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Jesus prayed of His followers, “that they would all be one” (John 17:21). It is sometimes hard to see the fulfillment of this verse, given that there are anywhere from several hundred to tens of thousands of Protestant denominations in the United States.
Jesus’ prayer has been a motivating impulse for the ecumenical movement, which strives to foster closer relationships between church bodies for the purpose of cooperation in missions, education, advocacy, and other programs, birthing organizations such as the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and the National Association of Evangelicals. The united church movement has taken the impulse a step farther, bringing together historically and theologically divergent groups into one fellowship. The United Church of Christ and the United Church of Canada even feature John 17:21 on their logos.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a plan for a massive united denomination garnered a great deal of support. J. Gresham Machen opposed having the Presbyterians join, arguing that it would obscure and destroy Presbyterian distinctives.
To ask a Baptist to give up believers-only baptism and local church autonomy is to ask him to cease being a Baptist. To ask a Presbyterian to give up infant baptism, presbyterian church government, and subscription to the Westminster Standards is to ask him to cease being a Presbyterian. We might ask, Why does that matter? Surely it is better to unite with other Christians than to maintain our own identities over what seem to outsiders to be trivial matters.
Unity is indeed our goal. But we will achieve that unity only in glory. That does not mean that we should cease striving for it, but it does mean that there will be roadblocks and that those roadblocks will sometimes be insurmountable. There is, simply stated, principled disagreement on many theological issues. And that’s OK.
There are many things that there is widespread agreement on—the deity of Christ, the Trinity, and so on—and for that we should be grateful. But the differences are due not to obstinacy or lack of study but to sincere disagreement. A Baptist baptizes believers only not because he doesn’t want to unite with other Christians but because he believes it’s biblical. A Presbyterian baptizes infants not because he stubbornly hangs on to a relic of Roman Catholicism but because he believes it’s biblical. These are not small stakes; they are not trivial matters. We are all striving to be biblically faithful; we simply disagree on how to do it. We can try to convince each other, but in the meantime we can still recognize one another as Christian brothers and sisters, pray for one another, and oftentimes work together for the cause of Christ in the world. We enjoy a unity as fellow members of the invisible church even now, and we look forward to the day when our unity will become visible.