We seem to be fascinated with labels. I remember from my student days, and from studying the Stone-Campbell Movement’s history, that Thomas Campbell was called an “Old Light, Anti-Burgher, Seceder Presbyterian.” If it takes four separate phrases to tell someone what sort of follower of Jesus you are, at best, there is a lot of confusion; at worst, Jesus has been lost in the vocabulary of division. That no doubt has a lot to do with some of what Campbell wrote in The Declaration and Address years later upon coming to the “new world” of the United States.
Campbell seemed to detest the label mentality. Why not simply be a disciple of Christ? Or a Christian? Why not forget the adjectives?
Fast forward 200 hundred years or so, and we are more into labels than Campbell might have been able to imagine. Far too often, we use labels to dismiss others – as though Jesus’ prayer about the oneness of the body of Christ in John 17, or Paul’s insistence on “one body, many members” in 1 Corinthians 12, were easily dismissed through some insistence on getting all the labels right.
Here are some examples. (And let’s just avoid all the denominational names that have become part and parcel of Christianity these days. That’s an issue worthy of consideration – but for a moment, we might even pretend they don’t exist.)
- Evangelical. Defined in some contexts as “people who believe the Bible is the trustworthy Word of God,” it has come to be a term by which some easily dismiss a rather significant portion of the Christian world. Why? Because some who call themselves evangelical have attached themselves to political, social, ethical, and moral ideas that don’t seem to connect with the story about Jesus we find in that trustworthy Word of God.
Many evangelicals have committed themselves to following Jesus as best they humanly, and empowered by the Spirit, can. But there are also many – sometimes it seems like a majority – who are far more interested in a political theory about American government than they are in the Jesus of Scripture. A part of the problem here is that political theory tends to ignore the marginalized, as if the Jesus story is only about people like me.
Too many people easily use the term evangelical to dismiss the faith of lots and lots of people – just because the term has tons of baggage, and we live in a world where if you disagree with me, I should dismiss you as unworthy.
- Progressive. I recently read a book where the author uses terms like “progressive Christian,” “progressive church,” and “progressive Christianity” on just about every page. Not one time was she being positive. Describing original sin as “historic Christian doctrine” – despite that historically it shows up in Augustine, not Jesus or Paul – she dismisses those who don’t believe in original sin as being in the category of heresy, or in the same world as “progressive Christianity.”
For this particular author (and I’ve read lots of others like her), any follower of Jesus who sees issues of substance differently than she does is guilty of being “progressive.” On this side of the great schism among believers, the issue seems to be that if you are really concerned about issues of justice, mass incarceration, racism, Black Lives Matter, or happen to think that Palestinians in the Middle East haven’t gotten a fair shake, then you are a “progressive” and clearly don’t take the historical reality of the Jesus story seriously. (Jimmy Carter may be among the early victims of this “you’re a progressive” spirit when, in 2006, he wrote and published Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.)
No doubt there are “progressives” who don’t give fair attention to what I would consider essential teachings of the New Testament. But I also know lots and lots of people, frustrated by the far-right political infiltration of the church by those who insist on a way of voting and thinking that makes those people uncomfortable, who would insist that “the Bible is the trustworthy word of God,” but are also concerned that our track record on lots of justice-related issues needs some major overhaul and renewed commitment.
Certain kinds of evangelicals – certainly not all – like the author of this book, appear to dismiss far more believers than they should with the broad-brushed swipe of a label – progressive!
There are lots of other labels. In addition to all the generic denominational names, we have to put initials after some of them to know what kind of that denomination we are talking about. Then there are terms like conservative or liberal; fundamentalism or modernism; and, God forbid, “post-modernism.” We swipe at believers with economic theory labels like capitalist, communist, socialist, etc. We are either white or a person of color – and obviously, you can create all sorts of labels with those two distinctions.
Interestingly, the label “Christian” only occurs three times in the New Testament (Acts 11:26; Acts 26:28; and 1 Peter 4:16), and it is possible that they were used in a pejorative sense by “labelers.” This fascination with labels may not be all that new!
All the while, Luke is telling me that Jesus said, “And they will come from east and west and from north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 13:29) That is said, by the way, in the context of Jesus’ reminder to some very religious folks that the appearance of “Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets” may generate some “weeping and gnashing of teeth” when we realize God may see outs and ins a bit differently than we do.
And in case we miss it, Paul reminds us – in Galatians, of all places, where label making may have been an art form – “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28) That, remember, is said in the context of “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” (3:27)
Before you think that it really doesn’t make any difference what one believes, that’s not what this is about. The ultimate question is, how in the world can I be an influence in the very confused world in which we live if I routinely use terms that dismiss people with whom I ought to sit down and have a conversation?
By the way, have you ever noticed that when writing to the Galatians – people who were pretty legalistic and morally upright – Paul omits any word of thanksgiving, and actually uses the word “fool” to describe them twice? (3:1; 3:3) But in writing to the Corinthians – people who have just about every moral, theological, sociological and ecclesiastical problem you can think of – both epistles have eloquent thanksgiving statements at the beginning. In 1 Corinthians, Paul uses the phrase “brothers and sisters” some 27 times, and an additional eight times in 2 Corinthians.
I have often told people that when I grow up, I want to be Paul. More importantly, as I tell those same people we are called to be Jesus to the world.
For me, or anyone else, to achieve those kinds of goals, we simply need to give up the addiction we have to “dismissal by label” as a way of approaching those with whom we disagree. Then we can sit down for a conversation.
Believing what Scripture teaches is important. It is so important that if forgetting the labels gives me an opportunity to share what I understand with someone else, then it will have all been well worth the effort.
Wye Huxford 