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The term “schism” is not much used in ecclesiastical literature these days. That is partly because referring to a church group or person as “schismatic” is considered a form of profanity in these ecumenical times and also because questions of ecclesiology and denominational legitimacy have been eclipsed. In Protestant circles as recently as the 1950s denominational questions mattered (e.g. the Anglicans would not commune anyone who was not episcopally confirmed) but such ecclesial concerns have been replaced by a focus on individual experience. Baptists now are more likely to focus upon an individual’s sincerity rather than upon whether they were baptized by full immersion as an adult. The individual has effectively replaced the denomination on center stage and sincerity has replaced doctrine. This means that the notion of a church being in schism cannot really arise.
Indeed, in Evangelical circles the notion of schism has almost entirely vanished. One might say that schism has been embraced as a guiding principle and is a part of the Evangelical DNA. If a congregation dissents from its parent body it is considered legitimate and even laudatory for that congregation to leave and form another denomination (which of course explains the thousands of denominations now in existence). The separating body is not considered to be “schismatic” but simply as another offshoot and as just as entitled to their opinions and existence as its parent body. It is considered not as schism, but as church growth.
In this climate many inquirers into Orthodoxy cannot understand the horror that the early church had of schism nor why modern Orthodox would insist on a convert being chrismated or re-baptized before receiving the Eucharist. Aren’t we all Christians? If so, then why can’t non-Orthodox Christians commune in Orthodox churches? What do the Orthodox mean when they insist that other Christians are not a part of the (capital C) Church but are in schism? Let me try to explain.
Instead of talking about the historical church of the first centuries and their rejection of schismatics, let’s talk about something modern. Let’s talk about the Salvation Army.
The question may be asked: what does it mean to be a part of the Salvation Army? Who is entitled to call themselves parts of the Salvation Army? The answer: congregations headed by an officer of the Salvation Army who is himself under other officers and ultimately under the current General of the Salvation Army, Mr. Lyndon Buckingham. General Buckingham heads an organization which traces its existence back to General William Booth who began the organization in London in 1865.
This means that buying and wearing a Salvation Army uniform and calling your congregation “the Salvation Army” does not mean that you are actually a part of the Salvation Army, even if you do good works like them and believe the same things they do. To be really a part of the Salvation Army you must be integrated into their organization, accountable to their organization and thus be able to trace your organizational existence back to General Booth in 1865.
So then if I were not a part of that organization but merely wore one of their uniforms and told people that me and my group were Salvation Army the real Salvation Army people would not at all be amused. In fact, they would quite properly denounce me and my group as fraudulent and ecclesiastically illegitimate.
Their opposition would be all the more pointed and vociferous if (let’s imagine) that God had promised William Booth that He would always guide the Salvation Army and that individual salvation depended upon membership in that group. (We are just imagining this; the Salvation Army doesn’t make these claims.) But if all that was true, the Salvation Army would denounce the faux-Salvation Army all the more loudly.
This situation is exactly what obtained in the early Church, except that Christ did promise to guide His Church forever and that full salvation did depend upon membership in the Church. In the days of the early church, schismatics left the Church because they rejected basic parts of its message. In other words, dissenters first became heretics and then left the Church to form a rival religion because of it. Schism and heresy went hand in hand. Please remember too that the schismatics in those days were rejecting the faith of the Orthodox Church, not (as at the Reformation) the errors of Rome. (The issue of the salvation of “separated brethren” is a complex one and cannot be dealt with here.)
The point is that, like membership in the Salvation Army today, membership in the (capital C) Church involved an organizational component and those refusing inclusion in the organization were considered to be outside the Church. There is of course more to inclusion in the Church than mere organization. That is why a better word to describe the inclusion would be not “organizational” but “sacramental”. But the word “sacramental” is too broad, misleading, and vague to use in this current discussion, and so the word “organizational” will have to do. The Church is more than an organization, but its organizational component—i.e. the fact that it is a body—is still basic to its existence.
Just as the Salvation Army would denounce in no uncertain terms faux-Salvationists who claimed membership while remaining outside its organization, so the Church of the first centuries denounced schismatics who claimed to be parts of the Church while remaining outside its canonical boundaries. No one would blame the Salvation Army for its denunciation of faux-Salvationists and (here’s the point) no one should blame the Orthodox for saying that schism is wrong and for receiving schismatics by chrismation or baptism.
The problem with schism is that the schismatic body is making a claim to membership within the (capital C) Church while rejecting the Church’s organizational component which has always been a condition for membership. We moderns tend to forget or dismiss as unimportant the organizational component because our culture has now trained us to think solely in terms of the individual and personal sincerity. But that is not how the early Church regarded the matter—nor (come to that) how the original Protestant Reformers regarded the matter.
The Church is a body and it needs rigid structure to live just as a human body needs a rigid structure (i.e. a hard inner skeleton) to live. We call that structure “organization” and it needs some rigidity if it is to function. The Salvation Army has a rigid structure and so it functions very well. So did the early Church. So does the Orthodox Church today. Everyone is welcome in the Orthodox Church, just as (presumably) everyone is welcome in the Salvation Army. One simply needs to join the organization of the Orthodox Church through chrismation or baptism and come home.
