My Dream for the Presbyterian
Church
by Howard Rice
A keynote address to a group of More
Light Presbyterians and friends, meeting at Old First Presbyterian
Church in San Francisco on October 14, 2000. Dr. Howard Rice is a former
Moderator of the Presbyterian Church and professor at San Francisco
Theological Seminary.
He writes frequently for Witherspoon's Network
News. Click here for one of his
reflections.
A discouraging time
There are times when I get more discouraged than usual
with the church and I think that we have begun a new century without
making very much progress.. We certainly ended the 20th
century with many of the very same faith issues that were brought into
it. The church began the 20th century with issues around
racial inclusion: women's role in leadership, how to adapt to new
immigrant populations, especially in the cities, about how to read
scripture, especially in the light of the findings of science, the place
of higher criticism, and issues around the use of language to express
what we meant, especially about predestination; and we are beginning a
new century with many of these same questions still unresolved.
We may put the questions differently but they are
essentially the same questions. We don't know what to make of women in
ministry very well yet. The church is still terrified by a feminist
agenda: witness the extreme overreaction to the Re-Imagining Conference
and the more recent flaps about other feminist groups and issues. We
still don't know how to minister in our cities to a changing population.
We still see new immigrants as a burden or problem rather than an
opportunity. Race remains a huge issue in both church and state, and we
are almost as racially divided as we were one hundred years ago. Our
witness among African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans is
actually weaker today than it was a hundred years ago.
We haven't begun to incorporate any kind of biblical
criticism into the ongoing life of the church at the congregational
level. Preachers learn about it in Seminary (and have for nearly two
hundred years) but they seem to forget when they are ordained and in
most congregations, even liberal ones, a kind of naïve or soft
fundamentalism is the norm. ... People believe that the disciple,
Matthew, wrote his gospel and that it is an eyewitness account of the
ministry of Jesus. Suggest the idea that Matthew was not written by the
disciple Matthew, and was probably written by someone who never knew
Jesus, and they are shocked -- even good Presbyterians. Yet, questions
about apostolic authorship of the gospels pre-date the twentieth
century, in fact, such questions were being asked in the eighteenth
century.
We still struggle to find new ways to express the
ancient faith and there is a mistrust abroad of anyone who tries to do
that. Many voices seem uncomfortable with anything newer than the
Westminster Confession of Faith.
A time to dream -- and to face the challenges
Each of us has dreams about our church -- what it
might be and how we can play a part in movement toward those cherished
goals. I certainly have mine and I want to share them with you today in
the hope that at least some of them are widely enough shared among us
that we may work together on achieving them. I guess I would not have
been invited to speak today nor would I have accepted if I did not think
there is likely to be a large measure of congruence among us. As
centrists and progressives aligned together, we are not all alike; we
have no rigid party line. Organizing ourselves is very difficult because
we are likely to be highly individualistic. After some years of working
with the Witherspoon Society, trying to organize in San Francisco
Presbytery, serving on the faculty of SFTS, and currently working with
PARO, I really believe the old saw about a liberal firing squad being a
circle. We certainly do know how to shoot each other down or shoot
ourselves in the foot!
Thus, I want to emphasize how important it is that we
do our very best in this year, for what we do and how effective we are
has much to do with the future of our church, and I know that
discouragement has already robbed us of some of our best leaders and
most promising candidates who have opted out altogether, most often to
join the United Church of Christ; some for reasons of sexual orientation
and many others because of the conservative direction in which they see
our Presbyterian Church heading.
A dream of living up to our own best past
My dream is really a rather conservative one. I dream
of seeing our church live up to its own best past. We have a great past
going back to John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the
Declaration of Independence, demonstrating the role of the church in the
political arena and including others whose witness has made our church
faithful to its Lord. I think of Samuel Worcester, whose commitment to
the cause of the Cherokee Indians caused him to break the law and landed
him in jail, but did not deter him from walking the trail of tears with
them all the way to Oklahoma. I cherish the memory of Harriet Beecher
Stowe, whose commitment to abolition of slavery led to the writing of Uncle
Tom's Cabin, the single most important book in causing this nation
to face its moral dilemma about race and slavery. Henry Highland Garnet,
born a slave, was ordained and edited a weekly paper, serving the
American Anti-Slavery Society, and in 1865 preached to the U.S. House of
Representatives on behalf of the thirteenth amendment.
