Denomination—Creed, Organization, Culture

Nancy Ammerman’s contribution to Denominationalism is outstanding. She asks what we’re studying when we study denominations, and she comes up with three answers: A group of Christian communities defined by a common set of beliefs and practices; an organization; and a cultural profile (evident, for instance, in Episcopalian jokes). All are part of the reality of the denomination’s life and history.

Officials within a denomination often focus on the first definition: “Those who occupy pulpits, teach in the seminaries, and write adult education materials for churches are likely to look toward beliefs and practices as the core of their denominational identity” (115).

But especially in the past century or more, denominations have become “modern organizations definable by their bylaws, budgets, and headquarters buildings” (115). She offers a striking SBC illustration of the professionalization of denominational life: “Long-standing tradition . . . has called for each church to send messengers to an annual meeting of the local association of churches bearing a letter of greeting. The churches all reported on the triumphs and struggles of their congregations during the year and perhaps even posed a perplexing theological or disciplinary question or two” (116-7). This is still done in many churches: One of the treasured parts of the meetings of the PCA’s Pacific Northwest Presbytery is the time devoted to church reports, delivered in person by a pastor or elder, followed by prayer.

In the SBC, that practice persists in a very different form: “What the church sends is now called a Uniform Church Letter (UCL, to the bureaucrats who handle them), and it resembles IRS form 1040 more than it does a friendly letter. It is full of technical language, with boxes to be filled in and columns to be added. It assumes that the programs in each church correspond to the plans and materials that have been formulated at headquarters, therefore making their outcomes reportable in uniform  fashion. . . . It is the perfect example of the standardizing and quantifying Max Weber would have expected” (117).

Finally, denominations have cultural identities quite apart from membership. Ammerman notes that survey evidence can be misconstrued if this is forgotten. Someone who ticks off “Presbyterian” may not be a member of any church, but has some cultural identification with something about the cultural ethos of Presbyterianism. She writes, “there is out there in American culture something defined as Presbyterianism that is not simply a theological tradition or an organizational membership. After a few hundred years of existence, denominational identities have taken on a cultural life of their own. The more established the denomination is, the more pervasive its cultural identity; the ore sectarian and separate the group, the more its cultural identity may be at odds with its actual practices and the less likely it is that someone not actually a participant will claim a preference for that group” (120).