So, says Kirkpatrick, "as it turns out ... the threat of schism has been, as Mark Twain said of obituaries announcing his death, greatly exaggerated."

The author is the Ellsworth Morton Tracy Lecturer and a professor of religion at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut.

Witherspoon Issues Analyst wrote an article back in January, considering what the Episcopal Church experience might mean for the Presbyterian Church.

Hello Doug,

So I 'm catching up with the Witherspoon page and read the one liner jokes and enjoyed them.

And got to thinking about the articles about splitting - or not - and the Episcopalians and new groups and for some reason an old joke came to mind...

How to porcupines hug and kiss? .... very carefully.

Perhaps that childhood joke applies to how we come together with others with whom we are not currently understanding. I mean we are the same 'species' so to speak and we are together in this adventure of being Presbyterian in 2004 in THIS particular time and world. And most people I know - think life is short and precious and there is lots to be done for God right now... So perhaps we should take a lesson from this joke and be careful with one another. And if we were - and are - maybe we would want to 'hug and kiss' more with those we've stayed away from for too long...

Just a thought... enjoy...

Once again, appreciation for your work from someone who agrees with you on relatively little. Gene TeSelle's piece was thoughtful and a valuable addition to the conversation--though I must admit I found the prospect he raises so depressing that it was a while before I was willing to read it.

There is a crucial difference between the Presbyterian situation and that of the ECUSA: namely, the ECUSA is part of a worldwide denomination, and we aren't. This is crucial because separation along theological lines is a concession of defeat in the battle to maintain unity, and as such is de facto schism; it would only teach us to live and work apart from each other, not to live and work together, and could only lead to de jure schism in the end. For Episcopalians, this matters less, because both groups would still be Anglican and still under the authority of, and in communion with, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus would still be connected to each other as parts of a greater whole. We wouldn't have that connection, only two separate and far more uniform Presbyterian denominations whose sense of their own rightness would be free to flourish unchecked.

It seems to me that the greatest problem we have as regards unity isn't our differences, as great as they may be, but the way we handle them. Specifically, it's that too many of us in this denomination--and by this I mean both liberals and conservatives--don't love our enemies (or respect them, or give them credit for their virtues). I'll certainly grant that loving your enemies doesn't necessarily mean being nice to them (was Jesus nice to the scribes and Pharisees?), but it does mean a whole host of other things which, by and large, we aren't doing in the PCUSA; and I think this is the root of much of the stress to which Mr. TeSelle refers. For the likes of Jack Harrison to admit and accept that the root of most conservative opposition to same-sex marriage and the ordination of homosexuals isn't hatred of gays and lesbians, and for the folk who applaud The Layman to realize and concede that most liberal support of those same things is based out of a sincere desire to serve homosexual people, would I think do a great deal to dial down tensions in this denomination. Yes, we disagree; yes, those disagreements are permanent; and no, I don't agree with Mr. TeSelle that eventually the left is going to win, which means we'll probably all be stuck in our trenches for a long while on these issues (unless, of course, one side or the other quits); but none of these things doom us to communication by bullet. A little love for those in the other trench, a little humility regarding our own sense of our own rightness, and a little willingness to accept being "reasonably unhappy" (to steal a phrase from one of Thomas Friedman's recent columns on Iraq), and I think we'll find we can live together after all.

Hesed ve-shalom,

Rev. Rob Harrison
Pastor, Trinity Church in the Pines
Grand Lake, CO

He added this comment on January 22, responding to Doug Nave's response to Casey Jones.

And my thanks once again for your kind words. I was struck, as I went back to see what other comments had been made, by Doug Nave's response, which I think misreads Rev. Winfield Casey Jones. It seemed to me that Rev. Jones' point wasn't "that G-6.0106b does not permit ordained service by persons in a same-sex relationship because that rule is not a statement of theology but is, rather, a clear polity standard requiring celibacy of unmarried persons," but rather the simpler point that, because this particular theological rule is enshrined in our polity and thus clearly defined (as well as being a particular theological boundary which has, uncharacteristically, been quite clearly defined, courtesy of the Authoritative Interpretation), there is little room for diversity of interpretation on this point. It seems to me that Rev. Jones understands quite as well as Mr. Nave that "our polity is grounded in our theology," and thus that the either-or between "a statement of theology" and "a clear polity standard" is a false one.

Hesed veshalom,

The Rev. Winfield Casey Jones has sent another contribution to the discussion arising from Gene TeSelle’s essay on learning from “the Anglican dilemma” about how we might live together as one Presbyterian church.    [1-23-04]

Response to Gene TeSelle and Doug Nave

I am grateful to the Witherspoon website for posting my earlier article, and I am glad for the thoughtful replies of Gene TeSelle and Doug Nave to my original response to Gene’s article posted 1-15-04..  However Gene summarized my thought in one way which I cannot quite agree with, and Doug’s comments perhaps go to the same point.

 Gene wrote: “What is especially interesting is that Casey agrees with the non-fundamentalists in the Presbyterian tradition who emphasize the responsibility of the governing body in determining fitness for ordination or installation.” That is at least partly right, but I think the governing body’s responsibility has to be exercised within broad, denominationally-defined parameters. So while I do think that the governing body’s responsibility for examination needs emphasis, I also think that certain broad standards need to be set at the denominational level. This means I would come closer to seeing the GA decision of the twenties not as a final irreformable word, but as part of a continuing dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. I believe some correction is needed now in response to the decision in the twenties to throw out any and all denomination-wide theological essentials. Of course that decision itself was in response to the adoption of very restrictive essentials (the five fundamentals) in the  first decade of the nineteen hundreds. I agree with Lefferts Loetscher of Princeton who wrote in the nineteen fifties about what had happened in the twenties:  

“But in sweeping away at a stroke of interpretation much of the previously exercised power of the General Assembly to define and thus to preserve the Church’s doctrine,  the commission established a principle which has much broader implications than the Church has yet had occasion to draw from it. If the Church has no means of authoritatively defining its faith short of the amending process…ecclesiastical power is seriously hindered for  the future from preventing more radical theological innovations than those discussed in the five points. .”    Lefferts Loetscher, Broadening Church, p.135, quoted in Bradley  Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy, p. 234. 

