Recently, a church in Appomattox, Virginia, advanced an overture to the Presbytery of the Peaks with the intent of ensuring uniformity as to the interpretation of ordination standards, particularly as they relate to Amendment B. Amendment B is the only (for now) specification of what it means that those ordained are to live “a life in obedience to scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the Church.” Among all the things that biblical and theological obedience could mean, Amendment B and the Appomattox church want it clear that it means “fidelity within the covenant of marriage of a man and a woman or chastity in singleness.”
The overture will not be considered until the March 2007 presbytery meeting. Still, that a church in Appomattox, Va., would champion such an overture is a symbolic indication that the north truly has won the ideological debate in the Presbyterian Church. I offer as explanation the following story of democracy in America and in the American Presbyterian Church.
Early English and Scots-Irish settlers, who learned their politics from their polity, primarily shaped American democracy. The settlers came with two different visions of democracy. The original geographical divide of these two competing visions runs right through the middle of the Presbytery of the Peaks. The eastern, flatter half of the presbytery originally was dominated by the English migration, and the western mountainous half of the presbytery was dominated by the Scots-Irish migration. The English encouraged the Scots-Irish to come to the mountains to provide a buffer between the Indians and the English. The latter soon learned that those obstinate Scots-Irish had their own deeply held views of how a democracy is supposed to work, and they were not the kind of people who liked to compromise.
The mountainous Scots-Irish delegated authority up, and were drawn to inspirational and persuasive leadership that earns respect. The tidewater English delegated authority down, and favored order and consistency over dynamic change. For the Scots-Irish, power tended to be localized in the person; for the English, power tended to be located in the office. The tension between these modes of authority has shaped American history ever since.
And Presbyterian history, too. The charismatic, bottom-up, tradition is in keeping with Scotland’s Celtic past. Celtic communities were remarkably egalitarian. Celtic chieftains were judge-like leaders who were expected to earn their respect. Spiritual leadership was provided by Druids who lived among and worked with the people, offering guidance and healing. The Celts were converted to Christianity by missionaries such as Patrick in Ireland and Columba in Scotland. Patrick and Columba were remarkably ahead of their time for they didn’t try to impose an outside culture. As a result, even though the Celtic converts were Roman Catholic, their church was a lot more Celtic than it was Roman.
Later Roman imposition of order in Scotland was tolerated only for a season. The Reformation gave the Scots the justification they needed to revolt fiercely against both king and pope and put into practice emerging principles of participatory democracy where the common people get to choose their own governmental and church leaders.
However, there remained a safeguard that was a Roman, then English, legacy. It was a Reformation commitment to constitutional government, a Torah-like code that places boundaries on the church’s leadership. So, a balance was placed within the church between those who are elected to authority and documents that balance and limit their power. In principle, our Reformation tradition gets the balance just right and we can smile serenely at the freewheeling Baptists below us and the tightly regulated Roman Catholics above us as we maintain a balance between the force pulling up and the force pulling down. In practice, though, the vertical tug of war keeps shifting and often we have cause to envy the unfettered Baptist leader below us and the managed and regulated priest above us.
The vertical tug of war kept shifting in America. The early Scots-Irish who came to the Appalachian hills and hollows by and large were not the educated and cultured Scots of popular imagination. They were descendents of Scots who had been relocated by England to the Ulster Plantation in Ireland to maintain business and political control. Sequestered as they were in Ireland, they missed the Scottish Enlightenment, which tempered Reformed fires in Scotland and softened the people toward English ways by enriching them with English opportunities.1
Stubborn and fierce in their theology and customs, these Scots-Irish would not bend easily to others’ ways, so others eventually had to bend to theirs. They ended up transforming the course in the colonies that had been set by the earliest, English settlers. It is a story too long for this article, but eventually the Scots-Irish style of participatory democracy trumped the elitist democracy of the Eastern establishment. Historians call it a Jacksonian Democracy since Andrew Jackson’s presidency transformed government. In America, bottom up democracy was becoming the order of the day.
