Union Seminary had let out for the 1957 Christmas holiday, and I had come home, looking forward to being with my parents, and to sharing the good news that I had "met someone" with whom I might get serious. As I looked about the neat little house my parents had just built in the York County, S.C. countryside, I noticed that there was a new woman keeping watch over the modest Christmas display.
The fallout from Presbyterian actions involving the Middle East continues to rain down.
On Nov. 11, the denomination announced that it no longer employs two Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national staff members who traveled to the Middle East last month and were involved in a controversial meeting with Hezbollah, a group that the U.S. State Department lists as a terrorist organization.
Gone are Kathy Lueckert, who as deputy director of the General Assembly Council was considered part of the top level of the denomination's leadership, and Peter Sulyok, coordinator for the past dozen years of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy.
In announcing the departures, John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council, did not make it clear if Lueckert and Sulyok resigned or were fired -- or say precisely why they no longer are PC(USA) employees, citing in a written statement their right to confidentiality.
But the Hezbollah visit, made during a two-week fact-finding tour by the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy -- a visit that also included high-level meetings with political, human rights and religious leaders around the Middle East -- had provoked strong and immediate criticism both from Jewish leaders already angry with the PC(USA), and by some from within the Presbyterian church.
Presbyterian-Jewish relations have been tense since the General Assembly's decision, last summer, to begin a process of phased, selective divestment in some companies doing business in Israel, in protest over Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people.
A committee of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has announced six criteria it says the church should use in deciding whether to divest in certain multinational companies doing business in Israel.
The PC(USA)'s Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee, meeting Nov. 4-6 in New York, drafted six criteria to guide the denomination in its divestment decisions, while emphasizing that any decisions will be made in a careful, deliberate way. The PC(USA) holds more than $7.5 billion in investments through the Presbyterian Foundation and the Board of Pensions, and the earliest any stock could be sold as a deliberate divestment action would be after the next General Assembly meets in 2006.
The question of whether the PC(USA) should divest in companies active in Israel, in protest over Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people -- or whether such a proposal is anti-Semitic or a bad idea, as some have contended -- has been white-hot since the General Assembly authorized a process of phased, selective divestment by a 431-62 vote last June.
With this issue The Presbyterian Outlook introduces the columns of Ron Ferguson, who was a journalist before attending divinity school and becoming a Presbyterian minister. He studied at St. Andrews, Edinburgh, and Duke Universities. Ron began as a pastor in a huge public housing area in Glasgow, Scotland, called Easterhouse (a place more like Gethsemane and Calvary than Easter).
In Meredith Wilson’s enchanting musical, “The Music Man”, Prof. Harold Hill comes to River City and tricks the whole town into buying his mail order musical instruments for a new children’s band. The parents are dubious, but the kids are excited. On the day of the promised delivery, they wonder in song if there is anything coming “for me”.
Editorial note: Retired Presbyterian pastor Ralph Bucy in the December 20/27 2004 issue of the OUTLOOK in his opinion piece "Beyond Reinhold Niebuhr" writes about Christian Realism and current events. It responds to an OUTLOOK editorial of November 1 entitled "Where is Reinhold Niebuhr?" by O. Benjamin Sparks. Since this editorial appeared while the OUTLOOK web site was inactive, it and Bucy's response appear below.
on Isaiah 9:2b-7 and cities of no refuge:
Tehran, Baghdad, New York, Sarajevo, Beirut, Hanoi, Selma, Nagasaki…
The warriors’ tramping boots their martial cadence count
dawn to day to dusk to dark by sighs.
Editor’s Note: This presentation was made at the recent Dialogue on Anti-Semitism at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. The speaker, Sari Ateek, was presenting the night’s dialogue participants, Rabbi Dr. Elliott Dorff and Fuller President, Dr. Richard Mouw.
Before I introduce our two speakers for the evening, I’d like to share with you a few personal remarks. When I was first asked to do the introductions for this dialogue, I have to admit that I found myself initially hesitant for at least a couple of reasons.
