Church discipline

As you can probably tell already, church discipline is important to me in choosing a church. And, as you’ll see, I am not easy to please in this area.

That’s because I’ve been provoked through the years by the misapplication (and nonapplication) of church discipline. That’s a big reason I left the Presbyterian Church. I was fed up with no action being taken against heterodoxy and heteropraxy while at the same time some presbyteries oppressed and even kicked out orthodox congregations.

But I’ve seen that liberals aren’t the only ones who can flunk church discipline. I’ve seen conservative controlling church leaders oppress people, often for things that are good!

Why do I get provoked over such things? Orthodoxy and Christian freedom are both very important to me, as well as Christian unity. On orthodoxy, if a church isn’t committed enough to the faith to remove heretics and apostates from positions of leadership, then why should I be committed to that church? On Christian freedom, it is for freedom that Christ has set me free. So I will not subject myself to a controlling yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1) On unity, I want Christians who differ on peripheral matters to be treated as full brothers and sisters. Church discipline is just not appropriate over matters such as, say, baptismal regeneration – a question that resulted in church discipline in the Episcopal Church in the 19th century. This misapplication of discipline helped fragment Christian unity and helped push some evangelical Episcopalians to split off and form the Reformed Episcopal Church.

And, yes, I want to be treated as a full brother when I differ on peripheral issues.

Church discipline is one reason I’m attracted to orthodox Anglicanism. Historically in Anglicanism, there has been room for a variety of orthodox from evangelical Bible-thumpers (Hey, I’m one.) to Anglo-Catholic incense addicts. I want to be in a church with such variety. I disagree with, say, Anglo-Catholics on some things, but I like them and want to be in the same church with them. At the same time, orthodoxy is taken seriously enough among traditional Anglicans to apply discipline against apostasy, as the Primates seem poised to do against the ECUSA.

As far as overly controlling discipline, one of the ironies of North American Anglicanism today is that most of the control freak behavior is coming from the liberals such as +Ingham and +Bennison. If anything, historically the orthodox haven’t been controlling enough, putting up with Spong and the like.

So I am hard to please when it comes to church discipline. But when I look at how orthodox Anglicans apply it, I like most of what I see.