Broken Covenant: Signs of a Shattered Communion
By Parker T. Williamson, Special to The Layman Online, February 7, 2007
There was a time when Presbyterians knew what they believed. Rooted in Scripture, denominational leaders guarded the truth that had been entrusted to them. Aspiring ministers were tested for an unequivocal commitment to the church’s faith.
Essential beliefs were specified, and candidates for ordination subscribed to them in writing. No scruples, no behind the back finger crossing, no “wink, wink” reservations, no private definitions of Biblically conceived and confessionally affirmed doctrine. The lines between belief and unbelief were clearly drawn and commonly understood. If you wanted to be ordained a Presbyterian, you had to believe what Presbyterians believe.
Winter Convocation scheduled
The New Wineskins Association of Churches will hold its Winter Convocation on Feb. 8-9 in Orlando, Fla.
The convocation will be held at First Presbyterian Church in Orlando, with the Rev. Dr. Sameh Maurice as the preacher and teacher. More complete information is available on the Web site of the association. Today, having lost more than half the denomination’s membership in the last few decades, decimated its budget, consumed its endowments, and jettisoned most of its missionary force, Presbyterian Church (USA) managers are clinging to the vestiges of a vanishing institution.
What happened? What caused an unparalleled witness to the Gospel in the United States of America to be so rapidly swept toward oblivion? These are questions, not of conjecture, but of history.
I. Essential Tenets
On May 22, 1922, the Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick stepped into the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church in New York City and delivered a sermon titled, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” A Baptist, Fosdick subscribed to no creed. Thus, he was the ideal front for Presbyterian leaders who chafed when required to subscribe to the denomination’s five “fundamental” beliefs.1 Modernists wanted more flexible standards – and preferably no standards at all. Finding the historic doctrines of Christianity too confining, they insisted that the essence of Christian faith lies not in specified beliefs, but in one’s “Christian experience.”
Fosdick and his Presbyterian supporters were challenged by J. Gresham Machen, a distinguished professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. In his book, Christianity and Liberalism,2 Machen argued that liberalism is not merely a different emphasis within Christianity, but a different faith altogether. He demonstrated that liberalism affirms:
- A different God (an immanent rather than transcendent ‘deity’).
- A different anthropology (human beings are essentially good).
- A different Jesus (a model human rather than Savior).
- A different scripture (of human, not divine origin).
- A different church (a political body whose primary mission is to change societal structures, not making disciples).
Machen argued that if the Presbyterian Church set aside “fundamental” Christian doctrines in favor of experience-based ideologies, it would no longer be “Presbyterian,” nor could it even be called “the Church.”
The 1926 General Assembly
In a 1924 document called The Auburn Affirmation, Presbyterians who sought to free the denomination from being tethered by “fundamental” Christian doctrines denied the inerrancy of Scripture and declared the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ “theories.” Forging an alliance with “moderates,” Presbyterians who affirmed Biblical teachings but placed their highest priority on institutional stability, the Auburn Affirmation group won control of the General Assembly, forced Machen to resign his Princeton professorship, ultimately revoked his ordination and, in a landmark 1926 General Assembly, abandoned the denomination’s requirement that ordained leaders subscribe to any particular beliefs. This removal of ‘fundamental doctrines,’ often referred to as “essential tenets,” was destined to have a seismic impact on the future of the Presbyterian Church.
During the four decades that followed the 1926 General Assembly, several generations of Presbyterian leaders were ordained without reference to any doctrine that the denomination deemed essential. During examination, candidates for ordination were asked to receive and adopt “the essential tenets of Reformed faith,” but nowhere were these essential tenets specified. The result was precisely what Machen predicted, a broadly inclusive leadership that defied theological definition.
As they entered the 1960s, Presbyterian Church leaders began to realize that they faced a growing disparity between what the denomination officially claimed to be and what, since 1926, it had actually become. The denomination continued to identify itself as a constitutional church, standing under the authority of the Westminster Confession of Faith, a theologically precise and logically coherent statement of Reformed belief. But in reality, since 1926, presbyteries had not been holding ordained leaders accountable to any particular doctrine, including centerpiece doctrines in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
Enshrining a library
Given the drift that had occurred since 1926, honesty required that the Westminster Confession of Faith be superseded, for, in practice, it could no longer be called the denomination’s constitutional standard. Publicly acknowledging this reality via a constitutional amendment, however, was politically untenable. Thus, denominational leaders developed a plan to honor Westminster without obeying it. They would leave the confession in place, but envelop it within a compilation of other historical documents.
A key component in the plan was to add into this mix a new confession deemed more relevant to modern times. Thus, a clear and precise theological benchmark, a single standard by which the denomination’s faith could be measured, was replaced with a library of multiple resources called The Book of Confessions.
A conditional ‘authority’
Not only was the denomination’s theological standard now diffused, but the inclusion of an additional document introduced self contradiction into the picture. A task force had been appointed “to update Westminster” with more contemporary language. But the group went well beyond its assignment by proposing a brand new confession, The Confession of 1967.
On the subject of Scripture, “C-67,” as the new document was popularly labeled, differed radically from all other documents in the book. In every other confession, the divine authorship of Scripture and its consequent authority over the faith and life of the church was the central affirmation. C-67 also said that Scripture is the Word of God, but it modified that affirmation. “Scripture,” it said, “is nevertheless the words of men, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written.”3
On its face, this qualifier can be accepted by Biblical scholars. No credible student of Scripture would deny that inspired human beings were the instruments by which God’s Word was inscribed. But C-67 was headed in a different direction, one that would seriously weaken Scriptural authority. By employing subjective phrases, this confession suggested that the Scriptures are God’s Word to the degree that the reader experiences them as God’s Word. According to C-67, scriptural authority is determined, not by Scripture, but the person who reads and interprets Scripture.
