This has set me to thinking that the center can be understood these days in one of three ways, two of which have virtually nothing to offer. But the third prompts me to write.
Lots of voices can be heard from the center of negation. Since I have not attended any gatherings in Chicago or Dallas and since I am not a member of either the Covenant or Coalition groups, I am a centrist of negation. I am in the center by virtue of not being a partisan on either side. I am quite comfortable with this, knowing that I would be shunned by both sides eventually any way. Sooner or later I would spill the beans in either group about how I really felt on some hot-button issue. Shocked looks from the faithful would signal it was time for me to leave.
Persons who practice the center of negation carry on about how the right-wing extremists bring vicious judgmentalism into the church. Then those same centrists turn around and rail about how the left gets its foot in the door first by convincing the church to permit something, and then they sneak up on us with an overture that says we must do it. Listen to the centrists of negation and you’ll have no concept what they are for. But you’ll get an earful about what they are against.
Not surprisingly these voices have little or no wisdom to offer. We gain nothing by listening to complaints about the “extremists” on either side of our denomination’s spectrum.
I also hear these days many voices speaking from the center of apathy. “Who cares?” “Let ’em fight.” To their credit centrists of apathy are not apathetic about the church as a whole. Rather they don’t want to join the fray on the present issues that seem to consume the church. Theirs can be a helpful voice wishing we spent more time and energy on worship, education, evangelism and mission.
Many centrists of apathy have withdrawn from denominational work so they can devote more time to cultivating the congregation. The debates hounding our presbyteries and General Assemblies are just not their cup of tea. Their main hope is that they won’t have to face hassles in their congregations over what they consider peripheral arguments. To the extent that they have withdrawn from the arena, the centrists of apathy have no helpful word for these times.
The third option, which I have not heard championed enough, is what I call the center of inclusion. Just the opposite of the viscerally seductive center of negation, the center of inclusion tries to invite and to engage both camps.
Admittedly I am a centrist of inclusion for very personal reasons. I have good friends who mean a lot to me and for whom I have tremendous respect on both sides of the great divide. The committees that drafted Amendments B and A were both chaired by close friends of mine. Further, as I listen to persons on each side of the debate state their case, I like what I hear. These people obviously love the Lord, take Scripture seriously and have a well-reasoned position. They are convincing. Yet inevitably I feel that I am not hearing the whole gospel about the whole Jesus as introduced in the whole Bible. I need some of what the persons on the other side bring to the table.
For me the voice of God speaks most clearly as friends and colleagues bring both sides to the discussion. Were my friends and colleagues no longer in tension with each other because they were no longer in the same church, neither of their new denominations could adequately nourish my soul. So I struggle to be an agent of reconciliation for the admittedly selfish reason that only when both sides exist together in tension is the gospel articulated in a way that feeds my soul.
For this reason I have tried to bring representatives of both sides together. For this reason I have rejoiced when each meeting has seen barriers broken down. For this reason I saw a ray of hope when one such meeting called the church to a sabbatical. Rather than keep trotting the same people to the microphones to offer the same arguments on the same issue, I had hoped we would let matters cool so that new levels of dialogue could occur. I had hoped the two sides would spend more time talking to each other instead of plotting to do each other in.
Now while we who stand in the center of the road fear that the mortar shells being lobbed over our heads signal that the sabbatical may not hold, we wonder about our role. And we worry.
These words are written inviting people to the center of inclusion. Are there others out there who feel as I do like a child of a troubled marriage? We love both our parents and both sides of our family. But an icy chill, resentment, lack of trust and occasional loud outbursts signal trouble. What scares us most is that if there were to be a divorce we would want to spend time with both separated partners and could not see ourselves exclusively with one without the other. In today’s church the center is at risk to become the lost children of an angry divorce.
So to those who have called me to ask what the center can do, let’s begin by defining what center we’re talking about. The center of negation and the center of apathy have little to offer. This is the time for the center of inclusion to be heard. Where are the voices among us who say to the right and to the left, “We love you both and we need you both”? Why haven’t we centrists been more aggressive in bringing the two sides together? Why have we let the opportunity of the sabbatical slide by, playing the easy role of negation and apathy?
What can we do now to keep the sides from poking each other in the eye, to declare that for us staying together is a vital and primary concern, to say we can be counted on to stay with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) no matter how any vote goes, to work for a church big enough to embrace both camps, to declare that Presbyterianism is all about the discussion and disagreement that makes the whole Gospel possible?
John T. Galloway Jr. is pastor, Wayne (Pa.) church. He was one of six church leaders who issued 1998’s call for a sabbatical on the issue of the ordination of homosexuals.
