Ideos Institute, in partnership with a host of Christian organizations and leaders across the country, is launching the 31 Days of Unity Campaign. This campaign, happening in October 2024, is designed to help us expand our imaginations for how God is at work healing the church. In the midst of another contentious election season, we invite Christians to focus on our call to unity and peacemaking.
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Is Unity Possible? Only with Truth and Grace
Is there any reason to believe that unity in the church is possible?
A quick survey of the landscape of American Christianity could easily make one believe that division is an inevitability. The American church is great at creating and multiplying divisions, and seemingly getting better at it all the time! Choose any social boundary or politicized social issue and it won’t take long for you to find it causing disunity in the church. Those issues alone aren’t enough for the church, however, as we add a host of our own theological divisions, which function as insider arguments further separating us from one another.
The rest of the world stands at a distance and watches, or chooses to actively ignore us, as we vigorously battle over biblical interpretation, the role of women in the church, every possible issue around the LGBTQ+ community, creeds, schisms that happened centuries ago, access to and the nature of sacraments, and the myriad theological questions around the nature of God. Instead of learning to live in tension with and generative dialogue around these issues they are walls dividing us from one another.
These issues and the brokenness accompanying them are the elephants in the room demanding our attention and requiring our reflection, if we are pursue unity. They are huge, they are daunting, and we can’t pretend they don’t exist.
Despite these real challenges, we believe unity is worth pursuing, and continues to exist as a possibility for the church. We believe it, because it is the purpose and calling of the Church. It is also one of the unquestioned goals of the Spirit’s work within us.
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me - John 17:20-23
Despite this calling, we are struggling to live into it. Thus, here are seven elephants and seven graces to explore as we move us away from our divisiveness.
The Truth about Seven Elephants in the Room
Here are some truths, staring at us like big old elephants, that we must name if we are to pursue unity.
We would rather gather with people who look like, think like, and believe like we do
Life is more comfortable if we don’t have to do the hard work of getting to know people across lines of difference. Our comfort works like gravity, pulling us back and away from the relational work necessary to grow.
Some of the walls that separate us from each other were built to protect the vulnerable from harm by the majority
Our world is filled with walls that divide the powerful and powerless. Some are built by the powerful to keep out the powerless. Other walls, however, are built to keep out the powerful from coming in and adding to the suffering of the powerless. Some walls were built in direct response to a history of relational violence of the majority against minority groups.
Unity is a difficult concept in a world of hyper-individualism. In this culture a commitment to a shared identity can feel like a threat to personal identity.
Part of the modern project has been the creation of hyper-individualized identities. Online, these identities are avatars, representations of who we want to be in a virtual existence. But these avatars have extended to real life where our identities have a performative component, earning our worth from the attention of the world. But, what communities are our avatars committed to?
Many calls to unity have been shaped to preserve a broken status quo, not transform it.
Calls for unity and peace can be weaponized against those who are seeking to transform an injustice. Those with power can and have used calls to “keep the peace” and “seek unity” to minimize prophetic voices and justify their own inactivity to address injustices. Unity is a form of justice, where all voices are present and mutuality exists. Without mutuality and justice, there is no unity.
We aren’t nearly as comfortable with difference and diversity as God is.
God creates beauty through diversity. The vast array of variance in creation is extraordinary. This extends to humanity, created in God’s image. Often, we like the idea of diversity, but are we truly motivated to build communities with diversity of worship styles, theology, language, and culture?We struggle with recency bias, thinking that our particular version of Christianity is the pinnacle of theological progress.
For thousands of year, Christians across the globe have been encountering God through their language, culture, and understanding of life. And yet, many of us are convinced that our particular experience of God, through our culture, is superior to them all. Instead of joining this beautiful chorus of voices, we shut them out and hide away, listening to the echo of our own voice and those who agree with us.
We are angry, and we have enemies
Reconciliation requires effort and commitment from all sides of a conflict. We can forgive those who have harmed us, but we cannot be reconciled without working together to create and maintain healing. We cannot be unified with those who do not want to be unified with us.
The Grace that Gives us Hope
Even with all these barriers there is grace enough for us. God wants to heal God’s church. Let us also name the reasons we seek unity with hopefulness.
Here are some graces we must cling to.
The body has a remarkable way of healing itself
As we seek to heal the body of Christ, there is much to be learned from how our own bodies heal themselves. The body is an incredible regenerating, healing, resilient living machine. So too is the body of Christ. We have thousands of years of conflict, oppression, disaster, theological confrontation, wars, and battles against empires that prove the church’s resiliency.
Love covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8)
If healing the church were dependent on us, the weight of our sinfulness and the brokenness of the world around us would be too great. There would be no hope. But love has a power that goes beyond all this sin. Love for one another is the grace that allows us to continue engaging and seeking a better way forward, despite our own sinfulness. When we don’t know how to move forward there is always the perfect law of love.
Stories have a profound ability to change us
Some problems you solve by not trying to solve them directly, but instead approaching them from a different angle. This is why we give God thanks for the grace of stories. Stories have a power to heal us, expand our imaginations, and teach us to love each other, in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. If we aren’t sure of how to pursue unity, we can begin simply by allowing the grace of one another’s stories into our lives.
Diversity in gifts and passions is a strength
God doesn’t carry out the work of the kingdom in one way or through a small set of people. Instead, God believes in diversity, redundancy, and interdependency to carry out the work of the kingdom. If we aren’t sure of our role or how to cultivate unity, that is merely a calling to pay attention to what God is already doing in and through someone else!
God wants to heal the church more than we do
However much we want God to heal the church, Jesus wants to heal his bride even more. Jesus died to redeem his church. The idea of unity isn’t ours, it is God’s. It is baked into the very design of the kingdom, and a clear sign to the world that we belong to God. (John 17) This is a grace that can sustain us.
Jesus is Lord over all
A lot of our arguments involve the rulers and powers of this world. In the same way that the power players of the political and religious groups vied for power in Jesus’ day, we continue to separate ourselves by our pursuit of worldly power. Jesus is Lord over the church, and over every power and authority. This is our cause for hope as we face very real confrontations with the powers of this world.
We know the end of the story
The story of this age ends with the kingdom coming in fullness and God dwelling among God’s people. Every tongue, every nation, every people, will be gathered in the presence of God. Seeking unity is our way of proclaiming to the world that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again! Ultimately God will reconcile all things through Christ. This hope is a grace that calls us to seek a better way.
Unity is only possible in and through the presence of Jesus. We are completely incapable of achieving unity on our own. As such, our pursuit of unity should look like Jesus’ own ministry. Jesus did not pursue unity through anger, coercion, violence, or manipulation. Jesus did not hide away from truth or offer platitudes. Jesus did not offer the illusion of unity. Jesus came in the fullness of truth and grace and invited his followers to discover unity with God and each other through his life.
So, let us embrace the way of Jesus and commit to the fullness of truth and grace in our pursuit of unity. Without this commitment to truth and grace, this campaign would be pointless.
Will you join us in our pursuit of unity? Will you take 1 minute and sign up today?
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