition, but it is a possible position.

Third, I hear a suggestion in what you say that what I said is not "liberal" and is inconsistent with the liberal view that I have of Christianity.  I can understand how what I said may sound ill-liberal because liberals are always uncomfortable with restrictions of any kind on individual liberty or freedom of conscience, as I said in my piece that I am; but I don't think that what I said is inconsistent with the view of Christianity that I preach every week.  I am a liberal, or a progressive (a term I prefer to liberal), but I am precisely a liberal or progressive Christian; and I minister in a Christian denomination.  Christianity is my way.  I never say it is the only way.  Indeed in my piece on non-creedalism I say that it is not the only way; but it is my way and, much more importantly in the current context, it is the UCC’s way.  Christianity is not a set piece, a fixed set of beliefs that one must either take or leave whole as so many Christians contend today.  It should be clear that my relationship to the larger Christian tradition is anything but uncritical.  My book is nothing but a critical approach to the Christian tradition.  A critical approach to Christianity does not, however, mean that either I or the denomination in which I serve cannot have standards for the faith of those who seek the status of authorized representatives of the denomination.  My piece suggests one such standard.  As I said in the piece, I am open to further discussion that may develop some other standard that is more appropriate.  I will be pleased if it does.

I can't tell from your comment who you are, but I would be very happy to discuss these matters with you further in person.  

The UCC as a Non-creedal Church

The paper below is a piece I wrote for the Committee on Ministry of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ on the issue of the UCC's claim to be a non-creedal Christian church.  I thought it might be of interest to some beyond the Committee on Ministry, so I have posted it here.

Further Thoughts on What It Means

to be a

Non-creedal Christian Church

For the Committee on Ministry

Pacific Northwest Conference

United Church of Christ

Rev. Dr. Thomas C. Sorenson

Pastor, Monroe Congregational United Church of Christ

September, 2010

At its September, 2010, meeting the Westside Committee on Ministry of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ discussed the question of what it means for the United Church of Christ to be a non-creedal church.  My earlier paper Some Preliminary Thoughts on What It Means to be a Non-Creedal Christian Church served as a starting point for that discussion.  This paper represents further thoughts on the issue, including some of the things that came out of the Committee on Ministry’s discussion.  It repeats some of the text from that earlier paper.  I intend this paper to be a contribution to the discussion.  I certainly do not see it as the last word on the subject, perhaps not even my last word on the subject.

The UCC as a “Non-creedal” Church

The question of what it actually means for the United Church of Christ to be a non-creedal Christian church is a pressing one that is receiving renewed attention today.  Is such a thing even possible?  I take it as a given that the UCC’s claim to be non-creedal means at least that we do not require anyone to recite the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, or any other specific creed without mental reservation to be a member, We call these creeds testimonies of faith, not tests of faith.  Yet  the UCC’s claim to be non-creedal seems to imply more than that, and in practice it is often taken to mean more than that.  So we have to ask:  Can a Christian Church truly be fundamentally non-creedal, truly to have no creed?  Isn’t Christianity inherently creedal, more inherently creedal than any other faith tradition?  Some Christians do indeed call non-creedal Christianity an oxymoron.  Yet the UCC and a few other Christian denominations do claim to be non-creedal Christian churches, so we need to understand just what we mean by that affirmation. 

The first question we need to ask is:  What precisely are we rejecting, if anything besides requiring adherence to the ancient Christian creeds, when we say we are non-creedal?  We are rejecting creeds, but what fundamentally is a creed?  One dictionary definition of creed is “a brief statement of religious belief; confession of faith.”  The English word creed derives from the Latin word credo, which means I believe.  On its face, therefore, the claim to be non-creedal means that we do not have or require a statement of religious belief or a confession of faith.  At this level of meaning the claim to be non-creedal means that there is nothing that we believe or confess as a church, which clearly is not the case with the UCC.

