New life for denominationalism

Christian Century, March 15, 2000 by Nancy T. Ammerman

And noted the Methodist pastor who's teaching her Nashville suburban newcomers how to be Methodist: "The bishops' initiative two years ago was on ministry with the poor and marginalized. This congregation has embraced that wholeheartedly.... This year's initiative fell right into that. It is an initiative on children and poverty, and that is where we ended up going with the ministry."

Assemblies of God pastors, along with those in other evangelical denominations, pointed to the visits of missionaries as flesh-and-blood evidence of what the denomination does. In a world in which these same congregations have (on average) connections to nine outreach organizations other than those of their denomination, they still highlight and promote the work done in their name by national and international denominational bodies. Congregations with a strong sense of identity were no less externally connected than those that downplay their tradition, but they highlight the denominational threads running through their outreach to the world.

Across a wide range of traditions, congregations today find themselves dislodged from taken-for-granted routines. Their pews contain nearly as many who grew up outside the denomination as "cradle" members. People who have never even attended a church outside their own tradition are virtually unknown. The range of religious experience, religious resources and potential mission partners on which church leaders can draw is mind-boggling. And the vast majority of congregations assume that they can make many (if not all) the necessary choices about how they stitch those scraps into a unique local patchwork. For nearly half the Protestant churches in which we interviewed, the result was a quilt with few distinctly denominational motifs. Whether drawing on civic liberalism, popular evangelicalism or simply pragmatic and ad hoc collections of cultural and programmatic elements, their response is the pattern many pundits have come to expect.

But for the other half, an intentional retrieval and construction of tradition is replacing the Lake Wobegon Lutherans with New York and St. Paul Lutherans--their Lutheranism no longer taken for granted, but now chosen; no longer a matter of enclave and birth, but now a matter of faith and practice. These congregations see their theological heritage as a gift, intentionally teach newcomers about the faith, and celebrate their own unique worship traditions. They may, in fact, assert their own retrieval of the denominational tradition over the versions represented in national denominational offices. Still, most choose to use their own denomination's educational curriculum, and many cherish the national and international denominational connections that enable them to do good work in the world. Not every congregation does all these things, but the more they engage in these intentionally denominational choices, the stronger their overall sense of rootedness in the tradition.

Remarked the Presbyterian pastor who wants to teach his members about Presbyterian theology: