Evangelical working on family paper criticizes ACSWP changes
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, January 26, 2004
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – After members of the social policy agency of the Presbyterian Church (USA) began stripping away Biblical and confessional language from its paper on families, both the chairman of the group and an evangelical who has been a member of the paper’s writing team voiced their objections.
Nile HarperNile Harper of Ann Arbor, Mich., the chairman of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, objected that his colleagues were trying to revise the document so that it did not express the concerns of traditional Presbyterians, who strongly oppose cohabitation and same-gender couples as acceptable models for marriage.
Alan Wisdom, director of Presbyterian Faith in Action and a leading figure in trying to implant an evangelical perspective in the family paper, said the committee’s revisions were stripping the family paper of its moral underpinnings and reducing his role to being the “token evangelical” on the project.
While not specifically providing endorsement for out-of-marriage sex, the changes would allow Presbyterians to reach those conclusions. The advisory committee appeared determined to continue espousing a minority voice that has fought for “justice love” – rather than Biblical standards – between consenting adults for nearly three decades. The “justice-love” proposals have repeatedly been rejected by General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the denomination’s presbyteries in three national referendums on constitutional ordination standards.
Nonetheless, many denominational leaders and some of its agencies have relentlessly advocated for the denomination’s blessing on “responsible” sexual activity outside of marriage, including teen-age sex.
On Friday afternoon, near the conclusion of a four-day meeting in Louisville, advisory committee members began striking from the document’s recommendations language that could be construed as supporting traditional and Biblical family values, including a confessional statement that marriage is intended for, among other things, procreation and the nurture of children and a declaration that some relationships are “contrary to the will of God.”
Harper reminded the group that the nurture of children had been part of the General Assembly’s mandate to ACSWP.
Without mentioning any specific issues, Harper also said, “I think we need to ask ourselves … the political question: How will this be perceived by the broader church, which will be more diverse than this group?”
Over the years, the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy has reflected the radical left flank of the denomination. More moderate general assemblies have rejected a number of ACSWP’s policy proposals, including one that all but recommended that the church give its endorsement to suicide and medical euthanasia – a paper that even raised the question of whether Jesus committed suicide – and another that envisioned Jesus on par with Allah, Buddha, Gaia and other so-called deities.
Last year, ASCWP sent its proposed family paper to the 215th General Assembly – and it bounced back after commissioners declared that it needed to reflect traditional theological and Reformed values.
The second edition was shaping up that way – through the work of a writing team – until it reached the full advisory committee. Several of the committee members expressed their dismay over the revised paper’s opposition to same-sex unions, cohabitation, and other sex outside of marriage.
They began to make line-by-line changes to the revised document’s eight pages of recommendations when Harper interrupted their process with his plea to recognize the evangelical contribution to the process.
Alan WisdomLater, Wisdom, who is not a member of the advisory committee but was invited to serve on its writing team, raised his objections.
“I think I should say something about the political context,” Wisdom said. “When I was invited to be a member of the writing team, I sought counsel from my friends, particularly those who had been in the majority” in the General Assembly’s decision to send the paper back to ACSWP.
“There was considerable discussion about whether it was wise or not to accept that invitation,” Wisdom added. “There were people who felt I should turn it down because I would be used. They perceived the strategy was to put a token evangelical on the writing team to tone it down somewhat.”
Wisdom viewed the revisions being made – mostly subtle changes so that readers could regard the document as supporting their own agendas, whether for traditional marriage or homosexual marriage.
Wisdom said he did not believe the paper, as it now stands, “conveys such an endorsement as supporting sex outside of marriage, but the changes that have been made will raise questions.”
Wisdom said his friends “believe there is a strong, Biblical teaching against relationships outside of marriage.”
He told the committee members that the changes they had made in the recommendations will make his friends’ questions “even more acute.”
The committee members, who rarely have an evangelical at their table, suddenly became silent. They offered no more changes, but the bulk of their work remained. When they left Louisville, they had not reviewed the 68-page rationale, which already includes numerous revisions.
They took the final version of the rationale home with them to prepare their own responses and, ultimately, make a decision on whether to submit it to the 216th General Assembly when it meets in Richmond, Va., in June.
