Ecclesial Solidarity - Allegiances of the Church

In Michael Budde's "The Borders of Baptisms" he explores allegiances that those in the church are affected by that sometimes rise above the sole allegiance - to God alone.

Concepts introduced - Ecclesial Solidarity - meaning unity in the body of Christ - regardless of national or ethnic identity or gender.

Sometimes allegiances - then and now - have overshadowed this.

A very convicting book - one chapter was less important but many very timely and needed statements of truth.

Some great quotes include

"When Christians take ecclesial solidarity as their starting point for discernment-political, economic, liturgical, and otherwise-it makes them members of a community broader than the largest nation-state, more pluralistic than any culture in the world, more deeply rooted in the lives of the poor and marginalized than any revolutionary movement, more capable of exemplifying the notion of "E pluribus unum" than any empire past, present, or future. Seeing oneself as a member of the worldwide body of Christ invites communities to join their local stories to other stories of sin and redemption, sacrifice and martyrdom, rebellion and forgiveness unlike any other on offer via allegiance to one's tribe, gendered movements, or class fragment."

"Christians follow a most unusual sort of king, one who disarmed his followers and made them part of a body wider and larger than any nation, more pluralistic than any state, and committed to the audacious notion that a community can be constituted by forgiveness and mutuality instead of by force and violence."

" It should be a source of embarrassment and shame to white churches in the United States that black Christians for more than a century have looked to find, and have received, help and protection from the state rather than from their white brothers and sisters in Christ-indeed, that black Christians would beg the state to protect them from white Christians. Such is testimony against the Church as Church, and an indictment laid at the feet of God. "