by Tricia Dykers Koenig

Amendment 10-A: Standards for ordained service reflect the church’s desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life (G-1.0000). The governing body responsible for ordination and/or installation (G-14.0240; G-14.0450) shall examine each candidate’s calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office. The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate’s ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003). Governing bodies shall be guided by Scripture and the confessions in applying standards to individual candidates.

The current text of G-6.0106b is out of sync with Presbyterian and Reformed theology and polity.  Amendment 10-A corrects those errors.

“A brief review of the discussions which have troubled our Church in the past throws a revealing light upon the path which we are now treading.  Controversy within the Presbyterian Church is not a new thing.  We have passed this way before.

“1.    The first of these controversies within the American Presbyterian Church ended with the acceptance of the Adopting Act in 1729.  The first Presbytery, formed in 1706, and the first Synod, organized in 1716, fell heir to the discussions over subscription to the Confession of Faith which distressed the churches in the motherland and divided the Irish Church.  Before 1729 the American Presbyterian Church was divided in its sentiment regarding subscription to the Confession of Faith.  Jonathan Dickinson, the first President of Princeton, and one of the ablest men in the Church, opposed it.  He said, “I have a higher opinion of the Assembly’s Confession than of any other book of the kind existent in the world, yet I don’t think it’s perfect.  I know it to be the dictates of fallible men, and I know of no law, either of religion or reason, that obliges me to subscribe to it.”  The matter was keenly debated and in the end a compromise was effected.  The Adopting Act was worded so as to be acceptable to everyone, and laid the basis of a creedal church.  The Adopting Act reads:

“‘Although the Synod do not claim or pretend to any authority of imposing our faith upon other men’s consciences, but do profess our just dissatisfaction with an abhorrence of such impositions, and do utterly disclaim all legislative power and authority in the Church, being willing to receive one another as Christ has received us to the glory of God, and admit to fellowship in sacred ordinances all such as we have grounds to believe Christ will at last admit to the Kingdom of heaven, yet we are undoubtedly obliged to take care that the faith once delivered to the saints be kept pure and uncorrupt among us, and so handed down to our posterity.  And do therefore agree that all the ministers of this Synod, or that shall hereafter be admitted into this Synod, shall declare their agreement in and approbation of the Confession of Faith, with the Larger, and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, as being, in all the essential and necessary articles, good forms of sound words and systems of Christian doctrine, and do also adopt the said Confession and Catechisms as the confession of our faith.  And we do also agree, that all the Presbyteries within our bounds shall always take care not to admit any candidate for the ministry into the exercise of the sacred function unless he declares his agreement in opinion with all the essential and necessary articles of said Confession, either by subscribing the said Confession of Faith and Catechisms, or by a verbal declaration of their assent thereto, as such minister or candidate shall think best.  And in case any minister of this Synod, or any candidate for the ministry, shall have any scruple with respect to any article or articles of said Confession or Catechisms, he shall at the time of his making said declaration declare his sentiments to the Presbytery or Synod, who shall, notwithstanding, admit him to the exercise of the ministry within our bounds, and to ministerial communion, if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge his scruple or mistake to be only about articles not essential and necessary in doctrine, worship or government.  But if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge such ministers or candidates erroneous in essential and necessary articles of faith, the Synod or Presbytery shall declare them uncapable of communion with them.  And the Synod do solemnly agree that none of us will traduce or use any opprobrious term of those that differ from us in these extra-essential and not necessary points of doctrine, but treat them with the same friendship, kindness and brotherly love, as if they had not differed from us in such sentiments.’

“The phrase “essential and necessary articles,” thrice repeated, contains the germ of differences that still vex the Church.  When the Adopting Act was enacted the particular doctrine objected to was the submission of the Church to the State; those submitting to the Act objected to including this doctrine as one of the essential and necessary articles.  The principle incorporated in the Act, however, has a wider application.”   Report of the Special [Swearingen] Commission of 1925

Amendment 10-A was drafted in reliance upon this principle, which is what Presbyterians always eventually return to in ordination disputes, once they wake up to the fact that a small majority imposing its will on a large minority is a recipe for continual conflict and can never be sustained: we have national standards, and they have to be applied to individual candidates with respect to their freedom of conscience, taking into account the governing body’s understanding of what is “essential.”

“… ordained officers differ from other members in function only.” G-6.0102

Breaking with the Reformed tradition, G-6.0106b treats officers as a superior class, distinct from other members of the Body of Christ. 10-A calls officers to high standards but acknowledges that they, like all Christians, are on a journey of discipleship, seeking to be faithful in submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, but always falling short.

“Confessions and declarations are subordinate standards in the church, subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the Scriptures bear witness to him. No one type of confession is exclusively valid, no one statement is irreformable. Obedience to Jesus Christ alone identifies the one universal church and supplies the continuity of its tradition. This obedience is the ground of the church’s duty and freedom to reform itself in life and doctrine as new occasions, in God’s providence, may demand.” Confession of 1967, 9.03

G-6.0106b substitutes Scripture for Jesus Christ, who alone is the source of the church’s peace, unity, purity, and salvation, and fails even to mention him. 10-A grounds ordination standards firmly in the Lordship of Christ.

“All synods or councils since the apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both.” Westminster Confession of Faith, 6.175

G-6.0106b establishes the confessions as rules of faith and practice in the matter of that which is to be considered sinful, leaving no allowance for error, changing understandings, or freedom of conscience in interpretation of Scripture. 10-A upholds the importance of our confessions but returns them to their proper role as guide.

“But we hold that interpretation of the Scripture to be orthodox and genuine which is gleaned from the Scriptures themselves (from the nature of the language in which they were written, likewise according to the circumstances in which they were set down, and expounded in the light of like and unlike passages and of many and clearer passages) and which agree with the rule of faith and love, and contribute much to the glory of God and man’s salvation.” Second Helvetic Confession, 5.010

“The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its witness to God’s work of reconciliation in Christ. The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless the words of men, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written. They reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which were then current. The church, therefore, has an obligation to approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding. As God has spoken his word in diverse cultural situations, the church is confident that he will continue to speak through the Scriptures in a changing world and in every form of human culture.” Confession of 1967, 9.29

“Yet the church, in obedience to Jesus Christ, is open to the reform of its standards of doctrine as well as of governance. The church affirms ‘Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda,’ that is, ‘The church reformed, always reforming,’ according to the Word of God and the call of the Spirit.” G-2.0200

“Thus, the creeds and confessions of this church reflect a particular stance within the history of God’s people. They are the result of prayer, thought, and experience within a living tradition.” G-2.0500

G-6.0106b calcifies not only the Scripture, but also the confessions, ignoring our call to understand and apply them in context and to discern that interpretation which best agrees with the rule of faith and love.

Numerous General Assemblies have declined overtures which would have defined “the essential tenets of the Reformed faith,” and yet G-6.0106b purports to make certain portions of the confessions – those that mention sin – authoritative in a way that the confessions themselves warn against. It changes our relationship to the confessions by requiring that officers be in conformity to them – an impossibility, since in some details the confessions are not even in conformity with each other – rather than being instructed and guided by them.

“The new life takes place in a community in which men know that God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are. They therefore accept themselves and love others, knowing that no man has any ground on which to stand except God’s grace.
“The new life does not release a man from conflict with unbelief, pride, lust, fear. He still has to struggle with disheartening difficulties and problems. Nevertheless, as he matures in faith and faithfulness in his life with Christ, he lives in freedom and good cheer, bearing witness on good days and evil days, confident that the new life is pleasing to God and helpful to others.” Confession of 1967, 9.22-23

God has given us responsibility for moral and ethical decision-making as we strive to bear witness to the reconciling work of Christ in the world. G-6.0106b trivializes the Christian calling by suggesting that faithfulness is dependent on a check-list of behaviors to avoid.

“What does the seventh commandment teach us? That all unchastity is to be condemned by God, and that we should therefore detest it from the heart, and live chaste and disciplined lives, whether in holy wedlock or in single life.” Heidelberg Catechism, 4.108

Historically and confessionally, chastity is a quality to be exhibited in all aspects of life and relationship; G-6.0106b reverses that intent, emphasizing form over substance and implying that fidelity and chastity are either/or rather than both/and.

Over a decade later, the terms fidelity, chastity, and singleness have still not been defined. Are persons in committed relationships considered single simply because they do not have a marriage license? What about same-gender couples who are legally married? One might assume that fidelity and chastity are used in reference to sexual expression, but it is not clear what actions would be deemed to violate the requirement. G-6.0106b devalues marriage by treating it primarily as a “license for sex.”

“We teach that baptism should not be administered in the Church by women or midwives. For Paul deprived women of ecclesiastical duties, and baptism has to do with these.” Second Helvetic Confession, 5.191

“The same Spirit… calls women and men to all ministries of the Church.” Brief Statement of Faith, 10.4

G-6.0106b raises legalism to a new level, and has enshrined in the Book of Order a literalism not of Scripture only, but also of the Book of Confessions – despite the fact that the confessions themselves warn against such treatment. The PC(USA) has rejected subscriptionism, as evidenced by its adoption of a Book of Confessions instead of one document only. As is true of the Scripture, the Confessions come to us from different periods in the church’s history and are sometimes contradictory in their details, such that “conformity” is impossible.

“The sins forbidden in the Second Commandment are … the making any representation of God, of all, or of any of the three Persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever…” Larger Catechism, 7.219; on the sinfulness of images of God, see also 4.096-098, 5.020-022, 7.051

There are hundreds of practice[s] which the confessions call sin, making G-6.0106b far too broad to be applied with honesty and equity, and has made hypocrites of all who claim to uphold it.

“We also confess that sins are not equal; although they arise from the same fountain of corruption and unbelief, some are more serious than others.” Second Helvetic Confession, 5.039

Standards are urgently needed – standards that will be taken seriously, not that invite being ignored or scoffed at. It is simply not possible to treat all sins equally. G-6.0106b makes what should be spiritual issues, to be dealt with pastorally and personally, into ecclesiastical inquiries and/or judicial cases.

“Q. 149. Is any man able perfectly to keep the Commandments of God? A. No man is able, either of himself, or by any grace received in this life, perfectly to keep the Commandments of God; but doth daily break them in thought, word, and deed.” Larger Catechism, 7.259

In G-6.0106b the confessions have become no longer standards toward which to aspire, but requirements to meet “or else” – attaining the goal of perfection becomes a prerequisite for office, at least as the paragraph is written, though of course it has not enforced in that way, which undermines respect for the Book of Order. The church must maintain reasonable standards which are applied equally to all and determined in a way that respects freedom of conscience in interpretation of Scripture.

“The decision as to whether a person has departed from essentials of Reformed faith and polity is made initially by the individual concerned but ultimately becomes the responsibility of the governing body in which he or she serves.” G- 6.0108

Sessions and presbyteries can be trusted to make the decisions for which they are held accountable, and should be allowed to do so without the impossible burden of considering each and every practice which the confessions call sin as essential, or the hypocrisy of ignoring this sentence.

“We confess and acknowledge that the law of God is most just, equal, holy, and perfect, commanding those things which, when perfectly done, can give life and bring man to eternal felicity; but our nature is so corrupt, weak, and imperfect, that we are never able perfectly to fulfill the works of the law. Even after we are reborn, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth of God is not in us. It is therefore essential for us to lay hold on Christ Jesus, in his righteousness and his atonement, since he is the end and consummation of the Law and since it is by him that we are set at liberty so that the curse of God may not fall upon us, even though we do not fulfill the Law in all points. For as God the Father beholds us in the body of his Son Christ Jesus, he accepts our imperfect obedience as if it were perfect, and covers our works, which are defiled with many stains, with the righteousness of his Son. We do not mean that we are so set at liberty that we owe no obedience to the Law – for we have already acknowledged its place – but we affirm that no man on earth, with the sole exception of Christ Jesus, has given, gives, or shall give in action that obedience to the Law which the Law requires. When we have done all things we must fall down and unfeignedly confess that we are unprofitable servants. Therefore, whoever boasts of the merits of his own works or puts his trust in works of supererogation, boasts of what does not exist, and puts his trust in damnable idolatry.” Scots Confession, 3.15

Anyone who believes him or herself to be qualified for ordination/ installation under G-6.0106b is indeed disqualified – for the sin of trusting in works rather than grace. Those endeavoring to require perfection of others are opening themselves to the grave temptation of judgmentalism, condemned by Jesus Christ (e.g. Matthew 7:1-5), the Apostle Paul (e.g. Romans 14:1-12), and the confessions (e.g. 9.13). 10-A acknowledges that officers are called to high standards, but realistically.

“Q. 60. How are you righteous before God? A. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ… “Q. 62. But why cannot our good works be our righteousness before God, or at least a part of it? A. Because the righteousness which can stand before the judgment of God must be absolutely perfect and wholly in conformity with the divine Law. But even our best works in this life are all imperfect and defiled with sin.” Heidelberg Catechism, 4.060, 4.062

The responsibility of every Christian is to strive to follow Jesus Christ in faith and reliance upon grace, not to reach for unattainable perfection and so delude him or herself that s/he has earned salvation. 10-A, while requiring rigorous examination, recognizes this journey without suggesting that anyone can reach perfect repentance in all aspects of life.

“Q.113. What is required in the tenth commandment?
“A. That there should never enter our heart even the least indication or thought contrary to any commandment of God, but that we should always hate sin with our whole heart and find satisfaction and joy in all righteousness.” Heidelberg Catechism, 4.113

“But we rebel against God; we hide from our Creator.” Brief Statement of Faith, 10.3, line 33

Human sin is far deeper than self-acknowledged practice; indeed, self-deception, dishonesty, and hiding from God are grave aspects of our alienation from God. The specification “self-acknowledged” is an encouragement of dishonesty, and implies that sins which are not recognized or admitted are somehow less serious.

“Repentance unto life is a saving grace, wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Word of God, whereby out of the sight and sense, not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, and upon the apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, he so grieves for, and hates his sins, as that he turns from them all to God, purposing and endeavoring constantly to walk with him in all the ways of new obedience.” Larger Catechism, 7.186

According to this definition, one cannot repent of a practice one does not consider to be wrong. A candidate might be willing to submit to the discipline of the church and give up a particular practice, yet s/he would still have not repented if his/her conscience was not persuaded that the practice is indeed sinful. Does this constitute refusing to repent? What has happened to freedom of conscience?

“Congregations, individuals, or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or patronize their fellowmen, however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which they profess.” Confession of 1967, 9.44

G-6.0106b upholds an ideal of “purity” that, although it might be inadvertent, nevertheless has the effect of excluding, dominating, and patronizing those who are judged not to measure up. Jesus Christ consistently opted for compassion over such “purity.”

“The power that Jesus Christ has vested in his church, a power manifested in the exercise of church discipline, is one for building up the body of Christ, not for destroying it, for redeeming, not for punishing. It should be exercised as a dispensation of mercy and not of wrath so that the great end of the church may be achieved, that all children of God may be presented faultless in the day of Christ.” Preamble, The Rules of Discipline

“The church in its witness to the uniqueness of the Christian faith is called to mission and must be responsive to diversity in both the church and the world. Thus the fellowship of Christians as it gathers for worship and orders its corporate life will display a rich variety of form, practice, language, program, nurture, and service to suit culture and need.
“Our unity in Christ enables and requires the church to be open to all persons and to the varieties of talents and gifts of God’s people…” G-4.0401, 4.0402

“It is necessary to the integrity and health of the church that the persons who serve in it as officers shall adhere to the essentials of the Reformed faith and polity as expressed in the Book of Confessions and the Form of Government. So far as may be possible without serious departure from these standards, without infringing on the rights and views of others, and without obstructing the constitutional governance of the church, freedom of conscience with respect to the interpretation of Scripture is to be maintained.” G-6.0108

The unity of the church is in Christ, not in a particular interpretation of Scripture or confessions, nor in uniform practice. In 1996 it was hoped that G-6.0106b would “settle the issue” of the ordination of lesbian and gay persons so that “the whole thing will go away.” However, it is clear from the more than a decade of continual strife that the church is far from reaching consensus in this matter. Those Presbyterians whose consciences are persuaded that qualified gay men and lesbians should be considered for ordained office did not leave the church when G-6.0106b became part of the Book of Order, nor will they be silent until it is removed. Historically, insistence upon uniformity is inherently divisive; G-6.0106b, which heavy-handedly imposes a single exclusive view on everyone, has heightened rather than ended our conflict, exacerbated the brokenness of our community rather than healed it. The Presbyterian Church has been at its best when it has been willing to live with diverse interpretations of Scripture and the Constitution.

