Evangelical, ‘progressive’ seminary presidents to address Covenant Network
The Layman Online, April 21, 2003
The presidents of two seminaries – one evangelical and the other self-described as “progressive” – will speak during the fall conference of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians on Nov. 6-8 at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.
Barbara WheelerThe theme of the conference will be “The Church We Are Called to Be and to Become.”
The Covenant Network is an independent group in the Presbyterian Church that was organized to end the denomination’s historic prohibition against ordaining practicing homosexuals.
At its conference in 2002, the Network’s leaders announced that they would also focus on “progressive theology,” which denies many of the orthodox doctrines of the Christian faith.
Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, will give the evangelical perspective. Barbara Wheeler, a member of the board of Covenant Network, will speak as a progressive theologian.
Richard MouwThe Covenant Network describes them as “two noted theologians from different parts of the Presbyterian Church.” The announcement did not say how their views will be presented or whether they will be challenged by each other in a debate.
Mouw has been president of Fuller, one of the largest seminaries in the nation (more than 4,000 students), since 1973. Mouw taught philosophy at Calvin College and philosophy and ethics at Fuller before he became the seminary’s president. Although Fuller is an independent seminary, it trains a sizable number of evangelical Presbyterians.
Wheeler is a graduate of Barnard College. She received an honorary doctorate from Hamilton College. At Auburn Theological Seminary, which is on the campus of the non-denominational Union Theological Seminary in New York City, she is also director of Auburn’s Center for the Study of Theological Education. She is a member of the 213th General Assembly’s Theological Task Force for Peace, Purity and Unity.
In 2000, Wheeler created a stir in the denomination when she addressed the Covenant Network about the chasm between conservatives and liberals in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
“The Presbyterian Church has adopted policies on ordination that a substantial minority of its members think are wrong: not only misguided, but unfaithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and therefore theologically false and damaging to the mission of God in the contemporary world,” she said.
Speaking of those who favor the ordination of practicing homosexuals, she added, “This minority of Presbyterians now faces a difficult, even tragic, dilemma: whether to defy the policies openly, a step that could well lead to disciplinary charges and removal from the ministry; or to acknowledge the force of these policies as church law while working to change them and perhaps quietly subverting them, tactics that weigh heavily on the conscience because they require – at least for the time being – countenancing actions that are wrong and possibly also making statements that are untrue.”
After The Layman published her comments, Wheeler objected that they were taken out of context and that she did not mean to suggest she was proposing that Presbyterians demonstrate their opposition to the ordination standard by defying church law or lying.
Nonetheless, many pastors who align with the Covenant Network have used strategies similar to the alternatives she posed. And, at its 2002 conference, the Covenant Network sponsored a symposium led by two lawyers who counsel churches to create their own meanings for such words as “fidelity,” “chastity,” “repentance” and “self-acknowledge” in a legal ploy to render the denomination’s ordination standard meaningless.
Besides Mouw and Wheeler, the Covenant Network’s 2003 Conference will feature addresses by Bruce Reyes-Chow, organizing pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco, and Patrick Henry, executive director of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Collegeville, Minn.