Interdenondenominational

“So, you’ve heard of interdenominational. You’ve heard of nondenominational. Well, this church identifies as interdenondenominational.”

johnbcrist, ‘Church Hunters: Episode 2’ (2017)

All I was doing was explaining to my orchestra desk-partner¹ that I wouldn’t be able to make the all-day rehearsal later that month because I’d be travelling back from a friend’s wedding. That’s one of the things one encounters when one has a lot of Christian friends, I added: they display a tendency to get married at what is considered, in the mainstream of our society, an unusually young age.

“Are you a Christian?” my desk-partner asked me. Perfectly reasonably.

I freely confirmed that I was. Easy question.

“Which denomination?” she followed up. Again, perfectly reasonably: I don’t in the slightest mean to imply that that’s something she was at all wrong or insensitive or ignorant to ask me. It was, I think we’d all agree, entirely fair as a question – and yet I wasn’t at all sure how to reply. I ended up shrugging, pulling a bit of a face, and making a tsh noise, before remarking rather vaguely that I was going to an Anglican church at the moment.

 

This is not the Anglican church I currently attend, but it is the one with which the secondary school I went to is associated. It’s quite a good cathedral, as they go.

But of course, that doesn’t really mean anything. After all, Anglicanism is literally the archetypal broad church.² “I go to an Anglican church,” could mean almost anything: it could mean repeating endless archaic liturgy, kneeling for the confession, and turning east for the creed; it could mean meeting in a school hall and using a bit of PE apparatus as a communion table; it could mean taking notes on a forty-minute exegesis of some obscure minor prophet; it could mean staring at a candle in silence punctuated only by occasional Taizé chants; it could mean publicly crying on the shoulder of the nice lady who just prayed for you in tongues; it could mean discussing current social issues over coffee and cake – I could go on. “I go to an Anglican church,” doesn’t, in practical terms, say anything much about what I actually believe.

Nor are other denominational identifiers significantly more useful. The church I went to until the age of (I think) about fourteen belonged to two denominations, Methodist and United Reformed, the latter being itself an amalgamation of two further denominations, the English branches of Presbyterianism and Congregationalism (minorities of whose congregations continued independently after the merger took place in the 1970s). To this day, I have very little idea what the distinguishing features of any of these denominations are, though I can’t help but feel said features surely can’t be all that distinguishing if their bearers are so easily merged.

In short, denominational labels don’t really tell you anything. Surely there’s got to be a better way of doing things.

***

I hadn’t been particularly trying to turn the conversation into a debate about predestination; it just sort of happened somehow. Perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect anything else when one goes for a spontaneous lunch with two fellow Theology students who also happen to be fellow members of the body of Christ. The one of the two I knew less well had already asked me – in an unusually, though pleasingly, straightforward manner – whether I was a Bible-believing Christian, and I had freely confirmed that I was. Easy question. But then I began attempting to articulate what I thought the contents of the Bible compelled me to believe about the sovereignty of God,³ and he asked a follow-up question as to whether I would situate myself in the Reformed tradition.

It was entirely fair as a question, and yet I wasn’t at all sure how to reply. “Um,” I eventually managed, “I guess you could say I’m heavily Reformed-influenced.” What I meant by this was, I have read some stuff by some people who call themselves Reformed and I agreed with a good proportion of it.

‘Reformed’ doesn’t refer to a denomination; it refers to a theological persuasion that can plausibly span a number of denominations. Yet exactly what the defining features of that theological persuasion are is far from readily apparent. On one level, there’s surely a sense in which any Christian tradition that traces its origins back to the Reformation can claim the title (like the United Reformed Church I mentioned above), making it little more than a synonym for ‘Protestant’. On another, if you tap ‘Reformed’ into the search box on Wikipedia, you find yourself redirected to the entry for ‘Calvinism’.⁴ On yet another, I recently saw someone in an online discussion give the minimum components of Reformed theology as Confessional, Calvinistic, and Covenantal,⁵ i.e. that in order to call oneself Reformed, one must believe in not only the gospel and the doctrines of grace⁶ but also covenant theology.⁷ Furthermore, I think it’s fair to say that in certain circles, ‘Reformed’ seems to be used to mean something close to ‘evangelical’ or ‘orthodox’: calling someone Reformed is kind of a way of approving her or him as correctly believing in the truths revealed in the scriptures. But then, of course, this leaves it liable to turn into a way of approving someone as holding the same views as oneself on certain secondary issues. For example, in another recent conversation I had, a particular subgroup of churches calling itself ‘reformed’ was mentioned; I, curious, pushed on the point as to what its defining characteristics were, only to discover that its main one was an opposition to placing women in church leadership roles.

‘Reformed’ may only be one example, but from the sprawling mess of possibilities behind this one little word, I feel able to conclude that, although cross-denominational theological labels might tell you a bit more than mere denominational ones, they still don’t do an altogether satisfactory job. Surely there’s still got to be a better way of doing things.

