So Campus Crusade for Christ has decided to change its name. To Cru. Why? Because it thought the “Crusade” part too off-putting to many it was trying to reach with the gospel. Please note that the change of moniker refers only to its U.S. operations. Apparently folks in the other 190 nations it ministers to are more broad-minded, including those in the Middle East, no doubt. But in the States, it’s Cru. Short for Crusade.
Now I am neither a cynic nor a skeptic. I merely assume that everyone is either lying, stupid, or lying to me about how stupid they think I am. So I’m wondering if this name change is merely an attempt to get Muslims to drop their guard long enough for a bunch of flip-flop-wearing Jesus freaks to love-bomb them back to the Lionheart Age. But who am I to judge.
In other news, Coral Ridge Ministries, founded by the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, is also changing its name, to Truth in Action Ministries. This, too, is an attempt to facilitate “outreach,” which presumably was hindered by what most people assumed was the true motto of Coral Ridge Ministries: “Miserable Lies in Amber.”
Whether these fresh, fab soubriquets affect the desired change in public perception remains to be seen. Christianity is all about new beginnings, after all. So mazel tov.
But there is another change in name that has been nagging at me for so long that I hit a pastry chef in the pancreas the other day just to get it out of my system (along with a stale cruller). What change is that you ask? (Just play along.) This:
“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins…”
When I began attending LCMS services after years in evangelical churches, punctuated by non-communicating attendance at Catholic Masses, I was jolted by that Christian. Every other English version of the Apostles Creed I have ever encountered in a church setting translates the Latin catholicam—as in “sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam”—correctly as catholic.
Yes, yes, I know, evangelical churches inevitably punctuate that “catholic” with an asterisk* that explains how “It’s not that kind of catholic, like in Roman Catholic, but catholic in the sense of universal.” Thanks. Explains the picture of Benedict XVI with the red slash through it in the Welcome Center.
But at least the “catholic” was preserved, the tradition, the original, intact and respected. Not in the Lutheran churches, or at least in the Lutheran churches using materials produced by Concordia Publishing House. At first I thought this to be a recent innovation. I would have sworn on a stack of Smalcald Articles that I learned my Small Catechism with the “catholic” in the Creed. But an edition of the catechism published by CPH in 1943 also translates “catholicam” as “Christian.” So the one I used had to have also. Did I imagine that “catholic”? Or had I recited it so many times in other contexts that I read it back into my boyhood church experience?
“But isn’t it the same thing?” you might ask. “Christian and catholic/universal?” No, you idiot. And who asked you? Didn’t Gnostics fashion themselves Christians? Didn’t Montanists? Don’t Mormons today? And Jehovah’s Witnesses? How about oneness Pentecostals? And there are a smorgasbord of nondenoms that would rather be caught reading out passages from The Story of O than one of those man-made traditions commonly known as a Creed. Anyone and everyone can call themselves Christians, including mainline churchniks who have longed jettisoned any notion of the Fatherhood of God and the divinity of His Son. My goodness, even the atheist Marxist Slavoj Zizek considers himself a Christian materialist, and Richard Dawkins wears a T-shirt that reads “Atheists for Jesus.”
(I must remember to breathe during these things . . .)
When I was but a teen, back in the days when garbage was still garbage and the Recycling Regime had not yet enforced segregation of our detritus, I was as pious as an assassin’s bullet. I wanted nothing to do with religion, organized or ramshackle, and thought the existence of a personal deity about as likely as Joe Pepitone’s being elected Emperor of Japan. My main obsessions were movies, books about movies, and Valerie Bertinelli (not necessarily in that order.) This caused a great disturbance in the Force, namely, my mother. The woman who taught me my Small Catechism as we sat across the kitchen table when I was but knee-high to a Buick Riviera was concerned for my soul, and not only because I was fast turning into a miserable blaspheming apostate. You see, my best friend was a Catholic-turned-charismatic-fundamentalist type who also worried about my eternal destiny, and he and his mother were determined to see that I was converted, and not by the frozen chosen who surrounded me five days a week in my Lutheran parochial school.
So my mom asked our pastor** to pay a friendly visit one evening to perhaps steer me back onto the straight and narrow before I swerved into a bridge abutment. What I remember from that talk was his response to my complaints about how my friend kept hectoring me about how I needed to be born again. “I was born again at my baptism,” the pastor reminded me, adding: “We are catholic in our faith.”