- Jack Rogers

… I had often said that I could not change my position on homosexuality unless I was convinced by Scripture. By studying the Bible in its historical and cultural context and through the lens of Jesus’ redeeming life and ministry, I have now been convinced that Scripture does not condemn, as such, the sexual expression of contemporary Christian people who are LGBT…

Read the whole essay.

- Dawn DeVries

The theology of the Reformation fundamentally reshaped the doctrine of ministry, and the practices surrounding ordination in Reformed churches. In the Roman Catholic as well as the Eastern Orthodox Churches, ordination as a sacrament ritually distinguished one group of people from another within the church. Priests, it was argued, by virtue of an “indelible character” conferred on them through valid ordination in the apostolic succession, were elevated to the role of mediators on behalf of the laity…  For the Roman Catholic Church, the unity of the church’s whole ministry is secured by the Bishop of Rome – the Pope – who is the ruler over the whole Church, standing in the place of Christ, and as the successor to St. Peter. Under the Pope, the entire leadership of the church is hierarchically organized, with metropolitans over bishops, bishops over priests, priests over deacons.

A quick glance through our Book of Confessions will confirm just how completely the Reformed churches rejected this theology of the ministry. In the first place, they did not recognize a fundamental distinction between priests and the laity. On the contrary, they saw the church as a communion of the faithful who have all been made priests and kings in Christ and are therefore able to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God through Christ. Thus understood, the priesthood includes all hierarchical understanding of ministry inherited from patristic and medieval times. The priestly work of interceding before God on behalf of others is a common work of the people of God…

Read the whole essay.

What General Assembly Called Us To Be and To Do

A Plenary Dialogue Between
Cynthia M. Campbell,
President, McCormick Theological Seminary,
and Douglas A. Nave, Esq.,
Member of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York 

Covenant Network Annual Conference – 2006
Broad Street Presbyterian Church
Columbus, Ohio

November 10, 2006

Cynthia

We are very grateful to be here today and to talk with you about living, in these new days, into what we are called to be and to do as church.

Our Moderator has just spoken with great eloquence about who we are called to be:  to be the church of Jesus Christ, the community of Christ’s body in the world, witnessing to the reconciliation that God gives the world in Jesus Christ, and demonstrating – by our lives, as individuals and corporately – the gospel of God’s love for the whole of creation.

It is our conviction that one of the ways we demonstrate the gospel is by our commitment to unity and community and fellowship, out of season as well as in season. Many in this world contend that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, are forces for division, destruction and even evil. We are committed to the opposite, that God has called us to be forces for life and hope. Our vision of church is a place that welcomes all in the name of the One who welcomed all. That’s what we think it means to be this church.

Doug

One of the great privileges of being a lawyer is being able to listen to wonderful speakers like Cynthia and our Moderator and then bring everything down to a dry, technical level that sucks all the life out of it.

We all know that one of the major subjects of discussion in the church these days is what was known at General Assembly as “Recommendation Five” – the fifth recommendation of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity. That’s the one that clarifies how we conduct our ordination examinations, and the one that has been the focus of our conversations in the months following G.A.

I would like to start this presentation by calling us back to the first four recommendations that came before Recommendation Five. In fact, The Outlook has set up a table out in the narthex, and they’ve got a new issue that talks about these very points. I’d encourage you to pick up this issue of The Outlook and read it. One of the articles in it was written by Blair Monie and Kate Kotfila, who chaired the Ecclesiology Committee, and they call these first four recommendations “the forgotten four.”  The forgotten four.

It’s important not to forget those four, because as we move to Recommendation Five, “we can’t get there from here” unless we go through Recommendations One, Two, Three and Four. So just briefly to remind you what those are:

• Recommendation 1:  We need to stay together. We need to witness to the reconciling power of Jesus Christ in our lives as the church.
• Recommendation 2:  We need to build community together. We need to worship together. We need to study together. We need to undertake projects and collaborative work together.
  

  By the way, I’m calling these “recommendations,” but they were adopted overwhelmingly by General Assembly, with 91% voting for them as “strong urgings” to the church. So again:  Stay together, build community.

• Recommendation 3:  Find our common ground. Find our common ground. You know the story:  What the members of the Theological Task Force realized as they worked together over five years – people from the far left, people from the far right, and every place in between – was that they had these profound points of agreement about the nature of their faith and the role of Jesus Christ in their lives. Find our common ground.
• And finally, Recommendation 4:  Pursue dialogue in joint discernment. We’ve been debating for a long, long time. These days, we get into rooms and we just holler at each other. We’re like a dysfunctional radar. You know how a radar works:  It sends out a signal, the signal bounces back, the radar receives that signal and interprets it. We’re all real good at transmitting, but not very many of our radars are receiving. We need to figure out how to be working radars – to work together, to listen to each other, to discern and dialogue together.

Those are “the forgotten four.”  I can’t think of anything more important.

Cynthia

Those “forgotten four” highlight the second half of the theme of this presentation:  What we’re called to be and then what we’re called to do. Those four recommendations are four of the things we are called to do together. We’re called to live together and to make a life together in the midst of difference and similarity.

We think one of the places where this comes together is around decisions about candidacy, ordination, and installation. These critical moments are the intersection, where our values, who we say we are called to be by God, intersect with how we will actually live together in community.

I want to back up for a minute and suggest that this whole process of discerning who has the gifts for ministry, examining candidates – that is, talking with them about their understanding of the Christian faith and of leadership and service, making a judgment about their fitness and readiness – is not a twenty-first century problem. It’s not even a twentieth-century problem. It’s not a sixteenth-century problem. It is an issue that began with the very life of the church itself. Discerning who would lead and serve is as old as this form of religious faith and faith community. Examination for ordination is a process that the community goes through under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to discern who God would have lead and serve within the life of the community. It is the responsibility of the community – the sacred, precious and very difficult responsibility – to make those decisions year in and year out.

In the Presbyterian Church, we talk about examination as having essentially three parts.

First of all, the larger church, whether it is through the voice of a session or of a presbytery, is to discern the character of the individual. Is this person a person of character, whose life itself gives witness to the love of God and the grace of Jesus Christ?

Second, we are to examine. We are to discuss, with persons presenting themselves with a sense of God’s call, their Christian faith and their views. This is particularly clear with respect to the ordination of Ministers of Word and Sacrament. Presbyteries are to discuss someone’s views with respect to theology, Bible, sacrament and governance.

And finally, the governing body is to discern fit. Is this individual rightly called to this particular place? Not all of us are called to every place in ministry, and it is the job of presbyteries and sessions to discern the fit between this particular call and the individual.

Now, our constitution sets standards by which these examinations, these moments of conversation and discernment, will be conducted. And it is our commitment as a denomination that those standards are set by us as a whole, by the General Assembly and the presbyteries, through writing and amendment of the Book of Order. It is important to remember that it is not up to local governing bodies to set standards, or to impose their own unique standards in their region. It is rather to our collective life as a whole that we look for these standards that will shape and form our life together.

Doug

Okay, down another level of legal technicality. I’m reminded of the story of the visitor to the parochial school who was going through the lunch line, taking things off the buffet, and got to the dessert section. There was a nice bowl of apples and a sign that said, “Please take only one. God is watching!”  This person went a little bit further down the dessert line, and there was a nice plate of cookies. And somebody had put up a sign that said, “Take all you want – God is watching the apples.”  We can get so wrapped up in technicalities and rules that we miss the big picture, can’t we? But it is important to think carefully about what makes up the picture.

General Assembly reminded us that the whole church establishes our standards for ordained service, and then sessions and presbyteries apply them. Applying our standards is a two-part process. The first part is deciding what the standard means – we’re going to talk about that a lot this afternoon. The second part is deciding how that standard applies to the individual being examined for office. Interpretation and application. Now, there is some conversation between General Assembly and the presbyteries and sessions when they interpret our standards, because ultimately if there’s an interpretive issue – “What does this standard mean?” – General Assembly can issue an authoritative interpretation that binds the church. But as a general rule, every time a candidate comes up to be examined, the ordaining body itself must consider a question:  If this standard is being applied, what does it mean? What does it mean in the context of this ministry, and what does it mean given the manner of life and the statement of faith of this individual?

Standards are important. The church sets them, presbyteries and sessions apply them . . . and candidates sometimes depart from them. Candidates depart from them for two reasons. One, they fail them because we’re all fallible human beings. Our standards come from scripture, so we have very high standards as a church. We take them very seriously; but we also recognize, given the depravity of human nature, that none of us meets our standards perfectly. General Assembly focused on a second way candidates depart from our standards, which is through the assertion of principled objections – that is, scruples. What happens when we’ve agreed on what a standard means and the candidate says, “I can’t comply with that”? We’ll be talking about that a bit later.

So there are two parts to the examination process. Part one is standards – what are they, what do we need to consider, and what do they mean? And part two, where the interpreted standard is being applied, may involve scruples. Standards and scruples. It’s very important to remember both of those words, because right now many in the church are talking only about “scruples” and they don’t really understand what that means, but they know it sounds bad. It’s not even really an English word, when you talk about somebody “scrupling” – scruples aren’t supposed to be a verb. Nobody knows what this means. But let’s start back and recognize that we have two things, standards and scruples.

Cynthia

This leads us to a question, more specifically, what are the standards? I must say, since General Assembly I’ve been working my way through this question, and coming back to it again and again. I’m curious as I read overtures or actions by presbyteries that say, “All of the standards in the Book of Order will be mandatory, and there will never be exceptions.”  That leads back to the question, exactly what are the standards?

Some of the standards I think are spelled out in G-6.0106a, which says, “In addition to possessing the necessary gifts and abilities, natural and acquired, those who undertake particular ministries” – now parenthetically, we are talking about all three ordained offices – “should be persons of strong faith, dedicated discipleship and love of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Their manner of life should be a demonstration of the Christian gospel in the church and in the world.”  That’s essentially the core of the standards, the definition of what is required, the overarching standard for ordination. G-6.0106b, which we’ll talk about in a minute, goes on to further define that; but it is within the context, I would argue, of G-6.0106a.

There are other requirements for ordination that have to do with education, with passing certain examinations, and the like. They’re all found in Chapter 14. Those I take to be somewhat different than standards.

The other standards for ordination, I think, are the ordination vows themselves. That’s the other critical place where we ask people in good faith and conscience to answer in the affirmative. Four of them have to do with theological affirmations. We ask, do you trust in Jesus Christ as Savior, do you accept the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ and God’s word, and then:  “Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church, as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?” [G-14.0207c, G-14.0405b(3)]

Now, the verbs that seem especially important, as I think about these standards, are  “receive,” “adopt,” “instructed” and “led.” It’s important to notice what they do not say – they do not say “affirm,” “believe,” or “hold without exception.”  They say, “receive” and “adopt” (that is, take into one’s understanding and one’s life), and then be “instructed” and “led” by them. They become guides. That is what one is to affirm:  that you understand yourself to be “instructed” and “led” by this large constitutional and confessional history as you lead the people of God.

The question that is coming up in the life of the church relates to the “essential tenets” to which our ordination vows refer. It’s worth pausing and noticing that for some time now, the church has resisted an attempt to spell out a specific list, to say, “Okay, here authoritatively are the ten essential tenets.”  There’s perhaps a guide to that, early on in the Book of Order [G-2.0500], but it is a suggested way of expressing the Reformed faith.

The Adopting Act of 1729, when this language actually came into our life, said that those things are “essential” which, when violated, would mark a disagreement so fundamental that we would not be able to share Communion with each other. To say something is “essential” means that disagreement about it would make it impossible for us to share the Lord’s Supper, to be in communion with one another.

In my own theological judgment, the “essentials” of the Reformed tradition that are most important are those that are the “essentials” of the Christian tradition. We are Reformed Christians, a form of Christianity, not a religion unto ourselves. That is why the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds are the fundamental foundation upon which all the rest of the Book of Confessions rests. The standards really begin with these very big-picture statements. Given those, we live within a community of discourse and interpretation and faith that is the Book of Confessions.

We’re going to talk about what happens when one has a disagreement with those texts.

Doug

While Cynthia was reading the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order, I was reading lesser things. One of them actually was a very interesting sociological study by Michelle Wolkomir – I’d recommend it to you. It’s called Be Not Deceived. It came out earlier this year from Rutgers University Press. Michelle Wolkomir is a sociologist. She’s not a Christian, she’s Jewish. She’s not gay or lesbian. But she is really intrigued by the existence of the Metropolitan Community Church, which is a predominately gay and lesbian church, and Exodus, which is a program to try to “bring people out of” homosexuality.

What intrigued Michelle Wolkomir are the commonalities between these two groups. She noted that they both come from conservative evangelical roots. They both address themselves to the same problem, which is the meaning of homosexuality in Christianity. They both address themselves to the same people, gay and lesbian people and their families. They both use the same kinds of methodologies to address this question – they have small group meetings, they share their faith experiences, and they study scripture together. And interestingly enough, both of them tend to locate their problems in a church that is unjustly hostile:  the MCC says that scripture has been interpreted in unrealistic and hostile ways, while Exodus tends to say that the church imports a unique gravity of sin against homosexuality which is not warranted.

So they’re very similar programs. Yet with all of these commonalities, they come out in diametrically opposed places. The MCC says, “God made you gay or lesbian, and that’s good – celebrate, worship and live as faithful GLBT Christians.”  And Exodus says, “Faithfulness as a Christian means leaving the gay part behind.”  Now how do they do that? That was Michelle Wolkomir’s question. She doesn’t come out with quite so interesting a solution or analysis as she has in pointing out the basic, interesting contradiction here.

What I took away, of most interest to me, was realizing how much similarity there is in the faith experiences of these two groups, faithful Christians all, and how differently they land on this one issue that can split the church if we’re not careful. When we start thinking about our standards for GLBT people, it may be helpful to think about the MCC and Exodus, and remember that faithful Christians can come out in very different places on this one issue.

Now why is that important? Well, that’s important for several reasons.

One is because we’re trying to decide whether our disagreements about sexuality are “essential”. That’s what Cynthia was talking about. Are they so important that they render us incapable of Communion with each other?

A second reason is because part of the debate we’re having in the church today is misplaced. I hope you all know – if you don’t, please, please, please focus – the church has always, as long as we’ve been talking about this, has always welcomed GLBT people into ministry. Always welcomed. Our debates are about sexual practice, not orientation. And the question is:  Do GLBT people need to be celibate?

If you ever feel like the church is too hostile, that it rejects persons, it’s important to go back to the 1978 statement that started all this. The 1978 General Assembly said that GLBT people can bring special gifts of ministry because of their life experiences. We welcome GLBT people in the ministry. But we do have this hang-up about practice.

One of the big questions that you’re going to see debated for the next couple of years in this church is:  Assuming our standards prohibit same-sex practice – it’s a big assumption, we’ll talk about that, but let’s assume that for the moment – and somebody says, “I’m a gay Christian, I believe that my sexuality is a gift of God. I live responsibly in a life-long partnership and I will not comply with that standard, I don’t believe it’s right” – can the governing body nevertheless ordain that person? The question, if you want to put it in its starkest terms, is:  While we all agree that we can disagree on matters of belief, can we disagree on matters of practice? Or do the people being ordained have to agree to comply with our rules of behavior?

