by Gene TeSelle, Witherspoon Issues Analyst

[11-11-02]

Some specific issues reported here include:
Dealing with G-6.0106b
Seeking theological common ground
Times of worship and preaching

The Covenant Network held its 2002 conference in Minneapolis, November 7-9. The host church was Westminster Presbyterian, whose ample facilities offered plenty of space for meals and small workshops, and whose sanctuary was the locale for both plenary addresses and four impressive services of worship with varied musical resources. While the Layman reported an attendance of 200, more than 500 were registered and fed; worship drew 750 or 800.

Fashion note: the local volunteers, who were numerous and helpful, wore rainbow scarves for easy recognition, and many people wanted them to take home. These were sewn by the mother of a Westminster member, and while we don't want to promote sweatshop exploitation of mothers, we recommend this for future conferences.

Some Witherspooners have expressed concern about the predominance of males at earlier conferences. This year there was gender parity on the platform, both in featured speakers and preachers and in other leaders in worship.

Mention was made of a number of recent deaths that diminish the church and the nation: Randy Taylor, Harry Smith, Clinton Marsh, Richard Shaull, Norm Pott, Elizabeth Achtemeier, Paul Wellstone.

One subtext of the gathering, which began two days after Election Day, was disappointment at the conservative victory nationally and in Minnesota. Since the Confession of 1967 was one of the featured topics, some participants expressed concern that the election results threaten to continue the "undoing of the Sixties" that began with the Nixon administration and "restructure" in the Presbyterian Church.

Walter Mondale is a member of Westminster Presbyterian (the congregation has plenty of Republican members, too). He had been scheduled to address the conference, but he was exhausted after the short, intense campaign. Tim Hart-Anderson recalled that Mondale had been in church the Sunday before he was designated as Wellstone's successor on the ticket, and in conversation saw the decision as a theological issue.

More overt was concern at the state of the world, especially in the Middle East. Moderator Fahed Abu-Akel had recently been in the Occupied Territories and had seen the suffering there. Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, recalling Karl Barth's saying about holding the Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other, commented that the newspapers are full of news about preemptive war, poverty, and the AIDS epidemic. He reminded the gathering that God loved "the world," not the church; the sovereignty of God means that one task of the church is to transform the world, but all too often this has been put on the back burner, he said.

G-6 Once Again

A major topic of discussion, of course, was how to deal with "Amendment B," G-6.0106b. At several sessions, attorneys Doug Nave and Peter Oddleifson discussed possible courses of action.

1. What joins all the progressive groups in the PC(USA) is that they want to remove G-6 from the Book of Order, since it is an obstacle to exercising ministries that need to be carried out. Joanna Adams and Eugene Bay, co-moderators of the Covenant Network, reiterated their commitment to change in the church; Adams reinforced the need for "hope, patience, and persistence." Repeal, they said, is not likely for several years - at least until the Theological Task Force makes its report in 2005 (or rather 2006 if Assemblies meet only biennially). What are we to do in the meantime?

2. For some in the church, commitment to long-term change is not enough. To them it is essential to continue witnessing to the injustice of G-6 and its contempt for the spiritual gifts of GLBT people in the church. They insist that they and their concerns continue to be listened to. Shower of Stoles, with its traveling displays, is graphically illustrating the loss of those who might have become ordained leaders in the church. That All May Freely Serve continues its evangelism, bringing Jane Spahr and others into direct contact with congregations and presbyteries. More Light Presbyterians continue to enroll more congregations that affirm the GLBT persons in their membership. Some congregations have openly declared their "defiance" of G-6, raising a new set of issues, both practical and theoretical, for the church.

3. A third mode of action has also been with us since the "definitive guidance" of 1978, the "authoritative interpretation" of 1991, and the passage of Amendment B in 1997: to respond, skillfully and knowledgeably, to the disciplinary cases that have been filed by the right wing of the church. It is significant that no actions by a governing body have been overturned on appeal; judicial commissions have affirmed the way governing bodies exercised the discretion that is their responsibility.

Nave and Oddleifson pointed out, furthermore, that the Londonderry decision by the General Assembly's Permanent Judicial Commission in 2000 declared that no part of the Constitution can be ignored, but every part must be interpreted in the light of the whole Constitution. There are no fewer than four major issues of interpretation.

