Wheeler: Network, PFR are part of the ‘great middle of the church’
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, August 19, 2003
A high-profile advocate for ordaining practicing homosexuals in the Presbyterian Church (USA) has singled out the Covenant Network and Presbyterians for Renewal as two organizations that, she says, are taking the high road in the denomination’s battles over the issue.
In the past, the Covenant Network and Presbyterians For Renewal have been at opposite ends of the spectrum on the ordination issue.
But Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City and a member of the Covenant Network board of directors, described the two groups as part of the “great middle of the church” – as opposed to the “superactivists and their sympathizers.”
‘The great middle’
“We should all be grateful for the few attempts there have been to offset the damage, especially for the wonderful statement of commitment to pray without prejudice for the whole denomination that Presbyterians For Renewal issued this fall [2002],” Wheeler said. “I am pleased that the Covenant Network called for compliance with the Constitution,” she added.
She continued, “With a few exceptions, however, the great middle of the church (including most of us who make up Covenant Network and PFR) has sat silent as a small number of our colleagues siphoned off an enormous amounts [sic] of time, energy, and money into judicial proceedings and political grandstanding.” Wheeler did not name the “colleagues” who are outside her definition of the “great middle.”
Wheeler made her comments in a paper titled “Turn Back: Hopes and Fears for the Presbyterian Future” that was distributed at the recent meeting of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity, of which she is a member.
Copies of the paper, which was originally delivered on Jan. 21, 2003, as a speech for a conference of Presbyterian pastors at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., were also distributed during a presentation that Wheeler and Jack Haberer, president of PFR, gave to a gathering of General Assembly attendees in May.
Bilateral conversations
Haberer, pastor of Clear Lake Presbyterian Church in Houston, is also a member of the task force. He has made three public appearances with Wheeler in which they affirmed one another as colleagues whose unity outweighs their differences. In their joint presentations, they point to their acceptance of one another as a demonstration of the collegiality that must occur if denominational peace is to be achieved.
Haberer told The Layman Online that he wasn’t certain what Wheeler meant by the “great middle of the church.” He termed Wheeler’s assessment about the Covenant Network and PFR being together “a broad generalization … an overstatement.” Haberer also told The Layman Online, however, that directors of Presbyterians For Renewal and the Covenant Network have been talking “informally in informal conversations” about achieving unity in the denomination. “This has not directly involved our boards,” he said.
Haberer said the Covenant Network has stated that it has two goals: the ordination of practicing homosexuals and church unity. He noted that the Covenant Network has drawn criticism from other gay-rights activists, including the Witherspoon Society and More Light Presbyterians, because it opposed radical defiance and did not support an overture to the 215th General Assembly calling for yet another referendum on the ordination issue.
Covenant Network and defiance
The Covenant Network’s public position on that overture was that it be deferred until the General Assembly meeting in 2006, when the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity will make its report. Although Wheeler and the Covenant Network say they oppose outright defiance of the denomination’s constitutional standards, they have supported churches and individuals that openly defy those standards.
In 1999, the Covenant Network announced that its leaders were providing “legal and polity advice and expertise pro bono” to the Presbytery of Northern New England after the presbytery told the defiant Christ Church in Burlington, Vt., that it did not have to comply with the denomination’s ordination law. The presbytery’s position was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission.
On the heels of that defeat, the Covenant Network began encouraging individuals and groups to defy constitutional standards by claiming that they are in compliance. At its conference in 2002, two of the Covenant Network’s board members, Peter Oddliefson and Doug Nave, taught a seminar on strategies for circumventing the law. They presented legal arguments suggesting that ordaining bodies redefine “chastity” and “repentance,” two key terms in the denominational standards. They argued that by giving these terms new definitions, groups could claim to be in compliance with the standards (as they understand them) without changing their behavior.
According to the Oddliefson and Nave plan, chastity has nothing to do with abstinence from sex and repentance did not apply to someone who doesn’t believe homosexual practice is forbidden by Scripture. As the Rev. Laird Stuart, former Covenant co-moderator, said in response to Paul’s New Testament injunctions against homosexual relations, “Paul was wrong.”
Sex is not the only subject in which Covenant Network leaders are redefining terms. In its 2002 national conference, Network leaders announced that they would begin focusing on “progressive theology,” an amalgam of philosophies and worldviews that denies the key doctrines of orthodox Christianity, including the atoning death of Christ and his bodily resurrection.
Claiming ‘the middle’
Covenant Network strategists are aware of the fact that their denial of Christian orthodoxy and morals finds little support across the Presbyterian Church (USA). In 2001-2002, for example, during the last national referendum on the denomination’s ordination standards, nearly 75 percent of the presbyteries voted in favor of retaining those standards, despite heavy opposition from the Covenant Network. Consequently, Wheeler and other Network leaders sought to convince Presbyterians that their group is part of the “great middle of the church.”
In a paper originally presented in 1998 and later published on the Covenant Network Web site, Wheeler outlined the campaign strategy. She urged the liberals to forge alliances with “moderate evangelicals.” In this way, she argued, they could demonstrate by juxtaposition that the Covenant Network itself is moderate. Wheeler claimed historical precedent for this strategy by pointing to Presbyterian controversies in the 1920s when liberal forces successfully co-opted moderate evangelical leaders for this purpose.
An apparent Covenant Network target is the historically evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., where Wheeler appeared on Jan. 21 with Fuller’s President Richard Mouw. In the Covenant Network’s 2003 conference, Mouw will return the favor by appearing with Wheeler in a highly publicized “dialogue.”
Although it is clear from Wheeler’s published statements that she and her Covenant Network colleagues are seeking alliances with moderate evangelicals, Haberer spurns the suggestion that he and Presbyterians For Renewal leaders might be targets for co-opting by the Covenant Network. Instead, he says PFR is engaged only in “informal conversations,” and that the sole purpose of these discussions is to foster denominational unity.