Redefining church

Here’s a proposition for debate, inspired by a discussion at TitusOneNine and a posting last week by Nick Knisely:

Resolved, that the members of ‘the church’ are those people — reasserter, reappraiser, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. — who are willing:

1) to pray ‘next to’ one another, even if the prayer of the person next to you is no more than a grudging acknowledgement that maybe a Creator of some sort might indeed exist;

2) to treat each other's prayers with equal dignity, even when there’s grave disagreement over underlying suppositions; and

3) to collaborate in seeking the best for others as for themselves, even if for no other reason than that this seems to give a species a survival advantage over the long term.

Under this definition of ‘church,’ a given individual’s theological beliefs would be of no particular relevance, except of course to the extent those beliefs influenced the individual’s actions.

I know some would object to such a definition of ‘church’; I’m curious how you’d articulate that objection.

Comments

[rick allen]

"Under this definition of ‘church,’ a given individual’s theological beliefs would be of no particular relevance, except of course to the extent those beliefs influenced the individual’s actions."

I can't think of a single "theological belief" that doesn't influence my actions.

Surely belief is something more than intellectual window dressing. If we have not wholly alienated our intellects from our wills then surely our actions are based on our beliefs, as our beliefs will be reflected in our actions.