wfn.org | Minister calls for church progressives to issue another ‘Auburn

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Note #6193 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Affirmation'
19-September-2000
00331

Minister calls for church progressives to issue another ‘Auburn Affirmation'

Downtown Church minister wants liberals to say, ‘This isn't Presbyterian'

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A minister in Rochester, N.Y., has called for a
convocation to reclaim the Presbyterian Church (USA) "for the principles and
the person, Jesus Christ, on which it was founded."

	The gathering would be held in Auburn, N.Y., the site of historic
conference in the 1920s that rallied the denomination's progressives against
a fundamentalist faction that had defined Presbyterian orthodoxy by five
doctrinal tenets.

	Another "Auburn Affirmation" is overdue, the Rev. David Bos, interim
pastor, told the members of the Downtown United Presbyterian Church in
Rochester.

	The Affirmation, written in 1923, argued that the Presbyterian church must
"safeguard liberty of thought and teaching among its ministers" -- and that
the vows they take at ordination do so sufficiently, without requiring
subscription to other particular doctrines.

	The Auburn Affirmation adhered to the principles of freedom of conscience,
liberty of expression and freedom to disagree within broad principles --
which runs counter to any attempt to use selected statements as a test for
ordination or other church service.

	"It is time for another Affirmation such as this," Bos said from the pulpit
of the Downtown Church, which has been in the midst of the fray for the
ordination of gays and lesbians for a decade, and came to national attention
when it tried to call an openly lesbian minister as its pastor.

	"It is time to reclaim our church from those who would hold it captive to a
certain ecclesiastical and political agenda. It is time to rescue the church
from those who would impose an unseemly uniformity upon it. It is time to
restore the liberty that is our rightful legacy of the Reformation. It is
time to let the Holy Spirit speak through the scriptures and through other
means as well.

	"One of those means," he said, "might be a convocation to be held in
Auburn, N.Y., following shortly upon the General Assembly of 2001.  I
herewith propose and call for such a convocation."

	Bos told the Presbyterian News Service that he was "unprepared" for the
enthusiastic response his argument provoked in the Downtown Church. He said
other Presbyterians outside of New York State are beginning to warm to the
idea.

	 "A lot of people like the idea," Bos said, "and I think that something
will happen."

	The Auburn Affirmation was written largely by James Hastings Nichols, who
was a professor of church history at Auburn Theological Seminary, which was
then located in the town of Auburn in upstate New York, with the assistance
of Henry Sloan Coffin of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York
City.

	The document was a reaction to a decision reached at the 1923 General
Assembly, which required the Presbytery of New York to administer a
doctrinal examination of Harry Emerson Fosdick, the preacher at First
Presbyterian Church, who had openly expressed doubts about the five tenets
of the faith espoused by fundamentalists within the denomination, and
approved by its General Assembly, in a now-famous sermon titled: "Shall the
Fundamentalists Win?"

	The tenets were:
* The inerrancy of scripture
* The virgin birth of Jesus
* The substitutionary theory of the atonement
* The bodily or physical resurrection of Christ
* The performance of miracles by Christ.

	If Fosdick failed the exam, the presbytery was to sever the ties between
Fosdick and First Church.

	It was then that the drafters of the Auburn Affirmation met in Syracuse,
arguing that deliverances of the General Assembly are not binding because
they are not part of the constitution or the confession of faith.

	The presbytery exonerated Fosdick and voted to license two other pastors
who had refused to affirm the virgin birth; and the subsequent Assembly
refused to discipline the signers of the Affirmation or to impose the "five
fundamentals" on all church employees.  It also told the presbytery that
Fosdick could remain in his position at First Church.

	Within two years, the fundamentalists' postion was defeated, and within
five years, the Assembly agreed that the unity of the Presbyterian Church is
based not in uniformity, but in "the power of its faith to hold together
diverse views and beliefs."

	Bos doesn't mince words in drawing parallels between the fundamentalists of
Fosdick's day and today's conservative Presbyterians who believe that the
ordination of homosexuals runs so counter to the faith that the
denomination's constitution needed to be altered to say so. The principle
under dispute, he says, is forcing additional requirements on church leaders
beyond their ordination vows.

	"The attempt of reactionary forces to use faith in God as a means to
advance their agenda appears in every generation," Bos said in his sermon.
"The last attempted takeover before the one that we are at this moment
trying to turn back occurred in the 1920s.  Then, as now, all the
denominations, including our own, faced well-funded reactionary forces that
appeared within their ranks and attempted to change the basic character of
the denomination.

	"Then, as now, there was an attempt made to purge the church of those
individuals -- especially those in positions of leadership -- who did not
conform to a narrow and unfounded view of what it meant to be a follower of
Jesus Christ and a member of the Christian church."

	This is not the first time that the Auburn Affirmation has been trotted out
by PC(USA) liberals in response to the theological and political rifts that
are polarizing factions within the denomination.

	On the 75th anniversary of the Auburn Affirmation, Jan. 12, 1999, Auburn
Theological Seminary President Barbara Wheeler addressed the document's
implications for the current political and theological stand-off.

	Wheeler began: "The Presbyterian Church has adopted policies on ordination
that a substantial minority of all members and a majority of those
represented here -- churches of New York City Presbytery and staff,
graduates and friends of Union and Auburn seminaries -- think are wrong: not
only misguided, but unfaithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and therefore
theologically false and damaging to the mission of God in the contemporary
world."

	She said the dilemma facing holders of the minority view is whether to
openly defy the policies, which could lead to disciplinary charges and
removal from ministry, or, rather, to work to change the policies or quietly
subvert them.

	She concluded that history teaches that liberals need to "take the
offensive" as a political strategy and to come to the debate prepared. She
noted that Nichols' statement had been written a year before it was used. 
Wheeler said it is critical to "convince the moderates," since the faction
that wins the current debate will be the one that comes to include the
"middle" of the church.

	Wheeler said finally: "The gospel has real power. ... As I've suggested,
those of us who want change have to be well-prepared, energetic,
strategically clever and exemplary as our predecessors at the beginning of
this century, but finally it is the truth, even more than our best efforts,
that will set the Presbyterian Church free."

	Wheeler declined to comment on Bos' proposal.

	Pam Byers of the Covenant Network said the board hasn't discussed the
proposal.

	The co-moderator of More Light Presbyterians, Mitzi Henderson, told the PNS
that it is premature for the organization to comment on Bos' idea, "other
than to say that we are very much in sympathy with the substance of the
concern ... that the church has departed from its Reformed roots and the
broadness of its ministry."

	"Barbara (Wheeler) challenged us to do something," Bos said, "and, in a
way, I'm taking up that challenge." He said he wants to bring about a
reclamation of the historic principles of the denomination, as the Auburn
Affirmation did -- standing up for freedom of conscience and liberty of
expression, and, as Bos says: "not adding onto the unadorned Gospel of Jesus
Christ for the sake of getting control of the church."

	Like the writers of the Auburn document, Bos says, today's church
progressives must say, "This isn't Presbyterian."

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