Church Fights

In an unsentimental discussion of the promise and difficulties of Christian community (in Freedom for Ministry ), Richard Neuhaus has these sage words about church fights: “Not infrequently, life together is mainly strife together. This commonly comes as a shock to young men and women entering the ministry. Among those who later leave to go into professional counseling or to take holy orders in the church of Health, Education, and Welfare, a frequent reason given is disillusionment with sheep who turned out to be wolves. It is easy to say that such ministers should have known better, that their idealized view of the Church was naive and immature, and what did they expect from a Church that is, after all, made up of people. But it must be admitted that there is no adequate preparation for the virulence of sheer nastiness that so often erupts in the life of the Christian community. It is a special sort of nastiness, perhaps because proimity to the sacred multiplies the force of the demonic. Envy, resentment, and unalloyed hatred can make their appearance in any human association, but they seem so ghastly in the Church because they so flagrantly contradict the stated purpose of the association.”