An Inkling
With a new week I’m renewing my quest to offer a daily blog on why I believe our denomination has crossed a line toward unfaithfulness by removing our “fidelity and chastity” ordination standards. I’m bearing down on this, doing a daily blog rather than a weekly blog, because I want to get on to other topics. I don’t want to stretch this matter out to two months! There is so much ministry to do, and so many other matters to address. But, given the power of these changes to undermine how the gospel finds expression in our denomination, I’m pressing on with this topic until I run out of reasons!
For today I want to think about part of the rationale offered by the revisionists for dropping “fidelity and chastity” – namely, fatigue with the fight. We’ve been fighting about this for over 30 years. I’ve been ordained 30 years this month, and I’ve never been part of a presbytery in which this was not the elephant in the room. We’re all tired of it. And so a winning vote margin was gained for dropping the standard largely through the well-meaning but naïve rationale that we’ll just kick the discussion from the national level down to presbyteries and sessions, where we all know each other well, and we can give each other space, and voila – finally, peace in the church. (Forgive me the caricature of that rationale, but it is only a slight caricature.)
With that line of thought in mind, a bunch of former General Assembly Moderators wrote the church immediately after the vote saying, “Ok, we’ve had our debate and vote. Now let’s get on with the mission and work of the church.” Would that we could.
In different context my brother, Kirby, and I have been able to bring that off. He’s a Presbyterian Minister too, and has been on the other side of this debate from me. When we were in the same presbytery, we found ourselves standing in opposite lines at microphones for the endless debates. But for the family’s sake, we decided some years ago to leave such topics aside. That means that our family conversations don’t have the depth they once did, lest we somehow pull the bell string of “the issue.” But all in all we’ve been able to get on with being family.
We could do that in the family because we don’t have to vote. Not so with presbyteries and sessions. We have to vote, over and over. And now, not on a clearly stated denominational standard to be applied graciously in a particular situation, but on a fuzzy standard to be applied one way in one place and another way in another place, depending on who has the vote margin. The elephant in the room just doubled in size. And oh, the shoveling to come!
Tomorrow another reason…
Blessings,
Keith
