wfn.org | Unity/Diversity Conference Participants Find Unity Elusive

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

3-May-1999 
99174 
 
    Unity/Diversity Conference 
    Participants Find Unity Elusive 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
ATLANTA - Newfound friends Joe Rightmyer and Scott Anderson embraced 
warmly, left the platform and went their separate ways - to opposite sides 
of a yawning chasm that divides them, and the entire Presbyterian Church 
(U.S.A.), on the issue of the ordination of gays and lesbians. 
 
    Rightmyer, the executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal, is a 
staunch opponent of gay and lesbian ordination. Anderson, an openly gay 
ex-Presbyterian minister, is an equally vocal proponent. Together they 
typified the seemingly irreconcilable differences that the 300 
Presbyterians gathered here for a conference entitled "What Is the Nature 
of the Unity We Seek in Our Diversity? Discovering Our Foundational Unity 
in Jesus Christ" explored here April 29-May 1. 
 
    In his remarks, directed to Anderson but intended for all the 
conference participants, Rightmyer said: "I need to say to you, Scott, that 
I am bound by a conscience that is held captive to the word of God. Because 
of that, I cannot support a view which I believe is contrary to the Word, 
and the sad reality is that as long as we hold such contrary views we 
cannot serve together in ordained positions within our denomination. I say 
this, however, not with any malice in my heart, but rather because I 
believe it is the loving thing for me to say, even though it does not feel 
that way to you." 
 
    Anderson compared coming out of the closet to Lazarus' coming out of 
the tomb. 
 
    "To be a self-affirming gay Christian is to see the stone rolled away," 
he said. "To respond in faith and trust to Christ's invitation to come out 
of our tomb of shame and guilt and secrecy and self-hatred. To inch our way 
into the daylight and to begin to live a new life filled with his gracious 
love. To be a self-affirming gay Christian is to know what it means to be 
Lazarus." 
 
    The gathering, known informally as the "Unity and Diversity 
Conference," was originally proposed by a group of African-American 
Presbyterians. It was mandated by last year's General Assembly in response 
to a new eruption of a long and bitter debate on issues of  human sexuality 
and gay ordination. That issue permeated all of the presentations made 
during the conference, but participants addressed a number of other 
unity-threatening issues - including race, the role of women in the church, 
differing worship styles, biblical authority and theological boundaries. 
 
    Theological diversity at the conference became an issue when all but a 
handful of conservative evangelical Presbyterians chose not to attend. 
While 16 board members of the pro-gay ordination Covenant Network of 
Presbyterians were on hand, not a single member of the vehemently anti-gay 
ordination Presbyterian Lay Committee was present. 
 
    And while several well-known conservative evangelical leaders served on 
the planning team for the conference, the Rev. Jack Haberer of Houston, a 
former president of the Presbyterian Coalition, told the Presbyterian News 
Service that "the absence of any conservative evangelical `headliners' 
among the plenary speakers probably hampered attendance by those on my end 
of the spectrum." 
 
    Their absence was particularly obvious during the small-group 
discussions that occupied much of the conference. The Rev. Craig Hall, the 
pastor of Opportunity Presbyterian Church in Spokane, Wash., told his 
fellow conferees that the absence of most conservative evangelicals caused 
him grief.  "I am living on an ever-shrinking island called the middle," he 
said. "... Too many who should be here are not." 
 
    The Rev. Stephen Jenks, interim pastor of Montview Boulevard 
Presbyterian Church in Denver, agreed.  "I am experiencing joy and grief 
here," he said. "The joy is in the sharing. The grief is that the people I 
needed to talk to are not here. We must go beyond the power struggles to 
the power of God to work between us." 
 
    Nevertheless, the conference illuminated the striking differences - and 
common commitments - of Presbyterians. These were especially clear in the 
plenary presentations on theological boundaries. 
 
                   Theological boundaries: walls or bridges? 
 
    Comparing the church to a near-sighted child who needs glasses, the 
Rev. Cathy Purves, the pastor of Hoboken Presbyterian Church in Blawnox, 
Pa., said: "We have become theologically and doctrinally nearsighted. As a 
church, we deal with the problems and issues that are right under our noses 
in a pragmatic, conciliatory way, but we are disinclined to try to focus on 
the boundaries of faith." 
 
    Purves said the conference planning team, of which she was a member, 
"discovered that the term `boundaries' is somewhat explosive. ... They are 
seen as exclusive. They can be used to keep people out and to help us judge 
who is in and who is out. Boundaries are thought of as rigid and judgmental 
walls that both confine and exclude." 
 
    That is precisely the problem, argued Jorge Lara-Braud, a commissioned 
lay pastor from Austin, Texas.  "Yes, Jesus drew boundaries," he said. "But 
his boundaries were drawn around the outcasts and the prostitutes, and were 
harshest on the powerful." 
 
    Noting his upbringing as a Mexican child subject to harsh racism in 
south Texas, and the church's frequent theological justification of such 
un-Christian attitudes, Lara-Braud added: "Boundaries would be very 
difficult to maintain if we kept Jesus' life and teachings first and 
foremost. Boundaries are essential, but they must be models of tolerance. 
If we keep asking, `What would Jesus do?,' within 10 years we will have 
reversed our exclusion of homosexuals, and our congregations will be models 
of integration, not segregation." 
 
    The Rev. James Logan, pastor of South Tryon Presbyterian Church in 
Charlotte, N.C., noted that "in some instances we have not only crossed the 
lines, but are endeavoring to create new boundaries." 
 
    Everything hinges on one's personal relationship with Jesus Christ, 
Logan said, and "with Jesus as my center, the center demands a 
circumference. ... My circumference, my outer boundary, is comprised of 
doctrines like the authority of scripture, the trinity, the virgin birth, 
the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, justification by faith alone, 
etcetera." 
 
    Logan conceded that his stance creates exclusive boundaries. "The 
gospel of Jesus Christ is inclusive and exclusive," he said, and the church 
fails "when we lower the bar to make room for standards of living and 
practice that do not accord with our understanding of scripture." 
 
    Purves agreed. "Crossing the line is when we allow anything other than 
Christ . . . to redraw our boundaries as a church," she said. "Crossing the 
line is when we allow God to be re-invented or re-imagined in ways to suit 
our needs, rather than seeing God through Jesus' eyes.  Crossing the line 
is when we allow grace to be re-invented so that it is simply a 
non-judgmental inclusivity. ... Crossing the line is when we allow our 
moral standards to be re-invented in response to the influence of current 
cultural norms, rather than being obedient to biblical and confessional 
standards." 
 
    The Rev. Cynthia Campbell, the president of McCormick Theological 
Seminary, said the issue of theological boundaries is paradoxical: "On the 
one hand, defining standards and core values is necessary - there is much 
in the Bible and church tradition about the character and commitments of 
the people of God," she said. "But on the other hand, there is a 
counter-tendency, in the scripture and our tradition, of crossing 
boundaries and breaking barriers - Jesus going outside the religious 
strictures to the outcasts, the taking Christianity beyond the Jews to the 
Gentiles, the Reformation. ... We're here having this fight because our 
ancestors crossed the boundaries and put the Bible in the hands of all of 
us. 
 
    "So the Bible is about setting boundaries and about crossing the lines, 
so how do you know which biblical instinct to follow? It's a matter of 
discerning God's holy spirit. What I see in Jesus is one who crossed 
boundaries and broke barriers, not because he was an iconoclast, but to 
heal people and bring them in. Let's worry less about where to fix the 
lines, and more about how to open the doors." 
 
            Gay ordination: exacting standards or recognized gifts? 
 
    "Because of friends such as Scott, I and many others in the church have 
been willing to do exactly what this conference has been designed to 
promote," Rightmyer said. "That is, to listen to one another, and to be 
willing to reconsider one's views." 
 
    Rightmyer acknowledged that such revisiting of scripture had led 
Presbyterians to change their positions on slavery and on the ordination of 
women. But "for many of us," he said, "such reflection [on homosexuality] 
has not resulted in sweeping change, but rather in deepening convictions." 
 
    Unlike racism and sexism, Rightmyer said, homosexuality has to do with 
"moral choices regarding sexual behavior - in this sense, the comparison is 
between apples and oranges."  Noting that the church has always 
distinguished between sexual orientation and sexual practice, he said "it 
is not right to call homosexuality a gift of God when the Bible declares it 
to be sinful practice." 
 
    Rightmyer said the church would do well to meditate on Romans 6-8, 
"which so masterfully describe the universal inward struggle with sin in 
the flesh, and God's powerful provision for life in the spirit." He said 
the church would "be well served in hearing the testimonies of those who 
have found the power in the gospel to be true in their lives in this area." 
 
    Anderson, who gave up his ordination when he publicly acknowledged his 
homosexuality in 1990, told of finding power in the gospel come out as a 
"self-affirming gay Christian." He cited the biblical stories of Naomi and 
Ruth and of Peter's conversion to outreach to the Gentiles in Acts 10 as a 
result of his encounter with Cornelius as inspirations in his struggle to 
persuade the Presbyterian Church to change its position on gay and lesbian 
ordination. 
 
