The Tolerant Christian Church

This month’s Church Herald, the monthly magazine of the Reformed Church in America, contains much material from the national Synod meeting. Naturally, the lead article is about the Church’s condemnation of a professor and Minister of the Word for presiding over the marriage of his gay daughter ( http://rca.org/news/archives/20050618.html). My own feelings on this are expressed elsewhere…

The most interesting statement in this month's magazine comes from a letter concerning church discipline, written by Victor Nuovo of Middlebury, Vermont. His thoughts concern the much broader issue of how a religious institution purports to ‘discipline’ individuals for supposed actions that do not conform to the institution. His sentiments speak to any religious institution’s methods of speaking to individual members:

“To be open and affirming and non-judgmental would seem to be a better course for the RCA to follow. Indeed, I would prefer that the RCA become less Reformed and more Christian, less evangelical and more tolerant, that it behave more like a church than a sect. Discipline, no matter how well intentioned, narrows the spirit and makes it, among those who apply it and those who receive it, resentful.”