What Is Unity For?

Reflections on the Lectionary for January 25th

Photo by Elijah Ekdahl on Unsplash

What is unity for?

I have been asking versions of that question for a couple of decades now. I think about that question in the world of religion. I come from a religious tradition—the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)—that places a heavy emphasis on unity. Unity is our polar star, we say, quoting one of the movement’s founders. But assuming we could achieve that unity, what would it be for? And I think about it the realm of politics, too. As the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence arrives, lots of people are appealing to unity as an antidote or solution to the current political moment of division and sharp disagreement. But who would be served by that unity? In congregations, workplaces, and groups of all kinds, we often appeal to unity. But to what end, and for what purpose, would that unity exist? We often treat unity as an obviously and self-evidently good thing, but often unity serves the status quo. Messages like let’s all get along and don’t rock the boat tend to benefit people who are already in power. And sometimes, calls to unity work to convince the people who are on the underside of power to be quiet about it—to accept their lower status or their oppression as the cost of keeping everyone on the same page.

That’s one of a thousand different reasons why the opening words of 1 Corinthians are so fascinating. If you look at the epistle reading for the week as it appears here, you’ll see that someone has titled this section An appeal for unity in the gospel. Those kinds of headings aren’t part of the Bible itself, but I think they’re useful as a window into interpretation—as a way to see how translators and editors think we ought to understand the biblical text. Here, whoever wrote this heading sees this whole section of 1 Corinthians as an appeal for unity. Is that what it is, and if so, who is served by that unity?

In many ways, 1 Corinthians is Paul at his most Paulish. In this letter he’s poetic, scolding, self-serving, inspiring, generous, haughty, and pouty. His tone is both intimate and aloof—both petulant and confident. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, displays the kind of tenderness that you see in other letters—a seemingly genuine bleeding-heart soft spot for people he loves. And he also shows a certain level of possessiveness, impatience, and callousness. In these verses in particular, we see a real appeal to purpose and togetherness, which Paul seems to think is very important, and which he believes is in jeopardy. But we also see the way Paul puts himself at the center of that purpose and togetherness, even as he protests that he has never put himself at its center. It’s a fascinating little dance, carried out with papyrus and quill at a distance of hundreds or thousands of miles.

This letter to the Corinthians seems to have been prompted by rumors. Paul says that it has been made clear to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, which was enough to inspire Paul to action. We should pause here to notice how much is being papered over with the phrase Chloe’s people—how much unity is being manufactured by these words on the page. Most likely, Chloe’s people refers to people enslaved by a woman named Chloe, though some scholars think it could refer to members of her family or her business associates. I hold with those who think that Chloe’s people were probably enslaved workers who helped her do business in Corinth, who somehow ferried rumors and information back and forth to Paul. If that’s true, then the unity suggested by the phrase Chloe’s people is really a forced kind of unity—a unity imposed on the people against their will or without their consent. But I digress.

The nature of the disunity reported by Chloe’s people was a kind of divided loyalty. Some of the Corinthians described themselves as loyal to one person or another—to Cephas, Apollos, Paul, or Christ. (It is utterly fascinating that Christ—who I would have thought would represent a higher category of belonging than any of Apollos, Cephas, or Paul—is listed here as an equal option among them). What seems to be happening is that people in Corinth had attached themselves psychologically or spiritually to one leader or another—to one or another personality—as the main aspect of their belonging. If you have been around organizations long enough, and goodness knows if you’ve been around churches long enough, this is a familiar pattern to you. There can be a history of ten different managers, and some employees still see themselves as loyal to one of them from years back. There might have been a dozen pastors in a congregation, but inevitably some people will remain loyal to one of them above all the rest, and will tell anyone willing to listen how that long-ago pastor is the real reason they are still there. We’ve all seen that kind of thing happen before, and that’s what seems to have been happening in Corinth. Chloe’s people reported that some of the Corinthians maintained loyalty not to the community or to the church, but to one charismatic leader or another.

Charismatic leadership has that effect, of course. That’s often what we say we want from leaders—that they should create personal connection, that they should inspire a feeling of belonging, that they should help people be bonded to the institution. The problem comes when those leaders move on from the system, but people have identified more with the leader than the system. That’s a problem for the system, and it’s a huge problem for the next leader. Something like that must have happened in Corinth, where waves of successive leaders (or simply a variety of people exerting influence over the community at the same time) created some divided allegiances.

