For more than a hundred years, Christians around the globe have marked the week of January 18th to 25th as the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.” This week, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, United, Independent, and many other Christians gather to pray for and work toward the unity of the Christian church.

The church does not have a great history of staying together. The Eastern and Western Church split in the Great Schism of 1054. The Protestant Reformation splintered the church in the 16th century and beyond. My own Presbyterian denomination has divided multiple times, including over the U.S. Civil War. And I’m sure many of you listening have experienced your own congregational breakups.

The good news is that over the last hundred years, the ecumenical movement made huge strides toward reconciliation among churches that had been divided from each other for centuries. Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox churches came to new agreement to honor each other’s baptisms. As a Presbyterian minister in the United States, I can now serve a congregation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or in the United Church of Christ without having to change denominations. Ecumenical organizations like the National Council of Churches, Church World Service, and Bread for the World, among many others, have worked together to reduce poverty and hunger, strengthen civil rights, advocate for disarmament, and seek racial justice. There have been moments in our lifetimes when Paul’s appeal to the Corinthian church seemed to be within reach, “that that there be no divisions among you but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose.”

In fact, now that we no longer fight to the death over our preference for bishops or presbyters, the remaining big-picture theological disagreements among churches can seem almost quaint. In many places, the gains of the ecumenical movement, especially among Protestants, mean that we don’t think that much about Christian unity anymore.

At least, we don’t think that much about Christian unity in a traditional sense of denominational divisions. But we are surrounded by the pain of disunity all the time:

The extended family who sits uncomfortably together in a pew on Christmas Eve at a service where some feel welcome and others do not.

An engaged couple from mixed Protestant and Catholic backgrounds who struggle to find a priest or a pastor who will marry them without pressure to convert.

Parents so deeply concerned about the salvation of their children that they threaten to disown them if they leave the faith.

In my first ministry position after seminary, I was a Protestant chaplain at a Jesuit Catholic university. I served with a team of supportive Catholic colleagues, ordained priests and lay ministers, men and women. The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was a big deal for me in that job, because that was the week I got to offer the homily at the student Mass on Sunday night. I usually started off the homily by pointing out the obvious: that I was a woman, wearing a black liturgical robe, and not Catholic. In that moment, I embodied divisions in the Christian church: disagreements over who could be ordained, beliefs about liturgy and sacraments, who is called to lead.

After preaching at those masses, I stayed in my seat during the Eucharist, honoring the beliefs of my Catholic colleagues and friends by not partaking in the sacrament. That was always a difficult moment for our team, who worked side by side in ministry but could not share together at the Table. It was a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, indeed.

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In Paul’s day, the Grecian city of Corinth was a crossroads, a commercial hub, and something of a Sin City. The church community in Corinth, whom Paul addresses in his letter from today’s reading, was probably a diverse crowd. Scholars note that some of the conflicts in the Corinthian church were primarily superficial — like arguments over wealth and status. Factions baptized by one person or another were making claims about what that should mean within the group, possibly asserting their importance over others.

In today’s reading, Paul seems to minimize the quarrels in the church as trivial: “Has Christ been divided? Were you baptized into Paul?” The implication is no: in Christ, believers should put away their childish spats and be knit together in the same mind and purpose.

The trouble is that it is not that easy to discern a common mind and purpose. While they may appear to be pointless squabbles, divisions in the community also reflected issues of power and authority. Those are deep questions about what it means to belong to Christ, and who gets to determine who gets to belong. These were not then and are not now unimportant issues. In fact, they are core to Christian community.

Paul knew this, too. While it would be easy to think Paul is simply chastising the Corinthians for being petty and childish, something larger is at stake. The point of being unified is that in Christ everyone is valued. Later, in chapter 8, Paul writes that those who are weaker should be supported rather than scolded or diminished. In chapter 12, Paul’s reminds the Corinthians that spiritual gifts are for the good of the everyone, and are not to be lorded over others or ranked as more or less important.

For Paul, being baptized into Christ is not like joining a club. It is about reimagining what it means to be in relationship with each other and with God. In Christ, how we came to belong is less important than the fact that we did — because we are now claimed by Christ for the sake of the gospel.

