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Peacemaker tells presbytery about CPT work in Iraq

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -  Beth Pyles, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams group that suffered the loss of member Tom Fox in Iraq, recently described her spiritual journey at a workshop during the Presbytery of West Virginia's annual Festival of Faith educational event.

The decision to join CPT was "mostly spiritual, partly political," acknowledges Pyles, who set aside a 22-year legal career in Parkersburg, W.Va. to attend Princeton Theological Seminary. It was spiritual because "we follow a Savior who was killed for the greater good for the greater number. We are a people who do not follow a cause, we follow a person," she said. It was political because "what we're doing in Iraq is problematic," Pyles stated.

Editorials

Who will lead us now?

William Sloane Coffin. James E. Andrews. Both gone.  After spending a lifetime on a mission, they joined the Church Triumphant, leaving big shoes to be filled.

Coffin and Andrews each embodied a particular kind of churchmanship.  

Bill Coffin was the activist: a chaplain and pulpiteer who stirred the masses to take action against what he declared to be the evils of the day. Many disagreed with his diagnoses. What he called a "disastrous cult of power" others cast as an international "police action." While others spoke of the force of law, he warned of the law of force. He provoked much rage. He also provoked action by those he persuaded with his arguments.

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Law and Gospel

Editor's Note: This essay is Part 2 in a series aimed at giving a voice to the center in the current theological debate within the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. 

 

The General Assembly's Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church has called us to the task of theological dialogue, and its report has given us a lead in starting the discussion. We might be tempted merely to re-polarize around this report, as some have done. A more constructive response is to reconfigure the issues with which we are dealing, and press forward--together.

Book Reviews

The Wounding and Healing of Desire: Weaving Heaven and Earth

by Wendy Farley. Louisville, KY:  WJKP, 2005. ISBN 0-664-22976-X.  Pb., 208 pp., $19.95.

 

On the back of Wendy Farley's new book, The Wounding and Healing of Desire, the brief description of her project uses appropriate descriptive language like "inspiring" and "passionate" to invite the reader into this beautiful work. The description ends by calling Farley's book a "theological memoir." If this categorization entices you to pick it up and read it, then I am happy with the choice of genre the publisher made. As a theologian, however, I find the description unsatisfying even as I grope for an alternative way to capture what Farley has accomplished. Indeed this book does pour forth from an intimate integrity that connects her experience with the way she constructs theology. Her project, however, is more ontological than it is a narrative of or theological reflection on her life. 

Book Reviews

Death by Suburb: How to Keep the Suburbs from Killing Your Soul

by David L Goetz. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006. ISBN-13-978-0-06-075670-3 Hb., 214 pp., $23.95.

The inspiration behind this new book is fascinating. Author David L. Goetz asks whether or not life in the suburbs is harmful to a living faith. As an answer, he claims it can be, but with the deliberate method he delineates in this book it does not have to be. 

We recognize the concerns he raises: that showiness and barrenness are the suburbia stereotype. In the lovely bedroom communities of America, it can appear that the inhabitants are more worried about orderly landscaping than they are the landscape of the soul. Such a message is intriguing to me and would be to many clergy. If you serve a congregation in which a large number of your members are suburbanites, the question is there, even if unasked: In the hectic pace and everyday diversions of the suburbs, is it possible for people to discern, to have a word with and have a word from the Living God?

 

Book Reviews

Song of Songs

by Robert W. Jenson. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville, John Knox Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8042-3117-6. 106 pp, $24.95

 

"It may be," says the author, "that the chief purpose of a commentary on (the Song of Songs) is not to provide interpretation but to provoke it" (p. 12). In this masterful commentary, Robert Jenson does both.

From the author's engaging preface, through a most informative introduction that makes one eager to read on, and throughout the commentary, Jenson leads the reader on an extraordinary adventure in the study of Scripture.

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GAC releases names of those laid off

LOUISVILLE -- General Assembly Council Executive Director John Detterick today (May 2) formally released the names of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national staff employees who have lost their jobs in the "reduction in force" needed to reduce the 2007-2008 General Assembly mission budget by $9.15 million.

Seventy-five employees lost their jobs May 1, the largest single layoff at the Presbyterian Center since 1993, when 140 jobs were eliminated.

