Guest commentary
Odd meanings of common words
A commentary by James D. Berkley, Special to The Layman, November 14, 2011
Related article
Contradictions: An analysis of the Covenant Network’s ‘Guidelines for Examination of Church Officers’
By Viola Larson
Naming His Grace blog
A recent Layman article about the Covenant Network’s conference revealed how helpful a glossary would be to delineate the peculiar Covenant Network meaning of specific words that have other accepted meanings in general usage. Here are a couple of words that need redefinition whenever they are used by the Covenant Network.
Reconciliation: The new meaning means requiring that everyone practice what Covenant Network advocates. Although Christians have universally believed and practiced a Biblical morality for 2,000 years, now that the Presbyterian Church (USA) has deviated from the norm, every Presbyterian must immediately embrace and celebrate this reversal that the Covenant Network has wrought. Doing so will make them “reconciled.”
However, should a teaching elder or ministry candidate indicate unwillingness to be forced into such ungodly complicity, that person must not be allowed to serve.
Although Covenant Network themed its conference “Reconciling Voices, Visions, Vocations,” reconciliation seemed pretty much aimed in one direction. In fact, Covenant Network’s peculiar idea that reconciliation equals rejection was made clear in its paper “Guidelines for Examination of Church Officers.” The paper concludes that
… the pastor who officiates at an ordination thereby performs a ministerial act that is required by the constitution (not a discretionary one), and the act of officiating indicates neither approval nor disapproval of the congregation’s choice of leaders and council’s approval of them. This point pertains primarily to pastors, who must officiate at child baptisms, ordination and installation of church leaders, and the like. While candidates who cannot agree to perform such functions in conformity with Presbyterian polity may be fine Christians, they may not be ordained or installed in the PCUSA [emphasis added].
In other words, if the Covenant Network interpretation is followed, one who will not ordain practicing homosexual persons cannot be ordained to ministry or installed into a new call. Reconciliation must mean thoroughly culling from ministry anyone continuing to uphold Biblical sexual standards.
Dialogue: It simply means listening to what Covenant Network has to say ad nauseam, without equal attention and weight being given to the withering logic of counter arguments. The dia in dialogue is meant to refer to two, as in two points of view interacting. But dialogue with the Covenant Network means being subjected over and over again to the shallow, illogical, unbiblical, and emotional monologue of those intent on promoting all things homosexual.
Covenant Network is regularly calling for more dialogue, but this has not meant honest give and take. What Covenant Network means is subjecting everyone to unceasing propaganda about homosexuality. The arguments are not made logically, the points are not backed up Biblically, and the conclusions are not theologically defensible, but that matters not. What is important in such dialogue is for the gay message to be spoken over and over again.
When truly fine minds such as Robert Gagnon or Mateen Elass take pains to engage liberal spokespersons point by point, they are able to absolutely dismantle the liberals’ reckless premises and assertions. If the exchange were truly a dialogue, then Covenant Network types would need to concede that they had been proven demonstrably in error.
But dialogue for the Covenant Network doesn’t work that way. The leaders and spokespersons simply ignore superior counter arguments and go their merry way, repeating thoroughly discredited assertions as if they retained any intellectual or theological merit. Dialogue doesn’t include listening to, weighing and responding to devastating critiques. Dialogue to the Covenant Network means mindlessly pressing the agenda of its disproved assertions as if they were solid fact. Dialogue really means propaganda.
There are other words, such as faithful or Biblical or love or truth that remain to be added to the Covenant Network glossary. That is a task for another day.