When Christ's Body Is Broken

Anxiety, Identity, and Conflict in Congregations

Fuller

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498203388
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

When Christ's Body Is Broken tells the stories of two congregations in conflict. Although these churches had very different problems, they faced similar struggles: to articulate a faithful response to their concerns and to cope with the discord that threatened to tear their communities apart.Pastoral theologian Leanna K. Fuller shares these stories as a way of exploring the sources and dynamics of conflict in congregations. She argues that at the heart of such conflict lies anxiety triggered by encounters with difference. Bringing together resources from pastoral theology, psychodynamic theory, and social psychology, Fuller offers a theological reframing of conflict through categories of diversity, vulnerability, and hospitality--categories that, she argues, can encourage human beings to sit with the anxiety stirred by communal life and remain connected across differences. This reframing provides fertile ground out of which Fuller imagines concrete practices designed for conflicted communities and their leaders.

1

What’s the Problem?

Understanding Congregational Conflict

In the introduction I briefly described Grace United Church of Christ, a congregation that faced a difficult conflict around issues of human sexuality and denominational affiliation. Grace UCC is a congregation that I know well because, at the time of the conflict, I was serving as one of its pastoral leaders. This experience of serving a congregation torn by intense theological conflict raised many questions for me, ranging from the extremely practical (“How can members of a congregation learn to resolve their differences, or at least talk to one another more respectfully when they disagree?”) to the psychologically and philosophically abstract (“What makes people want everyone to be the same? What is so threatening about theological difference within a single faith community?”). Over time, these questions became so persistent that they led me to write this book, which seeks not only to understand why and how theological conflicts are generated and sustained within congregations but also what resources pastoral theology can offer to communities who are experiencing such conflicts. By “resources” I mean both general theological frameworks for approaching conflict in communities of faith, as well as specific suggestions for pastoral practice in the midst of congregational discord.

The primary questions that drive this book are as follows:

1. How can we understand the intensity and dynamics of theological conflict within congregations?

2. How can pastoral theology offer an alternative vision of theological disagreement that aims toward healthy conflict, rather than toward either extreme of eliminating conflict altogether, or engaging it in destructive ways?

3. What concrete practices could pastoral leaders and congregations use to handle theological conflict more effectively?1

I have chosen to address these questions by carefully examining the lived experience of two congregations that struggled with conflict around two very different theological issues. By approaching congregational conflict in this way, I hope to provide a helpful resource for congregations who are challenged by various kinds of theological differences. Furthermore, in this book I focus primarily on experiences of conflict within contemporary mainline Protestant congregations in the United States.2 This is the social-historical location in which my own experience is grounded, and with which I am most familiar. However, given the ubiquity of conflict within religious bodies of all types, I hope that this book may also be relevant for communities from many different Christian denominations, and perhaps even for other faith traditions.

Yet, in introducing my topic this way, I do not wish to imply that all types of congregational conflict can always be resolved. Indeed, at various times throughout its history Christian communities have endured conflicts over crucial theological matters—matters that ultimately caused its members to break company with one another and to form new groups or traditions. I acknowledge the possibility that, in some cases, members of congregations may decide that the conflicts they are facing rise to this level and that they can no longer continue to be in communion with one another. Historically speaking, however, broad agreement on theological issues typically comes about only over a long period of time. I suggest that for congregations who are struggling with complex contemporary issues, more time is needed to discern whether far-reaching theological agreement can be achieved. Until that time elapses, congregations must learn how to make room for theological difference in their midst. Otherwise, more communities of faith may face destructive division in their life together.

