Anniversaries are important to Presbyterians. It is often my privilege as stated clerk to send official certificates to Presbyterian congregations when they celebrate anniversary milestones. These requests have come in abundance in recent years, a sign that our congregations take seriously their heritage, want to reconnect to their founding dreams, and make fresh commitments to live them out in a new time.
The same is true for the General Assembly. We have had a number of important anniversaries in recent years. In 1986 we had a wonderful celebration in Philadelphia when we held our 200th General Assembly and throughout the year our churches celebrated of our bicentennial in a wide variety of ways. Just two years ago we celebrated the 300th anniversary of the founding of our first presbytery, which marked the beginning of organized American Presbyterianism.
The year 2008 is also another very important anniversary for Presbyterians. It is the 25th anniversary of the reunion of American Presbyterianism that had been divided for well over a century following the Civil War. It was a great occasion in the life of our church.
I had the privilege of being in Atlanta that wonderful day in June 1983 when we celebrated this new chapter in our life together.
Following the votes of our two respective assemblies (those of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.) we poured out into the streets of Atlanta in a parade to mark this great occasion and then came back together that evening to begin our life together with a service of Holy Communion.
That reunion was important, not only because it gave us a new national denominational structure, but more importantly because it was built on gospel-centered dreams for the church. It was truly an important milestone in our journey as Presbyterians to be faithful to Christ and his reconciling love for us and for the world. Those dreams are just as important, if not more so, today than they were in 1983.
The Covenanting document for our reunion was this Book of Order, which we have amended and enlarged in the intervening 25 years but whose basic structure and foundational principles have remained intact. What was unique about this Book of Order in the history of Presbyterianism is that it begins with a theological rationale and a summary of our dearest values — found in the first four chapters. One of the greatest gifts of Presbyterian reunion was this powerful statement of the core values of Christian faith and life. They are an interesting mix of convictions that Presbyterians have always held dear over our 300 years and of the new directions to which God is calling us at the beginning of the 21st century.
In short, this covenant that launched the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 25 years ago was one that envisioned a church:
“¢ centered on Christ as the head of the Church, the Great Ends of the Church, and the historic principles of the Reformed tradition,
“¢ characterized by a generous orthodoxy and a passionate faith in Christ,
“¢ focused on being a missionary society,
“¢ committed to Christian unity and to welcoming the great diversity of God’s people into our fellowship, and
“¢ linked together as a covenant community of ministers and elders seeking together to discern the mind of Christ for the Church.
Twenty-five years later this vision is still compelling, but in many ways it is a dream unfulfilled.
We have huge emotional energy around every imaginable issue. However, we seem at times to have lost our ability to make “first things first” — Christ as the head of the church and the Great Ends as our common calling.
Some of our theological debates would lead onlookers to doubt that we are either generous or orthodox. We need to reclaim the genius of our common faith in Christ, the great truths of the Reformed tradition, and openness to the new things that God may be doing in our time.
There is a real paradox between our new vision of the church as a missionary society and the common perception of us as “God’s frozen chosen.” Statistics indicate that we have lost almost a quarter of our members since reunion — an indictment of our failure to be Christ’s faithful evangelists. At the same time, we live in a world that seems to get further and further away from Christ’s passion for peace, justice, and compassion for “the least” of our sisters and brothers.
While we continue to be leaders in the ecumenical movement at all levels, we seem not to have been able to find the key to unity within our diversity, much less to reaching out to an incredibly diverse world at the doorsteps of our churches.
We have a long way to go to live up to the vision and dreams that launched our reunited church 25 years ago and that are at the heart of our Constitution. There is no better time than now to reclaim the vision and seize the opportunity to live up to the great hopes of Presbyterian reunion. The dreams of reunion are God’s dreams for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Friends, it is time to seize the vision and make it our own.
Clifton Kirkpatrick is stated clerk of the General Assembly, PC(USA).
