Witherspoon luncheon hears call for
economic justice from Jane Dempsey Douglass,
and from James Hudnut-Beumler, doubts about polity as an instrument of
change
[6-10-01]
More than once the Witherspoon luncheon at GA, held
customarily on Sunday, has been delayed by worship services that have
run far beyond their allotted two hours. This year it was different.
Worship ended on time, people arrived on time for the luncheon, but the
delay came in finding seats and food for all the guests -- well over 300
of them in a tightly filled banquet hall. A bit of a problem, but not a
bad one to have. Here's what went on during this gala annual occasion,
and what we heard from two outstanding speakers.
The Whole Gospel Congregation Award
Witherspoon's Whole Gospel Congregation award went
this year to Central Presbyterian Church of Louisville. Robb Gwaltney,
in presenting the award (after acknowledging the slight danger of an
incestuous relationship because he is a member of the church, as well as
a past officer of Witherspoon), related the history of the congregation
and its many forms of social mission in the city and to people in its
neighborhood. The citation which he presented to the congregation read:
"The Witherspoon Society presents its Whole Gospel Congregation
Award to Central Presbyterian Church, Louisville, Kentucky, in grateful
recognition of its commitment to community service, its advocacy of
racial justice, and its demonstration of full inclusiveness as a More
Light Congregation."
Gwaltney described this congregation as a stunning
example of how social ministry and inclusiveness are by no means the
enemies of congregational growth. "Sixty percent of the members of
this congregation have joined the church in the last three years.
Fifteen percent joined past year. And you tell those people who
say you've got to be 'pure' to grow."
Dr.
Carolyn Klinge, the Clerk of Session, accepted the award on behalf of
the congregation. In describing the
congregation, she highlighted the
fact that for all its social concern and advocacy for justice, "we
are a caring community, sharing our joys and concerns in prayer, through
worship, caring for each other through an active e-mail prayer list,
calls, cards, food and visits." She pointed to other factors in
their health as a congregation, including their intentional focus on
worship and on inclusive language in that worship, and their commitment
to social justice.
The Andrew Murray Award
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Robb Gwaltney and William
Gregory |
Gwaltney then introduced a man whom he described as
having "come to us through a somewhat unusual route." William
Gregory is now a member of the congregation, but came there after
"doing time" in the penitentiary where he was falsely
imprisoned. His release came through the work of George and Jean
Edwards, who not only raised money to pay for the legal services he
needed, but have now become like parents to him. Gregory then presented
the Andrew Murray Award to Jean and George Edwards.
Jean Edwards responded first to the award by telling
how George was drawn into this case when a few prisons wanted to study
Greek in order to read the New Testament in its original language -- and
someone thought of George Edwards, retired professor of New Testament,
for the task.
George Edwards then took his turn by saying in his
somber way, "They've scraped
the bottom of the barrel for awardees this year. The only claim to
distinction that I can think of on my behalf is that I married the right
woman." He went on to proclaim "three short aphorisms that
speak out of my own soul and my own experience."
First, he said, "War is hell. Those who
patronize it because of its powerful persuasions or because they believe
in its alleged inevitability, not only degrade our religion, but they
promote the coming of what could well be the extermination of the human
species."
And second, "American empire continues to build.
... [And] whenever you build empire, you must also make
crucifixions."
And finally, "the current determination to
ratchet down tighter on biblical authority, in actuality weakens
biblical authority, because it denies to the text the valid and
necessary renovations" without which our present reality dictates
our decisions. We need those renovations, he concluded, because they
"represent the future of the text, that is required by moral and
social and theological and economic obedience. And only by embracing
these innovations can biblical sterility be removed from the
church."
Two noted scholars in the church's life then
offered their perspectives on "the state of the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.)."
