(Editor's Note: This article is written in response to "When departures relate to practice," a commentary by Douglas Nave in the Oct. 16 issue of The Presbyterian Outlook.)
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may appropriately permit officers freedom of conscience while requiring compliance with the ordination standards in the Form of Government. The historical and judicial examples Douglas Nave offers to support his claim that such would be unchristian or unpresbyterian are either mistaken or irrelevant.
Consider Jesus. We read that Jesus did not "reject the sanctity of the Lord's Day."
While Lord's Day observance developed to honor his resurrection, after the fact, Jesus did honor the Sabbath, even as he transformed it in light of his own presence in the world. He worked this transformation, in part, by healing on the Sabbath. These healings were not ethical expressions of faith, as Mr. Nave suggests, but rather were acts through which Jesus taught. This is a different matter, unrelated to Mr. Nave's point.
Editor's note: As Presbyterians continue their quest to promote peace and justice in Israel-Palestine, we offer for our Outlook readers' reflections both this letter prepared by the Advisory Committee on Racial-Ethnic Concerns and the essay by John Wimberly that follows. The letter was sent to leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in mid-August when the Lebanon-Israel conflict of last summer was front-page news.
The Rev. Joan Gray, Moderator of the 217th General Assembly
The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk
The Rev. Allison Seed, Chairperson, General Assembly Council
Ms. Linda Valentine, Executive Director, General Assembly Council
Dear Friends and Colleagues in the Mission and Ministries of Christ's Church;
Sadly and painfully we are all very aware of the seemingly endless cycles of vengeance, violence, destruction and death among the peoples in the Middle East. Time and time again we have called ourselves in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) family to pray and work for the peace and justice of God-in-Christ among all peoples. We write to call for a stronger witness now for justice for all peoples in the Middle East, in the interest of long-term peace and the restoration of fairness and balance to U.S. foreign policy. We urge you as leaders of the Church to share the following letter with the full Council and the church as a whole as a contribution to that witness.
The 2006 General Assembly has, hopefully, put the divestment argument to rest. It replaced the controversial divestment instructions passed by the 2004 General Assembly with instructions to our committees and staff to pursue a strategy of investing in those who work for peace in the Middle East. The GA affirmed the Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) process, which has been so successful for decades, as one appropriate means to this end. Given that the Middle East has witnessed a new round of death and destruction in Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine, the GA resolution seems even more prophetic today than it did at the end of June.
I think the GA was able to reach a consensus resolution on divestment for a variety of reasons. First, both pro- and anti- divestment advocates have spent the past two years discussing/debating/dialoguing about the best strategy for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the Middle East. As a result, we were a much more informed denomination in 2006 than we were in 2004. Second, the GA acted with remarkable independence. Anyone who thinks that lobbyists for one party or another prevailed in Birmingham wasn't there. Third, the table for a balanced outcome in Birmingham was set by an excellent forum held on Israel/Palestine the day prior to the GA convening. The speakers were reasoned and reasonable. Denominational staff and committee members who created the forum deserve praise.
Recently, a church in Appomattox, Virginia, advanced an overture to the Presbytery of the Peaks with the intent of ensuring uniformity as to the interpretation of ordination standards, particularly as they relate to Amendment B. Amendment B is the only (for now) specification of what it means that those ordained are to live "a life in obedience to scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the Church." Among all the things that biblical and theological obedience could mean, Amendment B and the Appomattox church want it clear that it means "fidelity within the covenant of marriage of a man and a woman or chastity in singleness."
The overture will not be considered until the March 2007 presbytery meeting. Still, that a church in Appomattox, Va., would champion such an overture is a symbolic indication that the north truly has won the ideological debate in the Presbyterian Church. I offer as explanation the following story of democracy in America and in the American Presbyterian Church.
c. 2006 Religion News Service
RICHMOND, Va. -- 'Your generation will have to die before we can move on,' a 20-something told a 60-something at a national church convention last summer.
'He could be right,' the 60-something said last week, but maybe not.
Veterans of religious wars are highly invested in seeking control of the Titanic, rather than rethinking the Christian enterprise for challenging, post-modern times.
While the same old warriors fight the same old battles over sexuality, church property, denominational leadership, control of seminaries, doctrine, and who's to blame for shrinking membership, more and more believers gravitate to the margins.
We voted. Congress changed hands. Some of us crowed over the victory. Some of us grieved the loss. Let's think twice about that.
