We flatter ourselves. No, it is true. Even the staunchest Calvinist among us sometimes thinks that we are in a mess so great that we will never get out of it. Name the issue and you will find voices that say, Woe is ours as Presbyterians in the U.S.A.!
Every generation faces this reality. While some issues truly are landmarks, issues of importance confront each of us in our own way. So it is also true that the issues that divide us today matter to us and to those that come after us. But let us not flatter ourselves too much. Our ancestors confronted this reality, and so will our descendants.
Can Muslims and Christians seriously engage with each other in these troubled times in creative, nonviolent ways? I am a witness to a community of 30 Christian and Muslim scholars who in early April, just beyond the sound of rockets and big guns, gave a resounding "yes" in answer to that question. We met and talked about our sacred Scriptures and how we view and interpret them. This was the second occasion for such an international gathering.
In three successive editorial series, which began late last year, titled The Real Presence, The Time Between the Times, and Renewing the Covenant, your editor has offered reflections on the state of the church, where we've been, where we are, where the Lord might be leading us. Such an effort is daunting and, perhaps, presumptuous, but has been undertaken in good faith to promote discussion about the most basic elements of faith, the church, life, the world.
Because we must eat in order to live, a considerable part of our life is spent at table. Apparently, our first parents, Adam and Eve, were vegetarians (Gen. 1:30) until they took a big bite of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:17). In any case, food customs are deeply embedded in every culture today, and food preferences identify many ethnic groups.
For the last 17 years it has been my privilege to work closely with, and indeed to be partially "on loan," first to the diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf, part of the Church of England, now to a diocese of the American Episcopal Church. At a recent diocesan yearly convention that I attended, there was an extended debate on (what else?) the Trinity, inclusive language, the authority of Scripture and the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals. I really couldn’t believe it — the sense of deja-vu was so strong I could taste it.
Christian education is not just about telling the stories of the Bible or delving into the meaning of a particular passage. It is not just about helping children to know they are included in the body of Christ or adults to understand the theology of the church. I believe it is also about helping each of us, whether eight or 80, to find our spiritual grounding.
This ongoing exploration of what covenant renewal would look like in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the early years of the 21st century has followed many threads of our corporate existence, demonstrating how things have changed in the last 50 years or so, and lifting up some possibilities for collectively, intentionally and prayerfully re-envisioning our life together and the shape of our mission.
In times of crisis as well as tranquility, public dissent is the conscientious conservator of democratic freedoms. As Rear Admiral Gene LaRocque, retired Navy, recently said, "Where there is no dissent, there is no democracy."
He was speaking in dissent and opposition to the "Bush Doctrine" of "exceptionalism" which has flouted the judicious wisdom of historic international principles for waging war, including the classical Christian bases of a just war.
Here is the simple thing that I did. I opened an envelope that contained a hospital bill. It was 19 pages long, an exact tabulation of every syringe, every test, every pill, every process that had occurred. It was the concrete, specific inventory of everything that had happened to my mother. It was the ritual of her last days, a medicinal rosary, one bead after another of failed instruments and procedures. Each one, listed here, rested now in my hand nine years after her death.
I have recently read and susequently re-read Robert Bullock's carefully crafted series on the current state of the denomination and those elements that have had an effect on our present malaise. Following this process I have also read articles in Presbyterians Today and The Layman, all dealing with elements of the same concern.
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