Also featured in the Outlook forum this issue: How Presbyterians dealt with conflict in the past by James H. Moorhead
Due to space constraints the original version of this essay was shortened for the print version of the Outlook. The following is the complete, full-length version. –Editor
The long-awaited Report of the Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity (TFPUP) is in hand. Thanks and assessments have been offered. We’ve invested a great deal in this effort: good people who were called in recognition of their capacity for such work, thousands of dollars gathering them and broadcasting their work, precious time for their work. Clearly they have had a powerful experience, calling us now to follow the principles that guided them, seeking similar experiences for ourselves.
Of course, the TFPUP Report does more. It proposes actual changes to the structure of our life together. And it is here that incisive questions need to be asked. The Report includes some deep problems. Specifically, the Report’s recommendations 1) do not recover historic Presbyterian practices, 2) propose a form of local option without explaining how we’ll deal with the implications, 3) propose a major change to our life together without putting that change before the presbyteries. It is important that these problems be recognized and addressed. In what follows I will consider these three key problems in the Report’s proposals, particularly in its Recommendation 5 (Rec. 5 for short). Other problems have been identified by others among us. They also bear careful consideration.
First, Recommendation 5 does not recover a historic Presbyterian practice. One of the stronger claims in support of Rec. 5 is that it restores historic Presbyterian practices dating back to the Adopting Act of 1729. This is false. Rec. 5 restores a mere fragment of an old practice, without the only context in which that practice made sense. But what will Rec. 5 accomplish? Is it just a way for opponents to get around G-6.01016b? Or is it a more general shift in our denominational life?
In 1729 our forebears faced a long-simmering disagreement. Some Presbyterians insisted all candidates for ordination to the ministry must subscribe to the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, arguing that these documents give a true presentation of the Christian faith. Others insisted that the Bible alone is our statement of faith and clergy should be held to Scripture alone.
The Adopting Act forged a compromise. First, all Presbyterian ministers were required to subscribe to the Westminster documents: “all the Ministers . . . shall declare their agreement in and approbation of the Confession of Faith with the larger and shorter Catechisms of the assembly of Divines at Westminster, as being in all the essential and necessary Articles, good Forms of sound words and systems of Christian Doctrine”. This set the context.
Second, and only on that basis, candidates for ordination were allowed to declare “scruples”: points at which the candidate believed the Westminster documents fail to convey the truth of the Christian faith. Presbyteries were then called on to evaluate the declared scruples, to see if these points of disagreement touched any essential matter of the faith: scruples, or disagreements, were not a bar to admission to the ministry “if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge [the] scruple or mistake to be only about articles not Essential and necessary in Doctrine, Worship or Government”.
Again, the two went together: subscribe to Westminster, then have the right (indeed, the obligation) to declare scruples about particular affirmations made in those documents. The Westminster documents provided a context in which declaring scruples made sense. Declaring scruples follows from and is dependent on subscription to a coherent confession of faith. Declaring scruples makes no sense without a coherent confessional document about which to have scruples. The two go together.
Which is precisely why we dropped the practice of naming scruples when we adopted the Book of Confessions. This basic and important. We developed a new context (the Book of Confessions) and then developed new practices appropriate to the new context. The Book of Confessions is organized in a way that makes declaring scruples about it nonsensical.
Think about it. Which beliefs in the Book of Confessions would a candidate for ordination have scruples about? About Scripture? If you disagree with what the Westminster Confession says, why not just affirm what you regard as key points made by the Confession of 1967 (say, emphasizing human authorship and cultural boundedness)? It makes no sense to declare a scruple about Westminster. Again, in matters of sexual ethics, what is our guiding standard? The Heidelberg Catechism, or passages in Scripture that proclaim the all-inclusiveness of grace? It makes no sense to declare a scruple about Heidelberg.
No, the Adopting Act had two parts, with the practice of declaring scruples dependent on prior subscription to clear standards in the Westminster documents. The Book of Confessions lacks that kind of coherence. We’ve moved to a different structure. Which is why we’ve dropped declaring scruples. We didn’t stop declaring scruples because we somehow fell out of balance, or mislaid a good old Presbyterian practice. Rather, we recognized the implications of moving to a Book of Confessions and have worded to develop practices appropriate to it.. The TFPUP Report’s Recommendations do not and will not recover the old Presbyterian practice of declaring scruples.
Of course, there is part of our Constitution which would provide a basis for declaring scruples: the Book of Order. Recommendation 5 only makes sense as a way of getting around the prescriptions of the Book of Order — especially G-6.0106b. Press coverage of recent responses to the TFPUP report suggest some among us would like to use the Rec. 5 in just such a way. (Who’s to say they’re wrong? Apparently we’ll have to wait for PJCs to make that decision later.) Where will that lead? Not to peace or unity or purity.
Second, Recommendation 5 proposes a form of local option, without charting a way to deal with the consequences. Rec. 5 is a form of local option. The Task Force denies this, but has so far been unable to show how Rec. 5 is not a form of local option. Those outside the Task Force who’ve read the report are nearly unanimous that it will create a form of local option.
I agree. Here’s how it works. Rec. 5 exploits a slight ambiguity in G-6.0108: “standards” and “essentials” — are they the same, or are they different? I believe they are synonymous. The Report sees them as very different. It drives a significant wedge between them. In this way:
“Standards” are elevated (lines 1248 — 1249, 1336 – 1339). Standards are elevated to the exalted status of inviolable, unattainable ideals: “Standards are aspirational in character. No one lives up to them perfectly . . .”(line 1248) No one can attain these standards. They exist as targets to aim at, in full knowledge that it is inherently impossible to achieve them. Under Rec. 5, pastors, elders and deacons can be required to aim at them in some way (PJCs will have to tell us just how, later), but can never be required to actually achieve them. They are unattainable. (It’s important to note that this is a thoroughly tendentious definition of “standard”, custom-made to suit the rhetorical purposes of the Report but usable for no other meaningful purpose. When I get on an airplane, I want to know that its manufacturer’s standards were more than “aspirational”.)
