s conception is the inclusive idea of the Church, which
runs along lines like these: that the Christian Church ought to be the
organizing center for all the Christian life of a community; that a
Church is not based upon theological uniformity but upon devotion to
the Lord Jesus, to the life with God and man for which he stood, and to
the work which he gave us to do; that wherever there are people who
have that spiritual devotion, who possess that love, who want more of
it, who desire to work and worship with those of kindred Christian
aspirations, they belong inside the family of the Christian Church.
The inclusive idea of the Church looks out upon our American
communities and sees there, with all their sin, spiritual life
unexpressed and unorganized, good-will and aspiration and moral power
unharnessed and going to waste, and it longs to cry so that the whole
community can hear it. Come, all men of Christian good-will, let us
work together for the Lord of all good life! That is the inclusive
idea of the Church. It desires to be the point of incandescence where,
regardless of denominationalism or theology, the Christian life of the
community bursts into flame.

As between these two conceptions there hardly can be any question that
the first idea so far has prevailed. Our endlessly split and shivered
Protestantism bears sufficient witness to the influence of the
exclusive idea of the Church. The disastrous consequences of this in
many realms are evident, and one result lies directly in our argument's
path. An exclusive Church narrows the idea of God. Almost inevitably
God comes to be conceived as the head of the exclusive Church, the
origin of its uniquely true doctrine, the director of its uniquely
correct practices, so that the activities of God outside the Church
grow dim, and more and more he is conceived as operating through his
favourite organization as nowhere else in all the universe. In
particular the idea grows easily in the soil of an exclusive Church
that God is not operative except in people who recognize him and that
the world outside such conscious recognition is largely empty of his
activity and barren of his grace. God tends, in such thinking, to
become cooped up in the Church, among the people who consciously have
acknowledged him. What wonder that multitudes of our youth, waking up
to the facts about our vast and growing universe, conclude that it is
too big to be managed by the tribal god of