A Baptist and a Catholic walk into a ...

No, not a bar. You've heard the joke:

Jews don't recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
Protestants don't recognize the Pope's authority.
Baptists don't recognize each other in the liquor store. 

But this is no joke. A Baptist and a Catholic ... share what's so great about Disciples. Dr. Elizabeth Flowers and Dr. Darren Middleton teach in the TCU Religion Department, and if you've ever wondered how a denomination can call itself Christian while insisting on intellectual rigor and religious diversity at the same time, read what they have to say about The C in TCU. Go ahead. It's worth the click.

What felt so refreshing in reading this was remembering my own intellectual and ecumencial awakening in college. Even as the son of a Disciples minister and college religion professor, I hadn't had my presuppositions really challenged until I got away from home and had to start framing my own questions. I couldn't get by just figuring out derivatives or memorizing the names of the cranial nerves. In interdisciplinary study of the sciences, arts, and humanities I came face-to-face with both existential despair and what Viktor Frankl called the "search for meaning."

This became life-giving because I was in a university whose religious heritage didn't demand conformity. Instead it demanded honesty and a willingness to risk my worldview. My professors expected me to read hard stuff I couldn't unread. Not only Augustine, Aquinas, and Hartshorne, but Sartre, Nietzsche, and Camus; Ruether, Daly and Gilligan. And not just to affirm or deny, but to understand. Not to arrive at answers once and for all but to help me get clear about my own questions and learn how to keep asking them better.

It kind of makes me want to go up and down the street knocking on doors. But instead of handing someone a tract with a bunch of questions and answers, I'd hand them a card that asks, "What questions matter most to you?" assure them I'm not there to force my answers on them, but if they want a community that likes exploring such things, we're down the street.

Drs. Flowers and Middleton have captured in a few paragraphs something most American Protestants really do believe and might be surprised to find that lots of church leaders do, too: intellectual rigor and the valuing of human diversity are not the enemy of Christian faith but are instead a vibrant expression of it. The intellectual richness required for religion to become worthy of human striving doesn't fit in a sound byte. It's relational, not propositional.

It feels healthy to be part of a movement that lives into the tensions of faith without minimizing ambiguity or reducing others to caricature (at least not very often, and when we do, we apologize). I'm glad we're the kind of church that supports colleges where someone asks, "What's the C mean?" and discovers that it's a Christian faith that welcomes questions.

In many of our Disciples congregations, the next few weeks we will receive our Thanksgiving Offering. It supports students at 14 member undergraduate colleges or universities and seven seminaries or divinity houses. Which schools? Click here for more. Thanksgiving offerings helped me when I was at TCU and at Disciples Divinity House at the University of Chicago. To support students in Disciples higher education, click here and designate your gift to the Thanksgiving Offering.

Blessings and Peace,
David