MEMPHIS — Where do moderate evangelicals stand?
That’s a question Jon Walton, a pastor from New York and co-moderator of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, slipped into his remarks when talking about one of the biggest issues facing the General Assembly next summer in Birmingham: the long-awaited report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
The Covenant Network — a progressive group in the PC(USA) — would love to know what moderate evangelicals think of the report, and whether they’re willing to take a public stand on it. Such information would help the progressives know how solid their own footing is and what the prospects may be that the assembly will approve the task force report.
But there are other questions to ask as well — including what Covenant Network supporters privately think of the task force report, whether there might be more support from them than seems apparent, and whether the church as a whole cares much about the positions all these special interest groups take.
The Covenant Network is publicly neutral on the report — it’s neither endorsing nor condemning it, instead urging Presbyterians to give it serious consideration. It’s also encouraging presbyteries to bring overtures asking the 2006 General Assembly to change the denomination’s ordination standards, which currently limit ordination to those who practice fidelity if they’re married or chastity if they are single.
If nothing else — even if those overtures don’t pass — they could be a display for the church that some Presbyterians think the current ordination standards are wrong.
But there also were signs of quiet support for the task force report at the Covenant Network’s national gathering, which brought about 500 people to Idlewild Church in Memphis Nov. 3-5.
For the 20 task force members, who range from conservative to liberal, to reach unanimity “was a stunning achievement,” said Tim Hart-Andersen, a pastor from Minneapolis and Covenant Network board member. Perhaps that’s “a signal to the church that God may be working through what they did,” Hart-Andersen said.
Walton put it this way: “What the task force is recommending is not justice. But it is progress.” It’s progress, Covenant Network supporters say, because if the report passes it’s likely that more gays and lesbians will be able to be ordained.
Smaller groups to the left of the Covenant Network — among them, More Light Presbyterians and That All May Freely Serve — are much more upset with the task force report, in part because it asks the 2006 assembly not to change the PC(USA) constitution.
The task force is proposing a set of recommendations that it hopes will dampen the sense of conflict in the church, keep the PC(USA) from splitting, and give Presbyterians with differing views time to begin talking face-to-face.
But some liberal groups want the denomination to open the doors fully to ordaining gays and lesbians and they want that to happen now — justice demands, they say, that the church not wait.
Jenny Stone, who’s on the board of the Witherspoon Society, teared up at the start of her remarks during a question-and-answer session.
Having spent seven years as a lesbian in the ordination process, “it’s very hard to wait,” Stone said. Some people from her home church thought they were being supportive by suggesting that she give up her relationship with her partner. Others have said, “If all we can get is half a glass, we need to get half a glass.”
People talk about not wanting to split the PC(USA), but “I feel split off, I feel split up, I feel spit out, I feel excluded, I feel called dirty,” Stone said.
She thanked the Covenant Network board for encouraging presbyteries to send overtures seeking to change the ordination standards, and said: “Please see me, see my face, when you think of saying, ‘Wait.’ “
Barbara Wheeler, the president of Auburn Theological Seminary, who’s both a member of the task force and of the Covenant Network board, said she honestly believes these small steps will make the PC(USA) safer for gays and lesbians and more open to change. “They’re not large leaps,” but they’re better than the all-or-nothing wars, Wheeler said.
She cautioned that if the assembly defeats the task force report, the future doesn’t hold quick victory for gays and lesbians, just more fighting. “Ten years is an optimistic assessment of what it would take for us to be at war,” she said. “I predict there would be a long period of zigzagging back and forth,” with gays and lesbians continuing to feel unwelcome and vulnerable.
Wheeler also warned against efforts to “cherry-pick” certain elements out of the recommendations, saying: “Friends, they are a package . . . Either the recommendations all pass together or they all fail together and we are back to capture-the-flag.”
But some are so unhappy with the task force report — both on the left and the right — that they’re considering leaving the PC(USA).
“Maybe I don’t have the time anymore to give the church 10 more years,” said Kathy Collier of First Church of Forney, Texas, near Dallas. “I’m at a point in my life where I want joy. I want to worship with joy, I want to serve the Lord with joy . . . Maybe it’s time for me to go to the Cathedral of Hope” in Dallas, a large, mostly gay-and-lesbian church — “and I’m straight.”
Collier said she doesn’t agree that the task force report has something to please everyone, but not all of what anyone wants — she’s just disappointed with it overall. “It pains me to say that, because I’ve waited and waited for this report,” Collier said. “It’s like receiving a birthday card with no check.”
A pastor from Iowa put it this way: “I am so tired of being part of a bloodless church.”
What Evangelicals Think
On the other side, some evangelical groups, including the Presbyterian Coalition and Presbyterians for Renewal, aren’t happy with the task force report either.
