Saturday, July 30, 2005
Report from CRC sesquicentennial planning committee at Trinity College
Here at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Ill., at the planning meeting of the Christian Reformed Church’s sesquicentennial conference in 2007, we’ve begun by wrestling with the question of how an ethnic denomination can have a future once it has assimilated. The CRC was founded by Dutch immigrants and the vast majority of its current members descended from those immigrants (though now 1 in 10 CRC members are Korean). But while our Dutch names are unmistakable, today most CRC members are more American and Canadian than Dutch. As one member said, the problem may not be that the CRC is too Dutch (though indeed its historic ethnic insularity is lamentable), the problem may be that the CRC has lost its immigrant identity, an identity that once fostered a strong denominational loyalty and fervent piety. As another member put it, while the CRC once identified with its status as “stranger in a strange land,” now it must find a way to be a “stranger in a familiar land.”
The point about immigrant identity was this: to the extent a worshiping community identifies with its immigrant heritage, with being the outsiders, with being uncomfortable in a culture, with being poor and powerless, with being reliant on God—to that extent, it is more empowered to truly embrace the new immigrants to the CRC—from South Asia in particular—as well as the poor and other “outsiders” of the culture around us. But to the extent that the “outsiders” become “insiders,” inculcated in a culture and enjoying its status and wealth, denominational identity and spiritual fervor may fade. In that sense, there is a price to pay for “making it” in North America.
These and other dynamics that will shape our denomination’s future will be discussed at the 2007 conference at Calvin College: mark your calendars for Sept. 13-15, 2007!
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