Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 21
January 8, 1970
NUMBER 35, PAGE 1-2

The Fading Fear

W. Carl Ketcherside

The cold snows of division in the higher peaks are beginning to melt. The spring thaw is starting and the first gentle rivulets are commencing to trickle downward, skirting the boulders and other obstacles and finding their way toward that unity which some day will become a broad and placid river. The heirs of the restoration movement are beginning to think in terms of oneness rather than of divisiveness.

It was almost a century ago that our fathers in a frontier culture, many of them uneducated and illiterate, possessed of quick tempers and touchy pride, began to splinter and fragment a movement which began so auspiciously as "a project to unite the Christians in all of the sects." The first cleavage was the signal for others to follow, and the sin of schism with its sectarian segregation and isolation became a way of life for thousands.

The first rupture ruined the restoration movement as an effective force for unity. Subsequent fractures intensified the confusion and multiplied the problems. From the first day that I began writing about healing the breaches, I have emphasized that we must go back to the first ghastly laceration and repair it, or it would stand as a monument to our inconsistency and mock us for our hypocrisy. At that time there seemed little hope that any consideration would be given to my plea.

I was hailed as a visionary, attacked as a liberal and branded as a traitor. Since I anticipated all of this I could say that "none of these things move me and neither count I my life dear unto myself." I have always felt that the brethren whom I love would someday recognize the futility of preaching unity and practicing partition. Now that faith is being realized.

More than two years ago a meeting of top-level men in the Churches of Christ was held in an eastern city with a prominent brother from the Christian Church. It was agreed that these leaders in the non-instrument ranks would tone down the factional approach in their articles and broadcasts, eliminating such material as would intensify tensions between the two groups. No mention of the meeting ever leaked out to orthodox journals but the effect has been seen from coast to coast.

In New York, the Manhattan Church of Christ entered into "the fellowship of giving and receiving" with an important and wealthy Christian Church family. In California, across the nation, the administration of Pepperdine College reached the conclusion that the use of the instrument was no barrier to fellowship in Christ Jesus. Since that time, the president and vice-president have both spoken at the North American Christian Convention, hailing those in attendance as their brethren. One of them made an address on the campus of a Christian Church school, and the other addressed a banquet of friends and alumni of the same institution. Both made it clear that they recognized they were among the children of God.

A front-rank man in the Bible department at Abilene Christian College recently said that if the instrument was being introduced now, the brethren who oppose it would look at it a long time before they would divide over it. This is a clear-cut admission that the division has cultural overtones and it is now time for the Bible department at Abilene to take a second look at its role in condoning and continuing a division which was sinful in the first place.

A ranking professor at another college told one of his friends, who is also a good friend of mine (but secretly for fear of the Jews), "Carl is right about fellowship and has been all along, and if he had come up in the right group, he would be headlining every lectureship program in the brotherhood." In the face of such an admission I'm not sure it is much of an honor to speak at a lectureship, and I am very grateful to God that I did not "come up in the right group."

I hail with genuine pleasure every attempt of brethren to meet and discuss our sinful schism. Such a meeting took place in a southern city several months back, and the proceedings were all conducted in an amiable fashion. One of the ironic twists of fate is that present for the occasion was my esteemed brother, James DeForest Murch, who has lived down his detractors on both sides, and is now able to meet with men who once heaped opprobrium upon him for working on what was known as the Witty-Murch plan for unity.

The brethren who oppose the instrument agreed to work for lessening of the tensions on the mission field where the question is not even an issue. They also disclaimed any intention of becoming involved in public partisan debate over the matter. They conversed and prayed together in a spirit of harmony and fraternity, and parted with a mutual resolution to promote other such meetings on an expanding scale in the future.

This points up one great phenomenon which must not be ignored. Brethren can treat each other with decency, politeness and even affection, on the street, in public and eating places, in private homes and in motels. It is only when they get into their church buildings that they clam up and retreat into the deep-freeze posture. There is a psychological reason for this. Our meetinghouses have become symbols of our partisan loyalties, bastions of orthodoxy, and citadels of the status quo. Outside of their walls we approach one another with cool heads and warm hearts, inside of them we resort to cold hearts and hot heads. If all of our temples of party pride were burned down we could get together in a month. This is merely an observation, and not to be taken as a suggestion.

We must face up to the fact that a great many preachers and professors in Christian Colleges now realize that it was wrong and sinful to divide over instrumental music and the millennial question. They are undergoing inner trauma because they would like to speak out plainly and say so. They are caught in a vise which they helped to construct. They have taught the brethren to be bitter and sectarian in attitude, and they are afraid of the legalistic monster which they have created. Their prestige, salaries and jobs depend upon keeping still about their real sentiments. They have a lot to lose.

I can sympathize with them and have compassion upon them. I was as narrow and factional as any of them. I regarded as faithful only those who were attached to our little party. All others were "brothers in error," to be stigmatized, scandalized and humiliated. I taught the members of our splinter group that they alone were loyal to Christ and that they should dwell in unsullied isolation to save the truth. But when the blessed Spirit of God opened my eyes to the realization that what we called righteousness was simply damnable self-righteousness, I openly and publicly renounced the whole sick and sordid mess.

Church of Christism is no better than any other "ism." It is parochial, provincial and sectarian. I am ashamed of the bigotry and intolerance which once enveloped my heart and caused me to turn the cold shoulder upon good brethren whose only sin was that they could not in pure conscience see everything as I did and bow the knee to our unwritten creeds. I am astounded that I could have been so brain-washed while proclaiming the grace of God to others. I have no intention to conceal the fact that such a schismatic course was a sin against my Lord and against His body.

My frightened brethren are choosing a different course. They are resolved to play down the troublesome questions of the past and allow them to gradually pale into insignificance and fade into the dusk of coming ages. They realize that these are trifling issues and will be eclipsed by the greater and more burning problems of a secular age. They will take no chances. They will rock no brotherhood boats. I do not doubt that they will achieve a measure of success. I only pray that their silence is truly golden, and not yellow.

— Mission Messenger, November, 1969