Now, there are differing views in the church on that. It’s a very important question. But I would like to hold up three things as you think about that question.

The first is from our Historic Principles of Church Order, grounded in the Westminster Confession. Section G-1.0304 of the Book of Order – please write it down – says, “There is an inseparable connection between faith and practice.”  If you believe something, you practice it. If you’re not practicing something, you don’t really believe it. John Calvin said the same thing. He said, “We have a doctrine not of the tongue, but of life.”  We live what we believe. And Jesus Christ said the same thing: “By their fruits you will know them.”  It is theologically bankrupt, in my view, to say that you can separate belief from practice. If we respect freedom of conscience in matters of belief, we must respect freedom of conscience in matters of practice.

Now, there are limits. You will hear about a case relating to women’s ordination called the Kenyon case. Walter Kenyon presented himself for ordination as a minister to the Pittsburgh presbytery in the 1970s. He told the presbytery, “I will not participate in the ordination of women. I won’t do it.”  And the presbytery said, “Okay, welcome into the fellowship.”  Some pastors of churches sued, and the matter went up to the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission. The GAPJC ruled that Mr. Kenyon could not be a minister in the Presbyterian Church. And that happened again in another case several years later, in the southern stream of Presbyterianism, known as the Hambrick case.

(By the way, while I’m talking about cases, let me do a quick pitch. There’s a CD out in the lobby – you notice I’m holding up things for you to look at, because we need resources, we need informed people; there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Please pick up a copy of these legal resources. They have all the cases people keep talking about, and if you read the cases, you’ll learn a lot.)

You have these two cases where the GAPJC said, “If you’re not going to ordain women, you can’t be a minister.”  Well, there were two other cases that people forget to cite, the Huie case and the Simmons case. The last one is the Simmons case, from ’85. In those two cases, the pastor said, “I don’t think women should be ministers, and I intend to continue teaching that women shouldn’t be ministers, but if my presbytery instructs me to ordain a woman, I will participate in that service.”  The presbytery said, “Welcome aboard,” and people sued. But the GAPJC said that this person – the same minister in both cases, Rev. Ellis – could be a minister.

What was the difference? The difference, as the GAPJC said, was that it is a function of the ministerial office to participate in services of ordination. It is a function of the office. If you want to have the office, you must be ready to perform the function. It’s not a matter of personal practice; in all four of these cases, the individuals were going to teach that women should not be ordained. They were acting on their beliefs. However, in two cases, the individual said that he would do what the ministerial office required in its functions, while the other two individuals said no. And that’s the distinction that we draw. You can declare a scruple, in our view, as to matters of both belief and practice. But if you’re standing for office, you must be prepared to perform the functions of the office.

Cynthia

In thinking about this matter of declaring a scruple, it’s helpful to reflect on the way this has been practiced in other parts of the life our church. I first met this concept when I was doing my intern year in Little Rock, Arkansas in the early 1970s. I went to a congregation and the pastor of that congregation, a man by the name of Donald Campbell (no relation) told me this story of his examination for ordination before the Presbytery of Arkansas.

Back in those days, the southern Presbyterian Church (like the northern church, actually, at that time) was governed by the Westminster Standards. The ordination vows were really quite specific: Do you affirm that the Westminster Standards “contain the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture?”  It was customary to ask candidates to express their faith and then to ask them, “Are there any places where you feel you depart from the Westminster Standards?”  And Don said, “Yes, there is a place where I depart, and I declare a scruple. The Westminster Standards forbid praying for the dead, and I believe that they’re wrong. I have always prayed for my grandmother, and I will continue to do so. I declare this as a scruple.”  Now, he acknowledged that when the Westminster Standards were written, that article had to do with the then-prominent idea within Catholic Christianity of prayer being a vehicle of moving the souls of the deceased from purgatory into the blessed state. But nonetheless, the prohibition remained, and he declared a scruple about something we now would not have a particular debate about, I think, in the life of the church. It’s an interesting example for me as to what exactly that has meant in our tradition.

Another example, frankly, if we had been using this as a way of understanding how to live with our confessional tradition, is that we would have required most of us, a large majority of us, women especially, to express scruples with the entirety of the Book of Confessions before the Brief Statement of Faith was written. Why is that? Well, that’s because both the Scots Confession and Second Helvetic Confession make it clear that women are not to function in the ordained offices. It is only with the Brief Statement of Faith, which clearly says that women and men are called to all ordained offices of ministry, that the need for the expression of a scruple was removed.

So departures from parts of the confessions should not be seen, I think, as a particularly unusual thing. The process of scrupling, in fact, may demonstrate the movement of the church with respect to our understanding of the status of different doctrines.

Doug

Okay, getting down to brass tacks, let’s look at G-6.0106b, “Amendment B.” 

The GAPJC reminded us in a case several years ago that every single person in the Presbyterian Church is in violation of G-6.0106b. That’s the provision of the Book of Order that requires everyone to live in obedience to scripture and conformity with the confessions, or to repent. And none of us lives perfectly in accordance with scripture and the confessions.

G-6.0106b is commonly thought of as the “anti-gay” provision in the Book of Order; the only place G-6.0106b has ever been applied, in any of the PJCs, is in cases relating to gay and lesbian persons. But let’s think for a minute about how it might apply. Here again, just to point out some resources – I hope you’ll read them on the flight home, or when you get home – we’ve made available Guidelines for Examination of Church Officers. We’ve included (in Chapter 6, I think) some cases as to how people might be out of compliance with our standards.

We start with the woman who drives the SUV because she thinks it’s stylish. The question is, is that a faithful reflection of our standard that we’re to protect the environment and act in a manner that doesn’t reflect greed or self-interest?

Cynthia

She unrepentantly drives the SUV.

Doug

She unrepentantly – she bought it! And we have other examples. And in raising up examples, we don’t mean to suggest the answers; we mean to suggest how many questions there are.

You know, you can leave from Ohio or Kansas, fly a bomber over to Serbia, deliver a bomb load over a city, and come home for dinner. So there may be Presbyterian churches here that have bombers on their sessions – that is, people who have chosen to exercise this practice in their jobs. Well, does that comply with our Confessions or not? I can’t tell you the answer, and none of us can tell anyone else what the answer is. We have to search our consciences.

What about people who believe that the war on terror validates torture? What about people who believe that bank officers serving on our sessions should adopt certain lending rules, rules on interest? What about those of us who are divorced and remarried? What about of those of us who enjoy playing the lottery, or going to the casino on occasion? We don’t mean any harm by it; it’s like going to the movies or having a sport or hobby. We spend money entertaining ourselves; why can’t we go to the casino and play a little poker? What about those of us who golf on Sunday morning? “Mental Health Awareness Day,” Sunday morning golf. Is it essential for church officers to be in church every Sunday morning? Is there a difference if the officer is working at his job on Sunday morning to support his family, as opposed to golfing? What do our standards require? Are those standards “essential”?

If we put this kind of thought into what G-6.0106b really means, we see that the gay and lesbian “issue” is in one tiny corner of the many, many things that we should be concerned about as Christians today.

But it is an issue, it’s the one people are focused on, and it’s an interesting issue. You know, there are presbyteries out there who are saying – I love this – “If you’ve got any scruples, you’ve got to declare them.”  I can just envision the first examination. The candidate gets up and says, “How many do you want?”  Somebody was talking about the person who took the Book of Confessions on their vacation. This is going to be one long presbytery meeting, and they’ve only gotten through Candidate #1!

That’s not really how our process works very often. What happens is, our examiners come with certain concerns and ask about those. But it is helpful and important to remember that what might be of concern to me is not necessarily what’s of most concern to God, or should be of most concern to the church.

How do we approach G-6.0106b? I gave you two words; do people remember them? Standards and scruples, and they come in that order. Our standards say that our officers are required to live either in a faithful heterosexual marriage or in chastity in singleness, and any person refusing to repent of any practice the Confessions call sin shall not be ordained to the office of elder, minister, or deacon. There’s a lot of stuff to unpack there if we’re going to take it at all seriously. (Another thing I love is these proposals that “everything in the Book of Order shall be required,” as if it’s all black and white.) 

For example, what’s “chastity”? Is it celibacy, or is it monogamy? What is it? If you read these Guidelines, you’ll see we’ve got several pages on chastity. The answer is not clear, as a matter of history or of polity in the Presbyterian Church.

Or what do the Confessions call sin? You know, there are only two passages in all of the Confessions that potentially talk about homosexuality. One of them condemns “homosexual perversion”. Well, I assume we condemn “heterosexual perversion” as well, but that doesn’t mean we condemn all heterosexual relations. The other passage condemns “sodomy”. But if you go back and read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where that word comes from, you realize we’re talking about rape, or inhospitality, or injustice, or oppression. The scriptures never say that the sin of Sodom was same-sex relations in a loving consensual relationship. So what practices do the Confessions really call sin?

If you, the candidate, or the examining body (session or presbytery) decide that these provisions really do outlaw all conjugal relationships in a same-sex couple – let’s assume that – and somebody comes in and says, “I’ve been in a 20-year relationship, it’s monogamous, and I believe that I cannot live in compliance with this standard because I believe the standard is wrong” – is that person “refusing to repent”? What is repentance? Is it just saying, “I don’t agree with the majority”? Well, the Confessions don’t say that. The Confessions say that repentance is a God-given sense of inward conviction about the wrongfulness of our acts. You can look it up, it’s in there. If this person is not convicted of the wrongfulness of his or her acts, is she really “refusing to repent”?

There are lots of questions, and those are just some of them, in G-6.0106b. It’s important to think through all of those issues and decide what the standard means, to decide if you have a disagreement with the standard. You don’t know if you disagree with the standard until you know what the standard means. It’s only if you’ve determined that the standard creates a problem that you might declare a scruple.

It’s interesting to me that the definition in the 1700s of “matters that can’t be scrupled” is “matters on which disagreement makes us ‘incapable of communion.’” You know, 45% of the Presbyterian Church, or more, believe that G-6.0106b is wrong. Are we saying that 45% of our members really aren’t Christians, that this is so “essential” we can’t possibly be in communion with each other? I don’t think so. In fact, I know that’s not right, because we’ve had this disagreement for a long time, and we haven’t excommunicated that 45%. Many of them are still serving as officers and ministers in the church. So we need to understand what the standard says, and then we need consider scruples, and what’s really “essential” in our life of faith.

I had an interesting conversation before the conference with somebody who said, “Isn’t what we’re really talking about here fidelity to our covenant together to live by the rules?”  And I said, “Absolutely.”  But the question is, “Which rules?”  We can talk about a sexual ethic as a rule, but we can also talk about our historic, fundamental, defining belief that God speaks to the conscience of each of us, and that we owe each other mutual forbearance in matters of conscience. If we try to cram down one understanding of a sexual ethic, we’re being unfaithful to much larger values in Reformed Christianity.

I’ll wrap up with this:  I was listening to Jon Walton comment a little bit before this session started about the fear in the denomination today, the fear. You see it in presbyteries and sessions:  What is going to happen? Do we have to adopt resolutions to make sure that what GA did doesn’t create anything bad? It’s fear. Jesus told us the answer to that. Jesus said, “Perfect love casts out fear.”  And that’s what we’re called to do.

Cynthia

I get a lot of grief from friends of mine because I was known in the church I served for always beginning a discussion, “On the one hand . . . but on the other hand. . . .”  I actually deeply believe that’s the right approach, as a principle of theological engagement. That is the heart of what it means to be Presbyterian, but is also a part of the reality of Christian tradition. Another way to put it is resisting the temptation to say there’s only one answer. Or resisting the temptation to see one value and not affirm others.

There are those in the life of our church who feel very deeply about personal holiness and the lifestyle of a leader in the life of church – elder, deacon, or Minister of Word and Sacrament – that our lives should be different, that we are called to a form of life, to disciplines relating to all kinds of choices, in economic, political and religious terms as well as in terms of our relationships. This concern about personal holiness is deeply embedded in the biblical tradition, as well as in our Reformed tradition.

There’s another side of that, and that is that holiness is always something that is conferred; it is not earned. I was doing some research on something else and was reminded that the first time the word “holiness,” or “to make holy,” ever appears in scripture is on the seventh day. When God rested, God made the seventh day holy. It’s the first time anything was made holy. The day wasn’t holy in and of itself until God made it that way. What was holy was not a person or a place, but time. Holiness is something we receive from God as a gift, as a grace that we are then enabled to live into. Yes, holiness matters, and yes, so does understanding that it is a gift of God to live into as imperfect people.

What we’re talking about here is in the best of the Reformed tradition:  having standards, rules and policies – principles, if you will – that shape our life as perhaps a boundary, a large boundary, but also being clear about what is our core, which is our common faith and trust in Jesus Christ. It is about applying those standards but looking precisely to the individuals and the situations in which we are called to discern the meaning and applicability of those standards.

In order to do this, we have three places where trust comes in:  trusting one another and freedom of conscience, understanding all of us to be enlightened by God’s Spirit; trusting in the sovereignty of God, who reveals truth in its season and walks with us through our journey as community; and trusting in the grace of God, that even if we’re wrong about this, God will not let us go, from God or from each other.

Thank you very much. We’re ready now to take questions, and David will manage those questions.

Question:

Our assumption is that all seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Why is it that the Holy Spirit opens some Christian minds to new understandings of the faith and not others?

Doug

That’s a terrific question. Who would like to answer it?

One of the things I find helpful in thinking about this – there’s so many ways to answer it, the great theologians have written books and spent careers on it. One of the things I think most interesting is when we look at the four gospels, we see that they were written to different audiences with different focuses. Sometimes they seem to be inconsistent with each other. And you wonder why that is. I think that reflects an acknowledgement and a witness in scripture that God speaks to different people in different ways. We see that also in our Book of Confessions. We recognize that the church hears the Holy Spirit in different ways in different times. God is so big and our understanding is so small that often we need to hear the message in many different ways in order to even begin to grasp an essential truth. That’s one answer.

Cynthia

Another answer to that is in an analogy I sometimes use when I’m teaching theology. It’s related to the example of the four gospels. One can think about the work of doing theological reflection – that is to say, trying to love God with one’s mind, to let our faith seek understanding and expression – as much like a group of people around a piece of sculpture or, for example, that baptismal font. My vantage point on that baptismal font is one thing, and it’s another thing for those of you who are sitting in different locations. You see different things. Some of you can see that there’s a bowl inside of that, and some of you cannot. I can see that from here, so I would describe it with that recessed bowl inside of it, but back in the back row, I’ll bet you can’t see that. You don’t know it’s there. You perceive it from a different vantage point. That is part of what accounts, I think, for real theological difference:  our place within the tradition, and our own experience, that we bring when we stand before the mystery of God, which none of us will ever comprehend. So we live under the guidance of God’s Spirit, trying to move around and expand our angles of vision.

Doug

Can I add one other thought that occurred to me? I’d have to go back and look at the story to think if I’m using it correctly, but there is the story in the gospels about Jesus being tempted to throw himself down from a high point, to demonstrate his sovereignty and power. And that just isn’t the way God has worked in the biblical accounts. If we believe in free will, then we believe that God, for some reason, has felt it is important that we have choice and faith; and perfect revelation almost makes choice and faith impossible. Perhaps there’s something in the created human nature that makes it important not to have complete and true and absolute revelation, because then we wouldn’t have the free will and choice to worship God, we would simply be automatons and serfs.

Question:

How does a governing body work with the “shall” language? Can something mandatory be deemed non-essential?

Doug

Yes. What’s the next question?

The “shall” language – there are lots of ways to address that. I think the short answer is that we have lots of different rules and hierarchies and levels of rules, and it depends on what level you’re looking at.

