A comment by Barbara Kellam-Scott, member of the Witherspoon Executive Committee

[1-28-03]

If we didn't have a constitutional crisis before, it would seem one was created by the petition spearheaded by Elder Alex Metherell with his call for a special meeting of the 214th General Assembly. Although that call has failed through the process of verifying the signatures, the demand that the church focus its attention on the concerns of one portion of the church will profoundly affect our life together in the Body of Christ.

We cannot go back to a time before an officer of our church, traveling from California to Louisville with a prepared portfolio of petitions, alerted the Associated Press of his intention before he informed the General Assembly Council's executive committee and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly, whose joint meeting he was about to disrupt. We cannot go back to a time before that same officer inserted himself into the stated meeting of a neighboring presbytery to confront the General Assembly moderator, who had been invited by that presbytery, with a written threat of civil suit if the officer did not get his way. [See "More salvos fired in Special Assembly battle: Petitioner threatens lawsuit; former moderators decry treatment of moderator," release 03046 from Presbyterian News Service, 1/24/03] We cannot go back to a time before a moderator of the General Assembly felt compelled to plead with commissioners not to impose an extraordinary half-million-dollar burden on the straining finances of the denomination to throw a meeting together less than 2 weeks before the convening of the next Assembly.

What can have brought decent, orderly Presbyterians to such personalized tactics? It is apparently a frustration with the very decency and order of our connectional system. The "petition" that Metherell circulated has no definition in our constitutional standards, and it contains no orderly presentation of business for a special assembly -- no overture from another governing body, no motion to reconsider a specific action of the Stated Meeting of the Assembly. The petition's three complaints, however, and Metherell's threat of civil action against Moderator Fahed Abu-Akel, charge other governing bodies with neglect in enforcing constitutional standards. They seek to somehow, without changing those standards, arrogate to the General Assembly the constitutional responsibilities of the governing bodies that commission the decision-makers of a General Assembly.

Perhaps the real frustration expressed in these extraordinary acts is with the failure of a piece of legislation to impose a particular view of the Gospel, as once for all received, on those who find that legislation a scandal to the Gospel. It might have been supposed that the presbyteries' ratification of amendment 98-B would have closed the issue of ordained service by certain classes of "sinners." But people in those classes appear to continue to hear a call to serve, and a call to community in the flawed institution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Those who thought they had "won" and closed the issue are understandably frustrated. So are those who hear those calls and are driven by those calls to stand firm before the condemnation of their brothers and sisters in Christ, and those who support the called.

What is less understandable is how we express our mutual frustrations. One side tends to speak of "justice," the other of "righteousness." One tends to lift up individual cases and to point to tolerance of these behaviors by the wider world that exceeds the tolerance of the church. The other side tends to be more concerned that the church stay within the boundaries they perceive God has set down, and that it impose those rules on its members. How individuals' ecclesiastically determined lives fit into the world or how the church fits into a world that is unavoidably pluralistic often appears to be of very little interest. They tend to define "mission" as drawing the world into the existing church, while the other side understands mission as reaching out to the world -- mission as proclamation or mission as service.

What is probably most false, and most provocative of frustration on both sides, is setting these principles in opposition to each other. Justice is meaningless without a concept of our own righteousness as an expression of God's will as we can discern it. The purpose of mission as service is, in the end, proclamation -- sharing the good news that we have heard. We should not look for a resolution of our differences. God has already resolved them, in reconciling the world to godself in Christ. And we have discerned God's call to an institution in which neither the General Assembly nor any other governing body is constituted as a "magisterium" with power to impose on the rest of us one view of what God would have us be and do. We are called to struggle, together. We are called to see our peace and unity in the purity of God's love for us, all of us. We are called to love one another as God has loved us, as God so loved the world.

We will bear scars from this struggle. But we must touch each other's wounds and turn our attention from blame-laying for the wounds to binding them up. We must become so close that when one weeps, the other tastes salt.

[1-28-03]

The Board of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, meeting in Chicago on January 27-28, 2003, issued the following statement:

In the controversies of recent weeks, the Moderator of the General Assembly and other church officials have come under unprecedented pressure. The Board of the Covenant Network honors the office of Moderator and affirms its respect for the extraordinary person who now holds that office. A chief strength of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is the principles of church order that long have guided Presbyterians in our life together. The Covenant Network urges the whole church to abide by those principles and to remember that "the organization rests upon the fellowship and is not designed to work without trust and love" (G-7.0103).

The Covenant Network remains committed to its goals: (1) to remove any impediment to the full participation of gay and lesbian Presbyterians in the life of the church and (2) to preserve and strengthen the unity of the church.

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