No Sects in Heaven

After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb. REVELATION 7:9

Amanda Smith’s ministry was carried on almost entirely outside the ordinary structures of any church. She had no appointment, no circuit, no salary, no board. She moved between the African Methodist churches of her own people, the white Methodist churches of New York and Philadelphia, the great interdenominational holiness camp meetings, the Quaker drawing rooms of Philadelphia and Dublin, the Keswick tent, the Anglican and Presbyterian missions of India and West Africa. And yet she was not a free-floating individualist. She had a strong and thoughtful view of Christian fellowship, and of the church, that is worth hearing today.

The camp meeting

Her first national holiness camp meeting was at Oakington, Maryland, in July 1870, and it changed her life. She had never heard such testimonies or such preaching on holiness. At the Sunday morning love feast she told how she had found the great salvation, and the Lord blessed the people. When the leaders appealed for funds and she longed to give, a stranger rose and pledged ten dollars on her behalf. She had gone to that meeting fearing she would not be allowed to eat at the boarding tent, and found that she was, and the secret of it, she said, was that they were earnest Christians.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! PSALM 133:1

Keswick and beyond

In England she found the same fellowship under another name. The Keswick Convention, a friend wrote to her before she sailed, answered to the holiness camp meetings at home, but they called it a convention for the deepening of spiritual life. She spoke there and at the conferences in Perth and elsewhere, and was received, as she says, with such warmth that by the third meeting in one Scottish town you would have thought they had been used to women preaching, and to Black women, all their days. She stayed with Quakers, Anglicans, Brethren and Presbyterians. In India she worked chiefly with the Methodists, but spoke wherever a door opened. In Liberia she held meetings in Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches.

I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts. PSALM 119:63

Her theology of all this is summed up in a cheerful aside. Remembering a well-known preacher who had left the Methodist Church for another denomination before he died, she said she had no objection to his going to heaven when his work was done, though she felt he might have gone as safely through the dear old Methodist Church; “but praise the Lord, anyhow there are no sects in Heaven.” The city, she said, will be full of blood-washed souls out of every kindred, tongue and people.

And yet she stayed

What is striking is that this wide fellowship never made her restless in her own church. She was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and she stayed one all her life, though it gave her plenty of reasons to leave. Her pastor mocked her from the pulpit. Many of her people opposed holiness. She was a speckled bird, as she said, among her own. She was drawn to the Free Methodists for their plainness and zeal, and found prejudice and harshness there too. She thought of walking to Brooklyn every week to sit under a pastor she respected.

In the end she prayed for three weeks for guidance, and the word she was given was, Fear not, stand still, and see the salvation of God. She stayed. “I never left the church,” she wrote, “but I have seen sad results of many who have left and gone away.” She had watched young people in New York leave one church and join another, and then another, and fail badly in their lives. The Lord, she said, had kept her steady.

Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is. HEBREWS 10:25

This is a lesson badly needed in an age that moves churches as easily as it changes shops. She did not stay because her church was perfect. She stayed because she believed God had put her there, and because leaving would not escape human nature, which she found the same everywhere. At the same time, her loyalty did not make her narrow. She was at home wherever Christ was loved.

The communion of saints

Her book is full of names. Page after page she stops to remember a band sister, a class leader, a Quaker hostess, an old man who prayed with power. It can seem like padding. It is not. It is her theology of the church. She knew herself carried by a great company of people, most of them obscure, who had fed her, housed her, prayed with her, lent her a quarter, or spoken one right word at the right time. She would not let them be forgotten.

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. PHILIPPIANS 1:3

She was especially tender toward the small praying bands in which she was formed: four or five women, meeting weekly, reading Scripture, telling each other their joys and sorrows, their victories and defeats, advising and praying for one another. Such bands, she believed, were the bone and sinew of a church. In Monrovia one of the first things she did was to reorganise such a band, and it outlived her stay.

Where she must be read with care

The holiness movement she loved had its dangers, and she saw some of them. Camp-meeting fervour could become an end in itself; testimonies could become formulaic; a doctrine of the second blessing could harden into a badge that divided the sanctified from the ordinary believers in the pew. Her own occasional impatience with dressed-up worshippers and fair-going churches sometimes shows this edge. But her instinct was to keep the fellowship wide and the heart humble, and to keep her own place in her own church. That is a sound instinct.

Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. EPHESIANS 4:3

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Think of believers from another tradition than yours whom you have learned from. Thank God for them by name, and tell one of them.

2. If you are restless in your church, ask honestly whether God is moving you or whether you are running from something He wants you to endure.

3. Consider joining or starting a small band of three or four believers who meet to read Scripture, confess, and pray for one another.

4. Write down the names of the obscure people who have carried you in your faith. Pray for the living and give thanks for the dead.

5. Is there a Christian meeting where someone like her would feel unwelcome? Do what you can to make it a place where earnest Christians make room.

A PRAYER

Lord, You are gathering a multitude no one can number, from every nation, kindred, people and tongue. There are no sects in heaven.

Make my heart as wide as Yours, at home wherever Christ is loved, and quick to learn from those who are not like me.

Keep me steady where You have planted me, and save me from running from the trials You mean me to endure.

And thank You for every obscure saint who has carried me. Bless them, and make me one of them for someone else. Amen.