What to say when the church is crooked

Of all the world’s institutions and movements, the church of Jesus Christ is history’s greatest force for good. It’s also the most blameworthy.

We’ll get to the blameworthiness in a minute, but first let’s consider its goodness because I think it ought to be uncontroversial.

If you told your friends you belonged to an organisation that abolished the slave trade, or outlawed child sexual abuse, or ended infanticide, or which founded charities as we know them, or orphan care as we know it, or hospitals or hospices, they’d be impressed enough. If you told them that a single organisation did all these things, they’d be astonished. If you went on to describe how it has been the greatest patron of the arts, and the academy, inventing human rights, and parliaments, and universities, and modern science, they’d wonder why they’ve never heard of it. When does it meet? How do you join? Tell them: ‘You’re welcome any time – Sunday at 10:30 – it’s called church.’

At this point you should brace yourself for the howls of derision: ‘Don’t be ridiculous, the church mired us in the Dark Ages, we’re better off shot of it.’ This response is as common as it is baffling. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming, yet the view persists that Christianity is regressive, and that rational people must leave behind its bigotry and superstition.

For this reason I suggest a three-pronged response in evangelism when people criticise the church. I don’t recommend one approach – an approach that’s all too common – of saying, effectively: ‘The church is awful, only look at Jesus.’ Jesus himself pointed to His witness on earth, the church. So instead I favour:

Busting the myths; owning what’s crooked; and insisting on the straight line.

Last time I looked at ‘busting the myths’ surrounding the church’s history. This time I want to balance that with what might sound like the opposite emphasis – ‘owning what’s crooked’. This is where my second sentence in this article comes in: the church of Jesus Christ is the most blameworthy movement in history.

This may seem like a flat contradiction of my opening sentence. But I think both statements are true. And it’s necessary to say both because the church is full of sinners.

The same pride, greed, lust and hypocrisy found in the children of Adam is found also in the children of God. Christians individually, churches corporately, and even the church institutionally, have made terrible and grievous mistakes – sins that stink to high heaven. And there’s a sense in which some of these sins have been worse than those of other institutions. This is true for at least three reasons.

First, the church has sometimes held great cultural power and therefore its sins have oppressed people ‘from a great height’.

Second, the church carries spiritual authority and so ordinary abuse can be layered with appalling manipulation ‘in the name of God.’

Third, the church should know better. We are those entrusted with the word of God. Jesus has taught us compassion, equality, freedom, and the inviolable worth of every member of the human family.

Put it this way: there’s a sense in which the crusades were worse than the centuries of Muslim aggression that provoked them. This is not because the crusaders were more bloodthirsty than the Islamic armies, but they wore the sign of the cross (that’s what ‘crusader’ means: ‘cross bearer’). Both sides had terrible blood on their hands, but one side bore the cross on their shoulders. This makes the crusaders worse – not worse than the far greater death tolls inflicted by other armies in history – but worse because of the hypocrisy.

Our sins are more blameworthy. It’s very little use to say that child sexual abuse in schools or scouts occurs more frequently than it does in the church. That may be true, but it rarely wins you a greater hearing from your sceptical friend. Child sexual abuse is heinous whenever and wherever it occurs. And there’s a deep sense in which it’s worse when it happens in our midst – we are meant to be the safe place, a taste of heaven.

When hellish things occur in our midst we must name it. ‘Own what’s crooked’.

Next time we’ll consider what we can also say beyond confessing to our evil. But here let’s acknowledge that sometimes the best way to get the world to admit to its own sins is for us to go first.