The Scope of the Problem

The type of intense congregational conflict that took place at Grace UCC is, unfortunately, not unique. A variety of sources within the fields of congregational studies and sociology of religion demonstrate that many congregations within the United States today cite conflict as a perennial part of their common life. For instance, data gathered in 2006 and 2007 as part of the second wave of the National Congregations Study show that of the 1,506 congregations surveyed, 23.1 percent had experienced a conflict within the prior two years for which a special meeting was called.3 Perhaps more troubling, this same study found that 26.4 percent of the communities surveyed had experienced a conflict within the prior two years that had caused some members to leave the congregation.4 A similar, though much smaller, study found that 45 percent of the one hundred communities surveyed reported having experienced at least one conflict “significant enough to convene a special meeting or call in outside help” during the five years of the study.5

The data reported in the Faith Communities Today (FACT) studies conducted in 2000, 2005, 2008, and 2010 by the Cooperative Congregations Studies Partnership reveal a similar pattern. This study differs from the National Congregations Study in that its sample is much larger—surveying 28,787 communities of faith in all6—and it includes a larger percentage of non-Christian communities. However, since Christian congregations make up a significant proportion of the communities surveyed, the FACT study still provides a useful tool for understanding the prevalence of conflict within the types of churches that this book primarily addresses. According to the 2010 FACT data, 65.1 percent of the congregations surveyed had experienced conflict within the prior five years in one of four key areas: worship, finances, leadership, or program priorities. This figure, which represents a clear majority of the surveyed congregations, increased by almost 1 percent from the data gathered in 2000, demonstrating that conflict remains an important issue for most contemporary faith communities in the United States.7

This figure, however, refers only to the general presence of “conflict” in churches, which David Roozen, the author of the study, distinguishes from “serious conflict.” Roozen defines a serious conflict as “one in which some people left, a leader left or money was withheld.”8 The 2008 FACT study found that this type of serious conflict “is present in a third of congregations overall and reaches a high of 45% for Oldline Protestant congregations.”9 Based on these research findings, Roozen concludes that

For virtually every measure of congregational vitality contained in the FACT surveys, conflict erodes vitality and the more severe the conflict the greater the effect—whether for spiritual vitality, financial health, numerical growth, or the securing, nurturing and caring for lay leadership.10

These findings related to the prevalence of serious conflict correspond closely with the data reported in the National Congregations Study about conflicts resulting in the loss of membership. Taken together, these studies suggest that such serious conflicts, which have detrimental consequences for communities of faith, are present in anywhere from one-quarter to nearly one-half of contemporary congregations in the United States at any given time.

Admittedly, the majority of conflicts reported in these studies do not appear—at least on the surface—to be theological in nature. Yet, congregational researcher David Brubaker notes that of the respondents in his study reporting a single or first conflict in their churches, roughly 25 percent named homosexuality as the primary problem.11 Sociologist of religion Penny Edgell Becker discovered a similar trend in her study of twenty-three congregations in the suburban Chicago area: out of sixty-five conflicts reported, ten centered on issues of gender and sexuality.12 The emergence of gender and sexuality issues as a key category in these studies signals that theology often plays an important role in the development of congregational conflict. Granted, discussions about gender and sexuality in the wider culture do not necessarily engage explicitly theological themes; however, similar discussions within congregations frequently involve appeals to Scripture and other theological resources as a way of wrestling with these highly complex issues. Talking about gender and sexuality within a religious context almost inevitably touches on the nature of human being and God’s intentions for the created order, both of which are deeply theological subjects.

In fact, I argue that virtually all conflicts within congregations possess a theological dimension. Conflicts about church finances, for example, are not just about money, but about parishioners’ theological understanding of the nature of the church and its mission in the world. In other words, how congregations spend their money demonstrates their theological commitments. Similarly, disagreements about worship frequently go beyond differences in preference or personal style and instead touch on people’s most deeply held beliefs about who God is and how God relates to human beings. In turn, these theological commitments are deeply connected to practitioners’ sense of religious and social identity. If you ask people about their faith affiliation, they are likely to respond with phrases like “I’m a Methodist” or “I’m Lutheran” or “I belong to the United Church of Christ.” For many parishioners, these general religious identifiers encompass a host of specific t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What’s the Problem?
• Chapter 2: What Do Churches Fight About?
• Chapter 3: Why Is Difference So Threatening?
• Chapter 4: Why Do Group Identities Matter?
• Chapter 5: Where Is God in All This?
• Chapter 6: What Can Conflicted Congregations Do?
• Appendix
• Bibliography