PCUSA divided by two competing
theologies, Gathering VIII told
[size=-1]By Craig M. Kibler[/size]
[size=-1]The Layman Online
[/size][size=-1]Wednesday, October 8, 2003[/size]
PORTLAND, Ore. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is "divided by two competing ideologies or, more properly in our context, theologies," Doug Pratt said in a State of the Church address to more than 250 people attending Gathering VIII on Monday.
Offering "my personal assessment of the current condition of our denominational union," Pratt, co-moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition which sponsored the Gathering, said that, "from my time of service to the church, it is my conviction that, in order to deal with our current challenges, we must understand the 'landscape' or dynamics of this denomination accurately."
Some people, he said, have tried to portray the denomination as a "body composed of primarily 'centrists' good-hearted and clear-minded people who share a common commitment, the 'real' Presbyterians who are, unfortunately, having to put up with an evil-spirited or muddle-headed few on the radical fringes of the right and left. The picture comes to mind of a group of folks celebrating an outdoor picnic who are distracted by some annoying ants and mosquitoes trying to spoil their fun. If only those radicals would just be quiet and go away, our church could go on about its business in peace and prosperity and the moderates or centrists could maintain the proper course. That's the right way to envision the PCUSA, we have been told."
That picture is "false, a fantasy," said Pratt, the pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Allison Park, Pa. The denomination "is like the body politic of a nation that is structured around a two-party system. The two parties have profoundly different beliefs and values; they each have their own comprehensive agenda for the church; and people of conviction and a bias toward action are drawn toward leadership in one or the other party."
Pratt then said there is a third group of people in the church, those in the middle "the undecideds, the uncommitteds, the independents, the apathetic. This middle group will be swayed sometimes this way, sometimes that, depending on the breezes of politics and individual issues. But the middle does not, and cannot, lead or set the agenda for the entire body. Leadership comes from the opposing parties, for it is there that people with the greatest passion and vision are drawn. Like the U.S.A., with its two dominant parties and its people in the middle, so the PCUSA is divided by two competing ideologies or, more properly in our context, theologies. The fact that some individuals and congregations may insist on identifying themselves as moderates or independents does not change the overall landscape."
He said the greatest concern "is the reality that the two parties within our denomination hold as their foundational principles positions that are mutually exclusive. They cannot both exist at the same time, due to the fundamental principle of logic (that 'A' cannot also be non-A'). For example, sexual activity outside of marriage between a woman and a man cannot be both permitted and prohibited at the same time. It's a logical impossibility it must be one or the other. And those who have tried to offer 'local option' as a reasonable solution to this dilemma are, in fact, calling for the end of a unified national denomination.
Those who espouse local option as the way to cut through the Gordian knot of the denomination's ordination standards, Pratt said, "have the wrong story from ancient literature in mind. Local option would be the sword that King Solomon threatened to use in 1 Kings 3, which would have split the baby in two and killed it."
In response to the recent election of the first openly homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church, USA, and referring to the meeting of more than 2,600 mainstream Episcopalians Oct. 7-9 in Plano near Dallas, he said the "evangelical and orthodox leaders of the American Episcopal Church are meeting there. What a difficult situation they find themselves in legally bound to a denomination that has abandoned the Scriptures and the clear voice of the Church worldwide and through the ages. Our prayers and our support are offered to our sisters and brothers, trusting that the Lord will give abundantly to them of his infinite wisdom."
In a notice about the meeting, organizers said it had drawn registrations from all 50 states and 95 of the ECUSA's 110 dioceses. More than half the registrations are lay people. That announcement said more than 40 bishops, 729 priests, 43 deacons and 91 seminary students had registered. Some Episcopal dioceses already have expressed their dissent to the election of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as a bishop and the denomination's authorization for ministers to conduct services for same-gender couples by cutting off contributions to the denomination. Several bishops have indicated that they may sever their ties with the ECUSA and affiliate with other provinces of the world Anglican communion.
The meeting in Plano precedes by one week an emergency worldwide conference of Anglican bishops, who will consider whether some punitive action should be taken against the ECUSA. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called for the bishops to meet Oct. 15-16 at Lambeth Palace in London.
"Some of our own have, perhaps rather smugly, stated that the disaster that has overtaken the Episcopal Church couldn't happen to us," Pratt said. "Technically that is true, of course, because our church is not ruled by bishops. We are ruled by a constitution. But make no mistake about it: The removal of G-6.0106b would be the direct equivalent for us of a Bishop Robinson. It would plunge us into the same kind of turmoil and pain. I fear that if a General Assembly were to pass another 'Amendment A' clone, the damage would be irreparable to our fragile union long before the votes of the presbyteries were cast. And the Louisville offices have already received an overture to next year's G.A., calling for the removal of our ordination standards in wording nearly identical to that which we have repeatedly defeated. So, here we go again.