The rationale includes even more specific language affirming Biblical teaching against homosexual behavior, co-habitation and other sex outside of marriage. Wisdom played a major role in getting the writing team, which included members of the advisory committee, to ground the family paper on Biblical and Reformed teaching.
The paper submitted to the 215th General Assembly essentially reflected cultural values, not Biblical values. It offered social and cultural definitions of marriage and family and declared that all types of “family groups” should be supported by the PCUSA.
On Thursday, the day before its meeting concluded, the writing team’s proposed family paper received a bruising reception from some members of the committee. They suggested a number of changes, some of which were incorporated into the revised version handed out on Friday.
The criticism that emerged Thursday was led by Ronald Stone, a retired professor of Christian ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and an elder at East Liberty Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. East Liberty is a once prominent Presbyterian church in a declining neighborhood and a membership that has dwindled from thousands to a few hundred. Yet, it has a $30 million foundation, of which Stone is a trustee. One of its grants supports the work of the advisory committee.
On Wednesday, Stone and Dr. Charles Wiley of the denomination’s Office of Theology and Worship had a confrontation over some parts of his theological review. On Thursday, Stone was even more insistent that changes be made – even if they required that ACSWP delay its report until the 217th General Assembly, which will meet in 2006.
“This heavy confessional theology is overriding our empirical judgment,” Stone said. “This is very confessional, kerygmatic, almost gospel.”
Stone focused his criticism on Wiley’s essential point in his theological review – that, at baptism, one is initiated into the family of God, an act that provides the essential identity of a Christian, places claims on one’s life and responsibilities on the community of faith.
“I would abandon this whole discussion of baptism,” Stone said. “I don’t think putting it into connection with one of our two sacraments is a gain. We were not asked to do a theology of baptism.”
He proposed that ACSWP omit the entire section on baptism because it “overrides our common sense. I don’t think any member of this group would say our identity is not related to our family life.”
ACSWP member Jack Terry, a minister in Portland, Ore., expressed his agreement with some of Stone’s suggestions. “I think the theological section belongs at the end of the paper. I think the mandate is to talk about the social-cultural context.”
Stone also criticized Wiley’s suggestion that marriage was an essential part of the Christian community.
“I thought the cross was essential,” Stone said. “To ignore Paul’s advice, that it is better not to marry, is to ignore more than 16 centuries of the church’s history. The church’s tradition was written by single people who were living in same-gender communities. Those are the people who ruled the church. When you come to the Reformed tradition, you come to a different reality. The Reformed tradition said people should be married. I think this paper ignores the historical reality of the Christian Church.”
On several occasions, the revised paper used the terms “chaste and disciplined lives” to apply to single people, which reflects the historic Presbyterian view about sex outside of marriage.
“I would substitute ‘responsible’ for chaste and disciplined every time it appears in the document,” Stone said. “I raised four children. I would never teach them to be chaste. That means a virgin. I always taught them to be responsible. Every pastor I talk with tells me the people who are not married are not virgins. I don’t believe we need that language. I don’t think that’s the common Presbyterian practice. I don’t think we want it in our document.”
Like Stone, committee member Donna Bradley of Tucson, Ariz., a lawyer and Presbyterian lay person, objected to the draft policy statement’s suggestion that sex should be confined to marriage of a man and a woman.
She said the old view of cohabitation is “only poor kids shacking up, but that’s not true anymore. There are older people, retired people who don’t want to get married. They’re in committed relationships.”
Stone expressed his concerns about the moral judgments in the paper. “This is a very important issue,” he said. “We need to keep in view our leadership cadres that are being trained now. We are losing young Presbyterians because of the attitude our church has taken against homosexuals.”
Peter Sulyok, ACSWP’s staff director, remained confident that the paper could be reworked and pass muster with ACSWP – even with the deadline pressing on. “I’ve seen it in my years with ACSWP, to turn around a product. We did that with ‘Building Community.'”
What he did not mention is that the first edition of “Building Community” was also scuttled by the General Assembly because it presented an un-Biblical universalist theme – that Jesus was on par with many other gods and not the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Commissioners ordered ACSWP to rewrite “Building Community.” The final product was more consistent with the denomination’s confessional standards and the General Assembly gave it a stamp of approval. The rejected paper on euthanasia and suicide is still being revised.