A Positive Theological Vision for the CRC

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The Christian Reformed Church was on shaky footing long before Synod 2022. This footing only grows more tenuous as individuals and congregations decide they can no longer be part of the CRCNA. However you feel about the Human Sexuality Report and recent synods, we have begun to lose beloved members who have meaningfully contributed to the life of this denomination. We lament this great loss.

For those who remain, as well as for those joining the CRC, what is needed now is a positive theological vision for the future. To that end, we submit this response as our own humble contribution to what we hope is an ongoing conversation about the future of the CRC. There are those who dream of a CRC that combines the best of evangelical Christianity with the best of the Reformed tradition. We suggest an alternative.

There seems concern on both ends of the spectrum of our current debates (and plenty of concern in the middle as well) that the CRC is either drifting toward mainline liberalism or toward a Christian nationalist evangelicalism. Some see the decisions of recent synods as evidence of the latter, while others celebrate those same decisions as evidence that we are avoiding the former. We see it another way entirely: We are fools if we believe the CRC’s identity is only found in our robust doctrine. We are fools if we believe the CRC’s identity is only in our rich relational history. We need both.

We propose that the way forward for the CRC is the way back—even further back. To be Reformed is to be catholic, as we confess to be in the Apostle’s Creed. To be catholic is, as the Belgic Confession maintains, to be part of the “one single catholic or universal church” that has “existed from the beginning of the world and will last until the end." As the Heidelberg Catechism teaches (Q&A 54), "We are living members of this community that has been gathered, protected, and preserved by God." To be a Reformed catholic, then, is to receive this entire history, including its historic practices of worship, as a gift of the Spirit.

The CRC would do well to recover, or for some to discover, our catholic roots. We need not be one more generically evangelical denomination, albeit with some Reformed theology sprinkled on top. Neither need we fear becoming another version of an aging and declining mainline. Rather, we submit that a positive theological vision for the CRC is to embrace a robust Reformed catholicity.

Here’s what we mean: The Reformed tradition in general, and the CRC in particular, is not merely a set of doctrines contained in the confessions. Rather, the CRC is, and has always been, a thick culture of practices, relationships, institutions, and emphases uniquely held together. To be CRC is both a way of being Christian and a way of being Reformed, and thus a unique way of being catholic. To lean into a Reformed catholic identity is to tether ourselves to our own past and to that of the wider Christian church. Whereas evangelicalism tends toward the tyranny of the present, and while some expressions of being Reformed are stuck in an attempt at repristination of the 16th century, a Reformed catholic approach avoids both. To be Reformed catholics is to cherish the entire sweep of the history of the church as guided by the Spirit and thus worthy of our attention.

We propose leaning further into the tradition we have, perhaps recovering some of what we have lost, as well as retrieving portions of our tradition long dormant. As such, we hope to see the CRC lean into a Reformed catholic identity in the following ways: covenant, ecclesiology, and kingdom.

Covenant

We have always been a church that emphasizes covenant. We fear this is being lost in favor of a more generically evangelical approach, especially as it relates to how we practice the sacraments. We worry that a further turn to evangelicalism, which has been underway in the CRC for some time, is a turn away from the robust practices of worship and sacraments that have guided our past. We were once a denomination of shared hymns and shared liturgy, shared practices embodying a shared culture that was never just about ethnicity; it was about covenant. We contend that a positive vision for the future of the CRC must be properly sacramental, rightly positioning baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the center of our faith and life together.

This positive vision of the life of the sacraments nourishing the life of the CRC is missing within so much of current evangelicalism. We have witnessed in the CRC how an abandonment of many of our shared practices has led to an abandonment of a shared culture, however unintentional or well-meaning it might have been. It is worth noting that in recent synods questions about divergent practices of baptism in the CRC were quickly brushed aside to get to the “real point” of divergent understandings of human sexuality. Some seemed to openly suggest that the latter were a bigger problem, and thus more important, than the former. Our confessions instruct us that “both the word and the sacraments (are) intended to focus our faith” and the sacraments uniquely “nourish and sustain our faith,” yet divergent practices on baptism and the Lord’s Supper are seen as unimportant. The CRC must root its future in its past emphasis on the covenant of baptism. Further, we would do well to grow roots that reach deeper than our historically infrequent celebrations of the Lord’s Supper.

Ecclesiology

A Reformed catholic understanding of the CRC returns us to the roots of not just shared beliefs, but shared practices. While we recognize the days of mandated liturgical forms are long gone, perhaps we can also recognize that something went missing in our communal life together. Attempts to rally only around belief in the confessions isn’t enough to reclaim or sustain it. Without common practices, common belief will fade quickly. A Reformed catholicity assumes a certain communal identity and approach. A Reformed catholic ecclesiology counters the tendency to individualism, independence, and congregationalism that lurks in evangelicalism by leaning into the ecclesiology we have received. Before we launch headlong into well-meaning evangelistic endeavors, be they multi-site congregations, online-only communities, house churches, or any number of other possibilities, we should pause and consider together whether our excitement over innovation faithfully reflects the Reformed polity we are called to steward. We recommend a retrieval of communal practices to foster a common identity.

Kingdom

Finally, the CRC has historically expressed the goodness of creation and the call to make culture well. Some see this as the sole property of a transformationalist camp, we see it simply as a faithful expression of Reformed catholicity. We desire to retrieve robust conversations about the goodness of creation and the implications for our world, as well as the demand for justice in this life as we await the next. These are serious times and those are serious questions. We contend the CRC can lean into these serious questions. We would like to see the CRC lean more into the full sweep of Christian history and culture making, expressing and appreciating the profound depth and beauty of the entire Christian tradition, to lean into beauty in our art, music, and liturgy, and not settle for the often trite sentimentality that seems part and parcel within much of evangelicalism. A Reformed catholic approach in the CRC would lean into beauty and thoughtfulness as a marker of Christian faith.

We applaud the desire by some to turn more toward evangelism, but we don’t think it requires turning to evangelicalism. A Reformed catholic emphasis on a covenant-keeping God is properly evangelistic in tone and tenor, and precisely what an exhausted culture desperately needs. There are exiles who are exhausted with being told they must construct their own identity. There are exiles who are exhausted with feeling the need to emote authentically in worship and life. There are exiles who are exhausted with rapidly changing mores in culture and church and exiles who would find the counter-cultural narrative of the Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 1 (and beyond!) a most welcome gift. There are exiles from evangelicalism who need encouragement that they need not deconstruct their faith entirely, but that the church is much wider than the narrow slice they might have encountered, thus far and deeper by miles. These exiles need to be encouraged that history and tradition are not impediments to faith, but the proper means of its nourishment. Similarly, there are refugees from the mainline who need to be assured that traditional historic worship and biblical preaching can co-exist. There are also cultural exiles, converts-in-waiting, who are drawn to the transcendence and beauty found within the depths of the Christian tradition, but are worn out with culture warring and uninterested in a purely emotional and experiential faith. The CRC is poised to welcome souls into her midst from these and other camps. We need not turn to evangelicalism in order to evangelize. We need instead to be Reformed catholics who catechize.

We submit that the CRC needs a Reformation. A catholic one.