It’s all about religious liberty, say
those who claim church property
By John H. Adams, The Layman, February 23, 2009
PITTSBURGH – With near patriotic fervor, a team of denominational loyalists accused the “schismatics” who are leaving the Presbyterian Church (USA) with their property of trying to undermine the PCUSA’s religious liberty.
The members of the team lacked the vitriol of their promotional literature for the Webcast conference sponsored by Pittsburgh Presbytery on Feb. 19. But they still argued strongly that that religious liberty – or at least the liberty of the denomination to seize property paid for by departing congregations or to impose exit fees on those congregations allowed to keep assets – is under attack.
Their assertions ranged from suggestions that John Calvin, founder of Presbyterianism, was an absolute ecumenist who would not have tolerated the current fracturing of the PCUSA, to the plaintive plea by the descendant of a Scottish Reformer who was ordered executed by King Charles II because of his demand for religious liberty.
Scrupling standards
They also brought forth the notion that scrupling the theological and behavior standards – the right of ministers to object to confessional and constitutional requirements – was a common practice that was acceptable from the early days of the Reformation. That was intended to persuade the participants in the conference that, because scrupling by homosexual candidates against the PCUSA’s ordination requirements had the blessing of history, it did not justify leaving the denomination.
Most of what was presented during the conference at Beulah Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh was spun from the PCUSA’s timbre and not from an unbiased consideration of the past or present.
Forrest Norman, an attorney who also attended a one-day legal conference on church property disputes at the Pepperdine School of Law in Malibu, Calif., said the difference between the two conferences was pointed. Pepperdine is a Christian law school whose dean is Ken Starr, a conservative who opposes the imposition of property claims by “hierarchical” denominations. Yet the Pepperdine conference was balanced and fair, with presentations and arguments on both sides. In contrast, the PCUSA’s Pittsburgh conference was mostly denominational propaganda.
“Your freedom of religion is at risk,” declared Douglas Portz, associate pastor of the Pittsburgh Presbytery and emcee for the event. “This is a Presbyterian crisis, not only in the church but among the people of God.” Portz complained that “we found ourselves drawn into the secular courts, where the church’s voice was diminished.”
So what’s wrong?
Appealing to Calvin
Joe Small, director of the PCUSA Office of Theology, Worship and Educational Ministries, said the problem stems from perceptions of the nature of the church. He cited the orthodox view that Jesus is the head of the church and Calvin’s marks of the church – the Word of God rightly preached and proclaimed and the sacraments rightly administered.
Furthermore, he said, the church is a communion. He didn’t like the “graceless phrase connectional, which focuses on institutional arrangements.” By communion, Small said, he meant the common sharing (koinonia) that marked the early Christian church. “Communion points to relationship with God and relationships with each other,” he said.
“The form of a denomination that becomes dominated by legislative disputes and political disputes is not what Paul had in mind,” he said. “It is not what our Lord had in mind.”
In response, a observer asked how “Calvin justified the Protestant Reformation.” Small pointed to Calvin’s writings about the unity of the church but made no mention of why he was a part of the Reformation. Small also did not acknowledge Calvin’s writings in Book 4 of the Institutes in which he justified separation from a church institution whose doctrines and practices have left the faith.
Calvin’s chief argument for the Reformation was similar to today’s: The Reformers believed the Roman Catholic Church did not rightfully proclaim the gospel or rightly administers the sacraments – and that the Catholic hierarchical institution had left the Church, not the Reformers, most of whom were, like Calvin, raised as Catholics.
Dr. Euan Cameron, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, pointed to the Reformers’ entanglements with the civil government to argue that scrupling has been an acceptable practice, even in the early days of the Reformation.
Revisionist history
Next up was Beau Weston, a Presbyterian elder and professor of sociology at Centre College in Danville, Ky. Weston zeroed in on the Adopting Act of 1729, which was the organizing polity of Presbyterians in the Colonies. The act committed Presbyterians to the Westminster Confession and its catechisms. Also, the Presbyterians at the 1729 assembly allowed candidates for ordination to exempt themselves (declare a scruple) from sections of Chapter 20 and Chapter 23 of the 1646 Westminster Confession. Those two chapters authorized civil magistrates to enforce church doctrine and punish persons who publicly criticize the Presbyterian church.
The Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity used the Adopting Act as the basis for its recommendation that ordaining bodies allow candidates who are sexually active outside marriage to “scruple” the constitutional “fidelity/chastity” clause. As later approved by the General Assembly, the current policy gives sessions and presbyteries the right to accept scruples on sexual behavior even though the “fidelity/chastity” clause is still in the Book of Order.
