Once more, hello Ron!

It’s high time we wrap up this series on the good things that Christian Reformed people who are no longer pure enough to continue in that fellowship hope to take along into their new church homes. Time’s a-wastin’.

My own church and a dozen others have, as of two weeks ago, severed their connection with the denomination, and more are on the way out. Two weeks hence the synodical Brethren—and perhaps a few Sistern—will gather to receive that news, doubtless “covering the matter in prayer” as they did every time they brought the hammer down during their previous three assemblies. Some among the ousted will repeat now, as then, Amos 5:21-23.

Virtues Complicated

You recall that my circle of thirty-some correspondents identified six traits they particularly value about the CRC. I’ve treated four of them so far: a communal, God-centered piety; a holistic sense of God’s redemption and the Christian’s calling; a high esteem for education and the life of the mind; and a robust confessional theology. 

The remaining two traits get complicated. My correspondents admire what I call the triple-S complex in Christian Reformed collective character: sacrificial, sober, and stalwart. But they, and many other, also see a negative obverse on that coin: tribalism, insularity, pride.

A similar contradiction attends the final virtue, the CRC’s longstanding deliberative style of governance. That above all has been bulldozed in the synod’s forced march to exclusion so that this treasure’s flip side is a sense of frustration and betrayal.

Sacrificial Character

Perhaps the most frequent theme among my correspondents is a sense of wonder, even awe, over the sacrifices of time and money their forebears made to create a remarkable set of institutions. Churches, of course, but also Christian schools and colleges built by first- or second-generation immigrants of modest means. As finances and educational levels improved, the giving and building continued: psychiatric hospitals and tuberculosis sanitaria; agencies to evangelize at home and abroad, to care for special-needs children, to facilitate adoption and provide for refugees. Substantial housing ministries at home and massive community development projects abroad. In terms of bearing out the gospel Monday through Saturday, Christian Reformed folk have punched way beyond their weight. 

For two reasons. First, they created institutions for the long run, not fly-by-night enterprises centered on a single leader’s charisma. Theirs has been collective work built on communal trust and clear accountability. There have been financial scandals, yes, but remarkably few given how open this field is to corruption. Second, generosity has been modeled from generation to generation. Christian Reformed folk long rivaled Mormons for the top rank in American per-capita charitable giving rates. A local Presbyterian pastor once ruefully told me how the CRC’s then-ban on divorce redounded to his benefit. The ousted couples that came to his church did wonders for congregational singing—and budgets. Plus, “they loved theological sermons.”    

Tribal Solidarity

The second “S,” sober, came up in our consideration of piety, so let’s proceed to the third, “stalwart.” The thesaurus’s supply of synonyms here is a veritable profile of classic Christian Reformed character: reliable, loyal, faithful, devoted, constant, firm, steadfast, on and on. But I’m haunted by the question of how much all of this has been rooted in a fourth S: solidarity with a strong shadow side of tribalism, negatively taken. “Us” vis á vis—or vs.—“them.”  Insiders and outsiders. The old fundraising motto for Calvin College was: “Our school for our people.” It’s taken long, hard work to get beyond that, and the job’s not done. 

For me the $64,000 question for those of us leaving the CRC is whether all these virtuous traits can be transplanted to another context without the common memories and group loyalties that have nurtured them to date. If the nurture has been strong enough, the answer is yes. And since recent synodical procedures have been cavalier in ripping old bonds apart, it might be that the old soil has turned toxic for the fruit we want to bear. 

Deliberative Governance

Calvin and Yale University philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff tells of the time that he took a colleague from Princeton Seminary to a session of a CRC synod. The visitor couldn’t believe what he witnessed: “a genuinely theological discussion in which the participants respectfully discussed issues on which they disagreed, without any pressure to rush to a conclusion.” It was so different from proceedings in his own denomination, the visitor said, where everything was pre-set and political.

Since COVID, CRC synods have declined to that level too, and a number of my correspondents pointed out the fact with remorse, even indignation. Accusing the progressives of being woke, the so-called traditionalists have undertaken their own imitation of “the world,” says one observer—that is, the world of Donald Trump with his disregard for the rule of law, precedents, and due procedure. “Rules for them are only the means to an end, the end being power and control.” And—as the synod of 2024 demonstrated by inventing and applying the category of “limited suspension” found nowhere in the church order—new measures can be jerry-rigged to reach an outcome designed in advance without any genuine conversation or theological deliberation in the process. 

In fact, bad faith marked the denomination’s consideration of same-sex relationships from the start, mourns another correspondent. Membership on the committee appointed to study the issue was limited to those in agreement with a policy established in 1973, irrespective of a subsequent half century of scientific research and abundant personal experience. Relevant scholars at the university over which the CRC claims pride of “ownership” were entirely bypassed for consultation where traditionally that was their role. 

Ignoring the Confessions

The bad faith includes theology and not just process, he continues. Belgic Confession Article 2 says that “God speaks to us in two ways,” in Scripture and creation. “Use them both. When the sources seem irreconcilable, be honest about it; don’t just dig in to defend preconceived notions with predetermined outcomes.” The synod’s Human Sexuality Report committed just that error, conducting an “exceedingly narrow survey of the current knowledge” on the subject and so necessarily rendering a dishonest “evaluation of the issues” which therefore could not provide “the definitive answer to a deeply complicated question.” That is, the Belgic Confession was violated in the name of confessional orthodoxy.

All in all, then, “thanks to a deeply flawed report being equated with scripture, the creeds, and the forms of unity, thoughtfulness and honesty have given way to the fragile certainties of the loudest voices. The Spirit’s still small voice has been drowned out by human noise.”  

Such is the state of the CRC, Ron. But let’s not leave the matter on that doleful note.

The best single lines among all the input I received belong to a small-town Baptist boy who learned Reformed ways at [then] Calvin College and became a loyal member and insightful leader in the CRC. A telling episode from college days: “I will never forget meeting kids from the dairy farms of McBain who read and argued philosophy on their lunch breaks while out baling hay.” That quality and the others reviewed in this series, he continues, helped equip the CRC to play “a unique role in American Protestant Christianity, influencing others far beyond its formal reach.”

My personal takeaway image: the CRC has been “a theologically literate, biblically serious, and intellectually adept archipelago of the faith in a sea of populism and intellectual impatience. American Christianity loses something precious with the CRC’s demise.”

Our tour is finished. Time to move on.

Fence photo by Jake Nackos on Unsplash