Kerux: a portfolio of Calvin Theological Seminary - Volume 42.6 - 05 Dec 2007

Bound Together

by Meg Jenista, Contributing Editor

It may not have been the Good Friday Agreement or the Camp David Accord but October 29, 2007 still qualifies as a hallmark date for peace, diplomacy and an optimistic hope of reunification. Student Senate President John Lee, Treasurer Dirk Van Eyk, and I traveled to Holland, MI, where we met with our colleagues from the Student Council at Western Theological Seminary. The meeting broke both ice and ground for these two seminary student bodies.

Western Theological Seminary is a training ground for would-be pastors in the Reformed Church of America. Much like our seminary, WTS is deeply rooted in a particular denominational identity while also seeking to provide a hospitable seminary experience for those outside their particular tradition. Not surprisingly, then, the symmetry of conversations regarding community, diversity, spiritual life and academia hit home to members of both seminary populations.

Despite these commonalities, this meeting was a first in both recent and remembered history. Two years ago the idea of joining forces, or at least sharing ideas with our contemporaries at Western Theological Seminary, was suggested. After failed attempts on both sides, the ice was finally broken over pizza on October 29, 2007. A few wheels were greased and future plans have since been put in motion. For example, we will be inviting members of WTS student body to lead us in chapel worship this Spring. We expect the offer will be returned. What about academic conferences and town hall meetings? A simple e-mail would invite both schools to participate in cross-denominational conversation. Why not sponsor a joint social event or service project in the future? (I would personally love to see a lighthearted quiz bowl featuring members of faculty from both institutions!)

Seeing as the Executive Committees of both schools got on so well together, we began wondering what it might be like if our student bodies began to associate more freely with one another. We invite you all to wonder along with us. And if students at the Christian Reformed Church’s flagship seminary begin to get to know students from the Reformed Church in America’s flagship seminary, we began wondering what it might be like if our collegiality moved beyond academia into the broader lives of these two, separate denominations. Is reconciliation, unity even, a possibility?

150 years ago, the Christian Reformed Church broke away from the Reformed Church in America. It was something many of us commemorated this summer but, really, ought division ever to be considered a celebratory event? As children of the categorically guarded Aufscheiding church in the Netherlands, the ties that held us together with the Reformed Church in America were always and at best tenuous. In 1857 suspicion of the Reformed Church’s capitulation to American, Christian culture, most notably in the singing of hymns (horrors!), created an unbridgeable gulf between the two immigrant communities. When we departed we called it secession, they called it schism; at any rate, we all called the whole thing off. Later rifts over lodge membership, Christian day-school education and women in office further isolated these two denominations from one another.

Now the question lies before us: are the reasons for our parting of the ways 150 years ago still cogent? Still, consider all that has happened in the intervening years to make hypothetical reunification a logistical nightmare: 150 years of Synodical decisions times two! Denominations are like aircraft carriers – stopping dead in the water or turning on an aquatic dime are delusions. Certainly, lovers of church polity blanch at the thought of trying to combine forces from the top down. Then there is that sticky wicket of a prayer offered up by Christ:

"I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

What in the world can that roaring idealist be on about? Well, at least this: two institutions, bound together by Christ, ought to be combining efforts in social justice and world relief, as the CRCNA and RCA have begun to do. Two denominations, bound together by theological ancestry, ought not duplicate efforts in foreign and home missions, as recently agreed upon by boards of these agencies in the CRCNA and RCA. Two churches, bound together by doctrinal and confessional agreement, ought to be willing to engage in a little pulpit exchange every now and again. Two seminary student bodies, preparing for the joys and challenges of denominational leadership within the next 20 years, ought to start talking to one another and two seminary student councils, faced with the daunting task of building community at distinct but uncannily similar institutions, ought to be willing to break the ice over a few slices of pizza.