A Tale of Two Churches?

A Keynote Address by the Rev. Jim Kitchens, 
Co-Pastor of Davis Community Church, Davis, CA

At a Celebration of the 35^th Anniversary of 
the Confession of 1967

As I begin this reflection on the meaning of the Confession of 1967 for our present situation in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I want to read the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens' story about an Englishman's being swept up in the "Terror" that immediately followed the French Revolution. The first sentence of the paragraph is often quoted, but I think it would be instructive for us to hear the paragraph as a whole:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

In short, the period was so far like the present period . . .. Isn't it uncanny how true that statement rings in the ears of those of us who identify ourselves with the more progressive wing of our denomination today … even to the point of wondering if and when the mobs with their carts will come to bind our hands and drag us off to our appointment with Dr. Guillotine's marvelous invention?

These past 20 years or so have felt like a time when the Holy Spirit was moving in an powerfully decisive manner within the church, only to have that door through which we felt its sail-filling wind blowing slammed decisively shut as the vote by South Louisiana Presbytery sealed the defeat of Amendment A. And now we - who felt so incredibly close to reasserting the historic right of presbyteries to determine the qualifications for their own membership and, thereby, providing at least a few places to welcome our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters into full participation in the life of the Presbyterian family - suddenly find ourselves huddling together, wondering whether the recently proclaimed "judicial season" will end up knocking at our door in the middle of the night. Indeed, it is the best of times and it is the worst of times.

But as I pondered Dickens' words further, it dawned on me that our brothers and sisters on the other side of the aisle on the issue of homosexuality and ordination might hear his words just as powerfully describing their experience of church life in the recent past as do we. They, too, have experienced the past 20 years or so of our denomination's life as a time of forceful ferment and change. The fact that what we might call "the season of Light" they would call "the season of Darkness," and what we might deem "foolishness" they would name "wisdom" is almost beside the point. Rather, the point is that the past couple of decades have felt to all of us like a moment of crisis in the truest sense: a time in which danger and opportunity have been mixed in about equal measure.

Perhaps an even more important conclusion to draw is that we have been through a long season of discernment that has left us all exhausted. And while many of us pray that this season of discernment is not yet over, it's pretty clear that we have reached a point in that discernment process when the church, as a whole, has called for a pause, a rest, a time for convalescence and reconsidering our future together.

As we take our convalescence, there are some in the denomination who suggest that they now understand the two sides in the debate to have grown so far apart that we are now living out our own "Tale of Two Churches." They think we not only have different understandings about the role that gay and lesbian Christians can play in the leadership of the church. They see the issue as going far deeper than that. They suspect we may also have two different Bibles, or at least that we read the Bible so differently that one side cannot recognize the story of salvation that the other side gleans from it. They even worry that our Christologies are so different that we may, in essence, worship two different Christs. And so, along with the calls for a "judicial season" in the life of the Presbyterian Church (USA), we are now beginning to hear calls for "peaceful separation," an ecclesiastical version of divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable difference.

I don't buy that view of our current circumstance, though, however tempting it may be to propose an amicable way for us to take leave of one another into two different churches. After all, we tried that in the 1930's when the fundamentalists pulled out of one of our predecessor denominations to form the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The sad, continually schismatic history of that movement, one of whose major figures - Carl McIntyre - died only this past month, ought to serve as a cautionary tale for any in the church today who think that schism can ever lead to a purified church that alone possesses true doctrine, vibrant witness, and strong mission. Instead - in the words of Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence - "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Or, to put it in the words of scripture, we must pray for the church as Jesus prayed for the church, "that they may be one." (Jn 17:11)

Because of my prior commitment to the unity of the church - or at least to preventing yet another schism in the body of Christ - I believe we are being called by the Holy Spirit to do something else during this period of convalescence. The Spirit is calling us to work and reflect together to recover that depth of tradition that binds us together as Reformed and Presbyterian Christians: a tradition with which both sides in our recent debate have - we must confess - played rather fast and loose. Each side has felt itself able to question the other's commitment to Christ exactly because we each have selectively chosen different aspects of the tradition to hold up as if they were the whole of that tradition. For a tradition that historically has prided itself in not resorting to proof texts, we have slung not only snippets of scripture but also of the Reformed tradition in each other's faces in an attempt to gain political advantage over one another.

