Sunday, March 28, 2004 AD
Closed Communion and Personal Cowardice
Interesting post by Blogsburg on closed communion, in particular the following comment:
Josh made the perceptive point in a comment on my earlier post on this subject, "Holy Communion or Unholy Chaos?" (using web-TV to post this so can't provide link), that the membership roll now has the same function in many churches as the Lord's Supper historically had. The idea that you could say, in effect, "It's not like I want to be a member of the Lutheran/RC/Orthodox church, for goodness sake, I only want to take Communion there", is therefore something of an innovation.
For all this, however, I have yet to test my theoretical commitment to closed communion in practice. I have not yet been in a position where I have visited one of our former churches, or a friend's church, and abstained from the Supper. This would require a degree of courage, brass neck, personal openness and willingness (though without the desire) to offend that is not my hallmark in such circumstances.
Plus, I'm English. We don't like to rock the boat or make a scene at the best of times. And when it comes to anything to do with religion, then I think it was TS Eliot who said that the English go to the church in much the same way they go to the lavatory: with the minimum of fuss, and without saying a word about it if they can possibly avoid it...
The entire closed communion controversy is people who don't believe in the Real Presence wanting to commune in churches that teach it. Most people who do believe in the Real Presence take it for granted that they should only commune in their own churches.That's exactly it. As I've mentioned before, I think the real issue is the personal offence felt by Christians denied the sacrament, because for many churches the only requirement for sharing in the Supper is that you "know and love the Lord Jesus". So if you come from such a church and are then excluded in a "Real Presence" church , you will perceive that exclusion, however wrongly, as an insinuation that you don't really "know and love the Lord", i.e. that you are not even a Christian at all. Not surprisingly, people take this rather personally. And quoting 1 Corinthians 11:27 at them probably doesn't help. ;-)
Josh made the perceptive point in a comment on my earlier post on this subject, "Holy Communion or Unholy Chaos?" (using web-TV to post this so can't provide link), that the membership roll now has the same function in many churches as the Lord's Supper historically had. The idea that you could say, in effect, "It's not like I want to be a member of the Lutheran/RC/Orthodox church, for goodness sake, I only want to take Communion there", is therefore something of an innovation.
For all this, however, I have yet to test my theoretical commitment to closed communion in practice. I have not yet been in a position where I have visited one of our former churches, or a friend's church, and abstained from the Supper. This would require a degree of courage, brass neck, personal openness and willingness (though without the desire) to offend that is not my hallmark in such circumstances.
Plus, I'm English. We don't like to rock the boat or make a scene at the best of times. And when it comes to anything to do with religion, then I think it was TS Eliot who said that the English go to the church in much the same way they go to the lavatory: with the minimum of fuss, and without saying a word about it if they can possibly avoid it...