Sheldon Jackson felt so strongly about his mission to
American Indians that he ordained someone to serve the Pima people
without asking a Presbytery to do it properly. Louisa Woolsey dared to
seek and accept ordination in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church even
though two decades of General Assemblies refused to recognize that
ordination, and she wrote Shall Women Preach? Charles Briggs, a
chief editor of the International Critical Commentary, dared to
challenge biblical inerrancy in his inaugural address at Union Seminary
and was tried for heresy and his ordination set aside by action of a
General Assembly.
Charles Stelzle broadened our visions by founding
Labor Temple to serve union members. Donaldina Cameron fought for the
rights of Chinese immigrants and particularly those girls sold into
slavery; through her underground tunnels in San Francisco, she liberated
them and got them to freedom. Norman Thomas dared to accept nomination
from the Socialist Party and run for President in order to bear witness
to his vision for a just society.
Eugene Carson Blake demonstrated for integration and
was arrested, as Stated Clerk of the General Assembly. In his steps, William
P. Thompson was arrested in Long Beach for demonstrating for
inclusion. Jane Spahr, Chris Glaser, and Scott Anderson have fought the
good fight for inclusion of gay and lesbian people, facing terrible
assaults upon their integrity and a viciousness most of us cannot
imagine, yet they remain steadfast.
I keep telling myself: if they can remain within the
Presbyterian Church, who am I or anyone else to think about leaving? Our
history is full of heroes who represent the best of our church, what it
has been as a source of encouragement for the disenfranchised, as a
source of welcome for the excluded, as a wide door to welcome different
point of view, as a beacon of hope for the marginalized, as an
ecumenical witness in the midst of denominational fragmentation and
competition.
The dream is threatened
That is the Presbyterian Church that I remember,
cherish and dream of seeing continued into this new century. But, I am
not at all sure that our progressive heritage will be continued. There
are forces at work to weaken our witness, qualify our welcome, silence
our prophetic voice, and narrow our confessional stance so as to exclude
those who do not fit in.
This movement is well financed: Compare the budgets of
Presbyterians Affirming Reproductive Options, the Witherspoon Society,
More Light Presbyterians and the Covenant Network, for example with the
organizations on the right. According to the Institute
for Democracy Studies, the Lay Committee reported receipts of 1.5
million in 1997, Presbyterians Pro-Life reported income of $251,000 in
1996, PFR anticipated 9 million in 1999, and the Coalition reported
$206,00 in 1997. That is a lot of money, most of it coming from
individuals and congregations and some of it from corporations and
foundations. The stakes are high in the struggle for the soul of our
denomination. To actualize our dreams, we have some hard work to do and
some sacrifices may be required of us.
A dream of a living Word of God
I dream that we can treat scripture as a treasured
gift from God without interpreting it literally as the WORDS of God. A
primary difference between Christians and Muslims is that the Koran is
understood to be an unchanging word from God which cannot even be
translated; its very words are sacred. In contrast Christians have
understood scripture as capable of different interpretations as the Holy
Spirit speaks afresh in every age and situation, and reveals the will of
God in midst of the ancient words. Fundamentalism is alien to that
Christian spirit. Our General Assembly rejected fundamentalism in the
20s but its influence lives on. Every attempt to address the issue of
human sexuality and especially homosexuality, falls back upon the issue
of biblical proof texting from Leviticus and Paul on a very few verses.