The Civil War caused momentum to shift the other way. That awful war, which fought many of its battles in the boundaries of the presbytery in which I serve, won freedom for slaves, but also reversed direction in the vertical tug of war. At Appomattox, a decisive victory was sealed for Roman/English unity and order; American democracy began swinging back toward English ways. Now we live in a day when professors of both law and church polity have a hard time holding the interest of any except those who need to pass their exams as they explain the layers upon layers of regulation and policy meant to keep the state and church well ordered and in line, or at least covered in the event of litigation.
The same shift has occurred in the Presbyterian Church. The Book of Church Order of the PCUS was a thin volume strong on principles and short on rules. It left a lot to the imagination and intuition of local leadership. Contrast it with the present Book of Order, which is a thick and ever-expanding volume of regulations. Authority in the church has in the main shifted away from leaders who inspire to documentation that regulates.
Nearly all southern Presbyterians are glad that the evil of slavery was ended by the Civil War’s outcome. Also, since the south reacted to their military loss by fighting fire with fire and developing a representative system of its own resulting in a southern apartheid, most southern Presbyterians understand why a system of representation was imposed. Anecdotal horror stories aside, the southern church as a whole has come to confess the evil of segregation and accepts the ordination of women.
Still, some might think that thoughtful and articulate advocates for Jacksonian-style democracy would argue that the pendulum should now swing back. A position that would be historically southern to the core is that a governing body of another region should not dictate its interpretation of biblical and constitutional guidelines on another governing body. “Who are they to come and tell us whom we can or cannot ordain?” has been a question often asked with a southern accent. This historically southern position would advocate that enforced institutionalized representation is a once justified top-down tactic that is now counterproductive and out of date.
Yet, a church at the site of the final military defeat in the south is now a champion of enforced representation. The Appomattox congregation is representative of other southern congregations that perhaps unwittingly have decided if you can’t beat them, join them.
That so many southern churches defend the inclusion of Amendment B in the Book of Order is an American irony. Amendment B is an extension of representation ideology, though articulated as an enforced exclusion rather than an enforced inclusion. The orchestrated movement for the defense of Amendment B is the latest evidence that the Presbyterian Torah has tilted away from Grace-based principles that trust local wisdom in implementation, to a Law-based manual that legislates morality determined by the majority. The Roman/English bias toward enforced uniformity is being served.
As a minister from the south who serves a southern congregation, I invite southern churches on both sides of the Amendment B debate to understand that they are on the same side in encouraging uniformity by legislation. They should consider what might result in continuing to advance the Roman/English strategy.
The perceived righteousness of the cause on both sides may be blinding those who are pushing the shared agenda of enforced representation to the result of erosion of trust in the church. When trust is lacking, rules multiply. When wisdom is lacking, policies and manuals are substituted for guidance.
When unity is too heavily legislated, true diversity is shattered. If the opposing forces are successful in their shared tactic, the result might be that congregations will continue to choose local option by a different route: retreating to special interest groups of like-minded churches or to other smaller denominations that better reflect themselves. What might evolve is a small, less diverse, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) denomination with a Book of Order of multiple volumes.
Count me as old school in my southern sensibilities. My passion is to protect the right of the congregation I serve to choose its own elders based on local discernment, and I have no passion for imposing my ideas about who should not be ordained on other governing bodies. I believe a compelling argument can be made to remove from the Book of Order Amendment B and other representation requirements. It would be a risky commitment to evangelical persuasion over legislated coercion to trust in the guidance of Scripture, constitutional standards, and the work of the Holy Spirit in guiding the conscience of those who vote on their leaders. Mistakes in choosing leaders would be made, of course, and each governing body would have to deal with the consequences of its choices. However, our denomination can exhibit true diversity by accepting local differences.
George C. Anderson is pastor of Second Church in Roanoke, Va.
1 A readable resource for these developments is provided by James Webb in Born Fighting; How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, Broadway Books, New York, 2004.