Paul’s curious response to this was to center himself, in a roundabout way. Was Paul crucified for you, he asked, and were you baptized in the name of Paul? On the surface these rhetorical questions were meant to make the people realize that, no, Paul was not the point of the system as a whole. Paul’s questions were meant to point to the supremacy of the Jesus movement as a whole, over any particular leader of that movement. But underneath, Paul’s denial of authority was an assertion of authority. After all, his aw-shucks pushback against the idea that anyone would belong to him comes near the beginning of a sixteen-chapter letter in which Paul is attempting to project his authority over the community at a distance. 1 Corinthians is full of instructions, admonishments, and commandments, all of them coming from Paul. So his protests that no one ought to think of themselves as belonging to him—or anyone else—ring a little hollow.

As an aside, I find it funny how Paul goes on a little tangent here about baptism, saying that he only baptized Crispus and Gaius…oh and also the household of Stephanas…and maybe some others, he can’t really remember. It’s both a reality of what we would today call pastoral ministry (it can be hard to keep track of all the baptisms, weddings, and funerals, after so many years), and also a funny little attempt on Paul’s part to make a point that he ends up not really being able to make.

Paul’s appeal to the Corinthians—the thing he’s trying to convince them of, with all his talk of divided loyalties and unremembered baptisms—was to be unified. Or, at least, that’s what the section heading would have us think. But if we look closely at verses 10 and 11, we see that Paul is actually arguing for something slightly more nuanced. Now I appeal to you…that there be no divisions among you, Paul writes, because Chloe’s people have reported quarrels among you. Here Paul is asking for the absence of discord or the erasure of differences of opinion, which is certainly a step toward unity, but not unity itself. We don’t all suddenly agree simply because we stop arguing with each other. Paul goes on in verse 10 to ask that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose. This is a kind of unity, to be sure; threads that have been knit together do lose something of their individual thread-ness and together they take on the character of fabric. And Paul is asking that the Corinthians display same mind and same purpose. What Paul seems to be imagining is a community that magically shares a mind and purpose, without disagreement or division or quarrels.

Is that unity? Maybe. Certainly people who share a same mind and a same purpose could be said to be unified, like the threads in a piece of fabric would be unified. But I suppose that I have a philosophical question, at that point, about whether unity is a meaningful idea if everyone has already become the same. If everyone is unified, does the idea of unity have any special force? I am thinking of the new Apple TV show Pluribus, which if you haven’t seen yet, you should go and watch. In that show, everyone shares one mind, just like Paul seems to be imagining here. And they experience a form of unity because of it, but the show is constantly asking us, as the viewers, whether such a unity is useful or not—whether it is worthwhile to give up all our particularity and individuality so that we can have what Paul calls the same purpose.

I’m a strong congregationalist, in the lower-case-c sense, and I’m a strong democrat, in a lower-case-d sense. I think governance works best when it happens at the level of the people. I resist autocracy in all its forms, whether it’s a political strongman or a bishop somewhere, duly authorized or not—or an especially strong-willed apostle, for that matter. In democratic or congregational systems, wisdom arises not when difference is flattened or erased, but when distinctions remain intact and the best course of action is contested. The part of me that values democratic and congregational systems, and resists autocratic leaders, gets suspicious when Paul wants to insist that the Corinthians be unified while also projecting his own power onto them in the form of a letter. When Paul writes a whole letter to tell people what to do, but opens it with a denial of his own authority, it gets my attention.

Often Paul gives away his endings—he says right at the beginning what he intends to conclude in the rest of the letter, just like they taught us to do in those five-paragraph essays we learned how to write in elementary school. Here’s what I am going to say, here’s what I am saying in three paragraphs, here’s what I said. Paul does the same thing in his letters, and I think this passage, which is part of the opening salvo of this letter, anticipates where he is going to end up later on in chapters 11-13 of 1 Corinthians. That section of the letter, which is desperately poetic and moving, is a passionate argument for unity. It begins with Paul’s instructions about the Lord’s Supper, which boil down to an argument for mutual consideration and thoughtfulness. It proceeds to his metaphor of the body of Christ, and the essential meaningfulness and usefulness of each part of the body. And it concludes in the famous 13^th chapter, the love chapter, which is not about love in the modern romantic sense but instead a reiteration of the idea of mutual forbearance and regard that he argued in chapter 11. Paul ends up, in 1 Corinthians, with a plea to unity, just like he began.

There are ways to read that unity as benevolent, and even selfless on the part of Paul. There are ways to understand the unity that Paul calls for as concerned only for the good of the congregation. But like with any call for unity, I’m left asking who is served by it. Whose unity would it be, what would be meaningful about it, and under what authority would the people be unified? With someone like Paul, just like with other kinds of leaders and politicians, I get suspicious about this unity, because I worry that ultimately points back to the person in charge. I worry that the unity ends up serving the one already in power. And maybe that’s ok—maybe the unity itself is worth enough to justify flattening all the difference. But I do wonder what good ideas got lost, and what valuable perspectives were silenced, if Paul got his way that there be no divisions among you. What was that unity for, and who was served by it?