The biblical scholars of the church have spoken again
and again. They have served on Special Committees and have helped to
write major reports but, because they do not say that many want to hear,
they are ignored and the reports that finally are approved end up
without a biblical grounding. Thus we have spoken as a denomination
about the sin of same sex intimacy without recognizing the social
location of the texts or the fact that the concept of homosexuality,
itself, is very recent. We seem to forget that when Paul wrote about
people who exchange the natural for the unnatural, he had no idea that
for some people the natural is homosexuality, and to quote Paul on this
as the Word from God is to be unfaithful to our task as interpreters of
scripture in our time and place.
We reluctantly learned that on the issue of the
leadership of women in the church and have now raised that to the level
of confessional status in the Brief Statement, but think of the price we
paid as a denomination over the ordination of women. Also think of the
time it took. Quoting scripture is not the way to solve the dilemma
raised by the fear of difference.
We have to find a way to put aside fear and dare to
look at the text using the gathered wisdom of two centuries of
scholarship. The ordination question addressed to all ministers, elders,
and deacons, I remind you, is: "Do you accept the scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and
authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God's
word to you?" Yet, at Long Beach there was a serious effort to
subvert that part of our Constitution, to place Scripture above Christ.
The battle over the bible is not over yet.
A dream of new images for a new time
I dream that we can begin to think about the faith in
new images, using new language that speaks to our time. I firmly believe
that the church we love has to change the way it speaks in order to
survive. Church attendance in North America and Europe is declining
rapidly. The old language doesn't speak to the generations under 50 and
they are speaking with their feet, staying home from church in droves.
They simply do not believe a lot of what we think of as core beliefs.
Perhaps I am not the only one here for whom that
language just doesn't speak very well any more, but I know it doesn't
work well for me; it doesn't really speak to my heart. How can we move
from the rut of 19th century language or even 4th
century language and begin to speak to the people we are given to
address? Marcus Borg says that many people have rejected Christian faith
because, "for them the chief obstacle to being a whole-hearted
Christian is thus intellectual; the tradition in the form in which they
learned it doesn't make sense to them anymore." I think the same
could be said for many people inside the church who haven't yet given
up. They are wanting a different image of God but they may not know how
to ask, it seems too radical. One example will suffice: our language and
images of God. John Shelby Spong, the radical Episcopal bishop has said,
"The heart cannot worship what the mind rejects." I can only
say, "amen" to that statement.
I know I have tried for too long to make myself
believe in that great, powerful, almighty, God who is beyond all things,
and all I end up with is a sense of gloom and fog. And, in addition, I
find myself angry at such a God. Why do such terrible things happen in a
world ruled by this powerful God? Why tornadoes and hurricanes, plagues
and earthquakes? Some bad things are caused by human beings. I can't
blame God for racism or human cruelty and most disease is not our own
fault. To the extent that I believe that God is almighty ... I can be
very angry at God. I know that my own resistance to prayer is rooted in
this anger. If God is almighty then why am I in this wheelchair and you
are not? Keep clear of this capricious God; who knows what tragic thing
might result. God might want to teach you a lesson by maiming your
child, for example. Life is hard enough without having a cruel God in
control; a God who sat idly by while Auschwitz and other horrors were
taking place.
In order to have any relationship with God, I have to
let go of the whole notion of the almighty and settle for a God who is
weak and helpless, a God who suffers with us in our affliction, the God
who hangs on the cross, bleeds, is whipped, spat upon, and finally dies
the death of a common criminal. This God is believable, this God is
loveable; this God is one with whom I want to be in relationship. Belief
in this God is the Christian tradition at its core.
A dream of a church transcending its culture
I dream that the church can see itself as something
other than a appendage of American culture. Homophobia still rules in
this nation: witness the states which pass laws to bar the recognition
of same sex unions as if these relationships are a threat to
heterosexual marriages. We face an Overture on that very subject, to
follow the state in denying the health and goodness of such unions, even
if it means more promiscuity and more deaths from AIDS. One might think
that the church would celebrate the desire of two people to make a
loving commitment to each other, to seek to be faithful to each other
and to have that relationship blessed. If we were not influenced more by
cultural homophobia than by gospel, it would be an obvious answer.
