 A time for repentance  The Layman Volume 39, Number 5, Posted November 27, 2006
Everyone, that is, except the stated clerk. Clifton Kirkpatrick knows his way to the press room. He’s been there on numerous occasions, boycotting Yum! Brands, Inc., muscling McDonalds, posing with Fidel Castro, promoting a hike in the minimum wage, and repeatedly asking Presbyterians to pursue peace with one another. But the draconian counsel perpetrated by his chief legal officer has done a number on this clerk’s credibility. At the very time that Kirkpatrick was calling for peace, his lieutenants were advising middle governing body executives to freeze bank accounts, seize church property, defrock ministers, oust sessions and sue individual elders deemed ornery because they consider distancing themselves from the denomination’s grasp. The clerk has not denied that his office did the deed. In fact, that would be difficult to do, given admissions by presbytery executives who have stepped forward with evidence. But neither has there been any apology, retraction or discipline of the officers. Denouncing the Louisville Papers as “unBiblical tactics [that] fundamentally forsake and damage the connectional nature of our community,” the session of Community Presbyterian Church in Ventura, California is castigating the clerk for his unwillingness to repudiate what his office has done. “This lack of repudiation,” said the Ventura church in a proposed resolution to Santa Barbara Presbytery, “feeds the fear that those who would exercise freedom of speech will face preemptive retaliation. The result is connectionalism through intimidation and the ruin of Biblical peace, unity and purity. Further, it forces churches to consider how they may defend themselves against possible legal action raised against them by their own denomination even as they pursue efforts to faithfully fulfill the great commission of Christ and the Great Ends of the Church described in the constitution.” There is something disingenuous and hypocritical about a General Assembly and its staff that plead with the congregations to engage in “a season of discernment” while seeking to punish those that do so. The irony is that in the name of “peace, unity and purity,” this denomination’s highest elected official is waging war against the very congregations he pledged to serve. It won’t work, of course. Coercion is a loser’s game, the desperate act of leadership that soon will be history. The stated clerk cannot deny what his office has done. What he can do is repent of the damage that he has inflicted on those whom he has a duty to serve. Before his next trip to the press room, he can fire Mark Tammen, his top legal lieutenant and the chief counsel for the Louisville Papers, calling off the confiscatory assaults and strong arm attacks that have been engineered on his watch. A column by Parker T. Williamson, editor emeritus and senior correspondent of The Layman. |
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