Theological Digest & Outlook

Selections from the March 2001 issue (Vol. XVI, No. 1)

NOTE: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THE SIGNED ARTICLES ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT ENDORSEMENT BY CHURCH ALIVE.

• Editorial (Paul Miller)
• Jesus and the Jesus Scholars (Paul Miller)
• Bearing Faithful Witness (Foster Freed)
• The Challenge of Marcus Borg (Frank W. Lockhart)
• The Report on the Changing Church (Philip A. Cline)
• How Christians Around the World See the PCUSA (Parker T. Williamson)
• Why the United Church should reconsider the August 2000 General Council’s decisions on homosexuality by way of a remit (Graham Scott)

Borg, the subject of our Church Alive retreat in November, constitutes a serious challenge to orthodox Christian theology. His thought is attractive to many in churches like ours who share his doubts about more traditional Christian thought while desiring its benefits.

In teaching such persons in university he finds a kinship with Schlieremacher in dealing with the "cultured despisers" of religion who question the biblical witness and the "scandals" of our faith. His thought has grown out of that context. Our task is too understand his way of proceeding and to question whether that method can enable, over the long term, the results he claims. Our prime source is: The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, Harper, 1999.

His radical critique of our Bible is evident in his distinction between a pre- and a post-Easter Jesus. Acknowledging that the New Testament describes Jesus in "exalted metaphors" as Messiah (e.g. "Son of God," "Word of Life," "Lamb of God," "Light of the World," "Bread of Life," "Alpha and Omega" and "First-born of all creation"), he adds:

...I doubt that any of these affirmations go back to Jesus Himself,

and so I do not use them in my exposition of the historical Jesus.

I describe Jesus before Easter in non-Messianic terms. (54)

What is the nature of these "non-Messianic terms"? They are drawn from "the cross-cultural study of religious personality":

Five are most illuminating for seeing the kind of person Jesus was:

(1) Spirit person; (2) healer: (3) wisdom teacher; (4) social prophet;

and (movement founder. Each type functions as a template that

helps to constellate the traditions about Jesus. (60)

Therefore, as "spirit person," Borg’s most basic "template," Jesus is treated as "Jewish mystic," he comments:

As foundational, my claim that Jesus was a Jewish mystic means

Jesus was one for whom God was an experiential reality. He was

one of those people for whom the sacred was, to use William James’

terms, a firsthand religious experience rather than a secondhand

belief. Mystics, as I use the term, are people who have decisive

and typically frequent firsthand experience of the sacred. (60)

Thus, rather than the unique instrument of God’s redeeming action in history through his person, Jesus is categorized amongst other notable religious leaders.

Consistent with this treatment of Jesus, Borg rejects the thought of any divine action within the human story:

...I do not accept a supernatural interventionist model of God and

God’s revelation to the world. (66)

For Jesus and Israel, history is the place where the will and passion

of God are known. The issue, rather, is whether the truth of a

gospel story is dependent upon its being grounded in a particular

historical event. Tom says "yes" and I say "no." (235)

What then of Good Friday and Easter if they were not events of divine intervention? Jesus’ death, rather than being the divine will and the fulfillment of his unique calling, was almost accidental: "The domination system killed him." (137) And Easter involved no act of God vis-a-vis the historical: "For me, it is irrelevant whether or not the tomb was empty." (131)

These views notwithstanding, Borg makes some surprisingly strong affirmations about Easter:

Easter is utterly central to Christianity. "God raised Jesus

from the dead" is the foundational affirmation of the New

Testament. About this Tom and I agree. We also agree

that the best explanation for the rise of Christianity-indeed,

the only adequate explanation–is the resurrection of Jesus.

We also agree about its central meanings...I see the meaning

of Easter as two fold: Jesus lives, and Jesus is Lord...Easter

means that Jesus was experienced after his death, and that he

is both Lord and Christ. (12)

And Easter constitutes God’s victory:

The domination system killed him. The resurrection of Jesus

is God’s vindication of Jesus. It is a simple no-yes pattern.

