‘Peace Discernment’ study points toward pacifism

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Alan F.H. Wisdom, Alan Wisdom, Non-Violence, pacifism, PCUSA, peace discernment, Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Second Helvetic Confession, war

By Alan Wisdom (@AFHWisdom)

A study process under way in the Presbyterian Church (USA) asks church members to “[s]eek clarity as to God’s call to the church to embrace nonviolence as its fundamental response to the challenges of violence, terror, and war.” The process, initiated by the 2010 PCUSA General Assembly, is expected to yield policy changes proposed by the 2014 assembly and approved by the 2016 assembly. Study materials released so far suggest that the intended result is to move the denomination in the direction of pacifism.

Historically, Presbyterians have not been pacifists. The Westminster Confession of Faith, the doctrinal standard until 1967, states that “[i]t is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate,” and in that office “they may lawfully, now under the New Testament, wage war upon just and necessary occasions” (6.128).

The Second Helvetic Confession, incorporated into the PCUSA Book of Confessions since 1967,  advises that “if it is necessary to preserve the safety of the people by war, let him [the magistrate] wage war in the name of God; provided he has first sought peace by all means possible, and  cannot save his people in any other way except by war” (5.256). The confession explicitly condemns the pacifist “Anabaptists, who, when they deny that a Christian may hold the office of a magistrate, deny also that a man may be justly put to death by the magistrate, or that the magistrate may wage war” (5.257). Both Westminster and the Second Helvetic base this teaching on Biblical passages such as the Apostle Paul’s affirmation that “the authority does not bear the sword in vain” because it is “the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4).

Presbyterians were notable for their willingness to fight in the American Revolution and subsequent U.S. wars. A November 2012 survey conducted by the PCUSA Research Office shows 90 percent of today’s Presbyterians believe war is justified “to protect our country after attack by another country.” Large majorities also support taking up arms to “protect one of our allies,” to “live up to treaties we’ve ratified,” or to “punish known backers of terrorism.” Nevertheless, the denominational structures are now weighing whether to join the Quakers, Mennonites and others who refuse to fight under any circumstances.

Leading questions

The Presbyterian Peacemaking Program has published a “Facilitator’s Guide” for congregations undertaking the new “Peace Discernment Process.” The guide asserts, “[I]f discernment is to be genuine, it cannot have predetermined outcomes; it must be truly open-ended.” Yet that same guide poses leading questions that point study participants toward particular outcomes. For example:

• “Should the PCUSA continue to rely on the ‘just war’ tradition as its basis for restraining war, or have the conditions of modern warfare and the politics and economics of war rendered our historic stance obsolete? Are there new emphases and different Biblical alternatives to consider?” The implications are: that the main purpose of the just war tradition is to “restrain war” (rather than to seek both peace and justice), that modern conditions have rendered it “obsolete,” and that the Bible puts forward a different approach.

• “In what ways does the church today practice (or fail to practice) Jesus’ message of nonviolence?” The implication is that Jesus preached a “message of nonviolence.”

• “How do we respond to the example of Jesus and the nonviolent church of the first three centuries after 17 centuries of trying to restrain violence through just war categories?” The implications are that Jesus and the early Christians were all pacifists, and that acceptance of “just war categories” came only after 300 A.D.

• “Do you, in your own life, see signs of a ‘military-industrial-congressional’ complex supporting our tendency to use force or threat of force?” The implication is that the United States uses force as a result of pressure from a venal “military-industrial-congressional complex”—not because it faces genuine security threats.

• “Is the PCUSA now being called to become a ‘peace church,’ not simply opposing particular wars but affirming nonviolence as a basic orientation toward conflict in our daily lives, in our communities, and in our world?” The implication is that the PCUSA is indeed being called to ascend the putatively higher moral ground of pacifism.

• “How can the PCUSA hasten the day when war and violence are no longer considered acceptable or inevitable means for resolving conflicts?” The implication is that the day to beat all swords into plowshares is fast upon us, and the church has the means to “hasten that day.”

Slanted reflections and prayers

The “Facilitator’s Guide” offers 16 “peace reflections” and nine prayers to direct participants’ thoughts. The authors of these selections — Union Seminary (New York) theologians James Cone and Walter Wink, Yale chaplain and Riverside Church pastor William Sloane Coffin, union leader Cesar Chavez, radical feminist author Mary E. Hunt, “urban monastic” Shane Claiborne — are almost uniformly heroes of the pacifist left. Hunt, for instance, is cited as saying that peace “means thinking the unthinkable, that we might just call a halt, yesterday, to war.”

To balance all the pacifists, there is one “peace reflection” from a presumed supporter of just wars, General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. But Eisenhower is not quoted explaining why it was necessary to resist Hitler in World War II or Stalin during the Cold War. Instead this is the selection drawn from the supreme allied commander: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” One is left with the (false) impression that the general regretted D-Day.

The guide would have study participants recite a “Litany for Peace” that asks God to deliver them from “national vanity that poses as patriotism,” “trusting in the weapons of war and mistrusting the councils of peace,” and “groundless suspicions and fear that stand in the way of reconciliation.” There are no prayers of thanksgiving or intercession for soldiers, sailors and airmen who risk their lives to defend their country.

The recommended “Resources for Further Study” tilt in the same direction. Several dozen champion nonviolence in theory or practice; only one comes from a scholar (James Turner Johnson of Rutgers University) who forthrightly maintains that today’s America can fight and has fought just wars.

Some recalcitrant Presbyterians might still be tempted to answer “no” to the question about whether the PCUSA is “now being called to become a ‘peace church.’” But they would find little information to undergird their position. The just war passages from the Westminster and Second Helvetic Confessions, for example, are not mentioned anywhere in the study materials.

‘Nonviolence’ as ‘central theme of Jesus’ ministry’

The main resource provided to help study participants answer the questions is a “Peace Discernment Interim Report” received by the 2012 General Assembly. “Matters of social and economic justice hold a central place in the Bible,” the report asserts (p. 19). It portrays the abstract, negative concept of “nonviolence” — a 20^th century term that Jesus never used — as “a central theme of Jesus’ public ministry” (19). Jesus lived “a prophetic and nonviolent life that threatened both the Roman and temple authorities,” according to the report (10). Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God with power to forgive sins and grant eternal life go unmentioned.

The “Peace Discernment” report reduces Christ to an exponent of a “third way strategy that—rather than fight evil or flee it—resists evil through nonviolent means, an approach that outflanks and reverses aggression, sometimes by choosing to suffer” (16). It downplays the “violent imagery” in Jesus’ parables and other New Testament passages that show God’s anger and determination to destroy sin. The report excuses Jesus’ attack on the moneychangers in the temple, remarking that “he stopped short of violence against persons” (10). Old Testament instances in which God commanded Israel to wage war are products of a superficial and primitive mentality, it suggests. The report rejects “the myth of redemptive violence” (23). It notably refrains from characterizing Jesus’ death as an atonement for sin.

“The first Christians lived according to a nonviolent code,” the interim report claims. “Indeed, there is no affirmation of killing or war anywhere in the writings of the early church” (11). The document challenges “Christians today who interpret the apostle Paul as giving divine sanction to violence and war” (12) in Romans 13. In the report’s version of history, it was only after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine that “Christians began to take up arms on behalf of the Roman Empire, sometimes with inducements of money, property and power” (12).

This simplistic portrait of early Christians as Gandhian pacifists ignores the work of scholars such as Peter Leithart. In his book Defending Constantine (InterVarsity Press, 2010), Leithart explores the complexity of early Christian attitudes toward war. Long before Constantine, going back to the centurion Cornelius in Acts 10, there were Christians who served in the Roman army and were accepted in the Church. Leithart concludes, “The church was never united in an absolute opposition to Christian participation in war; the opposition that existed was in some measure circumstantial, based on the fact that the Roman army demanded sharing in religious liturgies that Christians refused; and once [after Constantine] military service could be pursued without participating in idolatry, many Christians found military service a legitimate life for a Christian disciple” [emphasis in original].

A key to early Christian attitudes was the distinction between authorized and unauthorized uses of force. Individual Christians were to renounce the right of self-defense, in obedience to Jesus’ instructions in the Sermon on the Mount. Rulers, by contrast, were ordained by God to wield the sword to protect their subjects. But the PCUSA’s “Peace Discernment” study takes no notice of any such distinctions between individual and ruler, Church and State. It lumps all “violence” together. This conflation of categories becomes evident when the interim report asks rhetorically: “As a church and as a society, should we learn to move from violence to nonviolence, from war-making to peacemaking, from a permanent war economy to a sustainable peace economy, from being citizens of an empire to members of God’s peaceable kingdom?” (23) It does not contemplate the possibility that U.S. Presbyterians might simultaneously be devoted members of God’s kingdom and good citizens of the nation in which God placed them.

