Moderator says mail running 2-1 from people ‘angry with church’
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, September 26, 2001
TEMPE, Ariz. – Moderator Jack B. Rogers of the Presbyterian Church (USA) says two-thirds of his mail is from “people who are very angry with the church.”
Rogers made his comments during a report to the executive committee of the General Assembly Council. The council began a four-day meeting on Sept. 26 in downtown Tempe, where 100-degree-plus temperatures seemed to reflect the heat in the denomination.
Rogers reported matter-of-factly that while he is traveling and meeting with Presbyterians “about half the time I am received with dignity and warmth and half the time with anger.”
The issues causing the most controversy, Rogers said, are the Confessing Church Movement and the 2001 General Assembly’s proposal (Amendment O1-A) to remove barriers against ordaining persons who openly engage in sexual relations outside of marriage. Over the next few months, the denomination’s 173 presbyteries will decide whether to repeal the constitutional ordination standard.
Rogers has sparked much of the controversy. He has criticized the Confessing Church Movement and called it divisive. He has also excoriated the Presbyterian Lay Committee for its role in encouraging and promoting the Confessing Church Movement.
Until recently, Rogers was a member of the board of advisors of the Covenant Network, whose leaders say its sole purpose is to eliminate the ordination rule, G-6.0106b, from the Book of Order. He has declared publicly that he wants church and state to provide the “moral equivalent of marriage” for homosexual couples – a position that goes beyond the denomination’s policy that allows local sessions to authorize services of blessing for same-sex couples as long as they bear no resemblance to marriage.
During his report to the executive committee, Rogers did not repeat his criticism of the Confessing Church Movement or his views about ordination or same-gender marriages. None of the executive committee members questioned him or offered any advice about how he should represent the denomination.
The anger toward him and the denomination has abated slightly, Rogers said. But he added that he said he expects it to return soon, after the numbness of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack wears off.
“I expect arguments over Amendment A and the Confessing Church Movement will provide just as much rancor as they have in the past,” Rogers said.
Rogers did not say what he has been trying to do to bring Presbyterians together, but he did outline his plans for the annual Moderator’s Conference in Louisville, headquarters of the denomination. That conference, for moderators of presbyteries and synods, will stress unity and reconciliation, he said.
He said the conference will be held Nov. 30-Dec. 2 and that its theme will be “Jesus Christ is Our Peace.” One of the highlights, he said, will be a joint presentation by Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary, and Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, on “communication across theological lines.”
Wheeler has been a leader in the movement to thwart the influence of evangelicals in the PCUSA. Mouw is an evangelical.
“I have been concerned about persons talking much too casually about division in the church,” Rogers said. His role at the Moderator’s Conference will be to “talk about how we can come together.”
After Rogers’ report, Jeff Bridgeman, chair of the General Assembly Council, said he has received “not quite a dozen” letters from people about the Confessing Church Movement. He did not mention the fact that the council which he chairs has received communications from many of the more than 900 church sessions, representing 300,000 Presbyterians.
Bridgeman said he attended a meeting of evangelical leaders in Denver, sponsored by the Presbyterian Coalition. He said he challenged the meeting to prayer and fasting – and that about 100 people at the meeting joined him in prayer for the denomination.
Bridgeman did not include in his report the fact that the 200 evangelicals who attended the meeting in Denver endorsed the Confessing Church Movement.