Ultimate Church Union

Because the story of Holy Week began with a political act, it is only just that every week began with a political act. What put our Lord to death was not the action of the Jews but the Roman imperial system. In consequence, our actions as Christians become inescapably political, the building of a city that abides. I see very little of this politicization—the direct action, non-violent accompaniment to the usual channels of parliamentary democracy—in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. We need to recall the illegal life of the early church, the church that worshipped in the catacombs among the dead, to see how far we have come.

We need to remember who we are as disciples of Jesus, not Caesar, as members of Jesus’ body which was whipped, tortured and glorified. Yet that very body was and is in union with God, and prayed for the unity of all the faithful.

This is why politicization and precocity in union with the poor and precarious labourers is not enough. The Presbyterian Church in Canada should disband and disappear into union with the Roman Catholic or the Orthodox Church. All Protestant distinctive and denominational differences can after all be found in either church. A concrete sign of love, of abnegation and self-emptying would go far to show the world how these Christians love one another! The sign of unity is two becoming one, of many becoming one and we can either spiritualize that away or we can choose life and not death. To quote the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, “The sacred exists and is stronger than all our rebellions.”