I became a Presbyterian in 1994. I left the moorings of the Episcopal Church for an affinity with the well-constructed theology that abided in the pulpits and classrooms of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
I didn’t know one important fact about the PC(USA): I was entering a denomination that for years had been arming itself for contestation. I have not known a day as a Presbyterian when the specter of contest and dispute has not been hanging over our church. The standard bearer has been ordination standards and human sexuality. But there have been others: Israel, Iraq, PUP, Washington Office, General Assembly Mission Council politics, and on and on.
Know the tune refrain, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love?” Yet the rough and tumble tune of contest I have been hearing at the loudest volumes sounds like “And they’ll know that we are serious Presbyterians by our contests, our bouts over Book of Order supremacy, and by how well we can rally our people for the next vote.”
How many of us love the idea of winning — and reciprocally, fear losing — contests like the ordination fight more than we love the thought of having to be the church with those with whom we disagree?
While the ordination standard debate is important, my critique is that some of us are invested only in the contest itself. If it does not appear so to us on the inside, then it certainly appears that way to those on the outside more than we’d care to admit. Why is it that Presbytery meeting attendance (at least in the three presbyteries I have been associated with) seems to multiply every time a G-6 issue is before us? Is it that the other work of the presbytery is less important? I’ll be the first to confess that many presbytery meetings are exhaustingly dull. But I marvel at fellow presbyters we do not lay eyes upon except once every two years when they come to sway the body to their side as G-6 appears on the agenda. Our sinfulness, our love of victory, and our erroneous need to prove an opponent wrong ratchet our adrenaline and spur us on to contest.
Years ago I attend a presbytery meeting where G-6 was on the docket. A missionary from Africa spoke up: the vote would fail to resolve the dispute, he said, because the order of the day called for five minutes of prayer and one hour of debate. He made a failed motion to reverse the two: one hour of prayer and five minutes of debate. The presbytery politely laughed at him. I am convinced some 13 years later that he was right. The presbyters had decided the merits of the arguments and prescribed their votes long before they had arrived. The debate was only for the sake of contestation — the need, the love, or the desire to be argumentative and disputative for the adrenaline rush.
Two paragraphs in an old part of the Book of Order extinguish the idolatrous rush of contest and attempt to right the ship: G-1.0304 and G-1.0305. In the first we are reminded that truth is in order to goodness. In the second we are instructed that while the truth is good, it will remain constant that good people of sound judgment will disagree about the implications of the truth. The church officers I train are usually impressed with this reasonable approach. The paragraph (G-1.0305) ends with a call to forbearing duty when disagreements occur: “And in all these [disagreements] we think it the duty both of private Christians and societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other.”
That just might be it — a call to forbearance over and against a call to contest. I for one will welcome it.
CHRISTOPHER H. EDMONSTON is pastor of Howard Memorial Church, Tarboro, N.C.
