3 conservative credos fuel
confessing "movement"
Lay Committee version urges loyalty oath
for church employees
by Alexa Smith, Presbyterian News Service
[published here on 4-14-01]
LOUISVILLE - April 11, 2001 - A
number of leaders in congregations across the Presbyterian Church (USA)
are developing localized "confessional statements" that
supporters say are burgeoning into a movement.
A small church in Pennsylvania and a huge one in Florida
have issued confessional statements that are being promoted widely by
the Presbyterian Lay Committee, a conservative group that is likening
the documents to historic proclamations of faith by Protestants during
the Reformation and by German Christians who opposed the Nazis.
The Lay Committee has drafted its own document that
urges like-minded Presbyterians to pray that the Presbyterian Church
(USA) will return to a "full faith in Jesus Christ," and will
require employees of the church's national offices to sign loyalty oaths
upholding three specific confessional statements.
Among the signatures of board members on the Lay
Committee's appeal is that of the PC(USA)'s vice moderator, Rebecca F.
McElroy of Monroe City, MO, a longtime member of the 24-person Lay
Committee.
While the two statements are not identical, each
reasserts three faith claims: that Jesus Christ is the sole way to
salvation; that Holy Scripture is infallible; and that marriage between
a man and a woman is the only appropriate context for sexual activity.
The statements, from Summit Presbyterian Church in
Butler, PA, and First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, FL, also maintain
that churches and presbyteries may not ordain or install anyone who
cannot abide by or affirm any of the three standards. And each
emphasizes that General Assembly (GA) program personnel, policies and
programs out to be required to uphold these standards, although neither
document pushes for the "written commitments" recommended by
the Lay Committee.
"It has always been important for church members
to reaffirm their faith, to reaffirm their confessions," said the
Rev. Paul Roberts, pastor of growing, 270-member Summit Presbyterian.
"It is vital for our time and age. We believe these essential
tenets are under attack and we are more than ready to say, 'Hey, we
believe in this!'"
The Summit church's session started what insiders are
calling the "Confessing Church Movement" when it unanimously
passed its statement on March 13.
"Amendment O precipitated the finished product,
what you see as the confessional statement," Roberts told the Presbyterian
News Service, referring to recent balloting in PC(USA) presbyteries
on a measure that would have forbidden church involvement in union
ceremonies for same-sex couples. "But these are issues we've been
debating and arguing about for years."
After Summit church issued its page-long statement,
the session of the 5,300-member Orlando church, one of the largest in
the denomination, weighed in with a shorter version. The Lay Committee,
taking note of those two, then crafted its own.
The three confessions were written on the heels of
what conservatives consider two political upsets - the defeat of the
proposed Amendment O, and the refusal of the General Assembly Council (GAC),
the church's top governing body, to tighten the leash on dialogue at
church conferences after one speaker speculated that a sovereign God
might provide a way for non-Christians to be saved.
Nearly 40 presbyteries have produced or endorsed
overtures to the upcoming General Assembly that would modify or delete a
much-debated constitutional amendment that forbids the ordination of
sexually active gays and lesbians.
Conservatives lobbied hard in 1997 for the amendment's
passage.
How to interpret Biblical texts, particularly those
related to sexuality, has been a matter dispute between liberals and
conservatives for decades. Liberals argue that Presbyterians have always
set broad parameters in matters of doctrine and Biblical interpretation,
to make room for dissent. A handful of PC(USA) liberals are considering
a suggestion that they draft a statement of their own, what they call a
second Auburn Affirmation.
In the 1920s, the first Auburn Affirmation derailed an
effort by fundamentalists to require affirmation of five articles of
faith for ordination, including the virgin birth, the sacrificial
atonement and the bodily resurrection of Christ.
In recent years, conservatives have been vocal about
wanting more specificity about the beliefs and behaviors of church
officers. Two overtures that will come before this year's GA from
western Pennsylvania's Beaver-Butler Presbytery, where Roberts' church
is located, reflect that view.
One, held over from last year and known
euphemistically as the "Take a Hike" overture, would permit
churches that cannot conform to the constitutional provision preventing
the ordination of gays and lesbians to leave and take their property
with them. Another would have the denomination acknowledge that the
theological divide between groups within the church is
"irreconcilable."
A third -- on Christology -- was drafted this year by
the same coalition that authored the first two. Roberts is a member of
the Beaver-Butler Presbytery's writing group.
"We believe a Christological statement needs to
be made again, then a Biblical understanding needs to professed again,
which is very Reformed, one of the essential tenets," Roberts said.
"Those theological understandings produce certain behaviors, what
it means to live a holy life. That's the deeper issue.
"We're defining that in (point) three, because
there are plenty of people who do not understand points one and two.
We're not in agreement as a church on Scripture. We're not in agreement
that Christ is the only way to salvation. Consequently, we're battling
over issues of holiness. And sexuality is the issue of the day."
Roberts said the presbytery approved the church's
statement and sent it on to the GAC more as a point of information than
as a request for action.