All of which is why I am delighted that the executive committee of the Witherspoon Society has taken this particular moment in our church's history to invite us to reflect together on our confessional heritage as a way to celebrate the 35^th anniversary of the adoption of the Confession of 1967 (or C-67, as I will henceforth refer to it).

I'm delighted for at least three reasons. First of all, by drawing us together to engage C-67 and inviting us to discern its contemporary significance for the church, the committee already has involved us in that process of re-engagement with the tradition that the church so desperately needs today. I can only pray that what is beginning within the progressive stream of the church can expand so that it becomes a process of theological reflection that involves the whole church. Second, as we reflect on C-67 and the theological process that led to its adoption, we will be helped to see more clearly that the theological tensions that strained the church in 1967 are the same theological tensions that strain it today. We are not in a new situation, but only a new configuration of a continuing debate within the Presbyterian family. Third, by understanding that history a little more thoroughly, we may be better equipped to propose some positive ways forward from our present situation … or at least to avoid some of the mistakes of the past.

In the remainder of my talk, I want to address two sets of themes put forward by C-67:

¨ its general theme of reconciliation
¨ the four specific areas of concern on which it focused that general theme

Let's listen again to the central confession of C-67 (you'll note that I'm using the original, uninclusive language … but that's for a reason, as you'll soon hear):

In Jesus Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. Jesus Christ is God with man. He is the eternal Son of the Father, who became man and lived among us to fulfill the work of reconciliation. He is present in the church by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue and complete his mission. This work of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is the foundation of all confessional statements about God, man, and the world. Therefore the church calls men to be reconciled to God and to one another.

Instead, C-67 was precisely drafted around the issue of reconciliation: God's self-initiated reconciliation with humanity in Jesus Christ, the call for human beings to be reconciled with one another, and the promise that - no matter how far we feel we are from the goal after centuries of trying - God will consummate that reconciliation in the end. In many ways the confession is but a recapitulation of what the church historically had taught about the reconciliation God initiated in the Incarnation and will bring to fruition in the return of Christ in glory at the end of history.

But its startling innovation - one that caused no small amount of dissent as it was being drafted and one that continues, in a manner of speaking, to divide the church - was to broaden the church's work of reconciliation so that it was called to address concrete issues facing American society at the time of its adoption. Heretofore, the church had focused on individual reconciliation - the restoration of right relationship between particular individuals and God in the life of the church - and on the cosmic aspect of God's "reconciling the world" to God's self, at least at the end of time. This was the first time, however, that reconciliation in society, and reconciliation in such clearly delineated arenas of social life, had been addressed in a confessional document of the church.

What strikes me, at this point in the denomination's life, is that we need to listen to the confession's theme of reconciliation again, but with differently tuned ears. Instead of returning to C-67 to hear its call for us to engage in the ministry of reconciliation in the context of the broader society, we first need to learn to practice the ministry of reconciliation within the church. If ever there was a society in need of reconciliation, it is today's Presbyterian Church (USA). Having been through 20 years in which we have habitually objectified our opponents in debate, turning them in our minds and hearts into the "other," into something slightly less than human so that we can both vilify them and ignore whatever critique they might have for us, we can hardly recognize each other within the Presbyterian family as brothers and sisters in Christ. Bruised by the rough and tumble of ecclesiastical debate, aching from the constant barrage of epithets we have hurled at one another across the theological breach, we recoil from the thought of embracing one another. But to embrace one another is exactly what we need at this point in our church's life: not because we agree with one another but because we are one in Christ by the power of God in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Our unity precedes, and is more foundationally constitutive of our life together, than is our disagreement.

Miroslav Wolf, in his recent book, Exclusion and Embrace, talks about a particularly difficult journey of faith on which he's been since Jürgen Moltmann posed a question to him one day following one of Wolf's lectures. Having heard Wolf give a talk on the need for Christians to embrace their enemies, Moltmann stood up during the question and answer period to ask him if he could embrace a etnik, the notorious Serbian fighters who had pillaged Wolf's native Croatia during the Balkan War of the 1990's. Wolf's recollection of his thoughts in that moment can be instructive to us.

Can I embrace a etnik - the ultimate other, so to speak, the evil other? What would justify the embrace? Where would I draw the strength for it? What would it do to my identity as a human being and as a Croat? It took me a while to answer, though I immediately knew what I wanted to say. "No, I cannot - but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to."

Now, clearly, our relationship to those Presbyterians who have stood on the opposite side of the issues that have been before us in the recent past is not as problematic as the relationship between Croats and Serbs. But the force of Wolf's dilemma feels peculiarly applicable. Can we, in fact, reach out in the name of Christ to those who have been our (sometimes heated) opponents? Will we respond in kind when they approach us with open arms, seeking to be reconciled with us? Wolf points out that in any aggressive act - like war or heated debate - there are no innocent victims. All have contributed to the pain and discord; everyone has gotten in his or her licks along the way. Using the physical act of embrace as his model for the spiritual act of reconciliation, Wolf points out that the first step in embracing the enemy is for both you and the enemy to open your arms wide - thereby exposing your chest and rendering you vulnerable to further attack. Are we going to wait for our opposites to be the first to quit clasping their arms across their chests and walk toward us? Or are we - in the name of the ultimately vulnerable one - going to initiate that embrace at real risk to ourselves. C-67 would encourage us to walk out of this room with arms open wide, trusting in the reconciling love of Christ. Listen to what it has to say about the "new life" we experience in Christ, a new life that becomes actualized as people walk, with arms open, toward an embrace:

The new life takes shape in a community in which people know that God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are. They therefore accept themselves and love others, knowing that no one has any ground on which to stand except God's grace.

Then there are the four particular concerns lifted up as arenas in which reconciliation was needed in America in 1967:

· Racial justice
· Peace among nations
· Poverty
· Sexual anarchy

There is also a concern that C-67 does not lift up, but which is painfully obvious to us today as we listen to the language used in the confession: the equality of women and men in the new life in Christ.

In a sense, the only question you have to ask to ascertain C-67's contemporary relevance is this, "Have we, as a society, achieved reconciliation in these spheres of American life?" Obviously, the answer would have to be a resounding, "No."

Racial injustice, while it may not be as blatant as it was in 1967, has become more insidiously complicated. Racism has become subtler in America, and therefore more difficult to weed out of American life. Racial ethnic communities are still clear that they are the target of discrimination, but conservative ideologues, with California's own Ward Connelly in the lead, have declared racism dead and seek to cancel out the few hard-won tools for dismantling racism that have been developed since the 1960s. We need to redouble our effort to work with other people of good will in our society to insist that racism is alive and well in America and that we need to be strengthening, rather than dismantling, the tools that continue to help us weed it out.

Peace among the nations? I have one word for you: "Palestine." The conflict in Palestine and Israel is but the most brightly glowing hot button area around the world. The world has real questions about whether American's new unilateralism as the "world's only remaining superpower" is a bane or a blessing. One thing is clear, however. As American Christians, we have a special responsibility to encourage our nation's leaders to use our country's unparalleled military and economic powers in the cause of true peace, a peace that can only be accomplished finally when it is accompanied by justice. The words of Pope Paul VI, spoken at about the same time as the development of C-67, still bear a powerful truth: "If you want peace, work for justice."