It wasn't too long ago that mainline Protestants dominated American politics. Our churches were expanding with the baby boom. A nation recovering from war was finding our message reassuring. Our children's Sunday school classes were informing. Our fellowship was welcoming. What's more, the Hitler-Stalin legacy reinforced our determination to be a church-transforming-culture, or as Jesus put it, the salt of the earth.
It wasn't too long ago that the Anabaptist vision of church--a city set apart--shaped the culture of the non-mainline Protestant churches. Worshiping mostly in tiny sanctuaries on the edge of town, they followed a pietistic approach to ministry, aimed at saving souls, not cultures.
It's noon on Wednesday. In fifteen minutes you are meeting a colleague for lunch to discuss a conflicted situation in the presbytery. The phone rings, and you discover that your daughter has a fever and you need to take her home from school. You wonder if she will be able to go to school tomorrow. Tomorrow morning at ten o'clock there is a memorial service. Your spouse is out of town on business for two more days. Should you call the pediatrician? What if your son gets sick, too? Whose turn is it to drive school carpool? The session meeting went late last night and with several interruptions this morning, you are behind on final sermon preparation for Sunday. The bulletin has to be completed before day's end, and the hymns you chose weeks ago just don't seem to fit now. You didn't sleep well after the session meeting last night, as you mulled over how to respond to budget issues. You're pulled in three directions by three very influential elders, all of whom are pressuring you to advocate their proposal, and two of whom think of themselves as special friends of yours. As you hurry out of the office, the administrative assistant hands you a note. Oh no, the dentist appointment at three o'clock!
Grieving families, worship preparation, presbytery obligations, meetings, colleagues, your own family's needs, session responsibilities, disagreements, self care--a day in the life of a congregational pastor.
Editor's Note: These tributes to pastors arrived at the OUTLOOK too
late to be included in the recent Pastor's Appreciation issue (October
23).
Delaware
Lewes Presbyterian Church honors pastor Buz Hughes for his loving
leadership in believing, growing, and sharing the love of Christ.
The editor's rhythm meanders at a different pace than that of the preacher. Publishing cycles being as they are, I get to write a Thanksgiving meditation on Reformation Day. There's a connection there.
Thank you, God, for the Reformation of the church.
Sola Scriptura. Thanks spring from the seeds of renewal that predated the Reformation. Those sacrificial pioneers, Jan Hus and John Wyclif, were convinced that God's living Word is best understood through the written words of the Apostles. In her dark days, the church cordoned off those words, so the people could hear only what was mediated to them through the clergy. Hus, Wyclif, and their Reforming successors released into the people's hands those dangerous words for all to read and hear. Their gift opened not only eyes, but voices of praise and thanks.
It was our privilege and responsibility to serve as moderator and vice-moderator respectively, of the Ecclesiology Committee of the 217th General Assembly meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. The Committee's primary responsibility was to recommend actions to the commissioners regarding the Report of the Theological Task Force On the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church. The task before us was daunting; nonetheless, we came away from the experience inspired by the way in which we Presbyterians can come together, with all our inevitable differences of opinion, to seek common ground and unity in spite of disagreement.
In the aftermath of the 2007 General Assembly we have observed the controversies breaking out concerning the meaning and significance of the Assembly's actions. In particular, we have heard the criticisms and complaints that the Birmingham Assembly's action of adopting (with amendment) Recommendation Five of the Theological Task Force on the PUP of the Church has brought us less peace, unity, and purity than we had before.
As two members of the Task Force who helped develop Recommendation Five, who now continue to work together, and who feel a responsibility to promote shared understanding, we want to do what we can here to set the record straight.
We appreciate the grave concerns being expressed by critics of the TTF report. We esteem as brothers and sisters those who find themselves caught on the same side of the aisle as those GA commissioners who found themselves in the voting minority. One of the chief teachings of the Task Force, in fact, is that minority positions held in good faith need to be respected. Moreover, the Task Force urged the church to avoid situations in which the majority rides roughshod over minority concerns. Accordingly, we write these reflections in the spirit of ongoing dialogue. We believe that dialogue offers hope for mutual understanding and for moving the whole church forward together.
Do not say "Peace, peace" when there is no peace. In the debate over the recently adopted report of the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church, some have rushed to point to those words of prophetic denunciation, believing that they fittingly apply to the present-day Presbyterian Church.
But is it not likewise a serious error for God's people to proclaim "Doom and disaster" when there is no doom and disaster? It seems that certain individuals and groups within the church are so certain that doom and disaster are imminent that they apparently refuse even to consider the possibility that God might have something else in mind for our future.
