A Like Minded Church Plays Footsie with The Law of Group Polarization

There are some churches and church pastors who genuinely believe that the most faithful expression of their faith is to be with “like minded people”. Who does not like to be with others who are like minded? I love to be with people who remind me of my favorite person (myself)! Beyond the comfort of being with others who do not challenge us beyond what where we are willing to be challenged, those advocating for a like minded church assume that the church would somehow be better.

It is argued that a like minded church would be more “faithful” or more “efficient”. This assumes that if a group of people could stop arguing about the same issues or people THEN (and only then) could we get to the “business” of making disciples. The like minded church dream assumes that revisiting the same matters is somehow unfaithful. It is as though the like minded church would rather stop wrestling with the same person for so long and walk away with two good hips. The like minded church is suspicious of limping and cannot imagine that there is any blessing in wrestling.

In addition to these basic theological concerns, we ought to have with a like minded church we also should be concerned about the harsh and empirically proven Law of Group Polarization. And what is this law?

Cass R. Sunstein’s paper described like this (bold added):

In a striking empirical regularity, deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments. For example, people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm; people who believe that global warming is a serious problem are likely, after discussion, to insist on severe measures to prevent global warming. This general phenomenon -- group polarization -has many implications for economic, political, and legal institutions.

You read this right. After being with a like minded group that discusses an issue, you will become more extreme after the discussion than you were before the discussion.

And so here is the great irony, those who advocate for being a church of “like minded people” as a haven against undesired change are playing footsie with the law of group polarization. To put this more plainly, being with others who are like minded will change you and your views - you will become more extreme.

This is the law of group polarization. The temptation to create a like minded church (or country) is powerful, but it is to be rejected for what it is. A pathway to justifying our self-righteousness. And I think we all have read how Jesus feels about self-righteousness.

"Paint the Beauty We Split"

Some may argue that the fracturing, splintering and breaking up of the church is as old as civilization and therefore is some sort of proof that those who uphold unity as misguided at best. It is not lost on me that the current United Methodist Church is a break away from the Church of England which itself is a break away from the Catholic Church which was a split with the Eastern Church which split from the Jerusalem Council. I understand the human tradition of splitting. But it is also true the United Methodist Church is also a church that was birth at the union of at least two churches (the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren). Additionally, Jesus prayed in John that those who follow him might be made one. So for as many examples we can point to that splitting is God’s desire, there are just as many examples we can point to which suggests that unity is God’s desire.

This argument is boring and tiresome, but more, it distracts. It distracts from the larger human tradition captured in the following lines from In all Carlo Carretto’s book, The God Who Comes.

How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is. I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms. No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, though not completely. And besides, where would I go? Would I establish another? I would not be able to establish it without the same faults, for they are the same faults I carry in me. And if I did establish another, it would be my Church, not the Church of Christ. I am old enough to know that I am no better than anyone else.

The current splintering of the United Methodist Church is an example of the Church failing to understand our tendency to make Church reflect us and not Christ. We hear this in the way the Church is talking about if some should leave or stay. We hear that we should follow our convictions and that we ought to be able to let those who believe differently a gracious exit. The underlying assumption is that the personal conviction and beliefs are paramount, that those are what should drive what denomination a local church should be. Some will try to argue that it is less about personal conviction and more about adhering to some Biblical or creedal standard. But when the Bible and creeds never are in conflict with your convictions and beliefs it begs the question if we are just making “my Church” and not the “Church of Christ”. It is weird, is it not, that God always seems to have the same beliefs and convictions you have?

The truth is that I need the very people that I disagree with to walk with me. And the truth is, those who disagree with me need me in their lives too. I do not have all the answers and if you think that you do, then heck, I want you in my life! And if you have all the answers, then don’t you want to help those who, like me, do not have the answers?

To put this another way, I need you to show me how odd I am so that I can come to see that I am, as Carretto said, “am no better than anyone else”. When those who took the same vows that I took, decide to disaffiliate, then I believe all of our discipleship creates the conditions for all of us to become less faithful.

There is a song on the “Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast called “Sticks and Stones”. Recently the producers talked with the lead singer of the song and asked about the lyric that says, “Paint the beauty we split.” The songwriter said that his take on this lyric is that it is a plea and prayer to God. That God may make beautiful (paint) the church (the beauty) that we are tearing apart (we split).

Lord in your mercy, hear this prayer.

The Church Is Not A Community

For sometime now I have heard that many are tired of being in a church with so many divisions or so many points of disagreement. This fatigue has provoked some to inquire or even leave the Church in order to be with other “like-minded” Christians. The virtues of being with “like-minded” believers is argued for in many places such as the book the Benedict Option to caucus groups such as the Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA).

There is nothing wrong with being with like minded people. It is good to be with like-minded people as it gives a peace and comfort knowing that I am not alone. The defining characteristic of a like-minded group is that the group is held together by what they have.

There is a name for a group of people who are together because of what they have. It is called a community. A community is a group of people who belong to one another because of something they all have or hold in common. The Benedict Option and WCA advocate the creation of like-minded communities. This seems innocuous enough. Like I said above, like-minded communities have many benefits.

The problem is that when we take the idea of community into the Church because the Church is not supposed to be a community.

In a very basic sense, a community does not fundamentally challenge one another to change because to do so would threaten the communities very existence. If members of the community change, then the community may not all hold the same thing in common. If members of my bowling community started to dislike bowling, then the bowling community would politely ask those members to leave and not come back. Because what makes the bowling community the bowling community is the shared loved of bowling. If some members of the community no longer like bowling, then group may not be all “like-minded”.

Additionally, at the core, communities are groups that are motivated by purity. If there is anyone in the group that is not of “like-mind” then they cannot be a member of the community because a community is only possible if the entire group is of like mind. There is little appreciation for the one who is not like the community (impure). The community that has some members who deviate from the communities norm, are asked to leave. In fact asking the “other” to leave is considered graceful. I cannot imagine being asked to leave the community is grace-filled, but communities that hold the same ideas as the reason for existence are convinced that this is graceful.

Peter Rollins makes a point in this 90 second clip in which he talks about a community and a communion. He reminds the viewer that the community is gathered by what they have or what they share. But a communion is gathered around a lack or by something the group does not have. For instance, Alcohol Anonymous (AA) is a group that gathers around a shared lack (ex: lack of alcohol) and loss (ex: loss of control). The group is made not on what they achieve or what they have done, but on what they each lack and/or loss.

Each Sunday, Christians around the world gather together to share in the sacrament sometimes called Communion. It is the sacred meal in which calls to mind the time that God in Christ ritualized the death of God on the cross.

The death of God is terrifying. It is the ultimate lack. It is the thing that so many of us (self included) refuse to accept because it is too much to consider that the eternal and all powerful God would enter death - even temporarily. The church is a gathering of people who recognize we have lack (sometimes we call it sin).

The church, each week, gathers together not because we all are of “like-mind” or all hold the same thing. The core of the Church gathers together because of what we lack. We gather because we lack forgiveness, mercy, and grace toward ourselves and others. Like Jesus said, we do not know what we are doing and we lack the way to go. We are in need of God because the communion of the church knows it is not God.

The Church is much too sacred and important to be a community. The Church is a communion.