 Texas pastor challenges Kirkpatrick By John H. Adams The Presbyterian Layman Volume 33, Number 3 Posted May 22, 2000
Dr. Winfield Casey Jones, pastor of the 382-member First Presbyterian Church in Pearland, Texas, says he decided to enter the race to focus attention on the theological and constitutional duties of the stated clerk. Jones said the incumbent clerk, Clifton Kirkpatrick, has become a part of a trend that makes polity more important than theology and that, as a consequence, the Book of Confessions has been relegated to second-class status. The Constitution of the PCUSA comprises the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order. The General Assembly’s Stated Clerk Review/Nomination Committee nominated Kirkpatrick for election to a second four-year term. The moderator of the committee, the Rev. William Maloney of Pittsburgh, said the committee was pleased by the tangible ways Kirkpatrick has focused on moving the church into the future, including linking General Assemblies to scriptural themes, bringing groups who disagree together in both Presbyterian and ecumenical circles, and restructuring and refocusing the work of the Office of the General Assembly. Jones and Kirkpatrick are the only announced candidates, but nominations can be made from the floor during the meeting of the 212th General Assembly in Long Beach, Calif., June 24-July 1. Each candidate will have an opportunity to make a five-minute speech. That will be followed by questions from the commissioners. Kirkpatrick was director of the denomination’s Worldwide Ministries Division prior to his election as stated clerk, and served its predecessor General Assembly agencies since 1981. He attended Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., and earned a master of divinity degree from Yale Divinity School in 1968. Later he attended Harvard University and earned a doctor of ministry degree from McCormick Theological Seminary. For 13 years, he served ecumenical organizations in Texas. He became a denominational officer in 1981, serving as director of the Division of International Mission of the former Presbyterian Church in the United States. Jones has written a critique of the work of the stated clerk that is posted on his congregation’s web site at www.pearlandpresbyterian.org. The gist of his criticism is that the denomination, and Kirkpatrick, pay little attention to the church’s theological documents, the Book of Confessions. “How many people who desire fundamental change are trying to amend the Book of Confessions or are even trying to add a new confession so as to change our church’s theology about homosexual practice, language about God, salvation and other religions, or even the Trinity?” Jones asks. “Instead we see congregations doing what they please about many of these issues, and at best trying to get the General Assembly to adopt some statement congenial with their own views. Before reunion, some conservatives in the old PCUS, cynically I thought, said this was the way it would be. They said with ten (eleven now) diverse creeds, catechisms, and confessions that we would cease to be a confessional church. They argued, correctly as it seems to be turning out, that the reunited church would be a-confessional and a-theological because of the multiplicity of confessions. I do not believe the current clerk has caused this situation, but I believe that it is the clerk’s job to take the lead in changing it.” Jones is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina, which he attended as a Morehead Scholar. He studied law for a year before attending Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va., where he received his doctor of ministry degree in 1979. He speaks French, Spanish and some German and Hindustani. He and his wife Vicky, also an ordained Presbyterian minister, have two children. |
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