Former moderator Jack Rogers lashes out at ‘fundamentalists’
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, March 14, 2003
Declaring that the Presbyterian Church’s constitutional “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard “makes hypocrites of us all,” former General Assembly Moderator Jack B. Rogers has lashed out at “militant fundamentalists” who favor that standard – as well as their support for the classical Christian view that Jesus alone is the way, the truth and the life.
In a speech at the Witherspoon Society’s annual meeting, Rogers, who served as moderator of the 213th General Assembly, said “90 percent” of the denomination’s 2.5 million members are happy with the way things are.
“The few who are vocally dissatisfied with the denomination express themselves so forcefully that it often distorts our perception of the health of the church as a whole,” he claimed. He accused “fundamentalists” of being more power-hungry than theologically grounded.
He did not attempt to reconcile the supposed harmony in the PCUSA with the landslide exodus of members (35,000 during his watch) and the strengthening affirmation of the denomination’s ordination standard (75 percent of the presbyteries voted against the proposal to repeal the ordination standard and the denomination’s Definitive Guidance that says sex outside of marriage is sinful).
Neither did he mention that 17.1 percent of the members of the PCUSA are in the denomination’s 1,289 Confessing Churches, while hundreds of other sessions have expressed similar evangelical views without formally adopting three-point Confessing Church resolutions. Those resolutions represent classic Christian doctrines that Jesus Christ alone is Savior and Lord; that Scripture is authoritative for life and faith; and that God’s standards for holy life must not be compromised by shifts in culture.
In Rogers’ estimation, only a handful of “fundamentalists” – his description of the Presbyterian Lay Committee – are unhappy.
Rogers was speaking before a friendly audience. The Witherspoon Society agrees with him that the ordination standard should be repealed. But Rogers would go even further. He has publicly declared his support for marrying same-gender couples. He is one of 15 former PCUSA moderators who have been affiliated with the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, another group devoted to repealing the ordination law.
Rogers calls himself an evangelical and says his argument is not with other evangelicals. But he has demeaned the motives of the Confessing Church Movement and caricatured the Presbyterian Coalition.
In his speech to the Witherspoon Society, Rogers described the October 2001 meeting of the Coalition in Orlando. “When you arrive in the Orlando airport you think you are already in Disney World,” he said. “Everything is oversized, exaggerated in color, and unreal. The meeting had the same feel for me. Some of the language about the church expressed by participants was sickening. The Presbyterian Church was likened to an alcoholic spouse, a house with termites in the floorboards, the Titanic and something that would fall apart in a few months.”
Rogers also ridiculed Dr. Alexander F. Metherell, a Laguna Beach, Calif., elder who led the petition campaign to require Fahed Abu-Akel, the moderator of the 214th General Assembly, back into session to deal with issues of constitutional defiance.
Rogers described as “rather humorous Metherell’s claim that the effort of the Office of the General Assembly to verify the signatures on his petition was like making the commissioners vote again.”
In fact, as a part of its effort to negate Metherell’s petition, the Office of the Stated Clerk sent letters to commissioners asking them to check one of two boxes: “Yes” if they still agreed with the petition; “No” if they didn’t.
On Monday, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly – the highest court in the PCUSA – will conduct a trial to determine whether that second ballot was appropriate, among other issues.
If Rogers, who called at least one commissioner urging her to change her vote, had his way, there would be no trial. He declared Metherell’s petition “unconstitutional,” although the Book of Order clearly states that the moderator shall call the General Assembly back into session upon the request of at least 50 commissioners. Fifty-seven signed the petitions circulated by Metherell, but the stated clerk’s office rejected 13 signatures.
In his opposition to the General Assembly’s intervening in cases of constitutional defiance, Rogers offers a static interpretation of the PCUSA’s constitution – a “separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches” – which, he says, “is precisely the same as the United States Constitution.”
American history, including such actions as President Lincoln’s that essentially overturned the Dred Scott decision and his later Emancipation Proclamation, and congressional actions that overturn Supreme Court decisions, defy that static interpretation.