Parker T. Williamson
editor-in-chief
The 215th General Assembly was “intense and productive,”
said the Covenant Network, an organization that includes former
moderators, past and present bureaucrats and other denominational
functionaries that is working to undermine our constitutional standards.
It was a “Not Now Assembly,” said
Presbyterian Outlook.
The outcomes of the assembly “aren’t half bad,” declared
a spokesman for Presbyterians For Renewal.
The commissioners’ decisions warrant no dulcet descriptions.
What did the 215th General Assembly actually do?
With rare exception, the decisions of this assembly – like those of
the two that preceded it – furthered the agenda of denominational
leaders who deny the church’s faith and defy the people’s
will.
For the record: The assembly decided not to call for a
referendum seeking the removal of our sexual behavior standards.
That was a political decision by the left, whose tacticians knew they
didn’t have the votes in the presbyteries. The commissioners’
vote had nothing to do with a conviction that these standards should
remain in the constitution, and it certainly did not represent a victory
for the unquestionably outnumbered traditionalists.
The left controlled a solid 60/40 majority throughout the week-long
assembly. If it had wanted to submit our ordination standards to a
referendum by the presbyteries, it had the votes to do so.
But while the assembly did not attempt to remove our standards, it took
a giant step toward undermining them.
On the advice of the stated clerk (who says it is not his job to enforce
the constitution), the assembly removed a critical provision in its
Standing Rules (rule G.2.g), that allows the assembly itself to enforce
the constitution when the rulings of its highest court are ignored.
Denominational leaders and their Covenant Network allies entertain the
assumption that the defeat of our ordination standards is inevitable.
“It’s like water dripping on a rock,” a Covenant Network
member told the Associated Press. “It’s just a matter of time.”
That assumption surfaces in rhetoric that one often hears from
Louisville.
Despite the fact that the standard was reaffirmed by an almost 3-1 vote
in the last referendum, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick has repeatedly
declared, “Presbyterians are divided on this issue.”
Louisville rarely says, “PCUSA policy does not allow the ordination
of practicing homosexuals.” Instead, it reports that the PCUSA
doesn’t do so –
yet.
If those who manage the denominational infrastructure anticipate the
inevitable demise of our standards, and if, in fact, they desire this to
be the case, then what policy would they pursue in the interim? They
would do everything possible to impede enforcement.
This is where Kirkpatrick’s disclaimer that it is not his job to
enforce the constitution enters the picture. This explains the refusal
by lower-court gatekeepers even to allow courts to hear cases of
defiance. It explains the obfuscation that passes for official
interpretations of the constitution; e.g., “there is more than one
definition of ‘chastity.’” It explains why this General
Assembly – at the bidding of the stated clerk’s advisers –
determined that the General Assembly has no authority to “intervene”
in matters of constitutional compliance.
The strategy is clear: Undermine the standard until you can garner
enough votes to kill it. By refusing to deal with defiance,
commissioners to the 215th General Assembly rendered our highest
governing body impotent and played right into the hands of that
strategy.
For the record: The assembly reaffirmed its policy that
sanctions killing babies at the time of their birth. Desperate to claim
some semblance of victory that resulted from their hard work at this
assembly, a handful of renewalists have called this year’s decision
an “improvement” over the past because it now uses the words “mother”
and “child” rather than “woman” and “fetus.”
But these are word games, bones thrown to the pro-lifers by the
victorious abortion lobby.
One could even argue that the newly enacted policy is worse than before,
because the General Assembly now admits bald-face that the victim whose
skull is being crushed with its blessing is a “child.”
The act that this assembly deemed to bless has now been declared a crime
by the United States Congress. We thank God for Presbyterians on Capitol
Hill whose moral compass proved truer than that of their fellow
churchmen in Denver.
For the record: The assembly exempted its Theological Task Force
from the open meetings policy at the recommendation of the task force’s
co-moderator and with the approval of some of its members.
Created by a General Assembly whose commissioners would not forthrightly
declare Jesus Christ the Son of God and humanity’s only savior,
this task force has generated much skepticism from the start. All the
hype that has been heaped upon it by the Covenant Network, the
Louisville bureaucracy and a handful of moderates has done little to
inspire confidence in its work. But whatever sliver of trust it might
have possessed will vanish if it closes its doors.
For the record: The assembly reaffirmed its decision to hold
less frequent meetings, and made it more difficult for called meetings
to occur. This means less accountability to representatives of the
people and more power vested in a relatively small council that is
heavily “resourced” by denominational staff.
For the record: The assembly voted to continue massive funding
for the World Council of Churches despite the fact that the PCUSA has
been forced by declining income to make drastic cuts in its own mission
funding.
The 2.45 million member PCUSA gives more money to the World Council of
Churches than any other U.S. denomination – five times more than
the 8.5-million member United Methodist Church.
For the record: The assembly referred “Families in
Transition” back to its authors rather than killing it or, in the
alternative, referring it to an independent commission of competent
theologians and social scientists.
“Families in Transition” promotes an aberrant definition of
marriage and family that comes nowhere close to the teachings of
Scripture.
For the record: The assembly has asked its Congregational
Ministries Division to publish “pastoral resources” for
Presbyterian ministries to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered
people.
Congregational Ministries is the division that refused to bring its
controversial sex education curriculum into conformity with Scripture,
even after it was ordered to do so by a previous General Assembly.
For the record: The assembly rejected a proposal to require
greater accountability from the stated clerk when he files
amicus
curiae briefs on behalf of the denomination.
Recently, the clerk went to court on behalf of a cult that was using
dangerous drugs to inspire ritual vomiting and hallucinations. Arguing “freedom
of religion,” his lawsuit demands that federal drug enforcement
agents return confiscated drugs to the cult.
Some observers have welcomed the fact that the assembly expressed itself
in soft and dulcet tones.
But Christians are called to discern between spin and substance.
Language has its limitations: The little one whose skull has been
crushed is no less dead because this assembly decided to call it a “child.”
Those who would spin what this assembly has done would do well to hear
God’s holy Word:
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness
for light and light for darkness … Therefore, as the tongue of fire
devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their
root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust; for they
have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts, and have despised the word
of the Holy One of Israel.” Isaiah 5: 20 ff.
Parker T. Williamson is editor-in-chief of The Layman.