wfn.org | "Take a Hike" Overtures Draw Battle Lines

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

21-January-2000 
00028 
 
   "Take a Hike" Overtures Draw Battle Lines 
    Between Liberals, Conservatives - and Conservatives 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Even as he put the finishing touches on what would become 
General Assembly Overtures 00-5 and 00-6, the Rev. Jeff Arnold of Butler, 
Pa., knew he wasn't drafting a "beloved" piece of legislation. 
 
    He was right. The overtures - which politely invite liberals to leave 
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) - raised hackles even in Arnold's own 
staunchly conservative presbytery in western Pennsylvania. 
 
    Now they're raising hackles nationally, with a half-year to go before 
they are due to arrive at  the 212th General Assembly in Long Beach, Calif. 
 
    The overtures, from the Presbytery of Beaver-Butler, suggest one way of 
resolving a longstanding quarrel over the nature of the church - a quarrel 
that divides liberals and conservatives along ideological grounds and also 
seems to be creating new divisions in the conservative camp, between 
hard-liners and moderates and between older traditionalists and younger 
evangelicals. 
 
    Overture 00-5 asks the General Assembly (GA) to declare that an 
"irreconcilable impasse" has developed in the PC(USA) over several 
theological and scriptural matters, notably including the question of 
permitting the ordination of gay and lesbian candidates for the ministry. 
Traditionalists argue that calling any ecclesiastical quarrel 
"irreconcilable" is an affront to an all-powerful God. 
 
    Overture 00-6 asks the GA moderator to name a task force to explore 
changes to the Book of Order that would allow liberals - some of whom say 
their consciences require them to defy the denomination's constitution on 
the question of ordaining gays and lesbians - to leave the PC(USA) and to 
take their property with them. Normally, when a church disbands or leaves 
the PC(USA), its property reverts to the denomination. Overture 00-6, its 
supporters say, is a pastoral concession aimed at keeping the peace. 
 
    Traditionalists object that separating the Body of Christ and 
reinventing a church is something close to anathema. 
 
    "We're not trying to create division,"Arnold says. "The division 
already exists, and nobody has found a way to reconcile the differences." 
 
    It is no secret that the PC(USA)'s liberal and conservative camps 
disagree, sometimes vehemently.  But Overture 00-5 contends that the split 
has created  "two mutually exclusive theologies" that have evolved into 
radically different understandings of: 
 
    * God's biblical authority ("whether the Bible is accurate and the Word 
God speaks to His entire church with absolute authority, or ...  biblical 
authority is determined by personal feelings or various academic 
disciplines"); 
 
    * biblical interpretation ("whether the Protestant watchwords - `grace 
alone, faith alone, scripture alone' - govern our understanding of the 
biblical text or ... we allow other hermeneutic devices such as 
justice/love to displace them"); 
 
    * Jesus Christ ("whether Jesus Christ, through his atoning sacrifice, 
is the only means of salvation, or ... there are other means of salvation 
such as those revealed in the diversity of human religious and 
philosophical traditions"); 
 
    * salvation ("whether salvation is primarily God's forgiveness of sin, 
leading to eternal life and participation in God's church or ... is 
primarily freedom from political, social or economic disadvantage"); 
 
    * ecclesiology ("whether the church is God's creation and governed by 
God through Scripture, the Headship of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, or 
is an institution to be governed by human political processes and notions 
of fairness"). 
 
    "The first amendment (00-5) is the more important," Arnold says. "It 
has a simple purpose: to highlight what significant theological differences 
exist between the far right and the far left, though we realize those 
people are not neatly in camps. We want there to be a theological 
discussion ... not about sex and not about homophobia." 
 
    Arnold sees this acknowledgment of the division as the beginning of 
healing. 
 
    "And we want the General Assembly commissioners to address the 
irreconcilable impasse," he says. "(To say) if [it] is there, say yes or 
no." 
 
