Presbyterian Church Leaders Declare Gay Marriage Is Christian

tulipbee

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Ahhhh, that one's in the Bible too, Hebrews 10:24-25. But I think you're right, neither the Bible nor the Westminster Confession has much to say about jumping from one denomination to another.

Even though I strongly disagree with Roman Catholic defense against going outside the church, I somewhat aggree the bible wants us all worship under the same roof.

If the bible talks about some sort of government like offices, then we should let the votes of the elects to happen and try to work with it. Like Americans, we can't jump around between old and new parties. We'll be protesting too much and lose the meaning of worship.

Perhaps the protest-ants are still protesting.
 
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tulipbee

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dysert

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Even though I strongly disagree with Roman Catholic defense against going outside the church, I somewhat aggree the bible wants us all worship under the same roof.

If the bible talks about some sort of government like offices, then we should let the votes of the elects to happen and try to work with it. Like Americans, we can't jump around between old and new parties. We'll be protesting too much and lose the meaning of worship.

Perhaps the protest-ants are still protesting.
I disagree with part of what you're saying. While it would be nice to all worship under the same roof, that's unlikely to happen. We *can* jump around between parties. In fact, we *should* jump around if the party we used to belong to veers too far from its moorings. What if "the votes of the elects" turn out to say that belief in God as Trinity is optional? Or that Jesus was both God and Man is up for debate?

There are fundamentals to the faith, and I don't care whether one is a Presbyterian, Catholic, Baptist, whatever. You have a set of non-negotiables, and if "the votes of the elects" violate those non-negotiables you vote with your feet.
 
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JM

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The winning votes get in the book of order so reject Jesus thing isn't there. Should I believe you or should we wait and see? Reject jesus thing is 20+ years old and still didn't make it in the book of orders. Am I right?

I'm not sure I understand your point. The book of orders (is that what it's called in Presbyterianism?) doesn't determine what is preached if the confessional subscription is loose or systematic rather than strict or good faith. PCUSA has held to a loose confessional subscription for many years which is why the splintering has occurred....

Different Kinds of Confessional Subscription | Green Baggins

IMO loose confessionalism is a product of fundamentalism, the hand maiden to liberalism, with it's insistence of "no creed but the Bible!" This allowed for loose profession and disagreement of some of the more key doctrines within conservative circles the church settled 1000 years ago.
 
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tulipbee

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I'm not sure I understand your point. The book of orders (is that what it's called in Presbyterianism?) doesn't determine what is preached if the confessional subscription is loose or systematic rather than strict or good faith. PCUSA has held to a loose confessional subscription for many years which is why the splintering has occurred....

Different Kinds of Confessional Subscription | Green Baggins

IMO loose confessionalism is a product of fundamentalism, the hand maiden to liberalism, with it's I insistence of "no creed but the Bible!" This allowed for loose profession and disagreement of some of the more key doctrines the church settled 1000 years ago.

I think the book of order is more like agreements within the church. Make the terms more broader in case too many disagrees is an excellent idea. The culture changes and it might be better to say those that are happily called can be ordained or couples that want to marry is between two people. The vagueness gets pcusa out of trouble while the strictness to the confessions will get conservatives in more trouble later down the road in our rapidly changing culture. The changes are so fast that the conservatives may not be prepared for it and collapse rapidly at high speed. I believe the presbys are more focused on translating the bible to our modern culture. I believe the bible is 2000 years old and we're allowed to read it like it's written 2000 years ago. I believe pcusa will be stronger later.
 
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tulipbee

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I disagree with part of what you're saying. While it would be nice to all worship under the same roof, that's unlikely to happen. We *can* jump around between parties. In fact, we *should* jump around if the party we used to belong to veers too far from its moorings. What if "the votes of the elects" turn out to say that belief in God as Trinity is optional? Or that Jesus was both God and Man is up for debate?

There are fundamentals to the faith, and I don't care whether one is a Presbyterian, Catholic, Baptist, whatever. You have a set of non-negotiables, and if "the votes of the elects" violate those non-negotiables you vote with your feet.

