What Kind of Christians Are “Real” Christians?
I recently did a Twitter poll about conservative and non-conservative Christians. I had a number of people state matter of factly that non-conservative Christians are not Christians.
Really?
This is nothing new. I know numerous protestants who are confident that Roman Catholics are not Christians. To be fair, there are Roman Catholics who are just as confident that protestants are not Christians.
Even within protestantism, there are not just differences of theological interpretation but judgments about who is in and who is out.
I grew up in a liberal Anglican Church but switched to a conservative Pentecostal Church. At the Pentecostal Church, people like those in my former congregation were described as “so-called Christians.”
I accepted the narrative that mainline Christians were not real Christians (except for a few exceptions) and that real Christianity was evangelicalism. Some how, the fact that C.S. Lewis was an Anglican didn’t challenge that.
What really shook by view was participating in an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship group in university. There were Anglicans, liberal mainliners, anabaptists, evangelicals, and charismatics, all loving Jesus. They seemed to have a vibrant faith, even though they belonged to the “wrong” denomination.
Some may say that there are conservative Christians in every denomination and they are Christian because they are conservative.
However, there is no sense in the New Testament or other early Christian writings that adopting a conservative worldview is necessary for salvation.
We have things like the Apostle’s Creed:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
Most of the issues that separate conservatives from liberals are not found in this or any of the other creeds.
I think what happens is that both conservative and liberal Christians have such strong convictions about certain issues that they assume God is just as intolerant of the other group as they are.
We may actually be surprised (and some even offended) by who is a part of God’s family. And the family image is relevant here. Most families have relatives who they struggle with. But being family doesn’t require full agreement on every issue. Nor does membership in the Holy Catholic Church (church universal).
I am not suggesting that people should surrender their convictions or that we all need to agree. But being a Christian is about our connection to Jesus and not our place on the conservative-liberal continuum.
