Every Church Has a Theology

Can a church have no tradition?

The words “non-denominational” promise something nice. “We are not Baptist or Methodist or Catholic. We just follow Jesus and teach the Bible.”

About six in every hundred American adults now describe their faith this way. In 2020 there were more than 44,000 of these churches in the United States.

The word “non-denominational” is used with four different meanings.

1. “Nobody outside owns us or rules us.” This is almost always true.
2. “We are not the church that hurt you.” This is usually true.
3. “One local church is the whole church. It needs nothing more.” This is a real belief about the church. But it is usually not said aloud.
4. “We believe only what all Christians believe.” People say this most often. It is true least often.

What the numbers show

These numbers come from large studies of American churches.

• There are very many of them. There were 44,319 churches in 2020. In 2010 there were 35,496. About 21 million people belong to them. As one group, they would be the largest Protestant group in America.
• Most of them are very small. In a normal week, the middle-sized church has about sixty people. Almost half have fifty people or fewer. Very large churches are famous, but they are few.
• Three out of four belong to a network. A network is a group of churches that work together. It gives them teaching, training for pastors, money to start new churches, and songs. But a network cannot give orders to a church.
• Their beliefs are close together. The churches were asked to describe their own beliefs. Half said “Evangelical”. A quarter said “Fundamentalist”. The others said “Pentecostal” or “Charismatic”. That is 92 out of 100 in four groups that stand close to each other. So these churches are not above the old groups. They stand at one end of them.
• Most were started this way. 88 out of 100 began as non-denominational churches. They did not leave a denomination.

One fact is good news for these churches. They have more people of different races than other churches of the same kind.

“No creed but the Bible”

Many independent churches say, “We have no creed but the Bible.” But most of them have a “statement of faith” on their website. It has eight to fifteen points.

Read a hundred of these statements. They look like one family. Many of them come from one paper, sometimes word for word. A group called the National Association of Evangelicals wrote that paper in 1942 and 1943.

That paper is short. People wrote it. It is not part of the Bible. A group agreed to it. It is used to decide who belongs. That is a creed.

So the churches that say “no creed but the Bible” have a creed. It was written in the American state of Missouri in 1942. Almost nobody who uses it knows this.

Look also at what the paper does not say. It says nothing about baptism, the Lord’s Supper, church leaders or how a church is ruled. The writers left these out on purpose. The group had Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians and others in it, and they did not agree on these things.

But being silent also says something. It says, “These things are not important enough to write down.” That is a belief too.

Baptism

On baptism, most of these statements say the same five things.

1. Baptism is only for people who already believe.
2. The person goes fully under the water.
3. Baptism is a sign of a change that has already happened inside.
4. Baptism does not give God’s gift. It only shows it.
5. A person baptized as a baby is usually baptized again.

Each of these five ideas has a date when it began. Christians have argued about each one.

Compare the older teaching. Martin Luther wrote that baptism “works forgiveness of sins”. The old Church of England prayer book said after a baby’s baptism: “this Child is regenerate”. That means the child is born again.

Luther and the prayer book describe something that God does. The modern statement describes something that the believer says. Both are serious ideas. But only the modern one is given to the people as “simply what the Bible says”.

Every part has a date and a place

The ideas of these churches did not fall from the sky. Each one has a history.

How is it different from a Baptist church?

Think of a church like this.

• It baptizes only people who say they believe, and it puts them under the water.
• It says that baptism does not give the new birth.
• It baptizes again adults who were baptized as babies.
• It holds the Lord’s Supper as a way to remember Jesus, and only sometimes.
• It says a person is saved at the moment of a personal decision.
• It has no bishop above it and no written creed that it must follow.
• Elders lead it, and one main pastor leads the elders.
• It has modern music and a long sermon.

How is this church different from a Baptist church? In baptism and the Lord’s Supper: no difference. In how people are saved: no real difference. In leaders: independent Baptist churches have the same kind. In worship: no difference.

Only three things are left: the name, no creed that must be followed, and nobody outside who can check the church. These are differences in how the church is run. They are hardly differences in belief.

To be fair, the test does not fit every church. Some independent churches hold Pentecostal beliefs about the Holy Spirit. The Churches of Christ teach that baptism is for the forgiveness of sins, and that is closer to the early church. And some independent churches do follow an old written creed.