And what is that gospel? For Paul, the gospel is a new reality in which old differences are superseded by new bonds. The death and resurrection of Christ demonstrates God’s love for humanity — a love which we are freed to share fully with one another, regardless of status or power.

Unity in Christ is not about being the same, or about always agreeing. It is about being transformed into a body of interconnectedness. It is about being loved so much by God and each other that you can no longer imagine the lives of others as separate from your own. It is about seeing every human being, all made in God’s image, as siblings in need of love and care and hope. It is a world where one is disposable. A world where no one’s gifts are worthless. When one suffers, all suffer, and when one is honored, everyone rejoices (12:26).

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The Christian church has struggled to embody this love throughout its history, and our divisions continue to be anything but superficial. Today in the United States, churches find themselves divided by political ideology and calls for Christian nationalism, conflicts that have real-world implications for real people in a nation where Christians are the majority. A recent New York Times article noted “fault lines” among Baptists over immigration. Some Baptist leaders are calling for compassion and care for immigrants. Others have suggested that undocumented immigrants should be turned away at the communion table because of their “unlawful” status.[^1]

Here we are, two millennia after Paul called for unity among the Corinthians, and despite 100 years of prayer for Christian unity some days it feels like we are nowhere closer to that vision of interconnected love in Christ than the Corinthians were. Christian communities have argued over silly things to be sure, but more often we are trying to work out serious questions of power and theology and exclusion and authority and community. These things matter as we seek to be faithful in a diverse and complicated world.

Setting aside a week of prayer for Christian unity might seem insignificant amid the serious atrocities and suffering taking place around us. But in Christ what matters most is that our divisions never become the end of the story — that we never become satisfied with being separated. Christian unity isn’t about going along to get along, or denying our conflicts and differences. It’s about remembering again who and what we are called to be. It is about continuing to be transformed into an interconnected community even when we disagree. It is about being loved so much by God and each other that we can no longer imagine the lives of others as separate from our own. It may sound foolish, but it is world-changing. This kind of commitment to unity is a transformational act of faith.

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On the west coast of Ghana, there are buildings called “slave castles”: bright white fortresses at the water’s edge where enslaved Africans were held before being loaded onto ships bound for the Americas. The narrow and dark passageways in the castles where kidnapped Africans were held are called “the doors of no return,” symbolizing the brutal and final severing of ties to homeland, culture, and identity.

I visited one of these slave castles in 2004. It seems impossible, but directly above the spaces where kidnapped adults and children were shackled and crowded into dungeons — directly above that was a chapel used by their white, Christian enslavers: a space designated for Christian prayer built above holding cells for human chattel.

When I visited the slave castles, I did not go alone. I was with about a thousand other Reformed Christians from around the world.

We were descendants of slaves from the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America;
we were Dutch, British, and American visitors of European ancestry who, if our ancestors hadn’t personally owned slaves, were descendants of those who have benefited from the legacy of slavery;
we were Ghanaians and other Africans whose countries had only recently regained independence from colonial rule;
and we were others from around the globe whose own histories were no less heartbreaking and damning.

It was a scene that would have been impossible for our forebears to imagine — that their Christian descendants would cross the barriers of race and geography and culture and history to stand together on that coast and say, “never again.”

We went to the castles to lament, to remember, and to recommit ourselves to life together, to the unity to which we are called in Christ. We went to the castles in mourning and repentance, and to bear witness to and embody Christian community transformed.

So many voices around us clamor that we should fear each other, deny our interconnectedness, or believe that some are more worthy of love and compassion than others. But Paul reminds us that in our baptism, community itself is something transformational.

Maybe the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity should be a week of prayer not just for unity, but to remember what Christian unity means. Christian unity means that we are never satisfied with being divided from each other, and division will never be the last word. God’s love has the power to transform us towards one another. And in Christ, we learn to see every human being as just as much in need of love and care and hope as we are, all of us children of God.

It is not foolishness. It is the power of God to transform the world.

[^1]: Dias, Elizabeth and Shannon Sims. “Immigration Crackdown Creates Fault Lines Among Baptists.” New York Times. Dec. 21, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/us/southern-baptists-immigration-trump.html.