Jane Dempsey Douglass affirms the gift of Christian
freedom, and calls for global economic justice
Jane
Dempsey Douglass, professor emerita of Princeton Theological Seminary
and former president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, focused
on our call to Christian freedom as expressed in Galatians. The gift of
Christian freedom she saw as offering us the gift of loving service to
our neighbors, "the freedom to resist autocratic structures, and
the freedom to reject ways of reading scripture which justified slavery,
women's subordination, the inferiority of certain races and ethnic
groups, and the sinfulness of gay and lesbian relationships. We
celebrate the freedom to affirm the living word of God as a liberating
power for the wholeness of life."
She pointed to specific areas in the life of our
church where freedom must be proclaimed -- or claimed -- more
effectively. Beyond the obvious example of "Amendment B," she
noted also the continuing attacks on women's programs, which "seem
designed to intimidate and to silence women's voices."
As an example of the continuing constraints on women
in the church, she stated that "as of last October, 172
congregations, from 71 out of 173 presbyteries, report no female elders
or deacons. Clearly there's an educational task before us, which
requires a ministry rooted in Christian freedom and love."
"For Reformed people the church is not the ark by
which we are saved out of the world, but the new community through which
we work to transform the world to make God's reign more visible. The
freedom we have been given by the Holy Spirit is freedom to live against
the grain of the culture, both in church and society."
Another aspect of our freedom, she went on, is our
solidarity with all members of the body of Christ. That Reformed
awareness of solidarity is given concrete expression in a statement
issued by the most recent assembly of the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches in Debrecen, Hungary, in 1997. This council included 217
members churches from around the world -- three fourths of them located
in countries of the South: Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The dominant concern of the assembly was the emerging
globalization of the world's economies, and the injustices that are
associated with it: exploitation of low-wage labor in developing
countries; severe environmental damage by unregulated industries, and a
widening gap between the rich and poor nations, and between rich and
poor people within those nations.
That led the assembly to call on all member churches
to give serious study to issues of economic justice in a global economy.
Douglass urged that we work in our own church to undertake just that
sort of study, recognizing the urgency of these issues for us and for
all our sisters and brothers. Only in this way, she said, can the
fullness of the gospel be proclaimed in our world.
To enter into this study process seriously, she added,
will require acting on our freedom, for we are easily bound by the
values of our culture and so prevented facing these painful realities.
"This is a moment when our American churches need to engage these
questions with seriousness and in solidarity with our Christian brothers
and sisters across the globe, including them in our conversations."
James Hudnut-Beumler questions the limits of polity
for achieving change
James Hudnut-Beumler, Dean of Vanderbilt Divinity
School, Professor of Church
History, and former Academic Dean at Columbia Theological Seminary,
spoke about "the limits of polity for creating a just church."
[You can read the full
text of his address here.]
"The thesis in a nutshell is this," he
began: "First, the era of rising resources and expectations from
the progressive era -- 1890 through the early 1960s -- gave us the
national denominational structures that we now inherit, modeled on
large-scale, multinational corporations.
"Second, constriction of resources since that
time has produced denominations modeled not on the corporation but on
the regulatory agency. A regulatory agency exists primarily to control
the behavior of other actors, to assure outcomes ...
"And third: Our denominational meetings and
actions have become too often exercises in attempting to compel and
control where we no longer trust our abilities to convince. We prefer
law and polity to preaching and teaching and programming."
He then shifted to consider the current
"Confessing Church" movement. "Clearly they think that
those who would oppose Amendment O must be an apostate church. They
pattern their plans for righteous resistance on Karl Barth, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, and the Barmen Declaration. I tell you this: Only a
sex-obsessed and fearful group of Americans today could equate loving
Jews with hating gays. Only we American Christian would confuse
resisting Hitler with rejecting our own brothers and sisters in the
faith. And only in America -- capitalist-saturated, market-soaked,
cable-TV America -- could we miss the call to confessional status by the
world community of churches, but also think that people in this room
don't know Jesus Christ."
