"Better Together"

Look--let's be honest. What the denomination I've always been a part of is facing is an issue that has torn just about every other denomination apart. For a number of reasons, the issues raised are immensely difficult. The only faith communities left untouched/unscathed are those whose walls are largely impenetrable by anyone other than the chosen, churches where only sworn members know the right words.

The questions raised by same-sex marriage rise from centuries of denial, centuries of oppression, of gay people hidden away under any convenient bush, no matter how thorny, decades of telling ourselves that being gay is an unfortunate choice some sinners make, that same-sex attraction is as much a sin as drunkenness or infidelity, theft or murder, simply another iniquity that cannot and will not be tolerated in a church whose members swear allegiance to the love of Jesus--and years on end of reading the Bible as a rule book. 

It is that, of course, but it is so very much more.

I hope no one questions my loyalty to the Christian Reformed Church of North America. I am the author of its last published history, and I toured the continent with a staged show that told the denomination's story. For years, members of the church read meditations I wrote for their kids. I taught at a denominationally-affiliated institution of higher learning for decades, almost four. Ever since 1972, I written articles and stories for The Banner, the official magazine of the CRCNA, as well as a number of others. 

Today, however, my politics set me apart from many members. I believe the Trump Presidency ranks as among the most dangerous chapters in the life of the nation. Throughout Covid, I wore a mask when so advised, watched church on-line, and got shots and boosters as recommended. I'm progressive about things politic, a bona fide liberal. I believe in red flags and gun registration. I'm woke. Mostly these days, I vote Democratic. Not always.

I recently joined a new organization of CRC members, an organization calling itself "Better Together: A Third Way." I signed up because I believe in what that fledgling organization is working at building a union that allows for disagreement on issues that will not determine salvation, issues like same-sex marriage.

Just a couple weeks ago I took a number of friends out west to Indigenous reservations; they wanted to know more about Native American history. While we were out and about in South Dakota, I took a few backroads to show them the church where my great-grandparents, immigrant Schaaps, worshipped in the 1890s. That church, Harrison (SD) CRC, is in good shape, but, in size, vastly smaller than it was when many more people set roots on any section of ground. Today Harrison CRC has merged with the local Reformed (RCA) church which, for more than a century, stood just as proudly, and separately, a few blocks away. Decreasing memberships made consolidation the only means of survival. Today they worship together.

I know good people from that church, but I know good people at the church in Michigan too, where a woman living with another woman was voted into the office of deacon. I went to college with Larry Louters, and a member of the council is my daughter's college roommate. 

I know good people throughout the entire denomination, but I fail to understand why the prayerful choice that Michigan church made, standing in a wholly different culture and for their own particular reasons, has to split whatever it is or was that kept those two churches, so unlike each other, together. I can't help but believe we're "better together." There has to be "a third way."

"A Third Way" ran that cover ad (above) on last week's Banner, one of two. This week, "Better Together" was told that the second would not run: "based on the negative reactions we received for the May ad," the Banner editor explained, "it seems that we might have misconstrued the public’s perception of the group."

Presumably, serious and significant numbers of the CRC contacted the Banner office to tell them that working toward peace was somehow perpetuating war. It's very difficult for me to believe, but I do. 

A couple years ago, an aging Lakota tribal elder told me the story of a lesbian girl, a friend, who deliberately lived with the boys in a government boarding school because she wanted to protect her little brother who was also enrolled. This friend of mine spoke of her queer old friend as a hero.

"We honor those people among us," she told me, with clear reference to the differences she understood between my culture and the Two Kettle Lakota to which she belonged. "With good reason, too," she said. "We say those people are specially blessed with a double consciousness." 

Arguing the merits of her assertions isn't my intent here. What is, is that she made clear with the story that her culture, her world, even her faith assessed gay people as with respect, not scorn.

What I can't help thinking this morning is that significant numbers of CRC members, many of whom I know, truly and righteously believe that another group of members devoted to peace-making, "Better Together," really doesn't want peace but something of its opposite. Really?

A church that claims to follow Christ has no room for peace?