We have a rule that says people “shall not be ordained” – that’s where this comes from, let’s get to the agenda around those claims that, under G-6.0106b, people “refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained.”  That’s the “shall” word. If you believe all of that – “people refusing to repent of any self-acknowledge practice which the confessions call sin” – if you believe all of that means “persons engaged in unrepentant, same-sex conjugal relations,” then the “shall” might have some bite. But when we [the Church] wrote G-6.0106b, we wrote into it the need to interpret and grapple with our confessional heritage. What do our Confessions call sin? What is “refusing to repent”? What is “chastity”, which is in the sentence before? That “shall” word doesn’t have one meaning. You have to understand the whole sentence, take it apart and understand what it means.

Some have said, “Oh, that’s all legalisms; everybody knows what General Assembly meant to do when it adopted G-6.0106b.”  Well, if that’s what they meant to do, the question is, why didn’t they do it that way? We had language we’d been working with since 1978:  “self-affirming, practicing homosexuals” cannot serve. Real clear. Why didn’t its supporters try to put that into the Book of Order? Because they didn’t believe it would command a majority in the presbyteries to pass. We had to have language that provided flexibility and that was truer to our confessional and biblical understanding of human agency. When you hear that “shall” question, it’s important to note that it’s coming from a lot of assumptions about G-6.0106b that simply aren’t true.

The other point I would make is that you have the hierarchies of rules. You have sexual ethics at one level. You have other rules that say freedom of conscience “shall” be respected. We have a “duty” to show mutual forbearance to each other. We have those requirements too. I find it hard to believe that a sexual ethic that is so contentious today can be deemed as important as the guiding principles of our Reformed heritage for 400 years.

Question:

Some sessions have brought motions that presbyteries should not allow any scruples concerning G-6.0106b for candidates for ordination. What suggestion do you have for opposing this motion?

Cynthia

I’m going to toss that back over to Doug, because I must say, I find this immensely perplexing. I frankly don’t understand how it could be legal for a presbytery to say in advance that no one may disagree or have a principled objection to something. Now maybe there’s something about the polity, which is essentially what’s being said by an action like that.

The ones I’ve seen are even stronger; there are a couple of presbyteries that have affirmed statements saying they will not allow anyone to state any scruples about anything. I find this frankly incredible, a misunderstanding of what it means to be Presbyterian, which is to respect, in a give-and-take, the way in which we understand ourselves to fit within a Book of Confessions. That’s why we have a Book of Confessions and not just the Westminster Standards. In fact, we draw a wide circle, or an arc of a tradition, not a laundry list of specifics. That places the judgment, in the discussion between a governing body and an individual, on how that person’s views fit within that arc, or that trajectory, of the interpretation of the Christian faith. To say up front that no one may have any disagreements seems to me to be somehow out of sorts with the whole nature of our tradition.

Then again, I could be wrong about that. There are probably better polity people here than I, so let’s let you answer that.

Doug

I think it’s a perfect answer, I really do. I think what General Assembly did is remind us what it is to be Presbyterians. It wasn’t about gays, it was about Presbyterians. We’ve got to go back to the “forgotten four” – recommendations 1, 2, 3, 4, now “strong urgings” from GA 1, 2, 3, 4 – about how we live together as Presbyterians.

You know, there are lots of Christian communions in the world, and not all of them have our system of collective discernment with respect for conscience. If you want to have very, very clear rules, there are Christian fellowships that offer those. We don’t. What we offer is the ability of faithful Presbyterians to come together and to grapple seriously with their consciences and with collective discernment to try to find the way forward as the Holy Spirit leads us into a continuing understanding of what we’re supposed to be and to do.

One of the things that GA did, that didn’t get much press, but really was wonderful – you know, we talk about ourselves as “Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda,” which is Latin, and it’s translated in our Book of Order as “The church reformed, always reforming.”  It’s our tradition, or we’d all be Roman Catholics. The church reformed, always reforming. General Assembly this year said that’s not the right translation. In the next edition of the Book of Order you’ll see a footnote that says what those words really mean is that the church is always “being” reformed. We don’t reform because we choose to; we reform because the Holy Spirit reforms us. It’s these processes where we come together and act like true Presbyterians, grappling with questions of what scripture really means, what our confessional heritage really means, what we’re learning from our lives as faithful Presbyterians together, that allow us to be “Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda.”

Question:

This is along those lines. How can we dialogue with people who don’t even agree with the process of the first four parts of the Task Force report on the basis of the Task Force not using Robert’s Rules of Order for decision-making?

Cynthia         

Well, let’s remember that all the Task Force did was to suggest was that maybe, occasionally, a governing body might want to consider having a conversation about something in a way other than the American version of Robert’s Rules of Order.

Now, I’m the moderator of a faculty. I thought sessions were interesting. There’s no rotation in faculties, we’re just there forever. We don’t ever move to a formal voting session unless I sense that we’ve gotten to a place where we really need to slow down and make sure we can hear a variety of sides before we make a decision. Most of the time what we do is work through something until it’s clear that we’re satisfied with it. Now, this sometimes takes awhile. But it’s perfectly effective, and it’s not illegal as long as eventually we note that these actions have been taken. That’s essentially what the Task Force recommended might be considered sometimes. I think it’s important to just go back and say what this means, as we engage in that conversation.

Doug

One of the great things you might like to read, I strongly recommend you read it, is a paper that was prepared for the Task Force by Stacy Johnson, a professor at Princeton Seminary; it’s on the Task Force website. It’s about the different views people in the church have adopted over time about homosexuality, and there were seven. Interesting:  this is not a black-and-white question. Seven different views that faithful Presbyterians and Christians hold about same-sex relationships – from the strict “prohibitionist” to the “celebrationist,” or something, I forget the precise words he used – faithful Presbyterians all.

What the Task Force members learned in their life together, from the far right to the far left, was that they had the important things in common. They believed in Jesus Christ. They issued a theological reflection that they urged people to study; that’s forgotten Recommendation Two. If we come together and we start talking about the important things we have in common, that can provide groundwork for discussion of the things we don’t necessarily agree about, but that we can help each other understand.

It seems to me that the biggest impediment here is the fear, it’s “We have to do something, let’s pass a statement outlawing scruples or something.”  And by the way, folks, we’ve done it too. Remember those “statements of dissent”? When G-6.0106b was passed, we had a lot of congregations, even a few presbyteries, who felt they had to say something, and they adopted statements of dissent. Some of them were legal, some of them were found to be illegal, but they had to give witness to what they believed. And we’re seeing that now on the other side. We believe it’s problematic. But perhaps some of this is venting, and people just need time to cool down. We need to give people time to cool down, and then remind each other why we’ve chosen to be Presbyterians in the first place.

Cynthia

If I could follow on to that for a second. I think one of the things that’s going to need to happen, presbytery by presbytery, is for people to sit down with each other, whether it’s the Committee on Ministry or a separate examinations committee, and begin to think through how we will conduct this part of our life together. A lot of you here that I’ve run into have said, “I’m on a COM in my presbytery.”  My strong recommendation, what I would urge you to do – rather than take the San Diego Presbytery approach, which is to write a manual of do’s and don’ts, and adopt a set of questions that shall be asked – is rather to take the first four parts of the report, these recommendations that the church has been commended to receive, and to use those within the COM to talk about, “What is it that we share in common, what do we understand together to be the core of our faith? On the basis of that, then, we’re going to go into these conversations with individuals.” 

Does this make the work harder? Yes, it does. But I don’t think it is wrong for us to assume that this is an important practice of discernment that we should engage in together, and then be ready to question ourselves:  “So where is the mutual forbearance of someone who maybe doesn’t express the faith in all of the ways that I would, but is enough within the family that I can recognize the Reformed faith in that person?”

Question:

Well that sounds good. But someone wants to know, since the PUP Report called for us to move away from battling toward discernment, after all of the discernment aren’t we going to have to re-engage in the battle and then vote?

Cynthia

We don’t know that yet. It depends on what “the battle” means. Will we continue to make decisions? Yes. Can we imagine another way towards the decision rather than battling? That’s what I think the PUP Report asks us to imagine.

Doug

If we do the “forgotten four,” five is irrelevant. If we do the “forgotten four,” five is irrelevant and we don’t have to have the fight, because we’ve learned how to live with each other and we’ve grown in a new appreciation of all the commonalities we share, and we respect and trust each other enough to respect and trust each other’s ordination decisions.

I don’t want to be misunderstood. That’s not to say that we don’t at some point want to change our standards. We do. I think that a big part of the church thinks our standard is wrong. But we’ve been fighting legislatively for thirty years, playing Capture the Flag, and so far there’s just a lot of blood on the floor. This is an invitation to say, maybe if we do the “forgotten four,” next time we’ll have a parade instead of a fight, and we will see a common truth about what our standards should be.

Question:

Since the Book of Order states that church members and officers differ only in function, does prohibition of GLBT persons for ordination imply prohibition of GLBT persons as members?

Doug

No, no –

Cynthia

No!

Doug

– and no! First of all, GLBT people are not prohibited from serving in ministry. That’s what we keep asking people to remember, and it’s so hard for folks to really let that sink in. We do not prohibit people from serving in any office of the church on the basis of orientation. Our rules relate only to practice. And when it comes to membership, our Book of Order says that everyone can be a member on the basis of their statement of faith alone. Now give something better, but that’s the legal answer.

Cynthia

Section G-4.0403 of the Book of Order says that:  “The Presbyterian Church shall give full expression to the rich diversity within its membership” – and we wish it was greater – “and shall provide means which will assure a greater inclusiveness leading to wholeness in its emerging life. Persons of all racial ethnic groups, different ages, both sexes, various disabilities, diverse geographical areas, different theological positions consistent with the Reformed tradition, as well as different marital conditions (married, single, widowed, or divorced) shall be guaranteed full participation and access to representation in the decision making of the church.” 

Now that’s one of those interesting points of tension – how does that piece of the constitution shape and inform our practices of ordination? That is the tension within which we live as a church.

Question:

Some people contend that being a practicing gay or lesbian person is in opposition to “a demonstration of a Christian lifestyle,” and they don’t even use G-6.0106b to come up with their condemnation. How does one respond to the question of what a demonstration of a Christian lifestyle looks like?

Cynthia

I think one looks among other things to some of the definitions that Paul uses of the fruits of the Spirit:  patience, self-control, kindness. One looks to the model of Christ’s life of welcome and of service. One looks to words such as the exhortation to do justice and to love kindness or mercy, and to walk humbly with God. One looks to Paul’s statement that love does no wrong to the neighbor, and therefore it’s love that is the fulfillment of the law. And then one asks, how does my life interact with those kinds of fruits? How does my life give witness, give evidence of that? The answer for all of us to that is, by the grace of God, better some days than others, and for all of us, never completely, because that’s the nature of our human life. Christian discipleship, if it’s anything, is the prayer that our lives continue to be conformed to those values, rather than an assumption that the only time you can be an ordained officer is once you’ve achieved all of them, or some level of perfection.

Question:

A colleague of mine, a gay pastor, took his life last week after a TV reporter planned to expose him. I’ve wondered awhile now about coming out on the floor of presbytery to be honest about who I am and what and whose I am. Is now the time to stand up and call light to the dark and poisonous atmosphere that continues to devastate even the gifted faithful?

Doug

Well. That will be a question that has to be answered by every person in their conscience, given their context and what they want to accomplish.

You see this when you counsel people about their upcoming examinations for office. Sometimes they say, “I simply want to serve the church. Why are they talking about sex? I don’t want to have that conversation, I don’t want to talk about my relationship with my partner, I want to talk about my relationship with Jesus Christ.”  Our rules allow people to decide not to self-acknowledge practice, and some decide to do that. There are others who say, “It is important to change this injustice and error” – and you can add twenty words, it’s a horrible, horrible misunderstanding in the church – “and the way you change that is to witness, so I’m going to go to the presbytery with this.”  And we had a case of a gentleman who did that, who said, “I’m not in a relationship today, but I intend to participate in a fully human, sexual relationship in my ministry.”  Or there are people who go and say, “Yes, I’m in that kind of a relationship today.”  Their call is to witness in that way. And there are lots of things in between.

One of the things that we progressive groups consistently try to live out in our lives together – More Light, TAMFS, Covenant Network, Witherspoon, all of the groups that are working to make the church more inclusive – is to respect the many different choices that different people make within their own contexts and with their own calls. That kind of respect is very important. Sometimes you see some tensions between the groups about whether all strategies work at General Assembly. That’s a legitimate question to ask. But I don’t think there can be any question, when you’re talking about individuals’ witness, that there is no one answer, there’s no one straitjacket. There are many, many ways to be a faithful witness to your life and experience and call.

Question:

I was on the ordination track in the Presbyterian Church. While I was in seminary, I began my coming-out process while discerning my call. I grew tired of leading a double life, so I’ve recently left the denomination and am now under care in the United Church of Christ for ordination as a minister. When I speak with GLBT people who are considering entering seminary, they ask me if they should do this under care of the PC(USA). I tell them that is up to them, but that the PC(USA) is not a denomination that is open to GLBT people serving in leadership. Why would a GLBT person want to go through the burden of ordination in the PC(USA)?

Doug

I think the short answer is because the Presbyterian Church desperately needs faithful witnesses. We call ourselves Christians because Jesus Christ took the hard way, not the easy way. He wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms in his own religious establishment; he was considered a heretic and he was killed for it. We Christians today believe that ministers are often called to follow the way of the cross. The question again comes back to how you think you can best minister to a hurting church and a hurting world. Some will believe that they can best witness by righting this wrong, by witnessing on this issue, even if it means that they will not be ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA). There are others who believe that they can best minister to a hurting church and a hurting world by using the process to become ministers and then witnessing from the inside, to help grow a loving, better, more just understanding of grace and the gospel, which is frankly what this whole misunderstanding is about.

Philip Yancey wrote a great book – he’s more conservative than I am, but he wrote a book whose title I love:  it was What’s So Amazing About Grace? Wonderful title. Ultimately, I think we can address the gay/lesbian issues in this church by addressing the gospel, because if the church really understands grace and the gospel, we won’t be able to exclude gay and lesbian people the way we do today.

There are a lot of different choices as to how you can minister. Some will feel compelled or called to follow the way of the cross, knowing they make a witness and probably won’t be ministers in the PC(USA) but then may move to the UCC or to other life calls. Every person has to figure out how they’re called and how they can best serve the gospel.

Cynthia

I want just to add on a word to that, to take it another step. We’ve spent a number of years worried about a lack of, especially, younger people feeling a call to ordained service in the life of mainline churches in general, the Presbyterian Church in particular. A lot of us have spent a lot of time and enlisted a lot of help from people like you, identifying young adults with the gifts and graces for ministry and getting them into seminary and supporting them. I spend a lot of time with these people. I am frankly amazed at the talent and energy that is coming into the life of the Presbyterian Church from young adults who have been lured by God and the voice of the church and people like you into considering ministry. They are terrified, as we speak – straight, gay, whatever – they’re terrified of what they’re going to face in presbyteries.

One of the things we need to go home and think about is whether or not we want the beginning of ministry for some of our brightest and best to be a terrorizing experience, or whether we want it to be part of their discernment along with us and their growth in faith. I think most of us here would like to say that in fact our faith and our theological judgment have grown over the life of our ministry from when we were ordained. It’s the sign that there is a God. I’m not where I was theologically thirty years ago, and I’ll bet a lot of the rest of you aren’t either. It’s part of our job to discern and to deal gently with those in whom we have invested a lot of time and energy. That doesn’t mean that we don’t hold people to high and important standards. But it does mean that we want to recognize that we have people of very, very good will who are offering themselves to us, for our future, and to walk with them through this incredibly important time in their leadership.

Thank you.