I shall never forget a discussion I had with a leading
figure among the conservatives during a General Assembly a decade or
more ago. He asked me, "Howard what is the greatest threat to
Western Civilization?" and I responded, "Atomic
annihilation." And his response was, "Don't be trivial. It is
homosexuality." To that I had no response except to say, "who
is being trivial?"
Culture is fearful of homosexuality above all,
especially now that we don't have communism to fear. Such fear leads
otherwise sane people to pass laws to exclude -- laws that violate the
life and spirit of our form of government. G-5.0202 reads as follows,
"An active member of a particular church is a person who has made a
profession of faith in Christ, has been baptized, has been received into
membership of the church, has voluntarily submitted to the government of
the church, and participates in the church's work and worship. An active
member is entitled to all the rights and privileges of the church
including the right to participate in the sacrament of the Lord's
Supper, to present children for baptism, to take part in meetings of the
congregation, to vote and to hold office." In G-2.0200, the Book of
Order is equally clear as it speaks about the Confessions, "These
confessional statements are subordinate standards in the church, subject
to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the Scriptures
bear witness to him." The effort to place scripture above Jesus
Christ is a violation of our very identity as Christians, but it shows
how far frightened people will go.
A dream of a truly welcoming church
I dream of a church in which all God's people are
welcome and the principle of God alone as Lord of Conscience is honored.
The principle of inclusiveness is embedded in our Book of Order:
"The congregation shall welcome all persons who respond in trust
and obedience to God's grace in Jesus Christ and desire to become part
of the membership and ministry of his Church. NO person shall be denied
membership because of race, ethnic origin, worldly condition or any
other reason not related to profession of faith." (G-5 0103)
Every effort to compromise that welcome, to protect
the church from some group perceived as a threat, is not only a
violation of our polity, it gets in the way of our witness to the
welcome of our Lord. Inscribed in our Book of Order is a list of the
Historic Principles of Church Order, which date back to 1788 in
preparation for the first meeting of a General Assembly in this nation.
Among those principles is this: "we believe there are truths and
forms with respect to which men of good characters and principles may
differ. And in all these we think it the duty both of private Christians
and societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other."
(G-1.0305)
Mutual forbearance has to work both ways. Liberals
have traditionally been willing, sometimes begrudgingly I admit, to
welcome conservatives, but I have yet to see the opposite. When
conservatives win, they quickly move to exclude. The story of the
Southern Baptist Convention ought to chill us all and keep us vigilant.
The Southern Baptists were a denomination moderately pro-choice,
strongly in favor of separation of church and state, which was, at
times, willing to work with other Christian groups. Today, it has become
the preserve of hard conservatives who have driven out moderates from
seminaries, church agencies and publications. Our situation may not be a
parallel but I, for one, do not want to sit by and watch it happen to my
beloved denomination.
Homosexuality is a stalking horse issue which many
conservatives think is a way of getting power. If they can win on this
volatile issue, they may be able to win on many other issues:
withdrawing from COCU, winning control of our seminaries, reining in the
Peacemaking Committee, the Women's Unit and the whole national staff
which lives under a cloud of fear, imposing their agenda upon our
national conference centers and much more.
I remember when I was in seminary and a German bishop
spoke to us telling the story of how gradually the German church caved
in to Adolph Hitler: He said, they came for the homosexuals and I was
not a homosexual so I kept quiet; they came for the socialists and I was
not a socialist and I kept quiet; they came for the gypsies and I was
not a gypsy and kept quiet; they came for the Jews and I was not a Jew
so I did not protest; and when they finally came for me, there was no
one left to protest.
The dream is a challenging task, but we're in good
company
Our task is obvious; the challenge before us is
awesome, our resources do not seem up to the task, but we are not alone.
We work in the company of a great cloud of witnesses who have struggled
and fought the good fight before us; we are in the company of prophets
and freedom fighters who knew lost causes but gave themselves for them
nevertheless. We are in the company of those in our own church today who
long for a fresh wind to blow through and give us new life. Let us take
heart as we face this tremendous year ahead.
