Last July, I was troubled by the General Assembly’s resolution condemning the invasion of Iraq as “unwise, immoral and illegal.” It wasn’t the assembly’s weighing in on a public issue that bothered me, since it does so almost every year. Nor was it the church's stand against the war -- I had questioned the invasion myself.
The Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) announced on March 10 the members of teams that will work over the next few months to write draft sections -- possible approaches that the task force will consider for inclusion in its final report to the denomination.
The task force will vote on its report to the denomination on August 24 and 25, in a meeting in Chicago added to its schedule specifically to take that vote. The report is to be presented to the church by September 15
The three-year Presbyterian boycott of Taco Bell has ended, after the restaurant chain's parent corporation agreed to a deal that will increase what farm workers are paid by a penny for each pound of tomatoes they pick. That may not sound like much, but representatives of the farm workers say it can make a real difference in the amount of money those workers will earn.
Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), called it an historic agreement, and said its real significance is in the promise it holds on two fronts: for encouraging others in the food industry to also insist on fair wages and working conditions for farm workers; and for sending consumers a message that they should be responsible in spending their money with companies that require fair treatment for workers.
In this funny old town where I live and where I was trained theologically (at Union Seminary in Virginia) a continuing controversy is plaguing Black History Month. It concerns the use of a mock slave auction in an elementary school classroom in one of the conservative (red) suburbs that surround Richmond, the former capital of the Confederate States of America. Ironies abound.
While I make no brief against Black History Month or mock slave auctions, I do question the value of the latter in an elementary school. More to the point, I question the value of anything other than strict, basic education in elementary school (and in Sunday School) for elementary children. Children need to learn the basics if they are going to function responsibly as adults, as citizens, and as faithful Christians.
Presbyterian clergyman and professor, Charles W. Baird, shook up Presbyterian worshippers just 150 years ago with his historical study, Eutaxia ("good order"), in which he investigated Calvinist liturgical inheritance.
American colonial Presbyterians, highly suspicious of Roman Catholic and Anglican practices, were, on the whole, "low church" in their worship. The First and Second Great Awakenings-- with their emphasis on preaching, reading the Scriptures, Psalm singing and long, pastoral prayers--influenced them. When Presbyterians organized a General Assembly in the 1780's, they considered and adopted a Directory for the Worship of God (1788). At that time they considered discretionary prayers, but eliminated them for a book of directions only.
Charles Baird and his family lived under this Directory in the early years of the nineteenth century. Baird was Princeton born. His father, Robert, was a Presbyterian minister. Robert, with his French spouse and family, spent much time in Europe, living in Paris and Geneva and visiting other places. The senior Baird promoted a revival of religion among Europeans. Son Charles studied at Union Theological Seminary (N.Y.) and at New York University, where he was recognized as a brilliant student. After brief service as chaplain at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, he returned to America and finally settled down as pastor in Rye, N.Y. During this time he published a history of the Huguenots, with whom he had been acquainted in Europe. He gave faces to those from the old world who had immigrated to this country. With this background he was able to help Presbyterians appreciate the richness of their heritage.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) explains why it's considering pulling investments from some companies doing business with Israel, and Jewish leaders dismiss the church's position as unfair and misguided.
The story was no different Feb. 11 when Jay Rock, the PC(USA)'s interfaith relations coordinator, addressed ADL leaders to tell the church's side of the divestment story and to discuss interfaith relations. The ADL invited Rock to speak at its annual National Executive Committee meeting in West Palm Beach, Fla.
At certain times, Christians have felt compelled to speak out -- compelled by difficulties in their world to write a statement confessing what they believe (and often what they oppose) and why.
Some 20th century examples:
· Germany in 1934, as Hitler rose to power (The Barmen Declaration).
· South Africa in 1986, in the midst of apartheid (The Confession of Belhar).
· Korea in 1988, as people longed for reunification (The Declaration of the Churches of Korea on National Reunification and Peace).
· So what can the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) with its own basket of troubles, learn from such confessional statements-- known by the Latin term "status confessionis"? (The term basically means "a situation in which confession is demanded," according to theologian William Stacy Johnson.)
The Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gathered again in Texas beginning March 2 -- and this is considered to be a crucial meeting, coming just six months before the group's September 15 deadline for releasing its report to the church. Its only other meeting before the deadline is scheduled for July.
But the heart of this meeting -- the most serious discussion -- will be held behind closed doors. The task force has voted unanimously to close basically half its meeting to observers.
The President, Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, and Faculty/Staff Council of the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary are greatly disturbed by the false claims published by The Presbyterian Layman Online regarding classroom teaching by Dr. Mark Achtemeier, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, and by the false claim that members of the seminary faculty spoke with The Layman.
The President, Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, and Faculty/Staff Council unanimously affirm their full confidence in the integrity of Dr. Achtemeier as a presbyter and Doctor of the Church. We join with Dr. Achtemeier in calling for a retraction of the article and a formal printed apology from the editors of The Layman.
The meditation for Lent IV on Jesus' healing of the blind man in John's gospel effectively opens the central question before our beleaguered, cacophonous church. The PC (USA) is in an identity crisis. Publications and websites put forward by numerous associations claim to know the truth and to have the truth, and the truths are as different as night and day. Such stubborn knowing (seeing) is appropriately called into question by Chris Chakoian's meditation.
It set me thinking about how our eyes are opened, and how we learn to see. In John's story, learning to see is costly for the man healed, for his community of faith -- and even for the disciples. It is not, pun intended, a pretty picture. The healing provokes judgment as well as grace, for the light, which in John is never extinguished by the darkness of the cosmos, reveals as well as it enlightens.
