We also suffered the hippies’ accusations against the military-industrial complex, and we suffered the establishment’s counteraccusations against hippies’ love of drugs, sex and rock n’ roll. Those were tough times.
They also were important times. A kind of mutual prophetism emerged as the hippies challenged militaristic violence and as the establishment critiqued the hippies’ destructive hedonism. Neither was liking the other, but both were hearing atruth in ways that demanded their attention.
It is not easy living in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in these 20-teens. Not only do we continue to debate over social witness policies. Not only do we argue about sex. We are also suffering traditionalists’ accusations that they hear hedonism being promoted by progressives. And we’re suffering progressives’ accusations that they hear xenophobia being promoted by conservatives. Neither is liking the other, but both are hearing truth in ways that demand attention.
Face it, one camp’s response to the person caught in a same-sex relationship sometimes sounds a lot like, “Of course, I don’t condemn you. Go and do whatever feels good,” and the other camp’s response sometimes sounds more like, “To hell with you — literally — unless you go and sin never again.”
No, neither group is saying those things, but many are hearing one or the other seemingly sounding those notes.
Accordingly, the leaders of the conservative-minded Fellowship of Presbyterians, for their part, are striving to speak more graciously — and to minimize the fallout resulting from the recent vote to rescind the ordination requirement to live “in fidelity in a marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.” Their recent conference, held August 25-26 in Minneapolis (see pp. 10ff.), was the best-run anger management session I’ve ever attended. Was there anger in the room? Well, they stuffed it, telling the 1,900-plus attendees that they would have no patience for “stinky talk.”
They even praised the oft-blamed-and-berated denominational staff members in terms more glowing than you’ll ever even hear the staff use for themselves.
Moreover, they presented a catalogue of options —“tiers” as they called them — for self-defined evangelicals to consider as they look to their future connectional relationships.
The common denominator of all such proposals was “differentiation,” the act of delineating and articulating how one congregation stands apart from the rest. Nothing new here. The act of differentiating has featured prominently among congregations self-labeled, “More Light,” “Covenant Network” or “Confessing Church Movement.” Such differentiating clarifies and thereby reassures local church members of their congregation’s convictions. In the process, it helps reach out to those who might be drawn into that particular congregation.
Then again, many of those attending the Minneapolis conference seek more than differentiation. They want to distance themselves from the denomination either via shared affiliations with a new Reformed body (NRB) or completely jump ship from the one to the other.
It will come as no surprise that this editor would urge those so inclined to take a deep breath, to count the costs — especially those measured in the category “unintended and unforeseen consequences” — and to pursue the way of differentiation without separation.
Had either the hippies or the military-industrialists jumped ship, our national dialogue would have been deprived of the opportunity to be challenged by the Amoses and Hoseas and Jonahs of the day. If, in upcoming days, disaffected evangelicals exodus en masse from the PC(USA), the tenuous and salutary, albeit unpleasant, balance of prophetic voices will tilt way off in one direction, leaving those listening for the voice of the Lord the equivalent of a stereo that has only one working speaker. Many of us have ears tuned to hear the prophets to the left and the right. Let none be silenced.
—JHH
