THE cHURCH WAS A MISTAKE:
The Durable Mr. Nock (Edmund A. Opitz, June 6, 2025, Modern Age)
In conversation one day with several college presidents, Nock laid down a number of stringent guidelines for running a college. One of the presidents, somewhat shocked, said, “Why Mr. Nock, if my college were to follow your advice we’d lose most of the faculty and all but about five of the students.” Nock pondered this for a moment, and then replied, “That would be just the right size for a college.” […]
Every society constructs its institutions in its own image, and thus we get the schools we deserve, the economy we deserve, and the churches we deserve. Albert Jay Nock did his graduate work in theology, and before he joined the staff of American Magazine in 1908 he had served Episcopal parishes in three states. In later life he wrote that “when Christianity became organized it immediately took on a political character radically affecting its institutional concept of religion and its institutional concept of morals; and the same tendencies observable in secular politics at once set in upon the politics of organized Christianity.” And just as schools offend against education, so churches offend against high religion.
Which is why we Baptists are disorganized.