    "A change of heart concerning the place of gays and lesbians in the 
life of the Presbyterian Church comes through a process of conversion," he 
said, noting that the architect of the original PC(USA) policy barring gay 
ordination, former stated clerk William P. Thompson, has changed his 
position on the issue in recent years. 
 
    "The hard truth is that you can't plan for someone's conversion. ... 
You can't manipulate it, or strategize for it," Anderson continued. "You 
certainly can't pass an overture at General Assembly to make it happen. 
Conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit, the activity of God." 
 
               Racial-ethnic diversity: "We're not there yet" 
 
    That the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has not yet achieved adequate 
racial-ethnic diversity was one point of unity at the conference. 
 
    "Overtly we don't have racism any more," said the Rev. Sang Hyun Lee, a 
professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, "but it has become more 
subtle, and so difficult to talk about."  White America is still "the 
center," he said, "with racial-ethnic people at the margins, and we can 
only have community in the church if we leave our center and move toward 
the margin." 
 
    For people on the margin, Lee continued, the incarnation is crucial. 
"Jesus Christ came into the world as a Galilean, a marginalized person from 
a multicultural area," he said.  "Apparently God could not do God's work 
from the center, but had to enter from the margin." 
 
    Speakers on racial-ethnic issues recited a litany of failings in the 
denomination. Buddy Monahan, a Native American and a chaplain at the Menaul 
School in Albuquerque, N.M., said, "We have 350 Native American tribes in 
this country, but only eight synods with Native American churches, and only 
112 Native American churches and only 32 Native American ministers." 
 
    Monahan decried the choices that missionaries have forced upon Native 
Americans - "You must be either Native American or Christian."  On the 
contrary, he said, "I tell the kids at Menaul, `You have two gifts - you 
are Native American and Christian.  Tear down the fence - integrate them.'" 
 
    The Rev. Gloria Tate, an African-American who is pastor of Teaneck 
(N.J.) Presbyterian Church, said more than 140 African-American 
Presbyterian churches are without pastors. "It's not about white churches 
or black churches or Korean churches or Native American churches," she 
said. "It's about churches of all configurations working together." 
 
    "It's always been about race," said the Rev. Joey Lee, who grew up in 
San Francisco's Chinatown Presbyterian Church and is now associate 
executive for the San Jose Presbytery. He recited a colloquial proverb - 
"If you keep doin' what you're doin,' you're gonna end up with what you 
got"- and added, "The Presbyterian Church needs to be less an organization 
and more an organism - more fluid, more flexible, more agile." 
 
    "We're not there yet," said the Rev. Harry del Valle, synod executive 
for the Synod of Puerto Rico. "Some diversity is with us, but unity is for 
the future - a utopian project." 
 
                         God's reputation in the world 
 
    In his closing sermon, the Rev. Jim Mead, General Assembly 
vice-moderator and chair of the planning team, recalled the loving spirit 
of Paul, "who loved the churches he served passionately, even in the midst 
of their strife." 
 
    Presbyterians are tugged in two directions, Mead said: "We fight for 
inclusion in the community - people of many races, people of various sexual 
orientations, women - and then we squander what (Christian community) is 
precious, striving to win at who cares what price." 
 
    Noting several places where Christians are under physical threat for 
their faith, Mead added, "Maybe God will send us persecution - then we will 
cling to each other will all our might." 
 
    "We are giving God a reputation in the world," he said. "God has 
entrusted something precious to us - our Christian community - that through 
us the world may know God. What would God have you do?" 
 
    The conference also included presentations on the historical background 
of current conflicts in the church, led by the Rev. Bradley Longfield, a 
professor of church history at Dubuque Theological Seminary, with responses 
by the Rev. Jack Rogers, vice president of San Francisco Theological 
Seminary, and the Rev. Gayraud Wilmore, emeritus professor of church 
history at the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) in Atlanta; and 
on worship styles, led by Melva Costen, a professor of worship and music at 
ITC, the Rev. J. Frederick Holper, a professor of worship at McCormick 
Seminary, and the Rev. Paul Huh, the pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church 
in Bloomfield, N.J. 
 
    Bible study was led by the Rev. Clarice Martin, a professor of religion 
and philosophy at Colgate-Rochester University and Divinity School. 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  This note sent by Office of News Services, 
  Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
  to the World Faith News list <wfn-news@wfn.org>.
  For additional information about this news story,
  call 502-569-5493 or send e-mail to PCUSA.News@pcusa.org

  On the web:  http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/

  If you have a question about this mailing list, 
  send queries to wfn@wfn.org