There have recently appeared in the electronic version of Presbyterian Outlook a number of “open letters” responding to the New Wineskins Convocation. To date, six different open letters have criticized to some degree or another the finding by the New Wineskins Strategy Team that departure from the PC(USA) is a faithful option for those called by God to do so.
I suppose it should not be surprising that those most invested in the man-made construct known as a denomination, who place so much faith in its polity and bureaucracy, would be opposed to any diminution in the core membership of the group. Thus, four of the open letters were written by executive/general presbyters (one of whom is also one of the newest members of the denomination’s Advisory Committee on the Constitution): Messrs Hooker, Wyatt, Evans, and Ms. McRight. Only one serving associate pastor, Ms. Jongewaard, and one elder, Mr. Newkirk have commented. With one exception, all of the letters have been polity-based and there has been no real response in any of the open letters to the Biblical and theological concerns that have led us to the point at which we now find ourselves.
The general theme of the letters is that if the NWAC and its constituent members are faced with either obeying God’s call or with swearing unfettered fealty to the PC(USA), loyalty to the man-made construct must take precedence. The writers of the open letters refuse to even consider that entire congregations are being called by God to move from the PC(USA) to more Biblically-faithful bodies and are doing so out of obedience to that call.
One even argues that that disagreement about “vital matters” (dare I say “essential tenets”?) is insufficient to warrant realignment. That must be shocking news to the 15th and 16th Century Popes.
I will now concentrate on the letters from Mr. Newkirk and Ms. McRight.
In his thoughtful letter, from which I selected the title of this response, Elder Bill Newkirk said
Presumably those responsible for such talk [of departing] are at least nominally reformed and believe that God hath ordained all that comes to pass although He is not the author of sin. If, therefore, you are where God has ordained you to be, how can you think of being somewhere else? (Emphasis added.)
In her letter, Ms. McRight says
My own education in polity has taught me that the church is not a voluntary organization but a body in which we are united to each other by God with a common set of guiding principles and vows. . . . We can leave, individuals and congregations, but when we want to leave the denomination, there are processes clearly spelled out. (Emphasis added.)
Their mutual general premise is unassailable. With Ms. McRight and Mr. Newkirk, we believe that God alone has the sole authority to unite us. We are each called and united by God, and at His command, we must each go and be where He has ordained us to be.
It is only when the man-made polity that arose from Gods temporary joinder of individuals into a “denomination” is construed as permanent that I part ways with my brother and sister. For so long as we shared a common belief in the identity of God, the nature and authority of His Word, the divinity of His Son, Christ’s substitutionary atonement on the cross, the bodily resurrection of the risen Lord, and His second coming, God united some of us as that small part of the holy, catholic and apostolic Church known as the PC(USA).
Thus, unlike Ms. McRight and Mr. Newkirk and the authors of the open letters, we acknowledge that God alone can also send us on separate paths for His purposes. They are unwilling to concede God’s ultimate and sole authority over His children. They claim both a singular ability to know the mind of God and the call that he has placed on others and an irrevocable right to act in loco parentis over a small part of God’s family. They refuse to recognize that some may have received a greater call–directly from God–to abandon a failed polity and to labor in other vineyards as directed by the Holy Spirit.
In particular, if God calls my brother Bill to stay in the PC(USA) and labor in those vineyards, that is where he must stay. The New Wineskins Strategy Team also found that remaining in the PC(USA) is a faithful option for those called by God to do so. But I ask him to reconsider his assumption that simply because that is his call, so must it be for all of us.
If God has ordained us to leave what has been our spiritual home for centuries and to cross the desert to a new land, how can anyone say that we are anywhere other than where we are now meant to be?
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you.” Gen 12:1.
When God called Abram to pick up and go, he did so in obedience to that call.
I am particularly intrigued by the analogy to military service drawn by Mr. Newkirk and Ms. McRight. Among their questions/comments are the following:
What makes anyone think that they can pick up and leave any time something comes along they don’t agree with? In the military services they call that desertion. (Newkirk)
Until I was ten, my father was an Army officer and we lived our lives by military orders. We drove the posted speed limit on base, my dad wore the uniform prescribed in the orders of the day and when the Army said move, we packed. (McRight)
As a retired Lieutenant Colonel of Marines, I understand completely. On five different occasions, I repeated the same oath that Ms. McRight’s father swore: to “support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” (I also swore that “I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.” No scrupling allowed!!!)
At the height of Watergate, I remember a class given by my commanding officer to the effect that our oath was to the Constitution, not to an individual. The suggestion by some apologists for the PC(USA),that believers owe a first duty of allegiance to a denomination, is heresy; it is God alone whom we must worship and obey.
When I taught military law at The Basic School, one of my resources on the concept of orders and military authority was Matthew 8:5-13. Desertion is defined in the UCMJ (Article 85) as “without authority, going from [one’s] place of duty with the intent to remain away therefrom permanently.” The key phrase is, of course, “without authority. The Fifth General Order for a sentry is “To quit my post only when properly relieved.”
The desertion analogy would be correct only if the PC(USA) were the one true church. But it isn’t. In this case, many congregations have received an order from God to “stand detached from the PC(USA) and proceed and report to the EPC for duty.” When one accepts that God is our commander-in-chief, that the entire Church is His, and when He issues orders to “Go,” and to “Do this,” obedience of those orders is mandatory, then such obedience cannot be desertion because the departure is with authority. The recipient of those orders must pack and go.
When I was ordered by the Commandant of the Marine Corps to “stand detached from First Battalion, Fifth Marines and proceed and report to Commanding General, 3d Marine Division for duty,” I was not deserting the Battalion (may God bless ’em always). My commanding officer in 1/5 may not have wanted to lose an experienced officer, but he had no doubt that I was required to go.
Mr. Newkirk also asks
What is the biblical warrant for leaving anyway? (Yes, you read that right – the biblical warrant!)
A fair question and a refreshing acknowledgement that Scripture trumps polity. Indeed, is startling to note that it was an elder alone, not a pastor, not a bureaucrat, who asked it. For starters, I suggest the following:
Do not be yoked with those who are different, with unbelievers. For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? What accord has Christ with Beliar? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said: ‘I will live with them and move among them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore, come forth from them and be separate,’ says the Lord, ‘and touch nothing unclean; then I will receive you and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.’ 2 Cor. 6:14-18
If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. 1 Timothy 6: 3-5
I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people not at all meaning the people of the world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. 1 Corinthians 5: 9-10
People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God– having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. 2 Timothy 3: 2-5
Now, I can already hear the response of those who are demanding that all of us stay. “We are not unbelievers, teaching false doctrines. We are not sexually immoral. We are not, proud, abusive, without love, or, brutal.”
But ask them to affirm the essential tenets of the faith of the pre-1924 PCUSA and see how they respond. Ask the people of the Kirk of the Hills, of Central Presbyterian in Huntsville, and of Riverside Presbyterian in Linn Grove just how much love they are feeling? Ask whether their presbyteries are all that Ms. McRight urges us to believe they will be? The recent history of the PC(USA) reveals an ever-increasing abandonment of the call of Scripture in favor of political correctness and adherence to the demands of the world and a dictatorial corporate management model in Louisville.
But even assuming, as I do, that many presbyteries strive to be as faithful as do those of us who feel called to consider leaving, we are also given the following Biblical warrant:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 1 John 4:1-6
I give those who would faithfully stay sincere credit for having tested the spirits and having been led to stay. I simply suggest that others who have tested the spirits and have been led to a different sheepfold should receive the same credit, without being forced through man-made hoops.
In that regard, Mr. Newkirk speaks for evangelicals who are either called to stay or who are unable or unwilling to faithfully go.
Those thinking of leaving or already planning to leave need to remember the rest of us. You are, in fact, throwing us to the wolves. Together, we’ve got a chance to get it right. Separately, those you leave behind who believe as you do will have just that much less chance of prevailing, and a few years from now, you will be facing the same problems somewhere else. We need to win the battle here, and now. And we need all of you, And you need all of us! (Emphasis added.)
If God’s orders to some of His “troops” are to “withdraw and move to another part of the line,” then obedience demands that we move out smartly, even if the unit commander from whom we are detached doesn’t like it. I would also suggest to Mr. Newkirk that God may be sending some of the troops away so that when the few who remain prevail, they may not claim that it was their righteousness and perseverance that brought them the victory. See Judges 7:1-2.
Finally, Ms. McRight–a warm, wonderful, pastoral person when she spoke to the New Wineskins Convocation in Orlando– wants us to trust the organization known as the PC(USA). She asks
I wonder whether the sense of community has gotten so fractured in the church, the practice of polity has gotten so lax or whether we have gotten so comfortable together over the past 23 years that we have forgotten how to leave. Statistics would indicate that it is not option three. As a presbytery executive who counsels with pastors and sessions, I wonder how I can help my presbytery’s congregations regain a sense of our mutual responsibility to each other.
