Good Fences, Good Neighbors?

Dr. Marcus Bach of the University of Iowa School of Religion calls himself a "religious sleuth." For 15 years (partly financed by a Rockefeller fellowship) he has been investigating the state of Protestantism in the U.S. Published this week is the result: an autobiographical Report to Protestants (Bobbs-Merrill, $3), which is well-timed for this month's big conference of churches at Amsterdam.

Some 15 years ago, when young Pastor Marcus Bach first went to his Evangelical pulpit in the town he calls Fairfield, Kans., most of Fairfield's farmers and cattlemen were members of the Evangelical and Baptist churches. The same kinds of cars nuzzled the two churches on Sunday mornings and the same kinds of Godfearing Kansans sang and prayed inside. Why shouldn't the two become one flock? To Pastor Bach and the young Baptist preacher across the way, the 200-odd-sect division of Protestantism in the U.S. was "inherently wrong and sinful."

Songs & Candles. The Church of Christ, they thought, ought to be a united fellowship of all believers. They plotted to nudge their congregations into eventual unity, and for a while the experiment seemed to prosper on joint choir recitals, Christmas festivals and church socials. But when the two eager young pastors frankly talked merger to a joint meeting of their church boards, they learned something about the wellsprings of faith in the U.S.

"Why shouldn't there be denominations?" asked one Baptist leader. "Lots of them. All kinds of them . . . Some folks want candles burning in the church. Others don't. Some like one song. Others like another kind . . . Practice what you believe . . . Good fences make good neighbors, as every farmer knows."

Bach and his church board finally decided that he had better take his dreams of unity elsewhere. He went back to college and began studying U.S. Protestantism in earnest. Eventually, he began to agree with Fairfield's old Doc Reynolds: "Churches aren't built on a sense of brotherhood, young man. They're. built on things to be believed . . . Unite the churches and you'll kill what religion there's left."

The Man in the Pew. Dr. Bach's report to Protestants is a hopeful one: "Historic Protestantism," he says, "will continue to dominate 'Church Street' just as it has since the birth of American freedom." His early crusade for church unity in Fairfield now seems to him "as unimportant as it was impractical." Protestantism's very multiplicity he now considers its strength. As Doc Reynolds once told him: "Protestantism ought to remind a man of spring . . . New life beginning to move. New cells splitting up . . . Did you ever think of Protestantism like that? . . . The multiplication of cells is one of the manifestations of an inherent vital force."

The church leaders at Amsterdam, warns Marcus Bach, must remember the individual Protestant worshiper and his spiritual needs: "I had traveled 15 years only to agree that the personal religious life must come first in any Protestant plan . . . If the leaders of the World Assembly failed to challenge the individual . . . they would declare unity with their lips but retain plurality in their mission."

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