A presbytery cannot require a congregation to pay all of its per capita or to fulfill a mission pledge in order to receive financial assistance from the presbytery, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission has ruled.
The ruling helps answer the ongoing question of what presbyteries can do -- or not do -- when congregations refuse to pay all or part of their per capita assessments, often to protest positions taken by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). And it affirms a decision issued last April by the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of Mid-America.
The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, the PC(USA)'s highest court, had earlier ruled, in July 2003 in the Minihan v. Scioto Valley Presbytery case, that a presbytery can't force a session to pay per capita, the per-member assessment that the General Assembly sets, and it can't punish a session for failing to pay per capita. While paying per capita is not mandatory, in a connectional system it is strongly encouraged, the judicial commission ruled in that case, stating that withholding funds "as a mean of protest or dissent" is "a serious breach of the trust and love with which our Lord Jesus intends the covenant community to function."
Reformation Day (which this year – perhaps too appropriately – fell on Halloween) provides a needful occasion on which to reflect on the role of Scripture and preaching in the Presbyterian Church. The matter is made urgent by the recent election that sacrificed (at a cost of 600 million dollars on the presidential race alone) substantive debate about the serious issues before this republic on the altar of entertainment, spin, and downright dirty lies.
Gratitude, if and when it does arrive,
seems very seldom centered on the meal itself.
Yes, the sacred bird with all its panoply
is blessed in solemn, if embarrassed grace.
Celebrate, Celebrate, Celebrate said the words of the theme song for the 24th General Assembly of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) held in Accra, Ghana, July 30-August 13, 2004. It focused on the Scripture assuring life in fullness (John 10:10). The words and the tune reverberated throughout the campuses of University of Ghana, Legon and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).
Does there come a time for everyone
when looking forward yields
to looking back; when fond memory
takes over from anticipation
and what has been holds pride of place
It's the sermon pastors hate to preach, the ones congregations hate even more to hear.
It usually comes in the fall, and it's when they ask, cajole, even plead for ... money
And, theologically, it's all about God, our relationship with money, and thanksgiving.
"Gratitude is at the heart of our spirituality in the Reformed tradition," Tim Hart-Andersen, pastor of Westminster church in Minneapolis, preached last spring at a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gathering on stewardship. "There is no other human response to God more basic than gratitude, a deep thanksgiving that wells up from within . . . Our churches and those who inhabit them need such a rekindling of biblical stewardship, where we learn again what once we knew so well: `The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.' " (Psalm 24:1)
(PNS) The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has ruled that a session's failure to pay its per capita apportionment cannot be the sole factor in the presbytery's determination whether that congregation is eligible for requesting financial assistance from the presbytery.
In it's Oct. 18 decision in Johnston, et. al. v. Heartland Presbytery, the commission also ruled that a congregation's failure to pay its per capita apportionment and mission pledge could not be the determinative factor in a presbytery's refusal to grant assistance to that congregation. At the same time, the GAPJC determined that "a congregation's effort to pay its full per capita apportionment and to fulfill a mission pledge is clearly relevant as one factor among many others that a presbytery may consider in exercising its stewardship responsibility to allocate limited resources in action upon a congregation's request for assistance."
It’s clearly possible that we Americans need to distinguish between what has been given us by the hand of Almighty God, and what we have wrested by exploitation from others who were in this land before we were, as well as from those who were brought to the ‘New World’ against their wills and purchased by us, and as our property made enduring contributions to our national wealth. Thanksgiving is a peculiar American holiday.
It was my privilege during August this year to visit both Guatemala and El Salvador. I was in Guatemala in the company of my son Herb, who is a journalist/editor for the Diocese of Michigan. We then joined a group of Episcopal communicators for a week in El Salvador.