To me, it's like politics. While our government say it's good to protest and express opinions, too much of that will cause our country to behave like the middle east. Too many opinions on non-negotiables. It's like women must look like women or must wear hats in church or be nonordainable or never burn fire on Saturday meaning don't drive or use heaters.
 
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JM

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I think the book of order is more like agreements within the church. Make the terms more broader in case too many disagrees is an excellent idea. The culture changes and it might be better to say those that are happily called can be ordained or couples that want to marry is between two people. The vagueness gets pcusa out of trouble while the strictness to the confessions will get conservatives in more trouble later down the road in our rapidly changing culture. The changes are so fast that the conservatives may not be prepared for it and collapse rapidly at high speed. I believe the presbys are more focused on translating the bible to our modern culture. I believe the bible is 2000 years old and we're allowed to read it like it's written 2000 years ago. I believe pcusa will be stronger later.

Not translating but reinterpreting the Bible as if it doesn't have a historic context and meaning.
 
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hedrick

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The book of order is primarily procedural. There's a rather nice introductory section, which has good things about the faith, but issues such as whether you have to believe in Christ to be saved are not in the Book of Order. That's not its purpose.

The Constitution has 3 parts. The Book of Order is only one. Another of the parts is the Book of Confessions. There's where doctrine is. JM is correct that the PCUSA takes a different approach to the Confessions than the more conservative Presbyterian churches.

In the PCA, as in the PCUSA around 1900, the Westminster Confession was an actual doctrinal standard. You could not be ordained (and possibly not be a member, though I'm not sure of that) unless you accepted Westminster. Minor disagreements were allowed, but mostly it was an actual standard.

That changed, in a process that lasted from 1903 to around 1967. I use 1903 because a set of "interpretations" were added to the Westminster Confession that essentially disclaimed limited atonement, and possibly others of the 5 points. In the early 20th Cent there was a battle over whether certain traditional beliefs (many of which could be found in Westminster) were essential. The conclusion was the they were not. Some of the ideas involved were (from Wikipedia)

The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of Scripture as a result of this.
The virgin birth of Christ.
The belief that Christ's death was an atonement for sin. [This is Wikipedia's wording. I believe it was actually penal substitution. That Christ atoned for sin is uncontroversial. The issue was over penal substitution as the primary understanding of the atonement.]
The bodily resurrection of Christ.
The historical reality of Christ's miracles.

In a series of battles lasting several decades, it developed that the Church was unwilling to enforce all of those beliefs. Not that everyone abandoned them, but that the Church tolerated dissent on them (at least some of them).

This was codified around 1967 with a new confession (the Confession of 1967), and the creation of the "Book of Confessions." The single confession (Westminster) was replaced by a set, many traditional Reformed, but also the Confession of Barmen and the Confession of 1967. At that point the standard for officers was clarified: they were committed to be "guided by" the confessions, but not to believe every point in them.

Today the Constitution includes the Book of Confessions. Officers vow to be guided by them. In my experience, although new officers are trained, they are not specifically asked to review the confessions and explain anywhere they disagree, as the PCA does with Westminster.

This does indeed, as JM indicates, reflect a very different idea of what it means to be confessional. For the PCUSA confessions are documents produced by the Church to express its current beliefs. It is useful to explain and defend the faith to outsiders, and to train members and officers.

This is quite different from the PCA, and I believe also the PCUSA before 1900, where confessional meant having a confession as a doctrinal standard.

It's a matter of judgement which purpose the authors of the classic Reformed confessions had in mind.

---------------

On the matter of salvation. The PCUSA has for many years (certainly since I was in high school in the 1960s) had many people who believe that non-Christians may be saved. This seems to be the view of recent Popes, and as has been documented above, is also common among evangelicals.

An issue not brought out here, but appearing in the same survey, is that many of our members agreed with a statement that all religions are equally a path to God. While I acknowledge that God may save non-Christians, I most certainly do not consider all religions equal. I have very serious problems with the non-Christians religions I know (though I'd prefer not to lump Judaism in this judgement). Some of them can act as rather dim pointers to God, but I very much fear that some of them (I'm going to be diplomatic by not giving specifics here) leave people worse than if they were agnostics.