"This is not a battle of our own choosing," he said. "Contrary to what our opponents charge, we aren't 'hung up' on sex, nor are we Victorian prudes, nor do we take pleasure in ruining peoples healthy fun. We are simply captive to the Word of God. We will not let personal experience, political correctness, or the latest opinion poll take the place of God's own self-revelation as our rule of faith and practice.
"It is undeniable that those who oppose us have the cultural wind at their backs. Their sails are catching the breeze of a secular, postmodern society that is swiftly progressing toward moral decay. We, on the other hand, have to tack against that wind. We have to resist the prevailing philosophies that proclaim that all behavior between consenting adults is morally neutral, and that whatever 'feels natural' must be right and good. As hard as it seems at the moment, we labor on and we will never give up. We will spread our sails for nothing but the wind of the Spirit, the eternal and unchanging voice of God as recorded in Scripture."
Saying that the meeting in Portland comes at a time of "deep within our denomination over things that truly matter," Pratt said "we also meet in the context of a decades-long period of decline," referring to the denomination's rapid downward spiral, from a high of 4.2 million Presbyterians in 1965 to 2.49 million at the end of 2001. The PCUSA lost another 31,549 in 2001 the highest decline since 1994, when 43,930 people left the pews in the wake of the ReImagining God movement.
The membership loss in 2002 was 41,812 members the highest percentage loss (1.64 percent) in a single year since before reunion. For 2003, the General Assembly Council is projecting church membership to decline another 35,000 members.
All of these membership losses continue a trend that has seen more than 1.76 million members leave since 1965. Since 1966, the average membership loss has been more than 50,000 a year the equivalent of closing 250 churches with 200 members each annually.
Pratt also said he has been "profoundly disturbed in recent years by the repeated cases of defiance that have not been effectively disciplined. There are unscrupulous people in positions of leadership in this denomination who lack the courage or the integrity to enforce the constitution they took an oath to uphold and defend."
"But our problems are not just personnel issues. At the deepest level, they are structural flaws. Even if we could place exactly the people we wanted in all the key positions in each governing body, I believe that our denomination would still be largely ineffective and many of our churches would still continue to struggle and decline. We simply do not know, or have forgotten, how to be a denomination that sustains growing congregations. Our old 19th and 20th century systems and habits and institutions and tradition are no longer working," he said, adding:
"Perhaps the time has come at last when we will be open to truly new ways of being the Church of Jesus Christ. And perhaps, in discovering that new path, we will find that it leads us right back to our roots, to the New Testament Church."
theologies, Gathering VIII told
[size=-1]By Craig M. Kibler[/size]
[size=-1]The Layman Online
[/size][size=-1]Wednesday, October 8, 2003[/size]
PORTLAND, Ore. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is "divided by two competing ideologies or, more properly in our context, theologies," Doug Pratt said in a State of the Church address to more than 250 people attending Gathering VIII on Monday.
Offering "my personal assessment of the current condition of our denominational union," Pratt, co-moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition which sponsored the Gathering, said that, "from my time of service to the church, it is my conviction that, in order to deal with our current challenges, we must understand the 'landscape' or dynamics of this denomination accurately."
Some people, he said, have tried to portray the denomination as a "body composed of primarily 'centrists' good-hearted and clear-minded people who share a common commitment, the 'real' Presbyterians who are, unfortunately, having to put up with an evil-spirited or muddle-headed few on the radical fringes of the right and left. The picture comes to mind of a group of folks celebrating an outdoor picnic who are distracted by some annoying ants and mosquitoes trying to spoil their fun. If only those radicals would just be quiet and go away, our church could go on about its business in peace and prosperity and the moderates or centrists could maintain the proper course. That's the right way to envision the PCUSA, we have been told."
That picture is "false, a fantasy," said Pratt, the pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Allison Park, Pa. The denomination "is like the body politic of a nation that is structured around a two-party system. The two parties have profoundly different beliefs and values; they each have their own comprehensive agenda for the church; and people of conviction and a bias toward action are drawn toward leadership in one or the other party."
Pratt then said there is a third group of people in the church, those in the middle "the undecideds, the uncommitteds, the independents, the apathetic. This middle group will be swayed sometimes this way, sometimes that, depending on the breezes of politics and individual issues. But the middle does not, and cannot, lead or set the agenda for the entire body. Leadership comes from the opposing parties, for it is there that people with the greatest passion and vision are drawn. Like the U.S.A., with its two dominant parties and its people in the middle, so the PCUSA is divided by two competing ideologies or, more properly in our context, theologies. The fact that some individuals and congregations may insist on identifying themselves as moderates or independents does not change the overall landscape."
He said the greatest concern "is the reality that the two parties within our denomination hold as their foundational principles positions that are mutually exclusive. They cannot both exist at the same time, due to the fundamental principle of logic (that 'A' cannot also be non-A'). For example, sexual activity outside of marriage between a woman and a man cannot be both permitted and prohibited at the same time. It's a logical impossibility it must be one or the other. And those who have tried to offer 'local option' as a reasonable solution to this dilemma are, in fact, calling for the end of a unified national denomination.
