The Church v. the Churches

"When Christ came into the world, He found the church loaded down with ritual and formalism. . . . The spirit of religion [had] been displaced by empty form. ... To build up an internal rather than an external religion . . . was Christ's mission on earth. Few and simple were the forms He set up or sanctioned. . . . Far be it from any true follower of Christ to minimize the spiritual value of these symbols, [but] can we imagine that . . . Christ . . . would regard [their] observance or nonobservance . . . as of sufficient importance to justify controversy among His followers, and their separation into rival factions? . . . What the world craves today is a more spiritual and less formal religion. ... I plead not for a modification of form but for its subordination to the spirit."

These sound sentiments were voiced last week by a man who is a Baptist by birth but a Christian by conviction: John D. Rockefeller Jr. He has given much of his life and fortune to the cause of church unity. Last week, as he often had before, John D. Jr. hit hard at disunity, warned that the churches' survival hinged on their joining in a great rebirth as the "Church of the Living God." Said he at a dinner of New York's Protestant Council:

"This reborn church . . . would pronounce ordinance, ritual, creed, all nonessential for admission into the Kingdom of God or His Church. A life, not a creed, would be the test. ... It would be the church of all the people . . . the church of the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant, the high and the low--a true democracy. ... I see all denominational emphasis set aside. I see cooperation, not competition. ... I see the church through its members molding the thought of the world and leading in all great movements. I see it literally establishing the Kingdom of God on earth. ..."

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