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Holy Week resources and reflections

Bitterly divided Korean congregation works toward ceasefire in turf battle

(PNS) Lawyers representing two factions of a bitterly divided, 2,700- member Korean congregation in Torrance, Calif., are trying to negotiate an agreement to share the church building while a civil court decides which group is entitled to the property.

"I am overjoyed that these conversations are finally happening," said the Rev. Syngman Rhee, a former General Assembly moderator who is working informally -- as "pulpit supply" -- with the loyalist faction of First Church of Torrance. "Some kind of peace is needed."

Rhee was appointed by the group that now governs the congregation, an administrative commission formed by Hanmi Presbytery and the Synod of Southern California.

The congregation split last spring after it tried to call the Rev. Song Kyu Pak as pastor. Because Pak was the subject of an administrative inquiry in Olympia Presbytery, where he had been pastor of Joong-Ang Church in Tacoma, Wash., Olympia could not release him to accept the Torrance call. For the same reason, Hanmi Presbytery could not receive him as a member.

On April 24, Pak announced that he had renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a majority of the Torrance church voted to leave the denomination and affiliate with the Korean Presbyterian Church in America (KPCA). The breakaway faction seized control of the church's property.

The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound

by Stephen H. Webb. Brazos Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58743-078-9. Pb., 239 pp.  $24.99.

Why do we think of Scripture in terms of texts to be interpreted rather than a voice to be heard? Why has preaching become either so theory-laden and academic in its teaching or so anecdotal and visual in its practice that no demands at all are made on our ears or our voices, or on the obedience of our hearts? Why is the act of "listening to a sermon" so difficult for us today, an event that for many almost defines boredom and can only make sense to others if it yields an experience of personal "uplift"? Why is modernity (and even more, post-modernity) both so noisy and so silent, and why does it seek so relentlessly to render us deaf to the human voice while celebrating the visual, the loud, and the universalizing illumination of critical reason? And finally, what does it mean that God speaks, that the heart of Israel's faith begins with a summons not to read or think or see but to hear ("Hear, O Israel...")--that the gospel understands itself as a word to be heard and proclaimed, a word that is rooted in the being of the triune God ("In the beginning was the Word") who creates by speaking, and who loves by including us in the grace of the divine conversation, giving us ears to hear and words to speak?

Another coming storm

 

From Leslie Scanlon's review of the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly's decision to close the Montreat Historical Society for financial reasons, we learn that a storm has been whipped up. The destruction of that storm will be felt far beyond Montreat. If that location is closed, 30,000 visitors a year to that small town nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains outside Ashville, N.C., will morph into a much wider community of disgruntled Presbyterians, not only across the South, but from all over the United States and in other nations.

Consider the ill-tempered mood of the church regarding our major disagreements: divestment, the ordination of gays and lesbians, and beliefs about salvation in the name of Jesus Christ alone. In our agitated state, we lose 40,000 plus members a year. Is it not odd, in those circumstances, that COGA voted to close the Montreat center on the report of a committee of three persons, not one of whom is from the Southeast or "represents" Montreat? Do they knowingly invite us into another fray guaranteed to provoke persistent irritation and anguish to thousands of Presbyterians, whose support is needed for the church's future, as well as for the preservation of this collection in optimal form?  

Episcopalians reject divestment

 

(RNS) The Episcopal Church has flatly rejected a church-based movement to pull investments from Israel, instead choosing a strategy of "positive investment" among Palestinians and "corporate engagement" with Israel.

The church's Social Responsibility in Investments committee said the church should keep investments in the region and not follow the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and others who are seeking to divest from Israeli companies. "The goal is for selected companies to change behavior resulting in a more hopeful climate for peace," the committee's 12-page report said. "If the church simply divests, nothing positive has happened."

Montreat: Preserving Southern church heritage deeply felt issue

For some folks, sitting on a rocking chair on a front porch in Montreat, N.C. calls back a lifetime of memories and connections. They hear in those hills the footsteps of Presbyterians from their own families and others they know and revere, saints of the church who served God in congregations throughout the southern United States and on mission assignments around the world.

What's the value of someone being able to come to the archives at Montreat and find her grandmother's name listed as a Sunday school teacher in the records of her childhood church?

It's hard to know how to put a dollar value on that.  What's the right amount to pay to preserve such memories? When does that price become too much?

That bone-deep love for a place and a heritage is whipping up a storm in Montreat, where the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) has decided that, for economic reasons, for the sake of other priorities in the financially-struggling Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Montreat Historical Society should shut its doors.

Presbyterian College report: A minority voice speaks

Presbyterian College's commission to examine the school's "church-relatedness" has reported to the board of trustees that its faculty no longer need be Christian. While I was honored to serve on this commission as the Savannah Presbytery's representative, I believe this recommendation is outrageous, misguided, and embodies a bizarre approach to embracing diversity.

