Light still shining in the PCUSA
Commentary by, Craig M. Kibler, July 22, 2002
It was the best of times, as Charles Dickens wrote, and the worst of times when honorable men and women gathered in Columbus for the 214th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
At a time in history when a bold affirmation of a Biblical and Reformed worldview to address the problems facing today’s society is sorely needed, commissioners had the power – and what always goes with power, the responsibility – to raise that standard. They may not have sought such a role but, as people in the pews looked to them to advise and lead them and guide the church in these uncertain times, they were called to be the captains of the gate barring Scriptural vacuity and its comrade in arms, moral ambiguity, from entering the policies of the denomination.
Alas, the majority of commissioners abrogated that role and, instead, infused the assembly with timidity – meekly acquiescing to staff-generated and leadership-endorsed policies that perpetuate the bureaucratic institution’s 40-year slide into irrelevancy. Consider, for example, the following:
- Every single majority report produced by committees – every single one – was approved by the full assembly, most by margins of 70 percent to 30 percent. This rubber stamping, akin to the orchestration of musicians dancing to a conductor’s baton, reinforces the perception that the majority of commissioners came to Columbus determined to build a facade of unity – a “best of times” chimera – regardless of the cost.
- Every committee chairman – every single one – was appointed by outgoing Moderator Jack B. Rogers, who sparked an upheaval during his tenure with his culturally-oriented opinions and attacks on efforts, such as the Confessing Church Movement, to return the denomination to the solid Biblical and Reformed rock on which it was founded.
- The blatant and consistent advocacy of staff-generated reports by many bureaucrats threw out – perhaps forever – the time-honored parliamentary understanding that the sole function of resource people, when called upon, is to provide neutral information on a particular issue. The permissiveness of some committee chairmen, and their active solicitation of such advocacy, effectively relegated to the basket of unimportant interruptions or the ridicule bin the viewpoints of some commissioners – who, unlike staff members, were elected as representatives to the assembly.
- The Plutocracy Road Show (a group of top-level bureaucrats including Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, executive director of the General Assembly Council John Detterick, Associate Stated Clerk Mark Tammen and others) that visited many committees and, after commissioners had debated a particular issue, proceeded – in a show of institutional pressure tactics – to again press for the approval of the majority report.
All of this, indicative of a bureaucratic machine operating at ruthless efficiency hiding behind a cultural mush of God talk, was the necessary infrastructure that led to such outcomes as:
- The overwhelming (97 percent) adoption of the theological statement “Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ” – a far stronger statement than that approved by the 213th General Assembly, which merely asserted that Jesus Christ was “unique.” That, however, isn’t the point. It’s not that “Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ” is a bad statement, it’s just that it isn’t a good one – it doesn’t assert, boldly and without equivocation, that Jesus Christ alone is the way, the truth and the life for the entire world. Period. Upon closer examination, it reveals itself to be less than it appears at first blush. Designed to placate the vast middle of the church, it is – in reality – a wishy-washy “on the one hand/on the other hand” statement designed less to proclaim the truth of the Word and more to avoid offending someone by intruding upon their freedom of conscience. “I am” is eternal and unchanging. The only real freedom of conscience for Christians is that they either choose or not choose to build their lives on this singular truth. Anything less, such as the flawed “Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ,” opens the door, in both interpretation and practice, to “I am, maybe.”
- A super-majority (77 percent) voted to make the PCUSA the only mainline denomination to sanction partial-birth abortions. Despite all available evidence demonstrating the lack of a medical need for such a procedure, commissioners on the floor derided such testimony and, instead, dismissed it – to hoots of glee – as mere advocacy for a minority report urging birth in such cases.
- The rejection (79 percent) of repeated efforts to restore funding for 34 missionaries cut from the 2003 budget. Ignoring minority arguments that mission is the great commission of the church and pleas to restore the 1.2 percent of the $130-million mission budget that would provide the salaries and support for those missionaries, commissioners rubber stamped a majority report advocating the retention of the existing budget so as not to reduce funding in other areas – such as subsidies to the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches or money to prop up the Washington Office or the National Network of Presbyterian College Women. Commissioners ignored logical, reasoned arguments pointing out that the funds to support those unpopular initiatives – none of which is facing major budget reductions – is approximately what it would cost for the missionaries.
- The mantra not to reduce the budget in other areas – used to reject the restoration of funding for missionaries – did not prevent commissioners from approving new funding for such endeavors as a boycott of Taco Bell ($35,325 by a vote of 297-176), a study of government land acquisition policies in the Presbytery of Baltimore ($84,000 by a vote of 353-130) and the championing of “restorative justice” ($14,660 by a show of hands) as a way to eliminate “pain” for victims, communities and criminals.
