Subversive Christian Unity

J.I. Packer, no stranger to thinking Christians in or out of the Anglican Communion, in 2007 published the short booklet "Taking Christian Unity Seriously." It's free to download here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5925e7646a49636041956a8d/t/5952cbfb440243684b92b980/1498598397404/07-Taking+Christian+Unity+Seriously.pdf It is part of a series of booklets called The Anglican Agenda (Ginger Group) series, all of which may be read here: https://www.anglicannetwork.ca/resources/ "Taking Christian Unity Seriously" frames the question of unity in light of a notable disunity, the Anglican Communion's strife over efforts within it to approve homosexual conduct and same-sex marriages. Packer frames a scriptural case for what unity actually means and concludes it does not mean compromising about that. There are points upon which one cannot compromise without doing violence to the very religion one is trying to unify. Here are a few quot...

The weakest possible argument against Christian unity is to suppose that our group or faction or denomination is right about everything and thus compromise would be an abandonment of truth. "We cannot compromise on the truth!" That might have some validity if there were not so many saying it. It is evident that they cannot all be possessed of perfect truth, since they all disagree with each other. "Yes, but my church really is the one that has it right." Oh, is it? Then shouldn't you be reaching out in love and fellowship to the rest of us poor benighted Christians who have it wrong? What does your superior wisdom tell you about bringing unity among the faithful? What says it about being charitable toward the ill-formed beliefs of your fellow Christians? If (hypothetically of course) some of your beliefs were off base, how would you want to be approached about it? It is a non-starter for anyone to say that unity will be achieved when everyone agrees with m...

The love that is the Christian ideal is, of course, not self serving but self sharing, self giving and at rare times even self sacrificing. It has as its object the good of the other. The worldly counterfeit of love is by turns self serving and self debasing. One person lords it over another and the other capitulates. Sado-masochism is an extreme representation of this interpersonal dynamic. Its lesser forms are still diseased, for humankind was never meant to interact this way, which is not God's way for us. Dominance-submission may be well enough for monkeys, and a pecking order for chickens, but we should be of better understanding. The wrong view of love is responsible for many features of today's world. It explains, for example, how feminists can get the idea to shout "oppression!" when faced with church customs and institutions that, rightly used, honor and shelter women rather than exploiting them. In the false love, one is either exploited or exploiter. O...