Outlook Editor Jack Haberer, recently sat down with PC(USA) Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick to discuss some of the pressing issues in the church. This is the second of a three-part account of the conversation, but the entire interview is now available at the following link:
Read the entire article with comments here
JH: Over the years you have attended lots of events of organizations around the church, particularly interest organizations of the left and right. Of late you seem to be attending a lot fewer of them and are sending staff in your place. Is there a message being conveyed in that? Or what would be the reason for that?
CK: I don’t know that I’ve been to that many (fewer). I was at the Coalition meeting in Atlanta along with the Presbyterian Global Fellowship. I met with the tall steeple pastors prior to the New Wineskins recently in Orlando. I guess I did miss the Covenant Network. There are several reasons for it. Part of the reason is some family dynamics and part is my commitments to the World Alliance [of Reformed Churches].
There is no intentional message being conveyed. But I do believe that in this job, being stated clerk, I need to be stated clerk for the whole church. It’s also probably important to not go to where you’re not invited. I’ve tried to reach out. I shortened a trip to Mexico City and cancelled part of a time with San Francisco Seminary at the last minute, in order to be with the evangelical tall steeple pastors. They seemed to think that conversation was important, and I thought it was critical. So I want to be available.
But one of the things that Linda [Valentine] and I have done together and that I did earlier with John Detterick, was to realize that … whenever one of those groups would meet I would be there doing something. Finally, we said to ourselves … while it’s very important to reach out to groups like that, it’s even more important to be committed to renewing our presbyteries, strengthening our seminaries, and meeting at those gathering places that are centered in our Constitution. [Those bodies] are fulfilling the functions not only of governance, but also of nurture and of theological reflection that strengthen the church. So we started this process of doing every presbytery consultations.
Now Linda and I are doing one–a very rich experience–where we meet with trustees, students, and members of the community of our seminaries–and are really trying to build those intentional points of encounter with those parts of our church’s ecological system whose renewal is critical to our moving forward. …
JH: Let’s talk about the Theological Task Force report and what the Authoritative Interpretation means. There obviously has been a lot of confusion and a wide range of interpretations about the effects of the AI, especially around the meaning and effects of scrupling. We have been hearing a confusing set of reports from the Office of the General Assembly on that. What would you say to those people who are saying, “Please give us some clarity”?
CK: Let’s deal first with the matter of the authoritative interpretation. There is a strong feeling in the church, a strong sense of ambiguity about that action. There’s also a strong set of convictions all around the church of what it ought to say, and anything but that and you’re out the door. So I think in this time it’s important to be very careful. …
In its own way the Theological Task Force was being the very best in consensus decision making, saying as they adopted it, that there are some better ways to focus this conversation. G-6.0108 is the key issue of how do we really do the examination process.
Some of this [ambiguity] will only be answered when we do have a Permanent Judicial Commission that may respond to specific cases. But we have tried to make clear two or three things … that I think are important to be heard.
One is that one of the greatest gifts of the Theological Task Force report is that it says to us that we have to take the examination process much more seriously. If people really want in any sense to be committed to a church that is more faithful to the gospel, more faithful to its tradition, to the historic values of this faith, they ought to rise up with huge joy and say that this is a great gift to the church. We have become far too lax both in presbyteries and particularly in sessions that simply are not examining people in terms of their commitment to the Reformed faith, the Reformed tradition, and the essentials in our Constitution.
Secondly, we’ve got to say to the church that what this does for the church is not to create a new set of policies, but to reclaim what has been the historic position of our church all the way back to the Adopting Act, to move that forward, to indicate that the use of scruples is not a new thing. We have more recently given an opinion that tried to make clear what is a core issue, [namely,] that there are mandatory ministerial practices in the Constitution, like “Will you baptize an infant,” like “Will you welcome women and men on the Session,” that must be followed. Yet issues both of faith and of practice are subject to scruples but they are never to be dealt with lightly. What a governing body cannot do is to disregard any of the standards in our Constitution — this upholds a high view of the Constitution — but at the same time, it is right to give a hearing to a candidate who holds a genuine scruple or a genuine sense of departure from the Tradition. Then that governing body must make that decision: “Is that in accord with the essentials of Reformed faith and practice?”
Now, there’s no list, and that’s why it’s complicated. People argue, well, that opens the door to people involved in the burning issue of sexual practice, but it could be any one of any other set of issues. Well, maybe it could open a door. But on the other side it makes it clearly impossible to ignore those standards as has been done before. So I don’t see any sign of a major rush, in fact hardly any that I know of, of people who are in violation of standards of the Constitution, but I do think it places more responsibility on presbyteries and examining bodies to make that decision rather than issuing a clear yes or no list.
…to be continued next edition.