Poverty still strikes at the heart of the American dream. Despite all attempts to ameliorate its effects - from President Johnson's Great Society to modern-day welfare reform legislation - poverty and the despairing responses it can lead people to take, drug use, crime, and the abandonment of family life, still shape the daily existence of many in our society, especially in our inner cities and in our rural communities. Indeed, the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, and at an every accelerating pace, so that the poor have become more discouraged rather than less in the years since C-67's adoption. Despite this trend, there are voices (reaching all the way to the White House) that call for government to get out of the business of fighting poverty and leaving that battle to the churches and other non-government agencies in America. C-67 calls those of us who understand that the churches and these agencies cannot carry this burden alone - much less have an effect on the root causes of poverty - to let our voices be heard as well, calling upon government to be a partner, indeed the lead partner, in the continuing campaign to leave no child - or adult, for that matter - behind.

Let me skip over the issue of sexual anarchy for a moment, to point out the area of concern absent from the confession, formally, but made painfully obvious by the dated nature of its language, and that is the issue of the equality between men and women.

If the equality between women and men weren't such a serious issue and if the church didn't have such a checkered history in responding to it, reading C-67 today would almost make us smile at its antiquated use of "men" for "people" and the invisibility of women in its description of the church's or American life. While women have occupied positions of leadership in the Presbyterian church for more than a half-century, there clearly are still barriers to their full participation in the leadership and life of the church. You still can count on both hands (well, maybe you'd have to take off one shoe) the number of multiple-staffed churches led by a female head of staff in the PC(USA) today. Studies of pastors' ministries over time show how difficult it still is for female clergy to find the second or third call in her service and how many women leave ministry because they have grown tired of bumping into the glass ceiling that limits the places they can serve within the church. Even if we weren't facing a shortage of clergy in the Presbyterian church in the decades ahead, this would constitute a tragedy.

Finally, let me address the issue of what C-67 called "sexual anarchy." That term was not meant, as some recently have interpreted it, to say anything about the GLBT community. Rather, it addressed issues that affect every sexual human being - that is to say, all of us: our "perennial confusion" about the meaning of sex, the de-coupling of sex from procreation made possible by advances in birth control, progress in the treatment of sexually transmitted disease, the increased stress put on people's lives by urbanization, the media's exploitation of sexual images, and world overpopulation.

If I were to point out one tactical mistake made by those of us who have witnessed to the need for greater inclusion of gay and lesbian persons in the life of the church over the past several years, it would be that we were not firm enough about being clear that we did not bless, or ask the church's blessing, on all sexual relationships between homosexual persons. Rather, we should have made it clear from the beginning that we believe God blesses lifelong, monogamous commitments between homosexual persons in exactly the same way we believe that God blesses covenantal relationships between heterosexuals. Many people on the other side of the debate heard us as giving sanction to casual sex or to serial relationships between gay or lesbian persons. They perceived us to be contributing to the very kind of sexual anarchy against which C-67 so properly and forcefully argues.

In whatever discernment about homosexuality and ordination may continue into the future, it must first be grounded in a carefully rethought Christian anthropology and especially in a careful examination of how our sexuality defines our humanity and what expressions of our sexuality are faithful reflections of God's covenant love for us. We, for our part, must make a careful and biblically founded argument that it is the expression of our sexuality within a monogamous covenant that mirrors God's covenant love for Israel and the church that gives that expression its moral standing, not the gender of the persons involved.

In conclusion, let me restate my belief that we are not living our way toward "A Tale of Two Churches." Instead, as C-67 makes it abundantly clear, we are being called to live out God's gift of the unity of the church in the mode of reconciliation. We are called to be "ambassadors for Christ," first toward one another within the church and then, together, into a still hurting and divided America. May God give us an understanding of divine grace - truly, the only ground on which any of us can stand - so that we might risk opening our arms to embracing our brothers and sisters in faith, and then - joining hands with them - turning to offer ourselves in service to the world.

-- Jim Kitchens is Co-Pastor of Davis Community Church, Davis, CA

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