"The Spirit gives us
courage"
Address by the Rev. Dr. Jack Rogers
Witherspoon Society Award Dinner
215th General Assembly
May 27, 2003
[5-28-03]
I am deeply grateful for the Andrew Murray Award and for the faithful
witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ that the Witherspoon Society
continues to give.
I had thought that I would have a little fun by speaking
to you tonight about the seeming paradox in having a theological
conservative, like John Witherspoon, as the namesake for a progressive
social justice advocacy group. But, alas, the Presbyterian Layman
website beat me to it. The article was a criticism of the Witherspoon
Society's resistance to America's preemptive war with Iraq. That was
followed by a letter to the editor which began, "There is indeed a
profound irony in the fact that one of the most radically leftist groups
in the PCUSA has named itself after John Witherspoon." As usual with the
Presbyterian Layman, they dealt with only one aspect of the
story, and they got it only partly right!
The Layman's basic stance has always been that
the church should not be involved in political matters. If we interpret
their meaning from the positions they take, however, it would seem clear
that they mean the church should only be involved on the conservative
republican side of political matters. During democratic administrations we
hear only criticism if the church supports government policy. Now we hear
criticism of the church for not supporting government policy. That is
characteristic of American fundamentalists since they turned to politics
with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
My good friend, and former colleague at Fuller Seminary,
Mel White, is now the Executive Director of Soulforce, an organization
that advocates for equal rights of gay and lesbian persons in the
churches. Mel made his living for some years as a ghost writer. During
that time he wrote Jerry Falwell's autobiography, as well as books for Pat
Robertson and Billy Graham. Since Mel came out as a gay man, none of these
conservative Christian leaders will have anything to do with their former
friend. So, Mel and his partner, Gary, lived for over six months in a
cottage they rented across the street from Falwell's fundamentalist
Baptist church in Lynchburg, Virginia. On Sunday mornings they sit in the
fifth row of the sanctuary smiling up at Falwell. In a recent newsletter,
Mel reported that Falwell announced to the congregation the he (Falwell),
James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and other Fundamentalist leaders were called
to the White House for a "Presidential Briefing." Quoting Romans 13, Jerry
claimed that Mr. Bush was "God's man" and that to disagree with the
President is to "risk the wrath of God."1
In light of Falwell's comment I was especially pleased
to come across a quote from a Dutch Reformed Christian, our 26th President
Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt said: "To announce that there must be no
criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President,
right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally
treasonable to the American public."2
America's recent war in Iraq has not only divided our
country politically, but also religiously. Religious fundamentalists
proclaim the war as moral and just and according to God's will. All of the
institutional churches, except the Southern Baptists, have denounced a
preemptive strike against another sovereign country without a United
Nations mandate, said that it failed to meet the criteria of just war,
and decried Bush's use of religious language to justify it. We may see
some of the same division in this General Assembly as various advocacy
groups attack our denomination's position.
We would be unwise to see this as a division between
liberals and evangelicals. The media tend to lump fundamentalists and
evangelicals together. They further assume that all evangelicals hold
conservative political positions. That is a mistake. Fundamentalists are
the militant fringe of conservatism. Evangelicals is one name for the
broad middle of the church _ persons who have a commitment to Christ as
savior and sovereign, who look to the Bible as their authority for how to
be rightly related to God and their neighbor, and who want to share and
live out the full message of the Scripture. Twenty-eight years ago, I
wrote a book entitled, Confessions of a Conservative Evangelical.
In it, I said, that an "unbiblical assumption is that those in authority
are always to be obeyed as instruments of God. Christians often isolate
Rom., ch. 13 and take it out of the context of the whole of Scripture.
According to one of the main themes of Scripture, however, to make any
person or thing absolute except God himself (sic.) is idolatry. ‘Israel –
love it or Leave It’ was certainly not a slogan the prophets could have
accepted. Because they loved their nation and their people they were
constantly criticizing them and calling them to repentance. Jesus’
disciples were acutely aware that conflicts could arise between allegiance
to God and loyalty to earthly authorities. When such conflicts occurred,
the disciples found it necessary to obey God rather than men (Acts 4:19;
7:51-53; 12:6-11)."3 I believed that when I
wrote it as a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary nearly 3
decades ago. I still believe it today. The only things I would change
would be to eliminate the masculine pronoun with regard to God and to
refer to people, rather than just men.
To be evangelical is to seek to hear and obey the whole
Gospel. When
Jesus, "filled with the power of the Spirit" returned to his home town of
Nazareth he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and read from the
scroll of the prophet Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to
proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to
let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." When
he rolled up the scroll and returned it to the attendant he said: "Today
this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." The obligations of
service that Jesus took upon himself he has also bequeathed to us.