Editor’s Note: After the OUTLOOK guest opinion “What have we done for Brown?”, Nibs Stroupe, pastor of Oakhurst Church in Decatur, Ga. responded with the following letter. His letter in turn sparked a reply by Ken Woodley, author of the original opinion piece. Both letter and response add to the information about this chapter in civil rights history in the United States.
The year was 1965, the Second Vatican Council’s “Decree on Ecumenism” had readjusted the ecumenical landscape, and the Roman Catholic Church was thrust headlong into an ecumenical movement that had been a largely Protestant and Orthodox enterprise.
“Jesus began to weep.”
This man does not do this often.
This is the only time that the gospels record Jesus’ weeping. Something has struck the deepest chords in Jesus. This is a resurrection story, but Jesus is weeping. What do the tears mean?
It’s easy to bash the Pharisees in the gospel of John, but we do so at our peril. One writer notes, “For the Pharisees, protecting the identity of the Jewish people in the midst of a hostile world was an overwhelming priority. To continue to be ‘God’s people’ meant that they had to use every tool they had to remain distinctive, to resist the temptation to assimilate into the dominant culture.” [1]
THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS. By Fleming Rutledge. Eerdmans. 2005. $12.00. 91p. (0-8028-2786-1). Pb.
Rutledge presents seven meditations on the final sayings of Jesus. He links the sayings from the cross with contemporary events and concerns, incorporating recent biblical scholarship and modern questions about the death of Christ.
Rarely has a film captured my attention as did Hotel Rwanda. I recommended it to the congregation this past Sunday (1/30/05), something I've not done previously, and even declared that it should be required viewing in every school and college, beginning with Middle School. Hotel has no gratuitous violence or language. It is based on a true story, and those who wrote and directed it are to be commended, not only for making an excellent, suspenseful film, but also for bringing public attention in a mass market to the horrors of continuing genocide. In three months Hutus massacred 800,000 Tutsis, a horror that began immediately after a peace accord signed under the watchful eyes of Western powers. The Rwandan government, in the hands of a Hutu general following the president's flight into exile, did nothing to prevent the slaughter.
Third Sunday in Lent
A man and a woman meet at a well. They talk. Their heads bend toward each other. Her head jerks back in astonishment. He leans forward to explain. With a sweep of an arm he gestures for her to leave, and she drops her head to say something.
The Presbyterian Coalition is convening a national Lenten gathering called "Repent & Believe: A Call to Prayer and Repentance" -- an invitation for people from all the political corners of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to come together in confession and worship.
While the Coalition is the official sponsor, some involved with the Covenant Network of Presbyterians (on the opposite side of the political divide over ordination standards) have been involved with the planning as well
LOUISVILLE -- What would Jesus make of Jerusalem today?
Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), raised that question during the opening worship service of a recent conference on peace in the Middle East -- and his question in some ways spun itself through the entire event.
What would Jesus make of Jerusalem?
And how should Presbyterians view Israel?
Here's a question some folks will be considering carefully in the weeks to come: Just how generous are Presbyterians willing to be?
The year started off with stunning news, as the world struggled to comprehend the catastrophic impact of the December 26 tsunami, which killed more than 150,000 and left survivors strafed with grief and hunger and homelessness. Presbyterians responded with prayer, compassion and cash, contributing $1.5 million so far through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance for the relief effort.
That's what a Palestinian pastor from East Jerusalem said during an early session of a national Presbyterian training event that began Feb. 10 on peace in the Middle East.
But the telling of those stories -- painful and personal ones, for example, of the difficulty of teaching one's children love for all people when those children are routinely humiliated by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints -- opens the door to layer upon layer of complications.
Can the Palestinian stories be told without telling those of Israeli Jews? What about Muslims from the region? And how can Presbyterians have fruitful conversations with American Jews if the story the Palestinian Christians tell is so powerful and so negative?
Good advice is readily available on almost every topic. But when it comes to our church I am not so sure.
Some speak to us in hearty voices assuring us that all is well. Others are more strident, drumming their cadences out as though calling us into a campaign. And some speak so quietly that it is almost impossible to tell if they have something to say at all.
One of the quietest voices is that of a relatively obscure Benedictine monk named Adalbert de Vogüé. He lives in the abbey of La Pierre-que-vive, and he has thought about The Rule of Benedict for nearly fifty years. He has really thought about it, not quite in the same way that we have thought about the Westminster Confession of Faith. First hearing it read aloud daily as a novice, once in Latin and then later in French, he has become as adapt at listening to it as a doctor with his stethoscope upon a bared chest.
On Presidents' Day and just after the inauguration of President George W. Bush, we might do well to remember the inspiring words of one of our most important leaders. He presided over the country during the Civil War of the 1860s: Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln. In a letter to a Kentuckian in 1855, Lincoln, then a leading politician in the Illinois legislature, put the crisis of the Republic in these memorable words:
You are not a friend to slavery in the abstract. In that speech you spoke of "the peaceful extinction of slavery," and used other expressions indicating your belief that the thing was at some time to have an end. Since then we have had thirtysix years of experience; and this experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us. ... On the question of liberty as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self-evident truth, but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self-evident lie". ... Our political problem now is, "Can we as a nation continue together permanently---forever--half slave and half free?" The problem is too mighty for me--may God, in his mercy, superintend the solution.
Several years ago, an article in the PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK described how the Rev. James Smith, a Presbyterian pastor in Springfield, Ill., played a key role in converting Abraham Lincoln out of his original skepticism toward a greater confidence in Biblical faith.
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