The task force, which has been meeting for the past two-and-a-half years, is expected to make a report to the church by September 2005. It will gather in Dallas about a month from now, in August, to talk about one of the toughest issues it faces: whether homosexuals should be ordained.
What the task force will do about ordination remains a mystery. Task force member John Wilkinson, a pastor from Rochester, N.Y., said today that the final report “may be lean, embracing the principle that less is more.”
And in the meantime, the task force is trying to build support, lay the groundwork, and suggest that the way forward for the PC(USA) might involve some new ways of thinking — thinking that’s less about what individual Presbyterians are convinced is the right way to go and more about following Jesus Christ. The task force’s preliminary report makes the case, relying on passages from Ephesians, that Jesus Christ is the source of church’s peace, unity and purity — not what ordinary Presbyterians can do.
About 400 people attended an event sponsored by the task force Saturday morning, just barely before the 216th General Assembly was called into session. More than half the task force’s 20 members were present, leading worship and Bible study, as is their custom when they meet, and explaining for folks what they’ve accomplished so far and where they anticipate going.
Frances Taylor Gench, a task force member who teaches New Testament at Union Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, led a Bible study based on the 17th chapter of the gospel of John, including the prayer for unity that Jesus prayed shortly before he was betrayed and killed. “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me,” the passage says in part.
“I think this text is a important touchstone for the PCUSA” Gench said, “at a time when many of us are down on our knees praying for the peace, unity and purity of our denomination, at a time when it is imperiled, when talk of schism is in the air.”
Gench said she finds it reassuring to think of Jesus “praying for us, for the church of the future. It’s a prayer that transcends generations . . . We are hearing Jesus lift our names and our troubled church before God in prayer.”
And Jesus’ prayer that his followers all be one makes it clear that God is the source of that unity, Gench said. Jesus instructs his followers to love one another — perhaps “the most difficult thing Jesus could have asked,” she said.
To follow that commandment is to embrace the unity that’s God’s gift to us in Christ — and loving one another “is our most convincing testimony to the world of the truth and power of the gospel we proclaim,” Gench said. But showing love in Christ is not the same as saying we like one another, she said, adding that she’s always taken comfort in the passage stating that “my Father’s mansion has many rooms.”
Mark Achtemeier, a task force member who teaches systematic theology at the University of Dubuque Seminary, said some try to put peace and unity in tension with purity.
“We can find in the Bible all sorts of passages that say peace is a good thing, purity is a good thing, unity is a good thing,” Achtemeier said. “But where do we find guidance for balancing them?”
But that thinking is a false approach, “because it assumes that the peace, unity and purity of the church are all about us,” Achtemeier said. “The New Testament doesn’t have much use for these self-centered concepts,” he said.
The early church was bitterly divided over purity issues — over whether Gentiles should be allowed into the fellowship, Achtemeier said. And this is question many ask: “Do you compromise biblical fidelity in order to have a unified church family, or do you hold the line on obedience at the cost of a divided and conflicted church?”
But Ephesians gives a new answer, suggesting that Christ “has completely short-circuited every attempt to build ourselves up on the basis of our own supposed purity,” Achtemeier said. All of the arguments over who’s acceptable to God, who’s pure and obedient enough to have a place at the table, “have been nailed to the cross and put to death.”
Now, he said, our obedience is a thankful response to what God has done for us.
So this, in part, is what the task force is asking the PC(USA): Will you set side your differences, and your certainty that you are right, to claim peace, unity and purity in Jesus Christ?
Task force co-moderators Jenny Stoner of Vermont and Gary Demarest of California said the task force set as one of its first priorities building a community of trust and the writing of a covenant they’ve all pledged to follow. Demarest said he wouldn’t have chosen to be part of an intentionally diverse group — to say, in essence, “Let’s get together and fight. I choose to do that only once a year, at this annual shoot-out,” he said, referring to the General Assembly.
But Demarest said he’s learned through the task force that Presbyterians don’t pick who gets to be in the family of God, that “God has chosen us and we do have our differences.”
Stacy Johnson, who teaches systemic theology at Princeton Seminary, alluded to some of the criticism the task force’s preliminary report already has received — some of it, although Johnson didn’t mention any names, from Robert A. J. Gagnon, associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Seminary, who’s written a critique of the task force’s use of the Ephesians passages and has criticized it for leaving out passages relating to sexual purity.
The author of Ephesians “believes that no unrepentant sexual impurity is to be tolerated indefinitely within the community of faith,” and the implication is that those in the church “should consider disassociating themselves not just from believers who persist in sexually immoral behavior but also from believers who condone and support such behavior,” Gagnon wrote in an article posted on the Internet.
But the task force hasn’t discussed ordination and homosexuality fully yet, this is a preliminary report, and “it does not say everything that needs to be said,” Johnson said.
The task force also is encouraging presbyteries and congregations to continue the conversation — to talk about the kinds of things the task force is talking about in Sunday school classes and Bible studies, in small covenant groups, or with congregations whose views are different from their own. Is the present climate of anger and suspicion “something you enjoy and want to see continue? Johnson asked. “Or are you willing to se if there might be a still more excellent way?”
In small groups, those attending the pre-assembly event talked about some of what the task force had suggested.
An elder from California said he’s been thinking about “the conviction each person carries that they are right and lead by the Holy Spirit,” even when they reach different conclusions. If they’re each so sure, he asked, “where does the truth lie?”
One pastor said people will say they don’t want to be part of a congregation or denomination where everyone is fighting. But another said he’s reluctant to settle for “an easy peace,” for cutting off the debate too early, when maybe he could learn something and earn “a greater blessing” by listening to the arguments of the folks with whom he disagrees.
One man acknowledged that there are some differences of views he can accept, and some that cross theological boundaries so important that those views are not acceptable to him. “
And a retired pastor said he’d like the PC(USA) to develop a different way of listening, to become a church with “a spirituality of reception,” waiting to speak until “the second beat of a measure,” being quiet long enough to listen first for God.