Jack L. Stotts 
President Emeritus, 
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Friday, November 5, 2004

I am delighted to be here as part of this conference, to share with you in our exploration of questions of theology and sexuality.

The late Joseph Sitler, the distinguished theologian, is reputed to have said on the occasion of his retirement, “I am an old man. The world has changed, and I don’t understand it.” I identify with Dr. Sitler. One of the areas I flunk when it comes to understanding is a changed world of sex and sexuality. I want to share with you some comments and quotations, some statements about this or that, that I find of interest. Some of the things I will be quoting will seem quaint to some of you, but I will say them anyway. Also I apologize in advance for anything I say that may be offensive. It is not intended to be that way, but sometimes it is heard that way. As I say, one of the areas I flunk when it comes to understanding is the changed world of sex and sexuality. Here are some examples of the changes in the world that I have seen and do experience, even today.

When I was 50 years younger, birth control devices were metaphorically and literally sold under the counter. They were available, if at all, only on request, request from a stern pharmacist who presided over the cash register, or from vending machines that in bold print announced that these items were solely for the prevention of disease. At least, that is how it was in Dallas, Texas in the 1940s and 1950s. The world has changed. Now condoms line the shelves of our local drug or grocery store. They can be checked out at the counter along with candy bars and toothbrush and bath powder; and the amazing thing is, the clerk doesn’t even avoid your eyes or elevate an eyebrow. My most recent research on this matter occurred last Saturday, as a matter of fact, when my wife and I were shopping – now don’t jump to conclusions. We were shopping at Central Market in San Antonio, Texas, one of those vast emporiums, and I knew I had to say something today. So I parked my grocery basket, sneaked over to where I thought these items that are unmentionable might be available, and sure enough, there’s a whole row (did you know that?) of condoms. In San Antonio they were under the title, “Lifestyles.” The world has changed. I don’t understand it.

In the same manner, pornography was tucked away out of sight under the counter, available only on request; but the world has changed. Now these publications adorn airport bookstores, occupy a section of their own in local bookstores, and stride through the Internet. I remember a Supreme Court Justice who once commented that he couldn’t define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it. Some of us take that suggestion. We ought to look around a little more than we do. — I don’t recommend that, either. It is amazing to me, quaint perhaps to you, that in 1947 the New York Times, the arbiters of taste and news, refused to advertise an allegedly scandalous study on male sexual behavior. It came to be called the Kinsey Report. Ironically, three weeks ago, in the New York Times Book Review, there was an article honoring the work that Dr. Kinsey had done in breaking through the boundaries that enclosed him and others in the area of human sexuality.

As to homosexuality, that was a matter less than 50 years ago, of whispered snickers and derisive comments at best, and at worst physical abuse. That world has made slow progress in being overcome. Still there is subtle and overt homophobia which rules many of our hearts and minds and bodies, but some progress has been made. Some progress – there is more to be made. The world has changed in 50 years. 

The church in that period was very clear about the moral guidance it should stand for and propagate. The basic moral norm was abstention from sexual intercourse before or outside of marriage. Adultery and fornication were clearly ruled out as legitimate morally. You know about the elder who came to see his pastor and said, “Sir, I’m reading my Bible and trying to understand the difference between fornication and adultery.” The pastor thought a minute and said, “You know, I don’t know. I’ve tried both of them, and they seemed the same to me!”The world has changed, and I sure don’t understand it. Can you blame me?

The environment of sexuality is not something out there. It is in here as well. Its presence surrounds me and, at times, threatens me. Items like the following reflect competitive proposals that vie for my behavior, attitude, and understanding. They come in no particular order, priority, or logic. Some can be heard as pleas for help, others as affirmations, still others as descriptive observations. Listen to the jumble of some of the comments:

• Item: From a Purdue University women’s dormitory window, a banner hanging down had these words: “All we want is love. All we get is sex.”
• Item: As Karl Barth wrote (he’s dead, you know, but he is still speaking) – Karl Barth wrote, “We no longer have a bad conscience about sex; but we don’t have a good conscience, either.”
• Item: Masters and Johnson, sex therapists: “We never treat the individual. We treat the relationship.”
• Item, from a movie some years back, An Indecent Proposal: Robert Redford offers a financially strapped young couple a million dollars if the wife will sleep with him for one night. After anguished reflection the couple, who are in desperate financial straits, agree. The next morning the husband is furious with himself and his wife. The woman says to her husband, “Why are you so upset? It wasn’t love, it was only sex.” — Is any sex “only sex”? A question.
• Item: Who won the Super Bowl this year? Anybody remember? The Patriots. What was the score? Nobody remembers the score? I don’t either. The morning after the Super Bowl, these comments were made by Jim Wallace. “What everybody was talking about the next day was the baring of Janet Jackson’s right breast, the finale to a stimulated sex dance done to a song called, ‘Rock Your Baby’ which ends with the line, ‘I gotta have you by the end of this song.’ Why is it the outstanding thing we remember about the Super Bowl is not who won or who lost, but the references to Janet Jackson’s breast?” It is fascinating to me also, as a kind of a sidelight, that no one mentioned the reality of the violence of that act. It wasn’t just sex. It was violence against another human being. “I gotta have you by the end of this song.”
• Another item: “I subscribe to the ‘drink of water’ theory of sexual intercourse. When you are thirsty you drink a glass of water. Then your thirst is quenched. Same thing with sex. You feel tense. You relieve the tension with sexual intercourse. It is a natural biological drive. That’s all.”
• Item: From the health center on a university campus, this posted sign: “Condoms distributed without charge between 2 and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.” Directly below was another poster: “AIDS kills.”
• Item, an old timer: “Love and marriage, love and marriage / Go together like a horse and carriage. / I was told by Mother, / You can’t have one without the other.”
• Item: Martin Buber: “In the beginning was the relationship.”
• Item, from an article in the New York Times Magazine about teenage sex: Brian, a 16-year-old from New England, reports on the advantages of “hooking up.” Hooking up, I learned, is the name for sexual intercourse that is quick, casual, and shallow. “Being in a real relationship just complicates everything,” says Brian. “When you’re ‘friends with benefits,’ you go over to the person’s house, you hook up, then you play video games or something. It rocks.” A teenage girl named Melissa was asked whether she thought hook-ups worked equally well for girls and boys. She surprised me with her answer. “It’s equal,” she said. “Everybody is using each other. That’s fair.” Is it fair?When you are dependent, by the way, on a quote like that from a person like myself about sexuality of teenagers, you know you’re in trouble. I am reminded of Tom Stoppard’s play Jumpers. In the play, someone says to the wife of a professor of moral theology, “My dear, you have no knowledge about these things. After all, you are the wife of a professor. Therefore you are, by definition, twice removed from reality.”
• Item: “There is no such thing as love; there is only power.”
• Item: “Sex sells.”
• Item: “Sex is not anything. It is everything.”
• Item: “Sex in the City.”
• Item: “I don’t care what they do, as long as they don’t do it in the street and scare the horses.”
• Item, in this season of politics: A semi-sexist poem from W.B. Yeats, written in response to an affirmation of Thomas Mann, the German novelist. Mann proposed that “In our time the destiny of man presents its meaning in political terms.” Yeats responded:
  

  “How can I, that girl standing there,
  My attention fix
  On Roman or on Russian
  Or on Spanish politics?
  Yet here’s a traveled man that knows
  What he talks about,
  And there’s a politician
  That has read and thought,
  And maybe what they say is true
  Of war and war’s alarms,
  But O that I were young again
  And held her in my arms!”
  [W.B.Yeats, “Politics”]

• Item: “When all is said and done, more is said than done in the locker room.”
• Item, from Fiddler on the Roof: “Goldie, do you love me?” “For twenty years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned the house. . .” “Yes, but Goldie, do you love me?” “I suppose I do.” “And I suppose I love you, too.”
• Item: John Dedek, a distinguished Roman Catholic ethicist, begins his study of sexual ethics this way, commenting on the presence of the “f” word in everyday usage and rampant in the entertainment world. He writes, “Dogs ‘f’; people make love. The problem is not the language,” — although that is a legitimate issue to be addressed – “but the basic issue is the reduction of sex to bios, not anthropos — to biology, not to the meaning of life in its richness and fullness.”

These random references swirl around my head and maybe are present in some of you. They are unsettling for me. They unsettle my need for some kind of certainty. They unsettle my need for some kind of clarity about what is going on and what should be going on in the area of sex and sexuality. In today’s sexual environment, are many sexual encounters tied to immediate pleasure rather than enduring responsibility? Do we in the United States stake sex and sexuality to a short-term rather than a long-term intention? Sexual relations are shattered today by the threat and the presence of HIV AIDS. The acceptance of living together as a valid form of short- and long-term relationships is rampant. What do we say? I don’t know.

The ongoing debate about the ordination of gays and lesbians, the exploitation of sexuality by the media who themselves are hostage to the gods of exploitative consumption, entertainment, and consumerism …we could go on. The world has changed, and I don’t understand it. But I hope the point has been made and not belabored that when we deal with sexual matters, we live in a confusing and confused world. This world is, perhaps, summarized by the title song of the Cole Porter Broadway musical, Anything Goes. What do we make of all this?

Of all things to bring to this discussion, a word from the past, from almost 40 years ago, a familiar, not outdated word. The Confession of 1967 provides a summary statement of the sexual ecology that still holds true. Listen.

“The relationship between man and woman exemplifies in a basic way God’s ordering of the interpersonal life for which he created mankind. Anarchy in sexual relationships is a symptom of man’s alienation from God, his neighbor, and himself. Man’s perennial confusion about the meaning of sex has been aggravated in our day by the availability of new means of birth control and the treatment of infection, by the pressures of urbanization, by the exploitation of sexual symbols in mass communication, and by world overpopulation.” (C67, 9.47d)

The Confession of 1967 acknowledges that the society of which we are a part is “anarchic” in terms of sexuality. That’s followed by the call to the church to be agents of reconciliation. It affirms God’s good intention for the gift of sexuality, and our responsibility to lead people to ”the responsible freedom of the new life in Christ,” where “each person has joy in and respect for his own humanity and that of other persons.” (9.47d)

“Anarchy,” from 1967. The word sounds all too familiar to us today. What is lacking in that world is an integrated sense of what we mean by love and sexuality separately and together. There is sufficient evidence to recognize that there is in our day as in previous eras considerable confusion about how to understand the gift and the claim of human sexuality and how to live responsibly as Christians within this realm. 

There is even evidence that in our supposedly enlightened age, the conspiracy of silence within families about sexuality remains in effect. In the magnificent sermon last night, there was mention of how you learned about sexuality, and reference to a book being given. It was often the way it was done. I want to report that things are better now. Now you are given illustrated books.

In 1967, the primary presenting issue was contraception. But that particular issue provoked discussion about the primal question of the authentic meanings of human sexuality. It was the time when the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae was presented, and the Roman Catholic position was set out with reference to contraception. The same thing occurred in many Protestant communities and denominations. For the last 25 to 30 years, the presenting issue has been not primarily birth control but homosexuality; for homosexuality raises the issue of the fundamental nature of human sexuality.

I wonder, quite frankly, if the struggle over the ordination of gays and lesbians is not fueled to some degree by the need to avoid sexual issues that are closer to home, that are more intrusive and immediate to countless persons and families. For instance, living together and the legitimacy of non-marital sex — under what conditions would we say it was legitimate or illegitimate? One way of avoiding that question is of course to raise another question, about homosexuality. But that pushes us back to basic questions about human sexuality, not one gender or another, one orientation or another orientation, but what is basic in our nature?

We in the church and in the society are today confronted by an ethical occasion. By an ethical occasion, I mean the recognition of the need to examine a particular issue or issues, attitudes and behavior, because the received ones no longer bear the compelling mark of authenticity and validity. Yet the question here is sexual ethics from a Christian perspective, binding together diverse elements into a basic exploration of What is human sexuality? What is it? What are the continuities? A perennial question, as C67 says, but a question that must be addressed.

The danger of reducing the issue to one of the issues is always present in a case like this, an ethical occasion. This is in accord with H. Richard Niebuhr’s understanding of Christian sexual ethics as “reflection upon current moral attitudes and behaviors in the light of some standards of excellence.” Or again, Jim Gustafson, distinguished ethicist, “Ethics is an intellectual discipline that seeks to order one’s own life individually and corporately in response to God’s ordering of the self and of the world.”

What I want to do with the remainder of this address is to treat three different elements that are necessary as we consider human sexuality. The first is an introductory and very preliminary suggestion about one source all Christian ethics must employ, namely the interpretation of Scripture. Second, we will focus on sex in a case study of the ethical tradition that has had important consequences for our sexual life today. The third is an analysis of the way of doing sexual ethics that is known as Covenant ethics.

An essential component for a Christian sexual ethics is Scripture. I never thought I would be saying that here because it has been said so often and repeated so often. I think it is correct that the basic issue for us in dealing with any human issue, any human behavior issue, is the Scripture. It’s the ground on which we move. It is the ground to which we return. The question, then, is: How do we use that Scripture?

There are two camps, it seems to me, as I reread the material about sexuality and about other social issues over the years — there are two hermeneutic camps that have been identified. The first is what I call the thematic camp. Here one finds or is grasped by certain dominant themes that course through the Bible — they run through the text and provide an ordering principle for examination and reflection of what we are to be and to do. For example, one such theme is clearly reconciliation. It’s a pervasive theme in the Scriptures, not located only in a few verses. The theme has integrity in relationship to the whole history of that word, that concept, and that way of living. That pervasive theme observes the principles of interpretation that Scripture is to interpret Scripture. The Bible is a cradle in which Christ is laid, that all Scripture is interpreted by Jesus Christ in the Spirit. The ethical responsibility is to order our lives around God’s reconciling presence and power as we are able to discern it. The thematic camp is the one I’m referring to.

The second camp proceeds by taking particular verses as specifying for all time what is to be done. Here the Bible is seen as something of a manual which orders how we are to order our and others’ lives. Some verses are elevated as intrinsically right or good. In a confusing world and one laced with sin, these are seen as generous gifts of God to illumine our way. They make concrete what we are to do. Again, this approach sees a disordered world, an anarchic world, if you will, and worries about that and looks for moral laws that can be followed, that can be shared, that can be proposed. These laws come to be known by some degree of reason, but some are given in revelation.

Two fundamentally different ways of looking at Scripture, both present in our church. and we are trying to address them — the theme that runs throughout, of liberation for example, or specific rules about homosexuality, or what have you, and how you put those two together.

The second component of ethical reflection is the tradition which has shaped us, often unconsciously. We Presbyterians have not been really big on being informed by our tradition. The word most used — and used very loosely – is Reformed. We forget, I think – and it’s an American problem, not just a Presbyterian problem – we fail to recognize that history lives in us. Bruce Rigdon, a good friend and former colleague, says, “The past isn’t gone; it isn’t even past!”

So let’s look at the past, specifically the 17th Century, in a study of Puritanism by James Turner Johnson, distinguished historian at Loyola University here in Chicago. In his book A Society Ordained by God, James Turner Johnson charts the differing content of what he calls Roman Catholic and Puritan perspectives on sexual matters. He does so by addressing the Biblical anchor points of each. I will be caricaturing, of course, what he says, but I hope you will find it helpful. Johnson understands the Puritans as revolutionaries, struggling for liberation in all aspects of life — the sexual, economic, political.

These two traditions, Roman Catholic and Puritan, are shaped by where they began Biblically. With reference to matters of sexuality, the Roman Catholic perspective, he contends, is crucially shaped by Genesis 1:28, “God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” The Puritan position begins with Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the human should be alone. I will make a helper as his partner.”

