| Tipping point |
| Written by Jack Haberer, Outlook Editor |
| Tuesday, 26 June 2012 17:32 |
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The commissioners and delegates need our prayers. They are feeling the weight of a load we are asking them to shoulder during what could turn out to be a week of historic proportions — the gathering of the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Pittsburgh. That weight is quantified in a letter to the editor (Page 2) written by church historian Richard Lovelace. In his words, the PC(USA) may be reaching a tipping point. My words, almost exactly. Ours is not the first denomination to reach a tipping point in recent decades. In 1990, after years of election setbacks, the defeat of Daniel Vestal for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention signaled total loss for the moderates in his denomination. The fundamentalist takeover was complete. The moderates were left with little choice but to submit to outlier minority status in the SBC or start something new. They organized the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Although several openly gay and lesbian persons had been serving as priests, it was the 2003 ratification by the General Convention of Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest, to become Bishop of New Hampshire that tipped the Episcopal Church (U.S.A.). An “Anglican realignment” resulted as the Anglican Church in North America was formed out of 700 departing ECUSA churches, including four whole dioceses. Ecclesiastical wars and rumors thereof reverberate through our denominational family, and they all shout, “Tipping point!” That is the right term. I’d amend Lovelace’s comment by saying the tipping point has befallen us already. All that remains to be determined is the extent of change to which it will lead. The tipping began last year with the ratification of Amendment 10-A, which lifted the categorical exclusion from ordination of all persons sexually active outside the covenant of heterosexual marriage. Then followed the launch of two new presbyteries by A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (ECO) at its January 2012 gathering. The resulting acceleration of congregational departures to both ECO and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church pretty much guarantees that we are now in the midst of the largest division of the denomination since the Civil War. What can we do? What Presbyterians denomination-wide need to do is pray. And how shall we pray? First, we can pray that the commissioners will listen well to voices long silenced. At the GA many unfamiliar voices will plead for their attention. Some will don bumper stickers, placards, campaign buttons. Other will whisper. All those voices deserve a hearing. However, the commissioners also will need to listen for other voices: those of their far-away and long-ago Sunday school teachers. The voices of their grandmothers and grandchildren. Most especially the voice of the one they hear best in times of prayer. Listening to the voice of God won’t come easily amid the convention-style cacophony. Second, we can pray that the commissioners find the courage of the prophet, the serenity of the monk or nun and the wisdom of the sage. Some matters require the church to speak up with a ferocious boldness. We cannot rationalize the injustices of tyrants or sins of infidels — especially if we can take effective action to counter them. Then again, some topics have been exhausted with words, words, words; they beg for us to take a speech Sabbath, so that we may listen to the Spirit who often speaks in groanings that cannot be uttered. The odds against 688 commissioners and 221 advisory delegates being able to discern in wisdom when to speak and when to keep silent may seem insurmountable, but prayer invades the impossible. Finally, we can pray that by God’s grace this tipping point will not reach a point of no return. Both the SBC and the ECUSA are impoverished by the vanquishing of their opponents. The resulting lack of contrariness in leadership strips them of those white corpuscles that expose and counterattack toxins that sneak into their beliefs and practices. Unpleasant as are some of our exchanges in Presbyworld, they beat having one-party leadership. We have entered a historic, tipping-point season. For that, and for those who will lead, let us pray. —JHH
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 June 2012 18:13 |
Comments
Continuing as a broken record, I think saying Kenyon is going to happen again is prognosticating at best at this point. Those fellow evangelicals who come to a different exegetical conclusion than I do on homosexuality, are reacting in ways that are disappointing not because of theology but because of revisionist history or paranoia on this point.
As to the freedom question, there is more freedom today in the PCUSA to come to a variety of conclusions on what is faithful to God's Word on homosexuality than there was 15 years ago. A more solid argument would be to actually take issue with "creeping freedom of conscience" in our denomination. That's more true to the facts on the ground and holds more water even if I am a fan of that freedom of conscience and believe it to be the way forward that is embraced by the middle 70% of our denomination.
I think what is feared by my friends who simply have a different opinion on what God's word leads us to believe and do is an imagined knee-jerk reaction that would seek to retaliate for those years of policy enforcement from 1997-2011. Please correct me if I am wrong. Yes, there are those who may behave that way but I, for one, will stand up for those who disagree with me to choose their pastors and who they marry with freedom of conscience and practice. I will stand up for you to teach what you believe to be faithful exegesis (as long as you are doing exegesis) on this point. I will, however, expect the same in return. Yes, that may be asking a lot of some but I don't think it is unreasonable or uncharitable and, frankly, I believe it is quite Reformed.