Why are they all the same?

Suppose 44,000 churches each read the Bible alone and found their beliefs there. We would expect many different results. Some would baptize babies. Some would have the Lord’s Supper every week. Some would wash feet.

We do not see this. We see the same beliefs almost everywhere. The simple reason is that these churches do not each find their beliefs alone. They receive them. The beliefs come from networks, Bible schools, books, big meetings, songs, and a copied statement of faith.

That is a tradition. It is passed on in the way traditions are always passed on. Only one thing is unusual. It is passed on under a name that says, “We have no tradition.”

Where can a person complain?

First, be fair. Most independent churches do not hurt people. Most are small and poor. And denominations have failed very badly, on a much larger scale. So this part is about where the danger lies. It does not say what must happen.

In the first three kinds, a person who sees a serious wrong has somewhere outside the local church to go. In the fourth kind, there is usually nowhere. Only the law of the country, the newspapers, and the freedom to leave are left.

Now the other side must be told. The Roman Catholic Church had the largest known problem of clergy who harmed people. A study in 2004 counted complaints against 4,392 priests. A 2020 report found that the Church of England had cared more about its good name than about the people who were hurt. A 2022 report found that leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention kept a secret list of ministers who had been accused.

So the lesson is not “independent churches are more dangerous”. The lesson is this: every kind of church has its own way of failing.

• Churches with a ruling structure fail by hiding complaints. The result is very large failures that people find many years later.
• Independent churches fail because a complaint never reaches anybody. The result is many small failures that most people never hear about.

Some independent churches do let outside groups check their money and their pastors. That is good. But the church chooses this freely. It can leave when being checked becomes difficult. That is the whole difference.

“God told me”, and what these churches still use

“God told me”

A group of elders can think about a plan and vote on it. But what can they do when the pastor says, “God told me to do this”?

To vote no, an elder must say one of two things. Either “God did not say that”, and then he calls his pastor a false prophet. Or “We should not obey God.”

So usually the elders are not persuaded. They just stop discussing. The words “God told me” do not win the argument. They end it.

The belief that God speaks today is not the problem here. The Assemblies of God is a very large Pentecostal denomination, and it holds this belief. In 2001 it warned about leaders who “assert dominance and control… while leaving themselves unaccountable”. In simple words: they rule over people, and nobody can check them. But the Assemblies of God has a council that can remove a minister. An independent church has the same belief and no such council.

What these churches still use from the old church

Some independent churches call the old churches “dead”. But think about what they still take from the old church.

• The list of books in the New Testament. The church settled this list slowly, over three hundred years. The first list that is the same as ours is from the year 367.
• The teaching that Jesus is fully God and fully man. These words come from church meetings in the years 325 and 451.
• The Bible text itself. Monks copied it by hand for more than a thousand years.

So here is a question. The old church was right about which books belong in the Bible. Why, then, was it wrong about baptism, the Lord’s Supper and church leaders? There may be a good answer. But the answer must be given. Nobody should just assume it.

Where this page is weak

Here are four fair arguments against this page.

1. “Then every church is a denomination.” This is partly right. A better way to say it: every church has a tradition. The question is whether it has a name, is written down, and can be corrected by someone outside the building.
2. Some independent churches do follow an old creed. Yes. Some of them know church history very well. This page is about the usual independent church, not about every one.
3. New does not mean wrong. Printed Bibles and Sunday schools were new once. This is true, and it is the strongest argument. This page says something smaller. These churches say they are the same as the first church. So they should explain what has changed. Most have never been told that anything changed.
4. These churches do good. They bring people to faith, start new churches, feed the poor and grow. This is real evidence. But be careful: a church can grow by taking people from other churches. And other movements also grew fast and later disappeared.

One more thing. A normal member who says “we are non-denominational” usually means, “We do not fight about those things, and we love Jesus.” She is not talking about history. Nothing here judges her faith.

Check it yourself

1. Read your church’s statement of faith. Then read the statement of the National Association of Evangelicals. Are they alike?
2. Ask: “What does our church believe happens in baptism and in the Lord’s Supper?”
3. Ask: “Who can remove our pastor? If I see a serious wrong, who outside this church can I tell?”
4. Ask: “Where did our beliefs come from? Who taught the people who taught us?”