America as ‘violent and unjust,’ driven by fear of imagined enemies

The report casts doubt upon whether there might be legitimate reasons for war. It refers to “those we call our enemies” (2) — as if the hostility were merely a figment of our imagination. (When Jesus commanded us to “love your enemies,” by contrast, he was assuming that we would have real enemies who mean us ill — as he had real enemies who plotted his death.) The report puts “war on terror” in quotes (15), as if to question the threat from terrorist movements. It speaks of “the fear that drives our [U.S.] military policy.”

The interim report portrays U.S. defense efforts as a base conspiracy of the “congressional-military-industrial complex” (14) bent on preserving profits and power. America’s wealth comes out of the barrel of a gun, in this dark vision: “We maintain our privileged economic position in the world through U.S. military might, as well as through military aid and weapons sales to governments around the world…. Militarization makes corporate-led globalization possible.” (18) The report describes the U.S. as “a national security state” in “an almost permanent state of war” (15). “Without credible threats to the United States itself,” it asks insinuatingly, “have we come to value military power for its own sake?” (14)

This jaundiced view of U.S. military policy fits into a larger leftist critique of America. The authors of the interim report insist, “We thus believe there is an urgent need today for U.S. Presbyterians to question the extent to which violence and injustice pervade our society and dominate our relations with one another and with other nations” (4). They offer a half-dozen anecdotal bits of evidence to prove that “[v]iolence pervades American culture” (17).

There is also the “structural violence” that includes “the patterns of inequality and exclusion called the ‘isms’ of racism, sexism, classism, ethnocentrism, and nationalism, as well as homophobia” (18). The report complains that a “myopic focus” on individual prejudice “stymies people’s understanding of the more insidious institutional and cultural forms of the isms that crush the human spirit and deny people access to adequate food, water, shelter, education, health care and self-determination” (18). It warns: “We are also doing violence to the earth and its creatures, depleting precious natural resources, and causing a massive extinction of species.” (19)

The report fails to note any evidence to that might contradict its grim image. There is no acknowledgment that U.S. violent crime rates have plummeted over the last 20 years, that race relations and environmental conditions have improved markedly over the past half-century, that the U.S. military is shrinking as a proportion of the federal budget and the nation’s economy, or that women and gays have made tremendous gains.

Military force ‘impotent,’ nonviolence ‘successful’ against worst dictatorships

The “Peace Discernment” report affirms “an increasing sense of the impotence of military might” (3). “At the same time,” it boasts, “there is growing recognition that nonviolent direct action can be a powerful, alternative means of responding to conflict, as it has proven successful in struggles for justice, human rights, and self-determination around the world — even overthrowing some of the most brutal dictatorships the world has seen” (3). The report cites several examples to show that “[n]onviolent  people power movements have shown themselves capable of overthrowing dictators, thwarting coups d’etat, defending against invasions and occupations, challenging unjust systems, promoting human rights, and resisting genocide” (22). In this telling, “nonviolent action” is all upside — it’s “Jesus’ third way” (22), it’s the moral high ground, and it’s supposedly the most successful approach — and there is no downside.

The report pays no attention to counter-examples: that nonviolence was not successful in Tienanmen Square in 1989, that it was not successful in Iran in 2009, that it has not been successful against dictatorships such as the Castros in Cuba and the generals in Burma. It was military force that defeated the Axis powers in World War II, that ended genocide in Rwanda and the Balkans, that toppled tyrants in places like Iraq and Libya. In general, nonviolence does not work against “the most brutal dictatorships the world has seen.” It works better against more moderate regimes that have a conscience that restrains them from shedding too much innocent blood.

The interim report presents the current “peace discernment process” as a follow-up to earlier General Assembly statements on war-peace issues. “Peacemaking: The Believer’s Calling” and other statements from the 1980s were sharply critical of the U.S. stance in the Cold War. Resolutions in the last decade condemned the Iraq war as “unwise, illegal, and immoral” and urged withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Summarizing this record of opposition to almost every U.S. military involvement since Vietnam, the report states, “The current position of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), then, tilts strongly toward peace” (9). The new study process appears designed to tilt that position all the way over into pacifism. It remains to be seen whether Presbyterians are willing to take that last step away from the mainstream Christian “just war” tradition that has been their historic heritage.

Originally published at Layman.org.