It seems there's not much everyone in our denomination can agree on these days, but one opinion I have heard voiced a good bit is that the trust level is low across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
If this assessment is correct, it is little wonder that we are struggling. Trust is the lifeblood of voluntary organizations. Our system of polity is based on the idea that we trust each other to make decisions in the best interest of the whole church. If that trust is missing, the system becomes a bunch of rules signifying nothing. Without the generous assumption that we can trust each other to do what is right, things fall apart.
As a newly converted atheist, my study of Christianity began at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. Westminster was an outgrowth of J. Gresham Machen's separation from mainline Presbyterianism. It was, and still is, a bastion of Reformed orthodoxy.
Westminster's great strength was its stress on the authority of Scripture as the ultimate norm of faith and practice. Classes on the Old and New Testament were invigorating and faith-inspiring, carefully, though often critically, related to current scholarship. Theology courses had a polemic flavor, but immersed students in the worldview of the Westminster Confession. Historian Paul Wooley -- the only Democrat on the faculty -- exposed us to important primary sources, including Soren Kierkegaard and Jonathan Edwards.
Editor's Note: This sermon was preached at the recent General Assembly Council-Middle Governing Bodies Conference in Louisville, Ky.
Scripture: Jeremiah 32:6-15
In 1931, Karen Blixen lost her farm.
She had come to East Africa in 1914 from her home in Denmark, just as the Great War was breaking out in Europe. She had come to meet her husband and her future, far away from Europe's decay. Together, the Baron and Baroness von Blixen purchased some land in the mountains of Kenya to build a coffee plantation.
Their European friends told them it was a mistake; that the land was too high to grow coffee, that the market was too unstable, and that the enterprise would consume them. They were right. Coffee trees and marriages make for hard work, and offer few rewards, and the Baron grew impatient with his investment in both. In the end, he left both farm and wife and lived the life of the idle rich until his money ran out and he died penniless, of syphilis.
For several years I have had some unforgettable acquaintances. Of course, I have not known them personally. We never hung out together. After all, they did live in Egypt some sixteen centuries ago.
They could also have been a little hard to understand. They seemed to have been a peculiarly solemn lot. Completely clueless when it came to small talk, off the chart introverts, they nevertheless had something we often lack. As I read through their interactions with one another again and again, I can sense a deeper stillness than we normally know. They had a very low, unprovokable center of gravity.
I have spent so much time reading through The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (London: Mowbrays, 1975) that I feel that I actually do know them in some mysterious way. In fact, as odd as it sounds, I know them so well that in their most personal moments I can feel their tears falling through their prayers.
We Presbyterians are searching frantically to preserve the unity of our denomination, anything to keep the church from splitting. Let's try this way, that way, a third way. There must be some way we can find! But maybe what we need is to give up our ways and concentrate on what God in Christ has done. We Reformed souls are not very big on liturgy, but that's where our unity lodges and is celebrated -- in our liturgy.
Our utopian visions of harmonious love for each other quickly dissipate when we are confronted with the gritty everydayness of our life together in Christ, whether we are talking about the church down the street, our own Presbyterian denomination, or the larger church. Left to ourselves, our attempts at loving each other fall apart quickly and spectacularly. We try this love thing Jesus was talking about, but when we inevitably fail, which is bound to happen in the hands of sinners, we retreat into more familiar communities of the like-minded.
Perhaps that is the ultimate question hanging over our intramural disagreements and divisions in the Presbyterian church. Deep down, will our American Protestant proclivity for separation and schism continue to lead us into smaller and smaller enclaves of the like-minded, or can we move in a different direction? Can we be led to recover our catholic roots? Is the church, with all its faults and blemishes, still the church we have been given that summons us to live with our enemies and to share a common faith and life with them, even bearing with them in love and forbearance around the Lord's table?
The report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church is a winner. I support it enthusiastically. Then again, my enthusiasm is influenced by the fact that -- as one mystified parishioner asserted months ago -- I have a high tolerance for chaos.
Years ago I played college basketball, although not well. When our team fell behind by 20 points, with little hope of recovery except some drastic measures be taken, the coach would look long and hard down the bench. I knew his meditation: Should I put Massey in the game and hope that the resulting confusion will lead to new scoring opportunities? Early in my playing career my teammates hated to see me enter the game; I couldn't remember the plays or I would follow them slavishly. At best my personal style could be described as unorthodox. More than once a teammate hit me in the back of the head with a passed ball, or I would return the favor. But over time these same teammates--as much anxiety as I caused them--began to appreciate the chaos I created. It proved even more disadvantageous to our opponents, who could not anticipate what they were about to experience. Out of chaos came creative play, and sometimes surprising victory.
