It has finally occurred in a public aside, in the March meeting of the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church. A conflict erupted that many people have been waiting for impatiently. Could it be that the real challenge of status confessionis before the church of Jesus Christ in the United States of America is not homosexual ordination but the imperial conduct of this ‘Christian’ nation in its Middle East pursuits? If the Confessing Church movement has something to confess, then over against what apostasies and soul-destroying idolatries on behalf of Jesus Christ do they take their stand? Are they simply against other Presbyterians whom they deem heretical and unbiblical? Is the Covenant Network espousing a confessional position on the removal of G-6.0106b.? Are these organizations implicitly positioning themselves for “severance?”
Recent Reformed confessions have stood for Jesus Christ over against nationalisms and cultures. They have not been about one set of Christians inveighing against another. Re-read Barmen and the Confession of ’67. Have the retention and removal (or challenges to) G-6.0106 b. become matters of status confessionis? The conflict between Johnson and Loudon as reported by Leslie Scanlon is profoundly instructive. See p.5 of this issue, and also the generous letter by Eberhard Busch to U. S. Ministers, p.11. The pleadings of Dr. Busch speak not only to pastors, for goodness sake, but call all professing Christians to prayer and repentance, regardless of race, ethnic origin, or worldly condition. What is, in truth, of ultimate importance to U. S. Christians?
These questions arise for me, not from the division in the larger church, but rather from teaching Acts of the Apostles. The class at Second Church has been at it for a year. This week we read Paul’s protest (Chapter 21) against those who sought to save him from danger in Jerusalem. He told them that he was willing to be bound and die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. Paul’s testimony loops back to Chapter 5 when the apostles were flogged and forbidden to preach before being released. Luke writes that, ” … as they left the council they rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.”
How can the church, as it prepares to receive the report of the Task Force, discern what is of eternal importance in witness to Jesus Christ in these times, discern indeed what is worth suffering for? One answer was forged by the Coalition and its friends who gathered in Houston, not for the making of endless resolutions, but for prayer and repentance. Might we not repent because we witness to nothing in this controversy that makes us worthy to suffer for the Name?
We will never achieve unity and purity — much less peace, if we simply wait passively on what the Task Force releases in September. I suspect that many Presbyterians are tired of these matters because they inspire nothing worth dying for. Yet we live in a world where Christians die every day because they belong to Jesus. That side conversation between Johnson and Loudon focused my attention.
Friends of mine speculate about why the Presbyterian Church has chosen sexuality and ordination as matters on which the denomination should stand or fall. Is it perhaps because they distract us and divert us from the awful seduction of our consumer culture and its materialistic devotions held in place by military might? It is easier to make war on Venus than on Mars! And it’s certainly less painful to lob salvos against our opponents and to ferret out their weaknesses, than to question whether our national commitments please God, especially when we Reformed have had a hand in creating and maintaining this nation.
Thank goodness for the work of this Task Force — for its main business as well as this aside. History will indeed judge us. More important, God will be our judge. May God have mercy upon us, and grant all of us repentance unto everlasting life.
