What's worth a schism?

It depends upon the context of your question. Are you asking about who we would accept as a member? As a pastor? Who we think are saved?

It sounds like your question is when we’d consider theology sufficiently divergent to want to break. That’s very different than asking who is think is a Christian.

The PCUSA thinks of itself as Reformed. We’d like to see pastors and churches as holding Reformed theology, very broadly defined.

We ejected the most conservative Reformed in the early 20th Cent. I think that was a mistake. I think many others agree with me. But the issue is moot, because no very conservative Reformed pastor or Session would want to be part of a church that does gay marriages.

On the liberal end, we certainly have members and pastors who like Borg and Crossan. Not all churches would want a pastor whose theology was basically like Crossan, but we wouldn’t eject them from the denomination. We certainly would not intentionally accept an atheist. I would like to see a pastor have a real faith in God. However I think I’d accept a member who was a “seeker,” who wanted to worship as a Christian, but wasn’t completely certain in their faith. If they thought God didn’t exist, or thought Jesus was just a good teacher but not Son of God, I’d be happy for them to attend, and we’d involve them in as many church activities as possible, but I wouldn’t encourage them to join. (Specifically, there was a recent national decision that it is not valid for an atheist to join.)

We currently have a full communion agreement with the ELCA and other churches. So we consider their theology and practice fully acceptable. If a student is preparing for ministry, and their theology is more Lutheran than Reformed, I’d still point them in the direction of the ELCA. I’m not sure we’d reject them, it would just be an odd choice.

The official theological statements we’ve made in the last 100 years have stuck very close to Scriptural language. That’s true even when dealing with the Trinity and Incarnation. I don’t think you’ll find Person and substance used in any recent statement. Many of our members and leaders accept the classical statements, but we will also accept people who express the Trinity and Incarnation in different ways.

We accept modern theology and Biblical scholarship. While all major liberal schools are Trinitarian, and all believe that God was truly present through Christ, we’re willing to accept a variety of ways of understanding that, as long as it deals with the full range of Scriptural evidence. Note that modern theology of the incarnation often does not use the classical language. Even as conservative a scholar as N T Wright doesn’t think the Chalcedon is a very good way to express the Scriptural evidence. But I believe someone who was a candidate for pastor would find it very hard to be accepted if he didn’t affirm the Trinity and the Incarnation in some form supported by mainstream theology. We accept that there is a variety of views on the historical accuracy of the Bible, particularly the OT.

We’re basically a child of the enlightenment. One of the biggest changes of the enlightenment was to make us more conscious of the limits of our traditional understanding, and to realize just how much some of it depended upon the 1st Cent Jewish culture (for the NT) and the philosophical worldview of late antiquity for the theology formulated by the Church Fathers. While we don’t want to abandon the core of the faith, that Christ was God’s son, who was sent to establish the Kingdom of God, and who died for us, we’re much less willing than Christians a few hundred years ago to mandate specific ways to understand that.

Super Hotdog Salesman said:

That's very broad indeed! Also its interesting that you mention the PCUSA ejecting the conservatives instead of the other way around; I hadn't realized that occurred. Such an event does seem sort of antithetical to the "whosoever will may come" attitude, since conservative churches certainty have the above listed core beliefs in common.

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Here’s a detailed history of the early 20th Cent conflict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist–Modernist_Controversy.

In general conservatives have separated themselves from the mainline Presbyterian church, on several different occasions during the 20th and 21st Cent. However there have been things done by the church that precipitated some of it.

The most aggressive conservative in the early 20th Cent controversy was Machen. When his party lost control of Princeton Seminary and missions, he formed a conservative missions board. Machen was suspended from the ministry over this. He ended up forming what is now the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

It’s a difficult question. How do you tolerate serious dissent within a connectional body. He was censured because constitutionally there was a single missions board. A connectional church can’t have everyone forming their own national governing structures. If everything I’ve read is right, neither side at the time was inclined to work out a way for people to coexist. Maybe there wasn’t any. Machen’s writings on liberals are so vitriolic that I can see why people wouldn't have tried to work out a way for him to continue to function within the Church. I don’t think there’s any chance that he would have stayed anyway. But I would have made him decide to leave, and not suspended him.

In the current controversy there are national conservative groups. They have their own meetings and their own officers. No one has raised this as an issue. But today many of us want to find a way for us to coexist.

