The linkage between the current/1983 FOG, chapters 2-4, and our current standoff is the main reason why we need a major revision of the Form of Government NOW. These thoughts reflect a centrist perspective on the Church.
All Presbyterian books of order begin by saying Jesus Christ is the only Head of the Church and Lord over all of life. That is, at the center of the Church’s life, her worship, Christ stands before us and governs us directly “wherever we see the Word purely preached and heard, and the Sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution” (Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.9). The Word thus preached — with power from the Spirit — breaks into the present moment and redefines our lives by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. Our lives thus come powerfully into the presence of God’s saving love for us sinners, God’s kingdom of peace amidst our brokenness and justice for the least among us, and the future God has in store for the universe. Presbyterian church government is built around this core, plainly stated in Chapter 1 of the current Form of Government (FOG).
The current FOG Chapters 2-4, however, conflict with Chapter 1 and its Reformation origins. Added at the 1983 merger between the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA) and Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), these chapters have no precedent in any previous Book of Order, nor a mandate in any PC(USA) confession. To my knowledge, these issues were not discussed in any literature prior to the merger. The rest of this essay discusses the problems created by chapters 2-4, in reverse order for the sake of clarity.
FOG Chapter 4, “The Church and Its Unity,” affirms that the Church is one in Jesus Christ (G-4.0202), in polity relationships (G-4.0302), and in ecumenical relations with other denominations (G-4.0203). The language, however, speaks mainly of diversity and inclusiveness:
• The Church is a fellowship of believers which seeks the enlargement of the circle of faith to include all people …” (G-4.0201).
• “Visible oneness, by which a diversity of persons, gifts, and understandings is brought together, is an important sign of the unity of God’s people. It is also a means by which that unity is achieved.” (G-4.0203. See also G-3.0401b.).
• “Diversity and Inclusiveness,” the title and subject of G-4.0400, spells out what diversity “requires,” “must,” or “shall” include.
Unity-and-diversity is the natural word pair, not diversity-and-inclusiveness. Diversity-and-inclusiveness is rim-bound: How much diversity can the community include? Unity-and-diversity is center-bound: What unity holds all our diversity(ies) together? As only Head and Lord of the Church (FOG Chapter 1), Jesus Christ is the unity that holds the Christian community together. Everyone in Christ belongs to everyone else who is in Christ, no matter what diversity exists between them. Note how the two word pairs press in opposite directions. Unity-and-diversity pulls us toward unity, diversity-and-inclusiveness pushes us toward uniformity.
Following Chapter 4 for the last 25 years, the PC(USA) has pursued the rim-bound policy of including more and more diversity. A broad consensus of the church now supports the far-reaching, compelling list of diversities covered in G-4.0403. Especially important, if incomplete, is the inclusion of women and African Americans more fully in the governance of the PC(USA). Ordaining practicing gays and lesbians to leadership positions, however, is not part of the list in G-4.0403. Like it or not, right or wrong, for a majority of Presbyterians this step is a game-breaker. Going beyond hospitality, this issue bumps the limits of diversity — and uniformity — the PC(USA) can sustain without breaking apart.
The burning question is whether anyone can turn loose of his or her rim-bound expectations and demands. The current policy traps us on all sides. The engines of inclusiveness are relationships of love and trust for one another. The left demands relationships of love (and justice). The right demands relationships of trust (and trustworthiness). For 25 years these rim-bound demands have ignored the center-bound issue of unity in Christ and locked us into inclusiveness. In the end such demands for love and trust depend upon self-sustaining relationships we can produce apart from God. And, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, God will disrupt all such demands for perfection, mountain top experiences, or evidences of grace (Life Together, Chap. 1).
Sinners that we are, the only person who is fully trustworthy and loving is Jesus Christ. We can live with one another only in Christ’s love and trustworthiness, not our own, and then only when the Spirit/faith makes it happen, uniting us with him and with one another in him. But that turns us back to the Word of God, to the worship center around which we gather, and to the One who defines our lives and our life together by his life.
Alongside the current policy of diversity-and-inclusiveness, we need a revised Form of Government that elevates and pursues a countervailing policy of unity in Christ. We will always have issues of inclusiveness at the rim. The time has come, I believe, to focus on unity-and-diversity — unity in Christ at the center — and let the range of diversity “feather,” fading in and out of viability at the rim without calling attention to itself.
FOG Chapter 3, “The Church and Its Mission,” raises a different kind of problem, but also disrupts us. Mission is the distinctive mark of the Church in the Modernist-Pietist era (1650-1950/present). In the early stages of Pietism as in the Reformation, mission was the Church’s participation in what GOD does to save lost sinners and establish the kingdom of justice and love. In late Pietism — the last 50-100 years — mission has become instrumentalist: the Church is the instrument called to do God’s work in the World.
The consequences of this shift are enormous. As instruments of mission, God in us working through us, the accent falls on the messenger not the message, the human instrument not the divine action, and the means of salvation not the salvation itself. An instrument seems purely useful, untarnished, and value-neutral. And with utility in view, we assess Christian faith and life in terms of their amounts: faith (how much is enough to save?), good works (how many are needed to make faith genuine?), love (how accepting, warm, personal, just?), commitment to mission (how deep?), basic beliefs (how many are essential, how much agreement ?), and church programs (how effective?). The measure of our witness is the evidence of its impact: What difference does faith make in a person’s life? How well does the individual or congregation convert other people or transform society? And using impact, efficiency, and amounts to measure spiritual vitality, Christians invariably compare themselves to others: Who has more, who less?