The PC(USA) lost two outstanding leaders almost exactly a week apart with the deaths of C. Kenneth Hall on October 15 and Shirley Guthrie on October 23 (see obituaries in the November 8 and today’s issues of OUTLOOK). Both exercised extraordinary spiritual gifts in lives wholly committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to ministry in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
At this time of year it is worth thinking about our attitude toward God in prayer. So many negative things happen in our own lives, the church, and in the world that are dangerous and disheartening. we often start our prayers by listing our fears about potential disaster. As a denomination we run the risk of constantly focusing on our disagreements, our declining membership, and our lack of power in the world.
It is a prayer heard in almost every synagogue and church
throughout the world:
"May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord
cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you;
may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace."
LOUISVILLE - Two key Presbyterian Church (USA) staff members were apparently fired November 11 by General Assembly Council (GAC) Executive Director John Detterick - with no clear public explanation for their departures.
Kathy Lueckert, the deputy executive associate director of the GAC, the governing body of the church's mission program agency, and the Rev. Peter Sulyok, coordinator of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), are no longer employed by the GAC.
Leuckert has served the denomination for five years, Sulyok for nearly twelve.
Lueckert supervised Sulyok and both were members of an ACSWP fact-finding delegation to the Middle East last month that included a televised meeting with Hezbollah, an organization that is on the U.S. government's watch list of terrorist groups.
CHICAGO -- These progressive Presbyterians came to Chicago to talk about theology and sexuality -- about what it means to be a Christian and to live responsibly and faithfully as a sexual being.
And, like the wind whipping famously down Michigan Avenue, fueled by the torrents of the presidential election and the sting of John Kerry's loss, the conversation at the Covenant Network of Presbyterians' annual gathering quickly swirled into other territories too.
How can the church talk convincingly to young people -- many of them with their feet firmly planted in the secular world -- if it rarely talks about sex at all?
What should the church say about sex outside of marriage -- is it always wrong? What about committed, long-term relationships among unmarried partners, including gays and lesbians, but also church-going senior citizens and huge numbers of heterosexuals who live together or certainly sleep together before they marry?
I planted, wrote Paul to the Corinthians, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. (I Corinthians 3:6)
This image of the church is a flourishing plant, a living organism with deep roots, firm foundations, and tender branches. I am concerned about the tender branches, especially as they matriculate each year in church conference centers.
CHICAGO -- No votes have been taken.
It's kind of like reading the tea leaves before the kettle has even come to a boil.
But a preliminary, tentative, test-the-waters discussion Oct. 13 indicated that the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) still is searching for consensus on some of the most controversial issues it faces, including homosexuality and ordination.
On the first day of its Oct. 13-15 meeting, the task force considered draft papers on two big issues -- what to say to the church about ordaining gays and lesbians who are sexually active, and whether the denomination ought to spell out what it considers to be essential tenets. Neither of those papers was being formally advanced as reflecting the task force's position nor was up for a vote.
But at its last meeting, in August, the planning team for this October meeting suggested that it might be time to put forth some "affirmations," some suggested statements about ordination standards and essential tenets, just to see how task force members would respond -- basically, to sense where there might be some areas of agreement and where there's still work to be done. Those affirmations were drafted by a working group from the task force consisting of three pastors -- John "Mike" Loudon of Florida, Sarah Sanderson-Doughty and John Wilkinson, both from New York state -- and William Stacy Johnson, who teaches systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.
CHICAGO -- Immediately after a discussion on global context, a conversation about how the preoccupations and work of Presbyterians in the United States fit into the larger concerns of the world, the members of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) went into another closed-door session.
They shut the doors on October 15 because they wanted privacy to try to figure out what to say to the PC(USA), particularly on the controversial question of ordaining sexually-active lesbians and gays.
They went from the big view, the international context, to the small: the infighting within the denomination.
Presumably, the conversation had to do in part with theology and in part with politics and power. These 20 people have theological views, convictions, but also in some cases alignments with those in the church involved in the political fight. They are weighing what they want to say in their hearts, what they can afford to say publicly, what the church can accept and what they feel would be prophetic to say. They have developed a deep affection for one another, but they also may want to convince some of their friends to move.
They want to say something that will have the ring of truth.
They want the Holy Spirit to speak.
They want to know how they will know if that has happened.
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