Sounds familiar? Probably because it is…
A recent article from Christianity Today reports that songwriters Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend refused to change the lyrics to their popular song, "In Christ Alone," at the request of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America (PCUSA).
PCUSA requested permission to change the lyric "The wrath of God was satisfied" to "The love of God was magnified," for inclusion in a new hymnal, something that the church says is more reflective of their particular theological position. The request was denied.
Many respondents have weighed in with their support for Getty and Townsend, some offering their affirmation for the writers' unwillingness to submit to a supposed "recent trend" of churchgoers looking to "trivialize God's power."
Cue the standard theological standoff, which is always immensely successful in fostering really healthy, productive, and most of all pleasant, conversations. (For those of you who have difficulty detecting sarcasm in print—I am definitely being sarcastic.)
It'd easy to misrepresent the conversation, whether accidentally or intentionally, as a by-product of an increasingly polarized Church culture, or 'emergent attitudes' of what Christians ought to value. But the fact is, we've been here before. This is old news.
A story: back in the 1940s, the Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada (ECCC), a small denomination of which I'm a proud member, was suddenly divided over a similar issue. Whereas the ECCC allows its members freedom to respectfully disagree on the specifics of biblical atonement, that wasn't definitive enough for some ministers in some churches.
More than a dozen pastors across Canada left the denomination, many to become prominent figures at notable Christian institutions. Like a family that had been ripped in half, it was a moment that has forever echoed in the identity and trajectory of our small family of churches.
I'd like to point you to some historical record of the incident—to some place where you can 'read all about it'—but the fact is, little to no chronicle of those years really exists. There's virtually no online account whatsoever of the events, and outside of a couple of obscure, independently-published books—not the kind of stuff you'll find at your local Indigo—the stories exist now mostly as anecdote, things that even our oldest living church members may not remember in great detail.
In the very first issue of ChristianWeek (April 7, 1987), then-assistant editor Doug Koop mused about how various Christians across Canada responded to injustice through acts of compassion, chronicling a wide range of perspective from writers across Canada.
Fast-forward 27 years, and here we are—still talking about justice. Still talking about mercy. Still talking about how we go about doing those things. And wouldn't you know—there's still a wide range of thought, and plenty of disagreement to be had, as featured in this month's "Justice and Mercy" focus feature. As it turns out, not everyone agrees on what justice is, how it should be presented, and how Christ should be present within it.
The point is…it's important to remember where we've been, where we come from, and—maybe most important—to write these things down. History can be a valuable tool for navigating the waters of disagreement and debate—especially when it's things we've already spent a good deal of time huffing and puffing about. This isn't to trivialize, but just to say that a lot of the supposedly new debates and "recent trends" are actually ones we've had before, and things that people have been doing for a long, long time.
So when people ask us why the work of ChristianWeek is important, it's because remembering is important. Telling those stories of justice, mercy, and showing that, as long as we agree on the essentials, there's freedom to differ in the ways we live faithfully. Those are the stories we're interested in telling.
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