The current/1983 Form of Government reflects an instrumentalist drift when it says (italics added):
• “The Church of Jesus Christ is the provisional demonstration of what God intends for all of humanity.” (G-3.0200)
• The Church is called to be a sign in and for the world of the new reality which God has made available to people in Jesus Christ.” (G-3.0200a)
• “The Church is the body of Christ, both in its corporate life and in the lives of its individual members, and is called to give shape and substance to this truth.” (G-3.-30200c).
• G-3.0300a-c and G-3.0401a-d sets the criteria for measurable amounts of faithful action, at which point the Church’s calling to worship and service takes on a specifically instrumental role.
FOG Chapter 3 thus transposes the participatory form of church government centered in Jesus Christ (Chapter 1) into the instrumentalist sense of late Modernism-Pietism (Chapter 3). The Reformation dynamics are no longer recognizable. The conflict between chapters 1 and 3 is serious enough. But the instrumentalist approach to mission also sets false expectations for relationships of trust and love, and it fosters self-comparisons that undermine Christian community.
We need a major revision of the current Form of Government to bring Chapter 3 in line with Chapter 1. The key is to reclaim the participatory approach to church-and-mission, which is, after all, the true basis of Presbyterian church government. For the participatory approach to church-and-mission, both governance and mission entail listening closely to the Word of God breaking into our lives, discerning in faith what God is doing at the moment, and in fellowship with Christ vigorously following wherever God leads us. The issue here is neither liberal nor conservative.
FOG Chapter 2, “The Church and Its Confessions,” also contributes to our dilemma. Although the PC(USA) is officially a “confessional church,” the confessions are largely irrelevant to our congregations and governing bodies. We may use the Apostles or Nicene creeds, or A Brief Statement of Faith for worship. But officer training scarcely touches The Book of Confessions. Ministers right and left largely ignore it except when it gets in their way; and seminary students struggle with it at best.
The bigger question is whether we are losing our capacity to do theology. By design (FOG Chapter 4) the PC(USA) focuses on the rim-bound relationships of love, trust, and inclusiveness we cultivate, not on Christ who pulls the community together. By commitment (FOG Chapter 3) — both left and right — Presbyterians operate as value-neutral instruments whose impact is measured mainly by their usefulness. We have thus altered the primary language, concerns, and subject matter of Christian theology, depriving ourselves of access to our confessions at the very time we need them most.
FOG Chapter 2 merely states the problem of the confessions without solving it. Behind the purposes of the confessions (G-2.0100a.b) is the assumption of a timeless truth. Yet, rooted in the times when they were crafted (G-2.0500b), the confessions are subordinate to Scripture and subject to change (G-2.0200). Chapter 2 then divides the confessions into three ranks:
(a) the catholic confessions (early church) to which all Christians adhere (G-2.0300),
(b) the doctrines of the Reformation confessions to which only Protestants subscribe (G-2.0300), and
(c) beliefs peculiar to Presbyterians in the Reformed tradition (G-2.0500a). By the end of Chapter 2 the Reformed confessions (9 out of 11 documents in The Book of Confessions) are at best time-bound, changeable, sectarian documents. We are left wondering, Why pay attention to anything except the Apostles and Nicene creeds?
Our confessions are indeed time bound and subordinate to Scripture, but we have not yet made these factors work for us. In fact, perceiving the Gospel at risk in their own time, our forebears put the Scriptures front and center, and restated the Gospel to face the specific challenge(s) of their day. Then they called upon Christians everywhere and for all time to confess with them the truth of the Gospel at that moment. Reformed confessions intentionally:
(a) state only points where they perceive the Gospel is at risk, not the whole of Christian theology;
(b) tie the Gospel to their own time, place, and setting; and
(c) make claims and appeals to the universal truth of the Gospel at that moment.
These perceptions pertain to every confession in The Book of Confessions, except perhaps the last.
The quest for “essential tenets of the Reformed faith” illustrates the dilemma. “Essential tenets” are selected doctrines considered timeless. We are to agree with and apply them to our own life and times.
(a) “Essential tenets” draw out a small list of doctrines from an already limited selection of issues, and then set them up as a confession above the confessions. Either way they skew what the confessions really say and do.
(b) Interpreting the confessions to draw out “essential tenets” takes an enormous effort, subject to debate, with changing emphases over time. The same goes for applying the tenets. Who’s going to do all that in a local congregation?
(c) “Essential tenets” thus derived raise the instrumentalist questions: How much agreement is enough? How far does the application go?
(d) Confessing the Gospel personally, as confessions lead us to do, is very different from rationally agreeing with and applying “essential tenets.”
With these dynamics at play in the PC(USA), is it any wonder we can’t seem to grasp the theological issues facing us today?
Surrounded by a non-confessional church culture, we need a revision to our Form of Government that shows us how to make our confessions work for us, leading us to greater clarity, confidence, and zeal as Presbyterian Christians. The confessions engage us when we enter into them on their own turf (people, time, place, challenge). The confessions shape us when, as confessors ourselves, we affirm the universal truth of the Gospel using the words of those Christians at their moment in time. That in turn alerts us to the unique challenges of confessing the truth of the Gospel in our own time. The confessions still retain the definiteness needed for a constitutional role in the church, and the confessions we choose for our Book of Confessions identify us as a people centered in Jesus Christ.
This essay links the current Form of Government with the current controversies within the PC(USA). Revising The Form of Government now may just be the God-given moment and vehicle we have been looking for, to face the tough questions that divide us and the future God has in store for us … together.
Merwyn S. Johnson currently is professor of historical and systematic theology emeritus at Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West, S.C., and visiting professor of theology at Union-PSCE in Charlotte, N.C.
