The older I get the more content I become with my own preferences.I try very hard to participate with the modern world but I find it difficult and often annoying.For example, a recent Presbyterian book of worship recommended the use of dance in the church service.
A religious and spiritual revival is underway on the campuses of American colleges and universities. It is propelled by students searching for meaning in their lives, by the growing religious pluralism in American society and, perhaps surprisingly, by the post-modern movement itself. No campus is free from its influence, but only a few have recognized its power. To the extent that we Presbyterians understand our higher educational mission as a mission to promote Presbyterianism we may achieve a sectarian goal, but miss being a part of this extraordinary movement.
Forty years ago, the Presbyterian Church — in both its principal branches, the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church, U.S. — was busy marshaling its accumulated spiritual and material resources in addressing major structural issues of justice in American society which had been long neglected.
It is time for Presbyterians to remember and to recover the wellsprings of their faith, the fountainhead of God’s grace which suffuses the life of each Christian, of the church and even the world, though the world knows it not.
Those wellsprings are a constant source of faith, hope and love, and they are always there, but it is easy to forget that they are there; easy to ignore them; easy to turn from them in the struggles of everyday life.
Note — Since this story was posted on Oct. 21, we have received an e-mail from Alex Metherell, whom we attempted to reach last week but did not receive a reply. His response is as follows:
"Your report gives the impression that we have the 50 signatures needed to call the special meeting of the 214th General Assembly. In fact, we have 25 signatures (13 elders and 12 ministers) representing 19 presbyteries and 11 synods. All of these came from the e-mailing I made to about 70 commissioners. We still need to get another 12 elder commissioners and 13 minister commissioners. I have now sent out via regular mail a call to all 554 commissioners," wrote Metherell.
You may have missed it, but here in the Empire State a woman in Brooklyn has started a mini-revolution. On Sunday, June 2, a front-page story in the New York Times headlined: "The Elderly Man and the Sea? Test Sanitizes Literary Texts." Jeanne Heifetz, who is the mother of a high school senior, had inspected 10 high school statewide Regents English exams from the past three years and found that a large number of passages from well-known authors had been sanitized of any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol and even the mildest profanity.
"Constitutional crisis." Those two words roll off the tongue as easily as "Just do it" or "the real thing." These days, "constitutional crisis" seems to be rolling off more Presbyterian tongues than the other expressions. Have we fallen into a constitutional crisis? Is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on the verge of exploding for a lack of constitutional cohesion?
Following the advice of this past General Assembly, the next time a feuding family comes into my office seeking pastoral counseling, I guess I should tell them, "Meet less often!" Sounds like absurd, bad advice when spoken to a feuding family, doesn’t it? It is equally bad counsel when spoken by the GA to a denomination which is an extended, feuding family system.
As stated in this column last week, the 10 theological seminaries of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) collectively are arguably the most important set of institutions beyond the congregation, with which they have a symbiotic relationship. To the extent that the Presbyterian tradition depends on learned ministers and educated lay people, derived from a deeply ingrained commitment to serving God with the mind, the seminaries are indispensable.