One thing we know from surveys is that minor changes in wording can lead to very different results. I'm in a fairly liberal PCUSA Church. I very much doubt that very many of our members truly believe that all religions are equally good ways to God. So I'm not quite sure what was behind the answers to that question, but the issue concerns me.
 
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tulipbee

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The Reformed baptist recorded the Westminster confessions and call ed it the London baptist something. I read side by side differences and could tell similarities. I believe the Westminster had been modified agian not long ago probably by the presbyterians.

My concern is how closely a presbyterian folllows the Westminster confessions. I believe the confessions were also written during a different culture other than today. I can understand why some might not want to be that glued to that confession. My concern is how strong that glue is that makes a denomination.
 
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tulipbee

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Not translating but reinterpreting the Bible as if it doesn't have a historic context and meaning.

Way too many different reinterpretations among us. It keeps getting extremes. I thought I knew religion til new faith churches sprouted including those that sound Calvinistic and argues against Calvinism at the same time.

If christains are that picky about the presbies on Isreal, then I may need to question the conservatives. Not sure if the bible requires us to support that country at all.
 
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JM

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The Reformed baptist recorded the Westminster confessions and call ed it the London baptist something. I read side by side differences and could tell similarities. I believe the Westminster had been modified agian not long ago probably by the presbyterians.

The 1689 follows the form of the Westminster but using the wording of the Savoy more often and with more consistency than it does the WCF.

My concern is how closely a presbyterian folllows the Westminster confessions. I believe the confessions were also written during a different culture other than today. I can understand why some might not want to be that glued to that confession. My concern is how strong that glue is that makes a denomination.

Our faith is not based on culture but revelation brother.
 
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hedrick

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I think it could just as easily be, "The collapse of organized church in general".

It's not so much that the PCUSA is liberal as that it's not very evangelical. We've got churches in places where they're going to need to be closed down, but we aren't starting new ones where we should be. As indicated in the article, we haven't done very well attracting new populations. Too many of our pastors think they're living in the 1950's, where people expected to go to church, so you pretty much just had to set up churches and they'd come. They also tend to be unwilling to experiment with new worship styles.

It's worth looking at this: https://sociology.sas.upenn.edu/sit....edu/files/Birth_Dearth_Christian_Century.pdf. Most of the decline in mainline denominations can be explained by decline of the economic class it tended to come out of. That's part of the picture I'm painting: most of our churches haven't gone out of the comfortable group of people they're used to.

My feeling is that if we don't wake up, some congregations like mine will survive, but by and large mainline theology will move to the more liberal half of evangelicals. I don't think our theology will die. Indeed I suspect if you count the evangelicals that hold pretty much the same theology, it's probably growing. Barna's surveys as well as other work makes that pretty clear.
 
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hedrick

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What libral churches collapsed if any?

None. But most mainline churches are shrinking by a few percent a year. While the denominations haven't gone out of existence, a number of their churches have closed, and many others are in danger of closing.

Unfortunately the same pattern is starting to be true of at least some conservative churches. Southern Baptist membership declines for 7th year. Their decrease is slower than most of the mainline churches though.

The PCUSA situation is complicated by an exodus of churches offended by acceptance of gays. My original estimate was that we would lose 20% of our membership from that. That may have been an overestimate, but it's going to be at least 10%. This won't shut down the denomination, but it's definitely challenging to run a shrinking denomination.

We'll probably get some back in 10 to 20 years. The ECO looks like a temporary denomination. It uses the same book of confessions as the PCUSA, and seems to be pretty much identical except that it doesn't accept ordination of gays. When their younger generation grows up, that should change.

The national leadership of the PCUSA is trying to do something. They've finally started a process to encourage new worshipping communities (not necessarily conventional churches). Some presbyteries, e.g. Washington, DC, have had active efforts to address growth for some time. But these are still exceptions, and frankly I doubt that we're going to completely stop the decline.

People have a tendency to expect trends to continue forever. They don't. When the mainline churches were growing, no one expected that to reverse the way it did. When conservative churches started growing, they expected it to continue forever. It would be completely unsafe to assume that we'll continue to shrink by 2% per year for the next 100 years. The mainline churches could merge. The trend could change. Other completely unexpected things could happen. So I'm not going to try and predict more than for a decade or two.
 
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