Afterthoughts from the Assembly
On conscience and connectionalism
by the Rev. Dr. Eric Mount
[7-20-01]
After being an observer for the first time at a
meeting of our General Assembly and even testifying before two
committees, I find myself regretting that my attendance record at
presbytery meetings (due to my teaching schedule and need to be absent
for other professional meetings) has kept me from ever rising further
than alternate status on the commissioner list. Having the Assembly so
close to home in Louisville prompted me to attend, and I believe that I
picked a good one. These four observations or assertions arise out of my
experience there.
1) Freedom of conscience operates the context of community. Freedom
of conscience by sessions and presbyteries in ordination decisions
should not be seen as another sorry manifestation of American
individualism, as some argued in my hearing. As H. Richard Niebuhr
helped us to see (in The Responsible Self and elsewhere),
conscience ("knowing with") is dialogical. Since we are social
creatures and not self-contained atoms, conscience involves an inner
conversation between the "communities" that live within us,
and the self who is part of those communities; the self and the
community address each other.
Freedom of conscience repudiates the authoritarian
conscience, which is expected to be obedient before the dictates of
"higher authority." In a community of faith, members should
listen responsibly to the community's traditional teaching, but they
also contribute to the ongoing process of theological and ethical
discourse. Abraham (bargaining for Sodom's survival), Jacob (insisting
on being blessed), Moses (imploring God to spare the golden calf
worshippers), Job, and even Jesus are not presented to us in scripture
as docile avoiders of argument, controversy, and struggle, even with
God.
Conscience informed by the community of faith should
not be expected to concede all judgment about responsible action to
dictation from above. "God alone is Lord of conscience."
2) Connectionalism in a community of
communities avoids both localism and hierarchy.
We ask presbyteries and sessions to make judgments about
the spiritual credentials of persons who are being considered for
ordination, because we believe that discerning who does and does not
have the Spirit seem to be done best by those who see the people with
the Spirit up close.
Just as Peter found that he could not deny the
endorsement of the Holy Spirit in the case of Cornelius and his family,
presbyteries and sessions should be trusted to follow the leading of the
Spirit in recognizing the working of the Spirit. Just as Jonah found, to
his chagrin, that he had to recognize God's transformation of the hated
Ninevites, the Christian community must learn to recognize the effects
of God's grace in people who have had more than ample occasion to give
up on their church's lack of inclusiveness and leave it.
A "community of communities" (a term
borrowed from For the Common Good by Herman Daly and John Cobb)
will respect differences among members, including member communities,
and give all of the parts a voice. Those characteristics are part of
what makes a "community of communities" different from a chain
of command or a collection of individuals.
3) The Bible and our church's confessions are
not codes to be imposed, but conversations to be continued.
Recall our moderator's bird cage
and bird bath metaphors. We Presbyterians acknowledge that no
confession has the last word, but we have sometimes inclined toward
giving one or another of them absolute status. The confessions are parts
of the continuing conversation that constitutes a tradition.
The Bible should also be seen as canonical
conversation that invites and even demands continuation. The canon does
speak to itself. Genesis 1 speaks to Genesis 2 and 3. Judges speaks to
Joshua, Job and Ecclesiastes to Proverbs, Jonah to Ezra and Nehemiah,
John to Mark, James to Galatians, and Revelation 13 to Romans 13. The
Bible's redactors do not even resolve the dispariites about when, where,
and how the Decalogue was given. They even place contrasting accounts
beside each other.
We are left to wrestle with open-endedness as we continue
the Bible's conversations and even arguments in our time. We should look
through all of its lenses (to use Calvin's metaphor), but we need not
feel locked into all of its legislation.
4) When we are trying to resolve or disperse
conflict, time is not neutral or inevitably beneficial, but potentially
eventful.
We should be grateful that the approval of a task force
by the General Assembly was not done as a way of postponing continuing
address of the threats to the unity that we seek. The charge to the task
force recognizes that the mere passage of time will not solve anything.
Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" made that
point unforgettably. Moratoriums only work if people work to fill them
with eventful reflection, communication, education, and reconciliation.
The Assembly refused to let the church merely bide its
time. In the best biblical sense, any waiting that we do must be active
if it is to be faithful.
Eric Mount is Rodes Professor
of Religion at Centre College, where he has taught for thirty-five years
and done stints as vice-president and dean of students and as chaplain
in addition to the teaching. The most recent of his four books (and the
only one still in print) is Covenant, Community, and the Common Good
(Pilgrim Press, 1999). The others were Conscience and Responsibility
(1969), The Feminine Factor (1973), and Professional Ethics
in Context (1990).
