Covenant Network promotes takeover strategy
By Parker T. Williamson, The Presbyterian Layman, May 21, 1999
“This is hardball, and we would do well today, I think, to learn to play it.” — Barbara Wheeler‘Take the offensive’
Wheeler advised that these same tactics be employed by liberals today. She urged her Covenant Network colleagues to “take the offensive” in their battle with Presbyterians who insist on upholding the denomination’s constitution. Referring to the 1923 struggle she said, “our predecessors in effect named the time, place and their leaders in the confrontation … and strongly challenged the fundamental tenets that Presbyterians had adopted as church law.”
Wheeler urged her Covenant Network partners to “be prepared,” by organizing supporters and setting the stage for a confrontation with Presbyterians who insist that denominational standards be upheld. She advised “securing a political support base” in which a committed cadre of liberals who affirm “tolerance and diversity of views” would threaten to leave the church, “taking some substantial Presbyterian money with them.” “This is hardball,” she continued, “and we would do well today, I think, to learn to play it.”
Name calling
A key element in Wheeler’s strategy for taking over the Presbyterian Church (USA) involves co-opting “moderately conservative allies.” Having suffered a nearly two-to-one defeat in the presbyteries on its ill-fated Amendment A campaign, the Covenant Network has learned that it does not have the votes to control the denomination. Thus, suggested Wheeler, a method must be devised to identify persons with “conservative” credentials who can be persuaded to align themselves with the liberals.
Wheeler’s methodology for winning such support involves branding Presbyterians who insist on upholding the constitution as “fundamentalists,” then offering “moderately conservative allies” who fear being called fundamentalists a way to escape the label.
Covenant Network liberals, Wheeler suggested, should persuade their “moderately conservative allies that tolerance would promote the evangelical mission of the church and doctrinal fundamentalism would hurt it.” This was the tactic employed in 1923, she said, when liberal Henry Sloane Coffin succeeded in persuading “temperate conservative” Charles Erdman that Coffin’s views were “more Presbyterian and more practical than the fundamentalists’ position.”
Implementing the strategy
Wheeler says that the Covenant Network forces “have not done a very good job on the Presbyterian front.” She warns her colleagues that they must “develop a clear, compelling demonstration that our understanding of ordination will make the church more Presbyterian than it is now, or we will not prevail.”
Although the Covenant Network has not publicly declared Wheeler’s strategy to be its own, there is a striking parallel between her takeover suggestions and recent actions by its leaders. A key element in the strategy, building a public relations campaign around a designated victim, is under way. Persons who do not meet constitutional standards but insist on seeking ordination are spotlighted, and Covenant Network officials have pledged funds, legal and media assistance to their defense. Covenant Network leaders have also come to the aid of the National Network of Presbyterian College Women (NNPCW), an organization whose programs and publications have – according to a General Assembly evaluation committee – violated the biblical and confessional standards of the denomination. NNPCW women are being portrayed as victims of right-wing radicals.
Presbyterians who insist on upholding the constitution have been viewed as rigid, intolerant fundamentalists, persons who engage in witch hunts, encourage hate crimes, violate standards of civility, and abuse young women by denying them freedom of expression.
Starting with an announced war chest of $200,000, the Covenant Network launched a “Call to Covenant” campaign in 1997 to sign up “several thousand ministers, including a substantial number from larger churches.”
Wheeler’s thesis is that if liberals can demonstrate that kind of support, the Presbyterian majority will back away from enforcing church policies that would alienate such a significant minority.
Undermining the constitution
At the Covenant Network’s 1998 Denver conference, a featured speaker was Blair Moffett, co-pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Stamford, Conn. The network’s decision to showcase Moffett is significant, for the Stamford church has defied the constitution by electing as an elder a self-identified homosexual man who publicly declared that he and his male “partner” are “living in a committed loving relationship.”
When a judicial complaint was filed against the Presbytery of Northern New England for allowing one of its congregations to declare that it would not obey the constitution, the Covenant Network’s executive committee announced that it would provide legal, moral and financial support for the presbytery’s defense.
Compromising conservatives
Wheeler’s key thesis is that liberals can regain their grasp on the Presbyterian power structure only if they can co-opt persons reputed to be “moderate conservatives.” The Covenant Network’s choice of San Francisco Seminary professor Jack Rogers to serve on its board of directors is a move in that direction. Early in his career, Rogers was generally regarded as an evangelical Reformed theologian.
But perhaps the most obvious attempt to compromise conservatives can be seen in efforts, led by Covenant Network Moderator John Buchanan, to initiate closed-door negotiations with individuals who are identified with Presbyterian renewal organizations. In 1996, Buchanan and fellow board member, Cynthia Campbell encouraged Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick to host a “common ground” meeting in Chicago. The meeting fell apart when evangelicals John Huffman and Craig Barnes vigorously declared a “no compromise” position and cut off any possibility that the group might produce a joint statement.
On the eve of the 1998 General Assembly, Buchanan and Kirkpatrick tried again, this time initiating an invitation-only gathering with persons they considered moderately conservative. Members of this group signed a compromise statement called “A Call to Sabbatical,” essentially an agreement that liberals would refrain from attempts to amend the constitution if conservatives would refrain from attempts to enforce it.
But when it became known that most moderate conservatives declined to endorse “A Call to Sabbatical” while pro-gay-ordination activists persisted with their agenda, the proposed sabbatical withered away.
Covenant Network liberals, Wheeler suggested, should persuade their “moderately conservative allies that tolerance would promote the evangelical mission of the church and doctrinal fundamentalism would hurt it.”
Whither the Covenant Network?
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has been twice tested on the strength of its ordination standards. In 1997, the vote to place them in the constitution was 97 to 74. One year later, when that vote was challenged by the Covenant Network and its allies, the decision was even more decisive: “Amendment A” failed 59 to 114.
Recognizing the fact they could not win a legislative contest – particularly when groups like More Light Presbyterians (a merger of the former Presbyterians for Gay and Lesbian Concerns and the More Light Churches Network) and the Voices of Sophia assume high visibility – the Covenant Network has sought to project a more moderate image and to closet the overtly radical groups that work under its umbrella.
But continued promotion of Barbara Wheeler’s strategy paper may make it more difficult for the network to sell that image to the Presbyterian public.
Making dialogue more difficult
The Presbyterian Church (USA) majority appears unlikely to accept leadership from those who openly refuse to obey its constitution, or who say they intend to subvert it, even to the extent of lying about their actions.
And now that moderate conservatives have been given fair notice of a plan by Covenant Network leaders to co-opt them, a liberal-moderate alliance may be more difficult to accomplish.