A new "Auburn"?

Minister calls for church progressives to issue another 'Auburn Affirmation'

Downtown Church minister wants liberals to say, 'This isn't Presbyterian'

by Alexa Smith, PNS

For related material ....

Web site created on Auburn Affirmation

The recently established Silicon Valley chapter of the Witherspoon Society has been busy, among other things discussing the Auburn Affirmation of 1923 as a possible framework for dealing responsibly with present tensions in the Presbyterian Church.

The chapter's purposes in this effort are described as:

To safeguard the unity and liberty of the PCUSA

To faithfully raise questions about the church enacting G6.0106b in the Book of Order

To express concern over persistent attempts to divide the church and abridge its freedom

To recognize that our church is broad enough to include people of differing interpretation of our common standards who are nevertheless faithful followers of Jesus and committed to working for the great ends of the church

The site provides helpful links to a variety of background papers, the Affirmation itself, and more.

[3-6-01]

David Bos responds to criticism by the Rev. Ron Scates, on PresbyWeb, that in urging a new "Auburn Affirmation," he has neglected the document itself.
For the full correspondence, check PresbyWeb. [2-24-01]

LATE UPDATE: A group will gather in Baltimore over the weekend of February 9-11, 2001, to consider a possible rewrite of the Auburn Affirmation.

Click here for a comment from Semper Reformanda

Deborah Milam Berkley, of 1st Presbyterian Church, Bellevue, WA, has sent a note asking for "evidence" to back up some of the statements made by the Rev. David Bos in his sermon proposing a conference to consider a new "Auburn Declaration."

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- September 19, 2000 -- A minister in Rochester, N.Y., has called for a convocation to reclaim the Presbyterian Church (USA) "for the principles and the person, Jesus Christ, on which it was founded."

Click here to read David Bos' sermon on "Reclaiming the Church"

The gathering would be held in Auburn, N.Y., the site of historic conference in the 1920s that rallied the denomination's progressives against a fundamentalist faction that had defined Presbyterian orthodoxy by five doctrinal tenets.

Click here for the text of the Auburn Declaration

Another "Auburn Affirmation" is overdue, the Rev. David Bos, interim pastor, told the members of the Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester.

The Affirmation, written in 1923, argued that the Presbyterian church must "safeguard liberty of thought and teaching among its ministers" -- and that the vows they take at ordination do so sufficiently, without requiring subscription to other particular doctrines.

The Auburn Affirmation adhered to the principles of freedom of conscience, liberty of expression and freedom to disagree within broad principles -- which runs counter to any attempt to use selected statements as a test for ordination or other church service.

"It is time for another Affirmation such as this," Bos said from the pulpit of the Downtown Church, which has been in the midst of the fray for the ordination of gays and lesbians for a decade, and came to national attention when it tried to call an openly lesbian minister as its pastor.

"It is time to reclaim our church from those who would hold it captive to a certain ecclesiastical and political agenda. It is time to rescue the church from those who would impose an unseemly uniformity upon it. It is time to restore the liberty that is our rightful legacy of the Reformation. It is time to let the Holy Spirit speak through the scriptures and through other means as well.

"One of those means," he said, "might be a convocation to be held in Auburn, N.Y., following shortly upon the General Assembly of 2001. I herewith propose and call for such a convocation."

Bos told the Presbyterian News Service that he was "unprepared" for the enthusiastic response his argument provoked in the Downtown Church. He said other Presbyterians outside of New York State are beginning to warm to the idea.

"A lot of people like the idea," Bos said, "and I think that something will happen."

The Auburn Affirmation was written largely by James Hastings Nichols, who was a professor of church history at Auburn Theological Seminary, which was then located in the town of Auburn in upstate New York, with the assistance of Henry Sloan Coffin of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City.

The document was a reaction to a decision reached at the 1923 General Assembly, which required the Presbytery of New York to administer a doctrinal examination of Harry Emerson Fosdick, the preacher at First Presbyterian Church, who had openly expressed doubts about the five tenets of the faith espoused by fundamentalists within the denomination, and approved by its General Assembly, in a now-famous sermon titled: "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?"

