The litany of Presbyterian woes gets tiresome. In the New Year we should covenant to cultivate a more positive spirit, not because of what we can do, but because the church belongs to God, not us, and God's strength is always made perfect in our weakness.
A. J. McKelway, a retired Davidson College professor of religion, wrote a guest viewpoint, "Reconsidering 'Definitive Guidance,'" which was published in the Nov. 6, 2000, issue of The Outlook.
In that article, McKelway wrote that the church cannot approve of homosexuality, but should return to the position of ordaining into the ministry "homosexuals who do not insist upon that approval."
The sophisticated elegance of Plato's reflections on the dualism of body and soul and the resulting view of the immortality of soul continue to make a powerful impact on Christian theology. However, Plato thinks on a much higher level than I do. I just try to keep body and soul together.
The candlelight service is over, the darkened church is locked and we set out into the cold, starry darkness of a Texas Christmas Eve.
The long ride home holds its own surprises as the headlights shine on the eyes of foraging late-night creatures.
Lately it seems that we have had a resurgence in the use of the word "relevant." Everywhere I turn, someone is lauding something for being "relevant" or, more often, deriding something for not being "relevant."
MONTREAT, N.C. -- With a few protests about having to make "forced choices" and not understanding why they were doing what they were doing, members of the General Assembly Council did Friday morning what their leaders have insisted they do: rank programs according to how much impact they have on two top priorities, evangelism and discipleship.
There's a tune from South Ireland we used to sing around the piano that includes the question, "How is poor old Ireland and how does she stand?" Well, I've just been back to Ireland on my third Irish Institute in the past 10 years. And Ireland is old, but it is no longer poor.
This year, presbyteries throughout the denomination will be considering a proposal [Amendment D] to require that churches pay certified Christian educators the minimum salary they set for pastors. It is important that before they vote, they understand what a certified Christian educator is.
The church has been debating the issue of homosexuality for more than a quarter of a century to the neglect of more important issues and the creation of divisions within our fellowship which border on the catastrophic. So far, only two alternatives have been offered: that the church embrace homosexuality as simply another form of God's will for sexual life, or that the church condemn homosexuality as an egregious form of sin and deny office to homosexuals.
MONTREAT, N.C. -- Some General Assembly Council members raised questions Saturday about the theology behind ranking the work of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) according to its impact on evangelism and discipleship -- with former General Assembly moderator Douglas Oldenburg saying, "I don't ever want us to become just a consumer church," where only programs with the strongest constituencies prevail.
Yesterday Joan and I joined Hospice of the Valley. It was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever faced. By doing so I affirm that my cancerous condition is terminal and that in all likelihood I will die within six months. I also agree that in the light of my poor reaction to radiation the likelihood of significant help from chemotherapy is dubious. So I have opted for community and care and quality of life.
PITTSBURGH -- Dr. Kenneth Culver, a physician and Presbyterian elder who helped conduct one of the first clinical trials on human beings involving gene therapy, sees genetics, in the not-so-distant future, as "changing every aspect of our lives."
Back in September, the General Assembly Council (GAC) at Montreat graded Assembly programs based on their impact according to two established priorities -- evangelism and discipleship.
The season is upon us when all our hopes are trained on the inexhaustibility of a particular event in time and space, the coming of Jesus Christ. It is a season in which we remember that the gospel is received in the mode of anticipating and awaiting a promise.
When seen through human eyes, truth comes divergently. On three separate days, just a couple of weeks before the presidential election, I happened to have back-to-back conversations with three friends of impeccable sincerity and insight.
With much rhetorical wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, the Presbyterian publications are full of letters and articles lamenting the process and the result by which the General Assembly Council finally got around, 17 years after reunion, to doing some of what we promised to do at the end of the first year.
I have on my desk a map of the United States that shows how every county voted in this year's presidential election. Counties in red voted for Bush, counties in blue for Gore. The red and blue appear in different gradations of color, so that according to the intensity of the color one can tell by what margin the favored candidate won.
Nothing is clearer, as we go through yet another around of decision-making about sexuality in the presbyteries, than that the Presbyterian Church is in the grip of legalism, which seems not to trust the gospel. We are trying to order our affairs as a church by the book, and the book is really not very helpful right now.
American Christians can celebrate three Christmases. The most obvious is secular Christmas. In Pittsburgh secular Christmas has been officially dubbed "Sparkle Season." Sparkle Christmas begins soon after Halloween. Unless you become a hermit or find another way to escape the world, this Christmas is impossible to avoid.
Charles L. Moffatt, Presbyterian minister, taught me to fear no truth, for all truth is from God. The other side of that is not to be afraid to challenge any claim to truth, for not all claims to truth are from God. That is to say, the church does not have to swallow whole every new teaching that comes down the pike.
Grace and gratitude lie at the heart of Christian faith. Yet their meaning is far from selfÐevident. This has become clear to me, year after year, in teaching seminary and divinity students, for whom the most basic aspects of the gospel are sometimes as difficult as a foreign language. The difficulties in understanding grace extend, however, beyond the classroom, as should be clear to anyone who has focused carefully and critically upon the divisive debates that have strewn their wreckage over the life of the church in recent times. So then, what is the meaning and substance of grace?
Presbyterians pride themselves on being realistic Christians. This is due to the Reformed emphasis that human nature is not perfect nor are human achievements self-sufficient. From a Reformed perspective, all cultural and scientific "advancements" are subject to theological scrutiny. What is sought is a reforming attitude toward the totality of life.
For decades Reformation Sunday has been on the annual calendar of many mainline Protestant churches in the United States. Held on a Sunday near Oct. 31, it commemorates Martin Luther's protest against the Roman Catholic Church. Often its observance has been a way in which Protestants distinguished themselves from Roman Catholics.
Who is Jesus Christ? is the central issue facing the church today, or so I have claimed in the last four columns of this series titled "An Apology," "A Testimony," "Confession" and "Life." This claim has been related to Scripture, the gospel and the Christian life. This final part relates the claim to the issues that so deeply divide the church today and whose resolution seems nowhere to be in sight.
In recent issues, the topic of Jesus Christ has been addressed in this column: Who is he? What has he done for us and our salvation? The claim has been put forward that this is the decisive question facing the church today.
© Copyright 2026 The Presbyterian Outlook. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Statement. Website by Web Publisher PRO