"Barmen was about following Jesus as Lord,"
he went on. "So then I say, let us follow Jesus.
"If we did, our declaration might read something
like this: We reject as false doctrine the belief that sexual
orientation can separate us from the love of God and the fellowship of
Christ's disciples.
"It might read like this: We reject as false
doctrine the belief that the American nuclear family is the only
acceptable way for two or more Christians to live together in a
household.
"'What would Jesus do?' That's a favorite
question for evangelicals and fundamentalists, but it's a question to
which this church right now pays mostly lip-service. I ask you what
would Jesus do if he happened upon a group of people about to stone a
woman today, just as before, Jesus would ask, 'Why?' Those gathered
might say, 'Because she's a lesbian who wants to be a Presbyterian
minister.' What would Jesus say? The same thing he said before: 'Let the
one among you who is without sin cast the first stone.' And then this:
'Has no one condemned you? Neither do I.' All of us Presbyterians need
to get on Jesus' side when it comes to judgment and violence."
Returning to his thesis, Hudnut-Beumler suggested that
one of our problems today in our church is that we have tried to use
"laws" to deal with problems that should be dealt with in
other ways. That is, he said, "the kind of legality that Jesus and
the prophets sought to overturn again and again."
"Something's going very wrong in our church, and
I believe that the propensity to think that getting the Book of
Order just right is a major part of the problem. Right, left and
center are preoccupied by the politics of polity at the expense of
reconciliation, proclamation, justice, love and mercy. We've been
seduced by the false promise of regulatory powers."
When he moved to a new presbytery last fall, one of
the questions put to him from the floor was about our church's decision
to require all congregations to ordain women, and whether that has
contributed to our current problems with the sexuality and ordination.
"That is, because congregations could be bound by the polity
against their conscience at the time, factions within the church are now
trying to bind the consciences of others on the current issue, in a
regressive pattern. Do you believe that we made a mistake in the late
'70s and early '80s to force inclusion of women in all sessions in all
congregations?"
Hudnut-Beumler responded to his questioner by saying
"It seems to me that we were indeed interested in the just goal of
full inclusion of women in ministries of the church, so we did in fact
use the Book of Order to force a policy on churches and people
who were resistant to the change. We won the polity battle ... but
perhaps we lost something important along the way. Concerned as we were
to have the change, to experience full inclusion everywhere, we really
did not love our brothers and sisters in those conservative
congregations enough to care about changing their hearts."
Two issues, he said, seem likely to define the future
of the Christian churches: The acceptance of all people into the church,
and the way Christians relate to people of other faiths. "The
struggles ahead may be more difficult than the struggles well under way
for racial and gender justice in the church. But the question that ought
to be before us is 'What are we going to do about it ... about them?
What are we going to do to try to insure that Presbyterian churches
become known as places that try to be as accepting as the Christ who ate
with sinners, who talked with Samaritan women, and apparently worried
not a bit about ritual purity?'"
He added a challenge to Witherspooners: That what we
need to be about takes place mainly in between times of General
Assemblies, in "ordinary time ... conducting gracious acts of
resistance in the form of being the church, and being welcoming
fellowships no matter what the current form of government says, for our
final authority is the love of God revealed in Christ. Let them round us
up if necessary."
One reality that can help in this effort is that
people often accept individuals in their own lives who are somehow
"different" -- the lesbian daughter, the grandson named
Mohammed -- even as they vote for rules that would reject them as
children of God. "Presbyterians have a remarkably difficult time
being homophobic and zenophobic close-up. Familiarity brings out the
best in the Christian character. The work of progressives in this church
is, I believe, to help all Presbyterians apply lessons learned locally
to national level policies; to encourage people to vote with hearts
transformed, instead of with fears consuming their generous instincts.
"So this week," he concluded, "do what
you can to make this a more just and loving church, but with
loving-kindness, and imagination, pursue that agenda throughout the
coming year. May God bless you as you do."