I would say to Gene that if the GA could adopt a moderate and centrist understanding of essentials tenets, similar to what Bradley Longfield, on the last page of his thoughtful book mentioned above,  calls “ a normative, middle theological position with clear boundaries,” two things could happen: 1. There could still be, as I suggested earlier, a  fairly  wide latitude for interpretation in presbyteries. For example a “trinitarian” statement accepted in one presbytery might not be accepted in another.   2. Some of the perhaps over-zealous attempts to define local theological standards for officers, to which Gene objects, would be less likely to occur once the theological vacuum concerning theological beliefs for officers at the denominational level was somewhat filled.

Secondly, in his response to me, Doug Nave raises interesting questions about the relationship between polity and theology. He rightly points out that, for example, equality of the races is affirmed in our confessions, and that this theological affirmation would probably trump a hypothetical polity provision which restricted persons based on race. This is an interesting and important observation but I feel it neglects some realities of how our church functions.

1. First of all since our Book of Order is easier to amend than our Book of Confessions, and since, as Doug points out, both documents contain theology, it is difficult to imagine that a church would affirm that all races are equal in its confessions while failing to do so in its easier-to-amend Book of Order, and in fact this did not happen—Doug’s example is hypothetical.

2. The truth is, again contrary to Doug’s hypothetical analogy about race, that as to sexuality, our confessions do contain some statements which argue that homosexual practice is sin, while they lack any statements that it is not. While I do not think that these theological statements are prevalent enough in the eleven confessional documents to be anywhere near “essential tenets,” they still are there, and so the interesting hypothetical conflict between theology and polity which Doug mentions is not present in this case.

3. Finally Doug’s words in his analogy about race raise interesting questions. He     wrote: “However, the PCUSA has embraced the equality of all races as a confessional matter, and our judicatories almost certainly would rule that any standard discriminating against interracial marriage is unacceptable, as a doctrinal matter, because it perpetuates the notion that one race is superior to, or at risk of ‘pollution’ from, another.”    This analogy raises the question of how far “local option” can go in the face of perceived moral absolutes.  In the November 12, 2001 Presbyterian Outlook, Doug wrote an article entitled, “‘Discretion to Ordain’ will Not Become a ‘Requirement to Ordain.’” But using his own civil right analogy, since perceived moral absolutes are at stake in the gay issue, it is difficult to imagine a hypothetical future church, convinced of the rightness of the freedom to choose homosexual practice for its officers, allowing for long that right to be abrogated in certain sections of the church. Since perceived moral absolutes are at stake, a church deciding to allow officers to be in committed same-sex unions might well decide no one could refuse such officers, just as a United States, increasingly sensitized to the rights of African Americans, eventually decided against rights of states to deny these personal freedoms.  I believe this is the reason that theological conservatives today oppose local option for the other side—because we perceive this to be a moral issue which must be resolved one way or the other.

This brings us back to the issue which Gene and I were discussing. I think that there must be denominational standards both for polity and for theology, and local option and local decision, while very good, must operate within understood boundaries at the national level.

Winfield Casey Jones, D. Min

Click here for Nave's earlier comments.

Thanks to Rev. Jones for his response to my posting. We clearly disagree on some issues of importance, but I appreciate the spirit and thoughtfulness of his comments. Let me respond briefly to each of his three points:

1. Rev. Jones suggests that my hypothetical is unrealistic, because the church readily could amend the Book of Order if it chose to amend the Confessions. However, my example was not meant to suggest otherwise. Rather, it was to show that a Book of Order provision relating to one's conduct is not necessarily a simple polity standard. I take from Rev. Jones' comment that we are in agreement here.

2. Rev. Jones notes that the Confessions "contain some statements which argue that homosexual practice is sin, while they lack any statements that it is not." With all respect, I don't think that really tells us much. The two, very brief confessional passages that some cite as prohibitions of same-sex relationships are open to many interpretations. They do not support a blanket rule. For example, condemning "homosexual perversion" no more prohibits all same-sex relationships than a condemnation of "heterosexual perversion" would prohibit all heterosexual relationships. Likewise, while we did not explicitly address racial discrimination as a confessional matter until we adopted the Confession of 1967, that does not mean that many Presbyterians acted rightly in supporting slavery and segregation over centuries before that. We may go tragically wrong in reading too much into silence.

3. Finally, Rev. Jones expresses concern that lifting our current prohibition could lead to a requirement that we ordain persons in same-sex relationships. I believe that such a concern is misplaced. We clearly do not prevent interracially married persons, as a class, from serving in ordained office. However, that does not mean that we must ordain everyone who is in an interracial marriage. When the question turns to how individuals choose to live their lives, much lies -- as it always has -- in the discernment of local governing bodies.

If Rev. Jones or others wish to comment further, I will follow this discussion with interest (but I will be traveling heavily over the next several weeks and likely unable to participate, so silence doesn't signal assent!). Many thanks to all for the commitment to thoughtful consideration and dialogue across our differences that is evidenced in these postings.