Weston contended that the 1729 Adopting Act placed no limits on scrupling. The PUP task force also asserted the same thing. At one point, when asked what might be off-limits for scrupling, task force member Mark Achtenmeier declared, “I hope no one would scruple the Nicene Creed.”
Neither Weston nor the task force would accept the only historical account about the adopting act.
Samuel John Baird’s Digest of the Acts of and Deliverances of Assembly, which is posted on the historical Web site of the Presbyterian Church in America, summarized what happened at the 1729 meeting.
A task force of the Synod of Philadelphia intended that scrupling be allowed – as Baird’s record of the synod minutes suggest – “with respect to any article or articles” of Westminster. But that recommendation was rejected. According to Baird’s record, the final approval of the Adopting Act permitted scruples only on issues raised in the 20th and 23rd chapters of Westminster.
Seven years after the Adopting Act of 1729, responding to arguments about what scruples applied to, the synod adopted an explanation emphasizing that they were applicable only to the sections about civil magistrates in chapters 20 and 23 — “without the least variation or alteration” from the limited areas dealing with civil magistrates.
Leading from the center
Weston’s argument in favor of scrupling would place decision-making in what he believes is the center of the denomination. “In general,” he said, “we find in the church … a left wing and a somewhat larger right wing. And most people fall in the middle. They’re not liberals or conservatives. They’re loyal to the institution. The loyalists are going to preserve the institution.”
Weston said the center of the church would extend “toleration to our errant brothers.”
He extends that argument in a book titled Leading from the Center: Strengthening the Pillars of the Church. Its theme is similar to former PCUSA Moderator Jack Rogers’ Claiming the Center: Churches and Conflicting Worldviews. Not only does Rogers favor the ordination of men and women whose sexual behavior violates the “fidelity/chastity” clause, but he also favors marriages between people of the same gender.
“We’re now in the midst of testing that, performing marriages of same-sex couples,” Weston said.
Follow the money
Mark Tammen, director of constitutional services in the Office of the General Assembly, was one of the masterminds of the “Louisville Papers,” which outlined harsh steps presbyteries could take administratively and legally to force departing congregations to abandon their property or pay sizable exit fees.
But in his presentation in Pittsburgh, he claimed he did not relish his task. “I have the sad duty to sometimes speak with presbyteries or congregations who have become so frustrated with actions of the general assemblies that they seek a way to depart” from the PCUSA.
In Sundquist et al v. Heartland Presbytery, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission ruled that congregations do not have the right to talk about or vote on leaving the denomination, Tammen said.
The presbytery alone has the power to divide, dismiss or dissolve churches, and they do so by requiring departing congregations to pay negotiated amounts of money or give up their property and financial assets, he said.
Expensive exit fees
Tammen argued that the controversial property trust clause in the Book of Order is intended “to support the purposes and mission of the” denomination. Even so, the Book of Order gives the presbytery the right to dissolve a congregation without trying the confiscate its property or requiring an exit fee, such as the $1.75 million paid by Kirk of the Hills to the Presbytery of Eastern Oklahoma.
Jeff Tindall, a pastor and attorney in Carnegie, Pa., warned against going to court and said presbyteries and congregations should negotiate settlements. “The civil justice system is not about truth-finding,” he said. “It is intended to replace the kind of resolution you see in old John Wayne movies.”
He suggested that the Pittsburgh Presbytery process is a model. It has resulted in the presbytery’s dismissal of two congregations that did not go to court and a negotiated settlement with Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh just before a trial was scheduled. The settlement cost Memorial Park $500,000.
Any proposed settlement has to be approved by 75 percent of the commissioners at a presbytery meeting, he added.
John Lolla, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Plum Creek, had the final say in the 3½-hour conference. He contended that the trust clause that was unilaterally imposed on congregations by the denomination is an expression of the Reformed faith. Therefore, by Lolla’s logic a court’s decision to examine a local congregation’s records for evidence that it explicitly agreed to having its property placed in trust for the denomination is a violation of the First Amendment, since it favors one kind of religion (congregationalism) over another (Presbyterianism).
It was Lolla who referred to the 1661 execution of his Scottish ancestor, who protested that King Charles II “should not dictate the matters of the church.”
Somehow, Lolla found that analogous to congregations leaving the Presbyterian Church (USA) and seeking civil justice that allows them to keep the property they paid for.