(Each Saturday, a faith leader in Franklin County offers a personal perspective in this space. To become part of this series, email religion@recorder.com)
The question that has been plaguing me, as the cultural conflict that is driving our personal, political and religious lives has become more and more intense, is this: “What should happen when an issue moves from the public square into the conversations of a religious congregation? Sadly, what seems to happen most is that the issue is just battled out in the same terms, with the addition of biblical and theological quotations that support the positions we already hold. We become “prophetic” and our impulse is to proclaim, to shout aloud like the bible says.
I recently recalled a moment in a congregational discussion we were having at the Federated Church in Charlemont 20 years ago about whether same-sex marriages should be allowed in our sanctuary. Somebody asked, “Why are we talking about this in church?” Another spoke of his own positive regard for homosexual individuals among his family and friends, and then said, “but I believe that their marriage is contrary to the will of God.”
I agreed with the congregation as we went on to decide to welcome same-gender marriages, but the conversation has continued to haunt me because I realized that we had never asked the questions that those men put before us, much less answered them. Why are we talking about this in church? What is the will of God?
That we came through dealing with that question doing surprisingly little harm to ourselves was due to the fact that we had, a few years before, reorganized ourselves, abandoning the quasi business-type organization that congregations have been adopting throughout the past couple of generations and creating a new polity for ourselves, modeled on that of our spiritual forbears, the original Separatist Congregationalists who had settled in Plymouth. We returned the diaconate to the center of our polity so that it became the guiding body of our congregation. It was the diaconate, after several months of study, that created the resolution to our question about same-gender marriage and presented it to the congregation for its ratification. We had rediscovered the Diaconate but had not yet rediscovered the Congregation, and so we never addressed those original questions.
And the answers had been there, right before our eyes, and we hadn’t seen them. Our research turned up this astonishing fact: For Congregationalists, it is the local congregation in which the “offices of Christ” — Prophet, Priest and King — are vested. In the early church, after the destruction of the temple, when it seemed there would be no more priests, no more prophets, and certainly no more Jewish kings, it was believed that Christ was the inheritor of all these offices and then, with Christ ascended, through the centuries they were vested in the leadership — the popes, the bishops, and in the Reformation churches, the diocese, or the synod, or the presbytery. But for the Congregationalists, it was the local congregation: you and me. Not that each of us is a little prophet or priest or king like we pastors sometimes get to thinking about ourselves, but that together, in the congregation, we are all those things.
And there’s our answers to the questions we didn’t ask: We were talking about same-gender marriage in church because that was our job as prophet, dealing with an issue of justice and righteousness in our community. I don’t think the deacons directly asked the question about what the will of God was, but I think the long months of study, discussion and prayer that led them to become of one mind and heart meant that question was alive in them.
Which takes us back to the question that animated this article: “What should happen when an issue moves from the public square into the conversations of a religious congregation?” I believe that long before we begin to proclaim our opinions, it’s our business, first of all, to gather together to ask what God thinks. As absurd as that may sound, at least it separates us from our knee-jerk assumption that God thinks what we think.
The Montague Center Congregational Church, Trinitarian, is a United Church of Christ congregation located on the green in Montague Center. It was founded in 1751, a year before the town was founded. It is a thriving congregational with 65 members. You are invited to join us for worship and fellowship every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. Sunday School is available for children of all ages, September through May.