The first position pulling from these starting points, Johnson calls the Biological Model. The latter he calls the Covenant Model. We will look at that later. Both of those models, the Roman Catholic and the Puritan, presume and teach monogamous Christian marriage as the only legitimate location for sexual intercourse. Both rise from a patriarchal perspective. Both are addressing the purposes of marriage. According to the Roman Catholic view, the primary purpose of sex is procreation, which includes the requirement to have and to rear children in the church. Other purposes are secondary — companionship, remedy for sin, sacramentum or sacrament. In a class I was teaching in church, we were talking about the purposes of marriage and sexuality, and we got into this discussion about the multiple purposes. One of course is to maintain the ongoing life of the people, against which contraception speaks. We went very seriously through the other purposes, secondary, but they are there — companionship is one. Another one is, as the King James version says, human sexuality as a remedy for sin. “It is better to marry than to burn.” I think we all agree with that! We went through all these purposes, and I thought we were through. Then this young man in the Sunday School class said, “You’ve forgotten one purpose of sex.” “What’s that?” “Fun!” — And you know, we sometimes don’t take the delight in this gift that we ought.

What happened in the 17th Century was a change in the order of the priority of the purposes of sexuality. If you look at the history of the Roman Catholic and Puritan perspectives, what you have is one that begins with relationships and another that begins with moral, natural law. Those two are starting points. It’s been shown over and over again that if you begin with relationships, you are open to change. If you begin with moral law, there is no way you can open yourself to change – you can apply, but not open yourself to change. Just think of the differences in the moral positions around the question of divorce, for example. You can see in our own tradition, how divorce becomes acceptable over a period of years, and one of the reasons is the relationship shifts, and you are able to bring in different factors, making divorce not a legal situation primarily but a human situation, with human relationships being primary. If you think of others as well — divorce, contraception, responsible parenthood — all these become important. The important point is that the covenantal or Puritan approach is one that centers the issues, the law, on relationships. The law has a terrible job, a necessary job, of trying to change in the midst of a world which by definition cannot change morally.

Concluding the point of the Christian sexual ethic is an ethical model that is in keeping with our Puritan forbears as well as others, called Covenant. We are called the Covenant Network. Let’s talk about Covenant for a minute. A Covenant model gives some structure and order to the untidy world of swirling moral and ethical decisions that must be made. The Covenantal model is also one that self-consciously lies behind the various studies of sexual ethics that have been brought to General Assembly in the last fifty years. In every case that I have discovered (and I’m sure it is not complete), the studies that have been done — the 1991 study, the 1976 study, a variety of studies that have been done on human sexuality — all had as their content base a relational theology. Every one of them. Every one of them has been rejected on the basis of moral law. Such is the way it is.

The relational model says that the substance of the relationship is love. The structure of the relationship is moral law or rules. The whole purpose and promise of the Covenant is that which stands before us. Let me repeat that. The purpose of the Covenant is shalom, peace, salaam. The substance of the Covenant is love, justice — general principles. The moral law is what comes out of the substance, the Covenantal model. What you can do is to change the law, the regulations or guidance. It’s like Calvin’s third use of the law – it’s for guidance, for help. It’s important, very important; but it is open and flexible at the same time. We live in a world where the Covenant is a Covenant initiated by God. The substance of that relationship that God initiates is love and justice, and the structure of that relationship is You shall do this or You shall not do that. The third part is open to change. What is not open to change is the substance. It’s the old question of law and gospel: Which comes first, which is the most powerful, which belongs where? The commandments are expressions of the content of the substance. They fit the category of Calvin’s third use of the law. They lead to behaviors that are clear, that give direction to what is going on.

Today the normative setting of Christian marriage is the creation of a monogamous community where individuality and mutuality are linked together across time and space with the intention of permanence. What has happened, it seems to me, in the last two or three decades, is that the central meaning of marriage has really become philia, friendship. That is what is at the heart of the relationship. Friendship in the context of male and female in a monogamous relationship, an excluvistic relationship. That is the power of what is going on today. Or the marriage is a sexual community where the intention is that two shall become one, recognizing that becoming one is a process, not a state of affairs. Two shall become one. That is the promise.

A Covenantal model, sexual model is driven toward concreteness, but the practices that are derived are often at a very high level of generality. For example, in the booklet Sexuality and the Human Community, a marvelous study, by the way, this direction or guidance is given for dealing with an ethical norm: “In place of the simple but ineffective and widely disregarded standard of premarital virginity, we would prefer to hear our church speak in favor of the more significant standard of responsible, appropriate behavior. Responsibly appropriate behavior might be defined as sexual expression which is proportional to the depth and maturity of the relationship, to the degree to which it approaches the permanence of the marriage covenant.”

Such a definition clearly means that sexual promiscuity is neither responsible nor appropriate. That position was rejected, but you see the struggle. What do we recommend? We recommend a relationship be established of maturity. When does that set in? Age 16? Age 30? Age 50? Age 70? Age 80? Somewhere in there, surely! That kind of advice and guidance – like Calvin’s Third Use of the Law — cannot be finally enforced. It must be learned. It cannot be accepted in the church or has not been accepted in the church today. You can look also at how the different content of what is acceptable shifts. We have had marriage defined in so many different ways — polygamous marriage is still an issue, I am told, in some of our sister churches in some other parts of the world. The structure changes; the content changes.

I’m going to tell a little story about McCormick Seminary. When I was President of McCormick, down in Hyde Park, the Jesuit School of Theology had its headquarters right across the street from the central McCormick building. This was at a time in the 1970s when, quite frankly, the Jesuits were doing almost anything to get vocations and recruit people for this religious order. They had especially focused in on one person who really wanted to become a part of the order, and that young man was invited to spend the day on the campus of the Jesuit School of Theology with others from the cluster of scholars who belonged to those schools. Well, he came first at 9:00 in the morning to the best class they could design for him to attend. It was marvelously stimulating, and they had a break. They had cakes and cookies and fruit; then they went to another class, and it was a wonderful class. They went to lunch, and they had a great lunch. There was faculty there, and wines being poured, proper wines for the proper course. There was a little time for rest, then back to another class. Back at 4:30 to, what shall we call it, the Happy Hour? The time for gathering, I think we called it. There one had whatever one wanted to drink, but certainly they had the best of it. It wasn’t just plain old Scotch; it was Chivas, or single malt. The young man was very impressed. They went in to dinner and had prime rib — that was when prime rib was acceptable — twice baked potatoes, doubly good! — some kind of asparagus, a great meal, a wonderful meal. Then they adjourned to the coffee room across the hall from the dining room. Coffee was served to you – you didn’t have to go get it. As they sat and drank and pondered and talked and made the Jesuit order seem to be the very best possible order that a young person like himself could enter, they said, “You finished your coffee. You finished your dessert. Do you have any comments to make?” The young man replied (I am told this is accurate), “Well, sir, I think I have only one thing to say. If this is poverty, I can hardly wait for chastity!” By the way, it didn’t work. He didn’t go.

There are so many components to ethical decision making around the question of sexual ethics. Let me list some of them that may be helpful to your discussions. What is the place of power in sexual relations, positive and negative, including the asymmetry of power? Second, we need to deal with the questions of taboo and shame regarding sexual relations. We need as well to think together about the role of the church in giving specific direction or more generalized direction to its members and at what age and what time. What kind of material is helpful and necessary? and so forth.

Those are some thoughts about Christian sexual ethics. There’s lots more that could be said. Do you remember 16-year-old Brian and Melissa from the New York Times article I cited a few minutes ago? “Being in a real relationship,” Brian says, “just complicates matters.” About that, those two are right. Being in a real relationship does complicate matters. To be in a real relationship with a God who has come among us in Jesus Christ complicates our lives. We have to think about what it means to be a member of a community committed to learning from all its members and not excluding any. You have to struggle for thirty years, and that would be only the first thirty years with thirty more years to go. We have struggled for thirty years to be an inclusive church. We pass the torch to those who come after us. It complicates our relationships.

We have to admit our dependence upon a power beyond ourselves, who is, we confess, ordering our lives even as we gather here in this sanctuary. We have to admit that we are dependent upon a power who comes to us and through our neighbors, in particular those neighbors of difference, to whom we come beseeching their forgiveness and asking for their leadership.

For in the beginning was the relationship – God’s relationship with creation. It was good. In the future is the relationship with fulfillment of the promise that the world shall be completed in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ’s reign over the world. In the middle of our lives, the relationship is complicated. It is not only complicated, it is difficult. It is threatening from time to time. It is ambiguous and ambivalent; but it is there. Reconciliation, love, liberation — they are all there. I am an old man. The world has changed. I don’t understand it, but with the help of you, my friends, we will find a way. Thank you.

Litany for the Church

(Based on the Confession of 1967)  

Susan Ashton
Conference Manager, Covenant Network, and
Minister Member of San Francisco Presbytery

2002 Covenant Conference
Closing Worship, November 9, 2002

One: Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage.

All: By the power of the Holy Spirit we live in freedom and good cheer.

One: We dare the honesty of love and faithfulness, confident that our witness is pleasing to God and helpful to others.

One: No despair can erode the permanence of God’s love for us.

One: The pretensions and injustices of human schemes cannot change Christ’s welcome.

All: For it is by the power of the Holy Spirit we live in freedom and good cheer.

One: God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ embraces the whole of our lives. The gift of Christ is for all.

One: We mock our reconciling God if we propose otherwise.

One: However we might exclude, dominate or patronize each other, we resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith we profess.

All: For it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we live in freedom and good cheer.

One: Our life in Christ takes shape in community in which we know that God loves and accepts us in spite of what we are.

One: We accept ourselves and love others, knowing that none of us has any ground on which to stand except God’s grace.

All: For it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we live in freedom and good cheer. Amen!

Reconciliation Matters: C67 Now and Then

 John Wilkinson
Pastor,Third Presbyterian Church
Rochester, New York 

Address to the 2002 Covenant Conference
November 7, 2002

II Corinthians 5:16(RSV): From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. 17: Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. 18: All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19: that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20: So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21: For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

“Irresistibly imposed.” Those words from II Corinthians– “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”– irresistibly imposed themselves on a committee, a Presbyterian committee, of all things. At least that’s the way that Edward A. Dowey, Jr., who chaired the committee that offered the Confession of 1967 to the Presbyterian church, described the way in which those words captured a committee’s imagination. “Reconciliation,” articulated by the Apostle as the centerpiece of Christian theology and appropriated by a committee nearly two millennia later, forms the centerpiece of a statement — what we this afternoon will call “C67″ — that served as a theological and ecclesiastical watershed for the Presbyterian family.

A bit of background is called for. As you know, one of the many ways that Presbyterian history in the United States can be mapped is through the rhythm of schism and union. The pattern usually involves some kind of theological controversy, theological on the surface anyway, that also reflects a deeper struggle over power and decision-making and styles and practices of ministry and governance. Then, once bodies split, they almost always soon thereafter begin conversations about how they may get back together again.

Two major Presbyterian streams dissolved and then sub-divided in the constellation of events surrounding the Civil War, the issues of abolition and slavery and the war itself, and the church’s response. Almost immediately, those two streams began conversations about getting back together, but it was not really until the late 1940′s and 1950′s that those discussions gained much traction. A near-miss proposed union in 1954 of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (the P.C.U.S., the so-called “Southern” church), the United Presbyterian Church in North America (a denomination representing the Scottish covenanting tradition) and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (the P.C.U.S.A. without the current set of parentheses, the so-called “Northern” church) led to the union of the “Northern” church and the United church in 1958 to create the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, reflecting perhaps the longest ecclesiastical title in the history of Christendom. The bottom line was that a new Presbyterian church emerged in 1958, representing several streams of tradition.

Throughout those decades of union and reunion discussion, the issue of theological standards was always at the top of the agenda. Though the issue of application of standards was something of an issue of contention, union committees often reached quick consensus on the standards themselves: the Westminster Confession of Faith, plus a package considering the Larger and Shorter Catechisms as well as either an update of the Westminster standards or a contemporary statement of faith.

Then:
Such was the case as we turn to the theological identity of the newly united U.P.C.U.S.A. It took an overture, of course, to really get the ball rolling in the newly united church, from the Presbytery of Amarillo. That overture, about the need to state the faith in a new way for a new time and generation, passed, with appropriate appropriation of the Westminster standards, and the committee that received the overture concurred with the sentiment that the church needed a “brief Statement of faith in clear, concise, and contemporary language” seeking to “bring to all the members of our Church some sense of participation in the thrilling revival of theology.” The thrilling revival of theology. How wonderful that sounds.

In the fall of 1958, therefore, the Special Committee on a Brief Statement of Faith began its work, chaired by Edward Dowey of Princeton Theological Seminary by way of McCormick Theological Seminary and by way — along with his colleagues on the committee — of study with some of the great names of 20th century theology.

The notes of the Dowey committee fill some half a dozen boxes at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia. They capture what you might imagine they would capture, a group of dedicated, initially perplexed but eventually fairly convinced professors, ministers, leaders, seeking a way through an extraordinarily complex task in order to offer something useful to the church. They succeeded, and the manner in which they succeeded deserves not just a nod of recognition 35 years later, but re-examination and re-appropriation of how what they said then speaks to us now, for such a time as this. Because it does.

This is only nominally a history lesson this afternoon, but there are some things we should remember. We should remember that we Presbyterians are a confessional people, serving a confessional church. That is to say while “theology matters” all of the time, the work of the Dowey committee, and the call for a new confession, represents a particular moment when theology really mattered. The task they were given sought to do many things, but primarily it sought to give new articulation to some very foundational Reformed affirmations, at the same time providing a supplement, some say correction, some say abandonment, some say worse and some say better, to the Westminster standards that had served as the sole foundation of American Presbyterian theological identity.

One of the things we will need to bookmark for another day is not only the addition of C67 to our confessional corpus, but the creation, the formation, of a book of confessions, called appropriately the Book of Confessions, that captures theological formulations from the ancient church, the Reformation era and the 20th century. It took several years for the Dowey committee to develop that concept, just as it took them several years to develop the notion of a theme for this new statement of faith.

How to start? Whether “we hold these truths” or “four score and seven years ago,” how one starts matters. How to start? Was a central theme advisable, and if so, which one? Should it be “redemption,” what God has done for us in Jesus Christ? Should it be “revelation,” the ways in which we come to learn about God? In the end, Paul’s words about reconciliation “irresistibly imposed” themselves as the way in which we understand both redemption and revelation and became the calling card of the confession.

Unlike Westminster, which began with an affirmation of scriptural inspiration and authority, C67 was less interested in the how of the Bible and more interested in the that of the Bible, that the Bible testified to the reconciling ministry of Jesus Christ and therefore offered to the church a vision of reconciliation, a confession leading to Scripture and leading from scripture. As Ed Dowey remarked one time, this confession would start not with a book, but with the Word.

Our confessional tradition is fluid, rather than static, so the year, 1967, matters. Dowey wrote one time that the “genius” of the Reformed tradition is “a confessionalism that has adapted to its historical environment, subordinate to the scriptural witness and stating the faith in language appropriate to the evolving needs of the specific churches for which they have been composed.” (G.A. Minutes, 1959, page 267) It took many drafts and much debate to get to that point. Being a confessional church, I would submit, is like that. Reconciliation is like that.

C67 was originally intended to be “C65.” That a date was chosen at all as the title of the document is instructive — it suggests a timeliness to the whole enterprise that also seems very Reformed — God speaking a new word to the church in a new and particular moment in time, based on the timeless testimony of scripture.

And so, along with being a confessional church, we have been a contextual church. We believe in providence, in the loving acts of a sovereign God; we believe that that same sovereign God places us in context, historical, social, religious context. And what better context than the United States of the 1960′s to make a confessional statement to the church and for the world?

Historians of religion label the 1960′s a “watershed” era, a “turning point,” as do sociologists of religion. Consider this: the beginning of massive population shifts and the initial emergence of new immigrant groups; the civil rights movement; the women’s movement; the Vietnam war as political and cultural event, and the attendant anti-war movement; Vatican II, names like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, John XXIII, Betty Friedan, the Beatles.

