CHICAGO — Folks were civil and respectful — no one screamed and no one threw dishes. But a blunt exchange on May 10 between board members of the Presbyterian Coalition and five members of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) revealed some enduring differences of opinion about what the task force is trying to accomplish — and about what it will mean for the church if the General Assembly approves the task force report in June.
Coalition leaders have been energetically critical of the task force report, as have others from the evangelical wing of the church.
The Covenant Network of Presbyterians, which wants the PC(USA) to ordain gays and lesbians, has been more positive. And on May 9 its board of directors released a statement https://www.covenantnetwork.org/news/time4hope.htm saying it won’t offer advice to General Assembly commissioners on how to vote on the task force report, saying “we trust that the voice of the Holy Spirit may be heard more clearly if the voices of partisan advocacy are still.”
At this day-long gathering at a hotel in Chicago, a quarter of the 20 task force members took shots at answering a volley of questions from the Coalition — about why they met so much in closed session, about whether the presbyteries should get to vote on what the task force is proposing, about whether they’re in essence trying to “trump” the denomination’s constitutional standards regarding the ordination of gays and lesbians.
The conversation with the Coalition is arguably the most in-depth opportunity the task force has allowed for people to ask questions about the intent of their proposal and its likely impact. And while it might not have changed people’s minds or hearts, some of what was said provided clues for what may lie ahead if the task force’s vision becomes reality.
“We are proposing an experiment,” task force member Mark Achtemeier of Iowa acknowledged. He contends that the task force plan wouldn’t end the decades-long battle in the denomination over homosexuality — but would recognize that a sizeable minority disagrees with the PC(USA)’s current policy and would try to move the discussion to a less acrimonious place.
Coalition board member Jim Tony, a pastor from Chicago, predicted that church property issues — not just issues of sexuality — would be a matter on which evangelical Presbyterians would declare “scruples” regarding church policy.
And there was a clear sense that the battle will be fought out in the church courts. Mike Loudon, a task force member pastor from Lakeland, Fla., predicted that the floodgates will not open to large numbers of sexually-active gays and lesbians being ordained.
One of the questions for the church, he said, is “Do we trust those crazy people in other presbyteries” to make the right choices.
Much of the controversy centers around the task force’s proposed authoritative interpretation.
That interpretation would leave the PC(USA)’s ordination standards intact, but would allow candidates for ordination to declare a “scruple” if they disagree with the standard, which limits ordination to those who practice chastity if they’re single or fidelity if they’re married.. The local governing body involved then would determine whether a particular candidate for ordination had indeed departed from the ordination standards, and whether the departure “constitutes a failure to adhere to the essentials of Reformed faith and polity” or not.
Among the questions raised in the discussion:
· Does the denomination have the right to voice its conscience, and to expect that the standards for ordination that were approved by both the General Assembly and the presbyteries be upheld? Does the proposed authoritative interpretation affirm those standards or undercut them?
· What does it mean to say “the church has spoken” on gay ordination? Is that true even if a sizeable minority — the votes show nearly half the church, Achtemeier said — think those standards are wrong?
· Who should decide what are the “essentials” of faith and practice in the PC(USA)? Should there be a checklist? What’s negotiable in terms of Presbyterian belief and what is not?
WHAT’S ESSENTIAL?
One of the questions that Jerry Andrews, the Coalition co-moderator and a pastor from suburban Chicago, returned to over and over was whether the church as a whole should have the right to follow its conscience — in other words, to set standards regarding the ordination of gays and lesbians that it contends are biblically correct and to expect those standards to be followed.
“The church has made a judgment” about ordaining gays and lesbians, Tony said. “What do you think the church was doing when it put `shall’ in the sentences?”
But that led to discussion of whether the PC(USA) is consistently enforcing all the rules in its constitution — whether it always does what the constitution says “shall” be done.
Task force member Milton “Joe” Coalter, library director at Union Theological Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, said the constitution says that “persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin” can’t be ordained — but some sins listed in the confessions, such as neglecting to observe the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest, are routinely overlooked. Is the PC(USA) being strict about not ordaining gays, he said, but looking the other way on other things?
And what do people really want, Coalter asked — a checklist of essentials rigidly enforced, or presbyteries carefully examining candidates and considering what’s essential and what is not?
