“There are still tremendous gifts in the Reformed tradition,” the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick said in an interview with Ecumenical News International as he prepared to retire after 12 years in the top post of the Louisville-based denomination.
Kirkpatrick said that after three four-year terms as stated clerk, “I’ve had an exceptionally good run,” and he said he had been “blessed” with “a platform for expressing my deepest passions.”
The ENI interview covered a number of controversies during 63-year-old Kirkpatrick’s time at the helm of his denomination, and he acknowledged that some of the issues dividing the denomination, such as the ordination of openly gay and lesbian clergy, had been painful. “We’ve not done it perfectly,” he said, adding, “Some are angry.”
Still, he predicted the denomination would not experience a formal split, at least not in the course of the debate about the ordination of homosexuals.
“People [on both sides of the issue] who used to question each other’s motives realize the other side is acting out of faithfulness to their belief in Christ,” said Kirkpatrick. “That’s been a gift to us. … Most people are not going to leave the church over this issue.”
Kirkpatrick admitted, though, that some church members had left the denomination because of the PC(USA)’s increasing acceptance of certain gay rights.
In June 2008, the church’s General Assembly approved a proposed change in the denomination’s constitution that would, in effect, permit the ordination of openly gay and lesbian clergy. The change must now be approved by a majority of the church’s presbyteries. Similar efforts to change Presbyterian ordination rules in 1997 and 2001 failed due to opposition at this level.
“I deeply regret their leaving,” Kirkpatrick said of those who had departed from the denomination, “but I don’t regret the prophetic witness [the denomination has displayed].” He added, “Transitions are always costly.”
The recent General Assembly heard that the church continues to lose members. The loss of 57,572 members in 2007 represented a 2.5 percent decrease from 2006 and was the church’s largest decline in membership numbers since 1981. It was also the most serious percentage loss since 1974, the denomination reported.
Kirkpatrick believes the reasons for the latest losses are complex and include a combination of aging membership and the departure of some members to a “secular world.” Still, the retiring church official believes data indicate the PC(USA) is now receiving more members from other U.S. denominations than it loses to others.
He told ENI the current vitality of the church rests on both new communities of Presbyterians within the United States, such as people from Korea, Taiwan, and Mexico, and in welcoming “spiritual searchers” who might be less inclined than older members to embrace a set of stated beliefs. Kirkpatrick explained, “God’s call is not about numbers but to being faithful to the Gospel.”
He said he does not regret the denomination’s “prophetic” stance on such issues as the war in Iraq, which the denomination opposed, or calls for a settlement to the Israel-Palestinian standoff.
Kirkpatrick said he would continue his ecumenical work as president, until 2010, of the Geneva-based World Alliance of Reformed Churches, with 214 Reformed denomination members in more than 100 countries that trace their roots back to the 16th-century Reformation. He said he was excited that the WARC was to merge with the Reformed Ecumenical Council into a new grouping called the World Communion of Reformed Churches.
Kirkpatrick will join the faculty of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary as a visiting professor of ecumenical studies and global ministries, and he said he is bullish on the future of close unity between churches and expanding inter-faith relations both nationally and internationally.
A fellow Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Marcel Welty, has paid tribute to Kirkpatrick’s ability to steady the PC(USA) denomination during controversial times.
“Cliff Kirkpatrick presided over the PC(USA) at a time when the church was being pulled in opposite directions by liberal and conservative forces, and in a period of battles between liberals and conservatives both within and outside his denomination,” said Welty, who is an ordained Presbyterian minister and associate editor of the National Council of Churches’ Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches.
