When you confessed Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior did you also add “and the Presbyterian Church is the ‘True church’!”
I must confess that for this raised-in-Utah Presbyterian the answer was “None of the above.” Oh there were lots of folk around who were convinced they were members of the true church. The Catholics, of course, felt that way, but in Utah they were just a small group and their talk of the pope and infallibility made little impression in that sea of Mormonism. There were little groups like Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses who claimed they were the True Ones — but their numbers were so small, they were just a drop in the bucket.
The Mormons knew they were the True Church because God had gone to all the trouble of giving Joseph Smith the true Bible and all. They outnumbered the rest of us by at least 10 to l. If they were interested in being the True Church, I was happy to give them the prize. The term certainly had nothing to do with being a Presbyterian.
In Utah we understood our task as Presbyterians was to be the church. And as a small minority in Utah that was a full-time job. So we left the arguing about True Churchness to the folks that had time for it and enjoyed that kind of thing. I discovered to my surprise as I matured in faith that there were lots of groups around who felt it important that they be recognized as the True Church: Moslems, fundamentalist groups of all varieties and, lately, the Southern Baptists, but it has always seemed to me a non-Presbyterian question.
So given my heritage I have had a deuce of a time trying to figure out why “The True Church” has been such a big deal for us at GA and in presbyteries. For 25 years we have been obsessed with who is entitled to be a member, an officer and a participant in the True Church. It has dominated us for so long we are fed up with the question, and rightly so, ’cause it really is not at home in Presbyteriana.
This June we fearfully gathered in Louisville, prepared to watch the commissioners whack away at one another over the “True Church.” And lo, these folk seemed uninterested in the subject. They spent their time finding out how we could serve Jesus and the world as Presbyterians. The atmosphere in and around the Assembly amazed folk of all theological shades. These people were treating each other as Christians!
The editor of the paper put out by the church I don’t attend reported that he and his colleagues looked in vain for the True Church, but saw few signs of it.
How about that! Do you suppose we can discuss and vote and relate in presbyteries without the “True Church” messing us up? Can you imagine us spending a year talking and praying with each other about how to be the church described thus by the Master:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor;
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind
To set at liberty those who are oppressed
To proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord.
I am no artist so I ask you to draw your own graphic — a tombstone labeled “The True Church” and underneath “RIP.” I admit it is a dream, but as we used to say in Hawaii: “Could happen!”
posted Aug. 31, 2001
David Steele, the “parson on the loose” from Sun City, Ariz., died Tuesday, Aug. 28. His “Tuesday Morning” columns had run in The Outlook since February 1985. We will miss him.