Confusion reigns.
As a former member of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church (TTF), I have been distressed to see so many Presbyterian friends troubled, perplexed, and even angered by the actions taken by the 217th Birmingham General Assembly in response to the Task Force's recommendations.
Some of that confusion has been generated by inconsistent legal interpretations issued by the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) and by other "constitutional experts."
Added confusion has resulted from the difficulty of shifting from the polarizing political rhetoric used pre-GA--in the hope of defeating the proposals--to a more pastorally soothing rhetoric of reassurance we usually utilize after the home team loses or, as in this case, after our agenda fails to get the votes. Having spent nine months radicalizing the meaning of the recommendations, warning about unintended consequences, projecting worst-case scenarios, and expounding on any and all flaws, some opponents were too enraged by the action or, perhaps in a few cases, are too addicted to the fight to make that shift. The rhetoric of contempt has quieted in some places but continues unabated in others.
100. 75. 50. Three great numbers. Three great celebrations of the ordination of women: as deacons, as elders, and as ministers of Word and Sacrament.
At 100 years, we would love to claim to have been the first, but the Cumberland Presbyterians ordained Louisa Woosley in 1889. Then again, we don't need to claim originality to celebrate our role in promoting gender equality. John Calvin didn't launch the Reformation, he just organized and systematized it. Similarly, we Presbyterians have contributed critical leadership that has theologically validated and organizationally formulated the practice of women's ordination. Hearing of the three anniversaries, 100, 75, 50, might we imagine that something important could have happened 25 years ago, too? Well, as a matter of fact, one big thing did happen. One of our ecumenical organizations, the National Council of Churches, directed its Bible translation team, led by Bruce Metzger, to update the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, with an eye toward making it more gender inclusive. Soon after publication in 1989, the New RSV was being read in most Presbyterian pulpits every Sunday.
Her smile filled her face and your heart. She grinned and everyone felt the need to sing. Small in stature with straight black hair, Lorna was born with the genetic disability known as Down Syndrome, which causes developmental disabilities and mental retardation. Though she was not a quiet person--jabbering, laughing and giggling--Lorna was the type of person you could lose in an emaciated minute.
Not that Lorna wandered away or was mischievously hiding, she simply seemed to evaporate into the walls. Lorna was a member of The Special Gathering choir and I was the fledgling director. Special Gathering is a ministry within the mentally challenged community. It is a community-based program involved in classic ministry: discipleship and evangelism. We have nine programs dotting the eastern coast of Florida and South Carolina.
Given that most growing mainline denominations began to shrink around 1964, what was it that made that year such an unhappy turning point? In the Outlook's "Just the Stats" issue (Sept. 11), columnist Tom Ehrlich says, "'What happened in 1964 ... was that post-war Baby Boomers began to graduate from high school.'"
What did they do after graduating from high school? One thing they did not do was to wake up before noon on Sundays. Some attended on-campus Bible studies that fit into the eyes-open hours on their body clocks. Like 10:30 p.m. Others squeezed a chapel service between classes in their church-related colleges. Way too many simply suffered spiritual starvation. Years later, when they felt a need to return to worship they found other, non-mainline, churches more to their liking.
The headline on the cover of a recent Time magazine asked, "Who Needs Harvard?" The featured article was about students finding the right college. Not the school with the highest SAT scores or the lowest acceptance rate, but the one where your daughter, son, grandchild, neighbor, Sunday school pupil, or youth group member is most likely to succeed. The place where he or she will come away not only with a diploma but with a purpose in life.
Too much to expect?
Not if you help that young person choose a college wisely.
During an orientation gathering, a parent of a first-year student raised the question: Is the school affiliated with a church? Pausing to formulate an answer, the complexities of the matter became much clearer to me. It brought into focus the question of how a college begun by a Presbyterian pastor and long (though loosely) associated with a Presbyterian congregation becomes an institution that now refers merely to its "religious heritage."
The simple answer points to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Andrew Carnegie established the Foundation in 1905 to provide pensions for college teachers. The following year Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, keen to secure a pension for a retiring faculty member, turned to the Foundation. But there was a hitch. Sectarian schools were ineligible for Carnegie pensions, since they presumably received financial support in exchange for church control. Moreover, the Foundation discouraged sectarian education because of its supposed interference with the search for truth.
© Copyright 2026 The Presbyterian Outlook. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Statement. Website by Web Publisher PRO
