I was recently catching-up on old episodes of the Center for Christian Studies’ Theological Table Talk podcast. (If you’re interested in matters of the Church, the podcast is well worth your time.) In an early episode, the hosts invited on Brad East, professor of theology at Abilene Christian, and they discussed ordination and other ecclesial matters. There’s a lot to mine in this episode—and it is probably worth coming back to—but I want to focus on one particular point that was made: for churches, autonomy is not the goal, and we should want it to ultimately go away.
This suggestion by East comes in the middle of comments he makes about how the Churches of Christ and some other Protestant folks approach church. Those traditions, as he describes, attempt to DIY theological life; they think, like Descartes, that if they go into a room alone with their Bible, they have a good shot at emerging with a faithful vision of the Lord’s Church. This, we might imagine, is the method employed by autonomous congregations.
In contrast, East argues that such an approach is not only an impossible task, it’s completely misguided. Rather, a robust vision of the Church, a fleshed out example of Scripture’s model, has already been handed down to us in the Great Tradition (think: the doctrinal affirmations and liturgical practices of the historical Church). Here, he adds an insightful aside that some churches think they are moving in the direction of the Great Tradition by allowing the Nicene Creed to be read in the assembly—but this too is wrongheaded, for the point of the Creed is to allow, not to be allowed. East admits that there may be a place for autonomous churches, but a problem emerges when autonomy is the non-negotiable. Our goal ought to be less and less autonomy and, instead, to be swallowed up in that Great Tradition.
Those from my same tradition may, at first blush, find this proposition disconcerting. Autonomy is a major component of the Churches of Christ. This means, whereas other churches may operate under an episcopal model (with singular leaders arranged hierarchically, as in Roman Catholicism) or under a presbyterian model (with representatives from local churches governing over a synod, as in the Reformed tradition), the Churches of Christ operate by a congregationalist polity where each local congregation is independent. Moreover, they are often more congregationalist than other congregationalist traditions—while denominations like the Baptists still have conventions that hold real power, the closest thing Churches of Christ have are their publications and associated universities (which yield no direct power). This kind of radical autonomy is more than a matter of convenience and usually framed as biblically necessary.
It is against this position that we get East’s claim, that we ought to be “ceasing evermore to be autonomous.” The intuitive sense of such a claim roots in the undeniable Christian charge to be ruled by Christ, our King. Any aspect of our churches or spiritual lives that works against that unifying call is derived from our fallen nature and ought to be resisted. Appeals to autonomy are thinly veiled appeals to individualism and control. But to increasingly give up that control and to come under one tent is to increasingly be made more like the singular Christ.
Yet as sympathetic as I am to this way of thinking (and its resonances with the Restoration plea for unity), I think there is room for pushback. The institutionalization of autonomy into certain Christian traditions, particularly into the Churches of Christ, may not be rooted in selfish individualism. Rather, it may be something closer to Christian realism. That is, the insistence on autonomy may be the logical outworking of an Augustinian recognition of our aforementioned fallen nature. From that recognition comes something like democratic cynicism—autonomy is the worst form of congregational polity except for all those other forms that have been tried. In this view, we may not have independent churches in the hereafter, but in our current circumstances, we need it to deal with the human inclination toward sin and corruption. We need autonomy for practical reasons.
Still, this way of looking at things lacks the ethical idealism of Christianity—“be perfect.” Is that all the autonomy plea is—an acquiescence to our depravity? Or, could it be that congregational independence can actually contribute to our unity in Christ?
I think there is such an approach to this topic that completely redefines autonomy as more than necessary but actually good: that denominations and congregations themselves are representative of the irreducible diversity of the Body of Christ. As there is great variety in the body, so there ought to be great variety in church life. The fact that there are differences between congregations should be celebrated (with the obvious caveat that said congregations cooperate and show love to one another, and not condemn one another for their differences).
Some immediate concerns with this approach deserve response. One can easily say there is variety even in the episcopal model, take for instance Anglican churches; just because they have that authorial structure, does not mean that they impose every detail of congregational life on their constituents. Yet, true as that may be, that level of diversity pales in comparison to the diversity across orthodox Christianity. To my mind, a more substantial concern is that, in the metaphor, there is still very much one body with one head, which seems to be in contradiction to a multitude of church bodies with no discernible head. But crucially, the head in the metaphor is Christ—not the Southern Baptist Convention or Springfield Presbytery. Relatedly, one might be concerned that there are still boundaries, still doctrines (like the divinity of Christ) that need to be protected, and who will do that besides some governing body? But again, if Christ and the word of God do the governing, that is as good a measure of truth as one could ask for, and congregations must hold themselves accountable to it. (And across Christianity, most churches have done a pretty good job of holding themselves accountable to those matters of first important.)
But I’m getting sidetracked. My intention is not to defend congregational autonomy as necessary. I simply want to argue that ecclesial independence may actually reflect something good and noble. We know that there is variety not just within the body but between bodies, and moreover, in the Resurrection, even as we are perfected and become more like Christ, we do not expect to abandon the distinctions of our bodies. Instead, our distinctives are part of what give the resurrected form its beauty. And maybe the same can be said of the Church.