Rogers ends tenure reasserting his claim as 'confessing moderator' By John H. Adams The Layman Online Sunday, May 16, 2002 214th General Assembly Columbus, Ohio June 15-22, 2002 COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Moderator Jack B. Rogers, who entered office in June 2001 after attacking the then-fledging Confessing Church Movement within the Presbyterian Church (USA), began winding down his term by reasserting his claim to be the "confessing moderator." Speaking to the commissioners attending the opening plenary, he had them stand and read from the Brief Statement of Faith, the latest addition to the denomination's Book of Confessions. Rogers used that strategy last year in the 213th General Assembly -- often, after business was concluded -- calling upon commissioners to read together from the denomination's 11 confessions. Yet, he claimed then that the Confessing Church Movement's three tenets were political statements from the right wing of the denomination. The tenets are that Jesus Christ alone is Lord, that Scripture is the infallible rule of faith and that God's standards of holiness still apply. In his last report to the General Assembly on June 15, Rogers made no mention of the firefights he set off between liberals and evangelicals -- or to the financial problems that his bitter denunciations might have caused for the denomination. Instead, without any final swats at the Confessing Church Movement, which has tripled in congregations since he took office, he said, "When I became moderator last June, I said I wanted to be remembered as the confessing moderator. Now I want to ask you to join me one more time in using words taken from our Brief Statement of Faith." Besides that reading, Rogers talked mostly about his recent trip to visit PCUSA partner churches in Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Egypt. He said he worked 47 years ago helping to build a conference center for Egyptian Christians (the PCUSA-supported Egyptian Evangelical Church) and that, during his trip, he was able to reunite with some of his Egyptian co-workers. In a recent series published in The Layman, Christians in the Upper Nile region -- where persecution is intense -- mentioned the conference center, which they could not afford to attend. "They serve 12,000 people every year at that conference center," Rogers said. The center is located in a resort area of Alexandria. Rogers also said the trip to the Netherlands returned him to friendly soil -- he did his doctorate there. He said he preached during that leg of the trip in both Dutch and English.

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