Jesus’ death was the domination system’s no to what he was

doing. Jesus resurrection was God’s yes to Jesus. It is therefore

God’s no to the rulers of this world. (157,158)

One must add that Borg treats this struggle with the powers of domination in very comprehensive, almost cosmic terms.

To say that Jesus has been "raised to God’s right hand" and "Jesus

is Lord" is to say the same thing. Jesus has become one with God

and functions as Lord in the lives of his followers. (136)

Consequently, Borg affirms many of the qualities in God important to Christians: God is "near, at hand," "immediately accessible," "compassionate" and "passionate about justice." (241,242)

We note again Borg’s rejection of divine intervention in history:

My problem with this view is that I do not accept a supernatural

interventionist model of God and God’s revelation to the world.

The model creates more problems than it solves. (66)

One major problem is that, for many, this model leads to a loss of God:

For many people, it makes the notion of God incredible.

Indeed, most modern atheism is a rejection of the God of

supernatural theism. (62)

Related is a loss of the immanence, the intimacy, the sense of the presence of the divine.

Therefore, Borg adopts another approach:

A second way of understanding Jesus as the incarnation of

God is to do so within the framework of panentheism of

dialectical theism. Namely, God is not "out there" but "right

here" as well as more than right here, both transcendent and

immanent. God is the encompassing Spirit in whom we live

and move and have our being. (147)

Finally, we note how dependent Borg’s theology is on the availability of God to us through religious experience. This is crucial to his treatment of Jesus as "Jewish mystic" and to his assumption that it was the post-Easter experience of the early Church rather than the messianic mission of the historical Jesus that grounds the Christian faith:

As foundational, my claim that Jesus was a Jewish mystic means

Jesus was one for whom God was an experiential reality. He was

one of those people for whom the sacred, was, to use William James’

Terms, a firsthand religious experience rather than a secondhand

belief. Mystics, as I use the term, are people who have decisive

and typically frequent firsthand experience of the sacred. (6)

For me, the historical ground of Easter is very simple: the followers

of Jesus, both then and now, continued to experience Jesus as a

living reality after his death...Thus I see the post-Easter Jesus as an

experiential reality. I take the phenomenology of Christian experience

very seriously...The truth of Easter is grounded in these experiences,

not in what happened (or didn’t happen) on a particular Sunday almost

two thousand years ago. (135)

In Borg one finds Christian thought struggling to be alive in and for our time and this is to be applauded. We must, however, insist on standards in this exercise and this leads us to question certain aspects of Borg’s work, beginning with his treatment of sources.

Borg refers to a "common form of Western theism" as "Supernatural theism" and says that:

...it affirms only the transcendence of God and neglects the immanence

of God, despite the fact that the Jewish and Christian traditions have

consistently affirmed that God is both. Moreover, this theological

deficiency matters deeply: affirming only God’s transcendence

makes God absent. Mystical experience knows better. God is

immanent as well as transcendent, present and not absent. (62)

Surely the struggle to hold both the transcendence and immanence of God together is at the core of all great orthodox Christian thought! One finds it early and consistent in the great debates about Christology and the Trinity and in the richest of Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Reformation thought, though expressed diversely.

Had Borg understood better the depth of this struggle in orthodox Christian thought he might have known how hard it is to hold together in our understanding the divine transcendence and immanence without losing the character and fullness of either or both.

That God acts through history, that Israel received a special and unique divine calling, that God was in Christ reconciling is fundamental to our sacred scriptures. And this truth has enabled and nurtured the Church in its varied expressions. Moreover, our deepest knowledge of God as righteousness, grace and truth flow out of the divine actions to which our scriptures witness.

As Borg indicates, this affirmation does involve problems, the "scandals" inherent in our faith. Nevertheless, Christian thought must be grounded in, as it struggles with, this fundamental affirmation of our faith and scriptures. And the richest theologies, Catholic and Protestant, have consistently grown out of this struggle.

