wfn.org | Will the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Continue in COCU?

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

30-April-1997 
97233 
 
     Will the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Continue in COCU? 
 
                         by John A. Bolt 
            Reprinted from "The Presbyterian Outlook" 
 
DALLAS--Nearly four decades of Presbyterian presence in the Consultation on 
Church Union (COCU) could come to an end in Syracuse as commissioners to 
the 209th General Assembly consider whether to proceed in the face of 
overwhelming presbytery rejection of the mechanism proposed to participate 
in the envisioned structures of a united Christian church in the United 
States. 
 
     By a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent, presbyteries rejected 
amendments to the "Book of Order" that would have created commissions of 
elders and ministers to participate in the "covenanting councils" that 
would be created to oversee ecumenical matters under the COCU proposals. 
 
     The Rev. Michael Livingston of Princeton, N.J., who has chaired the 
Assembly's Special Committee on COCU since 1993, isn't ready to give up, 
but acknowledges that "there is an impression throughout the church -- I 
don't know how broad or how deep -- that by voting against these 
amendments, the church has voted not to participate in the consultation." 
 
     That's just what an overture from Plains and Peaks Presbytery seeks to 
do.  "We're not saying we don't believe in ecumenism, but that we already 
have it," said the Rev. Robert Dooling, pastor of Mountain View United 
Presbyterian Church in Loveland, Colo., and a longtime activist in the 
campaign to end PC(USA) participation in COCU.  "As far as I'm concerned, 
this thing's a dinosaur.  It's an effort left over from the early '60s and 
it's not going to work." 
 
     Alongside the Plains and Peaks overture, commissioners will consider 
the committee's proposed report to COCU's 1998 plenary meeting, called to 
hear how the nine member churches have responded to "Churches in Covenant 
Communion: The Church of Christ Uniting," the 1988 document that 
establishes a structure for the member churches.   
 
     The report gives a brief history of PC(USA) participation in COCU, 
which was formed two years after a 1960 speech by Eugene Carson Blake, then 
stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. General 
Assembly, in which he invited Episcopalians to lead an effort to create one 
church that would be "truly catholic and truly reformed." 
 
     The COCU proposal, as it evolved through the years, does not call for 
merging of the participating denominations, but instead suggests "a 
covenantal communion in faith, sacrament, ministry and mission."  At last 
year's Assembly, the committee recommended changes in the "Book of Order," 
including the creation of the office of "representative bishop," to allow 
the PC(USA) to participate in the local covenanting councils.  The Assembly 
largely rejected the proposal, creating its own structure that called for a 
commission of minister and elder representatives instead. 
 
     That revamped proposal was sent to the presbyteries, but was rejected 
by a 98-63 vote with two presbyteries voting "no action" -- 24 affirmative 
votes shy of passage. 
 
     Both the overture and the committee's report stress that the 
Presbyterian Church remains committed to ecumenism and to a unity of the 
faith, but -- as the report notes -- "there seem to be conflicting visions 
of how that unity is to be manifested." 
 
     The report outlines nine "messages" it says the debate has generated, 
including reluctance to create new structures, whether local or 
centralized; a desire to include more than the nine churches currently 
involved in COCU; and an insistence that the partner churches take the 
Presbyterian elder seriously "as an integral part of our polity."   
 
     The report asks for a reaffirmation of the PC(USA)'s commitment "to 
seek a more visible manifestation of the unity God wills for the church." 
In addition, "we anticipate that, following the 1998 COCU plenary, the 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will wish to propose further steps necessary 
to move toward full communion in a covenant relationship." 
 
     But Dooling says it's time to give up.  "Basically the reasons are 
this: We believe that we are already doing in essence what the COCU 
proposal wants to do in a vast majority of our communities and we're 
already doing those things on a far broader basis.  We don't need to do 
what we're already doing," he said.  "We see Christians working together 
all around the world without any kind of ecclesiastical structure to make 
it work." 
 
     He also questions the amount of money that has been spent so far and 
wonders if further spending is wise in this time of dwindling resources. 
And he points to the absence of some significant denominations, especially 
the Lutherans and Southern Baptists. 
 
     Livingston often notes that three of the nine churches are 
historically black and argues that COCU offers a unique opportunity at 
racial reconciliation.  But Dooling says, "I am not convinced we need 
another ecclesiastical structure to do that." 
 
     Besides the PC(USA), partner COCU churches are African Methodist 
Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Christian Church 
(Disciples of Christ), Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Episcopal 
Church, International Council of Community Churches, United Church of 
Christ and United Methodist Church. 

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