Because, internet

Why there has not been a rightward split in the CRC since the 90s

The internet is the reason—maybe the only reason—the CRC has not seen a rightward split since the 90s.

That’s because it takes more work to orchestrate change from within a denomination than to split from it. Or: changing a denomination is much harder than splitting from a denomination.

During the 80s and 90s, the right was never able to organize as well as the left, even though it had the upper hand. We shouldn’t mistake the close votes at Synod for a 50/50 divide: surveys from the 90s indicate only around 25% of laypeople in the CRC supported women in office. The right had the numbers, but the left had the organization.

The CRC is a network

The CRC is a network focused on Grand Rapids. Here, for example, is a map of the denomination that appeared on the first page of the 1930 Acta der Synode:

Though this image was published in 1930, it could just as easily been published in 1973, 1984, or even 1995. There would be more nodes on the edge of the network, and tighter concentration near the center, but the overall structure looked basically the same.

For most of the CRC’s history, your influence depended on how close you were to the center of the network: Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids was where Synod met. It’s where the denominational offices were located, which until recently housed most of the agencies. CRC Publications (later Faith Alive) was centered there. The denominational college and seminary were in Grand Rapids. It’s the place where networks were formed, where study committees met, where reunions happened. It’s where you reconnected with friends, fellow pastors, and denominational leaders. It’s where the most influential churches in the denomination were, too.

If you were fortunate enough to find yourself in Grand Rapids, you automatically had outsized influence in the denomination. You benefited by your proximity to the center of the network in two key ways:

1. Distance. You were close to everyone else. You interacted with pastors, elders, denominational employees, leaders, board members on a regular bases, not only at church, but in your community. It was easier to get to Calvin for a lecture or an event, or you discussed some matter of church polity while dropping your kids off at school.

2. Time. Shorter distances produce faster information spread. For most of the twentieth century, people in far-flung parts of the CRC learned about denominational matters when De Wachter or The Banner arrived in their mailbox. When Classis GRE did something egregious when I was a kid, people in Lynden didn’t know about it for two weeks and had no speedy mechanism to react. Now, when Classis GRE does something egregious, Tyler and Lloyd post a video within hours.

For a number of reasons, those at the center of the network, on average, began shifting to the left in the post-war decades. Not all issues separated along a clean left/right divide, but many did. The left’s location at the center of the network meant that they exerted outsized, usually one-way influence on the far flung nodes.

In the 1980s and 1990s, churches in the center drove the conversation around women serving in church offices, same-sex attraction, the CRC’s relationship with the GKN, creation and science, and other matters. For example, far-flung places like Third CRC Lynden/Classis Pacific Northwest felt the downstream, second-order effects of decisions, ideas, and conversations at places like Eastern Avenue CRC/Classis Grand Rapids East much more than the other way around. The churches at the edge—often right-leaning—could do little more than react.

The challenge of organizing outside the network

Because influence passed through and not around Grand Rapids, it was harder for churches at the edge of the network to collaborate and organize with other—often right-leaning—churches at the edge of the network. They could not compete with the efficiencies of the CRC Establishment centered around Grand Rapids. The right had an organizational disadvantage.

The link between the churches and classes at the edge and the center was stronger; the links among the churches and classes at the edge was weaker.

This is partly why, until recently, organizing a split was easier than organizing a change.

During the 80s and 90s, various right-leaning networks emerged in response to the perceived leftward drift of the denomination. But they were scattered throughout the US and Canada. Organizing to change a denomination from the fringe proved harder than simply leaving the denomination as a bloc—which is what happened.

Because, internet

This changed in 2007. In that year, the Returning Church was born.

True, the Returning Church emerged from in-person discussions at Synod that year, follow-up meetings among a cohort of pastors centered in Classis Zeeland, and conferences in West Michigan and Iowa.

But these in-person interactions were sustained by a blog, and later a Facebook Group, which kept interested pastors, office-bearers, clerks, and laypeople up-to-date on key priorities, denominational matters, meetups, and other concerns. With these online platforms, it was suddenly possible for everyone to know what was happening nearly in real-time, including churches who were geographically, theologically, and culturally distant from Grand Rapids.

The latent organizational capacity found in far-flung nodes in the CRC network no longer needed to route through Grand Rapids.

The internet leveled the playing field.

As always, everything above is first-draft thinking. Tomorrow I’ll probably draw connections between this denominational flattening and the emergence of specific organizations from 2007 onward. Subscribe to get the email: