Text for ‘Building Community’ is dramatically revised
John H. Adams, The Layman Online, April 30, 1999
Wholesale changes have been made in Building Community Among Strangers, a study document for the Presbyterian Church (USA) that was overwhelmingly rejected by the 1998 General Assembly. About all that survives for consideration by the 1999 General Assembly is the title.
The revisions have spawned mixed reviews, but criticism is mild compared to the opposition in 1998 when Building Community, which was written by a task force of the denomination’s Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, was called fatally flawed. The Presbyterian Layman was in the vanguard of leading those criticisms. An editorial said the 1998 paper documented “the inevitable outcome of misguided theologies that continue to mark so much of denominational officialdom.”
The proposed new study essentially buries the original. Neither the format nor the content are similar.
A lightening rod in the 1998 document’s text was its image of a multicultural banquet in which Christians who assume that Jesus Christ is Lord of all discover a great surprise: “The greatest surprise occurs when the food is blessed, not only in the name of Jesus Christ the Son of God, but also in the name of Allah, the Lord Krishna, Siddhartha Buddha, and the Goddess Gaia!”
Unlike the 1998 study, the new Building Community includes a lengthy theological framework of Scripture and Reformed interpretation. It still emphasizes the agenda of the liberal segment of the denomination — sexism, racism, multiculturalism, and diversity — but no longer suggests that other religions represent valid paths to God.
An analysis of Building Community will be published in the May-June edition of The Presbyterian Layman.