Blessing anarchy
The Layman, Volume 36, Number 3, July 1, 2003
an-ar-chy, n. , the complete absence of government; political disorder, lawlessness.
Example: the nation of Israel in the period after Moses and Joshua died – “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)
Presbyterians don’t have a king, but we do have a constitution with a governing system so important that we name ourselves by it. Our constitution is built upon a covenant in Christ like the one God made with the 12 tribes when he redeemed them out of Egypt during the Exodus. Through that commitment, God knitted the dozen tribes together into the single house of Israel. However, when the Israelites no longer lived by the covenant, their unity dissolved and their nation split into lawless bands. This 215th General Assembly has just taken an important step that brings such dissolution and lawlessness into the Presbyterian house.
How, you ask? Indeed, it is true that the assembly did not send out another vote to presbyteries to repeal the ordination standards. Many Presbyterians sighed in relief that the Des Moines overture to repeal the ordination standards failed. It sought to write anarchy into the very words of the PCUSA Constitution by allowing each session and presbytery to apply its own understanding of holy living when it ordained officers. If that proposal had passed, it would have eliminated the common interpretation of Scripture that we have through our Book of Confessions about how God calls us out of sinful behavior and works in us that we might live according his will. The overture would have formally blessed everyone doing what was right in his own eyes. Yes, the assembly closed this front-door invitation to anarchy.
But the assembly let in through the back door what it shut out at the front. The assembly had before it a “compliance report” from the Presbytery of Northern New England and the session of Christ Church in Burlington, Vt. In 2000, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission ruled that that session could not defy our constitution by declaring that it would ordain practicing homosexuals (Londonderry v. Northern New England). In its decision, the judicial commission applied the understanding of sin that our denomination has explicitly agreed to and held since 1978.
Reasserted defiance
Christ Church elders responded by breaking their ordination vow to abide by the discipline of the church. Instead of rescinding their declaration and submitting to the expressed will of God and the church, they reasserted their statement of defiance and substituted their own interpretation for each of the provisions of the ordination section (G-6.0106b), concluding that homosexual behavior is not sinful. The session then called its action “compliance” and offered it for approval. The Presbytery of Northern New England crossed its fingers, pronounced it acceptable, and sent it to Denver as compliance. The General Assembly received the report without comment, blessing by its silence this contempt for the teaching of God and this subversion of our system of government.
The actions of Christ Church may be imitated by the dozens of other congregations that have adopted similar statements of defiance and been awaiting the final disposition of the case. The bottom line reality in the PCUSA is that every session and presbytery has now been given the license to do what is right in its own eyes, calling that which is evil “good.”
The walls and floors of this denominational house are held in place by our constitution; it depends on every brother and sister, and every governing body, loving the Lord and each other enough to hold us accountable to our promises made under God. Just as the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, we, his disciples, are to discipline one another.
As all parents know, the discipline process costs something – every mother and father has endured angry names and slammed doors from children who have been held to doing what the parents know is right. The many in this denomination who have paid that price – the presbyters who have voted three times to affirm the ordination standards, the Londonderry congregation that brought Christ Church’s defiance to the church courts, the GAPJC that applied the tough love of our covenantal agreements – have had their efforts thrown away by the 215th General Assembly. This assembly has begun tearing down its house with its own hands. We can pray for mercy, and it may be that God will not leave us to ourselves.
Peggy Hedden, an elder in the Mifflin Presbyterian Church, Gahanna, Ohio, is the chairman of the Presbyterian Lay Committee.