***

I hadn’t thought my opinion was a particularly controversial one, but, judging from my friend’s evident surprise at my expressing it, it turns out that it’s not necessarily normal amongst committed Christians to believe that the events described in the book of Joshua actually happened in history. He said something about the apparent moral problem raised if the Israelites really did, on God’s orders, slaughter all those people in order to acquire the land they had been inhabiting; I replied with something about our human unwillingness to recognise the severity of punishment our sin justly deserves, and God’s right to execute said punishment by whichever means he chooses (making it all the more flabbergasting, incidentally, that, for those of us born again in Christ, he chose to execute it on his beloved, sinless Son in our stead). He countered with something to the effect that surely, then, by my reckoning, God could command us his Church to carry out a comparable slaughter of huge numbers of people, say, tomorrow, if it took his fancy – was I somehow OK with that? I responded with something along the lines that we the Church are under a different covenant to Israel, so that our inheritance is not of this world and will not be obtained by worldly force.

The conversation concluded about there, but another friend who’d evidently overheard it – and presumably discerned something vaguely theologically interesting in my responses – promptly caught my attention and asked me whether I’d mind informing her of the theological persuasion to which I subscribed.

Here we were, then. Fair enough if I was reluctant to affirm or deny the adherence of my theological views to somebody else’s contrived labels, denominational or otherwise – those ambiguous, polysemous identifiers that could easily mean something different to my ears than to someone else’s; those heavily loaded terms that could constitute the difference between being accepted as orthodox by another believer, or suspected as otherwise – fair enough, surely, if I didn’t want to be assessed according to those fickle categories. But what I had here wasn’t that sort of yes-or-no question; it was an open-ended one with room to show working and everything. It was the ideal chance to express my core theological views in whichever terms I myself felt were most suitable.

And what did I do with this golden opportunity? Well, if I recall rightly, I ended up shrugging, pulling a bit of a face, and making a tsh noise, before saying something to the effect that I didn’t really know. I just try to read the Bible, interpret what it says correctly, and then believe that.

I hasten to add that I’m not by any means trying to portray myself as terribly noble and pious and uncorrupted compared to all those dreadful people who actually appreciate the ease and efficiency of discussing their theological views using such pre-coined terms as are designed to make such discussions easier and more efficient. I’m not by any means trying to suggest that people who find it helpful to describe themselves using terms like ‘Anglican’ or ‘Reformed’ or whatever aren’t trying to read the Bible, interpret what it says correctly, and then believe that; on the contrary, an awful lot of them are probably making a far better job of it than I am. I’m not by any means trying to initiate some new movement modelling authentic, untainted, Bible-believing Christianity, because, let’s be real here, all that would really achieve would be to add one more denomination – or denomination-esque group⁸ – to the seething mass already in existence. (Not to mention that if I were in charge, it’d be a pretty terrible one.)

Indeed, it can be really useful to know and utilise a repertoire of technical terminology to describe and distinguish particular theological positions. Labels save time and streamline logic – assuming, that is, that everyone present is on the same page as to what those labels are being used to denote. The reason I shrink from them isn’t because I think I’m somehow above them; it’s because of my concern that what other people think I mean when I use them isn’t necessarily going to be the same as what I actually mean. How can I honestly state that a particular term does or doesn’t apply to me if I’m not clear on exactly what it is understood to refer to?

At the end of the day, adelphoi, we’re all trying to read the Bible, interpret what it says correctly, and then believe that. We all belong to one body, are indwelt by one Spirit, were called to one hope, acknowledge one Lord, hold to one faith, recognise one baptism, worship one God and Father of all.⁹ It may certainly be helpful to use (carefully defined) technical theological terminology when we’re having technical theological discussions, but the primary identity we need to recognise in each other is never one of belonging to this or that Christian subgroup, whether that be a positive or a negative thing in our thinking. On the contrary, the primary identity we need to recognise in each other is always one of belonging to Christ.

Footnotes

¹ Yeah, I play violin in my university symphony orchestra, https://www.exeterguild.org/societies/symphonyorchestra/, but please don’t be impressed; they only audition front-desk strings, so I can lurk at the back missing half the notes and still get my name on the concert programme.

² According to Wikipedia, the term was coined to describe “those Anglicans tolerant of multiple forms of conformity to ecclesiastical authority”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_church.

³ Which I most recently expressed in blog format in ‘Freedestination Revisited’, under ‘2016’ then ‘December’ in the box on the right.

⁴ See for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism.

⁵ This was in reply to a comment made on a poll created by The Dirty Christian, https://www.facebook.com/pg/thedirtyxian/posts/?ref=page_internal. If you’re at all tempted to argue that what some randomer says on the Internet can hardly be taken as an official definition, I counter that my point pertains precisely to differing usages of these kinds of terms amongst all the kinds of people who use them, rather than to lack of precision in any particular definition of an official nature.

⁶ A.k.a. TULIP: https://www.gotquestions.org/doctrines-of-grace.html. Which I affirm.

⁷ Namely this jazz: https://www.gotquestions.org/covenant-theology.html. Which I don’t.

⁸ Like ‘independent evangelical’ or ‘interdenominational’ or ‘nondenominational’. On which note, the video I quoted at the start of the post is hilarious and well worth a few minutes of your time, but it’s the second of two parts, so you should start with this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT70cA-7qMk.

⁹ I here allude to the beginning of Ephesians 4: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+4&version=ESVUK.