Churches in northern Minnesota are part of a presbytery that voted in favor in February. The presbytery in southern and western Minnesota voted against it in April.
“There is more and more ambiguity within the culture and within the church on topics like human sexuality,” said the Rev. Paul Detterman, the executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal, a group that opposes the change in ordination standards. “It does nothing to clarify questions that people are asking. What it basically also does is it removes a national standard for ordination, and it makes this much more of a territorial issue.”
Detterman conceded the measure is likely to pass. His group of opponents will meet in Minneapolis in late August to consider next steps. He said if the vote is about inclusivity, he hopes that will also will extend to accepting Presbyterians who disagree on the matter, and he says leaving the church would be a last resort.
Do I hear the sound of dominos falling?
A territorial issue? You bet it is The world wins another round.
A lot of churches are already in motion preparing to leave, while many other churches and presbyteries will defect in place by informally cutting off ties to PCUSA while not actually leaving the denomination. So there will be an immediate de facto schism, where the denomination breaks into two separate groups of presbyteries, even if it is not immediately apparent to the outside.
The hardest will be those presbyteries who are internally split on the issue, which is where you will see the largest number of churches then walking out the door. Unfortunately, like TEC, PCUSA has a property trust clause, so be prepared for many more property lawsuits as to those churches that actually choose to leave.
Although the media has focused on the “gay” aspect of this, the new language also removes the obligation for ministers, elders and deacons to be obedient to Scripture in their lives, as well as providing that adultery, fornication and other sexual immorality is not a disqualification from serving in an ordained position. For me as an elder this is a nonstarter, even more so than the gay issue.
There is also the issue of whether we who still believe in the Biblical standards will now have to declare a “scruple,” that is, declare we will not accept the changes to the constitution as a matter of conscience, and whether we then face being removed from office by the presbytery. For those in presbyteries that are still faithful to God’s standards it’s not an issue, but unfortunately our presbytery is not.
I’ve already been through this once as a refugee from the Episcopal Church, who like a number of others here, ended up in a Biblically faithful Presbyterian church. The pattern will now repeat itself.
Holy Moses, Jim, that’s a grim story. But why are these forces so successful,Jim? Why are we losing all the battles as well as the war?
What is there about homosexuality that has become so attractive?
I jjust don’t get it. Larry
#4 Larry–As our senior pastor put it in addressing the congregation at the congregational meeting last Sunday (yes, we’re already taking action and have been struggling with this for a number of months), the evangelical part of the church was focused on spreading the Gospel and was not particularly interested in playing church politics, whereas the “liberal” portion was interested in controlling the denomination for their political and social agenda. So over time they gained control over presbyteries and in determining who goes to General Assembly, which is where proposals like this originate.
The most painful part of this for me personally is the last time our presbytery voted on this (two years ago), and prior to the vote, we who were commissioners (voting members at presbytery) had to go through a 2-hour “listening session” where supposedly we were “having a conversation” about each other’s viewpoints, but basically it was a diatribe about how we who still believe in Scripture and sexual purity are fossils, homophobic, haters and “acting against the Spirit,” and how homosexual clergy and gay marriage were inevitable and we had to agree with their viewpoint “for the unity of the church.” The “listening” was really all about intimidation. Knowing the vote that time in our presbytery was already lost, a number of commissioners simply did not show up for the vote.
The fact is an awful lot of people have just walked out of PCUSA, one way or another, or have been totally marginalized. But none of this is news for the folks that have already gone through it in TEC. We are just about 10 years behind you.
What the other side doesn’t realize is that the fossils like us don’t need a denomination to serve Christ. We will continue to follow God, no matter what they say, whether inside PCUSA or somewhere else.
RE: “I’ve already been through this once as a refugee from the Episcopal Church, who like a number of others here, ended up in a Biblically faithful Presbyterian church.”
That was a central reason why I didn’t switch — I knew that if I went to another mainline I’d go through it all again, and I don’t love anything like I love the Episcopal church. So why be in something that I don’t love, and go through the same battle again?
I’ve always wondered why folks went to other mainlines. I would be very interested if Jim is up for talking about that, but I understand if you don’t feel like it.
But I still want to ask again, why is homosexuality so attractive? It is being treated as if it were a desirable alternative, the way to go, the cool thing to do. People see the scandals in the RC church, and they don’t seem to connect this with the homosexual ethos, for example. And homosexuals themselves have no vested interest in monogamy and have said so. Or is it simply that we have such a need for to be seen as the underdog, such a need to be the victim, that we will sacrifice gladly any value or standard that interferes with our hunger for the limelight that being a victim brings? Why is victimania so popular, so powerful, so omnipresent? Larry
Hi Sarah– I don’t want to specifically identify my present church because I suspect we could be in the cross-hairs one of these days, but let me give a general answer.
