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Note #8006 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Split decision
03487
November 13, 2003

Split decision

Theologians agree that dividing the church is not the answer

by Alexa Smith

WASHINGTON, DC - In an evocative conversation before an audience of 600
people, two prominent theologians - one liberal, the other evangelical -
explained why they agree that the Presbyterian Church (USA) should not split
over the question of ordaining sexually active homosexuals.

	Richard Mouw, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, an
evangelical school in Pasadena, CA, and Barbara Wheeler, the president of
Auburn Theological Seminary, a liberal institution in New York City, let the
Covenant Network listen in on a conversation they've been having for years.

	The question: How do strangers live as friends, thereby building
better community?

	Do they understand why some Presbyterians - some gays and lesbians
and their supporters, and some who oppose the ordination of homosexuals -
want to leave the denomination? Yes.

	Do they think the church could simply fragment? Yes.

	Do they think there is more to be gained, ecclesiastically and
theologically, if Presbyterians stay in the denomination?

	Yes - because by doing so they demonstrate that people who disagree
on important issues can choose cohesion over division.

	"The most critical reason for us Presbyterian 'strangers' to struggle
through our disagreements is to show the world that there are alternatives to
killing each other over differences," Wheeler said.

	"As long as we continue to club the other Presbyterians into
submission, with constitutional amendments, judicial cases and economic
boycotts, we have no word for a world full of murderous divisions - most of
them cloaked in religion."

	 Wheeler is urging people to "skip the split" that has shattered
other Reformed communions and Presbyterian denominations of other eras, to
make that witness.

	"We Presbyterians, who share so much - a confession of faith, a rich
theological heritage, the advantage and burdens of wealth and social power -
we could covenant to stay together in our Reformed relations, to labor with
each other in love, for justice and truth," she said. "It would be very
arduous and painful - much more so than splitting or drifting apart. (But) It
would be worth it.

	"The world would take note of what the gospel makes possible for
those who ... keep on going, strangers locked in covenant, toward the better
country of diversity and harmony, liberty and love."

	Mouw agreed that the reason to hang together is theological witness.

	He said past splits have done more harm than good to the church
because they have reduced the influence of  Calvinist orthodoxy.

	In other words: What's to be gained by learning only from those with
whom you already agree?

	"The denomination from which the dissidents depart," Mouw said, "is
typically left without strong voices who are defending their understanding of
orthodoxy."

	He said evangelicals should realize that a split could lead to rancor
in their own ranks.

	"When we evangelical types don't have more liberal people to argue
with, we tend to start arguing with each other," he said, "and I can testify
to the fact that intra-evangelical theological arguments are not always
pleasant affairs.

	"I would much rather see us continue to focus on the major issues of
Reformed thought in an admittedly pluralistic denomination than to deal with
the tensions that often arise ... when we have established (our) own 'pure'
denominations."

	Mouw said he has learned much over the years from social-gospel
Protestants of the past such as Harry Emerson Fosdick and Walter
Rauschenbusch, and from more contemporary liberal Christians who have modeled
commitment to racial justice and to peacemaking.

	He argued that repentance creates a common ground where evangelicals
and liberals can stand together. Wheeler said each camp can learn from the
other.

	"(Liberals) make a strong case: God invites
gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered (GLBT) persons into full membership,
committed partnerships and church leadership on the same basis as everyone
else," Wheeler said. "But we tend to leave it at that, to give the impression
that inclusion is the end of the story.

	"Of course, it is not. God incorporates us into Christ's body for a
reason: transformation."

	Wheeler said liberals can look to evangelicals for insight into what
that transformation might look like.

	"We can stand our ground ... and still let the evangelicals help us
balance our word to the church: inclusion, acceptance, but also metanoia, new
life," she said. "Who knows? If evangelicals listen intently to the testimony
of faithful GLBT persons, and if our side accepts evangelicals' prompting to
admit our need and desire to be renewed, maybe can strive together for a
church as just and generous - and holy - as God's grace."

	Mouw said Presbyterians could benefit from coming together at the
foot of the cross.

	"We do not have to have either our theology or our ethics
well-worked-out before we can come together to Calvary," he said. "All we
need to know is that we are lost apart from the sovereign grace that was made
available to us through the atoning work of Jesus Christ."

	In that awareness, he said, "We can journey on as friends - no longer
strangers to each other - who are eager to talk to each other, and even to
argue passionately with each other, about crucial issues of Christology,
atonement and discipleship, as servants who are 'wholeheartedly willing and
ready from now on to live for him.'"

	He said he'd be surprised to see the denomination put aside the
issues that divide until "after we have knelt and laid our individual and
collective burdens of sin at the foot of the cross. ... But then, the God
whom we worship and serve is nothing if not a God of surprises."

	Wheeler expressed hope that God may, in fact, be leading the church
into an entirely new understanding - not of sex, but of hesed, a Hebrew term
for "loyal love."

	Describing homosexuality as an important issue before the church but
not a "faith-breaker," she said that many Presbyterians of differing
theological views have recognized that "God's blessing is available to all
who commit themselves to love God more fully by loving another person truly."

	"Richard, this isn't capitulation to a libertine culture," she told
Mouw. "This expanding understanding makes the church and us in it more, not
less, holy. This is, I am deeply convinced, the work of the Holy Spirit."

	Mouw and Wheeler later took questions from the floor, including one
from Robert Dykstra, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, who asked
Mouw what would change his mind about the rightness of ordaining sexually
active gays and lesbians to church office?

	"A biblical argument," said Mouw, adding that, while there are
ambiguities in scripture on the issues of gender, race and slavery, there is
no ambiguity in its condemnation of homosexual behavior.

	The toughest text, he said, is Romans 1. If someone could demonstrate
that the verses there about "unnatural intercourse" and "shameless acts" do
not apply to faithful, lifelong commitments between persons of the same
gender, he said, his mind "probably" would be changed.

	The theme of the Nov. 6-8 conference at New York Avenue Presbyterian
Church here was "The Church We Are Called to Be and to Become."

	The keynote preachers included Jana Childers a professor of
homiletics at San Francisco Theological Seminary; Chris Glaser, of Atlanta,
GA, a longtime activist for full inclusion of gays in the PC(USA); and the
Rev. Ken Kovacs, the pastor of Catonsville Presbyterian Church, in
Catonsville, MD.

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