Notable Protestants Defend Marriage

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Barton Gingerich, Chuck Colson, family, homosexuality, LGBT, marriage, Presbyterian Church (USA), Robert Gagnon, Russell Moore, Salt and Light, Southern Baptist, Union University

Russell Moore (Photo Credit: Union University)

by Barton Gingerich (@bjgingerich)

At the start of May, Union University was graced with the presence of notable evangelical theologians who commented on the issues of homosexuality, marriage, the church, and society. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore joined the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Robert Gagnon at Union’s conference, “Salt and Light in the Public Square: Charles Colson’s Legacy and Vision.”

Russell Moore prominently serves as the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s departing dean and will soon succeed retiring Richard Land as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Commenting on the marriage debate, Moore worried, “There are many people in America—including evangelicals—who fear they will be [notorious segregationist] George Wallace, Sr., listening to their children rebuking them for a history that’s moving beyond them.” He acknowledged three common approaches to address the issue.

“Moral Majoritarianism” remains the most common approach “at the populist level.” Moore summarized the position as “We are standing with the silent majority of Americans, thus we can move this and sway this politically.” One assumes, “Most people are like us” (made more winsome by the loud yet truly small 1960s counterculture). “That kind of language is not helpful [for the marriage debate],” Moore contended, “because what a Christian view of reality from the beginning is that the state ought not to define marriage at all. The state merely recognizes something that is already existing in nature.”

Many American Christians also assume a “moral libertarian approach,” in which the church hides “in the opposite corner…Somehow we can find a way to be Christians without engaging such questions at all.” Moore reported he has talked to many young pastors of growing churches who share this sympathy. “We already tried that with the divorce culture, and how did that work out for you?” he quipped, “The state’s attitude towards divorce hasn’t only caused social harm…but also has influenced people in our religious communities to see marriage in a different way.” Moore concluded, “Evangelicals have been slow-change sexual revolutionaries…Many now wonder if they can be conscientious objectors in the marriage redefinition debate.” The SBTS dean believed the Gospel is at stake in this argument. “You are not calling sinners to repentance,” Moore warned, “When we do not speak holistically of (as the Scripture puts it) sin and righteousness and judgment, the people around us know that we are afraid.”

Dr. Moore touted an “engaged communitarianism” as the best response. It “isn’t arbitrary” that marriage functions as an “icon” for Christ’s relationship with His Church. Of course, Moore clarified, “to see the marriage issue within the context of the Gospel” does not discount natural law. Christians do not have to make a choice between two options. “Without [marriage], there is a lack of human flourishing,” the Southern Baptist leader explained, “[There is a view] that we want to keep marriage as a privilege for heterosexual people, and we don’t want marriage expanded to other people who want this…What we are actually after is the complementarity.” Moore graciously advised, “Our neighbors are not our opponents. Our neighbors are often primarily afraid of the voice of God, just as we were before our regeneration and conversion…They are not uniquely held by the devil…We are telling our neighbor, ‘You are not defined by your desires.”

Renowned Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor Robert Gagnon shared a summary of his exhaustive expertise on the homosexuality issue. He boldly announced, “A lot of Christians like to play dead on this issue, and that is because there is a price to pay for speaking out clearly on this particular matter. Because, as you know, in this particular society, if you continue to hold to a male-female requirement in sexual ethics as foundational for all other sexual norms, you will be treated as the moral equivalent of a racist, pure and simple. That’s the intent.” Gagnon started by claiming that Jesus’ speech in the nineteenth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel is normative for all sexual behavior. “For Jesus, marriage is not just a cultural construct. It’s an institution ordained by God…God intended for sexual unions to be binary,” Gagnon proclaimed. The biblical ideal of complementarity between unlike parts of a whole and monogamy forbids not only homosexuality, but also incest and polygamy, including the “serial polygamy” in divorce culture. He noted that idolatry and sexual immorality (pornea) are St. Paul’s top two concerns in the epistles.

Some evangelicals opine that all sin is of equal offense (which, Gagnon noticed, finds no Scriptural warrant). Since all lust and thus commit “adultery of the heart,” Christians need to lay off attacks on homosexual behavior. Gagnon, however, pointed out that adultery of the heart means Jesus does not bend the Law for innate urges to do something (quite devastating to LGBT apologists trying to change ecclesiastical sexual standards). Other feckless critics complain that Jesus did not explicitly forbid homosexual acts. Gagnon finds this hermeneutic sadly wanting: “I have never heard a pastor preach that you should never have sex with your mother. It is not assumed that you get a free pass, but instead that this is so far beyond the pale, it does not have to be addressed.” “Faith isn’t simply the proclamation of the truth; it’s a life,” the seminarian revealed.

