So Andrews, moderator of the 215th General Assembly, on Feb. 19 challenged the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA) to challenge the church. She is asking the task force, when it makes its interim report to the General Assembly this summer, to specifically request that presbyteries, seminaries and congregations start intentional, structured dialogues that cross the lines of differences.
Meeting over the last two years, the task force itself has been a model for such discussions — and already is encouraging others in the church to do the same. But the task force has begun talking about how to put some “teeth” into that request — wondering if Presbyterians are more likely to start such conversations if the task force or even the General Assembly formally asks them to do it.
Most of the time, if Presbyterians talk at all about issues such homosexuality or biblical authority, they do it only with people with whom they already agree, Andrews said, speaking briefly to the 20-member task force after sharing dinner with them at their meeting in Dallas. But she wants the task force to use its stature and influence to push the church to do more.
As an example, she held up Cincinnati Presbytery, which has had to face the very contentious issue of whether to strip Stephen Van Kuiken of his ordination after Van Kuiken, the former pastor of Mount Auburn church, refused to stop performing same-sex unions. That matter is not yet resolved. But at a recent presbytery meeting, two pastors who don’t agree about Van Kuiken went to the microphone together and made a motion that Cincinnati Presbytery commit itself to a year of discussion, Andrews said — a year during which Presbyterians who disagree on the controversies would listen to each others’ preachers, study the Bible together, work on mission projects and maybe become friends.
Having two years of that kind of work, until the task force gives its final report to the General Assembly in 2006, will give the denomination “some time to till the soil,” Andrews said.
She also issued a second challenge to the task force.
She said she hopes that in 2006, “you will figure out, with all the creativity and love in this room, how to take us beyond this impasse.” Andrews said all the hope she sees in the denomination “is being blocked by this logjam,” by the wars over ordaining gays and lesbians.
“You have been called to use all of your charm, all of your intelligence, all of your creativity, all of your love for the church” to find a way forward, she told the task force members. Then she quickly added: “I don’t want to put too much pressure on you.”
Earlier, Andrews told the group: “You know and I know that the future of the Presbyterian church is not up to you,” but to God — which made these folks whoop and clap.
Andrews also spelled out some of the reasons why this work is so hard. Some in the church want purity above all else, or peace.
Andrews said she’s met with gays and lesbians in California who minister to families affected by AIDS, and heard the pain and frustration of those who feel excluded by the church. She heard from a couple in their 60s, “Reagan Republicans” and members of a conservative church, who experienced a “revolution in their lives” five years ago when their son told them he was gay.
She also listened to two evangelicals from Trinity Presbytery in South Carolina. One, the pastor of the largest church in the area, spoke lovingly and civilly and “made it crystal clear that if this church budges on the issue of homosexual ordination” that his church and others would be forced to leave. The other man was not civil at all, Andrews said, but was “absolutely livid” with her and with many others and who said “the very fact that we talk about the abomination of homosexuality makes him sick.”
The second man also said he was tired of hearing Andrews tell stories of the Christian faith and witness she’s experienced around the world, saying he didn’t care about mission work in South Africa or Cameroon, but only about the purity of the church.
Some cite Scripture that speaks against homosexuality, saying, “If you don’t like it, leave,” Andrews said. Others argue that Jesus stood for justice, that ordaining gays and lesbians is a matter of justice that must be pursued, and “if you don’t like it, leave.”
Some just want peace.
They say, “Let’s just not talk about it and it will go away,” Andrews said, adding that “that’s the fondest wish of a whole lot of people in our pews, that it will just go away.”
Others say, just leave the current standards, which limit ordination to those who practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single, in the PC(USA) Constitution “and ignore it. Which as far as I’m concerned, does not have integrity.”
Andrews admitted, under questioning from task force member William Stacy Johnson of Princeton Seminary, that her own bias is for unity first (Johnson asked whether Andrews, to be consistent, shouldn’t be putting peace, unity and purity on an equal plane — although he said he shares her bias towards unity). But unity “rises above peace and purity as I read Scripture,” Andrews said, acknowledging, “that’s my bias and my interpretation.”
Andrews told of signs she’s seen of hope for achieving unity: of the pastor from western Pennsylvania, a man active in renewal groups, who suggested privately to her that perhaps an “ethic of monogamy” could bring the church together (although he didn’t want his friends to know he thought that), or those on both sides who tell her, “This is not an issue that should break the church apart.”
But Andrews also recognizes that to have an honest conversation about all this is risky — something the task force members, who are being asked to do just that, definitely understand. “People have strong feelings privately,” and sometimes are more willing than they might seem to seek a middle ground, Andrews said. But to say what they think out loud might jeopardize jobs, friendships and bring down the wrath of what she called “power politics.”
