“Change is inevitable,” Gomes told about 350 people gathered for the Covenant Network of Presbyterians’ annual meeting Nov. 1-3 in Pasadena. “Sooner or later, the right — which we know to be the position where we are now — the right will prevail. You can’t grow weary in well-doing. It is not a question of if, it is a question of when.”
But Gomes also threw out some ideas about what’s at stake in that campaign for change beyond just one denomination’s policy on homosexuality. Presbyterians have a chance, by example, to teach “a moral lesson the nation itself will take to heart,” he said — a lesson that will speak to a secular world about how Christians treat strangers, including those with whom they disagree, and how they find their way relying on the Scripture, the sacred texts.
Gomes warned the Covenant Network not to allow conservatives to claim that they are the ones with the Bible on their side. “They have a few verses, we have the law and the prophets,” he said, adding that “Our opponents must not be allowed to build a fence around the Scripture,” around their own interpretation of what the Bible means. “The Scripture belongs to us.”
That question, the authority of the Bible, has been central for many conservatives in opposing the ordination of homosexuals.
But in small-group discussions at this meeting, Covenant Network supporters spoke of their own reverence for the Bible — and their desire that, within the guidelines of the Reformed tradition, interpretations be allowed that aren’t always “so neat and so tidy,” as one speaker put it; a practice, they say, that sometimes means people of faith read the Bible together and allow God to show them in the Scriptures things they didn’t before see.
Gomes urged the Covenant Network to keep affirming three principles of Scripture:
— that all are created equally in the image of God — there is no “hierarchy of beings.”
— that we live in a fallen world, and as sinners must show each other charity. “You must love your enemies into extinction,” Gomes said, promising to pray for those with whom you disagree.
— that “redemption is not only possible and necessary — it’s inevitable . . . Redemption is the turning around of the very, very worst into the very best. It is possible even for the church to be redeemed. And because of the possibility of redemption, we do not give up, we do not lose heart, we do not give in . . . We do whatever it takes.”
Amendment A strategy
Already, the Covenant Network is working hard to do what it takes this year on Amendment A — a proposed amendment to the PC(USA) Constitution that would remove language limiting ordination to those who practice fidelity in marriage or chastity if they are single. To take effect, that proposed amendment would have to be approved by a majority of the denomination’s 173 presbyteries, which have already started to vote.
The Covenant Network plans to spend about $100,000 in its campaign on Amendment A, compared with about $300,000 committed by the Presbyterian Coalition, which opposes the ordination of homosexuals.
The Network is distributing a videotape of the PowerPoint presentation that a group of overture advocates used last summer to convince the 213th General Assembly to approve Amendment A, a video that may be played at some presbytery meetings (sometimes back-to-back with an anti-Amendment A video distributed by Presbyterians for Renewal — a prospect that one speaker described as the “video wars”).
And the Covenant Network is attempting to redefine the terms of the debate, saying they want the presbyteries to talk not about sex, but about how factions that have been battling over homosexuality for 25 years should “agree to disagree,” and to leave decisions about who should be ordained up to the presbyteries and the sessions, the people who know the candidates best.
Covenant Network supporters say they’re not asking people to change their minds on what the Bible says about homosexuality. “We are saying, with as much passion as everyone here has, ‘This is how I read the Bible, this is how God has spoken to me,'” said Pamela Byers, the group’s executive director. “But I’m not asking you to give up your interpretation.”
As a Covenant Network brochure explained, the primary issue in the vote on Amendment A “is what kind of church we want to be part of — a church in which we assume the best of one another, honoring freedom of conscience and the duty of mutual forbearance, or a church in which only one point of view is tolerated.”
Along with the polity arguments, those who favor Amendment A also are urging their supporters to go to presbytery meetings prepared to tell personal stories — stories of how their own views about ordaining homosexuals were shaped, and maybe how those views changed. The Covenant Network video speaks to Presbyterian history, tradition and theology, but “it’s not designed to tug at the heart,” said Tim Hart-Andersen, a Covenant Network board member from Minneapolis. Said Susan Andrews, of Washington D.C.: “What usually sway the votes are the personal stories.”
No predictions on Amendement A vote
No one was predicting publicly in Pasadena what will happen with the vote on Amendment A — previous votes on ordaining gays and lesbians have been so close that neither victory nor defeat are being taken for granted.
And the Covenant Network leaders say they’re in it for the long haul. There was no talk of walking out if things don’t go the way they want.
