As Is The Feeling,
So Is The Result.

The question, Where is The Church?, has been on my mind for decades. Phrased that way, the question can be misleading.

The essential character of the question is: Where does authority lie? I posed the question that way to an Irish Benedictine, then a resident at St. Andrews Abbey, Valyermo, CA, during the winter of 1967-68. I recount that experience here.

The existential character of the question is: Which of the churches now, today, most carries forward and least distorts the soteriological force of history that is The Church as embodied in mundane operations. Which church organization — polity, in theological terms of art — today is most loyal to the Apostolic (Great) Commission.

The temporal character of the question is: which of the churches should I join or attend, if any?

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All so-called main-line Protestant churches, including Episcopalian, have renounced Christianity and espoused Communism (philosophical and political Leftism). They are become an anti-soteriological force of history. This includes the church of my ordination (United Church of Christ) and the churches of my membership (Community, UCC, Lutheran, Episcopal).

So-called evangelical or conservative churches in the USA descend from the left wing of the Reformation and therefore never were a soteriological force of history. They are, as is obvious, political party fronts masquerading as entertainment venues.

Revival-type churches in the USA descend from The Great Awakenings unique to American religious history and long since operate as fleecing fields for grifters of more or less ability.

Roman Catholic congregations are stressed now by Communist leaders — Pope, Jesuits, prelates, and others, lay and religious — doing what Communists do: promote Communism against Christianity.

Frankly, I think it is, as ever,
a convenient excuse
for hell raising.

It deserves no more
consideration than that.

Communism is a twelve-bit
word for hell-raising.

So, The Latin Church, at least in her populous embodiments, is fairly assessed a suicide. The Greek Church I do not know well enough to assess fairly. I know her Russian component is led by at least one individual who collaborated murderously with the Communists during the Sovietization of Russia.

One could ask, why a suicide? I venture an answer: loss of self-confidence, meaning, among other things, all things being human, self-confidence can be regained in the presence of restoratives, which would consist of divine counsel, some of it rough.

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Perhaps there remains a strand, a remnant of The Latin Church — stump as the Prophets put it, using traditional horticultural metaphor — more than less loyal to the Apostolic Commission. That may be, perhaps, The Moravian Church.

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Moravian Church members from ancient times call themselves Unitas Fratrum, Unity of Brethren. Small in numbers, they are global in presence. One of the central underpinnings of this worldwide church is the Ground of the Unity, a doctrinal statement that was adopted by the Unity Synod of the Unitas Fratrum in 1995.

The name of that document appeals to my Tillichian sensibilities. Paul Tillich, it will be recalled, spoke famously and fluently of God — or, better linguistically although awkward literarily, Pre-God — as The Ground Of Being, a phrase which has two senses, one looking from Being down to its Ground and one looking from The Ground up to its Being.

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The Moravian Church descends from Jan Hus / John Huss, the luminous church reformer — literally, he was burned at the stake for trumped-up heresy — who labored a century and a half before Luther.  He took birth in Bohemia, Celt-land central.  In my opinion, Hus and The Moravian Church more thoroughly cleaned up The Latin Church, to which The Moravian Church belongs, than did Luther, Calvin, or Cranmer; and much earlier.

Unitas Fratrum is an alternate name for a glorious hymn tune of The Moravian Church. Other names for that tune are Bohemian Brethren and Mit Freuden Zart. Moravian church music is unique, favoring brass instrumentals.

John Wesley, then Priest of the Church of England, met Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf, then Bishop of The Moravian Church, during a passage both men took to Colonial America and became the latter’s admirer. Wesley belonged to a London-based society led by Moravian Christians when, by his account, he experienced the Apostolic Commission on 24 May 1738.

Moravians are Trinitarians. They affirm the Nicene Creed and the early Ecumenical Councils.

Moravians are known to grasp in their liturgies and other activities what I think is the Great Light of The Gospel of Jesus The Christ: the pre-potent, unalloyed goodness of Creation by virtue of her embodying, dirt and all, the Love of God.

In other words, they grasp the primacy of personal self-confidence, the quality most in short today as we pay for that emptiness in hell-raising by soi-disant Communists.

Few any more, especially of clergy, who recite the Creed or read the Bible believe a word of it.  Their conceptual structures they want entirely otherwise than those universal experiences elders and benefactors set forth for our guidance and edification.  So many today, especially clergy and professors, think they know better, feel free to torture text and meaning into consensus psychobabble, which flits about like a wildfire.

Communion Moravians call, characteristically, A Love Feast. The way they do it is enchanting, I think.  Entirely the opposite of dour solemnity. Wesley noticed this quality in Zinzendorf, liked and wrote of it.

This behavior is similar in both spirit and particulars to how I saw corresponding liturgical acts carried through by Hindus in India.  Baha’i have corresponding practices, though deriving from different, yet also true, theological forces.

The goodness of the world as is, shared out, enjoyed and worked by one and all, in contrast to wanting to consecrate some small part of the world first in order to purify it to make it fitting for solemn decantation.

It is an attitude, an acceptance, a detachment, a feeling, a grandeur of spirit, a taste of lasting satisfaction in the freedom of divine love which is our nature and that just does not fit inside the rubrics of desperate visions that pass among so many today as Christian teaching and doctrine.

In more recent years, many Moravians…have written articles, papers, letters and other documents that have addressed in one way or another the topic of Biblical Interpretation. All of these voices, while speaking from different contexts and with somewhat varying perspectives, seem to affirm what has been affirmed throughout our history: that as Moravians, proclaiming Christ and Him crucified as our confession of faith, and believing that the Triune God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only source of our life and salvation, we do not believe that Jesus points us to Scripture so that we can find the answers there, but rather that Scripture points us to Jesus so that we can find the answers in him.

Moravian Guiding Principles
Of Biblical Interpretation

Some Moravian scholars point to a different formula as a guide to constructive debate about faith. This formula was first advanced by Luke of Prague (1460–1528), one of the bishops of the ancient Unitas Fratrum. Luke taught that one must distinguish between things that are essential, ministerial, or incidental to salvation. The essentials are God’s work of creation, redemption and sanctification, as well as the response of the believer through faith, hope and love. Things ministerial are such items as the Bible, church, sacraments, doctrine and priesthood. These mediate the sacred and should thus be treated with respect, but they are not considered essential. Finally, incidentals include things such as vestments or names of services that may reasonably vary from place to place.

Wikipedia entry on
The Moravian Church

While it is true that God uses even the devil’s machinations to work His will, it is not true that, when He does, that makes the devil’s machinations divine, honorable, and admirable. The inscrutability of God’s ways means, among other things, that the devil’s machinations are not the last word in the drama of history. World history is the love of God and good.

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• Sathya Sai Baba – Divine Discourse, January 05, 1971 /  Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription

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