He asked people to “recognize the heterogeneity” of beliefs already in the PC(USA), and not just on gay ordination. Coalter said the task force is asking the presbyteries to carefully consider what’s core to the faith — and where there’s room for some differences of views.
“The church is not `somebody’ out there . . . it’s the presbyteries,” Coalter said. That’s who has the responsibility to meet candidates for ordination and to assess their qualifications — and to decide when and if exceptions to the national standards should be granted.
Achtemeier also cautioned about saying “the church has decided” when close to half the denomination was outvoted “kicking and screaming” and continues to try to change the policy. He doesn’t want to suggest “that our folk on our side are `the church’ “ and that those who disagree “are out in outer darkness somewhere.”
Achtemeier, who teaches systematic theology at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary and who provided introductory remark on behalf of the task force, also said the Bible calls on Christians to show forbearance to one another, and said the PC(USA)’s wars over homosexuality “have brought scandal to the cause of Christ.”
The task force isn’t asking for “least common denominator consensus” or a change in the ordination standards, he said, but a way for Presbyterians to faithfully work together to try to discern God’s truth on difficult issues, be it homosexuality or something else. How do we treat fellow Christians, he asked, even when we think they are dead wrong?
Presbyterians have discovered, Achtemeier said, that “fear, anger and outrage” fire up the troops. And the message to the “huge unconvinced minority” on gay ordination, he said, has been to either “keep quiet or leave the church.”
But Presbyterians are “heirs of the Reformation,” Achtemeier said — Christians who have seen the church be transformed and who believe “the Holy Spirit will guide God’s church into truth in God’s time.”
It’s part of Presbyterian history, Achtemeier said, to “create room in the church’s life for dissenting voices, not because truth doesn’t matter, but because it does.” If the PC(USA) decides “to apply the clamps of uniformity too tightly,” and people who disagree feel forced to leave, then those who remain lose the chance to exhort or even convert the dissenters, “and perhaps to be corrected ourselves.”
Andrews asked, however, “does the church get any credit for time served” in the battles it’s already endured over gay ordination?
In other words, in all the pain, “in all of the unhappiness and contention along the way,” in “all of the split votes and split churches,” he asked, has discernment of God’s leading already taken place?
WALKING TOGETHER
Andrews also asked whether the task force members — chosen for the range of their views on controversial questions — walked together “as far as you could go.” Were some things kept out of the report because they couldn’t agree?
Several task force members said Bible study together helped them see how much they actually agreed on regarding the foundations of Christian faith.
Loudon said some from his church suspected liberals on the task force might not really be Christians, but he never felt that way and came away certain they will “walk the streets of glory together.”
Mary Naegeli, a Coalition board member and pastor from Concord, Calif., asked if that means the task force members don’t think there are real theological differences in the PC(USA), as so many in the pews contend there are.
There are significant differences of views regarding biblical authority and interpretation, and “these are not minor things,” Coalter responded. But he had expected the liberals “were willing to throw out the passage if they didn’t like it,” and discovered that wasn’t true — the liberals on the task force wrestled with uncomfortable passages in the Bible, trying to understand what they mean.
When they agreed on 99 percent of the stuff and all took the Bible seriously, that “moderated” the differences, Coalter said.
And task force co-moderator Gary Demarest of California said that for Christians, joined together in baptism, not walking together is not an option.
HOW WERE DECISIONS MADE?
The task force members were grilled about their decision to shape their report behind closed doors, through e-mail and in conference calls. “We saw questions go into the meeting” and the report emerged, Naegeli said. “We don’t know what happened between point A and point B.”
Achtemeier said the task force wanted the freedom to put ideas on the table, “no matter how outlandish,” and to try out a possibility “without having it pinned to your personal reputation.”
A man from the audience asked if it’s fair to ask the assembly to vote the task force report up-or-down in just a week when the task force took four years to develop it and encourages the church to consider ways of making decisions outside of parliamentary procedure. And others asked whether the presbyteries should get a chance to vote on the proposed authoritative interpretation.
But Achtemeier said the presbyteries are not “helpless pawns” in the process — they will be examining candidates for ordination and deciding what are the essential elements of Reformed practice and faith.
And maybe it’s not bad that it just takes one assembly vote to pass the task force report, he said. It could be “undone by the next assembly if it turns out to be a mistake.”