(1) "Self-acknowledged" was dealt with by the Weir decision, which declared that questions cannot be asked of particular individuals unless all candidates are asked in a similar way.

(2) "Chastity in singleness" clearly does not mean celibacy, since the Heidelberg Catechism speaks of living "chaste and disciplined lives whether in holy wedlock or in single life" (C-4.108).

(3) "Sin" is a far more complex issue than the one statement of the altered Heidelberg Catechism about "homosexual perversion" (C-4.087). What about "heterosexual perversion," for example? And when the Larger Catechism speaks of "unnatural lusts" (C -7.249), it raises further questions: are there lusts that are natural? and are there some desires that are not lusts at all, but love?

Finally, (4) "refusing to repent" must be understood not in an external, legalistic way, giving in to the demands of some party in the church, since the confessions themselves emphasize inward conviction as the mark of true confession. In all of these ways G-6 must be interpreted. To dismiss such concerns as merely clever or devious is to ignore the complex tasks that the Constitution puts before the church.

Every part of the Constitution must be interpreted in the light of the whole Constitution, and the confessions are more basic than the ordering of the church, which the Reformed tradition has always regarded as a matter of human law, governed largely by principles of convenience. Thus we will always have the responsibility of "interpreting" the Constitution, and doing it with a sense for what is more or less important. In this connection it would be salutary to look at the Confession of 1967, which affirms that "every church order must be open to such reformation as may be required to make it a more effective instrument of the mission of reconciliation" (C-9.40).

And that, quite appropriately, brings us to the theme of this conference, chosen with an eye to recent controversies in the PC(USA) . . .

Confessing Christ Today - Seeking Common Ground

This year is the 35th anniversary of the Confession of 1967. John Wilkinson sketched the history of "C-67," as he has also done in his article in the May-June issue of Church & Society (PDS 72-630-02-603). He noted that conservative attitudes varied during the years when C-67 was being written. Presbyterians for Biblical Concerns, while initially skeptical, eventually supported a slightly revised draft; the Presbyterian Lay Committee opposed it then and still opposes most of what it represents.

It was Gayraud Wilmore, the only African-American member of the committee, who insisted on clear witness in the face of pressing political and social realities. This led to the four statements about race, war and nationalism, poverty, and (at the suggestion of the Committee of Fifteen) sexual confusion (C-9.44-47) -- in connection with which, we should note, the confession says that the church "comes under the judgment of God and invites rejection by [human beings]" when it withholds the compassion of Christ or fails to lead men and women into the fullness of life.

Curtis Jones, in many ways Wilmore's successor in raising a strong African-American voice within the church, recalled these aspects of C-67. He openly expressed his disappointment after Election Day, shifting his Scripture reading from 2 Corinthians 5 (the ministry of reconciliation) to 2 Corinthians 4, taking as his theme "Struck Down, But Not Destroyed." Commenting on the problem we have with people who are different, he emphasized that we really have a problem with the God who created all of us. He ended by citing the end of the Brief Statement: "The Spirit gives us courage to ... lead holy and joyful lives."

Shirley Guthrie tackled the issue of evangelism in a pluralistic society. He suggested that authentic Christian evangelism has at least these characteristics: (1) the focus is not our own religious experience or "faith journey" but God; (2) our own story must be set in the sequence of many other stories in the Bible, all of them about Jews, who "were the people of God before we came along"; (3) the focus is not the Christian community, either, whose role in the world has not been all that good and which is still a group of sinners in need of God; (4) evangelism bears witness to God beyond all group and ideological loyalties and therefore welcomes outsiders; and (5) it speaks not only of justification but of sanctification, discipleship, reconciliation. As C-67 says, "to be reconciled to God is to be sent into the world as God's reconciling community" (C-9.31). God, Guthrie emphasized, is interested not in "pious narcissism and consumer religion" but in the whole world, and there is no right relation with God that does not include a right relation with others.

Responding to Guthrie, Rabbi Joseph Edelheit of Minneapolis, who earned his Ph.D. under Catholic David Tracy, expressed gratitude for being invited to participate in an intra-Presbyterian discussion. Commenting on the often-heard expression "Abrahamic religions" to designate the unity between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, he suggested that the answer to their tensions is not likely to come from Abraham, since "tired old angry impotent men" are the ones who have gotten us into the current mess, and that we ought to listen instead to Sarah and Hagar.