Consequently, in rejecting this affirmation Borg tears the very heart out of the Bible. To reject it because, in his opinion, "the model creates more problems that it solves," is altogether too simplistic.

Inherent in great theology is intense concern about how applicable or even appropriate is our intellectual means to the study of the divine: how can analogy, metaphor, personness, story, etc. convey what is well-nigh unspeakable? Nor has this concern diminished with time.

By contrast, one finds that Borg imposes on the scriptural witness "templates" drawn from "the cross-cultural study of religious personality" (60), the dominant one being Jesus as "spirit person/Jewish mystic. Borg seems remarkable uncritical, even naive, regarding the adequacy to his subject-matter of the conceptual framework implicit in his "templates." And this, despite the violence it does to the scriptural witness and the themes basic to the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Because he so radically severs the experience of god in the early Church from the historical, pre-Easter Jesus, Borg, in his theology, relies wholly on the character and potential for truth in "firsthand religious experience." He distinguishes this sharply from "a secondhand belief" and emphasizes its ready availability to us: "God is near, at hand, and can be experienced." (241) Thus, "I take the phenomenology of Christian religious experience very seriously." (135) One has many questions about his treatment of "religious experience" and the heavy burden his theology places upon it.

a. Borg’s sharp differentiation of "firsthand religious experience" from "secondhand belief" is questionable. Was Isaiah’s experience of God (Isaiah 6) not quite dependent also on his belief background? In our contemporary experience does not belief have its own very real degree of truth?

b. Similarly, is not experience of revelation also dependent upon context? To refer to Isaiah 6 again, was not the state of his people a central factor in Isaiah"s call? Does not context contribute, for another example, to the revealing truth on receives through Jesus" crucifixion?

These questions are especially pertinent to Borg’s claim that the early Church created the core of the Christian faith out of an immediate experience of the risen Christ and quite without knowledge of the Messianic ministry of the pre-Easter Jesus and its historical background.

There is a remarkable symmetry, beauty and power in the depiction of Jesus as Messiah in the Gospels. We note especially the last week of his life beginning with his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Can all this have been imposed on Jesus" life without a thorough basis in biographical fact? Surely this would assume in the very early church a most extraordinary depth of insight, creativity and genius hardly indicated in Acts and the epistles!

c. Is the divine as readily and fully available to our experience as Borg suggests? Or, because he says that "mystical experience knows better" than the traditional treatment of knowledge of God, is the mystic the paradigm for our relationship with the divine?

Borg’s reference to the mystic as having "decisive and typically frequent firsthand experience of the sacred" indicates a quite ready and available relationship, given appropriate dedication and qualities in the mystic. However, the biblical witness does not indicate this kind of relationship: the prophets were, by contrast, thoroughly surprised by God, often pleading to be freed from their calling to become painfully involved in the contemporary history of their people.

Our appreciation of the role of the mystic (and the "spiritual," popular now in many forms) must be both critical and circumspect and must use the biblical witness as criterion and not the opposite.

d. One of the great contributions of Catholicism to the Church is its emphasis on wholeness. One senses in Borg’s move away from the biographical, the historical in the pre-Easter Jesus a loss of wholeness, of the catholic. For example, the breadth and depth of the meaning of Calvary is greatly diminished here; the radical evil that is made evident in the cross of Christ can hardly be comprehended in Borg’s treatment of the domination systems.

One questions how Borg can deny divine intervention in history while affirming Easter as God’s victory, God’s "yes." Is evil no more than public opinion gone awry? Does it not have its foundation in the very structure of being? Does it not therefore necessitate God’s drastic action through Jesus Christ? And without this strange and bewildering affirmation can there be a real and convincing Christian hope?

God is compassionate...Compassion is not simply the will of

God, but the very quality of God...The compassion of God is

commonly and more abstractly spoken of as the love of God.

God is love–and it can be a fierce love. (242)

One hesitates to question this fine affirmation. But there are reasons to doubt whether this flows authentically out of Borg’s panentheism.

