Recently I’ve begun to read The Bible Made Impossible, by Christian Smith, at the suggestion of Scott McKnight. McKnight suggests the Smith’s critique of the evangelical christianity is one of the most challenging and from what I’ve read in the first few chapters McKnight’s assessment could be correct.

While I’m not quite ready to respond to Smith just yet, I would like to examine a trend that I feel is becoming more pressing decade after decade in the Western Church (and particularly in its protestant segment ), one which Smith hovers around, though has not yet specifically mentioned—the continual decay of the cohesiveness of the Church.

The Christian church seems to be slowly fracturing into a thousand bits all claiming truth and very few calling for repentance from others or even honest deliberation.  For example, within the very close circle which I’ve been ordained into(Presbyterians), it has been admitted again and again that denominations that agree on 99.8% of Christian doctrine have no earnest plans to come together.  While some people would say, “Well that’s the Presbyterians, there are other examples of churches coming together, such as the newly formed Anglican Church in North American.”  I would argue that the Anglican church is not much better, after all even inside the Anglican Communion there are vastly differing viewpoints which at best are organized into truces and  at worst are destructive points of contention.  I can’t help but imagine that we will in the next 30 years see at least a few ruptures come from the existing cracks within that communion. As of this writing the ACNA is not actually a recognized part of the Anglican Communion,  and this just furthers illuminates our problem, even Anglicans can’t agree on their own church structure, and yet there has been no public decision made.

I’m beginning to think that what Stark and Finke call the free market expansion of church, is destroying the integrity of the Body of Christ.  Everyone is entitled to try out and exchange as many versions of the Christian faith as they possibly can. Often the sentiment is that there is no perfect church and so each individual is entitled to silently hold certain views without even the consideration that the whole church could benefit from the deliberation that might come if more Christian where honest about all their beliefs. We have in effect created a modular Christianity, where the individual self is the primary seat of Ecclesiology. Add to this the postmodern view of personal truth and we seem to have come upon quite a challenge for the people of God.  On a continental level this leaves us glad-handing with other Christians, while crossing our fingers as they speak about unity. On a local level it leaves many Christians one or two topics away from yet again moving churches.

People talk about the American church, but at what point do we reach a critical turn where the universal nature of the church is so neglected that it becomes almost impossible to interact with any group larger than a few dozen. Is Protestant ecumenism little more than the admittance that other traditions might be part of the True Church?

In moments like these I can’t but think of the hymn The Church’s One Foundation with both joy and sorrow.