Years would pass before I’d find my way back onto the narrow path (admittedly veering to the right and to the left now and again, as the Old Adam is a lousy driver). And I know I’m but a lowly layman who spends most Sundays hunting down a church, any church, that still uses the Common Service of 1888. But I do implore the powers that be in the LCMS: put the “catholic” back. I don’t care where or when saying “Christian” became de rigueur; it seems to have started in the Old Country, with German translations influenced by pietists who wanted to put more distance between themselves and Rome (but I could be mistaken about that). And frankly, I don’t care. Just put it back. Why? As has been said many times and will need to be said again: Luther never had any intention of starting a new church. In fact, he never left the church he was in—he was kicked out. And despite all the nasty things he had to say about the popes and how the “power of the keys” was wielded by same, neither he nor any of his successors ever denied that the Catholic Church was a true church, as it had the Word and the Sacraments. We, along with Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, and Orthodox, are members of the “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”
Catholics and Lutherans may debate from now till kingdom come about the nature of true apostolic succession: whether it is a matter of an unbroken line of men upon whom the laying on of hands has conferred episcopal authority, or a matter of perennial apostolic doctrine. But we English speakers should be saying the same words come that point in the liturgy when we express a common ancient faith as members of “one holy catholic and apostolic church.”
Whether a Campus Crusade or a Coral Ridge changes its name don’t make me no never mind, really. I am a member of neither, and both are parachurch entities. Here today and gone tomorrow. So go with God. But I am a member of the church catholic. Or at least I thought I was. And I take it personally when I’m told that I’m now a member of something else. In fact, I will not say “Christian church.” I will mount a singular, solitary, albeit quixotic protest by continuing to say “catholic church,” in a loud and clamorous voice. Now I just have to find a church to say it in . . .
*Every time I saw that asterisk, and considered its intention, I was put in mind of that exchange in Woody Allen’s film Bananas, when Allen, a budding Latin American revolutionary, reads out the charges against a member of the deposed regime, which includes the slaughter of thousands of civilians, torture, and other horrors: “How do you plead?” Allen asks. “Guilty,” the accused responds, “but with an explanation.”
**My pastor at the time was Kazimierz Kowalski , who is now a popular priest in the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. The man who succeeded him in my old church, Leonard Klein, is now a priest in the Archdiocese of Wilmington, Delaware. Never let it be said that Lutherans have never done anything for the pope. No thanks are necessary, but we are open to small gifts of cash.
July 22nd, 2011 | 10:55 am
Where’s God? Where’s Jesus? Please tell me you haven’t lost them behind church.
July 22nd, 2011 | 11:23 am
Nice article. Great sense of humor and sense of (c)atholicism.
July 22nd, 2011 | 11:30 am
So Alex Klages, via Twitter, has informed me that the “Christian” for “catholicam” translation predates the Reformation and is strictly a German thing, and that in the Middle Ages they were synonymous. Was there no German word for “catholic,” though? And if so, why that choice? And why not follow the English translation of virtually every other “catholic” communion when translating the Creed into English?
July 22nd, 2011 | 11:31 am
Cru is kind of funny. (But it sounds like Crew, so I can see a youth appeal in there). If others followed suit, we would have Chris, Caths, Meths, Angs, and Orth’s. Let us not forget Morms.
What’s in a name, indeed.
July 22nd, 2011 | 11:47 am
The temptation of comedy is impossible to resist with this thing. I remember how we viewed Campus Crusade when I was in college and if they were to create a new name based on that it would be “OTN,” for “Oh, those nuts.”
July 22nd, 2011 | 11:53 am
Pure gold Anthony. Would it violate copyright laws if I printed this in my August newsletter?
July 22nd, 2011 | 12:35 pm
“Hello, I am Cru. Back to work. Back to work! Back to…”
You know they have to be making Despicable Me puns in the home office.
July 22nd, 2011 | 12:46 pm
I’m less struck by the loss of the word ‘crusade’ in CRU than the loss of the word ‘Christ’. (Unless CRU is meant to evoke CRUcifix.)
I enjoy your writing. Humor reveals many truths — and makes us laugh at the same time.
July 22nd, 2011 | 12:50 pm
Welcome humor after a long week :) Well done Anthony. I could especially relate to the humorous correlation of your mother to The Force.
July 22nd, 2011 | 1:22 pm
We update the language in our Bibles, even the part God Himself spoke, to give the reader the best representation of the original meaning, since words change over time. Why don’t we translate that part of the creed as the “universal church” instead of using “catholic” and having to remind everyone what it doesn’t mean?
Just wondering … it’s seldom recited in my own church, so not a big issue for me.
July 22nd, 2011 | 1:35 pm
Federal Express became FedEx, National Public Radio became NPR, Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC, British Petroleum became BP. Why can’t the Roman Catholic Church change its name to RCC?