Doubt arise because "compassion" and "love" are so very personal and bespeak the freedom and sovereignty of a gracious God towards us. However, in rejecting the divine intervention in history and most especially in Jesus Christ, that freedom and sovereignty in the divine seems to have been lost by Borg. Significant in this regard is the loss of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as the revealing of the wholeness of the divine love. Where else, in all of human wisdom and experience, is there such a ground for our understanding of God as xaris and agape?

The Report on the Changing Church which was presented and accepted by the 37^th General Council is, on the surface, a persuasive document which seeks to address and provide an answer to problems within the governance system of The United Church of Canada as it has been known for the past 75 years. Among the problems listed are inordinate demands on the time and energy of volunteers in keeping the system going, inefficient use of human and financial resources, a changing church in changing times, duplication at various levels of the church, overly complicated procedures in the area of pastoral relations and the need to renew the vision of the mission of the church. Most people who have laboured on Presbytery, Conference and General Council committees could agree that such problems exist and do indeed need to be addressed in some manner by our church. The answer of the Working Group as presented to the 37^th General Council proposes a massive restructuring of the church which would combine most of the responsibilities of Conference and Presbytery into one unit, or Council, and thus have three levels of governance rather than the current and historic four. Such a change would substantially change the shape of the United Church, and therefore a remit is required to which Presbyteries and Pastoral Charges may respond. If a majority vote in favour, the changes would be allowed to take place following the next General Council, providing at least two thirds of the Presbyteries and Charges have responded.

The report takes great pains to report on the consultative process which took place and which led to the conclusions which the committee presented to General Council. It refers to "town hall meetings" as well as surveys to which some 400 individuals responded. At this point the reader begins to wonder just where the "town hall meetings" were held, and who were the 400 individuals out of a membership of over 600,000 who provided answers to the survey? There seems no evidence that Presbyteries or Conferences as such were consulted. Indeed much of the reported support for massive change seems based on such rather dubious sources as "they say," or, "it has been said," or "it would seem." A further concern in the area of "consultation" is that there is no evidence that the Working Group consulted with other denominations of similar tradition and structures. Were the Presbyterians, the United Methodists in the U.S.A., the Anglicans, or other United Churches consulted to see what is working for them and what is not? Each of the above have four levels of governance of various kinds and might well have been important resources. What of the Plan of Union, the proposed organizational structures for the union of Anglican, United and Disciples published in 1973? Here was a very thorough going new model which sought to deal with a widespread church population. It also proposed a four level system because of the size of our country and the tremendous variety of constituency to be served. One is left with the uneasy feeling that, as has been our habit as a church in the last number of years, we have been once more talking only to ourselves. If that is the case, it is a further example of the perceived arrogance of the United Church, that only we know what is best for ourselves. I say "perceived arrogance" for that is exactly how we are perceived by our sister denominations when we talk smugly about a "United Church ethos", whatever that may be, and give the impression that we really do not care how our statements and actions affect others.

The Working Group has listed a number of "Key Mission Values", most of which are commendable and most acceptable. For example commitment to mission is listed first, the principle of "smaller and closer is better", the importance of being a national church, commitment to the conciliar system and commitment to being a united church are all assumptions in the everyday life of our church. The assumption on the part of the Working Group that all of this can be achieved through three levels rather than four is open to question. How, for example, can "smaller and closer be better" be achieved in the proposed middle court (Council), some forty in number, when each will have at least twice the population as well as being twice as large geographically as the current Presbyteries, which presently number some 92 plus 1 Districts? How can we maintain a "national" church if major responsibility for policy and financing is downloaded to a middle regional court? How can the conciliar system of decision making work if the middle unit is so vast and remote that the local church has little contact, and therefore little interest in what is happening at that level? Presbytery often seems remote now to many church members, what will it be in a unit much larger than the current Presbyteries?

The report states quite properly that in order to be worth the disruption of change, change must be necessary, and be able to be justified. The arguments presented in favour of the proposed radical changes in the structures of our church are not convincing on either account.

