MINNEAPOLIS — Just days after Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first African-American president, progressive Presbyterians are considering what change looks like.

Some might argue this is a good time for progressives, with Democrats prevailing in both Congress and the White House. But William Stacy Johnson, a lawyer and professor of systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary , makes a different assessment. Johnson, a white, Southern male who campaigned for Obama and is thrilled with his election, told progressive Presbyterians that “our house is still broken,” despite Obama’s victory.

Johnson gave the opening address at the annual meeting of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, being held Nov. 6-8 at Westminster Church in Minneapolis.

 The theme of this gathering, the 11th national meeting of a network of progressives working for gay ordination in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is “Covenant: God is Faithful Still.” Johnson and other speakers are exploring the idea of enduring covenant — what that means for Presbyterians still divided over homosexuality and for Christians who believe in justice for all.

Johnson, for example, spoke of the cultural shifts. He cited columnist David Brooks of The New York Times, who outlines some of these shifts: the economic bull market has collapsed; 30 years of conservative ascendancy is coming to an end; and Obama’s election shows a generational shift.

But there are still signs that “our house is broke, and only God can fix it,” Johnson said. “We’ve become so used to sin that we’ve become forgetful of the world as it ought to be.”

He gave several examples. Millions of people living on less than a dollar a day, while incredible wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. Johnson used a statistic that the top 358 billionaires have wealth exceeding that of half the world’s population. He spoke, as he has before, of his opposition to the war in Iraq and how “we as a people have pretty much looked the other way while our government began to torture people in our name.”

In Presbyterian congregations, little attention has been given to torture, Johnson said. But “all you have to do is mention sexuality, and we go nuts.”

What are we to make, he said, of a church that will “shrug its shoulders at torture? … We have become accustomed to injustice in the world, and I fear we have become accustomed to injustice in the church.”

As the Old Testament shows, God made a covenant with God’s people, Johnson said, and “God’s covenant is played out among us in the unfolding of a drama.” Some try to reduce Scripture — God’s story — to something rationalistic or relativistic.

Some use the Bible “as an argument for keeping everything the same,” Johnson said. But “when the Protestant Reformers read the Bible, the earth shook — and it still does.” Because of God’s ongoing covenant, “we have permission to envision a new and different world than the world we see around us, and it is toward this sort of re-imagining — and, yes, I did use the word — it is toward this sort of re-imagining that the church should devote its energy.”

He described God’s covenant as enduring — not something that can be frozen in one place — and Scripture as dynamic and alive. “The real truth is the ongoing play of the story to the end, and the end is not yet here,” Johnson said. “I will be your God. You will be my people. The second part has not yet been fulfilled.”

It is important for God’s people to be at work fixing the broken house, working for justice in the world and in the church, he said. If we don’t, “this hurts God,” he said. And the voice we hear saying that the house is broken won’t just be the voices of the poor and the outcast, “it will be the voice of God.”

For the most part, Johnson did not directly address the question of gay ordination.

Johnson was a member of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and said his preference would have been for the General Assembly not to have recommended a change in the denomination’s ordination standards last summer, although the assembly did vote out a proposal to delete the requirement that those being ordained practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single.

 The PC(USA)’s 173 presbyteries will vote on that over the next year; the first four presbyteries to vote have all recommended keeping the fidelity and chastity standard.

Johnson said he wanted more time “to try to be church together,” as the theological task force recommended.

In a question-and-answer session, Johnson encouraged people to look beyond ideology, and “see the people behind the issue,” both those who agree with what the assembly recommended, and those devastated by that vote.

Your Responses (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed