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Christ’s Gift
Our Shared Identity

Our shared identity

As the Act2 team travelled around the Church we asked the somewhat provocative question, ‘what holds us together other than history and property?’ Despite some hesitation in answering, (‘maybe that is all that is holding us together…’), people named a range of things: the Uniting Church is inclusive, committed to justice, in covenant, multicultural, joyfully ordains women, has a thoughtful approach to theology and scholarship and values our connections to other Christians and other faiths. Often someone would say something like, ‘Jesus Christ holds us together’.

The consistency with which people named the Uniting Church’s shared identity markers was striking. Remarkably similar lists appear in Act2: On The Way and in Act2: In Response to God’s Call. The same markers have continued to resonate again and again.

Despite the consistency with which these markers are affirmed, as a Church we have often struggled to live up to the commitments we have made. This is particularly true of our Covenant relationship with Congress and our commitments to be a multicultural and intercultural Church.

We also continue to struggle with the significant theological fault lines that run through our life and impact the extent to which we can embrace a shared identity. While not the only one, sexuality remains the most prominent. Leaders within the LGBTIQA+ community, while acknowledging the decisions that have been made on sexuality, continue to long for a Church that is more open, affirming and celebrating of the gifts, participation and leadership of people who identify as LGBTIQA+. Despite the public and self-perception of being an ‘inclusive’ and ‘welcoming’ Church some members of the LGBTIQA+ community do not feel this is true in many communities of faith. Some are looking for more institutional recognition and support.

Other parts of the Uniting Church feel these decisions have made it difficult to continue holding our diverse theological perspectives within one institutional arrangement. One submission captured the mood in asking whether a ‘gracious decoupling’ might be possible – the creation of separate structures within the whole. These communities have found the decisions on sexuality, despite attempts to accommodate diverse theological perspectives, deeply challenging, disconnected from their local experience and inconsistent with their understanding of the Bible. However, the overall sense across the Church is that we should do all we can to bear witness to that unity which is both Christ’s gift and will for the Church.

Our theological culture

The concept of ‘theological culture’ finds its origins in the concept of ‘social imaginary’. That is, the set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols through which people imagine their social whole.⁸ As people of faith, our theology speaks into every aspect of our ‘social whole’ and so arises the idea of ‘theological culture’. It is deeply linked to our identity.

Some have suggested that the beginning point for this work should have been to return to the sources of our faith and redefine the faith and purpose of the Church. However, the Basis of Union did not seek to define the faith of the Uniting Church. It sought to confess the faith of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.⁹ As a Church, we entered into the faith of the church universal and described how we would live this out.

Over time as a Church, we have developed what have been called ‘instruments of unity’.¹⁰ These have built on our foundational documents, particularly the Basis of Union, to further respond to our context and the gaps and silences which were sinfully part of our history. For example, the Statement to the Nation (1977), The Uniting Church is a Multicultural Church (1985), the Covenanting Statement (1994), Uniting in Worship 2 (2005) and the Revised Preamble to the Constitution (2009). Others have suggested including our consensus decision-making process as described in the Manual for Meetings (2009). God has gifted us a foundation upon which to stand as we look to grow our theological culture and respond to our context afresh.

Faced with rapid decline, the temptation may be to build a stronger, uniquely Uniting Church identity; high walls to protect us from the outside and make us more secure.

However, our tradition as a uniting church is not to build strong walls of doctrine and identity. It is to look out to the wide-open spaces of God’s love in our life, the life of other traditions and the wider world and to learn from it all. Yes, from time to time we need to build fences, draw a line, define a boundary. And we have. We have said ‘yes’ to baptising children. We have said ‘yes’ to welcoming them at the Lord’s table. We have said ‘yes’ (again) to ordaining women called to ministry (continuing the tradition of our founding churches).

As important as it was to define those boundaries, it was done carefully and sometimes reluctantly. We have also struggled with not defining boundaries where some have wished we would. Despite the pain it has sometimes caused, we have faithfully sought to bear witness to the unity to which Christ has called us. Even in defining boundaries we have kept our fences low enough to see others (and so others could see us). We have been willing to learn from others and invite them to learn from us.

In the end, it is not the boundaries that will sustain us. It is the deep wells God has given us to draw from. The Basis of Union points us to the author and source of our faith. We further find wells of living faith in our instruments of unity. We need to gather around these wells to drink more deeply from them to renew and refresh our life. For some of us who have stood at these wells for a long time it seems they have run dry. We think we have learned all we can from these gifts of God. It sometimes takes a new person to come alongside and say, ‘that well is deeper than you think it is’, and for us to plumb the depths again and find fresh water.

Sometimes, we do draw water from the wells to manufacture bricks for the walls we want to build or to pour a bucket of water on an opponent in an argument. There is a well we have drawn from too often to try to sustain our shared identity and life – our Regulations. We have too readily looked to our Regulations as a source of unity. We have too often tried to search in them for a sense of common identity.

As we look to how to sustain a flourishing theological culture, we need to drink more regularly from the wells we already have and those we might dig in response to God’s call to fresh words and deeds. It might help us share with one another across the geographical and theological divides that currently seem to define our cultures.

Returning to the question of what holds us together, the answer ‘Jesus Christ’ ought not be interpreted as a simplistic, lowest common denominator answer. Rather it should be seen as a powerful force which transcends boundaries. The confession in Paragraph 3 of the Basis of Union, “The Church preaches Christ the risen crucified One and confesses him as Lord…”¹¹ is, and should be, our source of unity as a fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Far from this being exclusionary or inhospitable to the breadth of theological perspectives within and beyond the Uniting Church, it is the reconciling work of God through Jesus’ death and resurrection which draws us into the, “…coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation.”

To navigate our complex and changing ministry and mission context we will need to pursue a robust, compelling and imaginative theological culture. The shared institutions, practices and texts which enliven it will need to be strengthened along with the web of relationships that create strong networks.

We should embrace the task of cultivating a flourishing theological culture with hope. God has not left the Church without those who have reflected deeply upon, and acted trustingly in obedience to, God’s living Word. As we look to be more intentional and consistent about our discipleship, this conversation must spread beyond our scholarly interpreters to all who call the Uniting Church home.

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