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Voices

Reconsidering ‘Definitive Guidance’

The church has been debating the issue of homosexuality for more than a quarter of a century to the neglect of more important issues and the creation of divisions within our fellowship which border on the catastrophic. So far, only two alternatives have been offered: that the church embrace homosexuality as simply another form of God's will for sexual life, or that the church condemn homosexuality as an egregious form of sin and deny office to homosexuals.

Voices

Living with Mortality

Yesterday Joan and I joined Hospice of the Valley. It was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever faced. By doing so I affirm that my cancerous condition is terminal and that in all likelihood I will die within six months. I also agree that in the light of my poor reaction to radiation the likelihood of significant help from chemotherapy is dubious. So I have opted for community and care and quality of life.

Uncategorized

The Promise of Advent

The season is upon us when all our hopes are trained on the inexhaustibility of a particular event in time and space, the coming of Jesus Christ. It is a season in which we remember that the gospel is received in the mode of anticipating and awaiting a promise.

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Down for the Count

I have on my desk a map of the United States that shows how every county voted in this year's presidential election. Counties in red voted for Bush, counties in blue for Gore. The red and blue appear in different gradations of color, so that according to the intensity of the color one can tell by what margin the favored candidate won.

Voices

Christmas Eve

The candlelight service is over, the darkened church is locked and we set out into the cold, starry darkness of a Texas Christmas Eve.

The long ride home holds its own surprises as the headlights shine on the eyes of foraging late-night creatures.

Uncategorized

Advent and Apocalypse

When seen through human eyes, truth comes divergently. On three separate days, just a couple of weeks before the presidential election, I happened to have back-to-back conversations with three friends of impeccable sincerity and insight.

Voices

Three Christmases

American Christians can celebrate three Christmases. The most obvious is secular Christmas. In Pittsburgh secular Christmas has been officially dubbed "Sparkle Season." Sparkle Christmas begins soon after Halloween. Unless you become a hermit or find another way to escape the world, this Christmas is impossible to avoid.

Voices

Thank God for the Scientists!

Charles L. Moffatt, Presbyterian minister, taught me to fear no truth, for all truth is from God. The other side of that is not to be afraid to challenge any claim to truth, for not all claims to truth are from God. That is to say, the church does not have to swallow whole every new teaching that comes down the pike.

Voices

Religion is More than Being Relevant

Lately it seems that we have had a resurgence in the use of the word "relevant." Everywhere I turn, someone is lauding something for being "relevant" or, more often, deriding something for not being "relevant."

Voices

How’s Poor Old Ireland?

There's a tune from South Ireland we used to sing around the piano that includes the question, "How is poor old Ireland and how does she stand?" Well, I've just been back to Ireland on my third Irish Institute in the past 10 years. And Ireland is old, but it is no longer poor.

Voices

Council members concerned about theology of ranking Presbyterian mission work

MONTREAT, N.C. -- Some General Assembly Council members raised questions Saturday about the theology behind ranking the work of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) according to its impact on evangelism and discipleship -- with former General Assembly moderator Douglas Oldenburg saying, "I don't ever want us to become just a consumer church," where only programs with the strongest constituencies prevail.

Voices

Grading Evangelism and Discipleship

Back in September, the General Assembly Council (GAC) at Montreat graded Assembly programs based on their impact according to two established priorities -- evangelism and discipleship.

Voices

Why These Priorities?

With much rhetorical wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, the Presbyterian publications are full of letters and articles lamenting the process and the result by which the General Assembly Council finally got around, 17 years after reunion, to doing some of what we promised to do at the end of the first year.

Editorials

In Thrall to the Law

Nothing is clearer, as we go through yet another around of decision-making about sexuality in the presbyteries, than that the Presbyterian Church is in the grip of legalism, which seems not to trust the gospel. We are trying to order our affairs as a church by the book, and the book is really not very helpful right now.

Voices

Reformed realities

Presbyterians pride themselves on being realistic Christians. This is due to the Reformed emphasis that human nature is not perfect nor are human achievements self-sufficient. From a Reformed perspective, all cultural and scientific "advancements" are subject to theological scrutiny. What is sought is a reforming attitude toward the totality of life.

Voices

Let’s reform Reformation Sunday

For decades Reformation Sunday has been on the annual calendar of many mainline Protestant churches in the United States. Held on a Sunday near Oct. 31, it commemorates Martin Luther's protest against the Roman Catholic Church. Often its observance has been a way in which Protestants distinguished themselves from Roman Catholics.

Voices

Thanksgiving 2000

Grace and gratitude lie at the heart of Christian faith. Yet their meaning is far from selfÐevident. This has become clear to me, year after year, in teaching seminary and divinity students, for whom the most basic aspects of the gospel are sometimes as difficult as a foreign language. The difficulties in understanding grace extend, however, beyond the classroom, as should be clear to anyone who has focused carefully and critically upon the divisive debates that have strewn their wreckage over the life of the church in recent times. So then, what is the meaning and substance of grace?

Editorials

Life

In recent issues, the topic of Jesus Christ has been addressed in this column: Who is he? What has he done for us and our salvation? The claim has been put forward that this is the decisive question facing the church today.

Editorials

The Issue

Who is Jesus Christ? is the central issue facing the church today, or so I have claimed in the last four columns of this series titled "An Apology," "A Testimony," "Confession" and "Life." This claim has been related to Scripture, the gospel and the Christian life. This final part relates the claim to the issues that so deeply divide the church today and whose resolution seems nowhere to be in sight.

Editorials

Confession

In the Oct. 9 issue the claim was made that Christology is the most important issue facing today's church. In the Oct. 16 issue a companion claim was made that our understanding of the authority of Scripture and its role in the life of the Christian community is critical since it is primarily through Scripture, aided by the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, that we know who Jesus is for us and the world.

Voices

St. Paul and The God Poseidon

Marrying, as I did, a gorgeous redhead (there being no other kind) includes automatic induction into the League of Timid Men.  This explains why I did not object when my lady wife announced that she was going to learn to ski so she could join our grown children on the snowy mountains.  Actually, I was delighted to hear this decision since she had been contemplating learning to hang glide.

Voices

The Need for Good Neighbors

Present at this year's General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was Roy Sanderson, our oldest surviving General Assembly moderator. When I asked this sprightly 93-year-old what he was doing these days, he told me he was taking a computer class at a college in East Lothian. I was full of admiration.

Editorials

A Testimony

Christology -- the church's doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ -- underlies many, if not most, of the controversies facing the church today. That was the claim made last week in this column.

How is this so?

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