Voting for the Mind of Christ

I recently came across a Baptist Church which had chosen to register for 'same-sex marriages'. The then minister wrote an account of the process, which he was pleased to share on the Baptist Union’s website. He states:

The vote had 22 members in favour, one abstention, and three against (not every member was able to be present) and the discussion that ensued was clearly of the opinion that we should register. In the end we were pleased we had not put up a percentage threshold that needed to be crossed, with winners and losers, and the feeling was very much that ‘the mind of Christ’ had been sought and found by the whole process.

The very idea that the ‘mind of Christ’, another expression for ‘the will of God’, can be sought, found and determined by a vote is utterly bizarre. Although in a congregational church like our own whereat the members must vote on important matters, we could never claim that our democratically determined outcomes were inevitably in accordance with the divine will, especially if they were at odds with God’s word, the scriptures. The above paragraph is essentially saying that the Bible can be sidelined so long as a large enough majority of church members happen to agree to it. So a church that wanted to approve of three-way marriages can do so if enough members like the sound of it. Incestuous marriages may also be in the Mind of Christ if enough vote in their favour. The human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; to use it as the basis for re-writing the revealed will of God is human pride at its very worst.

Fortuitously, a questionnaire was taken of the members shortly afterwards, and the ‘three against’ recorded that they saw the error of their ways, reflecting:

“Now I feel that I had no right to judge”, “I was wrong”, and “Things change… learnt more about same sex marriage”. I guess they saw the light.

The church’s minister who led the alteration has since moved on but is now employed at a theological college, presumably training up new ministers in discovering the mind of Christ. He describes himself thus:

“[My] faith has constantly grown and changed from a very organised conservative evangelical beginning into the progressive mess that it now is.”

Indeed.