In Memory of Comedian
George Carlin
Having Died This Week
Here are the Seven Words
*&#%!@$
Jack asked me try again.
Here goes.
Post-modern, Post-denomination, Post-Christian.
Admittedly I do not know what these words mean (and am not even sure of the spelling; hyphens, capitals?) and whether they apply. Nor do I know if what I witnessed is rightly so called. Here is why I am tempted to use the words for the first time.
Post-Modern
The Moderator seemed to want to identify with this, the Youth Advisory Delegates trumpeted it, two committees were assigned to practice it, a couple of others tried. Post-modernism and post-moderns want to defy definition. Fair enough. But what, one may be forgiven for asking, is the positive agenda? Simply to come after something else is an insufficient identity and purpose for those who desire to be faithful to the Savior.
A look at one of the decisions may give us a clue to what was intended.
This General Assembly rightly wanted to reach out to our new Muslim neighbors (of course forgetting that Black Muslims have been among us for as long as anyone can remember and we have not been concerned to reach out to them that I can remember). We wanted to say, I think, that we want to express the love of Christ to you. We want to know your lives and your faith. We want to share our lives and our faith. We want to welcome you with a gracious hospitality to our country, our communities, our families, ourselves. We want to gladly obey our Savior’s command to love our neighbor as ourselves.
But what did we say? We argued over whether they worship the same God as do we, whether we should say it, whether it mattered, whether worshipping one God was the same as worshipping the same God and, in the end, wrote a statement that instead of saying we want to know more of your faith, stated their faith for them in a way that no classically trained Muslim would recognize.
The scene was memorable. Two seminary presidents, one an author on Christology, the other on the Trinity, waited the length of the argument at a microphone, paddles in hand, hoping the moderator would recognize them so they could speak. He did not. Instead the conversation was engaged by seventeen year olds who began each statement with something like, “I feel that …”
This was not so much the right versus the left debating whether interfaith dialogue is a supplement or alternative to evangelism. This was the triumph of relationship over doctrine, emotion over reason, connection over confession. Following that course one finds neither. The statement will not be an aid to our obedience to love our neighbor.
Post-Denomination
The attempt to have this General Assembly approve a new Form of Government document was abandoned early on. After the authors spoke to it at length in committee, and non-committee members had spoken at open microphones, it was asked if anyone on the committee would speak for it. Silence. The decision was postponed until after a two year round of further study. For all the talk of missional desires, non-regulatory hopes, more flexibility in a less defined structure, there was no action. This General Assembly, it seems, is not ready for a post-denominational denomination.
Another case suggests this also.
The General Assembly voted to establish a $2 million national fund to hire attorneys to represent presbyteries against congregations in the defense of presbytery retention of congregationally used properties. The attempt to fund this from per capita monies failed and instead an Extra Commitment Opportunity fund was established. Does anyone think that a congregation, at years’ end upon discovering an extra $25,000, will decide to give it to the denomination for the purpose of waging a war against evangelical congregations? The sentiment for the defense of denomination at all costs (at least up to a couple of million) was strong. (Never mind that $2 million spent on attorneys in defense of 173 presbyteries buys us an initial interview and a motion to dismiss, afterwards real money will need to be produced.)
That’s a gripe. This is my point. The following day the same General Assembly overwhelmingly supported a statement calling for grace to triumph in presbytery dealings with congregations. After voting to fund a war, good luck with that one.
It is not clear that this General Assembly had any sustained interest in doing business in any way different from when denomination was king.
Post-Christian
This General Assembly vacated all previous church teaching on the subject of homosexuality. We did not replace it with improved or even merely exchanged teaching. We abandoned all teaching. No new thought was offered, indeed no thought was offered. The Faith was absent from the conversation.
While the series of votes on the subject represents a triumph of one party over another — progressives over the evangelicals — this wasn’t good old-fashioned American Protestant Liberalism attempting to reformulate the Faith and then re-present it to the church as if it is the Faith. It was attempting to go forward without the Faith at all. No talk of sin or mercy, no mention of the Savior as filled with grace and coming in judgment. Holiness and forgiveness, salvation and sanctification? Unspoken.
This was an Assembly that had left its Faith behind. It gave every appearance of being the deliberations of an uncatechized church. It was, at several points, functionally post-Christian.
This is what was new and is most alarming.
The Muslim community will not read our statement. No harm done, just another opportunity to attest to the Savior missed. Nothing new there.
The $2 million likely will not be raised or mean much in the struggles between us. Self preservation will motivate us all, sadly. Nothing new there.
The sexuality moves will fail one after another — the constitutional amendment will be soundly defeated, the AIs will not have the intended effect, the confessions will remain unaltered. These are desperate moves. We are now debating the interpretations of interpretations of a standard that shows no sign of changing, based on Confessions that will not change, based on Scripture that cannot change. My team lost this assembly. Badly. The Coalition has already reloaded. Nothing new there.
What is new, or at least newly apparent, is that the church seems to want to try to live faithfully without the Faith. It cannot be done. Why would we try? In a fellowship that once prided itself on being the teachers of the Faith to many beyond our own constituency, it is particularly disappointing to witness us try to respond faithfully to the issues of our generation without reliance upon or even reference to the Faith.
Some words: The Church has a Faith without which she cannot live faithfully.
Dear commissioners to the next General Assembly: Learn the Faith. Live the Faith. Bring the Faith with you to Minneapolis.
Jerry Andrews is pastor of First Church in Glen Ellyn, Ill. He is co-moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition. He is not related to Susan Andrews, whose article is the second part of this Outlook Forum.