Or consider what was happening in the church and the broader religious landscape: the rise of secularism; the rise of evangelicalism; the beginning of the decline of mainline church membership; what sociologists like Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney call the decline of religion’s cultural influence or what historians like William Hutchison and Sidney Ahlstrom call religion’s “loss of hegemony.”

Context therefore does matter to a confessional church, just as it did for those faithful ones who produced the Scots Confession or the Second Helvetic Confession or even the Theological Declaration of Barmen. Context matters, even as Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Perhaps the most influential context for the formation of C67 came at a unique confluence of religion and culture in a theological movement called “neo-orthodoxy.” A definition of neo-orthodoxy is a bit elusive; those who practiced it and taught it never really considered themselves part of a movement. Its banner carriers include names like Emil Brunner in Europe, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr in this country, and most principally the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth. Neo-orthodoxy sought to serve as a corrective both to liberal Christianity and conservative Christianity, by focusing on the centrality of Christ as the Word of God, per the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the centrality of the Bible as it gave witness to Christ and a historical consciousness that took the world very, very seriously.

The Dowey committee was steeped in neo-orthodoxy, reflecting deep appreciation especially for the thought of Karl Barth. Beyond the more affirmative appropriation of the trajectories of neo-orthodoxy, the C67 committee saw as part of its task to challenge a view of orthodox Calvinism reflected in the Westminster standards and codified in the Princeton theology of the nineteenth century. This may be a bit more historically trivial than what concerns us at this gathering, except for the fact that we are living with historical and theological trajectories now more than a century old in American Presbyterianism. The issues “then,” many of them involving views of biblical authority and interpretation and Christological understandings — what we declare about Jesus Christ — continue to dwell with us “now.”

Dowey and the drafting committee sought to provide some remedy to the Westminster position on the Bible, specifically around the issue of inspiration. A counter view to that position understood the committee’s real concern not to be Westminster, but a nineteenth-century appropriation of Westminster headquartered in the scholastic Calvinist positions of Princeton theology. Read Westminster on the Bible. See what it says. The committee, however, deemed Westminster to be inadequate, because it led with inspiration rather than revelation. This position was founded on the neo-orthodox presumption that the Bible was both Word of God (vis a vis a liberal position) and subject to the learning of modern biblical scholarship (vis a vis the orthodox position).

The committee’s work itself involved a series of eight years or so of meetings, drafts, debates, compromises. After several years of formative work, including the development of the material on the Bible as well as the settlement of the “reconciliation” theme, the committee turned to the topic of ethics. The committee from the start embraced the concept of a strong ethical statement about the church’s role in society; it now turned to the task of specificity.

In 1964, and particularly in 1965, as the committee’s work proceeded to its conclusion, the church experienced other developments. One of the key developments in the C67 story is the rise of two groups — call them “special interest” groups or “affinity” groups, call them, as does sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow, “struggle” groups.

One such group, which came to be known as Presbyterians United for (a) Biblical Confession, claimed as its task the renewal of the church through biblical and evangelical means. Its focus came to land on the way that the proposed confession considered the issues of biblical authority and interpretation. P.U.B.C. was quite satisfied with the Westminster understanding of the Bible, and quite dissatisfied that C67′s perceived abandonment of that position implied an abandonment of a Presbyterian commitment to the authority of the Bible.

Several of the extraordinary biographical moments of this whole story came as Dowey himself, characterized in the report of one meeting with P.U.B.C. leaders as a “lion in the midst of a group of Daniels,” engaged P.U.B.C. rigorously and winsomely in debate. This single topic could become a conference in itself; suffice it to say for the moment that P.U.B.C.’s commitment to “revision” enabled some modifications to happen in the final version of the confession, allowing that group’s constituency to register its support in the confession’s passage.

Such was not the case with another group, known then and now as the Presbyterian Lay Committee. The Lay Committee’s work began in the early 1960′s, prior to the center stage events of C67. J. Howard Pew, Presbyterian elder and successful businessperson of Sun Oil renown, was convinced that American Protestantism, and particularly the Presbyterian brand of it, had lost its moorings. Pew and the Lay Committee would have agreed with the P.U.B.C. concerns about biblical authority; their more heightened concern was with C67′s social statements. The church, to Pew and others, had no business “meddling” in political affairs. The most celebrated moment in the C67 story, in fact, came in December of 1966 as the Lay Committee purchased a full-page advertisement in The New York Times and countless other newspapers across the country to protest the proposed confession. While P.U.B.C. embraced a strategy of revision, therefore, the Lay Committee’s strategy of rejection could not allow for the support even of a revised statement.

The 1965 General Assembly in Columbus, Ohio overwhelmingly approved a draft of the confession, thus handing the work of the Dowey committee to a committee of fifteen, chaired by Sherman Skinner. The Skinner committee treaded lightly and faithfully on the previous committee’s work, but heard more than 2000 forms of critique, many of them focusing on the issue of biblical authority and the confession’s ethical statements.

While enfolding the majority of the 1965 version into its final offering, the Skinner committee did offer a P.U.B.C. approved compromise on the Bible, coupling the Word (upper-case “W”) of God in reference to Christ with the word (lower-case “w”) of God “written” to refer to the text of Holy Scriptures. The Skinner committee also adopted a fourth ethical provision, on human sexuality, that met the approval both of the Dowey committee and any Presbyterians who were looking for a clearer statement on issues of human morality.

Following a successful 1966 General Assembly in which the Skinner Committee made the original committee’s offering even more accessible to the church at large, all that remained was one more round of presbytery voting. In late spring 1967, the Confession of 1967 became a reality, along with a Book of Confessions and a new set of ordination vows.

So, what does it say? That question will be more fully explored in the context of several workshops, but more than a few highlights now will help to set the stage for those and other conversations. The best treatment of the confession is an “unofficial” commentary produced by Dowey himself following the final vote for ratification. But here goes.

The structure of the confession is Trinitarian, flowing from God’s work of reconciliation to the church’s ministry of reconciliation to the fulfillment of reconciliation. One of several pivot points happens early, in ¶9.03, which serves as a kind of purpose statement and a reminder about the role of confessions in Reformed theology.

The real pivot point, however, happens as ¶9.07 re-frames II Corinthians for the present confessional task, and then as ¶9.31 makes missional hay with that confessional affirmation: “to be reconciled to God is to be sent into the world as his reconciling community,” which Dowey called “the force of the entire confession,” even with two passive infinitives. (Commentary, page 112)

We have said enough about the theme of reconciliation itself. Perhaps the fact that it was not roundly criticized means that it should be provoking us a bit more. This reconciliation is not about political correctness or about smoothing over real and honest differences — it is about the gospel mandate. Gayraud Wilmore wrote later that “Reconciliation, the great theme of the C’67, does not rest upon rhetoric, but upon deeds, upon performance, upon the structural transformations that only the responsible use of power can affect.”(“The Path Toward Racial Justice,” in Journal of Presbyterian History, volume 61, number 1, Spring 1983, page 117.)

Beyond the theme of reconciliation, there are several substantive streams of thought that will not receive any significant attention this afternoon: important paragraphs such as ¶9.08 that focuses on the humanity of Christ, his earthly ministry, largely ignored in the history of confessional statements, and on his life as a Jew from Palestine. An even more prominent theme given scarce attention here is a revolutionary doctrine of the church, an ecclesiology that affirms, per ¶9.31, for example, the call of the church to be Christ’s reconciling community dispersed in the world.

As we have noted already, the two controversial touch points of the confession revolved around the Bible and social issues. Dowey would argue that the confession was biblical throughout; in fact, it serves as a kind of exegetical, hermeneutical exploration of II Corinthians. But the four paragraphs on the Bible, ¶9.27 through ¶9.31, remain primed for conversation. Notice terms like “sufficient revelation” and “unique and authoritative” and “received and obeyed.” Notice the term “witness without parallel.” Notice especially in ¶9.29 the interplay between the human quality of the words and the divine nature of the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and the call to critical study.

I would submit that the confession is biblical throughout; in fact, it is a some 4700-word exegetical exercise on one biblical text. Nowhere is that biblical understanding more pointed than in the litany of ethical and social concerns that served as the confession’s other prime controversy, the praxis of the church generated by the act of confession. In ¶9.43 the committee makes the case that the church is called to face particular crises in particular times. It initially posited three such situations, knowing that the Skinner Committee would most likely add a fourth to the list.

• ¶9.44 focuses on the issue of race, within both church and society. It speaks to what historian Gayraud Wilmore, who served as the lone African-American member of the C67 committee, has called the “ambivalence” of the Black Presbyterian experience. It also embraces the commitment to “integration” as proclaimed, in the early and middle 1960′s, by Martin Luther King, Jr., applying the concept of reconciliation in an effort to break down barriers of discrimination.
• ¶9.45 speaks as much to the world of the past, a Cold War world, as it does to the emerging world in the Vietnam War. It would not be until 1967, in fact, when the U.P.C.U.S.A. produced a particular statement on the Vietnam War. The words “even at risk to national security” provoked heated debate and even elicited a statement from the Department of Defense stating that Presbyterianism and military service were not incompatible. This paragraph does expand Presbyterian thinking to include — through the rubric of reconciliation — the church’s call to make peace as well as the traditional issue of waging just war. It also reads as a very current statement in light of the issues facing us in late 2002, in Iraq and North Korea, for example, as we face the rumor of war.
• ¶9.46′s consideration of “enslaving poverty in a world of abundance” gives echo to Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” or the aftermath of books like Michael Harrington’s The Other America. Reconciliation in this case would confront economic systems, class distinctions, technological oppression, and links, much as the Roman Catholic understanding of a “preferential option for the poor,” Jesus’ earthly ministry with the needs of the economically impoverished.
• ¶9.47, on human sexuality, seeks to envision a sense of reconciling order for the “confusion” and “anarchy” of relationships between men and women. The issues it raises continue to be our issues, though our issues have broadened and deepened as well. That’s why we are here. How people make decisions about sexual behavior — in the then-new face of birth control options or the threat of disease, and how human sexuality is exploited in the then tip-of-the-iceberg world of television, should still concern us, we ourselves, our young ones.

This paragraph is concerned about confusion. It captures a moment on this side of a more complete conversation about the roles of women in church and society, and, of course, about homosexuality, about G.L.B.T. concerns, about the travails facing this denomination formally since 1978. More on that in a moment, but consider now how the biblical and theological themes of reconciliation might be brought to our current conversation.

Now:
So, briefly and quite incompletely, that is the “then” of C67, enough historical background to be dangerous and enough confessional provocation, I hope, to provide stimulus for our own little thrilling theological revival. That was then. What about now? The Bard of Duluth, Robert Zimmerman, whom we know as Bob Dylan, wrote in those same 1960′s that “the times they are a changin’.” Well, Bob, show me a time that’s not! Why we re-visit C67 is not nostalgia, or even relevance, but truth, truth for today.

Since then, the only constant has been change, and change has been constant, accelerated by new forms of globalization and technology. The earlier era faced war in Vietnam, Cold War, war on poverty. This era faces war on drugs and war on terrorism. We think much differently about the environment. The Berlin Wall has fallen, as has apartheid in South Africa. This is not the 1960′s. It’s not the 1970′s, or 80′s, or 90′s, for that matter. The culture is different.

The church is different as well. We enjoy no cultural hegemony, if we really ever did. Denominations look different; brand loyalties shift. Secularism is on the rise, as is evangelicalism. James Davison and others have written of “culture wars,” battles in society and religion, ideological realignment with clear church implications, reflected in the Presbyterian family by the continuing role and presence of affinity groups, including those who organized “against” something then and those who organize “against” something now. And we continue to face decline defined by membership statistics and defined much more broadly than that, and perhaps more deeply.

And yet, and yet God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The call to reconciliation, first articulated by Paul, re-articulated by Calvin and Barth or by a modest little committee, embodied by a great company of saints in word and deed, in many times and places. That call to reconciliation is more pregnant now than ever. Human depravity takes on new forms to which the transformative ministry of reconciliation in Christ must be offered.

It could happen in the particularity of four ethical statements, or the adding of new ones to the mix. If you want an interesting adult education exercise, invite people to list what issues they believe that a contemporary confession should consider. C67 seems pretty fresh in such a conversation. Issues of race haunt us still. Issues of war and peace haunt us as well. Poverty has taken on new forms, or more evolved forms. And all three are inextricably linked in our urbanized, globalized world.

And what about sex, and what about human sexuality? Can ¶9.47 teach us anything about G-6.0106b, for example? Perhaps. Perhaps we would do well at least to think about what human sexuality is not, according to C67. It is not confusion. It is not exploitation. It is not anarchy. It is a gift of reconciliation.

Reconciliation is about hard work, and not casual and surface harmony. Leonard Cohen’s wonderful song “Hallelujah” declares that “love is not a victory march.” Reconciliation is not a victory march. It is a gift to be received with gratitude and tended to and nurtured, a precious gift. Reconciliation between beloved one and beloved one. Reconciliation between co-worker and co-worker. Reconciliation between a certain constitutional provision and a biblical vision of Jesus’ extraordinary hospitality and common sense Presbyterian polity, reconciliation with those who have been so injured by that provision, and reconciliation between those who think one thing about that and those who think another. Or reconciliation even between the demands and possibilities in the most current iteration of our broken and fearful world.

We must reclaim the biblical vision of this, articulated not only by Paul but affirmed throughout the pages of scripture, and most certainly in the gospel narratives of Jesus’ ministry. And we must re-claim the confessional task. We owe that to each other, even as we owe it to the great tradition in which we gather.

To gauge the trajectory of the confession’s impact after the drama of its adoption is to be drawn into the murky waters of church growth and decline, of rising partisanship and shifting allegiances, of a new denominationalism that continues to seek definition and stability and unity.

And yet, the Confession of 1967 serves, to utilize John Calvin’s visual metaphors, as lens, window, mirror, prism to the past and as a looking glass into the future of American Presbyterianism.

Any statement of faith that takes Jesus seriously, the Bible seriously, the church seriously and the world seriously should be taken seriously. Whether it is a Reformed understanding of biblical authority, a compelling Christology or a vital social ethic, the Confession of 1967 will continue to matter as the church pays attention to it, and even more so, to the reconciliation it proclaims. It reminds us of the possibilities of a thrilling revival of theology, and also reminds us that we are at our best when we are teaching and learning and engaged in the mission of the church rather than fussing with one another.

At the new-member classes at Third Church, I often remark, half jokingly, that we could do a lot worse for ourselves than reading the Brief Statement of Faith before going to bed every evening, with its mantras of “in life and in death we belong to God” or “in a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing.” A member of the Membership Committee came up to me one Sunday after church. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been doing that. I’ve been reading the Brief Statement every day.” I was stunned and grateful. Stunned that anyone had actually listened to me, and grateful for the benefits of that discipline!

We don’t have many mantras in our tradition. Here is one, from a very intentionally non-liturgical confession — ¶9.55. “With an urgency born of this hope.” With an urgency born of this hope. With an urgency born of this hope. With an urgency born of this hope might we claim and be claimed by the promise of reconciliation– for a church in very real need and a world aching for good news.

In the “Little Gitting,” T.S. Eliot writes: “And all shall be well and/All manner of thing shall be well/When the tongues of flame are in-folded/Into the crowned knot of fire/And the fire and the rose are one.”

And the fire and the rose are one. And all manner of creatures are one. And all manner of Christians are one. And all manner, yes, even of Presbyterians, are one. And our fallen selves and our redeemed selves are one. And the broken and fearful world and its creator are one. And the church and its Lord are one. Thank God for that ever present and not-quite-yet gift of reconciliation, in the name of the one in whom such reconciliation is found, and no other, even Jesus Christ.

