Culture War in the Churches

Battles between liberals/progressive and conservatives have broken out in many denominations, from Missouri Synod Lutherans to Southern Baptists, and they are still going on in the Episcopal and Presbyterian and other churches.

Some have suggested that this internecine warfare is the cause of the decline of denominational identity, loyalty, and resources. Russell Richey suggests that this assessment may mistake symptom for cause:

“Might the cleavage and the warfare be more symptom than problem, more effect than cause? Might the problem, the cause, lie in the collapse of denominational purpose and in the loss of real reason for hanging together” (88).

Caucuses from the left and right “press themselves on (other) denominational agencies, demanding, in effect, agency adherence to the caucus norm or cause. Thus they behave like the monitoring or regulatory agency so common now in American political life.” In this way, “Regulatory behavior substitutes for the older dynamic and adhesive principles. Regulation, often adversarial in premise or tone, suggest a collapse of denominational cohesion and purpose” (88-89). 

Say what you will about ethnic cohesion the church, it’s a fair sight more deeply rooted, more organic, than cohesion by dictate from the denominational head office.