Why it’s so hard for affirming churches to leave the CRC

Quiet quitting isn't working.

It’s much harder for left-leaning churches in the CRC to leave than the right. For example, in Neland’s appeal to Synod 2023 in response to the in loco committee report, the council wrote:

“Neland feels a strong covenantal relationship to and with the Christian Reformed Church.”

All of them do. There are seventeen(ish) affirming congregations in the CRC. This, despite the fact that some from the rest of the CRC want them gone.

For example, Overture 34 from Classis Minnkota states the following:

“That Synod 2024 require Classis Grand Rapids East, at their Fall 2024 classis meeting, if there is no public repentance from Neland Avenue CRC, to depose the council of Neland Avenue CRC.”

And if Classis GRE doesn’t depose Neland’s Council? Then:

“That Synod 2024 require Synod 2025, if there is no public repentance from Classis Grand Rapids East, to depose all the church councils of Grand Rapids East.”

There are many such overtures and communications to Synod 2024, along with unofficial comments on podcasts and Facebook groups echoing the same thing.

What makes these churches want to stay?

I’ve written elsewhere that when there’s trouble in the CRC, people on the right leave in institutional ways and people on the left leave in individual ways.

When the right leaves, they are more likely to do so in institutional ways.

Example: First CRC of Ripon is more likely to leave the denomination in opposition to the left, but Neland Avenue CRC hasn’t left the denomination in opposition to the right.

When the left leaves, they are more likely to do so in individual ways.

Example: After Marchiene Rienstra, the first woman who received her M.Div. from Calvin Seminary, was denied candidacy by synod in 1979, she—not The Church of the Servant CRC, which appealed to synod on her behalf—left the denomination.

How the right leaves: in institutional ways

Almost 100,000 people have left the CRC since the early 1990s, usually in response to perceived leftward drift. In nearly every case, when the right leaves, they do by splitting a church. There are public votes, followed by a pastor’s resignation from the denomination, and then a public joining of the URC or some other conservative denomination. It’s all very official.

It almost happened in 2022. Many pastors and churches on the right were vocal about leaving the CRC if the HSR didn’t pass. My suspicion is that the Abide Convention in 2022, held a few weeks after Synod, was intended to lay a blueprint for a new denomination.

The right is more anti-institutional than the left

A couple days ago, in a post about the CRC circulatory system, I wrote:

The conservative half of the CRC thinks the way it does, for example, because it views GRE as siphoning off resources in the form of money, time, and personnel—largely funded by them—in service of projects and initiatives that undermine their theological and ideological positions and actively work against their interests.

Paradoxically, the right is more likely to respond in institutional ways because it is more anti-institutional. 

This tends to happen in two stages. 

Stage 1: The right turns the institution against itself

First, the right is quicker to turn the mechanisms of an institution inward against itself. “Drain the swamp” and “enact discipline” and “unseat GRE delegates” are different expressions of the same thing. The right’s first choice is always to use institutionally-sanctioned means to undermine the institution itself. 

Consider Overture 62 from Iakota:

“Classis Iakota overtures Synod 2023 to restrict any delegate who has not signed the Covenant for Officebearers without exception or reservation in their local church or classis from being seated or recognized as a delegate at synod.”

Or Overture 19, from Minnkota:

“Classis Minnkota overtures Synod 2024 to require that every delegate of Synod 2024 and all future synods be required to re-sign the Covenant for Officebearers, understanding… those who cannot fully affirm this statement will not be seated as delegates.”

Edit: the phrase “turn the institution against itself” is poorly worded and I retract it. In response to one of the comments below, I wrote the following, which I think is more accurate: “I don't think the right is trying to take down the CRC, but I do think they'd like to see less emphasis on its agencies and denomination and more emphasis on the things that directly affect local congregations (especially outside of Grand Rapids) and more clarity on our theological commitments.”

Stage 2: The right starts a new institution

If using institutional means to undermine the institution doesn’t work, the right’s second choice is to leave the institution altogether and start something new. Usually this new thing takes the form of the original institution in an idealized form. This is why, for example, the URC reverted to using the Blue Psalter Hymnal in 1997. The conservative split in the 90s was as much about an idealized Christian Reformed past as it was about women serving in church office. It was just as much cultural as it was confessional.

(Stage 1 was really difficult pre-internet. In that pre-internet world, the right would quickly jump to stage 2. But today, where the internet makes coordinating stage 1 easy, that’s no longer the case. In the CRC, the right will probably be stuck on stage 1 until the job is done.)

How the left leaves: in individual ways

When the left leaves, they trickle out—individuals here and there stop coming and eventually join other churches. There’s no mass movement, public vote, or institutional position. There’s no official exodus or big announcement. It’s a form of quiet quitting. (It’s destructive in its own way.)

See, for example, the results from a May 2023 survey commissioned by the Hesed Project. The findings, entitled A litany of lament: The effect of Synod 2022’s decisions about human sexuality, speak to how the left typically responds to crises:

“A friend of mine who has been a member of the CRC for several years is bisexual. She is married to a man, but her bisexuality is part of her identity. She had already previously been traumatized by experiences at a different CRC church, and the Synod decision with the conversations that have come out of it have made it difficult for her to feel safe in our current church. She is considering leaving to become a member of a different denomination.”

“There are many families waiting to see what our congregation does, and willing to leave if we are non-affirming. I understand, but the brokenness hurts.”

“It was heartbreaking to leave my church but I cannot see the Jesus I know and love in the decisions the CRC has made, and I cannot continue to be affiliated with this denomination.”

“We have had very active members withdraw their membership from our congregation and from the denomination.”

“The decision of Synod 2022 regarding the HSR caused me to leave the CRC.”

“I know that affirming members will face many challenges. I decided to leave before I get disciplined out.”

In each of these cases, people who hold affirming views leave quietly. They’re not starting a movement within their church to leave the denomination for the UCC; they’re not agitating within churches for a split. No URC-esque affirming breakaway group has formed of ex-CRC congregations. (Sunrise Church in Austin is the only recent exception to this that I’m aware of, though there are probably others.)

The left loves institutions

The anti-institutional stream isn’t part of the DNA of the left. Sometimes the left’s pro-institutional disposition can be counterproductive, manifesting itself in the form of bureaucracy, mission drift, and the other ways institutions can break down. 

But more often, it means the left is not only quicker to build institutions—which has happened in the CRC, as I wrote about a couple days ago—but also more reluctant to give them up. This is, partly, why it’s so much harder for Neland to leave the denomination than it was for First CRC Ripon. In the denomination, churches like Neland have done more to build and sustain the institution of the CRC, and they have more to lose by walking away.

That’s what makes the present moment so painful for many on the left.

And it’s why the tentative, pragmatic proposals from the right completely miss the point.

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Tomorrow, I plan to continue to try to understand why it’s so hard for the left to leave the CRC by taking a closer look at the nature of institutions in general. Here are some specific questions I intend to answer:

1. Why do institutions in general tend to drift leftward, and what about the CRC as an institution made it drift leftward for so long (until 2016)?

2. What functions do conservative groups, often majorities, have within leftward drifting institutions, specifically denominations?

3. Why do conservative groups usually fail to steer their institutions rightward?

4. Why have conservative groups been successful in steering the CRC rightward since 2016?

Thanks for reading.

Kent