As for the exclusion of those against gay ordination being far-fetched, your words echo the very sentiment that makes it possible: "But, let's remember, ordaining women [or now, gays] is the right thing." Well, Kyle, that's what all the hullabuloo is about: What is right? Until we agree on that, there's no unity. Not really.
Granted, perception is the reality we have to deal with but I think if you look at the PCUSA over the latter quarter century, you'd have to say that the movement has been toward conservative privilege, not liberal. Remember that 1991 Report on Human Sexuality? I pulled that up the other day. I can't imagine our denomination producing that document in any corner today (take another look, you'll be surprised that ever passed a committee!!). The movement after that to G-6.0106b of the former Book of Order was a conservative movement at the time. For 14 years the conservative wing of our church has had constitutionall y mandated privilege and used the Book of Discipline to enforce it. And, what has happened with 10-A is nothing but a removal of that privilege. No constitutionall y mandated privilege for the progressive wing of our church has taken its place. The church has not mandated anything. Instead, we have come out of denial and come to acknowledge diversity exists in our church.
Also any comparisons to a "Kenyon future" are ghosthunting at best. I find the Kenyon assertion though to be completely unfounded and unfair toward the church at this point and time. Sure, it happened and probably was not the most charitable way to implement the right thing with our churches who didn't want to come along on women's ordination. But, let's remember, ordaining women is the right thing.
I really believe what has happened is a loss of perspective that 10-A actually opens a door for a future where everyone exists in covenant and moves on in mission and ministry. What I worry most about for our church is not that we are approaching doomsday or may be but rather the fact that we are a people who never speak of hope and possibility and opportunity anymore.
I agree we should not be a church where opponents are vanquished. We also cannot be a church where minorities viewpoints play victim. Everyone has to show up to community or we have no chance. I'll die by that sword I'm so convinced of it. Schism, Schism with a foot still in the door, or non-geographic presbyteries all speak to a generation of Americans who still want to take their toys and go do their own thing or want to enable that nonsense.
Hooray for the young evangelicals! Hooray for the Next Church! Listen to them. They aren't pouting! They are leading! They are moving on. Meanwhile, there will probably be a spot for the Pouting Presbyterians somewhere. As was true in childhood if anyone ever tried that tact, that will be a lonely place in the end.
To borrow a phrase from the hay-day of religious liberalism, "no justice, no peace". That road runs in both directions.
For some, the tipping point was reached when the Presbyterian Church (USA) started to worship the goddess Sophia. For others, the tipping point was reached when homosexuals were ordained, for others the tipping point will be reached when the PCUSA endorses same-sex marriage. All of these decisions are directly contrary to the teachings of Scripture.
The PCUSA lost 3,2% of its membership in 2012. This is only the latest in a long string of heavy losses year after year. The PCUSA now has lost more than 1/2 of its membership. For most, the tipping point was reached years ago.
The PCUSA must now learn how to be a much smaller and less significant splinter denomination.
Despite these irreconcilable differences, moderates insist on peace-at-any-cost and so go with whichever side is winning because they care more about peace and unity than taking a stand either way. Their attitude in the crisis recalls Yate's "Second Coming": "The best lack all conviction, while the worst//Are full of passionate intensity." But who knows? The passionate ones may be right. Half of them, anyway.
Yes, let us pray. But I am beginning to think that praying for denominational unity is not the only or even the wisest prayer. We have no unity. Let us pray for the wisdom on how to follow God's leading on what to do with our already broken churches so that we may preach our separate gospels with clarity, conviction, and love, even towards those with whom we disagree.
Now, the SBC in the last decade or so has banned egalitarians from its leadership in seminaries and churches. However, the PCUSA has been equally exclusive against complementarian s since the Kenyon case in 1975, in which those opposed to women's ordination (even if they agreed to work with ordained women) were banned from ordination in our churches (then the UPCUSA). If the SBC has been "impoverished" by banning egalitarians for about one decade, have we not also been impoverished by banning complementarian s - albeit ones who will work with women colleagues - for nearly four decades?
In any case, once the conservative position regarding women's ordination became optional, it soon became prohibited. The fundamentalist position suffered the same fate after the fundamentalist/modernist split in the 1920s. Hence the concern today of those with a conservative position on sexuality: now it is optional; all the talk about unity aside, it seems only a matter of time before it is prohibited. We end up all one way or all the other: either fundamentalist or modernist, egalitarian or complementarian , pro-gay marriage or anti-gay marriage. Right or wrong, that's seems to be where we're headed, whether we like it or not.
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