Jesus issue back on council agenda By John H. Adams The Presbyterian Layman Volume 34, Number 1 Posted January 24, 2001 A festering issue that the General Assembly Council ignored during its last meeting will return to the council’s agenda in February. In September, the council decided not to pass judgment on the denomination’s 2000 Peacekeeping Conference or the theology of Presbyterian minister Dirk Ficca, the conference’s keynote speaker who suggested there are valid paths to God other than Jesus Christ. But negative reaction to Ficca’s remarks – such as “What’s the big deal about Jesus?” – has increased since September. The sessions of several congregations have filed preliminary complaints that could lead to formal legal filings in church courts. Shenango Presbytery in Pennsylvania has also issued a protest. And two leaders of the General Assembly Council have acknowledged that Ficca was amiss in his comments. John Detterick, the council’s executive director, told a gathering of evangelicals sponsored by the Presbyterian Coalition that Ficca’s comments were out of bounds and that the council would take steps to establish better oversight of denomination-sponsored conferences. A few days later, Peter Pizor, the chairman of the council, told the Covenant Network of Presbyterians that he would name a task force to recommend how the General Assembly Council might improve its oversight. But some independent Presbyterian groups that oppose many of the PCUSA’s Biblical and confessional standards criticized Detterick and Pizor, and Pizor delayed appointment of the task force. He said he would bring the issue before the council when it meets Feb. 19-24. In September, the council had the Peacekeeping Conference on its agenda but gave it scant attention. Council member Atlanta Brown of Wilmington, Del., seemingly expressing the sentiment of many, said, “Since this issue has been simmering down, just leave it be.” But potential legal cases filed by 5,500-member Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas, and the 300-member Montreat Presbyterian Church near the denomination’s conference center in North Carolina have added an urgency for the council to reconsider the issue. “I can assure you that we certainly do not like to be on the receiving end” of judicial action, Detterick told the Presbyterian Coalition. There appears within the council to be some loyalty to the staff that planned the conference – and perhaps Ficca’s theology. The council’s peacekeeping committee wrote a letter in September expressing its thanks “to the 2000 Peacekeeping Conference planning team, conference speakers and all of the participants for their willingness to explore how we Christians can faithfully dialogue and interact with persons of other faiths.” The Peacemaking Conference is not the first time a denomination-sponsored program or material questioned the deity of Christ. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is one of the sponsors of a “Faith and Reason” video series, which is available through EcuFilm, an ecumenical film/video service. This series promotes uncritically the beliefs of the late Rev. D.L. Dykes, a United Methodist pastor who declared about Jesus: “He did not see Himself as the Son of God, He didn’t see himself as anything special.” The series is comprised of 24 different videos, each of which tries to answer a different question about Jesus, such as “How did Jesus of Nazareth see Himself,” or “Was Jesus really raised from the dead?”

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