Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 20
September 12, 1968
NUMBER 19, PAGE 3b

Party Loyalty

Cled E. Wallace

An Episcopalian minister was called by a family to conduct a funeral service outside of his parish. The dead man was not a member of his church. He was unwilling to read the burial service from his little book until he had conferred with the local Episcopalian rector and secured his permission to do so. He was commented on as a fine example of loyalty to the laws of his denomination. It was.

Denominational ministers, as a rule, are very exact in observing the formal specifications of their respective creeds. An Episcopalian rector may not have a New Testament with him, but you will not catch him at a funeral without his Book of Common Prayer. He holds it next to his heart. The Methodist minister sticks to his Discipline, revised and brought down to date. And as for a Baptist minister, even the New Testament is not artillery enough to blast him loose from the yoke of Baptist usage. There are many fine examples of party loyalty in religion.

If these men were as loyal to the plain teaching of the New Testament as they are to their parties, there would be no such parties. Party loyalty perpetuates the parties. And they by no means take the liberties in freely interpreting their party law books...as they do the New Testament. They all "understand alike" the demands of the creed and do alike what it requires, although it is no clearer language than the New Testament; in fact, the verbiage is more complex. The religious world is slow to learn the lesson that party loyalty is not loyalty to Christ. Party creeds are not explanations of the New Testament. They are not parallel in their application. An effort to be loyal to both is an effort to serve two masters when "one is your Master, even the Christ." Loyalty to him is concretely exhibited in a hearty acceptance of New Testament requirements. The cause of true religion is not advanced by the idolatry involved in that reverence that men bestow upon the forms and ceremonies embalmed in party creeds whose authority is wholly human...

— Gospel Advocate (1933)