The tenets were:

The inerrancy of scripture

The virgin birth of Jesus

The substitutionary theory of the atonement

The bodily or physical resurrection of Christ

The performance of miracles by Christ.

If Fosdick failed the exam, the presbytery was to sever the ties between Fosdick and First Church.

It was then that the drafters of the Auburn Affirmation met in Syracuse, arguing that deliverances of the General Assembly are not binding because they are not part of the constitution or the confession of faith.

The presbytery exonerated Fosdick and voted to license two other pastors who had refused to affirm the virgin birth; and the subsequent Assembly refused to discipline the signers of the Affirmation or to impose the "five fundamentals" on all church employees. It also told the presbytery that Fosdick could remain in his position at First Church.

Within two years, the fundamentalists' position was defeated, and within five years, the Assembly agreed that the unity of the Presbyterian Church is based not in uniformity, but in "the power of its faith to hold together diverse views and beliefs."

Bos doesn't mince words in drawing parallels between the fundamentalists of Fosdick's day and today's conservative Presbyterians who believe that the ordination of homosexuals runs so counter to the faith that the denomination's constitution needed to be altered to say so. The principle under dispute, he says, is forcing additional requirements on church leaders beyond their ordination vows.

"The attempt of reactionary forces to use faith in God as a means to advance their agenda appears in every generation," Bos said in his sermon. "The last attempted takeover before the one that we are at this moment trying to turn back occurred in the 1920s. Then, as now, all the denominations, including our own, faced well-funded reactionary forces that appeared within their ranks and attempted to change the basic character of the denomination.

"Then, as now, there was an attempt made to purge the church of those individuals -- especially those in positions of leadership -- who did not conform to a narrow and unfounded view of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ and a member of the Christian church."

This is not the first time that the Auburn Affirmation has been trotted out by PC(USA) liberals in response to the theological and political rifts that are polarizing factions within the denomination.

On the 75th anniversary of the Auburn Affirmation, Jan. 12, 1999, Auburn Theological Seminary President Barbara Wheeler addressed the document's implications for the current political and theological stand-off.

Wheeler began: "The Presbyterian Church has adopted policies on ordination that a substantial minority of all members and a majority of those represented here -- churches of New York City Presbytery and staff, graduates and friends of Union and Auburn seminaries -- think are wrong: not only misguided, but unfaithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and therefore theologically false and damaging to the mission of God in the contemporary world."

She said the dilemma facing holders of the minority view is whether to openly defy the policies, which could lead to disciplinary charges and removal from ministry, or, rather, to work to change the policies or quietly subvert them.

She concluded that history teaches that liberals need to "take the offensive" as a political strategy and to come to the debate prepared. She noted that Nichols' statement had been written a year before it was used. Wheeler said it is critical to "convince the moderates," since the faction that wins the current debate will be the one that comes to include the "middle" of the church.

Wheeler said finally: "The gospel has real power. ... As I've suggested, those of us who want change have to be well-prepared, energetic, strategically clever and exemplary as our predecessors at the beginning of this century, but finally it is the truth, even more than our best efforts, that will set the Presbyterian Church free."

Wheeler declined to comment on Bos' proposal.

Pam Byers of the Covenant Network said the board hasn't discussed the proposal.

The co-moderator of More Light Presbyterians, Mitzi Henderson, told the PNS that it is premature for the organization to comment on Bos' idea, "other than to say that we are very much in sympathy with the substance of the concern ... that the church has departed from its Reformed roots and the broadness of its ministry."

"Barbara (Wheeler) challenged us to do something," Bos said, "and, in a way, I'm taking up that challenge." He said he wants to bring about a reclamation of the historic principles of the denomination, as the Auburn Affirmation did -- standing up for freedom of conscience and liberty of expression, and, as Bos says: "not adding onto the unadorned Gospel of Jesus Christ for the sake of getting control of the church."

Like the writers of the Auburn document, Bos says, today's church progressives must say, "This isn't Presbyterian."

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