 Sign of the times  The Layman Volume 38, Number 3, Posted August 8, 2005
The world saw an example of this in the last years of the Soviet Union. Decades before the fall, the Marxist vision had lost its hold on the hearts and minds of the Soviet people. Economists in Russia’s universities knew that Communism was untenable. Peasants in the streets were skeptical of rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin. Their vigorous black market constituted a daily no-confidence vote. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described those final years in his Gulag Archipelago. Managers of a system that was thoroughly discredited in the eyes of its own people held their empire together by the only means left to them: coercion. The KGB was never more cruel than during its final years. Police brutality shored up the teetering structure for a time, but ultimately the state’s intellectual, moral and economic bankruptcy forced its collapse. An institution called the Presbyterian Church (USA) is manifesting similar ungracious behavior. Historically, denominational leaders could count on a three-legged stool to support their claim on their churches. The first, and primary leg, was a common faith, anchored in Scripture and the Confessions of the Reformed tradition. Its leaders having weakened the essential leg of Scriptural authority in their pursuit of cultural relevance, the denomination’s structure became unstable. The second leg was church polity, a constitution that respected the rule of law and provided for an orderly means of governance. This, too, has crumbled under the weight of officially sanctioned individualism. The denomination’s chief constitutional officer chooses to look the other way as congregations and presbyteries openly defy ordination standards that are clearly delineated in the Book of Order. This enthronement of “diversity” has fractured a critical component of our connectional life. The third leg is the property trust clause, a spindle to which General Assembly officials are clinging with all the tenacity they can muster. In the secular world, property means power, and the exercise of power inevitably involves coercion. Muscle rather than ministry now characterizes the denomination’s relations with its member congregations. How else can one interpret two recent California atrocities? In May, officials from the Presbytery of the Pacific dumped two ministers from the Hollywood Presbyterian Church without a shred of due process, and in seizing congregational control, they appointed a commission that includes flagrant apologists for homoerotic behavior. This clearly unconstitutional power play deeply wounds an evangelical flagship church and tightens the denomination’s fist around property worth millions of dollars. Now we have the case of the 2,700-member First Presbyterian Church in Torrance, the largest Korean congregation in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Declaring that it could no longer associate with a denomination whose leaders have denied the gospel, rejected the authority of Scripture and undermined the sanctity of marriage, the Torrance church voted to leave with its property. That triggered civil actions followed by an ugly disruption (which included the moderator of the General Assembly) of the congregation’s worship service. I watched a video recording of that incident in utter amazement. The moderator’s supporters tried to snatch the microphone from under the congregation’s minister, and in the ensuing scuffle broke it. Meanwhile, in the chancel stood the uninvited moderator, flanked by presbytery and synod officials, wearing his cross and multicolored stole, countenancing an unholy fracas that resembled a barroom brawl. Lawyers from headquarters are now advising presbyteries to push their congregations into amending their corporate by-laws in order to strengthen the denomination’s claim on their property. Ironically, while homoerotic activists thumb their noses at our ordination standards and the stated clerk resolutely declares that it is not his job to enforce the Constitution, his office has become the enforcer-in-chief of the property trust clause. We are receiving reports from evangelical ministers across the country that their careers are being threatened by presbytery power brokers. Pastoral search committees are being told that by identifying their congregation as a Confessing Church, they could damage their prospects for finding a minister. Such thumbscrew tactics – well remembered by Russian Orthodox priests who suffered under the Soviets’ heavy hand – are designed to forge a compliant clergy. The Book of Acts reminds us that coercion will not win. In fact, the Apostles welcomed abuse from Rome and the religious establishment, for they considered it their privilege to suffer for the sake of the Savior. They knew that bullying characterizes the last gasp of a failing regime that can no longer claim the respect of its people. In these tough times, we remind our readers that the gospel alone is the power of God unto salvation. The Church that clings to that mighty Word will learn in our time – just as it has been taught in the centuries preceding us – that not even the gates of hell can prevail against it. A column by Parker T. Williamson, chief executive officer of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and editor in chief of its publications. |
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