Politically we found that open borders are not quite as easy to administer as we had imagined. The US ended up with millions of people whose presence is not documented and who are not here legally but now what? Europe had a grand idea of a union in which nationality was secondary and bolstered this with a common currency and set of rules that govern every member nation. But then came Brexit and a wave of immigrants and refugees that tested the whole thing.
Christians often presume that what does not quite work like planned in politics might still work well in the different environment of religion. It generally exhibits the same problems in church as it did in the state. So Roman Catholics, who had a parish system in which people belonged to one church but attended wherever, ended up with a sort of franchise system in which belonging took second place to where you shopped or ate. People began to see attendance as defined by something other than location. Some went to the Latin Mass and some to the church with clown masses and others went to the socially conscious congregation -- most driving past the parish where they belonged to find a church which shared their preference or perspective. It became sort of a denominational system within the umbrella of the papacy.
Of course, Protestants had already perfected this kind of thing long ago. No, not Luther, but the modern idea that belonging no longer really mattered that much -- neither did what a church taught. Instead, other factors reigned supreme -- the sound of their music, the personality of their pastor, the value of their youth programs, the freshness of their ambiance, the welcome of the organization, and personal preference to choose among them like Goldilocks finding that perfect fit. This was not a Reformation reality -- the churches born of the Reformation all respected rules, parish boundaries, and belonging. But it did not take long for this to dominate even Reformation churches.
People of a certain age look with longing on all the missed opportunities for a Christian moment in which essentials could be celebrated and distinctives overlooked. All those merger moments are now coming undone and not in a small way either. It turned out that how you treated issues of sexual desire and gender identity ended up being more important than differences over baptism, Holy Communion, the nature of Scripture, and many other things... Open borders was an idealized view of things in which you mattered more than what you believed and faith could be boiled down to a small subset of particulars that would still be inclusive.
The problem was that open borders ended up weakening the churches -- all of them and even those who never subscribed to the concept. Doctrine no longer mattered (except the stuff about sex and gender) and the opinion of individual mattered most of all. So everyone decided in their own mind what it meant to be Roman Catholic or Lutheran or Methodist or whatever. Others decided that celebrity pastors transcended denominations anyway and non-denominational was the best denomination. That is, until the media pastor stars started tarnishing and their mega churches started crumbling. Now the only thing that seems left of the open borders concept is cynicism toward nearly everything religious but most of all discipline and authority. Nobody can tell anybody anything anymore. It is the Pandora's box that cannot be closed and the genie that cannot be put back in the bottle. But before it is too late, perhaps it is time to admit that open borders was a ruse and a lie. Doctrine does matter. Belonging does matter. Even more than what you feel or think. Faith is bigger and deeper and wider than one person. If renewal is going to happen, it will follow this pattern and not the modern image of an open borders church and faith in which truth is captive to the individual.
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