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Down Under Drawers

Churchianity vs. Christianity is a comic book published by a Christian commune in Geelong, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne. The publishers identify themselves as “radical, unorthodox, living-by-faith Christians.” “We’re a small group of people who live together. We wrote and illustrated this booklet ourselves. We believe in things like love, faith, and honesty. We spend our lives trying to make the world a better place. Other than that, we’re pretty normal people.”

Their chief bugaboo is “religion,” by which they mean anything institutional, including, of course, the Catholic Church.

The comic book purports to be a rephrasing of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Most panels contain cross-references to the appropriate line of that epistle. The problem is that these people, who “believe in things like love, faith, and honesty,” are dishonest in their presentation.

Consider the first two panels. Paul (the bearded fellow with glasses) presents Titus to a “Churchianity” congregation. “Titus, my companion at this time hadn’t even been ‘baptised.’ And yet no one forced him to be…although some tried! (2:3-4).” 

But this is what Galatians actually says (RSV): “But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.” These Australians incorrectly equate circumcision with baptism, but Paul’s point in this chapter is that he “had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised” (the Gentiles), while Peter’s main focus was the circumcised (the Jews) (Gal. 2:7-8). 

The cartoon Paul says, “The way I see it, Christ never told us to ‘baptise’ with water!…That’s a hangover from your religious past.” 

But look at John 3:5: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” This can only mean water baptism. Jesus doesn’t say to be born only of the Spirit–he says “water and the Spirit.” And, despite what some claim, he does not mean by “water” the water of childbirth; the term is never used that way in the New Testament. 

Besides, look what he does right after this discourse: “Jesus and his disciples went into the land of Judea; there he remained with them and baptized” (John 3:22). This probably means not that Jesus himself performed baptisms (John 4:1-3), but that his disciples performed them at his direction. He must have told them to do so–a fairly clear proof that he “told us to `baptise’ with water.” 

The asterisk in the last sentence quoted from the comic book leads us to three verses: 1 Corinthians 1:17, John 1:33, John 4:2. These, we are to believe, demonstrate that Jesus opposed water baptism. But here’s what the verses really say: 

“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Cor. 1:17).Does this mean baptism is to be opposed? 

Not at all. As A New Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture states, “one must hear God’s word before it can be accepted and one can be baptized.” Paul was writing not against baptism, but against an unprepared baptism, which reduces baptism from a sacrament to a magical incantation. Jesus himself said to preach first, then baptize: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations [that is, preach to them first] baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). 

“I myself [John the Baptist] did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit'” (John 1:33). Again, no repudiation by Jesus of baptism. Quite the opposite, in fact. John the Baptist had b een performing a non-sacramental bap tism, the baptism of repentance. It was symbolic only. But the baptism which Jesus instituted was a sacramental baptism because through it one received the grace of the Holy Spirit. (Remember, a sacrament is a physical sign which signifies and effects the transmission of grace.) 

“…although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples…” (John 4:2). An apparent contradiction to John 3:22? Yes, but only apparent. Look at the full sentence: “Now when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again to Galilee” (John 4:1-3). All this says is that Jesus himself didn’t perform baptisms–but he certainly approved of them. 

In another series of frames the Australians reject the “bondage of Churchianity,” relying on Galatians 4:31-5:1, but they misconstrue what Paul means. (He is talking about the Law and contrasting its salvific power with that of Christian faith.) 

The comic book refers to 1 John 4:7 (“love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God”), suggesting the Church is not necessary–love is sufficient. But to love God fully is to love him the way he wishes–through his Church, which is his Mystical Body and which was established by him precisely as the “pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). 

“Don’t get sucked back into churchy games,” say the Australians: “To hell with your sacraments.” But these sacraments are Christ’s and are from him. To reject them (and the ministers of them) is to reject him (Luke 10:16). 

Which brings us to another panel: The frustrated Paul sees a vast plot, and his Australian handlers cap the argument by saying, “church leaders should not use titles like ‘Father,’ ‘Pope,’ ‘Reverend,’ etc. (Matt. 23:9-10).” 

But Paul–the real Paul–uses just such a title for himself: “I became your father in Jesus Christ through the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15). He uses the title “Father” exactly the way we use it now–for a spiritual father. (By implication he approves of the title “pope” since the word come from the Greek and means “papa.”) 

Our biological father generates us, comforts us, feeds us, cares for us in illness. At the spiritual level our spiritual father does the same: He generates a new, spiritual life in us at baptism, he comforts us in confession, he feeds us with the Eucharist, he cares for our illness in the anointing of the sick. 

What’s frustrating about this comic book is not the impact it may have. For all we know this is the first appearance of any of it in North America. No, what’s frustrating is that it is an exemplar of a whole way of thinking. Lots of Christians chuck historic Christianity for a vague reading of the Bible. They reduce the gospel to a few pat phrases, leaving out the hard organizational sayings even when they accept most of the hard moral sayings. Superficially their Christianity is strong. They are zealous, and their zeal attracts others, particularly the down-and-out who have had their fill of “rules.” 

But real Christianity is full Christianity–it accepts everything Christ taught, not just the convenient parts. And it accepts human nature as it really is. Our Lord told us what the Church would be like: It would be like a field of good grain mixed with tares. In other words, it would be just like the Catholic Church, containing both the elect and the reprobate (Matt. 13:24-40). Many of the leaders of the Church would be grains of wheat and the very best grains–but some would be tares. 

This so scandalizes some people that they don’t readily accept Jesus’ words. They rebel by remaking Christianity according to their own preferences. They take all the structure, all the incarnationalism, out of it, hoping to ta ke out also all the evil, not knowing that they can take out all the evil only if they take out all the Christians. 

Churchianity vs. Christianity is symptomatic of what some might call (and rightly, but only to a point) the anti-intellectual element within Evangelical Christianity. Fortunately, this element does not affect most Evangelicals, but it affects enough of them that today it affects even many Catholics. In many ways the dogmatic Fundamentalist is easier to reach than the anti-institutional Christian, the kind whose faith is best expressed through comic books.

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