Churches adopt the 'binary of liberalism'

Church members often reflect the wider society in their conflicts and how they identify themselves. Joshua Brockway, a Church of the Brethren minister and a doctoral student who works on the staff of that denomination, writes about this phenomenon in his blog for Missio Alliance.

In “Scandal of the Brethren: Binary and Church,” he notes how churches often divide themselves into two camps: conservative and progressive. He calls this the “binary of liberalism,” which he says “has framed the way we imagine ourselves as disciples.”

We in Mennonite Church USA must recognize that this isn’t just true of the Church of the Brethen. It is also true of us—and many other churches.

Brockway writes about how this plays out: “We unintentionally (or intentionally, depending on who you talk to) label our congregations and our districts as progressive and conservative. There are even certain places that receive a wink and nod when they are mentioned because of the extent to which they reflect one or the other of the modern camps.”

He goes on to get more specific about how this tends to work by looking at the question of sexuality. He notes that in 2009, Church of the Brethren leaders initiated an extended process of local study and districtwide listening sessions in response to two different responses to the question of sexuality that were presented to the church for discussion at an annual meeting. In 2011, the final report was presented to the church, and a decision was made.

“The report was a case study in the conservative-progressive divide in the church,” he writes. Though not a statistical survey, the report showed that there were generally three camps that emerged from the local conversations.

First, the report said there are two camps at the far ends of the spectrum, one conservative and one progressive.

The surprise came when leaders realized that together “the two groups comprised one-third of the members of the denomination. That means that one-sixth of the denomination is decidedly progressive and another sixth is conservative.”

This means that two-thirds of the denomination are somewhere in the middle of the question about sexuality. “In terms of parliamentary procedure, the deciding majority is in the middle,” Brockway writes.

Further, this means that the two ends of the spectrum—the minority—are driving the conversation. Sound familiar?

This has serious consequences for the church. Brockway writes: “The ideologues on the ends—those most set in their perspective regardless of what is happening in their congregation and in their community—make no room for those in the middle to narrate their perspectives or experiences. The majority of the church is shut down by the constant debates and politics of one-third of the membership duking it out among themselves.”

Brockway says that in his experience, this same breakdown is true for other issues as well: war and peace, mission and evangelism, gender and leadership. This does not mean, however, that the middle is lukewarm.

Brockway warns against adopting a model of making decisions that teaches us “there can be only two options—winner and loser, with us or against us, yes or no.”

This model derives from modern liberalism, he writes, with its emphasis on efficiency and the binary of progressive and conservative, which forms us to expect only two answers.

By following this model, he concludes, “we have not only lost the memory of our past but we have lost the ability to envision the possibilities of faithfulness in our context.”