From the heart: The diary of a departing pastor
A book review by Parker T. Williamson, The Layman, December 11, 2012
Charles Powell Sykes Sr. is no peripheral Presbyterian. The son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers and himself a Presbyterian pastor for almost 24 years, this man’s DNA is stamped with the Presbyterian Church (USA) imprint. That’s what makes his decision to leave this denomination so wrenching. Having poured his adult life, both personally and professionally, into efforts to save the ecclesiastical ship from sinking, Sykes is severing the ties that bind.
Out of Order: The Self-Destruction of a Mainline Denomination is a deeply personal book, a travelogue that traces Sykes’ journey through the labyrinth of debate, discord, despair and finally dismissal. It is the story of a minister who took his ordination vows seriously, who served his church at session, presbytery, synod and General Assembly levels. From reviewing stacks of session minutes to prosecuting cases before Permanent Judicial Commissions, Sykes took on churchmanship tasks that he believed were incumbent to his calling. And in this book, he records in meticulous detail the events that led him to an inescapable conclusion: “I can’t play that game anymore.”
Out of Order chronicles the predictable demise of the PCUSA through the experience of a passionate participant, one who loves the fundamentals that make a Presbyterian, a Presbyterian. Those fundamentals – “essential beliefs,” in contemporary parlance – Sykes believes and demonstrates have been serially abandoned by his denomination.
“Everyone is a fundamentalist,” says Sykes. That is to say, everyone has a core set of beliefs that forms the framework through which he or she interprets life experiences. Historically, the Reformed faith of Presbyterians anchored itself in five fundamentals, core truths of Christianity that are revealed in Scripture and affirmed through centuries of Christian tradition. The PCUSA says it has essentials. In fact, it requires its candidates for ordination to say that they “sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of Reformed faith …” But, the PCUSA has manifestly refused to list those essentials. “How can anyone sincerely receive and adopt anything without knowing what it is?” he asks.
Sykes identifies the fundamental enshrined by the PCUSA as “Inclusivity,” which is often voiced in the slogan, “Unity in Diversity.” This, he says, is the faith of “Religious Liberals,” a category that Sykes differentiates from secular liberalism. Religious Liberalism is a different faith, decidedly not Christian, while secular liberalism, a category of politics and economics, may include both Christians and non-Christians.
Religious Liberalism, the current mantra that underlies PCUSA policies, programs and pronouncements, “will fail”, says Sykes. In its attempt to encompass all “truths,” it embraces self-contradictions and accommodates itself to the culture that surrounds it. On its face, it is not true, nor is it honest when it “uses the same words as historical, Biblical Christianity, but gives them different meanings …”
Out of Order chronicles Sykes’ numerous attempts to contest Religious Liberalism’s dominant hold on PCUSA structures. He offers eye -witness accounts from presbytery meetings, synod councils of which he was a member and the 1994 General Assembly to which he was a commissioner, during which church leaders exchanged Reformed faith and ethics for the thin gruel of cultural accommodation. He gives blow by blow descriptions of battles waged against apostasy by renewal groups within the PCUSA, including his own failed attempts in denominational courts to contest patently clear cases of constitutional defiance. Sykes’ facts are documented and indisputable.
“In a denomination which tolerates open heresy from the pulpit and the seminary podium, one might think that any idea is allowed. After all, it has gone without a single heresy trial in almost 60 years, and has no list of essential beliefs,” says Sykes. But there is “one charge alone, without any proof or trial, [that] can be used at best to blackball a pastor, or at worst to remove him or her from office. That charge is schism.” One can believe anything so long as institutional preservation is left intact.
Sykes has committed that sin. When he announced his decision to members of his presbytery, he was greeted with multiple urgings to recant. The primary plea from Religious Liberals was that he accept his acceptance in a multifaceted communion. “I wish you would stay,” said a fellow presbyter. “We need your point of view.”
She wants me to stay, said Sykes, because “I can be one of the Collection! Here is our Feminist. Here is our Muslim. Here is our Wiccan. Here is our Liberation theologian. And here, rounding out the Collection, is the orthodox, historically Reformed Christian, or, as we like to call them, our Conservative.”
“I have no interest in being part of the Collection, especially when just being there validates an essential of Religious Liberalism … I refuse to play this game anymore.”
Out of Order
By Powell Sykes
Paperback, 238 Pages
Lulu.com, publisher
$20.00