The report of the Commission,  chaired by Allen McSween of Fourth Church in Greenville, S.C., makes the formal finding that "the faculty is the key element in the education of students to fulfill the mission of the College" (Report of the Commission, p. 9).  With that statement, I am in complete agreement.

After recognizing the faculty's key role, however, the majority of the members of the commission then recommend that the faculty of this Christian institution no longer need be Christian. With that recommendation (Report, Recommendation Number 3, p. 10), I am in strong opposition and, therefore, submitted a minority report.  How the majority can advocate such a change is simply beyond my poor comprehension as a minister of Christ's gospel and an advocate of Christian education. 

I hasten to point out that there is nothing wrong with the recommendation in and of itself.  Indeed, the wording of the recommendation is, I suspect, intentionally benign. The recommendation is that the College insure that new faculty members are oriented to and embrace the distinctive mission of the College. And who could oppose a professor understanding and supporting a college's mission?

Irish church leaders welcome IRA’s arms ‘decommissioning’

DUBLIN -- Two prominent Northern Ireland clergymen chosen to monitor a key part of an internationally-backed peace process say that, "beyond any shadow of doubt," the arms of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) have now been put beyond use. 

The clerics, the Rev. Harold Good, a Methodist, and the Rev. Alec Reid, a Roman Catholic priest, witnessed the IRA's recent act of decommissioning, in which the armed group put all its remaining weapons down, after decades of violent struggle.  

However, the Rev. Ian Paisley, the founder of the Free Presbyterian Church and leader of the largest political party in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionists, rejected the declaration on Sept. 27.

Paisley said, "(The IRA's decommissioning) illustrates more than ever the duplicity and dishonesty of the two (British and Irish) governments and the IRA." He said the clerics who witnessed the decommissioning "were approved by the IRA and therefore ... in no way could be independent." 

A thought experiment

Does our church have a shared sense of Christian faithfulness? Or has the celebration of personal freedom rendered us incapable of agreeing on what a "manner of life [that is] a demonstration of the Christian gospel" looks like?

 

Predictably, response to the report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church has focused on the effect its recommendations might have on the contested issue of the ordination and installation of "self-affirming, practicing homosexual persons." Many conservatives in the church distrust recommendation 5, seeing in it a back door opening to "local option." Many liberals in the church are distressed by recommendation 6, seeing it as a failure of nerve that maintains an unjust prohibition.

The Task Force's mandate was far broader than the ordination controversy, of course. It was asked to lead the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A .) "in spiritual discernment of our Christian identity," and to address specific issues of disagreement and conflict: biblical authority and interpretation, Christology, ordination standards, and power. Over a period of four years, Task Force members have worked faithfully and well on the full range of matters before them, but it was inevitable that the issue of ordination standards would push the church's consideration of the others into the far background.  Christological controversy receded in the wake of the General Assembly's overwhelming affirmation of "Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ." Scriptural authority and interpretation remains an issue in the church, and is unresolved by Task Force members' general agreement that Scripture is authoritative for them.  

Doubt, imagination, and truth: The domain of the church-related liberal arts college

This article is based on a presentation made September 8, 2005 at the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities executive committee meeting in Presbyterian Center, Louisville, Ky.

 

2005 happens to be the 125th anniversary of the founding of Presbyterian College and the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's miracle year. The connection between the two was set for me when a member of our faculty shared a contemporary epistle -- a letter from one of the young saints -- a graduate of the class of 2003.

I took your advice and thought about what my four years at PC meant to me as the bagpipes started playing that glorious, blue-sky Carolina Saturday that we graduated. ... I may never be famous or powerful, but I do have something that no one can ever take from me. I have something that will follow me to the grave. That something is a type of understanding that I received from the college that goes beyond a normal education. I know why PC is so very special now ... PC teaches you not just facts but how and why you should thirst for knowledge. PC teaches you not only to understand why Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge;" but PC also teaches you to love to imagine yourself. PC teaches you not only how the American justice system has changed in the last century, but PC also teaches you to strive for justice yourself. PC not only teaches you that God exists, but it also challenges you to examine God in your own life ...

Many collegians say they are spiritual; struggle with questions, alternatives

The standard litany goes something like this: Presbyterians go to church, bring their children, the children grow up, go off on their own, forget about church. Charles Wiley, who's with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Office of Theology and Worship, said recently that one test of Presbyterians' commitment to ecumenism is that they're ecstatic if their adult children go to church, practically any church, once they leave home.

But the stock wisdom only goes so far.

Recent surveys show that many college students do in fact have an intense interest in spiritual matters and that many of them believe in a higher power and pray regularly. On college campuses, groups interested in religion -- from Buddhist meditation circles to "alternative spirituality" groups to evangelical Christian Bible studies -- meet all over the place, all the time. During Ramadan at some campuses, students who aren't Muslim join in the fasting, out of solidarity with what they affirm as a spiritual way of life. And many classes in religion are packed, as students try to understand the complex relationships between religion and politics in a world in which suicide bombings and violence in the name of religion make the news nearly every day.

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