The next question we need to ask is whether it is even remotely possible for a Christian church truly to be non-creedal in this sense.  The thing that makes Christian churches Christian is that they profess faith in Jesus Christ.  They may mean different things by that profession, but some kind of faith in Jesus Christ is what makes Christianity Christian.  Is it not true that the mere statement “we believe in Jesus Christ,” whatever a particular church may mean by that statement, is the profession of a creed?  A minimalist creed to be sure but a creed nonetheless.  When Christians speak of creeds they usually are thinking of The Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, or one of the confessions of the various Reformation traditions.  Those creeds appeared a couple of centuries after Jesus at the earliest, and it is legitimate to ask whether or not there ever was a time when Christianity did not have a creed.  The earliest Christian creed is the simple confession “Jesus Christ is Lord.”  That phrase, in precisely that form, appears at Philippians 2:11, which dates it all the way back to the earliest decades of the Christian movement, most probably to the fifties of the first century CE.  We know that very early on the Christian movement was distinguished from other movements within the Jewish faith by its confession that Jesus was the Christ, God’s Messiah.  That confession appears in the earliest of the canonical Gospels at Mark 8:29, which dates it to the late sixties or early seventies of the first Christian century.  Paul was using the title Christ for Jesus even before the Gospel of Mark had Peter confessing Jesus as the Christ.  It appears, therefore, that there never was a time (at least after about the 40s of the first Christian decade) when Christianity did not have at least a minimal creed focused on its confession about Jesus.

The next question we need to ask is whether or not the UCC is truly non-creedal as we claim.  Do we really have no creed?  There is good reason to doubt that this is the case beyond the fact that there never has been a truly non-creedal Christianity.  The website ucc.org/beliefs gives some information on the UCC’s position regarding the Christian creeds.  That source says that the UCC “embraces a theological heritage that affirms the Bible as the authoritative witness to the Word of God, the creeds of the ecumenical councils, and the confessions of the Reformation.”  It goes on to say that “We seek a balance between freedom of conscience and accountability to the apostolic faith.”  We “receive” the historic creeds and confessions as “testimonies, but not tests of faith,” it says, a statement I have already included in the discussion above.

The UCC Constitution also provides some information on our issue.  The Preamble to the Constitution of the United Church of Christ states in Paragraph 1 that the denomination was formed by its two immediate predecessor denominations “in order to express more fully the oneness in Christ of the churches composing it, to make more effective their common witness to Him, and to serve His kingdom in the world….”  Paragraph 2 of the Preamble states that “The United Church of Christ acknowledges as its sole head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior.”  It also says that the church “claims as its own the faith of the historic Church expressed in the ancient creeds and reclaimed in the basic insights of the Protestant Reformers.”  And:  “In accordance with the teaching of our Lord and the practice prevailing among evangelical Christians, it recognizes two sacraments:  Baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion.”  The Preamble of the UCC Constitution therefore places the denomination squarely within the ancient Christian faith and specifically within the Protestant variety of the ancient Christian faith.  It declares the UCC to be a Protestant Christian church that proclaims Jesus as head of the church and as Son of God, Lord, and Savior.

Are those authoritative statements by the UCC, including statements in its foundational document, consistent with the claim that we are non-creedal?  I suggest that they are not.  The statement that the church “acknowledges as its sole head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior,” for example, is the statement of a creed.  That is, it is a brief statement of religious belief, a confession of faith.  The statement is short, but it is packed with theological meaning.  All of its terms—head (of the church), Jesus, Christ, Son of God, and Savior—are theological terms, the terms of a faith.  We need not try to unpack all of their meaning here, but it is clear that this statement is, in a basic sense, creedal.  So the first conclusion we reach is that in a fundamental way the UCC’s claim to be non-creedal is a bit disingenuous.  We are not truly or completely non-creedal.  It is not clear how any Christian church could be or that any Christian church or movement ever has been.