    Needless to say, the handful of clergy in Beaver-Butler Presbytery who 
consider themselves liberals read the overtures as a way of saying, "Don't 
let the door hit you on the way out." 
 
    Beaver-Butler is a largely rural enclave that is unquestionably one of 
the PC(USA)'s most deeply entrenched bastions of conservatism. But the 
actual vote on the overtures split the presbytery down the middle: On one 
side, the under-35 evangelicals who drafted the overtures (with some 
fine-tuning by The Presbyterian Forum, a hard-line coalition that focuses 
on grassroots organizing); on the other, older traditionalists who believe 
in the classical formulation that the church is Christ's indivisible body, 
made by God. 
 
    The vote on Overture 00-5 was 61-46. On 00-6, it was 63-50. 
 
    "[The overtures give] a limited view of God and God's power ... to say 
it is impossible to reconcile," grumbles one minister who is angry that the 
debate ever got this far. He says he's disgusted by any ecclesiology that 
suggests that the church, which was created and is sustained by God, can be 
destroyed and reinvented by humans. 
 
    Overture 00-6 isn't the first recent effort by church conservatives to 
oust liberals. In 1991 - back before the church's 173 presbyteries passed 
the controversial constitutional amendment known as G-6.0106b, which 
forbids the ordination of sexually active and "unrepentant" gays and 
lesbians - an overture from the Presbytery of San Joaquin (California) took 
a much harder line: It proposed to jettison anyone or any PC(USA) 
institution that was unwilling to declare homosexual behavior biblically 
unsound. That overture was dismissed by that year's General Assembly. 
 
    Last year, when two lesbians were chosen to receive the church's "Women 
of Faith Award," Beaver-Butler tried to protest the decision, but didn't 
get very far - even though a commissioner's resolution similar to Overture 
00-6 was circulated at the presbytery's May meeting. The clerk did draft 
letters to the denomination's stated clerk, objecting to the choices and 
reprimanding the General Assembly Council for its supposed lack of 
oversight. 
 
    Although those actions bore no immediate political fruit, they did give 
rise to an evangelical caucus in the presbytery that has met bi-weekly ever 
since and authored this year's overtures. 
 
    What's unusual about 00-5 and 00-6 is their call for liberals to leave. 
For decades, conservatives have pressured the denomination on various 
issues by threatening to take their money and members and leave. That's 
been true since the 1920s, when liberal leaders emerged in many mainline 
denominations. Nowadays, however, conservatives admit that they have 
nowhere to go: They don't fit in with the more fundamentalist stances of 
the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Evangelical Presbyterian 
Church(EPC). Moreover, evangelical women don't want to join a denomination 
that gives women fewer opportunities for ordained leadership, like the EPC, 
or refuses to ordain women at all, like the PCA. 
 
    "We don't demonize people, we just think they're mistaken," says the 
Rev. Dan Reuter of Prospect, Pa., at 65 the oldest member of the 
evangelical caucus, who will be the advocate for the overtures in Long 
Beach. "And if this is their conviction (that the church should permit the 
ordination of homosexuals), they ought to be able to express it." 
 
    Reuter says the provision that defectors may keep their property might 
make it possible for some congregations to leave quietly, relieving the 
tension that masks theological differences that he thinks are way beyond 
repair. 
 
    But excision doesn't sit well with traditional conservatives. 
 
    Surgical-style solutions seem fundamentally wrong to a generation 
raised on an ecclesiology that stresses peace and unity ahead of purity -- 
and puts peace and unity before purity even in the ordination vows. The 
traditionalists are appalled by what they consider a breach of 
institutional loyalty, and suspect that 00-5 and 00-6 are a kind of 
smokescreen for evangelicals who would like a clause in the Book of Order 
that allows for gracious separation - in case a day comes when they would 
like to leave. Reuter says that wasn't the impetus for the overtures, but 
says the possible "out" probably comforts some conservatives who are deeply 
dissatisfied with the PC(USA) and consider the property issue to be 
coercive. 
 
