Balkanization: To break up (as a region or group) into
smaller and hostile units. Webster’s Dictionary

Balkanization is a term coined to describe the political and ethnic
divisions in that region of the world known as the Balkans.

For the past 30 years I have worked internationally in a variety of
capacities. Most of my focus has been on international development,
substance abuse and crime prevention and most recently mobilizing and
capacitating communities to respond to the HIV & AIDS pandemic sweeping
across Africa. Of particular interest and concern to me has been the
role of the Church and NGOs in responding to poverty and disease. For
the purposes of this article, I intend to focus on the Church.

The Church is organized and works within geographic and political
boundaries. It cannot escape them – yet, the Church often claims to
transcend them by virtue of the nature of the gospel it proclaims.
Balkanization, a term often used to define political and social sectors
has created political division and been the source of conflict for
decades if not centuries. Well, Balkanization is also a source of
conflict and struggle within the Church.

The “Church” is not nor has it ever been an easy entity to define.
Throughout my journey, I have worshipped with Nazarenes, Methodists,
Anglicans and even Mormons. My academic background is in the History of
the Western Church. I take pride in the fact, that I have studied,
thought about and engaged the Church in diverse and multi-faceted ways.
I have a love-hate relationship with this creation of man. Yes, there
are those that will dispute the claim that the Church is created by man.
To be sure the community of faith is a called out community – but the
current institutional expressions of that community defy any connection
to its New Testament roots.

The Church created by man to organize his/her beliefs and to find some
kind of fellowship with people of like mind, is something different to
each individual who encounters her. For me the Church has been home,
family, a refuge and a constant source of frustration. As one of my
Seminary professors use to remind us: “The Church is scandalous humanity
seeking God’s grace and forgiveness in a community that continually
seeks perfection.” That reminder has kept me coming back to the “Church”
throughout my life. But I often question what it is I have come back to
and is it really a universal community.

Today, unfortunately, the Church is as balkanized as it has ever been. A
gospel that is universal finds itself captured by the geographic, ethnic
and ideological boundaries of the people who created it and who serve in
it. Church growth, cultural anthropologists and cultural competency
experts stress the importance of accommodating the gospel to the
particular social and cultural regions of the world. We preach that the
Christ confronts and transforms all cultures and yet we seek to package
our Christ in cultural terms that often create an ecclesiology that is
as diverse as the nations of the world. This reality has forced the
Church to think regionally and structure itself in ways that assure the
inclusion of all regions in the shaping of polity and doctrine. In this
reality – there is seldom any cross-cultural or cross-political
accommodation.

Seldom do conversations about differences in Church polity across
regions begin with the common source of our salvation – Jesus Christ. It
usually begins with why you and your culture don’t understand me and my
culture. Therefore I and my culture are sovereign over you and your
culture – especially if you are living or working in my culture.

Jaroslav Pelikan, noted historian of Christian thought at Yale
University says, and I paraphrase, doctrine is that which the Church
teaches, believes and confesses in response to internal and external
threats. Doctrine or for that matter polity or governance are seldom
positive affirmations but rather structures created to protect or
defend. In his work, The Christian Tradition: A History of the
Development of Doctrine, Pelikan lays out a pretty convincing case.
I have to concur. In the practice of the Church, regardless of
denomination, seldom does the transcending message of the gospel
actually transcend the political realities of the region. We can stand
in Christian worship and in circles of fellowship and affirm the
universality of God’s love and grace, but when that love and grace needs
structure or organization love and grace usually collapses under the
weight of regional, geographic and even ethnic ideology.

I believe a central theme of the gospel as it relates to our coming
together is found in Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for
you are all one in Christ Jesus. Imagine if we took that literally
and seriously. Imagine that such divisions were sacrificed on the altar
of unity and we were known for our love and compassion and not our
geographic division, or ethnic difference or even more salient our
gender. Imagine governance that was anchored in trust, reconciliation
and a mutual goal to make Christ-Like Disciples of the Nations. Imagine
a world that really was not a world to be imagined but a world that
truly was anchored in faith and action – faith in our God and faith in
each other.