A la carte denomination

Mike Warnke once called nondenominational churches, "a Baptist church with a cool website." It is true, they do tend to partake of that theological tradition. So I got to thinking, if I could go a la carte and assemble my ideal denomination, what would it be?

There would be much of Eastern Christianity in it. The Eastern Church has several points of theology that make more sense to me than the Western. For one, although the Eastern Church knows what the Crucifixion was for, they dwell on it less than Western Christians do, and conversely, dwell more on the Resurrection than Western Christians. I am sure this is why there are no Eastern Saints with stigmata, but several who manifested a light like the Transfiguration. Also, although the Eastern Church recognizes Original Sin, they differ from the West in that they do not believe we inherited Adam's guilt. Thus, their concept of God is more just -- it is unjust to say anyone is born guilty. The Eastern Church would slightly change the Nicene Creed: instead of saying that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son," they would say, "proceeds from the Father, through the Son," and see the Holy Spirit, not as the relationship between the Father and the Son, but rather, as the fullness of God overflowing to fill the physical creation. Finally, an Eastern doctrine that is usually misunderstood in the West is the "deification" of the saved. Of course they do not mean that we are or become gods in our own right; what they mean is that we become "partakers of the Divine Nature," as James says; we become divine, not in ourselves, but by union with the Divine.

But I do not like everything about the Eastern Church. For one thing, in matters of church governance, I much prefer the Congregationalist model within Protestantism, i.e. each congregation is self governing, not beholden to a central hierarchy. I suppose that is my anarchist bent coming out, but it also seems to me more in keeping with the Pauline Epistles, in which he tells the church in each city to choose its own bishops and deacons from among its own congregation.

And since I see a progression in concepts of morality from the Patriarchs, to Moses, to later Prophets, to Jesus, that tells me that moral progress, not entrenched Law, is God's intention. Therefore, I would also have the kind of progressivism pioneered by the Metropolitan Community Church, and now being adopted by such mainstream groups as Episcopal and Lutheran: the full acceptance of LGBT members, and applying the principles of traditional marriage to same-sex marriage.

And I would even bring in a few ideas from fringe groups that were called heretical. For instance, the idea that the believer is free from Original Sin. Gee, wasn't that supposed to be the point all along? As far as I can tell, when an alleged heretic declares himself free from Original Sin, that is just a very straightforward way of saying he believes the Gospel. And don't let me forget the Adamites! I wish we had more of their writings, or better yet, would that they had not been persecuted to extinction. Their practice of worshiping in the nude seems to me just a more radical expression of the idea of being freed from Original Sin, since the Eden story attributes clothing to Original Sin.

I also would partake deeply of Matthew Fox's "Creation Spirituality," which endeavors to bring Christianity back into harmonious relationship with Nature -- too long neglected and even opposed by historical Christianity. In its zeal to abolish pagan gods, the Church unfortunately also alienated people from the natural cycles of life that those gods symbolized. Is this not what modern-day Pagans are seeking to heal? Maybe they wouldn't feel the need to go Pagan if they found the same healing in Christianity.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no denomination in existence that has all these characteristics. So I guess that makes me a "denomination" of one?

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