wfn.org | Opinionated and embattled, Jack Rogers won't be pigeonholed

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

Note #6955 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

29-November-2001
01437

You Don't Know Jack!

Opinionated and embattled, Jack Rogers won't be pigeonholed

by Jerry L. Van Marter

(Editor's note: This profile of Jack Rogers was originally written for
CHIMES, the alumni magazine of San Francisco Theological Seminary. The
author is an alumnus.)

As comedian Jerry Seinfeld might ask: What's the deal with Jack Rogers?

Here's an academic who moved from conservative bastion Fuller Seminary to
liberal stronghold SFTS.

In between, he served on the "liberal" national staff of the Presbyterian
Church (USA), where he and SFTS trustee Gary Demarest were hailed by
conservatives as two of very few "true evangelicals" serving in Louisville.

Rogers' two best-known books are Confessions of a Conservative Evangelical
and Claiming the Center.

After he was elected moderator of this year's General Assembly, Rogers said
he wanted to be known as "the confessing moderator" and wanted the Assembly
to be remembered as "the confessing Assembly" - then immediately crossed
swords with an organization known as the Confessing Church Movement.

This inability to pin Rogers down has Presbyterians of all stripes
cautioning each other - in the words of offbeat game show host Paul Reubens
- "You don't know Jack!"

Despite vilification by the right wing of the church - which considers him a
traitor for supporting gay ordination - Rogers insists he is a bona fide
evangelical. "Evangelical today is being defined ideologically rather than
theologically," he says, "and historically that has always been a mistake."

Evangelicals can be identified by three defining characteristics, he says: a
personal relationship with Jesus Christ as lord and savior; belief in the
Bible as the ultimate authority for life and salvation; and ardor to share
that life and faith with others. "By any reasonable definition, then, I have
been and continue to be an evangelical," he says.

Some evangelicals disagree. No moderator in recent memory has come under
such criticism. It got so bad that 29 former moderators recently sent an
unprecedented open letter to the church, asking that Rogers be treated with
more respect.

Rogers tries not to take the criticism
personally. "My experience as moderator has made me aware that our church is
deeply divided," he says, "and not just by issues."

Much of the problem, he says, is the way Presbyterians approach Biblical
faith: "A simple faith is necessary - trust in God, belief in Jesus Christ
as savior. However, there is a large group who are not touched at all by the
understanding that the Bible is a human book with a divine message. They
treat it like a computer print-out with specific answers to all their
questions."

Seminaries contribute to the problem, he adds.

"I have been surprised by the extent to which the scholarly side of
theological education has not penetrated our congregations," he says.
"Seminaries have a greater need to show the relevance of contemporary
scholarship to daily life. Pastors need to be able to help un-theologically
trained church members study the Bible on their own, so they'll be led to a
deeper understanding of Scripture."

During his professorial career, Rogers, 67, has certainly exemplified that
approach to theological education. A native of Nebraska, he earned degrees
from the University of Nebraska and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, then in
1959 accepted a fellowship to study in the Netherlands, where he served as
an organizing pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church while earning his
doctorate in theology from the Free University of Amsterdam.

After returning to the United States in 1963, he taught at Westminster (Pa.)
College for eight years, then moved to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.,
where he taught and directed the non-denominational school's Presbyterian
students' program. After his brief stint in Louisville, he established and
directed SFTS' innovative Southern California Theological Program.

"After my election (as moderator), I felt as if God had been preparing me to
serve such a disparate, diverse constituency," he says. "Being at both
Fuller and SFTS showed me the commonality of the theological enterprise.
Most, but not all, of the faculty at both institutions could be effective at
either."

Rogers says his seemingly contradictory experiences have also helped him
better understand the full "spectrum" of faith and personality in the
PC(USA). "I find devout folk in all the camps of the church," he says. "The
labels help me understand where people came from, rather than where they are
now."

Seeing faith from several perspectives has been personally rewarding, he
says:

"All of my choices have been to enable me to grow. A lot of being moderator
has been painful, but it has been a privilege, and has spawned great growth.
And much of this is possible because SFTS gave me the opportunity to found
the General Assembly class - Presbyterian Principles and Practices - which
has enabled me to better understand the relationship between the seminary
and the church."

Rogers says being moderator has given him a unique vantage point. He says he
believes the church is "at a critical point," and cites the Confessing
Church Movement - an allegedly grass-roots movement of congregations
dissatisfied with the theological pronouncements of the denomination - as a
prime example.

"We have to be self-critical, to ask if we have communicated adequately," he
says. "But we have others, like The Presbyterian Layman, who are spreading
disinformation on a large scale."

Rogers worries about "strings" attached to signing on to the movement, which
is financially supported and heavily promoted by The Layman, an evangelical
journal that is often critical of PC(USA) policies and leadership.

"We've always believed the three propositions of the Confessing Church
Movement (Jesus is the way to salvation; the Bible is our authority;
Biblical morality demands sexual purity)," he says, "but we've always
believed them in greater depth than is exhibited by the Confessing Church
Movement.
There will come a moment when The Layman will lead a destructive action that
will be harmful to the denomination and to the congregations. They can't
ultimately have it both ways."

Rogers is also concerned that the debates raging in the church are
counter-productive in even more serious ways. "There are much greater issues
at stake than our internal squabbles," he says. "I hate to see us
squandering our resources on non-productive disputes, while the mission of
Jesus Christ is left wanting."

Here again, Rogers insists, the seminaries have a role to play. "The
solutions to our debates lie in education, not legislation," he says, "so
the seminaries have a critical role in the healing of the church."

"I have visited too many churches (as moderator) where pastors give their
opinions and judgments without educating their members on how they arrived
at those conclusions. We should and must be teaching folk how to study and
think critically, so they can arrive at their own judgments.

"It seems to me that we who have been blessed with a seminary education have
two responsibilities: to give thanks for that gift we have received, and
then to use that gift to empower others all across this church - to make
available to the broadest range of Presbyterians how we've thought through
these issues and problems."

That's the deal with Jack Rogers.
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