The simple fact of the matter is that any system will work if there is a willingness to use the system at hand. Invariably systems fail when those within the system no longer use that system, but follow their own shortcuts, end runs, or are mistrusted by the constituency which they have been chosen to serve. No manner of changing of rules or structures will make a difference if there is a perception that the existing rules are not followed, or at best selectively, and that there are those who manipulate them to suit their own particular agendas. Such poisonous suspicions have crippled our church of the past twelve years. No manner of restructuring will change that until the membership at large can be persuaded that the United Church has its mission firmly in hand and knows where it is going. Structures may, as the respot says, "make a statement", but structures are principally in place as a means by which the work of the church is done. The church is not an organization, but in order to fulfil its mission in the world it requires organizations and structures as the machinery which will give it cohesion and a united front as it lives out its tasks within the society of the day.

It is also true, that structures can and do impede the work of the Church. When that happens, the existing structures do need to be examined and blockages in the system be removed. However, such changes can surely be made without throwing out the whole system and re-inventing it once more. To be specific. One of the criticisms has to do with the slowness of the General Council to act after a decision has been made. Being slow and deliberate is not always a bad thing. Sober second thoughts may yield wisdom that has been overlooked. Being slow because of unnecessary hindrances cannot be accepted. For example, why does implementation of legislation passed by General Council need to wait until the publication of the Record of Proceedings (frequently a full year later)? In many organizations, decisions made come into effect with the rise of that body. If minutes of the previous day’s sessions could be circulated the next day during Council, as is done in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, for example, surely that would be sufficient record for the actions to pass into law and the decisions acted upon immediately.

The system by which alterations through Petitions, once called Memorials, are dealt with is raised as requiring change. Some Petitions may be frivolous and a waste of the General Council’s time. However, we need to remember that it is also the procedure by which individuals within the church have the right and opportunity to make their concerns know to the "highest court" and should not be changed without provision of some means by which such concerns may be expressed, and if valid, be acted upon.

A further safeguard which needs to be jealously guarded is the requirement of a remit through which the church at large is consulted prior in any proposed change in the Basis of Union. Our Church inherited the process from the famous Barrier Act of 1697 of the Church of Scotland, and which requires that in matters affecting doctrine, government, worship and discipline no General Council can pass legislation without first consulting the Presbyteries, and if advisable, the congregations of the church. Such consultation lies at the very heart of our governance system.

Procedures around Pastoral Relations come in for considerable, and in my mind, justifiable criticism. Such procedures could easily be streamlined by throwing out half of the multitude of forms now required and leaving Conference and Presbytery to do their respective work in the matter. There is no need, under the Basis of Union, for the National Church to be as involved in pastoral relations as it has become, other than to expedite movement of personnel through the Transfer Committee from one Conference to another. The report suggests that Order of Ministry are accountable to several bodies. If the Basis of Union is followed, it is clear that Conference Ordains and places, while Presbytery has oversight of members of the Order of Ministry who are accountable first and foremost to the Presbytery of which they are members. A further question might be, why do both Presbytery and Conference need to have Interview Committees? Admission to ministry is by the Conference and there seems little reason for Presbytery to be involved in what amounts to duplicate action. Similar overlap and duplication is present in a number of other areas which could be adjusted or modified without rebuilding the whole structure.

The Working Group quite properly emphasizes that there is a need to retain a strong national presence. The ability to move resources and personnel to that part of the church where the greatest need lies has always been one of the strengths of our church. That ability can only be achieved by retaining the concept of a national church. It is for that reason that we should be wary of any further down loading of resources to a middle court (Council) which could well lead to regional competition and diminution of the ability of the national church to see that all parts of the church are treated fairly, justly and evenly.

Having studied the proposed plan, as it appears in the report of the Working Group to the 37^th General Council, I am not persuaded that the changes proposed are worth the effort, expense and disruption which such changes will make. I am further persuaded that the new model will not move our church from its current general mode of maintenance and survival to a lively and energetic commitment to mission. Instead of money, resources and energy expended on moving the furniture of organization around, let it be expended on a new vision and a new energy to reach out to our own people who have fallen away from their church as wll as those without faith within our country and beyond. One of the strong resolutions which came out of the 1988 General Council, and which was largely lost in the uproar over another debate, was the clear reminder that the congregation is the primary agent of evangelism. Let money to be spent on reorganization be rather used to help congregations indeed be that agency.