Litany for the Church

 John Wilkinson
Pastor, Third Presbyterian Church
Rochester, NY

2002 Covenant Conference
Opening Worship, November 7, 2002

One: We confess and acknowledge one God alone, to whom alone we must cleave, whom alone we must serve, whom alone we must worship, and in whom alone we put our trust. (Scots Confession, 1560)

All: Let us seek, in all that we say and do and are, to cleave to God and to trust God’s promises.

One: Our only comfort in life and in death is that we belong — body and soul — not to ourselves, but to our faithful savior Jesus Christ. (Heidelberg Catechism, 1562)

All: Let us seek to live in the sure promise that in life and in death we belong to God.

One: The church is the assembly of the faithful, a communion of all saints, citizens of the one commonwealth, the one city, in the fellowship of all good things. (Second Helvetic Confession, 1561)

All: Let us seek to live together as citizens and to build a city of reconciliation and joy.

One: As the saints of God, we are united to one another in love and have communion in each other’s gifts and graces. (Westminster Confession, 1647)

All: Let us seek to use our gifts with integrity and to dwell in perfect unity.

One: The church’s commission, upon which its freedom is founded, consists in delivering the message of the free grace of God to all people in Christ’s stead, and therefore in the ministry of his own Word and work. (Barmen Declaration, 1934)

All: Let us seek to be bold witnesses to Christ’s grace, proclaiming to cities and nations the living Word among us.

One: Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage. (Confession of 1967)

All: In a broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing. (A Brief Statement of Faith, 1991)

One: With an urgency born of this hope, the church applies itself to present tasks and strives for a better world. (Confession of 1967)

All: May we, the church of Jesus Christ, be joyful in our worship, be generous in our giving, be abundant in our caring, be courageous in our proclaiming, for the sake of the world God loves so much and for the sake of the church entrusted to our care. Amen.

Jack L. Stotts

President Emeritus, Austin Theological Seminary

Address to the 2001 Covenant Conference
November 2, 2001

In 1949, a little over fifty years ago, the late H. Richard Niebuhr, then professor of Christian ethics at Yale University, gave the alumni lectures at Austin Seminary. The theme of those lectures and the title of the subsequent book were Christ and Culture.

Following the lead of one of his mentors, Ernst Troeltsch, Niebuhr employed the methodology of ideal types as he sought to bring some order out of the chaotic swirl of diverse understandings and approaches to the enduring question of the relation between Christ and culture. He saw his task as descriptive more than prescriptive, though he added his own perspective in a concluding chapter insisted upon by his editor. The book Christ and Culture has become a classic, if we understand a classic as having enduring power to inform one’s own and other’s understanding and to yield fresh insights with each reading. It has stood the test of time. It has also been informative across religious borders, providing ways of understandings of the relationship between the ultimate and penultimate powers that are confessed.

Another reason for this book’s staying power is that this issue of Christ and culture is always contemporary. This pressing concern is not only about what has happened, but how do we make sense of what is going on now? How does the past behavior of the church inform its activity today? In the kingdom of God in America, Niebuhr wrote in its introduction: “All attempts to interpret the past are indirect attempts to understand the present and the future” (p. 1). So it us with us.

The spark for asking the question of Christ and culture may come from the side of Christ or from the side of culture. The Christ who says, “My kingdom is not of this world” provokes us to think about which world is Christ’s and what are we to do in this world that we inhabit. Or, a culture such as our own, mired in a consumer mentality which seeks many things, clashes with Christ’s injunction to “sell all that you have and give it to the poor,” thereby creating dissonance for a society of increasing economic distance between the rich and the poor, what Niebuhr called fifty years ago the revolt of the rich against the poor. That rebellion has continued, still intruding on our Christ-formed conscience.

Further, specific contemporary issues such as abortion, ordination of gays and lesbians, terrorist actions, and cloning confront both Christ and culture, and not one without the other. The church which is the body of Christ is, therefore, always and inevitably engaged, Niebuhr writes, in the “double wrestle with its lord and with the cultural society with which it lives in symbiosis.” This wrestle is carried on “publicly by opposing parties and privately in the conflicts of conscience” (CC, p. 1).

In affirming the multiplicity of the outcomes of the church’s wrestling both with its Lord and with its environment, Niebuhr relativizes all responses as context specific, one answer not ultimately superior to another, but each complementary to all in the ongoing conversation, seeking a dynamic harmony. Thus the theological grounding for his analysis is the affirmation that no group has exclusive claim to truth. Rather, God uses, Niebuhr writes, “the partial insights and . . . necessary conflicts to attain God’s purposes.” Perhaps to overstate, truth resides in the whole community of faith, thereby mandating an ecumenical theology and ecclesiology, affirming the sovereign rule of God, transcending all our limited and finite perspectives, invoking what Niebuhr was to call radical monotheism.

It is important to note at this point that the methodology of ideal types is one that generalizes about a clutter of historical trends and behaviors, giving tentative order and content to diverse and often competing meanings and transactions. The method of typology, though historically inadequate, has the advantage of calling to our attention the continuity and significance of the great motifs that appear and reappear in the long wrestling of Christians with their enduring problem. Hence also, it may help us to gain orientation as we in our own time seek to answer the question of Christ and culture. It is a hermeneutic of social interaction. The test is, “Does it enable us to see and to understand more adequately what is going on in the current dynamic of Christ and culture?” (CC p. 44)

Niebuhr identifies five typical answers to the Christ and culture question. But before doing so he proffers brief definitions of both Christ and culture. First, Christ. “Jesus Christ is the one who for Christians is of supreme importance as the key to the understanding of themselves and the world, the main source of the knowledge of God and man, good and evil, the constant companion of the conscience, and the expected deliverer from evil” (CC, p. 11 ).

“Culture,” he writes, “is the artificial secondary environment, which humans construct, in contrast to nature, which is given. It comprises at least the following: language in distinction from sound; ideas and beliefs in distinction from reaction and ignorance; physical construction as distinct from unshaped nature, values in distinction from neutrality; social meanings in distinction from individual views. Culture is social, human and purposive. It is a fragile yet strong way of ordering human life” (CC, p.29). Culture is dynamic, and there are multiple cultures.

Working from these two definitions, Niebuhr sets forth the five types as interpretive devices to understand our past, present and future, to give some order in a world of seeming randomness, to perceive more adequately recurring relationships between Christ and culture.

To simplify, Niebuhr himself compressed his five types into three. His first type is “Christ in opposition to culture.” Here firm lines are drawn between Christ and the dominant culture, emphasizing the importance, if not the necessity, of withdrawing from the dominant culture, withholding legitimacy which the culture always wants from Christ. It seeks purity without its dark side of fanaticism. It leads for some to establishing separate communities that resist compromise with the practices and values of the environment, refusing to accommodate the rigorous claims of Christ to the “world.” It eschews compromise. One thinks of the Amish as an example.

The last type – a “Christ of culture” position – represents those who embrace the current culture as identical with God’s purposes. There is a smoothness in the relationship of the church to cultural institutions. So one talks about the Christian West as God’s intention for all cultures, or a Christian nation wherein the current dominating cultural economic, political and social forms are identified as God’s world without remainder. Here there is little distance between Christ and culture.

The third response is one that seeks to maintain the tension between Christ and culture, engaging the followers of Christ in seeking an ever more just society, reflecting more clearly the reign of God. The reformed heritage is one such type. It is the conversionist or transforming type. Its slogan might be to be “in the world but not of the world.” It is prepared to grasp the nettle of power, yielding a positive place in the relationship between Christ and culture for the coerciveness that in a fallen world inevitably goes with such an accommodation to the culture. Indeed it is a necessary element of God’s reign, restraining evil and promoting good. For in the creative work of God all things are good, but not all things are right. We live in a disordered world which God is ordering toward ever more just ways. (Here one should turn to H. Richard Niebuhr’s brother Reinhold for assistance.)

We in the reformed tradition agree with Niebuhr’s contention that we understand ourselves, when we are at our best, as a transforming community, being transformed and transforming the church and the culture. “Reformed, always being reformed.” We do so as a function of our theological affirmation that the God whom we have known in Jesus Christ is a transforming God, one whose willing and doing intends the well being and well doing of all creatures, of the whole creation. We are a people who, tutored by the late Paul Lehmann, ask first not what we are are to do, but rather inquire, “What is God doing in the world to make and to keep human life human?” And the trajectory of the answer is that where there is a transforming power which seeks love and justice for the universal community, there we are to be, responding to the transforming God of sovereign love. So understood, reformation is not for the church alone. It is for the culture, including the church.

The God who is transforming the creation so that it reflects and participates in the City of God is at work in us individually and in the culture which we inhabit. This transformation is always partial, but it is substantial. It is limited but it serves the unlimited One. It is temporary but it points to One who is eternal. It is humble in its service but ennobled by One who is Lord. It is finite but lodged within the infinite. It is local but universally comprehensive. It sees dimly but sufficiently. It is singular but located within a community. It often rises from the church but finds its completion in the world.

Transformation, so understood, transforms its earlier transformations. It takes on authentic content in particular historic time and places. It does not boast that it has initiated transforming movements, for as James Luther Adams wrote, “History is made by latching on to what already has happened and onto what is already occurring” (On Being Human Religiously, p. 133). But it confesses that such initiatives toward faithfulness may have their source in either Christ or culture. That is so because transformation is God’s work and our response. And God’s transforming power and presence are not limited to the church.

We have affirmed earlier that we study the past in order to guide us in the present. So let me now hazard implications for us that will reflect the usefulness of these categories of understanding and guidance. I will conclude with two gifts I believe that Niebuhr gives in and through his discussion of Christ and culture.

The first is the types as strategies of faithfulness.

The second is a generous confessionalism.

First, strategies of faithfulness. The five different types are not mutually exclusive. It would be a mistake to allow the elegance of the categories to rule over the untidiness of cultural and ecclesiastical dynamics. Categories are static, while that which they seek to illumine is active, living and dynamic. Indeed, in any one ecclesiastical tradition one will find elements of more than one type.

In our own heritage there has been a strong strain of “Christ of culture,” as illustrated dramatically by a report adopted in 1909 by the General Assembly of the former Presbyterian church with reference to extensive immigration into this country: “Our continent was not settled by bands of atheists or infidels having no religion, nor by Jews or Mohammedans refusing the name of Christ, but by colonies of Christian people acknowledging Jesus Christ as lord.” Ten years later the General Assembly addressed President Woodrow Wilson in the midst of WWI, commending him to God’s grace and affirming his presidency: “We are confidently relying upon you, as the spokesperson for the moral forces of the world, to carry on your gigantic task to righteous consummation.”

And we have adopted a “Christ against the dominant culture” perspective in events of recent memory. One thinks, for example of the General Assembly’s designation of the Vietnam war as “illegal and immoral.” And a Christ against culture motif may judge our too-easy accommodation to our environment, especially perhaps in times of threat to national security. It may not mean withdrawal from the dominant culture, but may include the withholding of consent to be governed by the powers and principalities.

Both of these are strategies of faithfulness, potential means to sought-after ends. For a transforming perspective they are context specific. They illustrate that while we seek to be faithful to our legacy of a “Christ transforming culture” type as dominant and integrating for us, there were and are present other forces and perspectives. Indeed, their presence provides criteria to evaluate our own strategies of transformation.

What I propose is that Niebuhr has supplied us with strategies of faithfulness. He writes that the five types represent for people of faith not only categories of understanding but also ethical mandates to be considered and applied as appropriate, calling on us to discern as best we can the appropriate strategies of faithfulness, remembering that strategies are subordinate to purposes.
In the “Christ transforming culture” model ,we can and should be instructed not only by our Reformed heritage of faithfulness but also by the faithfulness exercised by other followers of Christ who have been elected to, or chosen for, another way of witnessing to the love, justice and mercy of God.

In brief Niebuhr offers to us ethical and theological strategies as ways we have not chosen to follow but that can and do correct or complement our ways of seeing and acting, ways that transcend a narrow path. To be faithful we must consider the full range of options behind and before us. We must be genuinely ecumenical in our thinking and our acting. Niebuhr states his own conviction that Christ as living Lord is answering the question of Christ and culture in the totality of history and life in a fashion which transcends the wisdom of all his interpreters yet employs their partial insights and their necessary conflicts.

A second gift provoked for me by Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture is his commitment to a generous confessionalism. Christologically he focuses on Jesus Christ who comes to us through our histories and current encounters. Jesus Christ is the one who calls us to repentance, to “metanoia” as “permanent revolution, which does not come to an end in this world, this life, or this time” (The Meaning of Revelation, p .ix)

We are called to confess what we believe in a fashion that is true to our tradition and responsive to our current world. We are called to confess that in Jesus Christ we are liberated from our trivial, meager and idolatrous saviors to the one savior of the world. And we are called to confess from our own limited and relative experience.

And Niebuhr instructs us that a generous confession of faith is more positive than negative. It is not designed to exclude but to include. He affirms that we are often right in what we affirm but wrong in what we reject or deny. Thus, we are right in affirming that God was uniquely present in Jesus Christ. But we are wrong in limiting God’s saving work to ourselves. We are right in confessing our experience of God’s redeeming love in Jesus Christ, but are wrong in making our experience normative for all. We are right in exploring the relationship of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ to other faith communities, as Dirk Ficca has helped us do in the address he gave to a peacemaking conference some months ago about Christian and other religions. We are wrong, however, in refusing to consider the wider inclusiveness of God’s redeeming work beyond our own religious boundaries, forgetting the Second Helvetic Confession’s affirmation that, “God had some friends in the world outside the commonwealth of Israel.” We are right in identifying our experience of God’s love in Jesus Christ as authentic; we are wrong in requiring other experiences of God’s love to be like ours.

True and generous confessionalism for Niebuhr is one that affirms what we genuinely hold about the love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ. That confession is individual and corporate, being positive about what is believed without projecting our need for superiority over others by a confessional exclusivism. An authentic confession is the confession of a generous God, a God of grace who invites our generosity of spirit.

The generous confessionalism which Niebuhr endorses is open: open to confessing God’s definitive love and presence in Jesus Christ; open to the recognition that what we say and how we say it is shaped by time and place; open to facing new issues; open to ongoing transformation.

Finally a generous confessionalism is one that unites a profound gratitude and love of God in Jesus Christ while not elevating to confessional status any perspective or belief that would limit the sovereignty of God. It provokes a generous spirit toward neighbors. In humility it confesses that God’s forgiveness of sin is a sign of God’s generosity.

Niebuhr concluded his posthumously published book, The Responsible Self, with this confession:

Thus Christians understand themselves and their ethos somewhat in this fashion. They cannot boast that they have an excellent way of life, for they have little to point to when they boast. They only confess – we were blind in our distrust of being, now we begin to see; we were aliens and alienated in a strange , empty world, now we begin sometimes to feel at home; we were in love with ourselves and all our little cities, now we are falling in love, we think, with Being itself, with the City of God, the universal community of which God is the source and governor. And for all this we are indebted to Jesus Christ in our histories, and in that depth of the spirit in which we grope with our theologies and theories of symbols. Could it have so happened otherwise; could the same results have been achieved through other means? Are they being produced elsewhere through other means? That seems possible; nevertheless this one is our physician, this one is our reconciler to the determiner of our destiny. To whom else shall we go for words of eternal life, to whom else for the franchise in the universal community? (The Responsible Self, pp. 177, 178)

And Niebuhr concludes his meaning of revelation with a quotation from St. Augustine. It places the initiative where it belongs, on God’s generous, gracious presence with us, while urging our positive response: “I do not say to thee, seek the way. The way itself has come to thee: arise and walk.”

The conversation and the struggle between Christ and culture continues. There is no final answer, but there are important conclusions and decisions to be made. But we confess that the One who is the way and the truth and the life comes to us. And we are enabled to walk, really to limp, but nevertheless to follow. A gracious, generous God.