CHURCH:
UNITY; TOLERANCE/INTOLERANCE; PASTORAL MINISTRY: CONVICTIONS

Then I don’t mean the oneness of passivity and compromise. In order to stay one, some churches have the oneness of passivity. Nobody cares much anyway and so they just compromise. That is the beautiful unity of the dead. I suppose there isn’t anything more united than a cemetery. Everybody there, whether they were Democrats, Republicans, Tories or Patriots while they lived, all lie there calmly together because they’re dead.

When you go into a church where the pastor is afraid of hurting somebody who has a large checkbook, who is careful to say nothing at all and take no position, everybody gathers around him. He is dead and he gathers a lot of dead people around him and they call that a church. It’s not a church at all; it is simply a conglomeration of dead men, afraid to have an opinion. It is the beautiful tolerance of the dead.

Matthew 18:15–17; 1 Corinthians 5:11; Galatians 1:9–10

Success and the Christian, 95.