Someone asked Bojidar Marinov about whether local church membership is the decentralized solution we hope for, and that speaking of the universal church and downplaying the local church is more of a collectivist (bad) way of thinking.

Bojidar’s Answer:

The argument here is not between the local church and the universal church. The argument here is between the individual and the local church. Notice how no one argues against local ACTION. We are arguing against MANDATORY “local church membership.” If a group of people got together and decided, “We will act locally,” this is one thing. When a group of people got together and said, “No one is legitimate unless they submit to us,” this is another thing altogether.

It is like the clan of which I wrote in my article in clan society. Yes, the clan may act locally, but the ideology of the clan is just as collectivist as that of the totalitarian state. Our argument against the clan is the nuclear family. In the same way, the “local church membership” is where collectivism is. Our argument is: the individual doesn’t need that “membership” in order to be a Christian.

Besides, “local church membership” is never used to ACT locally. It is always used to NOT act at all. No group needs formal membership to act. The very purpose of formal membership is to limit action.

The concept of the universal church here is invoked not to replace the local church as a bureaucracy with the universal church as a bureaucracy. The universal church as defined by the Reformed Confessions is not an organization. It is only used to oppose a different concept of membership to the bureaucratic concept. It is not that an individual “joins” a church. It is that in baptism, an individual becomes part of the Church, and therefore the Church goes with him when he goes out in the world.

To use the example of the clan again, we do not replace the clan with a bigger clan, the state. We oppose the clan with Christendom.