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GAC approves 2007 budget; details on cuts May 1

LOUISVILLE -- Without releasing any specifics of a $9.1 million budget cut, the details of which are expected to emerge May 1, the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has unanimously approved a budget of $97.2 million for 2007 and of $95.9 million for 2008.

What exactly that will fund -- what programs will be kept and which will be cut -- remains to be seen, as virtually all the council's budget discussions over four days took place behind closed doors.

When the council finally pushed open the doors, about a half-hour before they were scheduled to adjourn for worship April 29, they handed out only overall budget figures they had approved. More details will be released May 1 after employees being terminated are informed.

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PDA hurricane response plan

LOUISVILLE -- Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is proposing a long-term strategy for responding to the hurricanes of 2005 -- a plan that would organize the Presbyterian response for five to seven years in Mississippi and for eight to 12 years in Louisiana.

"The affected area is so large that responding to all communities is not feasible," states a report to the General Assembly Council outlining the plan. 

But Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is working now in 15 communities in Mississippi and seven in Louisiana. It has set up six "Volunteer Villages" where volunteer teams from churches across the country stay when they come to assist with the relief work.

The volunteer tent villages each cost about $8,500 a month to operate. And the response from churches has been terrific, said Susan Ryan, who leads Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Volunteers have come to help from 40 states and three other countries, she said in an interview. In March alone, the villages hosted 1,890 volunteers who gave 12,372 days of work valued at $1.48 million.

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GAC requests diplomatic response to divestment

LOUISVILLE -- The General Assembly Council is asking the General Assembly in Birmingham to respond to more than two dozen overtures on Israel, Palestine and divestment by setting up a process for monitoring what's happening in the Middle East.

The council wants the assembly not to jump to action -- but to set up a seven- member "working group" that represents a range of views on divestment. That group would spend time listening carefully to Christians, Jews and Muslims concerned about the difficulties in Israel, and would "develop guidance that honors each of their concerns" to present to the assembly in 2008.

Voices

An Easter tribute to William Sloane Coffin in his own words

[In Memoriam:  William Sloan Coffin

June 1, 1924 -- April 12, 2006]

 

Note:  Bill Coffin died four days before I delivered this tribute to him at the Presbyterian church.  It is a composite of his own words in sermons, books and interviews over the years -- g.a.w.

 

 

"To Bill with Great Love and Appreciation" -- Gary

 

 

"I am reminded of all the undergraduates I knew and loved, many now crowding sixty, even seventy.  Some of them have aged like vintage wine, heeding Albert Camus's wisdom:  'To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion.' 

 

A few of them, however, looking back on the springtime of their lives, say, 'Ah, those were the days!' --- and the worst of it is, they're right!   It was not the days, I suspect, but they who used to be better! 

 

You have to unlearn as well as learn, to clear away the weeds and thickets in order to see more clearly the various paths ahead.  [The same applies to our faith.]

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Immigration in America: What will churches do?

Presbyterians concerned about immigration, who are watching closely the Senate debate over immigration reform and feeling the press of an estimated 12 million undocumented workers on cities and congregations, know this: whatever legislation gets passed, this issue won't just go away.

A new "Presbyterians for Just Immigration" e-mail network https://www.pcusa.org/acrec/immigrationreform.htm  is jumping with conversation about what's happening -- with folks tracking the status of proposed legislation and lobbying efforts, and brainstorming about what, in local communities, can and needs to be done.

If legislation is put in place that would impede churches from helping undocumented immigrants -- a version of this has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives -- then "we aren't going to obey," said Mauricio Chacón, pastor of Iglesia Presbiteriana de la Misión in San Francisco. "We are going to have civil disobedience. ... as Christians, we have a higher law than the law of man. ... This goes against my principles, against my beliefs, as a religious person."

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Does prayer help healing? No benefit, says study

c. 2006 Religion News Service

 

It's a profound if unanswerable question for many who ask God to heal the sick: Can prayer actually help another person recover from disease?

A group of prominent scientists recently sought at least part of the answer, in the largest study of its kind, and concluded that prayer from strangers had no effect on whether people suffered complications from coronary artery bypass surgery.

"The effect of intercessory prayer was neutral. It showed no sign of any benefit," said Charles Bethea, an Oklahoma cardiologist and researcher who participated in the $2.4 million study by the John Templeton Foundation, which supports exploration of ties between religion and science.