Those who espouse local option as the way to cut through the Gordian knot of the denomination's ordination standards, Pratt said, "have the wrong story from ancient literature in mind. Local option would be the sword that King Solomon threatened to use in 1 Kings 3, which would have split the baby in two and killed it."
In response to the recent election of the first openly homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church, USA, and referring to the meeting of more than 2,600 mainstream Episcopalians Oct. 7-9 in Plano near Dallas, he said the "evangelical and orthodox leaders of the American Episcopal Church are meeting there. What a difficult situation they find themselves in legally bound to a denomination that has abandoned the Scriptures and the clear voice of the Church worldwide and through the ages. Our prayers and our support are offered to our sisters and brothers, trusting that the Lord will give abundantly to them of his infinite wisdom."
In a notice about the meeting, organizers said it had drawn registrations from all 50 states and 95 of the ECUSA's 110 dioceses. More than half the registrations are lay people. That announcement said more than 40 bishops, 729 priests, 43 deacons and 91 seminary students had registered. Some Episcopal dioceses already have expressed their dissent to the election of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as a bishop and the denomination's authorization for ministers to conduct services for same-gender couples by cutting off contributions to the denomination. Several bishops have indicated that they may sever their ties with the ECUSA and affiliate with other provinces of the world Anglican communion.
The meeting in Plano precedes by one week an emergency worldwide conference of Anglican bishops, who will consider whether some punitive action should be taken against the ECUSA. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called for the bishops to meet Oct. 15-16 at Lambeth Palace in London.
"Some of our own have, perhaps rather smugly, stated that the disaster that has overtaken the Episcopal Church couldn't happen to us," Pratt said. "Technically that is true, of course, because our church is not ruled by bishops. We are ruled by a constitution. But make no mistake about it: The removal of G-6.0106b would be the direct equivalent for us of a Bishop Robinson. It would plunge us into the same kind of turmoil and pain. I fear that if a General Assembly were to pass another 'Amendment A' clone, the damage would be irreparable to our fragile union long before the votes of the presbyteries were cast. And the Louisville offices have already received an overture to next year's G.A., calling for the removal of our ordination standards in wording nearly identical to that which we have repeatedly defeated. So, here we go again.
"This is not a battle of our own choosing," he said. "Contrary to what our opponents charge, we aren't 'hung up' on sex, nor are we Victorian prudes, nor do we take pleasure in ruining peoples healthy fun. We are simply captive to the Word of God. We will not let personal experience, political correctness, or the latest opinion poll take the place of God's own self-revelation as our rule of faith and practice.
"It is undeniable that those who oppose us have the cultural wind at their backs. Their sails are catching the breeze of a secular, postmodern society that is swiftly progressing toward moral decay. We, on the other hand, have to tack against that wind. We have to resist the prevailing philosophies that proclaim that all behavior between consenting adults is morally neutral, and that whatever 'feels natural' must be right and good. As hard as it seems at the moment, we labor on and we will never give up. We will spread our sails for nothing but the wind of the Spirit, the eternal and unchanging voice of God as recorded in Scripture."
Saying that the meeting in Portland comes at a time of "deep within our denomination over things that truly matter," Pratt said "we also meet in the context of a decades-long period of decline," referring to the denomination's rapid downward spiral, from a high of 4.2 million Presbyterians in 1965 to 2.49 million at the end of 2001. The PCUSA lost another 31,549 in 2001 the highest decline since 1994, when 43,930 people left the pews in the wake of the ReImagining God movement.
The membership loss in 2002 was 41,812 members the highest percentage loss (1.64 percent) in a single year since before reunion. For 2003, the General Assembly Council is projecting church membership to decline another 35,000 members.
All of these membership losses continue a trend that has seen more than 1.76 million members leave since 1965. Since 1966, the average membership loss has been more than 50,000 a year the equivalent of closing 250 churches with 200 members each annually.
Pratt also said he has been "profoundly disturbed in recent years by the repeated cases of defiance that have not been effectively disciplined. There are unscrupulous people in positions of leadership in this denomination who lack the courage or the integrity to enforce the constitution they took an oath to uphold and defend."
"But our problems are not just personnel issues. At the deepest level, they are structural flaws. Even if we could place exactly the people we wanted in all the key positions in each governing body, I believe that our denomination would still be largely ineffective and many of our churches would still continue to struggle and decline. We simply do not know, or have forgotten, how to be a denomination that sustains growing congregations. Our old 19th and 20th century systems and habits and institutions and tradition are no longer working," he said, adding:
"Perhaps the time has come at last when we will be open to truly new ways of being the Church of Jesus Christ. And perhaps, in discovering that new path, we will find that it leads us right back to our roots, to the New Testament Church."