Non-creedal as Valuing Individual Freedom of Conscience Within a Core Theology

Once we have concluded that the UCC is not, at the most basic level, non-creedal, we need next to ask if the claim that we are non-creedal yet has any meaning other than the one I have assumed, namely, that we don’t require adherence to any of the ancient Christian creeds.  The UCC is not the only Christian tradition to declare itself to be non-creedal, and looking at other Christian traditions that claim that label may help us in our inquiry.  The Society of Friends (Quakers) and the various Baptist denominations also claim to be non-creedal.  Yet each of those traditions has a distinct identity.  We know, more or less, what Quakerism is and what the Baptist tradition is.  Clearly for those traditions being non-creedal does not mean having a lack of identity.  Yet people both inside the UCC and outside it wail all the time about the UCC’s lack of identity.  Our emphasis on individual freedom of conscience and local church autonomy is so strong that it is indeed sometimes difficult to say just what the UCC stands for.  We often point to our non-creedalism as a source of that unclear identity, yet the experience of the Quakers and the Baptists teaches us that a claimed non-creedalism, perhaps in part because a Christian church cannot truly be non-creedal,  need not equal a lack of identity or the absence of a core theology.  In those traditions non-creedalism seems to mean valuing individual freedom of conscience while at the same time proclaiming a core theology.  These other non-creedal Christian traditions seem to value individual freedom of conscience (to a greater or lesser extent) within the limits of a core theology, a core identity.  In that regard they are, I think, a good model for us, so I suggest that  non-creedal really means a commitment to individual freedom of conscience within the bounds of a common core theology.

But what is the UCC’s core theology?  According to the foundational documents cited above, that core theology doesn’t seem to extend much past a confession that Jesus Christ is the head of the church, that he is Son of God, Lord, and Savior, and that we claim as our own the ancient Christian faith, especially in its Protestant form, creeds, confessions, and all.  Which leads us to the conclusion that non-creedalism in the UCC means that we recognize individual freedom of conscience while at the same time self-identifying as a Protestant Christian denomination.  It seems that we value individual freedom of conscience within a tradition that self-identifies as Protestant Christian.

There is of course more to theology in the UCC than those few statements cited above.  We have a tradition, or rather several different traditions that have come together in the denomination.  Each of those traditions was in its own right a Protestant Christian tradition.  There are theological differences between them, but they were all Protestant Christian traditions.  No non-Christian or non-Protestant tradition is part of the UCC tradition.  The denomination’s history strengthens the conclusion that the UCC is expressly and intentionally a Protestant Christian tradition. 

Are There Limits on Individual Freedom of Conscience in the UCC?

So the question arises:  Does that self-identification as Protestant Christian impose limits on individual freedom of conscience within the church?  For us committed UCC people the phrase “limits on individual freedom of conscience within the church” certainly grates.  I at any rate have an immediate, visceral reaction against it even as I write it.  Yet I think we do need to consider the question.  After all, our church’s self-identification as a Protestant Christian church must have some meaning.  It must in some way define who we are, and any definition of a group necessarily imposes a boundary between the group and the rest of the world.  Without such a boundary a group has no identity.  Identity is established as much by what a group is not as by what it is.  When we proclaim that we are a Protestant Christian denomination we are proclaiming that we are not any other kind of church.  We are not Roman Catholic.  We are not Orthodox.  We are not Unitarian Universalist.  We are not secular humanists.  We are some variety of Protestant Christian.  We do not and need not condemn people who are not Protestant Christians, but we do proclaim that that is who we are. 

Which leads us back to the question posed above:  Does that self-identification as Protestant Christian impose limits on freedom of conscience within the church?  My answer to this question is a reluctant yes, it does impose some limits on individual freedom of conscience.  The individual freedom of conscience that we recognize and value is individual freedom of conscience precisely within the Protestant Christian tradition.  We of course recognize everyone’s right to a faith position that is outside the Protestant Christian tradition, and we celebrate the way in which people in other religious traditions, whether Christian or of some other faith, find their connection with God in those traditions.  But we are a Protestant Christian tradition.  To be a member of the United Church of Christ is to be a member of a Protestant Christian organization. 

Within that broad tradition there are a great many different understandings of the central issues of the Christian faith—our understanding of God, our understanding of Jesus, our understanding of the church, our understanding of the sacraments, and so on.  Beliefs that characterize the Protestant Christian tradition include at least a belief in the Triune God and in Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior, as the UCC Constitution says.  As the UCC Constitution also says the Protestant Christian tradition professes two sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist.  Within the broader Protestant Christian tradition these beliefs are understood in many different ways, all of which fit in the United Church of Christ.  That the UCC is a Protestant Christian tradition is a limitation on the breadth of theological belief appropriate in the denomination, but it is a very broad limitation.

So What Are the Limitations?

 That the UCC is a Protestant Christian church places broad limits on individual freedom of conscience within the denomination, but it has also occurred to me that those limits differ for people occupying different positions and filling different roles within the denomination and its local churches.  For me, the distinction between lay members of our congregations and those who are authorized or who seek authorization by the UCC for ministry in the denomination is significant in this regard. 

