Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three-part series. An enlarged version of this and the other two articles may be found in the booklet, Bearing the Marks of the Church, published by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Theology and Worship. Also available online at the Re-forming Ministry website: https://www.pcusa.org/re-formingministry/papers/wiley_charles.pdf.
I have great hope for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I believe we are at a critical juncture in this denomination’s history. At this time we need nothing more than we need honesty. Better public relations will not carry us forward to a better place; speaking the truth in love just might.
In that spirit, I offer four theses about the one holy catholic and apostolic church, one thesis for each attribute of the church.
“One”
The greatest future possibility for the Presbyterian Church is also its greatest challenge: to repent of its idolatry of the past for an uncertain future where the PC(USA) is no longer mainline nor a denomination.
I come as an outsider to the PC(USA), having been raised Pilgrim Holiness. When I was in seminary as a new Presbyterian, I noticed the way that folks told the story of Presbyterianism. It almost always started something like this: “Presbyterians have featured prominently in United States history.” The story centered around the importance of the Presbyterian Church to the republic, e.g., that the governmental structure of the United States was modeled on Presbyterian polity. Did you know that nine U.S. presidents have been Presbyterians — including a remarkable three-in-a-row streak of Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and … well … Grover Cleveland– still, it is three-for-three? Much of this history was indeed true, but it also became clear to me that it was much more than a listing of events–it was an identity-creating story. We Presbyterians are, in a word, important. And we can prove it to you by showing you how important we have been in our nation’s history.
That role of influence has faded. We no longer define the heart of the culture. Indeed, we are blind to the reality of our own marginalization. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon in their book, Resident Aliens, put it well: “Mainline American Protestantism . . . plodded wearily along as if nothing had changed. Like an aging dowager, living in a decaying mansion on the edge of town, bankrupt and penniless, house decaying around her but acting as if her family still controlled the city, our theologians and church leaders continued to think and act as if we were in charge, as if the old arrangements were still valid.”
Ironically, this analogy helps explain Presbyterian blindness to the situation clearly before us: we are not bankrupt and penniless. We believe that we still are the mainline–a belief sustained by riches. The financial stress we have recently been facing is primarily because our significant endowed funds have produced less income due to the stock market drop of 2000. It only goes to show how dependent we are, to put it bluntly, on dead people. If the Presbyterian Center were run just on current giving, we’d be working in a mirrored office complex out in the suburbs, sharing space with a temp agency. Instead, even in hard times we can sustain an existence that provides a sense of authority and prestige.
The very descriptor mainline is now sociologically puzzling. This term, borrowed from the churches that lined the Main Line in Philadelphia, now appears to be as appropriate for Pentecostals as it is for Presbyterians–at least there are more of them in church on a Sunday than there are of us.
No, our future will not find us in our culture’s mainline. It won’t even entail being a denomination. Denomination is clearly one of the slipperiest words in this discussion. Face it: to our children over 18, denomination does not mean church in any way. For us parents, if our children attend worship of almost any Christian tradition, as long as it does not practice human sacrifice, we jump with joy. We do not consider them to have abandoned the church when they affiliated with a denomination other than the PC(USA). However, when we are considering congregations and their property, we use words like schism and consider breaking fellowship with the PC(USA) nigh to breaking fellowship with the church universal.
“Holy”
The greatest challenge to our polity is that while most Presbyterians find their experience in congregations life-giving, they find their experience, or at least their perception, of governing bodies life-draining. Members experience the church beyond the life of the congregation as no longer dealing in holy things.
The significant exception to this thesis, as far as my experience goes, is General Assembly commissioners. The vast majority of those I have spoken with at the Assembly find it an exhilarating, faith-building experience. But of course, they don’t have to attend it 6 times a year! For many, especially those in vital churches, the work of governing bodies has become a distraction at best, and a life-draining burden at worst.
This is no one’s fault in particular, as if the fault could be laid at the feet of presbytery execs or the like–it goes way beyond presbytery leadership. It is the natural reaction of people within a failing institution. We become focused on internal, structural issues and forget our true purpose. And while this may be a strategic problem for many kinds of institutions, it is fatal for the church. The church errs when its institutional life becomes the focus of its vision and energy. When this happens, life in the church ceases to be holy.
“Catholic”
The greatest challenge to local congregations is the rate of cultural change, specifically related to music, that makes conversations about worship the most divisive issue in local contexts. What does it mean to call the church comprehensive and universal when cultures even within congregations seem incompatible?
Homosexuality is usually cited as the most church-dividing issue denominationally. Music in worship is the most church-dividing issue within congregations.
Worship music has evolved since its introduction in public worship. That is not a problem. It is a problem to provide a theologically and liturgically coherent account of worship when it is directed to narrow sociological bands defined by race, class and increasingly by age.
It is not a crisis that there is a wide variety of music out there. I would argue that it is a good. It does become a problem when worship is so identified with particular genres of music such that common worship becomes an oxymoron.
Church buildings are becoming “branded” by type of music in worship. One recent trend is that churches that once had their organ pipes discreetly hidden behind screens are putting them out in the open. Churches that have bands are setting up their space for that. More and more, when you walk into a church, without anyone saying a word, you know: “This is an organ church” or “This is a band church.”
What does it mean for our notion that the church is catholic (universal and comprehensive) when we cannot find a way to sustain worship together?
“Apostolic”
The greatest challenge to our mission is that we lack a cohesive and compelling account of salvation in Jesus Christ.
A few years ago the PC(USA) had something of a triumph at General Assembly. After almost two years of vitriolic debate that seemed to indicate that we had no shared understanding of who our Savior was, the Assembly affirmed the document “Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ,” which proclaimed the church’s broad faith in Jesus Christ. As someone who helped write that document, I have to say that the standing ovation from the commissioners that day was the single most satisfying moment in my work on GAC staff. But as we have moved away from the great day in Columbus, I have been left with a nagging concern.
As you know, the debate those 20 months surrounded the question, “Is Jesus Christ the only way?” The Assembly adopted the statement “Jesus Christ is the only Savior and Lord, and all people everywhere are called to place their faith, hope, and love in him.” So we stood together and proclaimed Jesus as the way. My nagging concern is that we have little shared understanding of the way to what.
In an earlier day we did have a shared understanding: sin condemned us to eternal damnation, and salvation consisted of being spared from hell and eternal life in heaven with God. Many in the church find this a less than satisfying answer, but we have replaced it with vague affirmations that we find difficult to articulate.
This makes the first great end of the church, “The proclamation of the Gospel for the salvation of humankind,” a bit of a mystery. Recent work in the Pulpit and Pew research program shows that most ministers are satisfied in their lives as pastors, but 80% find preaching the Gospel to be a significant problem in their ministry.
Without a Gospel to proclaim, we become an institution searching for a reason to exist. It is often said that without a mission, the church becomes like the Kiwanis club. Well, as a member of the Kiwanis once told me, let’s not insult the Kiwanians that way. As a civic club, the church is pretty pitiful. If we do not have a Gospel to proclaim, we better just close up shop.
Charles Wiley is associate for theology, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