July 22nd, 2011 | 3:53 pm
This is the new modern-day version of “Christianity” where anything goes, even to the point of denying Christ as God YAHWEH (think: false preacher John Hagee whose “church” I picketed in San Antonio), accepting homosexuality and sexual perversion, putting Israel before Christ, rewriting the Holy Bible, etc…
Everywhere you look, there is corruption eating away at the very fabric of our society. How will America or any country survive like this?
July 22nd, 2011 | 5:17 pm
For what it’s worth, the Canadian version of Campus Crusade for Christ changed its name a few years ago to Power to Change, which was the name of one of its marketing campaigns a few years earlier.
July 22nd, 2011 | 5:40 pm
Everywhere you look, there is corruption eating away at the very fabric of our society. How will America or any country survive like this?
By making sure we have maximum economic freedom?
July 22nd, 2011 | 10:12 pm
Ironically, I’m reading The journey Home by the late Bill Bright. What a man of conviction. I think he would turn over now at this. All over the world Christians are being asked to slide back their values a bit and be tolerant. We do not have to be ashamed of the name Christ or think that He is not able to do His work even if WE think we need to control how the Name Christ affects our ministry. LET THE LORD WORK IT OUT! He just needs to find us faithful. So, KEEP IT LIKE IT WAS !!!
July 22nd, 2011 | 10:52 pm
Actually…Bill Bright had been contemplating a name change for several years. And as you read his history – you probably noticed that he tended to be fine with shaking things up and trying new an innovative ways to introduce others to Christ. So to the contrary, I actually think he’d be pleased (and perhaps think the Christian Community has their panties in a wad over the wrong things yet again). I’ve worked with Campus Crusade for nearly 20 years in the U.S., Russia, Estonia! Italy,
July 22nd, 2011 | 11:09 pm
…doh. Typing on an iPad sometimes I make stupid grammatical errors AND at times post before I’m finished. Okay, so back to Italy, Spain, France and Thailand. And our name has been a hinderance for many, many years everywhere. When 20% of people spiritually interested people surveyed said the name would cause them to walk away, the name of your organization is a hinderance to the gospel. It is considered a failure if 2-3% of people are turned off by your name. I am not primarily committed to the name “Campus Crusade for Christ”, nor the organization, but to the actual person of Jesus. And if a four word organizational name can shut off a person’s heart and mind before I can even get to know them, share my own story, and most importantly tell the about the one who knows them best & loves them most…then by all means change the name. We haven’t been just a campus ministry for decades, and Crusade is negative, outdated and offensive to many around the world…so why not change the name if it allows me to talk about the Name above Names even more? It’s sad and a little bizarre to me how freaked out the American Christian response has been to this change. Sad because yet again, it makes those who say they follow Christ look like a group of backbiting, critical nitpickers who will quickly turn on those who are supposed to be like minded believers. Sigh. So much for that part about, “they shall know them by their love.” please do not assume the worst, but believe the best. We have changed our name to have the freedom to talk about Christ even more, not less. Not to be PC, not to remove Christ’s name…if we thought His name were offensive, then we wouldn’t talk about him so much, to so many, all around the world.
July 22nd, 2011 | 11:41 pm
I am on staff with CCC and have stayed with it because of the convictions of Bill Bright. Those convictions have not changed among the leaders of CCC as they have prayed and sought God whether we should have a new name. It is simply a name. Our mission and vision has not changed. We are still people whose lives have been transformed by Jesus and seek to make Him known among nations. The name is simply to help us become more effective in our mission. Please check out ccci.org/cru for more information…
July 23rd, 2011 | 7:20 am
Go ahead and change the name, by all means, but Cru? As in Motley Crue?
July 23rd, 2011 | 1:10 pm
Yes, good article with nice sense of humor – esp.liked the part about the ‘gift ‘ – even if it is not for the Pope , as much as for The Father who is The One who is invoked in that prayer for unity !
And may be one day , the author himself will find even more deeply , the riches of another name – of St.Anthony ( of Padua ) :)
Till then , may our Lord bless us all, to keep practising the Catholic value of forgiveness , esp. towards those who malign or persecute Her , on account of Her proclaiming The Name and His gifts to The Church , which include the trust that She ( those who guide Her ) wil not be an agent of erroneus teaching ,in faith and morals !
Those words about the small cash gifts also can bring a smile ; could poor Luthur have been affected by our old fallen nature of envy and greed – that he as a monk, was doing things out of whatever sense of guilt , to ‘earn heaven’ whereas , not so holy persons were being told to ‘make treausres for heaven ‘ with their possibly ill gotten wealth !
if Luthur had recognised , with a merciful attitude , that such a small seed of yearning of the heart , to ‘work out the salvation’ or desire to do one’s part , in gratitude , could then open doors for more grace , he may not have been used by the agent of discord , so successfully !
