A few months ago, I read a sermon produced by a pastor who belonged to the same circle of ministry as I did. He was talking about doctrine. In that sermon, the pastor more or less concluded that doctrine emerged within the church in order to protect, to exclude, and to puff the church up. The church, “perhaps as a result of its sense of exceptionalism,” he said, formulated doctrine that served to divide the “holy” from the “unholy.”

He continued by suggesting that most people in most churches today couldn’t even recite the doctrines of the church. In fact, he thinks that most people are attracted to religious groups not because of doctrine at all. Rather, “Practice is far more important [for these people].”

In this post, I don’t want to focus on what I see as a great irony — namely, that people in religious gatherings probably value “practice” (whatever that is) over doctrine precisely because leaders in their congregations have told them that “practices” are more important than doctrine! I don’t want to dwell on the fact that several leaders in the church, as I’ve experienced them, have degraded the role of doctrine, treating it like the embarrassing uncle who shows up at family gatherings.

Instead, I want to consider two parts of what he said. First, is doctrine really created for the primary purpose of excluding? Second, are people really more motivated to participate in religious communities because of practice?

To the first question, regarding the purpose of doctrine. I’ve heard this idea he puts forth parroted in many circles, most of which comprise people who are predisposed to moving away from orthodox Christian doctrine in the first place. In particular, I’ve heard it among those who reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The first loose thread is often regarding the person of Jesus. The traditional Christian understanding of Jesus — that he is God, fully, and human, fully — seems ludicrous, to modern reasoning. Therefore, it should likely be rejected, these people conclude. From there, the whole thing unravels: if we do not have to wrestle with the question of Jesus’ divinity, then we have no need for Trinitarian reflection. Once one has arrived at that conclusion, it only makes sense to look back on Christian theological reflection over the centuries as misguided, at best, or deceptive, at worst. The point is that “we know better” than ancient, primitive peoples, so it is the doctrine that needs revised, not our own assumptions and conclusions.

Of course, as is often common in cases such as the one I’m presently discussing, people throw out “doctrine” as a vague, catch-all word, without ever explaining which particular doctrine(s) they have in mind. The word doctrine simply refers to teaching. At its core, doctrine is about teaching and guiding. It of course assumes some notion of truth. And certainly orthodox Christianity has made bold claims to have access to truth in unique ways. If doctrine is concerned primarily with exclusion, it is so only in the sense that teaching a child to eat her food excludes — if she chooses not to eat, then she will be excluding herself from health, and if she chooses not to eat long enough, then she might exclude herself from life. Christians believe that they have a message to share about what’s going on in the world, about the true source of life, and they wish to include all to participate.

Christians certainly have a track record of misusing doctrine for the purpose of exclusion, in a more harmful sense. But I would argue that this is less a problem with doctrine than it is a problem with these Christians. In particular, I think that the problem arises when Christians become confident that they own the market on truth.

But to blame doctrine for this problem is troubling. The only reason for this would be that one does not, in fact, think that Christianity has anything to say about reality. And this is what disturbs me about such flippant rejection of doctrine. It’s implying a sort of agnosticism about truth.

If we were to apply this skepticism to the doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, then it would imply that we cannot know much of anything about who God is, especially in as specific terms as the Trinity puts the matter, therefore we cannot really say anything with certainty. And if we do wish to keep using the language of Christian orthodoxy so that we still sound like we are part of the “in” crowd, then it must be in such highly contorted ways as not to be truly Christian orthodoxy, after all.

The biggest irony, and the biggest danger, is this: in reality, all people ascribe to certain doctrinal convictions, regardless of whether they make them explicit. So to challenge Christian doctrine without spelling out further what other doctrine is being held in its place is really to replace it with “my” preferred thinking, but to put it forward as if it were obvious to and accepted by all. In this specific case — especially based on where the rest of the sermon goes — I can only assume that the doctrine of secular liberal humanism wins the day. Practice — that is, participating in social-service activities, feeding the poor, being generally and vaguely kind to all — is more important than doctrine. From my understanding of the Christian worldview, this doctrine of liberal humanism is not only flat-out wrong, but harmful.

To the second question: are people motivated to participate in religious communities by “practices,” over against doctrinal commitments? I would respond with a resounding “No!”. G. K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, calls attention to this very claim, and how wrongheaded it is. He mentions the oft-quoted idea that goes something like this: “All religions believe basically the same thing. They just have different ways of expressing those beliefs.” Chesterton suggests the opposite is true: in practice, most religions often look the same; all that separates them is that they believe fundamentally different things, many of which are incompatible with each other. Being kind; helping the poor; supporting the community — most mainstream religions more or less do these things. This is precisely why such groups can cooperate to achieve helpful purposes within a community. But you will never be able to put Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc., in the same worship service and expect that two of the groups will be comfortable with the other one’s doctrinal assumptions. To deny the incompatibility of, or at least the differences between, these groups is either naïve or delusional.

What I’m getting at is this: if people were mainly motivated by “practices,” then they probably wouldn’t care which community they belonged to, since most are doing more or less the same thing, in terms of life and service within the larger public community. What is more likely is that they wouldn’t pick any religious community. Why would they? There are nonreligious groups that perform these “practices” way better and way more efficiently. I’m convinced that people join religions as they become convinced that those religions can make at least some claim to the truth.

In other words, they join because of doctrine.