. . . As a presbytery executive, I wonder how my colleagues and I can model in the weeks and months ahead what it means to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination and love and to be governed by our church’s polity at the same time. For my own part, I will try to remember with grace and good humor that we are not the first generation of Presbyterians who have come to a fork in the road and taken it even as I pray that God will call us into a different way of settling our difficulties and modeling what it means to be called by Christ’s name as we face the future.
Good questions. Here is a third: “Does God expect nothing more than blind obedience to a failed polity? Is polity meant to serve God, or is He expected to submit to our polity?”
Trust once broken is nearly impossible to restore. In the past quarter-century, we have seen an increasing assumption of power in a centralized bureaucracy. The traditionally connectional polity of the presbyterian form of governance has been mis-characterized through administrative legerdemain as an episcopal hierarchy. In the minds of the PC(USA) leadership, presbyteries are now bishops. The Constitution has been effectively amended by GA fiat. Finally, in the past eight months, we have learned of a pernicious plan emanating from Louisville that places polity, punishment and property above all. As a result, there is neither trust nor a sound basis for trust.
Ms. McRight ignores the fact that when asked to lend their support to a period of prayer and discernment, and to call for a moratorium on punishment of congregations for merely discussing their options under the Book of Order, the very leaders who could have lent their prestige to re-establish some modicum of trust, our Stated Clerk and our Moderator, refused to do so. She ignores the fact that nearly eight months after they were made public, incredibly, our Moderator still claims not to have read the despicable Louisville Papers.
Ms. McRight wants us to follow the practice of a polity that recognizes that a presbytery has the absolute and unconditional right to dismiss a church with its property. She wants us to believe that retributive tone of the Louisville Papers is a fiction. She wants us to believe that the pastoral response will be the norm. She asks that we do so even as we actually witness punitive, confiscatory and dilatory responses by presbyteries to lawful tests of a unilaterally stated and individually unratified trust provision — except in the Presbytery of Mississippi (so far).
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One final word about Mr. Hooker’s letter: In a chilling commentary by one who is now a member of the Advisory Committee on the Constitution, he misstates a major historical antecedent of the current polity. He opines that “. . . the principle of conscientious objection to aspects of the Constitution goes back to the Adopting Act of 1729″ which permitted ministers to declare “scruples” regarding the Westminster Confession or Catechisms, provided that the scruple be “only about articles not essential and necessary in doctrine, worship, or government.”
He ignores the fact that the Adopting Act and its allowance of scruples was tightly limited to Chapters 20 and 23 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which permitted civil magistrates to be arbiters in theological disputes. In 1736, the highest governing body of the nascent American presbyterian church reaffirmed that scruples were permitted only for chapters 20 and 23.
I doubt that any of the signatories of the Adopting Act ever envisioned that a scruple would be permitted to allow the disregard of ordination standards permitted under the PUP AI.
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For nearly a century, the denomination and its predecessors have been wandering in a desert, drawn this way and that by the demands of a society that believes that the over-riding purpose of the Church is to validate currently popular, politically correct beliefs and lifestyles. For fear of “offending” the world, it refuses to state unequivocally our core beliefs, witnessing to the just demands of our loving God and the saving grace He has extended to us through His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In so doing, it has elevated man-made polity to the same level as, or even above, the Word of God.
As a result, in the past 40 years some have left to associate with more theologically compatible believers. Still, many different groups of Christians within the PC(USA) have remained and prayed that the PC(USA) would be reformed and would return to the narrow path described for us by our Savior. They have met. They have talked. They have debated. They have written. They have prayed some more.
But they have refrained from action.
And in the face of that inaction, the institution has ignored and rebuffed every prayerful attempt to foster reformation. It has replaced a connectionality based on common core beliefs with an artificial, coercive connection based on property. It has played games with polity and the Constitution to get what its liberal and worldly constituents demand.
Only when some churches propose to faithfully respond to God’s call on them to “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you” has the PC(USA) acted. And when those same churches propose to “take all the possessions they had accumulated and all the people they had acquired,” the PC(USA) finally takes them seriously. But its response has been punitive, not charitable.
So to our faithful brothers and sisters in Christ who reside in that province of the holy, catholic and apostolic Church known as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), who pray with Mr. Newkirk for renewal, we say “Until we meet again, may God bless you and keep you. We will be waiting for you on the western shore.”
God calls on us to go. Go we must and go we shall. Now is the time.
Michael R. “Mac” McCarty
Elder-member
NWAC Strategy Team