Our church faces a time of crisis; financial crisis in the matter of the Residential School lawsuits; crisis in shrinking numbers of members and resources; crisis in the challenges of being a witnessing community of faith in an every increasingly secular society; crisis in self confidence and in identity and a crisis of faith. In my view, this is not the time to be expending time, energy and resources in restructuring the system, when that system, with some adjustments, remains workable and generally adequate. Let us not be as the Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917, of whom it is said were in deep discussion over what should be the appropriate liturgical colours of the day while the Bolsheviks rampaged through the streets of Petrograd!

The current system is far from perfect, it never has been, it never will be. Nor is any system. However, there are certain principals which need to be kept before us. The Plan of Union, to which reference has been earlier made, contains the following principles which deserve our attention when we are considering major changes to our structures:

"The structures of the Church are determined by what the Church is in its given nature, by what it undertakes to do in obedience to Christ, and by the need for freedom to be renewed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit." (p. 37)

I believe that our current system of four levels does provide opportunity for involvement of all who wish to be involved in the ongoing life of the church. I believe that certain modifications could be introduced which would break some of the logjams and make the system work more efficiently and effectively within our church. The stated hope of those who established our church was that the system would "provide for substantial local freedom, while retaining the benefits of a strong connexional tie." I believe that can still be achieved with the system which we have if there is a will to make it so.

"If you support same-sex marriage, we will have to break relations with you," declared Ricardo Santana, president of Mexico’s San Pablo Seminary.

Santana’s sentiments were widely shared by more than 60 church leaders from Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia who came to the campus of Reformed Theological Seminary in November 2000 to organize the World Reformed Fellowship.

Human sexuality disputes among Presbyterian Church (USA) leaders have taken their toll on this denomination’s international partnerships. Santana’s seminary, for example, enjoys close relations with the PCUSA, which supports the seminary financially. Severing ties with the U.S. denomination would strike a severe blow to San Pablo’s income. But President Santana says that, if the PCUSA endorses same-sex unions, Mexican Presbyterians would have no choice but to pay that price. "Homosexual behaviour is wrong," Santana says. "We cannot support that and be faithful to Scripture."

Santana’s seminary plays a critical role in the PCUSA’s Latin American mission strategy. Located on the Yucatan Peninsula, San Pablo is now the largest Presbyterian Spanish-speaking seminary in the world. There, leaders are trained for the rapidly-growing Presbyterian Church of Mexico, which claims 160 churches and more than 400 new church developments in the Yucatan alone. Students come to San Pablo’s 15-acre campus from all of Mexico, as well as Nicaragua and Belize. Their number has doubled in the past five years.

Because the PCUSA missionaries work through partnerships with national churches, a divorce from San Pablo could cripple this denomination’s credibility, not only among Central American Christians, but further south as well.

The Rev. Guihermino Cunha, president of the Supreme Council of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil and a delegate to the Orlando conference, tole The Layman that his people are "amazed" that U.S. Presbyterians are even discussing extramarital sex. "How is this possible when the Bible is so clear?" he asked.

Cunha and his colleagues monitor news of the PCUSA via the Layman Online and other related web sites. Layman articles are translated into Portuguese and appear in a seminary-based publication called Impacto! He says that U.S. Presbyterians should know that their battles over sexual ethics are distressing to Christian brothers and sisters in other lands.

Dr. Fontao Aldo of Buenos Aires, Argentina, who divides his time between his practice of cardiology and Christian evangelism, echoes the concerns of the Brazilian Presbyterians. Christians, Aldo says, are called to leave the ways of the world and to obey the Word of God. "There can be no compromise on this issue," he told The Layman.

