Tony the simple churches guy asked this, and it produced a slue of emails with different replies.  Because I am lacking in wisdom and grace, I am posting two of the emails I read.  The first one is by Tony himself; Tom Edgerton wrote the second.

…Among those of us who know Jesus and try to keep his commandments, I think there are different understandings and interpretations of what that means.  To me, the most basic commands we are to keep are found in the Kingdom Manifesto (Matthew 5-7), which obviously includes the command to love your enemies.  We don’t all understand that the same.  My experience with a number of so called Christian communities has been that if you are not into the whole Mom, the flag, and apple pie thing, they will not allow you to be part of their community.   Or horror of horrors, you chance to mention that because of your convictions about peace and loving your enemies, you voted Democratic rather than being a part of the evangelical Christian base Tim Russert talks about that is solidly behind the Republican Party and its values. Trust me on this one, there are a number of Christian communities from which that alone will absolutely exclude you. You and I have talked before about this whole Left Behind/Left to Burn craze going on among contemporary Christians.   I have a hard time getting excited about trying to be in community with people who are looking forward with great relish to the time when they’ll escape from this evil place and all those other wicked people will finally get what they deserve.  I don’t think it creates any great passion for those in the world who are without hope; from where I stand it smells a lot like smugness and self-righteousness and smells is the word.  More to the point, I was in a group the other day that was talking about eschatology and what was an orthodox point of view.  I am I believe the term is a preterist - I believe most of the book of Revelation was written to the first century church, understood by the first century church, and experienced by the first century church.  Can I safely say that and still remain in community with those who have a different understanding?  I guess we’ll find out since I just did. Let me tell you what I will probably remember most from the conference you and I both attended last weekend.  When we did the exercise about how we experience God, another minister came up to the group I was in and said his profile was lacking in green, that maybe he should go out and hug a tree or send some money to FCNL or one of those groups.  I suppose he was trying to make a joke, but the underlying meaning was very clear.  If you don’t experience God the same way I do, you’re wrong - so wrong that it’s ok for me to make fun of you.  Well guess what?  My three colors were pretty well balanced, but know what my primary was?  You guessed it -green.  And that one comment really made me feel uncomfortable and out of place for the rest of the day.

What Spencer Burke said there just really resonated with me.  We as church fellowships claim to be relational communities, but as Leonard Sweet so aptly said, most of us are still operating in the propositional realm.

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“Community” implies a certain like-mindedness, yes, but more importantly for me, it also includes a component of mutual spiritual challenge. I don’t attend the Meeting I attend because I want everyone to agree with me, I attend it because I can count on my Quaker brothers and sisters to challenge me and help me grow in my Christian understanding to a deeper and more fulfilling place. What good would it do me or my Friends to sit around and congratulate ourselves on knowing the Truth as an end in itself? On the Last Day, I don’t think I’ll get points for knowing the Truth but doing nothing with it. Jesus promised us a lot of things—good and bad—that would result from following him but I don’t remember that “comfortable” was on the list. Any church that posts a sentry at the door to keep the sinners out so that the Pharisees will be comfortable inside is a church with no spine, and to my mind, no future. If I am to be a follower of Christ, then I expect to have to engage in the world, and our work in it, outside the church door. But I need the help of all my Friends to discern what that work is, and sometimes we disagree on this. What else would you expect? It’s simplistic to ask someone if they are “washed in the blood,” and expect that a simple yes or no answer will be the end of the discussion. Rather, it’s the beginning of a lifetime of discussion-and yes, sometimes debate-about what being washed in the blood means and how we are to conduct ourselves as Christians. Maintaining that some Friends [Quakers] are washed in the blood and others aren’t is divisive, unloving, and unhelpful. Wouldn’t it be easier to just assume, for purposes of discussion, that anyone who calls themselves a Christian and a Friend and shows up at Blue Ridge [for our annual business meeting] is washed in the blood, and then get on with our Society’s business?

…We can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. I can’t make you like the people I choose to like, and if you’re going to see them as sinners, I can’t stop you. But I think it’s appropriate for me to ask you, in the light of what we as Quakers say we believe, to consider what that judging does to their spirit and to yours. And there are a host of other things we need to be discussing and doing as well. Spiritual challenge. North Carolina Yearly Meeting of Friends ought to have the resiliency to allow for this; if we don’t we have NOTHING to say to the rest of the world. No guts, no glory, as the saying goes. Yes, John 15:14 says “you are my friends if you do what I command.” But the meaning isn’t found in the next verse, for me it’s farther down in John 15:17: “This I command you, that you love one another.” Community.

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