One small church joins the
Confessing Church movement - then thinks a bit, and leaves
by Berry Craig
[10-11-01]
MAYFIELD, Ky. -- We're the church that got away.
Mayfield First Presbyterian's brief tenure with the Confessing Church
Movement is over.
How did we get in, then get out? First, the basics:
-- The Session unanimously endorsed a Confessing
Church Movement-inspired "Confessional Statement."
-- After several church members expressed serious
concerns about the endorsement, the Session voted again, this time 5-3
against joining the Confessing Church Movement.
Apparently, few members of the Session had even heard
of the Confessing Church Movement before the first vote. An elder not
currently on the Session showed up with the confessional statement at
the April session meeting. It was almost identical to the movement's
"Sample Session Resolution" on the Presbyterian Lay
Committee's Internet website.
The elder read it aloud, seeking Session approval.
Reportedly, there was no discussion. All present voted "aye,"
then evidently got on with routine business.
The confessional statement said:
"-- That Jesus Christ alone is Lord of all and
the way of salvation.
-- That Holy Scripture is the Triune God's revealed
Word, the Church's only infallible rule of faith and life.
-- That God's people are called to holiness in all
aspects of life. This includes honoring the sanctity of marriage
between a man and a woman, the only relationship within which sexual
activity is appropriate."
Apparently, the elder asked that the confessional
statement faith be approved because he was going as a commissioner to
the General Assembly. He said he wanted to know if the Session agreed
with his views, which were reflected in the statement. Evidently buoyed
by the Session vote, he supported keeping Amendment B, which prohibits
the ordination of gay people as ministers, elders and deacons.
The Session's endorsement of the Confessing Church
Movement's confessional statement was not reported in the church
newsletter until August. The minister explained that the ex-elder had
been "moved on the conscience of his heart" in seeking Session
support for the statement. The pastor said, "looking over it prior
to our [April Session] meeting, I found the statement to be Biblically
sound and in accordance to the confessions of our church."
The newsletter failed to include three other parts of
the statement which urged Presbyterians who agreed with it to:
"-- Renew their commitments to the above
confessions.
-- Urge there [sic] Session and Presbytery to affirm
these confessions and to declare that they will not ordain, install or
employ in any ministry position any person who will not affirm them.
-- Urge the 2001 General Assembly to instruct the
General Assembly Council to require that all program personnel uphold
these confessions and ensure that these confessions are followed
faithfully in all programs and policies of the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.)."
A number of church members objected to the statement
as soon as they saw it in the newsletter. Their concern deepened when
they read the three other resolutions in the Session minutes and learned
that their congregation was on the Presbyterian Lay Committee Internet
website as part of the Confessing Church Movement.
The minister and the clerk of the Session, both of
whom signed the six resolutions, said they did not contact anybody with
the Confessing Church Movement. Evidently, the Assembly commissioner
notified the movement on his own.
After meeting with and talking on the phone with
church members who opposed the statement, the minister agreed that the
Session had erred in endorsing it. While he said he still agreed with
its sentiment, he conceded the statement was divisive and wrong for the
church.
In a Sunday sermon and at the Session's August
meeting, the minister urged that the statement be repealed. Three
Session members, at least one of them a Presbyterian Layman
subscriber, declined to change their votes. One said he had heard from
other church members who favored the statement.
After the vote, the minister asked the Confessing
Church Movement to remove Mayfield First Presbyterian from its rolls.
The church is no longer on the Lay Committee website.
Mayfield First Presbyterian is hardly a hotbed of
liberalism, political or theological. My wife, Melinda, and I are the
only Witherspooners.
Our congregation is probably typical of most
small-town Presbyterian churches. Many members are better-heeled
Republicans.
It is hardly a secret in the church that Melinda and
I, both teachers, keep the liberal Democratic faith. We don't hide our
liberal theologies, either. But we have never felt anything but welcome
in church.
So we were as much surprised as disappointed when the
Session adopted the Confessing Church Movement's statement. Melinda has
been a deacon, elder and clerk of the Session. The Session vote meant
she could never hold church office again.
I grew up in the Mayfield church. Melinda was reared a
Southern Baptist. While we watched fundamentalists take over her former
denomination, we were sure that the Presbyterian Church was immune to
fundamentalism. With the rise of the Confessing Church Movement, the
Presbyterians For Renewal and the Presbyterian Lay Committee, we are no
longer so certain.
There is indeed a struggle for the soul of the
Presbyterian Church. But Witherspooners and other progressives did not
start it. We are not the aggressors. The Confessing Church Movement and
its fundamentalist fellow travelers are.
Writing this for Witherspooners, I feel as if I am
preaching to the choir. Probably most other society members go to
fundamentalist-proof churches. We would, too, if we lived where there
were many Presbyterian congregations from which to choose.
Melinda and I would rather worship in a More Light
congregation. But First Presbyterian is the only PCUSA church in our
little town.
There are a lot of one-church PCUSA towns in America.
Evidently, they are the Confessing Church Movement's idea of a fertile
mission field.
I doubt that many members of small Presbyterian
churches know much about the Confessing Church Movement. That makes
these churches particularly vulnerable when the Confessing Churchers
come calling.
Confessing Church Movement supporters portray
themselves as healers, not dividers. They style themselves as guardians
of traditional Presbyterian "life and faith" which they insist
mustn't "change to accommodate a transient culture."
In the church newsletter, the pastor at Mayfield First
Presbyterian characterized the Confessing Church Movement statement as a
middle-of-the-road stance against "extreme factions ... both ...
conservative and liberal ... [that] focus on the issues that divide us
instead of focusing on the issues that unite us."
But the Confessing Church Movement, Presbyterians for
Renewal and the Laymen are an "extreme faction." Their
"rule or ruin" approach is the real divider.
I also suspect that like the proverbial camel, the
CCers are able to get their nose under the tent because most
Presbyterians grew up believing that "fundamentalist" and
"Presbyterian" are contradictions in terms.
But the CCers, the PFR and the Laymen want to turn our
wonderfully diverse denomination into a narrow -- in theology and mind
-- fundamentalist church. The Confessing Church Movement's claim that
scripture is "the Church's only infallible rule of faith"
means the same thing as the fundamentalist notion that the Bible is
"inerrant."
The CCers's statement also suggests that they believe
that only conservative Christians go to Heaven. Growing up in Mayfield
First Presbyterian, I never heard that doctrine preached from the
pulpit. I never heard a pastor say non-Christians are going to hell.
The former pastor who married us put it this way:
"Presbyterians don't believe that ours is the only water."
Amen.
Our denomination has many historic confessions, but
none of them is a loyalty oath. The Confessing Church Movement's
statement of faith is a pledge of allegiance to fundamentalism.
The Witherspoon Society does not urge Presbyterian
Sessions not to ordain ministers, deacons or elders or not to hire
employees who don't agree with us. But love-it-or-leave-it is how the
Confessing Church Movement operates.
-- Berry Craig is
an associate professor of history at Paducah, Ky., Community College
and a freelance writer. Melinda Craig teaches senior English at
Mayfield High School.
