On June 20, after four years of work by the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church, nine months of church-wide discussion of its report, and many hours of testimony and debate in the 217th General Assembly, the Assembly approved recommendations from the task force that were intended to dampen if not end the party strife that has roiled the Presbyterian Church for decades. Fifty-seven percent of commissioners voted in the affirmative, making the task force recommendations church policy. Then, within a few hours, both a coalition of conservative “renewal” groups and More Light Presbyterians announced their displeasure with the Assembly’s action and promised to promote proposals to the 218th General Assembly (2008) that would remove one or another feature of the “balanced package” the TTF said it was presenting.
Did the task force succeed or fail?
Obviously, some of hopes of the task force were not realized. Our report ends with a plea that the church demonstrate to a suffering world the healing power of gospel, even as disagreements persist. In a final word to the Assembly Committee on Ecclesiology, we put it this way:
The task force reminds you that, just as the church has been watching the task force, the world is now watching this Assembly. What the world hears most often about faith in God is that it lies at the root of deadly conflicts around the world. Religious groups, including Christian churches, are better than others. Most often, the news about them, about us, concerns fierce fights. Sisters and brothers, you could offer the world a different kind of headline: PRESBYTERIANS, EMBRACING AN OLDER TRADITION, STAY TOGETHER DESPITE DISAGREEMENTS; SAY THAT JESUS CHRIST GIVES THEM PEACE, UNITY, AND PURITY. Just before he died, Jesus prayed for such headlines about those who bear his name: “May they be one, Father, as you and I are one. … May they be completely one so that the world may know that you have sent me.”
This is a rare and holy moment. The Presbyterian Church is yearning for new life, not just for its own peace and comfort, but so that the world may see and hear the truthful and just and loving Gospel of Jesus Christ. May our report and your thoughtful and prayerful action on it satisfy the church’s deep desire and the world’s deep need.
By these criteria, the task force report fell short. The message the church and world heard from the General Assembly did not broadcast unity in Christ. It portrayed the decision as a win for one side over another on a single issue. The most common headline was “Presbyterians Open the Door to Gay Ordination.” The press seemed not to understand major themes of the TTF report: that it urged a return to a classic Presbyterian ordination practice that held the church together in times past; that the practice would provide a way to handle many controversies, not just those over sexuality; and that it was intended to benefit both–or all–sides, offering anyone who dissents from church doctrine or rules of conduct the possibility of exercising their consciences in matters deemed “not essential to Reformed faith and polity.”
In part, the misreading of the Assembly’s action was due to the dynamics of the secular media. Sex gets more attention than theology or biblical interpretation, and victory-and-defeat makes a better story than gentleness, forbearance, and the other fruits of the Spirit that were much in evidence in the Ecclesiology Committee and the Assembly, but little reported. Much of the news about “winners” and “losers,” however, was generated by us Presbyterians. Partisans on both sides of the battle over gay ordination were quick to seize microphones to proclaim the Assembly’s action inadequate for their purposes or worse, drowning out quieter expressions of satisfaction by church officials and many commissioners. The TTF recommendations were meant to foster a new ethos in which this sort of grandstanding would happen rarely if at all. Clearly they have not yet had that effect.
From another angle, the TTF report was a mixed success. In that same final presentation, we voiced the hope that the Assembly would wrest control of the church’s agenda from a small number of groups that have a vested interest in keeping the church in combat mode. We admitted that, in speaking of interest or affinity groups, we were pointing the finger at ourselves much as anyone else–about half of TTF members were past or present leaders of such groups. We acknowledged that these voluntary affinity groups benefit the church in many ways, raising serious issues that would otherwise be neglected, providing educational resources available nowhere else, and offering Christian community and support for Presbyterians who for one reason or another feel isolated in their home settings.
But in recent years these groups have also determined what the Presbyterian Church focuses on and its style of engagement over tough issues. As a result, almost all the time in the General Assembly and many presbyteries is spent on just a few topics. And because a good fight stimulates support for these groups, they (we) regularly stage big battles, the goal of which is total victory. Winner-takes-all means loser-loses-all, so the losers invariably fight back, and the conflict never stops.
The TTF believed its recommendations point to a different way of being the church, one that seeks understanding and persuasion of those others rather than their defeat. We pleaded with the Assembly to mold a future in which for all Presbyterians the primary affinity group within the Christian family is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
How far toward this goal did the church advance? In one sense, a long way. Fifty-seven percent of commissioners voted for an important set of measures that was strongly opposed by many interest groups and had the ringing endorsement of none of them. That amounts to a declaration of independence on the part of commissioners, a determination to make up their minds despite an avalanche of mostly negative propaganda that urged the gutting or defeat of the TTF report.
At the same time, though, affinity groups dominated the media coverage of the decision. The New York Times quoted only two Presbyterians, leaders of the Presbyterian Coalition and Presbyterians for Renewal. Not only the world, as I noted earlier, but also the church gets most of its Presbyterian news from these sources. So the goal of “wresting control of the agenda” from church lobbyists has not been fully achieved. Nor was progress made toward the higher goal of bringing these groups into conversation with each other and with the majority of Presbyterians who are not aligned with any side.
One last measure of success and failure–my personal one. I joined the Task Force because I want to belong to a denomination to which two groups that have ministered to me most powerfully in recent years also belong. One of those groups is GLBT Presbyterians, who sacrifice so much to stick with the rest of us. Because the church has insisted on it, some have embraced celibacy even through they are not called to it. Others have remained members of a church that has denied them church leadership even though they are called to it. Still others have been living in a kind of limbo, unable to tell their brothers and sisters in faith about significant parts of their lives and struggles. From all of them I have learned about Christ’s kind of self-giving love, what it means to love God and God’s people more than one’s own comfortable life.
The other group is conservative and evangelical Presbyterians. In my work in theological education, in my home presbytery, and on the TTF I have met extraordinary conservatives whose views I often cannot endorse but whose faith, character, and courage frequently exceed my own. Numbers of them have become some of my closest Christian friends.
I endorsed the TTF report and the Authoritative Interpretation it proposed because I was convinced that by making room for all faithful Presbyterians to exercise their consciences within the bounds of Scripture, it would bring us closer to the day when these two groups of exemplary Christians, and the rest of us, can live joyfully in the church together.
Did the passage of the report in fact bring us closer to my dream denomination, or did the split vote push that possibility farther away? For all the discouraging developments–the failure of the “sides” to understand how the TTF recommendations might serve their purposes, the rumors of war that still emanate from special interest and affinity groups–I count the Assembly’s decision and even its aftermath as progress.
In my talks about the TTF report to various groups this year, I often quoted the Israeli writer Amos Oz, who said that there are only two ways to end a serious play. You can do it like Shakespeare, he said: one character and his friends prevail, and everyone else is a dead body on the stage. Or you can do it like Chekhov, everyone alive and a little disappointed. The story of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church has come to a Chekhovian conclusion. The most vocal antagonists are disappointed, but all of us, including the gay Christians who are my heroes and the evangelicals I love and admire, are still in this drama of redemption and reconciliation together. That, I think, is God’s kind of success, and God’s will for the church as well.
Barbara G. Wheeler is president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. She was a member of the PC(USA) Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church.