Not only were effects of prayer by strangers neutral, the study said, but a selected group of patients -- who knew with certainty that strangers were praying for them -- experienced complications at higher rates than did two other groups who were told only that they might receive prayer. The group faring best was the only one not to receive strangers' prayers.

The researchers acknowledged their study was not definitive and called for more research on the subject.

Editorials

What about ordaining educators?

Those Christian educators just won't take "No!" for an answer. Recent General Assemblies have rejected again and again proposals to ordain educators, yet presbyteries persist in submitting more overtures for the same. When will they give up? Or, maybe, should this year's GA return a different response?

Our attachment to the threefold offices of minister of Word and Sacrament, of elder, and of deacon is held almost as intensely as our affirmation of a Trinitarian God and our preference for three-point sermons. We have protected that structure against those promoting the office of bishop or of priest or of anybody else. Indeed, many of us urge our seminaries to appoint as faculty members only those who have been ordained to one of those offices.  

We have not always been so jealously protective of the threefold structure of church office.

Voices

Pastors, parents, and baptisms

What really happens in baptism?

Why don't we have godparents?

What does baptism mean for children born with birth defects?

Where does the water come from?

Why not wait until my child can decide for herself?

My spouse is not a church member, what do we do?

 

These are just a few of the questions I received when I surveyed pastors and educators in Presbyterian congregations in the United States and Canada as I prepared to write the book, "The Baptism of Your Child."

Many people raised the same issues, and, I suspect, some questions were given in the hope that I might provide a ready answer for parents. I found from my mini-survey that pastors have given a lot of thought to the meeting they have with parents before a child is baptized. I know from talking with parents over the years that many questions go unasked because parents are afraid to ask them.

Editorials

Communal discernment — demanding, rooted, graced

Several years ago a small incident occurred that has been much in my mind since I received the Final Report of the Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church. The incident took place as a pastor and I drove home from a meeting. We had joined ten others in what was called a "discernment exercise," exploring future directions for the presbytery where we both served. Rather than just brainstorm and then debate ideas, the group had attended on Scripture, entered silence, listened deeply to one another's yearnings, even where those yearnings lay far apart. The group prayed. On the way home, for better than an hour, my friend talked about the "fresh bond in Christ" (his exact words) he was discovering with a person whose views differed dramatically from his own.          

Editorials

Why I oppose the proposed Authoritative Interpretation of G-6.0108

The Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity is recommending the General Assembly approve an authoritative interpretation of G-6.0108 that claims merely to clarify what has long been the historical position of the Presbyterian Church: that ordaining governing bodies have the final say on decisions of ordination. It once was common that presbyteries would allow candidates for ordination to declare their disagreements ("scruples") with the confessional standards of the church, and then determine if they would ordain the candidate nonetheless (lines 724-726). The recommended authoritative interpretation would revive this historic tradition (lines 1138-1179), encouraging governing bodies to hear the scruples of candidates and decide whether the stated scruples were sufficiently beyond the pale of our tradition to prohibit ordination.

I oppose it for two reasons: If it is approved, it will further erode the level of trust in our church; and it will be a top-down decision of a matter that the presbyteries have refused to allow.

Voices

World news, a child worries

When our daughter was five she began to have more than the usual difficulty going to sleep at night. She cried when we put her to bed, used all of the "tricks" we'd learned to ignore for staying awake, and frequently woke up during the night calling out to us or weeping. After several days of this behavior that was exhausting all of us, I decided it was time to talk. We walked home from kindergarten and stopped at the park.

"Do you know why you're afraid at night?" I asked.

"Yes," she said softly.

"Can you tell me about it?"

"I can tell you what I wish," was her answer.

"What do you wish?"

"You won't get mad?" she asked, turning her tear-filled eyes toward my face.

"I won't get mad. I promise."

"Mommy, could we please not watch the news at breakfast any more?"

It took my brain a few seconds to process this request, but I managed to say, "Well, of course! We don't even have to have the TV on in the mornings. Would that help?"

"I think so," she said with the most incredible look of relief on her face.

