By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist
If you spend a lot of time with digital news and social media (please don’t), you might think that conservative and liberal Christians have little in common and that we despise each other because of our doctrinal disputes over gay clergy, transgender people, abortion, etc.
But down here in the pews, it’s mostly about the work of the church – caring for your congregation, your neighborhood, and the wider world.
Jesus asked us to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19) by “feeding his sheep” (John 21:17). My layperson’s interpretation of Jesus’ commands is that he wants us to improve people’s lives – feeding, sheltering, visiting, healing – caring for them in the myriad ways that one person can show love to another. Once we do that, they will have a better idea of who he is and may be moved to become his followers, too.
The beauty of the church is that we meet every week to worship and to face human need, both near and far, together. It is a unique uniting force in society. Yes, the church has done some terrible things historically, which I acknowledge and condemn. But that same sin and corruption that drives wars and injustice and abuse also exist outside the church. In my experience, the church has been an overwhelmingly positive force.
Which brings me to my annual sojourn to Hampton County with Salkehatchie Summer Service. Since 1978, Salk has brought United Methodists and other people of faith together to spend a week rehabilitating homes for South Carolinians. The adults supervise teenagers 14 to 18, and the teens are the focus of the ministry. We want them to understand poverty in a new and provocative way and to realize their connection to it. Every summer, dozens of camps gather in various locations all over the state, involving hundreds of young people in total. The one I have attended since 2008 is fittingly housed at Camp Christian, an old-time Baptist campground.
My team of 4 adults and 8 young people were putting a new roof on an old, but well-built, 4-room home. On Monday afternoon, it started to rain (Monday rain is the bane of Salk roofers because the old shingles are off, but the house is not dried in). We tarped the roof well, but there was a deluge and the inside of the house was drenched. The homeowner couple watched despairingly as their mattress, upholstered chairs, and ruined possessions were unceremoniously thrown into a dumpster in the front yard. The couple gathered some clothes and belongings and we paid for a hotel.
The next day, deacons from two local churches came to the house to see how they could help. These were retired men who belonged to rural Baptist churches. We didn’t talk politics or religion, but I suspect that I am significantly more liberal that they are. But those differences, so prominent on social media and in the minds of many who do not understand why churches exist, did not matter at all. Our goal, about which we were completely unified, was helping the homeowners. On Tuesday, it wasn’t clear that the house could be saved. A thorough inspection by our team after the rain had revealed some previously undiscovered electrical problems that would require extensive rewiring (which was in addition to some significant rot in the floor joists about which we already knew).
For the next three days, we acted on faith. We had come to put a roof on, and we put it on. When the inspector came Friday and determined that the house was salvageable, we cheered.
What impressed me most about our week was the deacons. Every day one of them stopped by the house to check on us and the family. And not just casually. They were there to solve the problem, to love their neighbor in the most tangible and pragmatic way. “Well, we can’t pay for them to stay in a hotel very long.” “Can we find them a place that is close enough to their jobs?” (They had a single car and different work schedules). “If we knock the house down and start over, how will they afford the increase in property tax?”
The deacons, the Salk camp director, and a local Methodist minister, met to formulate a plan. Temporary shelter, better than their current home, was secured until the home could be repaired. All their salvageable belongings were packed up and moved to their new residence. The Salk camp had to end after a week, but we are committed to returning as many times as it takes to join forces with the deacons and other friends of the couple until the house is habitable again.
This is the work of the church. But no media outlet would write about this. Why not? First of all, these kinds of displays of Christian love are too commonplace to be considered news. Second, examine how you feel after reading this. Are you upset or angry? Have I dunked on a group that you dislike? No? Well, that answers the question. This is a story about ordinary people who have some differences in their world views. But those differences pale in comparison to the common ground we share. My week in Hampton was a refreshing demonstration of what happens when we focus on what connects us and try to make our corner of the world a little better.
A version of this column appeared in the August 14th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.
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Thanks for your column, Paul! I enjoyed it. Some points:
It seems to me that there is no such thing as “the church,” neither now nor at any point in the past. There have always been multiple churches, certainly different forms of religious belief and expression – even prior to the Reformation. As then, so it is now, with churches splitting off to form their own separate congregations based on opposition to church practices. In other words, a kind of politics has always been active in religious life. The two cannot be separated.
And that leads me to wonder if the example you cite actually applies to broader issues society confronts. The sort of cross-currents that exist in political society are much more complex than those facing a group of church people re-roofing a house. Large-scale societal concerns must be addressed by a politics that accepts a rough-and-tumble world as it is, not as it wishes it were.
“It seems to me that there is no such thing as ‘the church,’ neither now nor at any point in the past.”
Actually, there is, in the sense that Paul and I use it. All denominations that use the Nicene Creed — including Methodist like Paul, and Catholics like me — regularly state that “We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” That’s not Catholic, but catholic — the universal church.
You see this principal at work on such things as the LARCUM process. Back in the 90s, LARCUM in SC issued a common baptismal certificate to be used by all participating sects — Lutheran, Anglican, Roman Catholic, United Methodist, hence LARCUM.
Now this NOT the case if you are a Baptist, or some other congregationalist (again, small C rather than a large one). Baptists hold that each congregation is its own separate “church.” (And Baptists weigh in here if I’m getting any nuance wrong.) If you’re a member of one Baptist church, and you attend another across town one Sunday, you are there as a “visitor,” not a member. And rather than all these congregations being a part of one larger “church,” they gather to discuss things they have in common at a “conference.”
I don’t know where that leaves, say, Presbyterians. But I think I’ve correctly described the term in the sense that Paul and I were using it.