Anna Case-Winters, moderator of the 2002 Assembly committee that dealt so effectively with the tough issues of "Confessions and Christology," spoke about confessing Christ in the 21st century. Talk about God, she pointed out, is associated today with nationalism and holy war; we must continue to ask, then, "what we mean by God," since not all share the same assumptions. If there are stumbling blocks, she said, they should be God's, not ours.

She made three points about confessing Christ.

1. What about Jesus' maleness? "True man" includes definiteness in this and other ways; yet a male Jesus, fossilized in the church's doctrine, has been used to oppress. Rather than reject Jesus' maleness, we need men to be more like Jesus. Mary Daly's complaint that "if God is male, then maleness is God" needs to be taken seriously; if our understanding of God is "Christ-formed," then we need to understand God anew, and she mentioned the way the "cosmic Christology" of Colossians 1:15 has reshaped our definition of God.

2. What about the cross? Does it amount to "divine child abuse"? The Christian tradition, to be sure, has sometimes glorified sacrificial suffering and made it the model for those most oppressed. Much better, she said, is the suggestion that God in Christ is a "co-sufferer," and she commended Irenaeus's Christology of "recapitulation," in which Christ replays human history in the right way.

3. What does it mean to say "Jesus is Lord" in a situation of religious pluralism? Here too, she said, we must do "two-handed" theology ("on the one hand," "on the other"). This, she pointed out, is exactly what Bullinger did in the Second Helvetic Confession, stating that salvation is only in Christ, yet respecting God's freedom to act outside the sphere of the church and urging us to "hope well of all." (C-5.055) Jesus shows us what God is, and yet, as the extra Calvinisticum reminds us, there is more to God than Jesus, and Christian mission is likely to find God already out there, active throughout the world.

Paul Capetz, agreeing with these points, added some elaborations. (1) Jesus' being truly human does include a sexual identity; yet "truly divine" must always enlarge our vision. The Syro-Phoenician woman (Mk 7:24-30, Mt 15:21-28) brings this tension to light, confronting what appears to be Jesus' ethnocentrism and enlarging the horizon. (2) The cross shows us that sin exacts a price, and it remains true today that "the Easter faith must be lived in a Good Friday world." (3) As to the extra, the divine is not exhausted in Jesus, as the early church recognized when it appropriated Greek philosophy as coming from the divine Word. Theology matters. But this means engaging the tradition, understanding why it spoke as it did, and then making new statements that are convincing in our own time.

Times of worship

Preachers at the four services of worship were eloquent in relating biblical passages to the theme of the conference and applying them to the current situation. Curtis Jones has already been mentioned. There were three others. Here are some of the highlights.

Andrew Foster Connors, a recent seminary graduate with several preaching awards, who is currently associate minister at Idlewild church in Memphis, took as his text Peter's vision in Acts 11 and suggested that many today might respond to this proposal for an "inclusive church" by saying that "this is not the time to press a divisive issue in the church" -- especially since it was not based upon biblical hermeneutics, evoked no guiding principles of theology or ethics, manifested little respect for authority, went beyond all existing "definitive guidance," but simply said, "The Spirit told me." In our day, Connors said, we should not try to "build bridges over the bodies of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters."

Cynthia Jarvis, pastor of the Chestnut Hill church in Philadelphia, took as her theme some words from Paul Lehmann: "God's Private Arrangements." She explored the dilemma that God's way of acting can be learned in Christ, yet God's actions still cannot be predicted. Her text was the passage in John 10 that contrasts the hireling and the true shepherd, and she emphasized that the one who seeks us continues to accompany us. Despite our difficulty loving those who are in our own flock, we must stick with each other, she concluded.

Linda Loving, pastor of the House of Hope church in St. Paul, took as her text Joel 2 and elaborated on the image of songs in the midst of destruction, in times when there is a plague of locusts and "the seed shrivels under the clods" (Joel 1:17). She urged the church to be "an on-going people who will rise again" (Maya Angelou), not because of us but because God's Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. She concluded with the saying of Julian of Norwich, "Once you know the song, you can never get lost."

2003 plans announced

Next year's Covenant Network conference will be held at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, November 6-8. The theme will be "The Church God Calls Us to Be and to Become."

A major
Ghost Ranch event this summer!

July 28 - August 3, 2008

Paths toward Peace and Justice:
Spirituality, Earth-Care, and the Prophetic Word in a time of Violence

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