    The traditionalists say that looking for ways out instead of ways to 
stay in is looking at the problem backwards. 
 
    "(You have to have) a sense of maturity, a sense of trust that the 
denomination recognizes all sorts of diversity, and you also have to trust 
the Lord," said the Rev. Bill Jamieson of Butler, a pastoral counselor who 
has been a member of the Beaver-Butler Presbytery for 28 years. He 
remembers vividly the pain caused by a split in the early 1980s, when five 
churches  left the denomination because of long-simmering dissatisfaction 
with its policies, including the decision to ordain women. 
 
    In that case, the presbytery lost the property battle in state court; 
the breakaway churches were permitted to take their property with them. 
 
     "Where does it stop?" Jamieson says. "It's like that quote from Pastor 
Martin Niemoller: `First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak 
out because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, 
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. They they came 
for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they 
came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.'" 
 
    "Who will be attacked next? Will they come after me because I have a 
different view of the church? Where's the unity? Right now it seems like 
the one with the most power has the most unity." 
 
    For the Rev. Judy Angleberger of Beaver Falls, Pa., a former presbytery 
moderator, it's bad enough that the evangelicals are caucusing apart from 
the full presbytery. She says she feels sadness and resignation as she 
watches presbyters plunge headlong into what she considers the age-old 
theological struggle between law and grace. 
 
    "Beaver-Butler Presbytery has worked internally over the years to build 
a spirit of collegiality," she says. "This kind of organizing may tend to 
evade that spirit ... It [cuts] part of us off, and a trust was broken ... 
(because it kept) the whole body from working on something together. 
 
    "There's a fragmenting of the spirit of the presbytery, from my 
perspective as a former moderator." 
 
     That's not how the caucus sees it, according to some of its leaders, 
including Bob Davis of The Presbyterian Forum. They claim the body is 
already broken, and if surgical intervention is what it takes for healing, 
that's just what it takes. 
 
    For Arnold, the concept of ekklesia ("assembly" in New Testament Greek) 
is primary, as the place where the community gathers to do God's work, 
God's mission - and mission, as he sees it, is suffering enough. "If we've 
ceased to exist for mission, it is possible to dissolve the denomination 
without harming the Body of Christ," he says, noting that the Body is 
bigger than Presbyterianism and that presbyteries often dissolve local 
congregations without harm to the wider denomination. 
 
    "I'm not sure we're at that place within the denomination," he says, 
"but we're not far from it.  That's why we used the word `irreconcilable.'" 
 
    Such a stance isn't unusual among the under-35 evangelicals, according 
to Davis, who is convinced that less institutional loyalty is reflective of 
the times. Some - like the group dubbed "Angry, Young, West-Coast, 
Evangelical Pastors" by the Presbyterian Coalition - talk about 
"post-denominationalism," in which churches are said to align through 
common assent instead of being bound by denominational ties, and Christians 
join local churches, not denominations. 
 
    Others, like Reuter, describe the local congregation as the locus of 
ekklesia, with other levels of a denomination functioning as a service 
organization rather than an ecclesial body. 
 
    "We don't make or unmake ... the Body of Christ," Arnold says. "It is 
bigger than the PC(USA) ... We cannot harm that which God already claimed, 
although I don't know anybody in the group that is very happy about any of 
this. When the vote was positive, there wasn't celebrating in the streets. 
Who's happy?" 
 
    The Rev. Laird Stuart of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians (a 
coalition of dissenters against G-6.0106b), who says he has heard of 
Overtures 00-5 and 00-6 but hasn't seen them in print, says he thinks their 
conclusions are too bleak. 
 
    "The basic story of faith is that God takes us where we can't get to 
ourselves," Stuart says. "And this [the two overtures] is a secular 
conclusion, one that does not really believe that God can lead us out of 
this crisis."  

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