Protestant renewal groups face similar challenges
The Layman Online, February 9, 1999
The denominations are different, but the issues are the same. What’s the authority for life and faith? What’s an acceptable sexual ethic? What can be done to stem membership losses? How can the church re-energize worldwide mission and the proclamation of the Gospel?
These and other concerns are priorities for evangelical renewal organizations working within mainline denominations. Because their priorities often clash with their denominations’ agendas, many of the organization leaders sometimes feel closer kinship to like-minded renewal leaders in other denominations than to the leadership of the denominations they seek to revitalize. But they share a common commitment to work from within and not to bolt to greener pastures.
Sticking to standards
Several of the renewal organizations, including the Presbyterian Lay Committee in the Presbyterian Church (USA), participate in the Association for Church Renewal (ACR). Through ACR, the renewal groups are intensely ecumenical — but within the framework of historic faith and evangelical commitment. They are not promoters of unity that abandons Scripture and their denominations’ traditional theological standards.
They seem to share a sense of urgency about the faith and mission of the church in today’s culture.
“At the advent of a new millennium, we recognize that our culture and our church are both in crisis. Our American culture has lost faith in the Creator,” said the Rt. Rev. James M. Stanton of the American Anglican Council. Stanton, an Episcopal Bishop in Dallas, added, “At the same time, our Episcopal Church has become confused about the Christian faith we have proclaimed throughout our history. Whereas in the past, we have sent abroad, it is now those Anglicans around the globe who are calling us back to allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to reliance upon the authority of His Word in Holy Scripture to form our lives and our world view. The American Anglican Council is gathering the individuals, parishes and ministries of the Episcopal Church who share a common faith with the rest of the Anglican Communion. We are gathering in order to fulfill the church’s mission: sharing God’s revealed truth in 21st Century America (as Episcopalians) and making disciples for Jesus, the Christ.”
Membership losses decried
The heavy membership losses in mainline churches are another key issue. David Runnion-Bareford of Biblical Witness Fellowship, a United Church of Christ renewal effort, expresses the concern of many of the renewal leaders. “The UCC is now 40 years old. We have suffered a net loss of members, confirmands, Sunday School children and worshippers in every single year since we came into being. Any objective observer can see that we have been 6,000 churches wandering in the wilderness for 40 years carrying on an infatuation with the cultural idolatries.”
One of the “cultural idolatries” identified by renewal leaders is the persisting effort among denominational leaders to abandon a traditional Christian sexual ethic.
The United Methodist Church, like other mainline denominations, has been a hotbed of dissent over the issue of ordaining practicing gays and lesbians. Those efforts have been rejected by several national assemblies, but votes have been close. One of the groups in the vanguard of biblical ordination standards has been Good News, a movement that publishes a magazine by the same name.
Letter to bishops
In an open letter to the United Methodist Council of Bishops, the Good News board of directors said recently, “We are one of many voices speaking for a broad majority of the United Methodist Church in saying that the church’s acceptance or approval of homosexual behavior is absolutely intolerable. We view such approval as a clear rejection of the teachings of Scripture and over 3,000 years of Judeo-Christian tradition. It would place our denomination outside the bounds of apostolic Christianity, and many church members would find it impossible to remain in such a denomination and/or to continue supporting it financially.”
While the different renewal groups have their own theological tradition, ranging, for instance, from Calvinism to Wesleyanism, they share a common Scriptural commitment.
In their guiding principles, The American Baptist Evangelicals of the American Baptist Church express that shared view: “We call for a return to the Word of God and the principle of Sola Scriptura. Our final authority is the Bible and we long for our dialogue to be biblical, hermeneutical, and theological. It is our intention that we ground everything we believe, say and do as a denomination in thoughtful, careful, prayerful submission to the Word of God under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
COCU membership opposed
In their renewal work, many of the groups have developed proclamations opposing their denomination’s involvement in multi-denominational movements. The Disciple Heritage Fellowship (Disciples of Christ) still asserts the tenets of what it calls “The Pittsburgh Proclamation,” which opposes its denomination’s membership in COCU. “… by this action the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has formally abandoned the historic, Campbell-Stone plea for unity based on mutual acceptance of the essentials of the biblical faith.” The Pittsburgh Proclamation decries “a unity based on lowest-common-denominator negotiation of unbiblical distinctives. …”
Renewal efforts in the broadly ecumenical United Church of Canada are spearheaded by Community of Concern, which makes its appeal from historic standards of faith, as summarized in its Statement of Purpose. “We seek a continuing process of reform through which Jesus Christ is clearly confessed as Lord, in word and action in accordance with a balanced understanding of the witness of the Scriptures and in continuity with the tradition of both the Reformed Churches and the whole Ecumenical Church.” The Statement of Purpose also declares “that the Biblical intent for sexual behaviour is loving fidelity within marriage and celibacy outside marriage [and] … we intend to pursue a clear statement of policy on the part of the United Church of Canada declaring the unsuitability of self-declared practising homosexual persons for ordained/commissioned ministry in our church.”