Splits and divisions – like divorce – are not always avoidable. Sometimes they may represent the best available option.
'Zeal is nothing but a terrible renderer [divider] when there is not enough love to balance it.’
That sentence has stayed lodged in my mind ever since I read it some years ago. I came across it (or rather it leapt up at me out of the page!) while I was reading a brief history of the great Welsh religious revival of 1904-5. Writing just eight years after the event, the author, R B Jones, concluded that the revival, which had swept the country and achieved remarkable things, had then sadly fallen victim to a fatal spate of splits and divisions.
Now there is nothing in itself wrong with zeal – with enthusiasm, whole-heartedness, single-mindedness or absolute devotion to an idea or a cause. No-one – quite rightly – has a good word for luke-warmness. Jesus, for example, affirmed to his followers that the first and greatest commandment was, ‘To love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Nothing held back here. Once you have put your hand to the plough, he emphasised, there was no turning back.
So why is it that the more fervently and single-mindedly a cause is upheld, the more likely it is that splits and divisions will develop? A modern example is the IRA – the Irish Republican Army. Now mercifully committed to peaceful methods, it was once the feared military wing of the Republican movement in Northern Ireland. First there was just the IRA, then there was the ‘Provisional’ IRA, then the ‘Continuity’ IRA and after that the ‘Real’ IRA. Each time a split took place it was because some dedicated activists felt that the parent body had drifted away from the true cause. ‘Zeal’ made the ‘rendering’ only more likely.
The history of Christianity is littered with such splits. They date from very early on, but are particularly noticeable among the Protestant and Reformed churches. Just to take one example from the (very) many possible. In Scotland there are several groupings of Presbyterian churches outside the main Church of Scotland. These include the Free Church of Scotland, the United Free Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) and the Associated Presbyterian Churches. Doubtless those breaking away (or ‘continuing’) would claim to be clinging to some vital and non-negotiable aspect of the truth.
The same, of course, applies to other Christian denominations and also to other faiths. I saw on the news with sad incomprehension how women Sunni Muslim suicide bombers had targeted Shia Muslim pilgrims making their way to a religious festival in Baghdad. These zealous women had sacrificed themselves to wreak maximum carnage among their fellow (and equally fervent) co-religionists. In newly-independent India it wasn’t the departing imperialists or the Muslims who shot Mahatma Gandhi, but fellow Hindus who felt he was compromising the purity of their faith.
Splits and divisions – like divorce – are not always avoidable. Sometimes they may represent the best available option. We need wisdom to see when such a parting of the ways has become inevitable and is ultimately for the best. But it is also true that, with the application of enough love and its hand-maiden humility (perhaps an acknowledgement that the other party may have some of the truth), many breakaways could be avoided.
Another commentator on the Welsh revival, Nantlais Williams, put it like this, ‘Once we lose the love of Christ it is not long before we show signs of narrowness and the result is that we are constantly living on the other side of the fence with everyone.’
At Christmas time Christians are drawn once more to ponder the extent and the depth of God’s incredible love for us. As Christina Rossetti’s still-popular carol puts it:
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine.
Love was born at Christmas,
Stars and angels gave the sign.
There was no lack of a consciousness of God’s love in Wales in the years immediately following the revival. As one of the most popular songs of the ‘awakening’ put it, ‘Here is love vast as the ocean, Loving kindness as the flood.’ The sadness would seem to be that it was not sufficiently applied when it came to dealing with internal arguments and disagreements among the believers. ‘Never let your zeal outrun your charity,’ warned the American nineteenth century Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou, ‘The former is human and the latter is divine.’
Since graduating in Modern History from Oxford University, Paul Williams has worked for Initiatives of Change – mainly in India and Wales. For 20 years he was Secretary of the national twinning link between Wales and Lesotho.
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