Moderator’s post-election press conference
By Robert P. Mills, The Layman Online, June 16, 2001
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In his opening statement at the press conference that immediately followed his election as General Assembly moderator, Jack Rogers asserted, “this assembly is determined that this church is going stay together, that we are not going to let divisive elements separate us. My goal is to help us all stay together as the church of Jesus Christ in its Presbyterian form.”
Moments later, he echoed a theme that he had sounded during his election as he leveled a scathing blast at the Confessing Church Movement.
Ordination standards
The first question the new moderator faced was whether he would like the denomination to return the 1978 “Definitive Guidance” concerning the ordination of self-affirming, practicing homosexuals, a that would eliminate the denomination’s “fidelity and chastity” ordination standard and related Authoritative Interpretation.
Rogers replied, “I think we could help ourselves by returning to 1978. That assembly was very careful only to give guidance, and not to do what we did with G-6.0106b, which is to make it a law in the Book of Order. They were very respectful of the fact that it is the right of the presbyteries to decide who is ordained. If we had just been more careful about that, and really allowed that to help, I think we could have lived with that. Right now we’ve got a problem because we’ve quit behaving like Presbyterians and we’ve tried to micromanage at the national level.”
From right to left?
Asked if he had moved from right to left over the years Rogers replied, “It’s very interesting. As far as I can tell, as far as I know my own mind and heart, I have not either changed the way that I read the Bible nor have I changed any of my substantive theological positions. All I have done is apply what I have always done to an area that previously I had ignored, and that was the area of homosexuality.”
He continued, “I thought like most everybody else did that this was different from slaver and the role of women. [But] the more I studied it, the more they didn’t look different at all. … I believe the way we are now dealing with homosexuals is exactly the way we dealt with African Americans and women until we learned to look through that and look at the whole situation through the lens if the life and teaching of Jesus rather than picking particular texts out of the Bible as if they were.
Rogers went on to add that “The irony is that I agree with the evangelicals on almost everything except this one thing. I agree with people who are called liberals on the other one. So at least that gives me some platform from which to work with both groups. I count as very good friends people in both groups. I’m hoping that those longtime friendships will enable me to enter into serious conversation with people across what seems like very difficult lines to draw.”
Confessing Church Movement
Rogers was then asked about his views on the Confessing Church Movement in light of his agreement with evangelicals on everything except homosexual ordination. He replied, “I don’t think the Confessing Church Movement represents evangelicals. I think it represents just one very tiny group within the evangelical community of the Presbyterian Church. And I think if the truth were known, a lot of other evangelicals are embarrassed by it. I do not think it is helpful to the church.”
Asked how confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is a threat to the church, Rogers replied, “The issue is not the affirmations. The issue is the implications that are being attached to them by the Confessing Church Movement. … The implication is that I’m supposed to be condemning of everybody who says good things about people of other religions. I don’t accept the implications of that.”
Of the authority of Scripture Rogers said, “I do not accept the implication that you can just pick verses out of Scripture and say ‘This is the clear word of God and nobody can argue with it.’ That’s not a responsible way to exegete Scripture, and a lot of that is being done. That’s an implication of the Confessing Church Movement, that we have to agree with their interpretation of Scripture. And I don’t think we do. And it violates the Book of Order to say ‘We’re going to dictate the personnel policies of the church.’ That’s ridiculous.”
‘The McCarthy scare’
Asked what he would like to say to the presbyteries about his election, Rogers answered, “I think we have got a great church that is very orthodox in its confessions and beliefs, that, what I hope would be the case at the end of my moderatorial year is that people would be speaking more respectfully, more honestly and more carefully about our church leaders and not make extravagant charges against church leaders.
“As the Presbyterian Church did in 1952 when the McCarthy scare was going on, McCarthy was calling everybody a communist, people are using very loose language about our church leaders right now and making very awful claims about them. I think that needs to stop. We need to get honest with each other and be respectful of each other.
“What you see is what you get. I’m very clear about what I believe. I will be willing to sit down with anybody and to work with anybody to try to help us stay together as a church and to move forward to fulfill our mission and ministry.
Theological commission
Rogers was asked if the proposed theological commission would have the authority normally granted a commission to act on behalf of the governing body that appointed it. He first responded, “I think that would be the important thing, to vest it with greater power than a committee.”
But when asked specifically if the commission ought to have the power of the governing body, he quickly backtracked “I have to confess ignorance. I think we need something more than the usual committee. I’m not trying to say exactly what that ought to be.”
Rogers campaign brochure noted that for 38 years he “has equipped and empowered thousands of church leaders in Biblical interpretation, the Confessions, and Polity.”
‘No one can be ordained’
Rogers then was asked, “How in the world can the Presbyterian Church get back on track and get the confessions in their proper historical perspective?”
He answered, “First we have to be honest about what is happening. The final sentence of G.6-0106b means that no one in this church can be ordained. Because it says that if anyone practices something the confessions call sin, they can’t be ordained. There are 250 sins in there and everybody in this room commits many of them because we no longer think they are sins. Usury is one.”
Speaking of the majority of General Assembly and presbytery commissioners who voted to put G-6.0106b in the Book of Order and keep it there Rogers said, “The people who did that didn’t really know what the confessions said. It sounded good. I think what they meant was that nobody should do what they thought was sinful. And they just assumed the confessions thought like they did.”
Rogers continued, “No governing body in the church will prosecute any sin in the confessions except homosexuality. And that’s just silly. We’ve got to go back to using the confessions educationally instead of trying to use them legislatively. But nobody wants to open that can of worms, and I understand that.
Asked how he would open that can of worms, Rogers concluded, “I just said out loud what everybody knows.”