It is the council -- and the agencies it supervises --
that the Lay Committee criticizes. Its
executive director, the Rev. Parker Williamson, says they have too
easily accommodated to the culture -- by failing to discipline staff for
a speaker's allegedly heretical remarks about religious pluralism last
summer, for example, and by tolerating feminist theologians' critiques
during a controversial conference nearly seven years ago (although the
staff liaison to the conference was fired).
Williamson said he doesn't know yet why the wider
church rejected Amendment O, but he believes many presbyteries
mistakenly thought it would limit pastoral practice well beyond the
issue of same-sex union rites.
"This is a 'Here I stand,' declaration from
sessions," Williamson said, aligning the confessing ''movement'
with Christians in the past who have affirmed the faith against the
grain of the culture -- from Peter's declaration of Christ's lordship,
to Luther's 95 theses, to the Barmen Declaration, by which a coalition
of Christians, including the famed theologians Martin Niemoller and Karl
Barth, challenged the union of Christianity, nationalism and militarism.
Williamson denied that the movement means to
characterizes its liberal opponents as Nazis. He said his foes are
simply people who have accommodated to the culture, and observed that,
in 1930s Germany, the accommodation simply took the form of Nazism. The
issue is different now, he said, but the witness is the same.
The idea of a contemporary 'confessing movement' is
getting a cautiously positive response among conservative leaders. Most
affirm it as a way of keeping disgruntled conservatives inside a church
that they often have threatened to leave.
In a statement issued on April 4, the Rev. Joe
Rightmyer, executive director of the evangelical organization
Presbyterians for Renewal, said he thought it was "thrilling to see
Presbyterians stand up and shout these affirmations from the rooftop,
and recommit not to waver in the midst of cultural accommodation or
religious pluralism by parts of our body."
But Rightmyer was careful to say that "making
such confessions can imply that the church no longer holds to these
basic beliefs of the Christian faith. While some pastors and members
obviously do not, the doctrinal position has not changed. Therefore, it
would be a false witness to suggest or imply that a movement leading
individuals or congregations out of the denomination is in order."
Rightmyer has repeatedly spoken against schism.
Theologian Mark Achtemeier of Dubuque Theological
Seminary endorsed the idea, saying that a "confessing
movement" is a witnessing strategy that has a distinguished
tradition in Reformed circles.
Singling out a few faith tenets over others, he said,
isn't problematic, because all of the affirmations have been the
consistent teachings of the church for centuries.
"They're not saying anything that is not already
in the constitution," he said. "They are, largely, finding a
voice, offering each other encouragement in the midst of frustration
over the inability of the church at large to speak effectively on some
of these contested issues."
It is precisely the fact
that the documents reiterate what the PC(USA) confessional documents
already say that worries the Rev. Joseph Small, the director of the
denomination's Theology and Worship Department.
"This is a confessing church," he said.
"That's why we have a Book of Confessions. To single out certain
items is not useful. Can you imagine (what could happen) if groups with
somewhat different points of view singled out their own items? We'd
have, not the church, but a collection of single like-minded
sub-groups."
Small said the GA is the vehicle through which
"the whole church" expresses its understanding of the
confessions.
Even after the fact, Roberts said, Beaver-Butler
Presbytery is debating whether a presbytery can actually write its own
confessional statement, or whether such a document must be called an
affirmation.
The confusion may be why Rev. Jerry Andrews of Glen
Ellyn, IL, a spokesperson for the Presbyterian Coalition, perhaps the
most visible evangelical political network within the church, is waiting
for more information. He said the Coalition has appointed a group to
study options for the future -- and the agenda will likely include
everything from engaging in renewal work, to championing or opposing
particular actions, to what the organization's younger evangelicals call
"gracious separation," a notion the Coalition has consistently
rejected.
Andrews, noting that the church is itself a
"confessing movement" with a long tradition of costly witness,
said his phone has been "ringing off the hook."
Andrews is nervous about comparing the 1930s crisis in
the German church to the current conflicts in U.S. mainline
denominations. He said that, despite "whatever lunacy" the
PC(USA) liberals might put forward, "they ain't the Nazis."
McElroy said she regrets the
timing of the Lay Committee's statement -- during her term as vice
moderator -- but thinks such statements might help conservatives find
reasons to stay in a denomination.
McElroy said she was in Albany Presbytery with
Moderator Syngman Rhee when the Lay Committee's board voted to endorse
the confessing church movement. She signed her name later.
"There have been rumblings about a 'confessing
church' for years and years," she said.
Roberts, who said one conservative pastor in his
presbytery left the denomination just last week, would rather see folks
committing to stay. He said that's the purpose of the statement his
session wrote: "We're saying, 'We are going to believe this. We're
not walking away; we're not backing off.' We've had years and years of
people leaving the denomination. We're willing to start saying what we
believe … and we're gonna push."
"We're not backing down," said Roberts, who
said the conservatives are fighting, not a dictatorship, but a
"tremendous cultural war."
The Lay Committee, according to Williamson, intends to
"be a servant to the movement," and has committed itself to
providing extensive coverage to its adherents in The Presbyterian
Layman, the organization's newspaper, and use of its website,
teaching materials and other resources. A discussion of the
"Confessing Church Movement" will be a focus of the Lay
Committee's May 31-June 3 annual conference at Grove City College in
Grove City, Pa.
