Lay Committee version urges loyalty oath for church employees

[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.

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.

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