The Rev. Alonzo Ramirez Alvarado, moderator of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Peru, and The Rev. Pedro Merino Boyd, first vice president of Peru’s Evangelical and Reformed Presbyterian Church, told the Orlando gathering stories of Christians who stand firm in the gospel amidst a guerrilla war that rips their country apart. To them, reports of U.S. Presbyterians bickering over homosexual marriage ceremonies sound like fairy tales.

The Rev. Ferdinand Hope Gbewonyo, moderator of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ghana says that African Christians are having a hard time understanding why sexuality issues keep coming up among U.S. Presbyterians. Rachel Achineaku of Nigeria, who works with the Tir tribe in the Sudan; Patrick Rukenya, secretary general of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa; and Isaac Ababio, Presbyterian evangelist in Accra, North Ghana shared Gbewonyo’s concern.

"AIDS has infected millions in our countries," Ababio said. "We know what happens when people refuse to follow God’s law. Our people are suffering. Our children are becoming orphans. The church must say that sex is for marriage. This is god’s way, and this is what the Bible teaches."

The Rev. Peterson Sozi, former moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Uganda, is president of a rapidly growing evangelistic association that employs 10 full-time ministers and 26 lay evangelists to plant churches throughout the country. Noting that Uganda has suffered terribly from the ravages of AIDS, Sozi’s team has launched a major effort to rescue some of the 2.4 million children who have been orphaned due to deaths from AIDS. Peterson shakes his head in dismay when he hears that U.S. Presbyterians are debating the legitimacy of homosexual behaviour. "It doesn’t make any sense," he says. "No sense at all."

Presbyterian leaders in the Far East are asking what has happened to the church that brought the gospel to their countries. The Rev. Byung Sun, of the Kumkwang–Sungnam City church in Seoul, South Korea, and Dr. Aaron Pyungchoon Park, president of Christian Theological College in Seoul, recall with gratitude that U.S. Presbyterian missionaries came to their country 100 years ago to establish churches, hospitals and colleges. Presbyterian churches are found throughout Korea today, some congregations with as many as 50,000 members, and they are sending missionaries throughout the world.

The emigration of South Koreans to the United States has sparked a fascinating reverse-missions thrust. Today, south Koreans comprise the fastest growing segment of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Speaking on behalf of the denomination’s 350 Korean-American congregations, the National Korean Presbyterian Council has sent a letter to every Presbyterian congregation urging the passage of Amendment O, which bans same-sex union ceremonies in Presbyterian churches. The letter warns that endorsements of same-sex unions would result in "a devastating blow" to membership growth among the Korean congregations. "In a word," it said, "the blessing of same-sex unions would bring our demise as a church of Jesus Christ."

Other Far East representatives at the Orlando conference–Dr. Supardan, a Presbyterian who is general secretary of the Indonesian Bible Society, and Dr. Tial Hlei Thanga, president of the Disciple Training Center in Yangon, Myanmar and general secretary of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Myanmar–shared sentiments expressed by the South Koreans.

Reformed Church leaders and scholars from centers in eastern and western European countries also participated in the Orlando gathering. Dr. Emil Bartos, director of the Center for Reformation Studies in Oradea, Romania, and Dr. Daniel Szabo, lay vice president of the General Synod in the Reformed Church of Hungary, spoke of the seismic changes that are occurring in their countries since the fall of communism. In the face of such challenges, they said they find the U.S. Presbyterians’ preoccupation with sex trivial.

Western Europeans at the conference, like Dr. Pierre Berthoud, professor of Old Testament at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Aix-en-Provence, France, and Christians from Great Britain like Malcolm Maclean, representing the Free Church of Scotland, and Dr. A.T.B. Mcgowan, principal of Highland Theological College in the Church of Scotland, spoke of the enervating effect that theological liberalism has had on their churches. The seminaries that they represent are training new leaders who can articulate Reformed faith and address the moral malaise that has undermined their society.

One of the ironies of our time is the fact that liberalism, which historically has promoted ecumenical alliances, appears to be the driving force toward an isolated Presbyterian Church (USA). To the extent that denominational leaders advocate the homosexual agenda, they are clearly distancing themselves from the worldwide Christian community.

