I wish that I had found this quote by Reinhold Niebuhr in reading through his work which comes from circa 1916. Yet to give credit where credit is do, I got it from Ben Cole affectionately known as The Baptist Blogger. If you think you know who Baptist are you’ve never met Ben Cole. Ben can be found on his website and on SBC Outpost, a great site that exposes the pharisee-isms and the hope of reform that is in that denomination. Let me be clear though, Southern Baptist are some of God’s finest Christians and like every denomination it is filled with the proverbial wheat and tares. Yet, they like all of us desperately need to address the issue of sin found in our own eyes before dealing with the sin in our neighbors, see Mat. 7:1-5. A good place to start is this mess of denominatinalism within the body of Christ. Read Neihbuhr excerpt for a good view of why denominations are a secondary issue to the work of spreading the message of Christ.
Excerpted from Leaves From the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic:
“Doesn’t this denominational business wear on one’s nerves? If I were a doctor, people would consult me according to the skill I had and the reputation I could acquire. But being a minister, I can appeal only to people who are labeled as I am. Yesterday a professor I met asked me what denomination I belonged to. Being told, he promptly pigeonholed me into my proper place and with a superior air assumed that my mind was as definitely set by my denominational background as is that of an African Hottentot by his peculiar environment.
Perhaps if I belonged to a larger denomination this wouldn’t irk me so much. I suffer from an inferiority complex because of the very numerical weakness of my denomination. If I belonged to a large one I might strut about claim its glory for myself. If I give myself to religion as a profession I must find some interdenominational outlet for my activities. But what? Secretaries and Y.M.C.A workers are too inarticulate. They deal too much with machinery and too little with ideas. I don’t want to be a chauffeur. Does that mean that I am a minister merely because I am a fairly glib talker? Who knows?
But let us not be too cynical and too morbidly introspective. I may find something worth saying in time and escape the fate of being a mere talker. At any rate I swear that I will never aspire to be a preacher of pretty sermons. I’ll keep them rough enough just to escape the temptation of degenerating into an elocutionist. Maybe I had better stop quoting so much poetry. But that is hardly the point. Plenty of sermons lack both beauty and meaning.
Possibly related posts:
- life reflections on my spiritual journey
- Thoughts to Come
- Politics and Faith Reflections
- Confession of mandatory chapels, dispensational charts, and meeting Jesus at 17
- Reflections on Pelagius and Augustine