Following just a month after the Presbyterian Coalition meeting, at which 1,200 evangelicals met and spoke with fervor of controversial ideas such as withholding money from the denomination or leaving en masse if things don’t change, Covenant Network supporters talked about how they don’t want a “gracious separation,” and how they have disagreed deeply with the denomination for years but haven’t threatened to leave.
In recent months, “there has been an assault on civility in our denomination and a stoking of the fires of fear,” said Hart-Andersen.
“I think it’s a loyalty contest for the center of the Presbyterian church,” said Bob Bohl, one of the Covenant Network’s co-founders. “It’s also a time when we cannot be quiet,” but must speak out and say, “We’re not going anywhere. We belong in this family and we’re going to stay here.”
But speakers also challenged those on the Covenant Network side to search for their own shortcomings, to see if they are truly living up to the example set by Jesus. Jean Kim, the founding pastor of Church of the Magdalene in Seattle, spoke of economic injustice and racial conflict, and how churches often fail to show real hospitality to those who don’t easily fit in. Jesus’ hospitality knows no rich, no poor, no boundaries, knows “no creed, no polity, no hunger,” she said.
Preaching during the closing worship service, Barbara Anderson, co-pastor of Pasadena church, where the gathering was held, used as her sermon title “Add Another Leaf to the Table,” an obvious reference to Covenant Network’s desire to allow gays and lesbians to be ordained.
But Anderson didn’t stop there. She went on to say that the holiday dinner tables in her parents’ home always made room for everyone, the grandparents and the children, the liberals and Republicans, a lesbian couple and conservative Christians, the millionaire cousin and the unemployed single mom.
Anderson said she’s had to remember, as she’s pulling as hard as she can to make more room at the table of her denomination, that the people with whom she disagrees are at the other end, pulling just as hard — and that it takes people at both ends pulling hard “to break open the middle of this great church, so God can drop in another leaf.”
She has to remind herself that this is God’s table, not her own.
For her, “the hardest part is holding on to the difficult truth that those with whom I disagree and whose tactics I abhor are invited to the same table . . . and they are God’s hungry children too,” and are always welcome, Anderson said.
New co-moderators elected
The Covenant Network announced its two new co-moderators: Eugene Bay, of Bryn Mawr church in Pennsylvania, and Joanna Adams, of Trinity church in Atlanta.
The conference’s theme was “Christ Transforming Culture,” chosen to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of the late Yale University theologian H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic book on theology, Christ and Culture. And Laird Stuart of Calvary Church in San Francisco, who’s just completed a term as the Network’s co-moderator, said transformation through Christ “isn’t simply a slogan — it’s something we believe in.”
Some criticize those who want the church to ordain gays and lesbians for “simply mirroring the culture,” Stuart said. But his response is that “we are trying to be agents of Christ” and “we do believe in a church that can be a way of transformation, a church that is whole and faithful and just.”
And, Stuart added, “A whole church is a far more effective witness to the transforming power of Christ than a fractured church.”
In workshops, people discussed some of their sticking points with the evangelicals — exploring what they mean when they talk about “freedom of conscience” or biblical interpretation.
“There is no such thing in Presbyterian polity as an absolutely free conscience,” because the idea that “God alone is Lord of the conscience” means that conscience is shaped and molded by our relationship with God and our understanding of Scripture, as well as by our own experience, said Blair Moffett, pastor of First church, Stamford, Conn.
Al Gephart, a pastor from Tempe, Ariz., said he grew up in a “fundamentalist” church and attended Fuller Seminary, which has a strong evangelical presence. But Gephart said in an interview that he’s moved away from “a simple surface meaning” of what the Bible says to different understandings, his thinking transformed by what Jesus said and did.
Gephart said he understands the reluctance many evangelicals feel to allow interpretations of the Bible that seem to contradict the plain meaning of the text — to allow in some element of the unexpected. “There’s a lot of fear behind this, that if I give in to this, the whole house of cards is going to fall down,” he said. “I know that feeling. But ultimately, our trust is in God — that can be a scary thing.”
Gephart said he’s come to think about those kinds of tensions in the PC(USA) as being like the difference between riding in a rowboat and a canoe. “A rowboat has this initial feeling of stability — it’s flat and it doesn’t tip” and feels safe, he said. “But if you’re out in rough waters, you’re far more stable in a canoe.”
Finally, as he looks ahead, Gephart turns to faith — to his certainty that the Holy Spirit will not allow the Christian church to stray too far off course.
“I believe in the church, when Jesus says nothing will prevail against it,” Gephart said. The shape and form of the church may change; it may not be the church as we know it now. But what’s truly of God, he said, will always prevail.