Lay members

Let’s start with the laity, the members of our local churches who have made a commitment to be part of the life of the church and to live their spiritual lives within and with the help of a local UCC congregation.  These people in a meaningful sense are the church.  One of the great virtues of our emphasis on local church autonomy is that this polity more than any other expresses the belief that the people, and not some hierarchy, are indeed the church.  Yet the UCC also has an institutional expression, the institutional expression established, at the most basic level, by the UCC Constitution.  That is the institutional expression of the church that has declared itself to be a Protestant Christian church.  The lay members of the local churches are not authorized representatives of that institutional expression of the church.   Therefore the larger institutional expression of the church has a low level of interest in what these individual lay members of the church believe.  The faith of the members of the local church is a matter of primary concern for the pastor of the local church.  It is less of a concern for the larger institutional expression of the church.  The limits on the individual freedom of conscience of the lay members of the church are few, and they are primarily the concern of the local church.  Let me suggest just one limit:  I believe that we can and should expect those who become official members of a local congregation of the UCC to self-identify in some way that is meaningful to them as Protestant Christians.  I know that some of our churches have admitted as members people who self-identify as followers of some other faith tradition.  Personally I would draw the line here and not invite those folks, however good, however faithful, however constructive for the church they may be, to become formal members.  In not inviting them to become formal members I intend no judgment of their faith.  I am merely seeking to preserve the self-identity of the UCC as a Protestant Christian church.  Beyond that limit, however, at the level of the laity individual freedom of conscience can and indeed must have the widest possible latitude in the UCC.  That freedom is part of who we are, a cherished, valuable part of who we are that we must preserve and defend.

Authorized Ministers

I believe, however, that the matter looks a bit different when we shift our attention from the laity to those who have or who seek formal authorization for ministry in the UCC from an authorized body of the UCC such as a Conference or Association Committee on Ministry.  The difference is precisely that authorized ministers in the UCC, whether ordained, commissioned, or licensed, are precisely authorized for ministry by the UCC; and the UCC formally declares itself to be a Protestant Christian church.  The UCC’s self-identification as a Protestant Christian church means, it seems to me, that those who have or who seek authorization for ministry in the UCC from an authorized body of the UCC must profess a faith that is in some sense recognizably Protestant Christian. By that I mean that they must profess a faith that the larger church, the church from which they are seeking authorization for ministry, recognizes as Protestant Christian.  I said above that the common characteristics of all Protestant Christian traditions include belief in the Triune God, in Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior, and the profession of the two Biblically established sacraments.  In this way of looking at the matter, candidates for authorized ministry in the UCC should profess a faith that the larger church can recognize as a Protestant Christian version of those beliefs.

  Because this question arises in our Committee on Ministry, it is appropriate and necessary to consider what the UCC Manual on Ministry has to say on the matter before we reach any final conclusions.  The most appropriate place to look in the Manual on Ministry is Section 3, Ordained Ministry.  That section of MoM begins by citing relevant provisions of the UCC Constitution.  That Constitution says:

20.  The United Church of Christ recognizes that God calls the whole church and every member to participate in and extend the ministry of Jesus Christ by witnessing to the Gospel in church and society.  The United Church of Christ seeks to undergird the ministry of its members by nurturing faith, calling forth gifts, and equipping members for Christian service.

21.  The United Church of Christ recognizes that God calls certain of its members to various forms of ministry in and on behalf of the church for which ecclesiastical authorization is required.  Recognizing God’s call, the ecclesiastical authorization is granted by an Association through the rite of ordination; through commissioning, licensing, granting either ordained ministerial standing or ordained ministerial partner standing and other acts of ordination.

23.  An Ordained Minister of the United Church of Christ is one of its members who has been called by God and ordained to preach and teach the gospel, to administer the sacraments and rites of the church, and exercise the prerogatives of ordained ministry in the United Church of Christ.