Following its adoption of C-67, the General Assembly approved substantial changes in the vow required of persons seeking ordination. The earlier vows asked, “Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice?” The new vow asked, “Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the unique and authoritative witness of Jesus Christ in the Church catholic, and by the Holy Spirit, God’s Word to you?”
The new religion
The adoption of C-67 completed what was begun by the General Assembly of 1926. Now, the great confessions of the Reformed tradition, and even Scripture itself, could be neatly arranged on the shelf, enshrined as historical documents, and revered as expressions of the culture from which they arose. Sufficiently sidelined, they would no longer inhibit those who were rapidly developing what Machen had identified as a distinctly different religion.
The new religion that came into vogue during the late 1960s was secularized liberalism. Popular authors on Presbyterian seminary campuses were Harvey Cox,4 Thomas J.J. Altizer,5 and Bishop John A.T. Robinson.6 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s7 “the world come of age” and “religionless Christianity” themes were also required reading.
Seminarians cut their theological teeth on the very themes that Machen had identified as alien to the Gospel: an immanent, pantheistic god rather than the transcendent God who reveals himself in his Word, an essentially good human being who needs only an opportunity for self-development, a vast array of culturally developed “authorities” available for selective utilization by humans as they maximize their inherent potentialities, and a church, now redefined as a political association, vectored toward community development goals.
II. Liberation as Salvation
If one believes that human beings are essentially good, then, as Machen argued in Christianity and Liberalism, there is no need for a Savior. Jesus Christ becomes an example of the kind of person all humans can be. He is a moral leader, who encourages us to do good deeds, building communities of peace and justice where all humans may flourish and share the earth’s resources.
But how does such an optimistic anthropology explain the obvious fact that many persons live vastly below their potential? How does it account for a yawning gap between the rich and the poor? How does it explain poverty of mind, spirit and resources? Liberalism’s answer is that the problem in these inequities lies not in the transformation of persons, but in the overthrow of systems, socio-economic, political structures of oppression that enslave individuals, keeping them from becoming all that they can be. Secularized liberalism’s solution to this problem is not salvation, but liberation.
As Presbyterian Church leaders substituted liberation for salvation, a radically different concept of missions began to surface among denominational boards and agencies. The church’s call now was to engage in revolution, to participate in class struggles both at home and abroad, to declare that “God is on the side of the poor,” and to support political and, if necessary, armed liberation movements ostensibly aimed at redressing inequities.
Increasingly, the language of Presbyterian Church leaders included race, gender and economic equality. They referred to “the tools of Marxist analysis” as essential for understanding and addressing the world’s inequities. This transition from the Christian doctrine of salvation to secular liberalism’s ideology of liberation is illustrated in the following actions by Presbyterian general assemblies and their agencies:
- On May 15, 1969, James Forman, author of the “Black Manifesto,” was welcomed to the General Assembly podium by Stated Clerk William P. Thompson as “a modern prophet.” Later, a $50,000 gift was given in response to Forman’s demand for “reparations.” The gift was channeled through IFCO, an ecumenical agency of denominational leaders.
- In 1971, the United Presbyterian Church made a $10,000 grant to Black Panther and self-avowed Marxist activist Angela Davis, who was on trial as an accessory to the murder of a judge in a Black Panther trial.
- In 1972, and again in 1973, the United Presbyterian Church made $75,000 grants to ROSCA, a Marxist organization working to overthrow the government of Colombia. Three presbyteries in the Presbyterian Church of Colombia sent a sharply worded “Declaration” to the United Presbyterian Church General Assembly. Colombian Presbyterians said leaders of ROSCA “are men with known Marxist views who are totally unrelated to our Colombian Church. These men reject the order now established in Colombia and propose the establishment of a socialist regime with the logical implication of the destruction of economic and political structures which at present operate in our country.”8
- In 1973, the United Presbyterian Church funded and participated in IDOC, a coalition including denominational “national missions” representatives whose position paper stated: “To be more specific, this paper contends that the system which creates and sustains much of the hunger, underdevelopment, unemployment, and other social ills in the world today is capitalism … As such, it is an unjust system which should be replaced.”9
- In 1973, the Presbyterian Church of Brazil evicted United Presbyterian Church missionaries for their involvement in liberationist activities.
- During the 1970s, both Northern and Southern streams of the Presbyterian Church made significant investments in liberation movements, largely guerrilla activities, operating in southern Africa. Many of these grants were channeled through the World Council of Churches Fund to Combat Racism, of which the Presbyterians constituted the largest denominational contributors. In 1974, for example, WCC grants to terrorist groups in southern Africa (called “liberation groups” and “freedom fighters” by denominational officials) totaled $322,000.
- One grant recipient was FRELIMO, whose guerrilla fighters attacked a Nhacambo hamlet. One hundred twenty of the hamlet’s 186 huts were burned. Seventeen villagers were killed, of whom three were small boys, three were youths, two were baby girls, seven were women and two were men. The massacre and FRELIMO’s responsibility for it was authenticated by the International Red Cross.
- In 1975, the Joint Strategy and Action Committee (JSAC) – a coalition of denominational agencies, including representatives of the United Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church (US) – issued the following policy statement: “There is a need to demystify Marxian thought and