Underneath, “essentials” appear (lines 1249 — 1256). Essentials are beliefs and behaviors (especially behaviors) that people actually can be held to: “Essential doctrines”, “Essentials of polity” and “Essential practices are those that are required for a person’s” beliefs, ordained service and life “to fall within the bounds of Reformed understandings” (lines 1251 — 1256). (Again, why set “standards” that are not “required” — that are optional?)
Essentials need to be related, in some way to “standards” (the Report gives us no idea how — PJCs will have to write that polity later), but the local ordaining body is to be free to decide what is essential within its bounds. Needless to say, this is where the actual traction lies. This is what people will actually be held to within the governing body’s bounds (remember — essentials will be “required”). And these essentials are determined locally by whatever majority happens to prevail there on any given day. Of all the many claims made in the Book of Confessions, Scripture and the Book of Order, the presbytery or session gets to decide which ones officers will actually be held to. Protests to the contrary, this is clearly a form of local option: we decide locally what essentials candidates (or Ministers seeking to come into our Presbytery) will be held to, and when we ordain someone the entire denomination is required to recognize that ordination.
But how will this work out? Imagine a congregation. It affirms that willingness to ordain GLBT persons is an essential implication of the Good News of God’s all-inclusive love. Imagine this congregation is in a presbytery that affirms the present standard as an essential implication of the Gospel. Imagine that the congregation calls a Minister who shares their view, a lesbian woman who will move into the manse with her partner. What can the presbytery do? If this presbytery allows the transfer, it is refuting its own claim that essential matters of the faith are at stake in Christianity’s long call to sex only in heterosexual marriage.
Or, reverse the roles. Imagine a presbytery. This presbytery decides willingness to ordain non-celibate GLBT persons is an essential implication of the all-inclusive love of God. May a Session within its bounds on the contrary decide that our current standard is an essential implication of redemption to a Christ-shaped life? How will they negotiate the differences? Will the presbytery be able to force this congregation to accept a Minister member of the Committee on Ministry who is in a gay or lesbian relationship to be the Committee’s representative in dealing with that congregation? How could the presbtery not be able to? What right of conscience does the congregation then have?
Now, the Report does say that higher governing bodies can review decisions made about ordination. But here the report’s frequent lack of clarity becomes significant. In at least one place the higher body’s review is carefully limited (lines 1385 — 1393). There the higher body is granted permission to review the process by which the decision to ordain was made, but not the substance of the ordaining body’s decision about what’s essential. The higher body is not allowed to make its own judgments about the ordaining body’s decision about what is “essential”. This truly is a form of local option.
Unless the higher body is also to be allowed to review the content of the ordaining body’s decision about what is and is not essential. In which case the higher body can, presumably, decree what essentials the lower body will hold its members to. But if so, this needs to be made clear. (Apparently once again we’ll have to wait for PJCs to tell us whether review is limited in this way.)
Either way, the Report fails to think through this recommendation, asking us to accept a form of local option without careful thought about where that will lead us. This form of local option will not lead us to peace or to unity or to purity.
Third, most disturbingly, Rec. 5 proposes that a major alteration of the denomination’s polity will be made law without putting the matter before the presbyteries.
The Report asks that its proposed changes — a form of local option — be put into an “Authoritative Interpretation” (AI). An AI is an authoritative interpretation of our denomination’s Constitution. It becomes law for all of us in the PCUSA. An AI is approved by the General Assembly alone. A simple majority of GA Commissioners — a majority of one — is enough to make the new law binding on everyone in the denomination.
But one of the main points of the Report is that Presbyteries need to be decisively empowered. It is a sheer self-contradiction to achieve empowering the presbyteries by cutting them out of the decision about the Report’s Recommendations — especially about Rec. 5. Rec. 5 remakes the shape of our denomination, and does so without including presbyteries in the decision.
Why has TFPUP not asked that its proposals be put to a vote of the presbyteries? Why try to settle a matter of such grave importance by GA vote? The Report itself notes that GA is an unsuitable place for settling such key matters in ways that are likely to unite us. Recent votes have shown majorities at the GA were willing to approve measures the presbyteries decisively reject. And yet the Report asks that such a crucial decision be put in the hands of so few — a mere majority of commissioners to a GA. Will the Report’s strategy lead all of us forward? No. The choice of an AI as the means of getting the Task Force’s ideas made law for the denomination represents a contradiction of the Report’s own best insights and impulses. The very means by which the Report’s recommendations will be made binding (an AI) will, in and of itself, work against peace, against unity, against purity.
One of the great historic slogans of church unity is “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, forbearance; in all things, charity (the deepest form of love).” Recommendation 5, with its form of local option, will explicitly create a PCUSA in which we have “In essentials, disunity; in non-essentials, disunity; and in all things . . .” well, in the face of such commitment to disunity, what becomes of charity? Is it anything more than warm sentiment?
Our gratitude to the Task Force should lead us to consider its proposals carefully. As we do so we will see the deep problems written into what they have proposed. We cannot achieve peace, unity and purity by proclaiming that as a denomination we’re simply not up to the hard work of reaching a settlement of disputed issues that will enable us to move forward. The Holy Spirit is capable of better and so are we.
Barry Ensign-George is associate for theology in the PC(USA)’s Office of Theology and Worship in Louisville, Ky.
