Goddess returns to Presbyterian headquarters
By Parker T. Williamson, The Presbyterian Layman ,Volume 34, Number 4,Posted May 23, 2001, May 23, 2001
LOUISVILLE, KY – “Building Community Among Strangers,” a paper by the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, created quite a stir in 1998, when General Assembly commissioners learned that it placed Jesus Christ on an equal plane with Buddha and a goddess named Gaia. The paper urged Presbyterians to “own the problem” that “Christianity has been an exclusive religion,” and to acknowledge that other religions are “not that different” from faith in Christ.
The 1998 General Assembly ordered the committee to correct its erroneous teaching with a policy statement “clearly centered around the confessional and Biblical teaching about Christ as Lord of all the world and its only hope of reconciliation.” But despite the General Assembly’s instruction, Louisville headquarters is continuing to sell the paper in its original version, complete with Buddha and the goddess.
That discovery was made on April 30, when several Presbyterian renewal organization leaders dropped by the denomination’s Resource Center. “I was really surprised,” said Rev. Ilona Buzick, a minister from Kansas City and former moderator of the Renewal Leaders Network. Buzick attended the 1998 General Assembly meeting which rejected the “Building Community Among Strangers” theme. Buzick said she couldn’t understand why the staff didn’t do what the Assembly instructed them to do.
That news came as no surprise to Sylvia Dooling, president of Voices of Orthodox Women. She remembers a 1991 General Assembly decision to reject an ethic called “justice love.” Included in a proposed human sexuality report, “justice love” advocated homosexual relations and adultery among consenting adults. “The vote was overwhelmingly against that report,” said Dooling. But later, she discovered that the National Ministries Division had included it among its “recommended resources” for the National Network of Presbyterian College Women. The Louisville office continues to list writings of several “ReImagining god” leaders among their resources.
Alan Wisdom, director of Presbyterian Action, recalls the September/October 1999 issue of Church & Society magazine, which attacked the denomination’s standards of sexual conduct for ordained officers. At several points the magazine implied that the “fidelity and chastity” requirement in the Book of Order engendered “hate crimes” against homosexuals.
Church & Society is published by the National Ministries Division in Louisville.
A recurring complaint among renewal organization leaders who discussed these discoveries was that it appears to matter little what the General Assembly decides during its one-week annual meeting if its General Assembly Council, whose task is to implement these decisions, requires no accountability from the staff.
Many local church sessions that are joining the Confessing Church Movement are insisting that the General Assembly Council instruct its staff to uphold the confessional standards of the church. Some staff members are reacting to these demands by labeling them “loyalty oaths.”