Methodist Inquisitors

It did not take long for our Protestant ancestors to drive the Roman Catholic hierarchy right up the wall. As we are so fond of saying these days, the RC's had "had it up to here," and proceeded forthwith --- on July 21,1542 to be exact --- to crank up the languishing machinery of the Inquisition in the interest of repressing deviate opinions once and for all. If the interests of doctrinal purity were not enough to fire up people to burn their neighbors at the stake, there was the additional happy prospect of confiscating all of the heretics' properties.

These days, nobody in our churches is making much of a living out of exterminating the unorthodox. The realization that this is so, however, does not diminish some peoples' unholy passion to make the rest of us believe exactly and only what they themselves believe. What gets to me is how many Protestants seem to want a piece of this inquisitorial action. The Reformation started out with a commitment to every believer's enjoying a direct relationship with God. It may end up promoting blind loyalty to barely comprehended doctrines as a substitute for joyous celebration of gladly received grace.

What gets to me even more is that there are increasing numbers of Methodist Protestants with the same kind of Torquemada-envy that is on the rampage among Fundamentalists and Traditionalists all over the place. Recently, for example, a rowdy bunch of United Methodist clergy and laity from the North Central Jurisdiction lodged a complaint against one of the Jurisdiction's bishops, allegedly for teaching what is contrary to our denomination's Doctrinal Standards. The group wants this bishop either to renounce his teaching or resign from the episcopal office. If he does neither, then the group will insist that he be removed from the ordained ministry. These folks are only the latest group of Methodists to weigh in on the matter; this particular "firestorm," as it has been called, has been raging over half a year and shows no signs of abating.

Think about it for a minute. One bishop puts forward his best effort at theologizing, in this case at a theological seminary --- just the place where we want such things to go on. Another bishop challenges him vigorously. So far, so good. Even better, the ensuing debate went just the way our Doctrinal Standards Statement originally envisioned theological conversation to proceed in our churches: scriptural passages were flying; tradition was being re-discovered; personal experiences of belief, doubt, and unbelief were respected and given fresh articulation; and reason was put in the service of seeking new meaning in old images.

Then the trouble began. Paranoid about the "apostolic faith" slipping away before their very eyes, self-appointed arbiters of every other Methodist's faith began hurling just the kind of anathemas that have polarized and paralyzed thoughtful people in the church ever since Paul permitted non-circumcised Gentiles to become followers of The Way. Contrary to their deformed, terror-stricken vision of a church mutating into godless liberalism, the last thing the United Methodist Church needs right now is an inquisition just when our leaders finally are getting bold enough to think some original thoughts.

As someone who has taught and written about the Doctrinal Standards of the United Methodist Church, I continue to find it irritating when Methodists confuse the "marrow of Christian truth" with doctrinal utterances the assent to which they arbitrarily deem necessary for acceptance into the Christian fellowship. (At least they haven't started telling us that the assent is necessary for our salvation.) If it were not proving so destructive to Christian fellowship, the confusion would be simply laughable. Construing the content of Christian belief as right doctrine is like construing the substance of the spinal cord with the vertebrae that surround it.

It is no accident that the Christian tradition as a whole constantly refers to the doctrines of the faith as symbols. The Apostles' Creed itself was once better known as "The Old Roman Symbol." As the greatest teachers of the church have reminded us, symbols operate at many different levels at once. And at every one, the way not to understand a symbol is the way of literalism. With legalism, literalism can only draw us ever downward, finally into the realm of death. Symbols, by contrast, offer us life, if we joyfully allow them to be what they are, instead of doggedly trying to make them into something that they are not.

Going on a tear about doctrinal impurity is a far cry from lifting one's heart and voice in gratitude to the One whose presence to us on this earth must always be shrouded in mystery. Blindly upholding unexamined doctrines is no way into the mystery. The better way is to work hard, together, to let the great symbols of our faith bring the mystery closer themselves.