Presbyterian paranoia?

Presbyterian Paranoia?

[1-21-02]

The real roots of the "Confessing Church Movement" -- a protest not against Nazi tyranny, but against the abolition of slavery
[1-22-02]

Prof. Stephen Haynes of Rhodes College offer another historical perspective the antecedents of the "Confessing Church Movement."

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If you are past 50 like me, you might remember the first "HP" - Henny Penny. She was a storybook chicken - literal and figurative - who flapped around and cackled, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

The heavens never hit. Thus from hapless Henny, we kids learned the folly of making much ado about nothing.

In college, I read weightier tomes like The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays by Richard Hofstadter. It was a Henny Penny sequel for grownups.

Henny Penny and the Paranoid Style remind me of the Presbyterian Laymen and the Confessing Church Movement. "The Church is falling! The Church is falling!" cry the Laymen and the CCM in what Hofstadter called "the paranoid style."

Published in 1966, Hofstadter's book is about real-life Henny Pennies in American history, from citizens who panicked over the 18th-century Bavarian Illuminati to the John Birch Society. "Heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" characterize "the paranoid style," Hofstadter wrote. "...The feeling of persecution is central, and indeed systemized in grandiose theories of conspiracy."

According to Hofstadter, "the spokesman of the paranoid style finds...[the conspiracy] directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others." Also in the paranoid style, "the enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice." Moreover, "the paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms...He is always manning the barricades of civilization...It is now or never in organizing resistance to conspiracy."

Had the Laymen and the CCM been around when Hofstadter wrote The Paranoid Style he might have put them in his book. He did include some of their fundamentalist forbears, Dr. Fred C. Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communist Crusade and the Christian Crusade of the Rev. Billy Hargis.

Straight out of the paranoid style, Robert L. Howard, chairman of the Presbyterian Lay Committee warns, "The Presbyterian Church has been in a dark tunnel of decline for 40 years...The political and secular agendas [have]...shut out the light of Biblical Christianity."

Howard says the Confessing Church Movement defends "Biblical Christianity" against "cultural accommodation." The CCM is sorry that "Biblical Standards" are "increasingly...under attack by leaders within the denomination and, lamentably, are being ignored with impunity by many churches and presbyteries." Worse, according to the CCM, "the leadership of the PCUSA seems to be in sympathy with this drift away from Biblical standards and also seems to be encouraging it."

Parker T. Williamson, Presbyterian Layman editor-in-chief, sounds the tocsins of "a war going on that has little to do with carpet bombs and anthrax scares. This contest rages between a culture that exalts the autonomous self and Christians who trust the word of God."

He chides "postmodern libertarians" for being "ever eager to undermine the Church's faith." Reminiscent of Spiro Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism," Williamson heaps on the alliterations: "masquerading as modernity, religious relativism is hardly new."

Neither is what Williamson is preaching. Before gay people became the Laymen-CCM demons du jour, like-minded guardians of "Biblical Christianity" manned the barricades against "conspirators" including evolutionists, Freudians, Catholics, Jews, African Americans, wets, flappers, trade unionists, socialists, Reds, rock and rollers, the UN, women's libbers and secular humanists.

Anyway, Howard gives us Hofstadter's "heated exaggeration" -- "dark tunnel of decline" -- and "suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" -- "political and secular agendas." There is persecution, too, with the snuffing of "the light of Biblical Christianity."

The CCM defines "the enemy" -- "the leadership of the PCUSA." Williamson's foes are "postmodern libertarians." He provides the apocalyptical vision -- the raging contest "between a culture that exalts the autonomous self and Christians who trust the word of God."

I would not deny the Laymen and the CCM the right to their views. Given my views, the CCM Confessing Statements would deny me the right to hold office in my church. The Laymen and the CCM do not represent the Presbyterian Church in which I grew up.

I am a history teacher. History is replete with examples of mischief caused by ideologues, sectarian and secular. Sadly, that lesson seems lost on the Laymen and the Confessing Church Movement.

-- Berry Craig is an associate professor of history at Paducah Community College, and a fourth-generation member of Mayfield, Ky., First Presbyterian Church. He and his wife, Melinda, a high school English teacher, are members of the Witherspoon Society.