Division ducks controversy over other paths to salvation
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, September 22, 2000
MONTREAT, N.C. – The Congregation Ministries Committee of the General Assembly Council decided to duck the controversy that broke out in the Presbyterian Church (USA) after a Presbyterian minister told a national peacemaking conference that faiths other than Christianity were valid paths to God.
The committee received a letter void of any chiding or recommendations from the members of its peacemaking subcommittee. Nothing was added by the full committee.
“Since this issue has been simmering down, just leave it be,” said Atlanta Brown of the Congregational Ministries Division.
The controversy began after the Presbyterian News Service reported that Dirk Ficca of Chicago, a Presbyterian minister who heads an inter-faith organization, told a PCUSA peacemaking conference that salvation through Christ was the norm for Christians but that there were other valid faiths. Ficca asked rhetorically, “What’s the big deal about Jesus?”
Later, sponsors of the 2000 Peacemaking Conference in California publicly supported the conference and said it did not stray from the Reformed tradition and that “… God alone is the author and source of salvation which we experience through Jesus Christ.”
Also, Peter Pizor, chair of the General Assembly Council, and John Detterick, executive director of the council, issued a similar joint statement saying, “We believe that God’s love and grace for us was revealed through the life, death and resurrection of Christ….”
Because of their qualifying phrases – “which we experience” and “for us” – both statements fell short of the standard expressed in the New Testament and each of the denomination’s Reformed confessions. They all make clear that there are no paths to God other than through Jesus Christ.
The peacemaking subcommittee of the Congregational Ministries Division wrote a letter saying that the California conference was a “highly successful event” and that Ficca’s “speech had a profound effect on the attendees and he received a standing ovation.”
The letter commended conference leaders, speakers and all participants “for their willingness to explore how we as Christians can faithfully dialogue and interact with persons of other faiths.”
Neither during the opening plenary of the council nor the meeting of the council’s Congregational Ministries Division committee were the statements by the peacemaking conference leaders or Pizor and Detterick analyzed.
No one asked whether those statements were inconsistent with Biblical witness – “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” – or the united voice of the confessions affirming Christ’s statement and other New Testament teaching.