- The rejection of additional funding for missionaries out of the offerings dedicated to Jesus Christ from congregations did not prevent commissioners (97 percent) from approving a five-year, $40-million campaign to raise money from corporations, foundations and major donors for international mission personnel and new church developments. Such an action does three things:
1)It reinforces the de facto bureaucratic interpretation that the great commission of the church – to proclaim the gospel – no longer is the church’s raison d’etre.
2) It makes giving to missions a secondary, optional choice – not the primary purpose for gifts.
3) It moves mission support from the offering plate that is passed among the individual congregations to the checkbooks of major donors. By soliciting only major donors (those who can contribute $25,000 or more), it perpetuates a bureaucratic trend of bypassing the people in the pews whenever possible to achieve, and finance, the outcomes the bureaucracy – and not individual members – desire.
The so-called “Mission Initiative” is destined to fail of its own accord, simply because it lacks the linchpin around which missionary initiatives historically have succeeded – individual Christians working out of a sense of community dedicated to spreading the gospel.
What the “Mission Initiative” may succeed in doing, however, is energize individual Presbyterians in congregations all across this country to bypass the official fund-raising apparatus and, instead, increase their gifts and specifically dedicate them to missionaries and their support. That type of approach, like Martin Luther’s “Here I stand,” will tell the institutional machine – in ways it cannot begin to imagine – that mission is “doing church” and that one cannot be separated from the other.
There was a host of other such bureaucratic-engineered outcomes, such as an aversion to enforcing the denomination’s constitution and, in fact, embracing a gutted document long on platitudes and short on specifics floated by Kirkpatrick, who urged commissioners to follow the admonition of the 1862 General Assembly and “avoid all needless controversies and competitions;” an eagerness to minimize bureaucratic accountability through biennial assemblies; a distaste for a clear statement on marriage between a man and a woman; a loathing to shut down the production of a sexuality curriculum – whose previous version was under fire for the past three years before being discontinued – and, despite instructions being ignored by staff members during those years to revise the material, rubber stamped an additional $750,000 to develop a new version of the curriculum; an elevation of the Confession of 1967 to primus inter pares status in The Book of Confessions; an endorsement of “dialogue” without evangelism (whatever that means) between Christians and Muslims; and urging the creation of a “Peace Department” within the U.S. government, ignoring the historical reality that peace is not possible without the maintenance of an adequate deterrent to war and that such a “peace” entity – the Department of Defense – already exists.
The adoption of such a culturally-derivative grab bag as official PCUSA policy has created great anxiety and perplexity throughout the denomination and in the greater Church. A continual drift away from a Biblical and Reformed worldview, and an increasing reliance on platitudes and unrealities, engenders horror in churches like those in Egypt or Rwanda or South Korea or Pakistan or South America that have gone through – or are going through – Armageddon clinging to a belief in Jesus Christ alone as the way, the truth and the life.
That anxiety and perplexity and horror was answered in Columbus by the 30 percent of commissioners who sought to stem the bureaucratic institution’s accelerating slide down the slippery slope to irrelevancy by doggedly persisting in bearing faithful witness in the face of overwhelming rejection and ridicule.
And what about the 70 percent, those whose decisions de jure validated those staff-generated and leadership-endorsed policies that continue sliding the PCUSA down that slippery slope? After all, they are honorable men and women, well-meaning and well-intentioned, acting out of an expressed love for this institution.
The only pertinent response comes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Paraphrasing the speech by Brutus in which he explains why he believed Caesar had to die, “It’s not that they loved Jesus Christ less, but that they loved the institution more.”
In the final analysis, nothing can save the Presbyterian Church (USA) if it will not save itself. If it loses faith in Jesus Christ alone, in Scripture’s capacity to guide and govern our lives, if it loses its will to proclaim the gospel to all corners of the world, then its slide into irrelevancy will be complete.
If appeasers from within and without daily exert a more aggressive and activist cultural accommodation, and the people in the pews remain paralyzed by a misplaced sense of unity or remain dazed by exhaustion brought on by battle fatigue defending the Permanent Things, then complete irrelevancy will be swift and final.
Thankfully, in answer to constant prayer that may yet convert the 70 percent, that day is not here – as 30 percent of the commissioners demonstrated. If Presbyterians all across this country, in congregations large and small, stand up and proclaim, “We support the 30 percent,” then the PCUSA’s return to being the church God has called it to be is not far off.
That road will be hard, and those faithful witnesses travelling it will be beset on all sides, but the source of their strength, the bright light they are following and the ultimate outcome is clear:
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).