Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand

Who marks the boundaries between those who are in a church and outside it? And what do the boundary markers look like? 

An incessant part of the ongoing conflict within not only the UMC, but virtually every US or US influenced denomination has been over boundaries, determining who is in and who is out. 

But this an old story, and one that is inevitably both theological and political 

To understand this we need some quick history. 

In the New Testament we can see that the early church struggled to define its boundaries. Were Ananias and Saphira in or out? Where did they step over the line? What about the Gentiles, could they be in? What was the line they could not cross? 

Paul struggles with these kinds of boundaries in writing the first churches. What are the rules all must obey? What are the rules for leaders, and are they different? Are they different for men and women? How can the body of Christ be free from the Law and yet not be antinomian? What gives the church its identity?

It is easy to say that a relationship with Christ, marked and sealed in baptism, is what places a person within the Body of Christ. But the Christ is also Ruler of a Reign, and rulers make rules for their followers. They set boundaries. And even if these are not physical boundaries, they are manifest in those actions that are obedient and disobedient. Is it not necessary to identify the boundary between obedience and disobedience to Christ? 

But the Christ is a very peculiar kind of Ruler, because his primary command isn’t obedience to a set of rules, but to be a witness to the love of God for humanity manifest in his death, resurrection, and ascension. We can see in the New Testament book of Acts and the Epistles that Paul and the apostles are acutely aware of the complex interplay between churches that witness to God’s love and are simultaneously obedient to God’s commands. What, after all, are those actions both consonant with God’s love and commended by all those outside the Church? 

Eventually, as the Church became fully identified with Graeco-Roman culture and social standards these discussions were less fraught. Conventional morality became Christian morality even as Christian morality with its roots in Jewish law began to shape conventional morality. Christendom was being born, a realm ostensible ruled by Christ through Christian rulers, through the hierarchy of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and thus “bound up with golden chains about the feet of God.” 

That was going to change. This chain would be broken by the revolutions that ushered in modernity. These were not merely intellectual. The social dimension had a growing influence on Christianity. Urbanization, migration, and colonization led to increasing numbers of people who although nominally Christian were both uninstructed in the faith and had no relationship to a faith community. By the time John Wesley and others were seeking to revive Christianity among these populations creating a movement that would engage in the command of Christ to witness to God’s love couldn’t depend on conventional, but largely nominal morality and theology. 

This is manifest in the work of John Wesley in founding the Methodists. In the circumstances of emerging modernity he created a society that was actually more disciplined in some respects than the general English culture. The result was the General Rules that are still part of our UM Discipline. 

As it turns out the changing political situation with the rise of nation-states necessitated making recognition of the United States part of the Discipline of the Methodists. Wesley amended the Church of England Articles of Religion for the new United States so that they dropped loyalty to the king. Article 23 now states: "The President, the Congress, the general assemblies, the governors, and the councils of state, as the delegates of the people, are the rulers of the United States of America, according to the division of power made to them by the Constitution of the United States and by the constitutions of their respective states. And the said states are a sovereign and independent nation, and ought not to be subject to any foreign jurisdiction.”

The need for a specifically political dimension to the Discipline became even more acute in the 1930’s, when Methodist churches and missionaries were active around the world; world poised on the brink of war. So in 1939 an article was added to the Articles of Religion that is still in our Discipline: "It is the duty of all Christians, and especially of all Christian ministers, to observe and obey the laws and commands of the governing or supreme authority of the country of which they are citizens or subjects or in which they reside, and to use all laudable means to encourage and enjoin obedience to the powers that be.”

In short, Methodism became a creature bonded to the nation-state, with its political boundaries becoming our political boundaries. We weren’t a universal movement, but an inter-national movement. 

But it wasn’t just politics driving Methodists to state their loyalties. In 1908 the Methodist Episcopal church adopted a “Social Creed” addressing concerns with which Wesley might well have resonated, given that it was entirely directed to the rights of workers in a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing America. Many features of that creed would not only be unrecognizable, but unsupportable for contemporary United Methodists. Imagine if all United Methodists offered political support for legislators committed to “a living wage in every industry.” 

In any case, after WWII Methodists found themselves in a situation of cultural complexity far beyond what Wesley might have imagined. The social structures supporting and supported by conventional morality were breaking down. This was obvious in terms of understandings of sexuality and sexual relationships, but just as much in questions related to war and pacifism, racism and integration, freedom of religion and separation of church and state, women’s rights and a woman’s right to her property (not least her body) and many more. The old General Rules seemed quaint in relation to the urgency of these questions, and the original Social Principles too narrowly focused on worker’s rights. So the Social Principles Creed was expanded into the United Methodist Social Principles, a detailed statement of the ethical guidelines for engagement with each imaginable community of which Methodists are a part. 

In short we not only defined orthodox belief, but also orthodox behavior. We now had a theological boundary, a political boundary, and an ethical boundary. Absent a conventional morality to which to give assent United Methodists have contained their movement within boundaries delineated by beliefs, by politics, and by ethics. It is a trifecta of contentiousness and contestation. 

Worse, it turns out that these boundaries cannot be enforced. Our United Methodist political structures make it possible for parts of the church to just ignore these boundaries. And this is as true of those defined by the creeds as it is of the political boundaries that both bishops and congregations regularly leap across and the ethical boundaries the regular violation of which goes far beyond matters of same-sex marriage. Our situation is much like the old days buying beer in Oklahoma, or fireworks in Texas. If you didn’t like the local law you just crossed the state line. 

But I think as we look at it there is something much deeper going on. 

And yet I don’t think the real issue for United Methodists is setting and enforcing the boundaries, although we spend a lot of time talking about it. 

The issue is that Traditionalists, Centrists, and Progressives have fundamentally different understandings of whether and what kind of boundaries are necessary for the Church to exist and carry out the command of Christ. 