Catholic Church , being of East and West , cannot be called only as ‘Roman ‘ ;
Since Lutherans seemingly do not want to see him as a founder , may be being tended on to the next letter – M , as in mercy may be a good name change !
July 23rd, 2011 | 5:18 pm
Let’s be clear: the part of ‘CCC’ that unnecessarily offends is ‘crusade’. For some years now CCC has been called simply ‘Campus für Christus’ in Germany and ‘Agape’ in Britain. ‘Cru’, by contrast, retains the problem, at least for anyone who looks for a meaning in the name.
In Germany, as Anthony notes in a postscript, ‘Christian’ replaced ‘catholic’ in the creed already prior to the Reformation. The words “eine heilige, christliche Kirche” were then enshrined in the Lutherans’ Augsburg Confession, and they remain in creedal usage by German Lutherans today. Given the reluctance of Germans to adopt Greek (or Latin) technical terms (without, at least, transliteration root-for-root into a German equivalent), “katolisch” would inevitably evoke the Roman Catholic Church as an institution much more than it evokes the concept of the church’s universality. (I suspect that this is why the medieval church changed the wording to begin with. There was no good way to convey the right nuances in German. Or was the Latin form of the creed changed as well?)
Since the LCMS has one foot firmly rooted in 16th-century Germany (and the other foot in 19th-century Germany), it follows the traditional German usage.
July 23rd, 2011 | 11:13 pm
Hey Nate, “Where’s God? Where’s Jesus? Please tell me you haven’t lost them behind church.” Surely not my friend! Jesus is the eternal Word and the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The written Word says in 1:Tim 3:15.
“But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” Meditate on that and you’ll see that there’s no losing God and Jesus “behind the church.”
July 24th, 2011 | 1:08 am
Sensibilities of humanity, what about God’s?
If the crusade is intended for campus communications (colleges?), what attraction does CRU provide for serious inquirers? Why not something like a simple definitive identity that would ignite the curious to the Christ part of the name of the group – Christian philosophy present on campus. The world has enough salt-free alphabet soup. Crusaders be bold in your intent to spread the Gospel as a framework for life, after which you can fit your story into it.
Which brings me to two years of Saturday mornings studying Luther’s Small Catechism – at church. First, the Ten Commandments; second, The Lord’s Prayer; and last, The Apostles’ Creed. The last paragraph of the creed was a couple Saturdays before Confirmation on Palm Sunday. Many hands were raised to our loving, patient Pastor at the “catholic” word in the ‘one Holy catholic church’ phrase. He said, “… small “c”, a Latin word meaning universal, because the creed was written before there were Lutherans and because all Christians believe in Jesus. OK. Take your recess and we’ll go on to the ‘communion of saints’.” All on one Saturday morning … in eighth grade, 30 of us led there by our ‘forces’. We didn’t have the ‘one Christian church’, we had the ‘one Holy catholic church’ – maybe our edition was edited? I enjoyed your experience of being in church and having surprises (disappointing). I guess mere mortals vote on names and words to serve their purposes – I was glad that next part of the Creed, “forgiveness of sins”, entailing looking into the heart, was the next week’s class. No denominations involved – just consideration of God’s view of us.
July 24th, 2011 | 5:31 am
Yes, I hold firmly to “the holy catholic church” (with asterisk), but I am more amused by many of my Roman-Catholic friends who have tendency make the mistake in other way, calling every Christian “Catholic” (I am afraid, with mistaken ignorance about non-Roman-Catholic Christians). When appropriate, I usually reply with the lecture how I would love to be Catholic (even Roman Catholic … I believe one should accept the majority denomination in the place he lives), but that Catholics are not enough catholic for me. Which usually leads to a nice conversation about what does the “catholic” actually means and how it is silly (and truly heretic) to separate parts of the Church and discard others.
July 24th, 2011 | 7:04 pm
@ David Nickol. Instead of RCC how about “RomeX”, with the “x” capitalized to represent our Savior’s cross?
[no brain cells were damaged during the fabrication of this comment]
July 25th, 2011 | 12:25 pm
Mr. Sacramone may have a good sense of humor, if you like the sarcastic tone. I don’t and I did not find his article enlightening in the least. What I really miss is any sense of his convictions in a positive direction. There is plenty of ridicule for this and that stupidity to be found in various organizations but why should he care? I, at least, found next to nothing that convinces me that he loves his brothers and sisters with all of their warts and shortcomings. After all Christ made a rather big deal out of His command for us to love one another in a way that distinguishes us from the world.
July 29th, 2011 | 1:56 am
Just want to point out that Kennedy’s heirs had a fight with his succeeding minister and are no longer attached to Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. I would assume that’s why they’d change their name. Not a fan of the late Kennedy’s Christian nationalism, so, eh, whatever.
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