View
Table Manners
Russell D. Moore on the Welcoming Catholicity of Closed Communion
A man walked out of my church in protest. I didn’t notice it as it was happening, but he told me about it, in a note, a few weeks later. He was angered that he had been excluded. At first, I feared that maybe he hadn’t been spoken to. In a church this size, that’s certainly a possibility. Or maybe, I wondered, had one of our elderly church members looked askance at his wearing jeans or shorts? Turns out, he wanted the Lord’s Supper, and I’d turned him away.
On the Sunday in question, our visitor had observed my congregation take communion. I had explained the elements, and the act as a sign of the kingdom of Christ. I called the church to repentance from sin, forgiveness of one another, and renewed faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus. Then I’d done what my grandfather’s generation of Baptist preachers called “fencing the table.”
As the bread and the cup were distributed, I announced that, while all were welcome to attend our church, only baptized Christians in good fellowship with a local congregation were invited to commune. Then I defined baptism the way our church does, along with Baptists all over the world, as the immersion of a believer in water as public profession of faith in Christ.
An Ecclesial Segregationist?
That’s what did it. The man told me in the letter that he had seethed in a quiet fury and then picked up his Bible and walked out. He was a member of some non-denominational church in another city, but he’d been baptized in a United Methodist church, as an infant and by sprinkling. My refusal to welcome him to the table indicated that I didn’t really believe in “mere Christianity.”
After all, we share a common belief in all the big things. We could both recite, with full conviction, the Nicene Creed. We both hold the same orthodox commitments about how many persons God is and how many natures Jesus has. And even beyond that, we were both Evangelicals, holding to the same call to sinners as to how to be reconciled to God through the blood of Christ. All we disagree about is something as trivial, he said, as how much water you ought to pool together, and what to do with it, in the act of baptism.
What people are saying about Touchstone:
Knowing my affinity with the Freedom Riders and civil rights heroes of my native Mississippi, the correspondent wrote what I’m sure he thought would sting. It was as if, he wrote, he’d been denied service at a restaurant. That wasn’t just a denial of hospitality, he reminded me, it designated him as some kind of second-class citizen in the kingdom of God. He pointed at me in his words and announced, by implication, “Thou Art the Man.” I was an ecclesial George Wallace, standing at the Lord’s Supper table.
Once I crucified my wounded ego, and considered his note, I realized he made some good points. After all, don’t I preach, consistently, that the kingdom of God is vast? Don’t I recognize as brothers and sisters in Christ those such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Jonathan Edwards, and Walker Percy, none of whom I would recognize as biblically baptized? Would I really tell C. S. Lewis, were he alive and with us, that he isn’t qualified to commune at the Lord’s Table with me?
This man’s complaint is hardly limited to Evangelicalism. It is echoed in the voices of American Catholics of a certain kind when, in any given generation, a bishop bars the table to a Roman Catholic politician who supports white supremacy or abortion rights or some other scandalous injustice.
Russell D. Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Catholic from the online archives
35.4—Jul/Aug 2022
The Death Rattle of a Tradition
Contemporary Catholic Thinking on the Question of War by Andrew Latham
29.3—May/June 2016
A Deathbed Reflection on Catholic Social Teaching & Our Future Prospects by Karl D. Stephan
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
A Critical Memoir of Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey by Patrick Henry Reardon
more from the online archives
24.6—Nov/Dec 2011
Liberty, Conscience & Autonomy
How the Culture War of the Roaring Twenties Set the Stage for Today’s Catholic & Evangelical Alliance by Barry Hankins
31.5—September/October 2018
The Rise of the Gnostic Liberal State After Christianity by Andrew Latham
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