So I suggest that we look at the UMC in terms of set theory. These ideas are not original. Christian missiologists have used set a theory for decades to understand new Christian communities and what it means to be part of them. When you are involved in evangelism, particuarly where Christianity is outlawed, it becomes critical to work out what it means to be a member of the church when the usual makers like attending worship, saying the creed, and following the ethical rules are impossible if you want to survive. Which means asking afresh just what kind of group the Church is. 

So let’s do some set theory. 

One type of set of people or objects or numbers is what is called a bounded set. It may be infinitely large but it definitely has a boundary that determines what is inside and what is outside. An example of a bounded set in numbers is all the real numbers between zero and one. Any negative number is out. And any number greater than one is out. All the rest are in. 

An example of a bounded set in a social setting is the set of all members of a sailing club. If you paid your dues and followed the rules you are in. If you didn’t you get kicked out. Rules and dues make up the boundary that bounds the set. 

Another type of set is what is called a centered set. it doesn’t have any boundaries, but everything in it is related to the center of the set. The set of all even whole numbers is a centered set. Every number in the set however large or small has the characteristic that when divided by two the result is another whole number. So you could say that divisibility by 2 is the center of the set, and all the members spread out from there. 

An example of a centered set in social terms is the set of all the descendants of the Jacob Hunt who landed in the Plymouth Bay colony in 1642. This set includes a vast and continually growing number of people of all different names, ethinicities, languages, and even nationalities who are genetically linked to Jacob Hunt. Note that it has no boundary - only a center. 

To make it simple, it seems clear that Traditionalists understand the church as a bounded set whose boundaries are the Nicene Creed, the Social Principles Creed, and in general the UM Book of Disciplines.

Progressives, it seems to me, see the church as a centered set. As long as you claim a relationship with Jesus Christ you are in, even if you don’t fully accept orthodox beliefs or if you reject orthodox morality.

The complicated group are the Centrists, who claim to have boundaries, but boundaries that don’t appear to be rigid, and who claim to be centered on Jesus Christ, but accept some differences of opinion regarding just who is he is for those who follow him. 

It turns out that modern set theory actually has a type of set that can help us understand this. It is a fractal set that is related to something called a strange attractor. Fractal sets have both an infinitely complex boundary and a center that can’t quite be pinned down. 

One of the most interesting and well known fractal sets is called the Mandelbrot set. It is named for a pioneering mathematician in fractal geometry.

The Mandelbrot set is generated by plugging numbers into simple equation, then taking the result and putting it in the same equation, then doing this over and over again to see if they continue getting larger and smaller, or remain within a defined range. If a number remains within the range it is a member of the set. If not, it isn’t. Images of what happens when you look at the boundary of the set reveal that it is both infinitely long and complex, because for some numbers not even trillions of iterations determine whether they will remain in the defined range. 

So the Mandelbrot set has the characteristic of having an apparent center, but one which can’t be precisely located, and a boundary whose infinite complexity makes it hard to determine just which numbers are in and which are out. 

Fractal sets are found everywhere in nature. Think of waves on the ocean. At first glance it seems very clear the difference between the ocean and the air, but can you actually draw the boundary? You certainly cannot calculate it mathematically even with the worlds largest and most powerful super computers. Nor can you predict where it will be from one second to the next.

They are found in human societies as well. Think of the apparently simple sailing club. Does it center on sailing, in which case non-sailing members aren’t related to the center? Is it bounded by paying dues, in which case the family of those who paid the dues aren’t members, even though they are? Anyone who has been the officer of a sufficiently old, large club knows that both centers and boundaries get a fuzzy fractal feel. In my sailing club we have a proliferation of types of members, of centers and boundaries, to recognize the rough boundary of the modern family and fuzzy center that related to those moving from being sailors to being former sailors. 

It makes people very uncomfortable if it turns out that the church of Jesus Christ is a fractal set. If it is a bounded set, all of the people who agree on a certain set of beliefs and moral standards, then that’s pretty easy to understand. And if it is a centered set, all the people who believe in Jesus or are followers of Jesus, then that’s pretty easy to understand as well. But if it is a centered set without a perfectly defined center and a bounded set with an infinitely complex boundary then you aren’t always sure who is in and who is out. Maybe Jesus was wise when he suggested that we not judge. 

On reflection it does seem that the Church is a fractal set. Because it turns out that the concept of the Church is both as simple and as indeterminate as the iterative function in which zn+1 = zn2 + c where z and c are numbers on the complex plane and n is 0 or a positive integer.  

From the very beginning Christians have been trying to exactly define who Jesus is and the theological, ethical, and political boundaries of his reign. And those efforts have proven unsustainable. The one, holy, apostolic, and universal church has continually divided over just the issue of who is at the center and where the boundaries lie. We don’t agree on what it means to be one, holy, apostolic, and universal, much less exactly who is the One, Holy, Universal God who in Jesus Christ called the apostles. For all our ecumenical dialogue we Christians, all baptized in the name of the Triune God, don’t agree on exactly who Jesus is. And we don’t agree on what he commands those whom he calls to do, and do not. 

The first efforts to graph the Mandelbrot set were done on a line printer that could only print black and white. The result, after as many iterations as were possible on that primitive computers, was as simple black shape that looked like a bug. Now we have computers that can perform trillions of iterations and generate images in millions of colors to indicate what is in (still black bugs) and well, we don’t know for sure what is out. In fact, what appears to be out in the first thousands or even tens of thousands of the iterations turns out to be in. 

If in the end the Church must decide who is in and who is out let’s at least admit that it is not because the boundaries are clear, but because we don’t have the patience to wait for clarity. And admit that in all those iterations yet to come as God, the only Judge approaches, we may well find that we were wrong.