 Covenant Network calls for 'the purity of unity' By John H. Adams The Layman Online Thursday, June 15, 2006
Susan Andrews, moderator of the 215th (2003) General Assembly, and Tim Hart-Anderson, a Minnesota pastor who is co-moderator of the Network, spoke at a $34-a-plate dinner in the Sheraton Hotel, which is across the street from the Birmingham Civic Center, where the 217th General Assembly begins today. The major event on today's agenda is the election of a new moderator. Deborah Block, a former co-moderator of the Network, is one of four candidates for the two-year post. If elected, she would become the seventh Covenant Network member to become moderator in the past 10 years. The Covenant Network has kept a lock on the office despite its size. It has about 300 congregations. On the other hand, there are more than 1,300 congregations in the Confessing Church Movement, an evangelical group whose candidates for moderator have lost by wide margins. Andrews, who recently announced that she is leaving her job as senior pastor of Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church in Maryland to become the executive of the Hudson River Presbytery, titled her address "The Purity of Unity." She expressed her disappointment that the final report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity did not call for repeal of G-6.0106b, the constitutional "fidelity/chastity" requirement. She and other Covenant Network members still refer to that requirement as Amendment B, as if it has never been included in the Book of Order. But she said the competition between Presbyterians who favor and oppose the ordination requirement has been severe and fracturing and that the task force's recommendations are, at least, a temporary step toward restoring purity in unity. The task force is proposing an authoritative interpretation that would allow sessions and presbyteries, the ordaining bodies in the Presbyterian Church (USA), to decide on their own whether to ordain practicing homosexuals and adulterers in violation of the constitution. Nonetheless, the task force also recommends against repealing G-6.0106b or nullifying the current authoritative interpretation. Andrews said the Covenant Network recognized that it had contributed to the bitterness of the debate over ordination. During her year as moderator, she said conservative Presbyterians expressed their belief "that those of us who are liberal don't like to talk about sin." There is some justification for that conclusion, she said, because "for many of us peace means silence." But she added, "Intense dialogue is not bad for the church, as long as our goal is not to destroy each other. … What about purity? All too often this means 'my way or the highway.'" She said ideological extremes in the PCUSA "push us toward injustice and schism." The task force, she said, has cut through the "narrow and simplistic" ideological extremes through its own model of dialogue and discernment. "Their report is not easy stuff to understand, but it is worth trying because it is brilliant. The task force calls us to embrace the purity of love. The spirit of Christ can impel us to hold on to each other even as we hold on to our convictions." She said members of the church are related not by purity but because the "baptismal touch on God's church never dies. The baptismal touch on our brothers and sisters will become a blessing." Andrews called for the church to be "as just and generous as the grace of God" and to no longer lock horns on sexual behavior that is condemned in "the Levitical code and Romans 1." Hart-Anderson acknowledged Janie Spahr, one of the people who attended the dinner and earlier this year was exonerated of charges of violating her ordination vows by marrying homosexual couples. She did not deny that charge, but she won her case, which is on appeal. She is employed by That All May Freely Serve, a organization of homosexual activists and their allies, that has condemned the task force report. More Light Presbyterians, a similar organization, also disagrees with the Covenant Network's strategy of not opposing the task force report. The Covenant Network has claimed to be the moderate voice opposed to the ordination requirement and is seeking to shore up support from its more demanding allies. Thus, Hart-Anderson assured members of other liberal groups that "we will not rest until Amendment B is out of the Book of Order." "As Susan pointed out, our reaction to the task force report was disappointment in terms of how far it did not go," Hart-Anderson said. "But we do recognize our complicity in terms of demonizing those with whom we disagreed. It is progress. We did not take a position on it. We generally wanted to step down from that kind of aye or nay." |
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