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Congregationalists have ever been warmhearted and open-handed toward all
Christian brethren. We hark back to Biblical days when men and women found new
life in company with Christ, and to apostolic times when faith spread from
person to person and town to town.
In its beginnings Christianity was neither an
institution nor a dogma, but a fellowship of loving hearts kindled by the Risen
Christ. We today know ourselves as part of that worldwide
fellowship which from age to age has experienced the same power and the same
truth. In simplicity we hold to the words of our Lord, "Where two or three
are gathered together in my name, I will be present in their midst."
We recognize the Church as being fully present in every local group in this
spiritual interpretation of Christianity. "The Congregational Way" -
brought to New England shores by the Pilgrims in 1620 and articulated by the
Cambridge Platform of 1648 - recognized independent Churches organized in
response to Christ's call in each community, and loosely related in fellowship
for counsel, advice, and mutual tasks.
In the past sixty years Congregationalists have been in the forefront of the
ecumenical movement. In local, state and national councils of churches our
people can be found working for the cooperative approach to our common tasks.
This has been a natural role for us, inasmuch as we do not insist on the
uniformity that many do.
We think that God is too great to care what
denominational labels we wear, but that God does desire that we
join hands with all who love Him/Her in an effort to hasten the day of the
Kingdom. World Communion Sunday is impressive from our viewpoint. Respecting the
customs and rituals of all denominations, and stressing a common loyalty beneath
all differences, we gladly welcome all to share with us. We seek to inherit the
description of the early Church given in the second century: "Christians
hold the world together."
This "holding the world together" we believe can best be done by
fellowship. It is in fellowship that our lives are linked around Jesus Christ,
and it is through fellowship that we come to care mutually for one another.
To us the essence of the Church is fellowship - a unity of spirit between
member and member, and a unity of spirit between member and Christ. We
need not agree in details of doctrine and organization before we care.
This emphasis on fellowship determines our approach to church unity. Through
Congregationalists have pioneered in the ecumenical movement, we have discovered
that ecumenicity is often conceived in terms of organic unity rather than of
cooperative fellowship. This confronts us with a real crisis. We are willing to
cooperate with all denominations generously and freely; but when we are asked to
join in an organic union we are threatened with a complete denial of the nature
of the Church as we understand it.
For example: we hold that the local Church is an integral manifestation of
the Christian fellowship, and is a Church full and complete in its own right. The
church is called into being by Christ, not by an ecclesiastical organization.
It voluntarily chooses to cooperate with other Churches to accomplish mutual
tasks, and thus joins on its own initiative to help create councils, boards and
associations that serve as its agents, yet always dependent upon it. In this
relationship the spirit of Christ in the local Church remains the dynamic of all
action.
This is reversed in ecclesiastical organizations such as the "United
Church of Christ", by making "the Church" (spelled throughout
their constitution with a capital "C" in contrast with a small "c"
for the local parish) to be the top national organization. Within this
organization each local congregation is subordinated as a unit. The life of the
"the Church" is governed by a General Synod, the delegates to which
are not chosen by the local Churches but by the state conferences. All actions
and all amendments are made on the synodical or conference level, never on the
local Church level.
Regardless of what freedoms are guaranteed local congregations, their
integrity is hereby destroyed. No longer are they free, independent cooperating,
Christ-gathered Churches. They become units in an institution, gaining their
rights and their directives not from Christ but from the organization.
For this reason the emphasis on centralized
authority spells the destruction of the Congregational Way. We
who gladly have cooperated in councils are asked to surrender our identity as
independent Churches, and to recognize the control of a
"super-Church". This we cannot do. Because we believe fellowship is
the essence of Christian life, we freely cooperate; but because we are
historically and theologically opposed to ecclesiastical superstructures, we
cannot become part of any organic union that reduces the local Churches to units
in a machine.
When Archbishop Crammer in 1544 wrote the preface to his "First
Litany," the first use of English as a liturgical language, he suggested
that even those who could not read might through the litany follow the service,
"so that with one sound of the heart, and one accord, God may be glorified
in his church."
This is the desire of Congregationalists: to
glorify and to serve God with one sound of the heart. We
recognize diversities of form, creed, ritual; yet in fellowship and cooperative
goodwill we find the essence of discipleship that enables us to walk side by
side with Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians and all others, with one sound of
the heart.
One Sunday in India I worshipped with a congregation of outcast Christians in
a small rural village. Between me and them were barriers of language,
nationality, color, intellectual belief. Yet I have never been more deeply moved
by the sacrament of the Lord's Supper than that morning when I partook with
those Indian friends. Despite difference, with one sound of the heart we were
worshipping God's gift in Christ. Those people did not know whether they were
Congregationalists or Presbyterians. They knew only that they belonged to
Christ. This is all that matters; for fellowship in the Lord is of the essence.
We dare not lose this spiritual oneness in Christ by submitting to any
centralized organization where the structure rather than the sound of the heart
will determine what God requires of us.
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