“If we are going to resist the culture, we have to know what we are resisting and why,” said Edwards. Jesus addressed both the questions of who he was and who his followers were in an unexpected way, he indicated. “Caesarea Philippi is a strange place for a Jewish rabbi to take his disciples in order to ask them who he is,” noted Edwards. It was a place on the outer edge, where Judaism met paganism “A lot of conservative churches have found themselves on a journey to Caesarea Philippi, taken out of a situation that we had found very comfortable” suggested Edwards. “We now find ourselves in a very uncomfortable situation because we have walked hand in hand with our culture and now we find ourselves unable to do so.”
His words crystallized the discomfort that pervaded the three day-event.
In his annual state of the church address, Jerry Andrews, the co-moderator of the Coalition, suggested that three expressions, post-modern, post-denominational, and post-Christian, describe the denomination in the aftermath of June’s General Assembly. The most serious and evident, according to Andrews, is the term post-Christian. “We abandoned all teaching on homosexuality,” said Andrews. “The faith was absent from the conversation,” making the GA functionally post-Christian.
“Our team lost this Assembly. Badly.” Andrews confessed. But he sought to reassure the conferees: “But the Coalition has already reloaded.” It rehired Terry Schlossberg, former executive director of the Coalition, to be coordinator of the Campaign to Defeat Amendment B (which, if ratified by a majority of the denomination’s presbyteries, would effectively eliminate the constitutional ban on the ordination of sexually active gays and lesbians).
Win or lose, how shall Coalition members live in a culture and a denomination that seem to be headed in the wrong direction?
Paul Detterman, executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal (PFR), told the crowd, “I got the closest thing to an audible from God that said to me, ‘You are not going anywhere,’ and it was not fun.” Nevertheless, remaining is not a passive action. In his workshop, titled, Evangelical and Reforming, he said, “We are absolutely committed to what needs to happen in presbyteries to reverse the actions of the General Assembly,” exhorted Detterman. “It is imperative that we are Christ’s ambassadors in the places where we have been planted,” he continued.
Detterman urged his hearers to remember that the issues at hand are not like working on the merger between GM and Chrysler, but are ‘holy things.’ He also warned against the tendency to caricature those in Louisville. “There are some who will say, ‘Good luck dealing with 100 Witherspoon Street because we know what they’re like,” said Detterman. “No we don’t. We’ve got to stop talking about them,” he cautioned, noting that there are folks in Louisville, and also in the Covenant Network, who want to enter into conversation.
Mark Roberts, Senior Director and Scholar-in-Residence for Laity Lodge, Leakey, Texas, told the conferees that no one can know the future shape of the PC(USA), but that the challenge is to remain faithful to the call of God. He admitted that taking this position requires some tolerance of ambiguity. “I live with a bit of uncertainty, but I have complete certainty about who is my Lord,” Roberts concluded.
Edwards admitted that the idea of leaving, of escaping what often seems like futile gridlock and protracted struggle can often be an enticing one. He is often asked why he doesn’t leave behind the gridlock and get involved in the third world churches that are growing by leaps and bounds. It is a question that gives him pause. “What do I have to give to the third world if I have fled the battle in my own world?” asked Edwards. “If I cannot or will not bear witness to the gospel in the world that I know best, that speaks English, middle class America, the Presbyterian Church, educated,” he questioned, “if this world is one in which I will or cannot bear witness to the gospel in an indigenous manner, what do I have to give if I go to Africa or China or Thailand?”