This is precisely what happened to Episcopal Church (USA) bishops when they met in Canterbury, England, for the August 1998 Lambeth conference of the worldwide Anglican church. At Canterbury, American bishops led by John Shelby Spong met overwhelming opposition as bishops from around the world insisted on adopting a sexual ethic that is faithful to Scripture. Since Lambeth, bishops in other countries have begun to dispatch missionaries to the United States, and even to ordain priests inside other bishops’ territories, in order to bring the Episcopal Church back into the fold of Biblical Christianity.

If the Presbyterian Church (USA) experience parallels what is happening to the Episcopalians–and the Orlando gathering suggests that it will–denominational leaders in this country will experience increasing pressure from the world church. And as Sough Korean Presbyterians have been quick to point out, those to whom the United States once sent the gospel will now bring it back home.

The August 2000 decisions on homosexuality, bisexuality and transgendered sexuality are as brief and bad as the 1988 Sexual Orientation, Lifestyles and Ministry (SOLM) report was long and bad. In fact the August resolutions turn the rejected SOLM report into accepted policy.

The result in my opinion has been the relativization of the doctrine of marriage which Jesus proclaimed as valid from the beginning of creation and which his Church has maintained for close to two thousand years. One could hardly think of a worse way in which to mark the two thousandth year of his official birth.

If Jesus was mistaken about marriage, and his doctrine was based on God’s revelation in Genesis 1 and 2, then the effect of the August resolutions is also to render both Jesus as an imperfect revealer of God and God himself as a creator who knew not what he was doing.

The only way that I can think of to bring the United Church to reconsider the extremely bad decisions on homosexuality which Commission C made on behalf of the whole General Council, is to call for a remit. Sending thousands of petitions to General Council were proven ineffective by the 1988 and the 1990 General Councils. General Councils do not listen to congregations of the United Church. Even if a petition campaign were mounted, the next General Council will not be until 2003, and that would be far too late to effect any serious reconsideration. That leaves a call for a remit.

Just such a call was issued by Niagara Presbytery of Hamilton Conference on November 28, 2000 on a motion by its Faith and Order Committee. The text of the call for a remit follows. And then follows a revision of my paper, which led off the debate. The debate was civil, despite the controversial subject and the late hour on the evening’s agenda. Pros and cons were heard. The Chair yielded the chair to a former Chair and spoke against the motion, the former Chair agreeing with him. A number of members of the court abstained from voting. But the vote, however narrow, was in favour of calling for a remit. The Chair was relieved that we all left the meeting as friends.

FAITH & ORDER COMMITTEE OF NIAGARA PRESBYTERY

ADDRESS ON THE FAITH & ORDER COMMITTEE’S RESOLUTION FOR A REMIT

EPILOGUE

We do not know what the General Council Executive will do with this call for a remit. Perhaps a panel of the Judicial Committee will rule on it. In any case I do not think that they will approve a remit to change the Basis of Union Doctrine on Articles XX, VII, I, and XIV. If they do, they will have a fascinating time writing the wording of the remit.

If the Executive do not require a remit, then I think we can fairly assume that they do not believe that the remit would carry. They would in fact be afraid that their cherished policies on homosexuality would at last be nullified by a democratic vote. They would not want to risk a vote of non-confidence. For a negative vote would not only nullify the blasphemous August resolutions, but would cast a pall over policy-making by a Commission of the General Council.

If the Executive do issue a remit for voting Yes or No by presbyteries and pastoral charges of the Church, then congregations and presbyteries will have a decisive opportunity to shape the future of the United Church. A Yes vote to enshrining the gay agenda in the Basis of Union would cast the United Church out of the Holy Catholic Church and into the role of a sect like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. A No vote would make it possible for the United Church to redeem itself from marriage to the spirit of the age and for obedience to Christ’s commandment to evangelize (Mt 28:19-20) and to be holy (1 Pet 1:13-16).