Faith and Tradition

Things were simpler when I was a child. That statement could be applied broadly, but I'm speaking here about church and denomination. I was Baptist before I was born, literally not figuratively, adopted from a Baptist adoption home in New Orleans, reared in the home of a devout church librarian, and earned perfect attendance pin awards in Sunday School (only the elderly Culpepper couple had longer badges for more years of uninterrupted attendance). There was never a question of whether or not my sister and I would be attending church. No doubt you've heard the joke about the guy who had a drug problem as a child-- his parents drug him to church. That is my story, only with a twist that placed my mother in the leading role. 

I was immersed into the membership of Trinity Baptist Church at the tender age of seven, and never thought much about nor was I exposed to other faith traditions. Port Arthur boasted a strong Catholic community, but I grew up influenced by those who did not understand that tradition, and what we do not understand we most often resist and even criticize. I remember preaching sermons as a young man that criticized the Catholic Church and questioned many things about adherents to the Roman Catholic tradition. I was equally as quick to pass judgment on any group that did not share my denominational label. Without knowing it (and I would have vehemently denied it), I had more in common with Pharisees than I did the pioneers of my own free church tradition. Everything was simple then--if you weren't like me, you were wrong.

Fast forward now many years later, forty plus to be exact. I work for a Baptist university, preach most Sunday mornings in a Methodist church, and preach Sunday evenings for a non-denominational fellowship (in the truest sense of the term--a Christian group, a group of Christians, a family of believers that believe in family, a small gathering of believers whose loyalty to one another is surpassed only by devotion to Christ). I am drawn to the writings of the spiritual classics, most of which were written prior to the Protestant Reformation, making them Roman Catholic writings. My favorite weekday settings for prayer are Catholic sanctuaries, surrounded by images that evoke deep contemplation; colored glass and symbols that feed a hunger to know the unseen God. You may say that makes me quasi-Baptist, but you might also declare me to be quasi-Methodist, quasi-Presbyterian, quasi-Anglican, or even quasi-Catholic.

What I'm saying is that at age 54 faith and tradition are no longer simple matters, and I am comfortable with the ambiguity. My Christian identity can no longer be defined by or confined to a label; my allegiance belongs only to a Person. The Person of whom I speak loves all of His creation equally and sees us according to a color and not a tag line, not the color of our skin or our flag or our hymn book, but the color of the blood of Jesus Christ that makes us clean and makes us one. 

"When Jesus took the bread and said, 'This is my body which is broken for you' (1 Corinthians 11:24), it's hard to believe that even in his wildest dreams he foresaw the tragic and ludicrous brokenness of the church as his body. There's no reason why everyone should be Christian in the same way and every reason to leave room for differences, but if all the competing factions of Christendom were to give as much of themselves to the high calling and holy hope that unite them as they do now to the relative inconsequentialities that divide them, the church would look more like the Kingdom of God for a change and less like an ungodly mess." (Buechner, ~originally published in "Whistling in the Dark" and later in "Beyond Words")

"Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences." (John Wesley)