The Sunday Mail
Fr. Anold Moyo, SJ —
THE title of this article is drawn from Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20-21. Jesus prays that all his followers may be one, just as He and the Father are one.
The apostles of Jesus were well aware of Christ’s wish that they maintain unity within the newly founded Church after Jesus had departed from them.
We see this effort in Acts 15, where the apostles, as leaders of the one Church, discuss a matter that was threatening to divide the Church along ethnic lines, between the Jewish and Gentile Christians.
“Then the apostles and presbyters, in agreement with the whole church…” make a decision that was binding to and unifying of the whole Church.
St Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians addressing the division within that Christian community, challenges them, “Is Christ divided?”1Cor 1:13.
He urges that there be no divisions among them, (I Cor1:10). So if Jesus founded only one Church, why do we have the more than 20 000 Christian denominations in the world today?
We find Jesus’ direct, conscious intention to found the Church in Matthew 16:18.
“And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church”. In Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance, we see him instructing Peter to, “feed my sheep”, (John 21:15-17). Jesus thus founded one Church, which he intended to be under the supreme authority of one leader, Peter (and whoever succeeded him), assisted in its governance by the other apostles and their successors.
The unity of the Church is modelled after the unity of God who is Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Church is one first and foremost in her source; there is one Lord, one God, one Spirit, one Faith, one Baptism (Ephesians 4:4-6).
A united Church attests to the unity of the Triune God: “So that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me”.
It is only within a united Church that the incarnation of Jesus and his salvific mission can be genuinely proclaimed. We cannot hope for the world to confidently believe in the Christ we preach if Christianity is a divided religion.
The Church should be one just as God is one. St Paul uses the image of the Church as the body of Christ, (1 Corinthians 12:12-27; Ephesians 4: 1-6). The body of Christ is one and cannot be fragmented.
So why do we have so many churches today? And what is the implication of this for christianity and the gospel of Christ? Various factors account for the numerous christian denominations we have today.
There was an original unity in the Church, a unity that however allowed for legitimate diversity. And as demonstrated above, the divisions that occurred where dealt with within the Church. No one broke away to form his own church.
There was also an acceptance that the bishop of Rome, successor of the apostle Peter (Peter died in Rome, and his tomb is in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican), had primacy over other bishops of the Church, and hence its universal leader.
This unity, however, was first severed when some Christian communities in East Syria, the Copts and Armenians refused to accept the decisions of the Council of Ephesus (AD431) and Chalcedon (AD 451), councils that had been called to settle the Christological debates of the time.
The great division of the Church came in 1054 when the church in the East refused to accept the pope as the universal leader of the Church, among other theological reasons. This church became known generally as the Eastern Orthodox Church. There were thus now two main churches, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.
Another major fracture to the unity of the Church occurred in the 16th Century in the form of the Protestant Reformation, when Martin Luther, a Catholic priest, left the Church and founded Lutheranism in 1517.
King Henry VIII of England in 1534 rebelled against the pope’s authority and declared himself the head of the Catholic Church in England, effectively founding the Anglican Communion.
As years passed, numerous churches formed from other Protestant churches. Chronologically, therefore, was first the Catholic Church, then a thousand years later the Orthodox Church, then 500 years later various main-line Protestant churches.
What is worrying is the continued multiplication of churches, and particularly the economic or financial motivations behind them. Unlike the mainline Protestant churches whose founders rebelled against the Catholic Church for theological reasons that could be given credit, churches that have been founded in the last thirty to fifty years have been established mainly for business purposes.
What new gospel can they possibly preach that a Church which has existed for 2000 years missed? Jesus preached the Kingdom of God, and instructed his disciples to continue, within the structures of the Church, the work of evangelisation.
However, what we see today are self-anointed pastors and prophets who preach and give themselves a mandate to found their own churches, in order to build their own personal kingdoms.
The integrity of Christianity is under threat. The dignity and integrity of the gospel of Christ is being threatened by individuals who have no intention whatsoever to further the Kingdom of God, but individuals only interested in fattening their pockets.
This constitutes not only a grave sin, since it is paramount to taking the Lord’s name in vain, but also constitutes an injustice to the millions of people who are hoodwinked into giving their cash and other resources in order to “earn” spiritual benefits.
Christianity has become a spiritual supermarket where people move about freely from church shelf to another in search of what satisfies their spiritual taste. That was not the intention of Jesus for his Church.
What is happening today is a mockery of God himself and the destruction of genuine Christianity.
The ecumenical movement seeks to bring about the cooperation and unity of all Christians. This is a good step in helping the Christian churches recover the apostolic sense of a Church that is unified in its diversity.
Given what we know of the intention of Jesus that we may be one, any serious Christian would resist the urge to continue diving Christianity by either creating his or her own church or by being a member of such a church. A divided Christianity is a scandal both to God and to the world.
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