I'm a news junkie. Many of us are, and the media encourages us to believe that the most significant thing we can do in a crisis is to know everything there is to know. But the news has been scary for a long time: terrorists, plane crashes, war, a tsunami, hurricanes are just pieces of what children have learned about in the last five years. As families and as church we have a responsibility for offering help and hope for our children in frightening times. All of us, our children included, need to be reminded regularly of our certainty that God is present comforting us, loving us, suffering with us, and that God can be trusted never to leave us, even, perhaps especially, when things we cannot explain happen.

Voices

Educational experiences for children: A model for a new generation

The Sunday School bulletin board quietly announces "Joseph: A Life of Changes" but down the hall there is nothing quiet about what the elementary children are doing!

In the Drama Room, three kindergarteners are dressed like Egyptian royalty while others, dressed like nomads, stand waiting for their bags to be filled with grain (or is that sand?). In the Art Room, excited first graders stare intently as oil-based paint, in a variety of colors, is swirled by a teacher who is telling the story of Joseph and how, like the paint, Joseph's life was constantly changing -- all under the direction of God's hand! Occasionally the teacher pauses to invite a child to lay a piece of paper on the paint and lift it gently so that everyone can marvel at the unique artwork with "oohs and ahhs." In the Theater Room, third graders settle into their seats, popcorn in hand, to view a popular video that follows the life of Joseph. In the Game Room, a group of eager fourth graders are wildly ringing their buzzers as they "chime in" with their answers in a rousing game of "Jeopardy" where the questions (in the form of answers of course) all come from the biblical account of Joseph's life. In another corner of the room stands a "Wheel of Fortune" board with this unit's memory verse waiting to be revealed. In the Kitchen, creative fifth grade "cooks" are stirring together their "Twelve Tribe Trail Mix" as they begin to learn about Joseph's family tree and the lineage it would foster. And in the Computer Room, sixth graders are navigating their way to Egypt using a computer game designed by one of the youth of the church.

Voices

At “Decade of the Child” midpoint, decline; new worship resources

The story of Jesus and the children is the passage often cited as one key biblical foundation for child advocacy. This is a story beloved by curriculum developers and by artists who illustrate Bible stories for children. There are many winsome paintings that depict beautiful laughing children, hair shining with cleanliness and spotless clothing. Such illustrations are attractive, but I've often wondered if we don't do an injustice to the power behind the narrative when we show the children in this way.

So I was struck with the way Joyce Ann Mercer explores that story in Mark's gospel. In her book, Welcoming the Children: A Theology of Childhood1, Mercer examines specific stories from Mark's gospel to address the question of how children appear in Mark's telling of the story. Child advocates most often use the story of Jesus welcoming the children from Matthew or Luke. But in focusing on Mark's account instead (Mark 10:13-16), Mercer helps us to examine the place of children in the context of a culture dominated by the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire. The farming peasant population of that time was crushed under the weight of economic privation. Family structures, and in particular women and children, were under enormous economic pressure. So it's likely that the children in Mark's account were street children who may have straggled after Jesus from place to place, children that Mercer calls "other people's children."

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Auburn Seminary launches the Auburn Coaching Institute

 

Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City introduces a new program bringing the best of business and professional coaching into the sphere of theological education and ministerial support. 

The Auburn Coaching Institute is designed by and for people dedicated to furthering the mission of the church through effective leadership and ministries. Church leaders from across a spectrum of backgrounds and locations have experienced coaching through classes at Auburn and through the New York Sabbatical Institute, a program funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. and administered by Auburn in partnership with Union and New York Theological Seminaries. 

Voices

Addressing the “youth problem” in Presbyterian churches

The lack of youth in churches is a common lament. Many in our congregations complain that today's families don't emphasize church attendance, and they point to the 1960s as the beginning of the age of youth disinterest in church life. Clergy struggle to explain why the youth population has fled, pointing to parental laxness and competing cultural events. How many of you have heard -- or even expressed -- the following sentiment voiced by F. E. Clark, Pastor of the Williston Congregational Church in Portland, Maine:

We in this generation are just beginning to feel the evil effects of this loose family government and home training in regard to church-going. The generation immediately preceding ours slackened the reins, and the empty pews in many churches show that the young colts have run away. What shall we expect in the generation which is to follow ours, when, as in many cases, the reins have been thrown entirely away and the colts allowed to roam at their own sweet will? This, I say, ... is the great cause of the lack of attendance at our churches; and this cause, unless the evil is checked, will decimate our churches in the future.

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