A second example occurred in 1974, when ordination of women was an issue. A seminary graduate, Walter Kenyon, was opposed to ordination of women. When he was being considered for ordination, he was asked what would happen if his church elected a female elder. Would he participate in their ordination? He said that he would not. He wouldn’t stand in the way of the ordination, but he wouldn’t participate. The Church found that this was unacceptable. It was a refusal to carry out the functions of his office, which includes ordination of officers in whatever church he was serving. The decision was made by a national judicial body, so it applied to the whole Church.

Today’s conflict is over gays. There is a great potential for a replay of the Kenyon case. A conservative candidate could be asked whether they would participate in the ordination of a gay elder if one was elected. The reasoning used in the Kenyon case is still valid. As far as I can tell, the only thing that has prevented this is that no Presbytery has asked the question. I believe most of us don’t want them to. Gay marriage isn't such an issue. Generally pastors can decide who to marry. There are specific policies that don't require pastors to marry gays if they don't want to, nor for there to be gay marriages in churches that don't want them.

But the specific question asked of Kenyon is still a valid one. I suspect the reason no one asks it is that in practice it's probably not an issue. Conservative pastors are normally called by conservative churches. They wouldn't elect an elder that their pastor couldn't ordain. However at some point in the future a case could come up. Because younger members are more accepting, it's easy to imagine a conservative church changing over time, and presenting a Kenyon-type situation.

We really don’t want to eject conservatives. There are plenty of conservative pastors, members, and churches in the PCUSA, and we'd like them to continue. But there are practical questions to coexistence in a connectional church.

Hedrick already gave a great answer.

I'm in the Episcopal Church. Due to differences in the last several years, we've lost various conservative members.

Most notably in recent times, when the church ordained an openly gay man as a bishop (Gene Robinson back in 2003), & in various ways moved forward toward full inclusion for LGBT members, including blessing same-sex relationships. (Last year, TEC officially gave the green-light to offering the sacrament of marriage to gay couples).

Overall, TEC is composed of moderate members & churches, & conservatives are certainly welcome - we have conservative members - but many were not able to tolerate any avenue toward affirming gay persons or their relationships. Many left & formed their own churches, & the whole situation was disappointing for all involved.

As far as clergy, I think there is the same acceptance & diversity. There are conservative priests & whole dioceses, though I think moderate to slightly liberal is more common.

TEC does share a communion agreement with ELCA & the Moravian church. It's my understanding there could be possible movement to such an agreement with the UMC. In the ordinary community, Episcopal churches are involved with various inter-denominational & also inter-religious work.

Schism is worse than heresy (see 1 Clement). However, where someone drifts into heresy, one can argue they are schismatic. So for example, if a mainline denomination were to decide belief in the trinity were optional, and some parishes left in protest, one could argue persuasively those parishes were not schismatic.

Someone said: "It’s a difficult question. How do you tolerate serious dissent within a connectional body"?

The answer is the Apostles' method of unity as described in Acts 15 and discussed in the Righteous Government page at http://BILIB.webs.com .

LloydK said:

Someone said: "It’s a difficult question. How do you tolerate serious dissent within a connectional body"?

The answer is the Apostles' method of unity as described in Acts 15 and discussed in the Righteous Government page at http://BILIB.webs.com .

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The biggest difficulties in the PCUSA have always been over ordination. We can tolerate differences in opinion of various kinds. But you either do or don’t allow ordination of women and gays. Of course you can allow it as optional. That would be fine with me. But on those issues conservatives not only won’t do it, but they don’t want to be part of a body where anyone does it. We haven’t come up with a way to avoid schism when one party is unwilling to be in the church with people who don’t agree, and other side considers it unjust to exclude groups from ordination.

Nothing short of outright denying what is in the Nicene creed.

A 'schism' is a concept formed from fearful vested authority. Each group that formed is a at peace with it's decision. It's only the group broken away from that feels the loss. Authority performs a role only so far as it doesn't become the prison guard for individual conscience. I'm pretty certain God is not fearful of schism. Where can the people run to? Wherever they go, God is. God has won the battle. It's his chess board and his pieces. The bodies we inhabit are his creation. He has nothing to fear and neither do we.

The liberal mainline churches have a wider variety of opinions, in certain respects. Most mainline churches are very ethnically and class segregated, so you get the particular concerns of that segment of society as the norm. For instance, gender inclusive/neutral language, even when referring to God, is not rare in the ELCA and UCC. There's lots of white, middle and upper class college-educated folks in that denomination. On the other hand, I was attending a liberal catholic parish for about a year and there was traditional language used exclusively, but the church was very gay welcoming. That's because the church was primarily gay-oriented, and the people there were from a variety of races and socio-economic backgrounds. It was liberal, just not mainline liberal Protestant.