ORLANDO — How much do many evangelicals dislike the report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)?
Listen to some of what’s been said at the national gathering of the Presbyterian Coalition, held Nov. 7-9 at First Church in Orlando.
Jim Berkley, interim director of Presbyterian Action for Faith and Freedom, the Presbyterian arm of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, called the task force report “an indigestible sausage” that “would permit behavior that would have scandalized Jesus himself.”
Michael Walker, executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal, has praised some sections of the task force report. But he described the task force’s fifth recommendation as ‘damaging to the church,’ and said it could with one General Assembly vote ‘effectively do an end run around three decades of discernment by the whole church.’
John “Mike” Loudon, an evangelical pastor from Lakeland, Fla., who’s one of the 20 task force members, was invited to answer questions about the report. But Berkley, not Loudon, got to describe and analyze what the task force had done — and the first question Loudon was asked was about what tradeoffs the task force had made to achieve a unanimous vote.
Loudon was gracious, saying he sees the report as a way for the PC(USA) to stay together, keeping its national ordination standards but allowing them to be applied locally. “Nowhere does it say to remove those national standards,” Loudon said. “In fact, I fought long and hard to maintain those national standards.”
But it couldn’t have been easy for him. And “I would really feel very sad if the evangelicals who are on there” — serving on the task force — “feel like they’re going to be eaten alive,” Berkley said later, during a workshop discussion.
That doesn’t mean, however, that evangelical Presbyterians won’t work their hardest to defeat the task force report — and some hints at strategy for both sides bubbled up in Orlando.
Berkley told one workshop that a team is working — he wasn’t specific about who’s involved — to write a substitute report, an alternative to what the task force is recommending.
James Tony, a pastor from Chicago and member of the Coalition board, said the task force is pushing for the report to be considered and voted on as a whole — all the recommendations together — so that the controversial fifth recommendation wouldn’t be split off and considered alone.
That recommendation calls for the assembly to issue a new authoritative interpretation to clarify parts of the PC(USA)’s Book of Order. The authoritative interpretation would require candidates trying to become elders or ministers to adhere to the essentials of Reformed faith and polity, but also would allow some freedom of conscience in interpreting Scripture, within certain bounds.
It would allow, in other words, candidates to declare “scruples” or objections to certain requirements. And the session or presbytery involved then would have to determine whether the objection involved an “essential” of faith and practice or not and, if so, whether the exception ought to be allowed.
Some evangelicals find that outrageous — that the denomination could set standards that limit ordination to those who practice fidelity if they’re married or chastity if they are single — and then invite, as one evangelical put it, presbyteries and sessions to say those standards really aren’t essential after all. Some argued that the PC(USA)’s ordination standards have been repeatedly affirmed by the church as a whole and reflect Christian teachings over centuries that do not favor ordaining sexually active gays and lesbians.
And some predicted that, if the assembly approves the task force report, more gays and lesbians will be ordained and the church courts will face a flood of contested cases.
“If we thought we were in conflict up until now, this opens the door to civil war,” pastor Phil Keevil said during one workshop. “For anyone who loves this church, whether they be left, right or center, this has got to be a tragedy.”
Berkley responded, “It’s when the rules are fuzzy or unknown that you really fight over them.”
One woman asked if it’s fair to call the task force proposal “local option” — something task force members say just isn’t true, because the national ordination standards remain on the books. But Berkley answered yes, and a man in the audience responded: “It quacks like local option.” Walker said in another workshop that he’s been using the phrase, “local license.”
Berkley, in his analysis, criticized the task force’s decision to hold much of its significant discussion behind closed doors. “They lost a grand opportunity to show the church how to make consensus through differences” and “left people speculating on what kind of deals were made,” he said.
He said encouraging presbyteries to use consensus approaches to reaching decisions, as the task force has done, could give coercive minorities too much power.
And Berkley said the task force is asking one General Assembly to contradict the will of the church and the church’s consistent, orthodox witness for centuries on sexual matters. One assembly vote and “whoosh, out would go 2,000 years of Christian practice.” And, he added, “Jesus would have been appalled by homosexual behavior.”
