Some Christian Convictions: A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day ThinkingCoffin, Henry Sloane
Religion
Some Christian Convictions: A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking
Coffin, Henry Sloane
Christianity -- 20th century; Theology, Doctrinal -- Popular works
We have to consider the particular communion to which we ourselves
belong, and ask whether there are any barriers in it that exclude from
its membership or from its working force those who possess the Spirit of
Christ, and so are divinely called into the Church and divinely endowed
for service. We must make our own communion as inclusive as we believe
the Church to be, or we are not attempting to organize the Church of
Christ, but to create some exclusive club or sect of Christians of a
particular variety.
We must study sympathetically the ways of other communions, and be
prepared to borrow freely from them whatever approves itself as
inspiring to Christian character and work. A Presbyterian will often
refuse to avail himself of the great historic prayers, simply because he
thinks he would be copying Lutherans or Episcopalians, forgetting that
he is heir of the whole inheritance of the Church, and that his own
direct ecclesiastical forbears freely used a liturgy, and even composed
some of the most beautiful parts of the Book of Common Prayer; and an
Episcopalian will not cultivate the gift of expressing himself in prayer
in words of his own because this is the practice of other communions.
As every communion employs in its hymnal the compositions of men and
women who in life were members of almost every branch of the Church of
Christ, so each should as freely use methods of propaganda, or worship,
or education, that have been found valuable in any communion. The more
freely we borrow from one another, the more highly we shall prize one
another, and the more completely we share the same life, the more
quickly will our corporate oneness be felt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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