At the end of October, Presbyterians for Renewal released its own proposal https://mrw.typepad.com/AI_108.doc — an alternative authoritative interpretation of the same part of the PC(USA) constitution on which the task force’s most controversial recommendation focuses.
Why are evangelicals unhappy with the report? Many think the PC(USA)’s ordination standards are exactly right now — they see those standards as biblically-based and strong.
And some evangelicals contend the task force is essentially calling for a version of “local option,” which would allow presbyteries and the sessions of individual congregations to make exceptions to the ordination rules. Task force members deny that — John Wilkinson, a task force member and pastor from Rochester, N.Y. who’s also on the Covenant Network board, referred in Memphis to “the much-pummeled report” and said “it is decidedly not local option.”
But under the task force proposal, a candidate for ordination could declare a “scruple” or a conscientious objection to the current ordination standards. If a gay or lesbian candidate living in a committed relationship declared a scruple, and if the governing body determined that the “scruple” did not involve an essential matter of faith and the person was otherwise qualified, that candidate could then be ordained. And that has some evangelicals all fired up.
So Presbyterians for Renewal is suggesting an authoritative interpretation that would say, in part, that essential matters of faith are expressed in the PC(USA)’s Book of Order — those essentials are not determined by local governing bodies. But local governing bodies must follow the Book of Order provisions.
So that leaves some liberals and some conservatives opposing at least some task force recommendations, and the Covenant Network standing a little awkwardly in between. On the other hand, if the task force report passes, the Covenant Network is likely to be on the front lines of supporting test cases in congregations and presbyteries.
If it passes, “it would still be a huge step forward because a lot more ordinations would be happening,” Tricia Dykers Koenig, the Covenant Network’s national organizer, said during one workshop presentation. “We would be doing it all over the place,” and the struggle to change the ordination standards would be taking place “in a much different context” than it is now.
Implications
During other discussion sessions, some people at the conference raised interesting questions about what might happen next and about issues the task force report raises in their minds.
Might, for example, some Presbyterians declare scruples on other matters — regarding the ordination of women, for example, or the paying of per capita? Might heterosexual candidates declare their scruples regarding the ordination standards too?
If unity in the body of Christ is so important, would the PC(USA) consider altering its positions to seek unity with Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics, who have different ideas than do Presbyterians about ordaining women and the structure of authority in the church?
Would leaders of the Covenant Network be willing to invite leaders of key evangelical groups to form a discussion group at the national level — to model for the rest of the church the kind of discussion-across-differences the task force encourages?
Does the Covenant Network recommend that General Assembly commissioners vote for or against the task force report? That question went essentially unanswered (the advice Hart-Anderson gave was to give the report serious consideration and listen for the Holy Spirit’s guidance.) That led Ron McHattie, an evangelical from Cupertino, California who said he’ll be an assembly commissioner and came to the conference to learn more, to praise the Covenant Network for its “non-stance.”
Maybe the PC(USA) should split, “have a great big party and celebrate what God has done,” McHattie said. “Then go our separate ways and see what God might do.”
Jin S. Kim, an evangelical pastor from Minnesota and former president of Presbyterians for Renewal, said he’s attended several Covenant Network conferences. And Kim, a Korean-American, said many Asians and other ethnic groups see the battle over ordination standards as “largely a white debate” — a “luxury issue” in a mostly-white and affluent denomination.
“My primary concern is schism,” Kim said. If the PC(USA) splits, where are Koreans to go? Many Koreans do not favor ordaining gays and lesbians. But “God forbid that we be left alone with the conservatives,” who’ve shown little heart, Kim said, for social and economic justice.
Nora Tubbs Tisdale, consulting theologian at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian church in New York and one of the conference preachers, said the task force has challenged her thinking — but she remembers how hard it’s been for the Presbyterian church to accept women as ministers.
“I’m not sure that two more years of talking” will change things as much as letting congregations actually experience gays and lesbians in ministry, Tisdale said. “Are we also not hurting the church the longer we delay ordination?”
In some places, the conversations across theological divisions aren’t happening either. One man said his executive presbyter doesn’t encourage those discussions and didn’t invite anyone from the task force to come speak to the presbytery.
Then there’s Walton’s question, of where the middle of the Presbyterian church stands.
Jake Young, a pastor from South Carolina, got involved in one of the discussion-across-diversity groups the task force wants presbyteries and congregations to create.
“The people who left the table first and did not complete the process were from the middle,” Young said in Memphis. “We felt like we were abandoned by the moderates,” who basically said, “the far left and the far right fight it out, and we don’t care what happens. Just quit the squabbling.”