First, the Episcopal Church of my later years had radically changed from what it was when I was a kid. When I was young, the church was quite conservative. Of course, this changed in the 1960s and 1970s. First of the things I had problems with was the 1979 prayer book (which was preceded by the Zebra book and other things). I just didn’t care for it, compared to 1928. Second, my church started embracing New Age things like Sophia and worshiping the Labyrinth (straight from Grace Cathedral, San Francisco). Third, the worship became more and more elaborate liturgically, but more and more dead spiritually. Fourth, about 1997 the diocese embraced being “open and affirming” as a policy, and people were told that gay people would flood into the churches and the coffers would be overflowing with money. In other words, it embraced the gay agenda primarily as a marketing and money raising strategy.
Of course, none of those things happened. In fact, my former parish has lost 60% plus of its members since 2002, now cannot afford or be able to get a rector–the position has been vacant for going on 4 years now, and now the church is basically filled with a handful of ancient folks and the majority of the rest being gay. There no longer are any families or children there. There no longer is any Sunday School. There no longer are any adult education classes.
Frankly, walking into my former parish today physically creeps me out. I’ve snuck in a couple of times for a Lessons and Carols service, or had to go to funerals there, and each time I’ve been struck by how empty the place is, emotionally and spiritually. As they say, “Ichabod” — the glory has departed. You can physically feel that. And we do not have any orthodox parishes. There was one remaining, but when their rector retired a couple of years ago, the bishop basically told the congregation to leave and they did.
Meanwhile, we are fortunate to have a thriving Biblically-centered, Christ-following PCUSA church, where the pastors all give real, meaningful sermons based on Scripture on Sundays, where the attendance has doubled in size to the point where we actually had to sell our church and move to a larger site, and which is filled with young families and has a thriving children’s and young adults ministry among other things. Especially if you have a family with growing children, that is the type of church you want to go to.
And frankly, you can really feel the Holy Spirit here. At a recent men’s ministry meeting, for example, we found ourselves talking about how many of us have actually cried during services, often without knowing why. That’s kind of an amazing admission to get from a bunch of macho guys, especially in a church in the quintessential “frozen chosen” denomination. But we are not a normal PCUSA church. We have regular healing services, for example, at which people regularly get healed, and we have altar calls.
And there are advantages to being PCUSA, rather than another flavor of Presbyterian. In one sense, the laxness in standards in PCUSA has worked in our favor to let us be able to incorporate a lot of different types of Christians in our church family. We have very few cradle Presbyterians. In my Sunday adult classes, for example, you will find people that come from Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Baptist, Assembly of God and other Pentecostal backgrounds, and we all are able to get along with each other because we all focus on the Gospel and Christ. Without being overly critical, in a lot of other Presbyterian denominations, if you don’t follow the Westminster Confession verbatim right down the line, believe in the 5 points of Calvinism, affirm double-predestination, etc., you can forget about it, and a lot of those churches tend to be so narrow in permissible beliefs that it chases a lot of people away. We don’t spend a lot of time in our church (i.e., none) arguing about why Calvinism is right and Arminianism is wrong, for example.
The other thing is that specific PCUSA churches traditionally have a fair amount of independence. It is only in the last few years that there has been a push to concentrate power in the national church. Basically, as long as we paid our yearly per capita to the presbytery, we were pretty much left alone.
The bottom line is it is not the denomination, it is the specific church that draws people.
It has only been in the relatively recent past that the issue of gay rights has started to dominate everything else in PCUSA. This present proposal has come up a number of times in the past, but always before has been relatively easily defeated. The fact is that the people in the pews in many PCUSA churches are still very orthodox–the problem primarily is the clergy. That plus the fact that because of problems in the PCUSA polity, a number of small and dying liberal churches when they band together can dominate the evangelical churches, which tend to be much larger in size but fewer in number.
Our pastors have seen what is coming for a while, and have taken a lead in trying to reform the denomination, and in warning that a train wreck is coming. They have come up with proposals to try to save the denomination, but virtually all efforts were shot down. So we just haven’t stuck our heads in the sand either.
I think the vast majority of our congregation highly trusts our pastors and will follow them. It may be possible one of these days they and session will determine it’s time to go, even if we may face losing our property. But that’s fine, we will find a theater or high school auditorium to meet in until we can build another church.
There are some things I miss about the Episcopal Church and Anglicanism. Primarily the music and traditional hymns. I also am somewhat troubled that Communion is not treated with the dignity I’d grown up with. But the trade off is that there is a high degree of emphasis on Biblical teaching and preaching which frankly I don’t think you would find in the large majority of TEC churches these days. Plus, again, that the presence of the Holy Spirit is very tangible here, and there is a high degree of people trying to be faithful to God’s call.
Hi Jim the Puritan — thank you for the thoughtful response.
It sounds as if the primary issue for you was in having a faithful local congregation.
I can understand that. What I don’t understand is when Episcopalians leave TEC announcing that they are very upset over the denomination’s stances — and then join an ELCA or PCUSA church.
But if congregational faithfulness is the point, I can see that, for sure.