Other relevant provisions of the Manual on Ministry include a statement that the purpose of part one of a candidate’s ordination paper is to “provide a way for the student to share his or her present grasp and understanding of the teaching and traditions of the Christian Church down through the ages and to relate this to his or her own theological perspective.”  MoM says that part three of the ordination paper “invites the person to relate the faith and practice of the Church to her or his own pilgrimage of faith and understandings of and intentions for her or his ministry as a person ordained by the United Church of Christ.”  MoM says that the task of the Committee on Ministry in the ordination interview is “to satisfy itself that the candidate is prepared for and can faithfully and effectively carry out the responsibilities of ordained ministry in and on behalf of the United Church of Christ.”  MoM suggest as an examination subject “Is this a person of mature Christian faith?”  MoM’s section captioned “The Church’s Expectations of Its Candidates for Ordination” includes the expectations that the candidate is “compelled by the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and can “clearly articulate a personal theological position.”

What can we conclude from a review of these relevant provisions of the Manual on Ministry?  We conclude first of all, I think, that these provisions are not as clear and consistent as we would wish.  They are however, significant guidance for us as we consider our question of what limitations on freedom of conscience are appropriate for those with or seeking ordination or other authorized ministerial status in the UCC.  We can conclude I think that MoM expects candidates for authorized ministry in the UCC to be Christians, to seek to proclaim the Gospel, that is, precisely the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to understand Jesus precisely as the Christ.  The statement in the section on expectations of candidates for ordination that the candidate should be able clearly to “articulate a personal theological position” taken in isolation may seem to suggest that any theological position is acceptable.  When MoM’s statements on the issue are taken as a whole, however, the Manual is not quite that loose.  It expects candidates to be Christians who profess Jesus as the Christ.  It expects them to have an understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to make proclamation of the Gospel central to their beliefs and their ministry.  Thus MoM does not use the language we are using here, but nothing in it squarely contradicts the language we are using here.

In my experience not all of the candidates who come before our Committee meet this criterion.  Let me give a specific example of a situation where we have seen this issue come up.  Many of the candidates for ordination who have come before us in the past two years or so that I have been on the Committee profess a Christology that is radically different from the classical Christology of the ancient Christian creeds and of the Protestant Christian tradition.  This Christology is more Unitarian or humanist than it is Protestant Christian.  These candidates see Jesus as only a man whose role in the faith and in the lives of the faithful is to be a great moral teacher, nothing more.  We have approved some of these people for ordination in the UCC, an approval for which I have also voted.  Has that approval been appropriate?  For purposes of discussion at least, let me suggest that no, that approval has not been appropriate.  A Unitarian or humanist understanding of Jesus is inconsistent with the statement in the Preamble to the UCC Constitution that the UCC proclaims Jesus as Christ, as Son of God, Lord, and as Savior.  It is inconsistent with traditional Protestant Christianity, which has always accepted the classical Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.  The New Century Hymnal may have so much trouble with Jesus’ masculinity that it has virtually eliminated the idea of the Incarnation from the hymns we sing; but that is a problem with the New Century Hymnal, it does not change the self-identification of the UCC as a Protestant Christian church.  I consider this matter open for discussion, and I am more than willing to listen to other views.  Today, however, I am inclined to vote no on approval for ordination for candidates who express only such a Unitarian or humanist view of Jesus because that Christology is in no meaningful sense a Protestant Christian Christology.  I would take the same position with regard to a candidate who had a view of God that was more Unitarian than Trinitarian.

Conclusion

So then:  It turns out not to be entirely correct to say that the United Church of Christ is a non-creedal Christian tradition.  We profess Jesus Christ as Son of God, Savior, and Lord, and those are creedal professions.  Yet we continue to say that we are non-creedal, so we need to consider what that claim may yet mean in our church.  First of all, non-creedal does not mean anything goes.  It means that we are a Protestant Christian church which, despite that self-identification, does not require members or authorized ministers to be able to recite the Nicene Creed, or any other traditional creed, without mental reservation in order to be members of or ministers in the church.  But non-creedal does not equal non-Christian.  Seeking a balance between individual freedom of conscience on the one hand and accountability to the apostolic faith on the other, as ucc.org says we do, means that we live always in tension.  We live in the tension between two polarities—absolute individual freedom at one end and rigid, mandatory adherence to the creedal Christian tradition on the other.  We, quite rightly, tend to position ourselves toward the first of those two polarities.  We seek to live freely, but we seek to live freely precisely within the Protestant Christian tradition.  It’s not an easy thing to do.  The right thing is rarely an easy thing to do.  I look forward to discussing this matter with you further in the months ahead.