The Presbyterian Layman and other conservative
groups may wish to claim the Bible, patriotism, and John Witherspoon, but
they are not theirs exclusively. John Witherspoon disagreed with the
Layman in the most fundamental principle of its stance. He believed
that the church should be involved in social and political affairs. He was
involved as an individual, but he also called the church as an institution
to be at work in society.
One of Witherspoon's first acts, leading toward the
American revolution, was on behalf of the institutional church. After the
Minutemen were fired on in 1774, he headed a committee of the Synod of New
York and Philadelphia, and on their behalf wrote a letter, giving
ministers permission to speak regarding the revolution.
In 1776, when John Witherspoon signed the Declaration of
Independence, he wore his Geneva gown and preaching tabs. He was always
clear that he represented the church, as a minister of the gospel. He
continued to wear his clerical garb as a member of the Continental
Congress from 1776 to 1782.
Witherspoon stood astride the gulf that some wanted to
create between individual and social action, between piety and learning,
between individual conscience and institutional commitment. He had one
foot firmly planted on each side of these divides.
Before Witherspoon's arrival in the United States,
American Presbyterianism had been deeply divided between the New Side
which stressed the importance of personal religious experience and the Old
Side which insisted on an intellectual understanding of the doctrines in
the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. Witherspoon never
hinted that he had had a New Side conversion experience. He held that
one's conversion would show in one's character. Apparently his character
convinced the New Side people of his piety. At the same time, his Scottish
education, including a doctor's degree in theology, reassured the Old Side
people as to his learning. One trustee of the College of New Jersey wrote
to Witherspoon that his coming as President would "effectually make up the
ancient quarrel among the Presbyterians here."
4
As an educator, Witherspoon balanced the values of the
church and the academy. He said: "Piety without learning is but little
profitable and learning without piety is pernicious to others and ruinous
to its possessor."
Committed as he was to the well-being of the College in
Princeton of which he was President, he could allow the students freedom
to exercise their consciences. After the Boston Tea Party the students
confiscated and burned the college's winter supply of tea. The Trustees
found the act "unwarrantable and riotous." Witherspoon remained calm and
supported the students.5
Witherspoon made his mark, not only as a patriot, but as
a Presbyterian. In 1786, Witherspoon chaired a committee to develop a book
of order and discipline. Perhaps, when he saw that the Scottish model of
authority from the top down would not prevail, he dropped from the
committee. The first Book of Order, in 1788, is more the work of
Dr. John Rodgers. However, John Witherspoon did write a short preface to
the Plan of Government which is still in our Book of Order,
beginning with the statement from the Westminster Confession that God
alone is Lord of the conscience.6 In May of 1789, Witherspoon
was the preacher and acted as moderator until the General Assembly elected
John Rodgers as its first American Moderator.
I have spent most of my adult life studying the history
of biblical interpretation and our Reformed confessions. I had the great
privilege to serve on the Special Committee that drafted "A Brief
Statement of Faith" that we adopted into our Book of Confessions
in 1991. The biblical balance that Witherspoon exemplified and that we all
need and seek is for me summed up in these lines from a Brief Statement.
The first phrase I took as the title of my remarks tonight.
"The Spirit gives us courage
to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples
to Christ as Lord and savior,
to unmask idolatries in Church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and
peace."7
I am deeply honored to receive the Andrew Murray Award
from a group whose statement of purpose reflects our biblical and
confessional sense of mission and calling. "Listening and learning from
others, engaging the church and the world God loves, we witness, through
demonstration and proclamation, to the whole gospel of God's radical
love." May you, consistent with the character of your namesake, John
Witherspoon, continue to uphold liberty of conscience, justice and love
for all of God's people, because that is what the Gospel proclaims.
Jack Rogers, May 27, 2003
References
1
Soulforce letter (Lynchburg, VA: Soulforce,
Inc., Spring, 2003), p.2.
2
Serving Together (Pasadena: Southern
California Ecumenical Council, May 2003), Vol. 4, No. 1, p.1.
3
Jack Rogers, Confessions of a Conservative
Evangelical, Second Edition (Louisville: Geneva Press, 2001), pp.
110-111.
4
Cited in Martha Lou Lemmon Stohlman, John
Witherspoon: Parson, Politician, Patriot (Philadelphia: The
Westminster Press, 1976), p. 66.
5
Cited in Stohhman, p. 98.
6
Douglas Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment and the
American College Ideal (New York: Teachers College Press, 1971), p.
142, "Witherspoon adhered to the position on religious freedom set forth
in the Adopting Act of 1729."
7
The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Part I: Book of
Confessions. 10.4, ll. 66-71.
