 |  | Over this summer I had the opportunity to take a seminary course of spirituality in diversity. A mixed class featuring Methodists, Moravians, Episcopalians, and Catholics, we spent the weeks exploring the ways in which note only our different faith traditions but also our different backgrounds and demographics impacted our Christian faith and the ways in which we express it both as individuals and as groups. For one particularly memorable class we went on a field trip to various sites around Bethlehem. In the morning, we visited a farm owned by Franciscan nuns where sustainable agriculture methods are used to produce food destined to be distributed at food banks to those in need. After lunch, our first stop was the local Episcopalian cathedral. Originally founded by important families in the steel and rail industries, the Cathedral is an ornate building and stepping into the sanctuary there was a sense that this was a place crafted especially for the sole purpose of worship. Meanwhile to one side a bench provided a bed for someone without a shelter of their own, a more immediate and pressing use on a weekday afternoon. Next was a visit to an interfaith ministry offering various forms of support to those suffering from severe poverty. Finally we visited an African Methodist Episcopal Zion church whose pastor had just returned from the state capitol, rallying for minimum wage reforms, and were treated to an oral history of the congregation and their involvement in civil rights work.
What struck me throughout all of this was that whilst we may have differed, perhaps even strongly, in terms of theological, social, or political issues, everybody there was united in recognising the importance of the gospel, of Christ’s message of the Kingdom of Heaven, and of the importance of not just believing in Him but in striving to emulate Christ’s example.
It can be very easy to let our differences create division. Loving our neighbour is much easier when that neighbour agrees with us on issues we put great importance on, but it can become much harder the greater the disagreement, and the more important we think that issue is. Just as it might seem shocking to turn a grand place of worship into a makeshift bedroom, so too can doing what Jesus would have us do sometimes be upsetting to our established idea of how we think we should “do church”.
Reading the news can be disheartening, as it can feel that we live in an increasingly divided world and that even the church is becoming more fractured. Perhaps we can even at times be tempted to increase that division, looking for points of similarity and difference in choosing which local churches have members we deem worthy of associating with. Instead, we should look for and recognise those essential points of unity: that across traditions and denominations we are united in Christ, and called to the same work of the Kingdom.
God’s church is a diverse, and it is through, not despite, that diversity that we are equipped to carry out our calling to follow Him.
Blessings,
Stephen Whitehead
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