Professor Gagnon continued to explore the themes of marriage in the Genesis account. Highlighting Eve’s creation from Adam’s side (or rib), Gagnon illustrated through the Hebrew language that woman is “an indivisible part to the once-complete whole.” Marriage is “a reconstitution of the divided parts” of male and female. In this view, incest is bad because it is sexual union with someone who is too much the structurally same. The same dilemma remains for homosexuality: gay or lesbian couples are “too much alike in their embodied existence.” Gagnon also pointed out that many “cutting edge” ideas regarding homosexuality (such as orientation) existed even in the ancient world.

The Pittsburgh Seminary instructor encouraged his audience to attend to the example of St. John the Baptist. He said, “John the Baptist criticized an autocratic despot in Galilee for sexual misconduct…He criticized behavior that he recognized as abhorrent and against the welfare of the society as a whole. Jesus was baptized by this figure. Presumably he shares some agreement with the person from whom He received His baptism.”

If nothing else, these scholarly presentations prove that evangelical witness regarding marriage does not fit the stereotype offered in the entertainment and news industry. They are not hypocritical, foolish, or bigoted. Instead, Gagnon and Moore offer level-headed, powerful arguments that find steady footing on firm ground. May their tribe increase.

Presbyterians Tout Community Gardens as ‘Act of Resistance’

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Ecumenical Advocacy Days, food justice, Presbyterian Church (USA)

By Alan F.H. Wisdom

People who grow tomatoes in a garden patch may regard the endeavor as a mere seasonal pastime; however, panelists at a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) conference discerned deeper theological and political significance. The Rev. Ashley Goff, Minister of Spiritual Formation at Church of the Pilgrims in Washington, DC, exalted “growing as an act of resistance,” “compost as resurrection,” and “eating as an act of remembrance.”

In a presentation of slides and commentary at the April 5 “Food Justice” conference, Goff described her church’s “Sacred Greens” garden that supplies vegetables for the congregation’s “open table” lunch on Sundays. She disdained store-bought produce: “So the tomato pretty much represents hell, right? So the tomato represents migrant workers…. The tomato was actually created to make the trip from California to Harris Teeter [grocery chain] in Virginia. But we are resisting this model of a food system that is just absurd, that exploits and uses people. We are resisting a powerful dominating system by growing tomatoes.”

“The garden is a never-ended possibility of creativity,” Goff rhapsodized. It represents “embodiment,” as “people are using their bodies” in a “whole beautiful way of being outside together.” The young minister announced, to the delight of the gathered Presbyterian activists, that “we are going to start growing hops so that we can brew our own beer”—perhaps enabling a different kind of transcendence.

Goff mentioned that the “Sacred Greens” gardeners had experienced problems with rats eating their tomatoes, and consequently were acquiring cats to hunt the rats. She did not offer a theological interpretation of this episode.

Although the carrots, eggplants, beans, and such were intended for church lunches, Goff had no objection to human passersby helping themselves. With anti-capitalist bravado echoing 1960s radical Abby Hoffman, she declared: “You cannot steal food from us…. It’s not really our food to begin with. We want to have signs that say, like, ‘Free food. No questions asked.’”

Goff trumpeted the garden as a sort of theological manifesto: “The uncontained, spaceless God is our God of our Sacred Greens garden—a God not contained by human insight.” She invited her audience: “Come to our garden in mid-summer, and it looks like an uncontained God.” She did not explain how this quasi-pantheistic “uncontained God” was related to the God who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.

Referring to the garden, or to the theology it represented in her mind, Goff proclaimed: “This is where the future of Church of the Pilgrims rests. You can take those books on church growth and management, leadership development and recycle them, burn them into ashes, and turn them into compost. I’ll take composted soil and the stings of honeybees and the sharing of food any day as a means of growth and healing and justice-making.” The PCUSA-affiliated Church of Pilgrims, located in the hip Dupont Circle neighborhood, reported 94 members in 2011—down from 140 a decade earlier.

The second speaker on the “Models for Food Justice Organizing” panel also promoted community gardens, albeit less dramatically. Cynthia White, Director of the PCUSA Committee on Self-Development of People (SDOP), told of how her committee supported a number of community-based agricultural and food-related projects.

SDOP, White said, was particularly concerned about “food deserts”—areas with “little or no access to stores that offer fresh fruit, vegetables, and affordable food needed to maintain a healthy diet.” She described a number of SDOP-funded projects to address the problem: a Sudanese-American church that had a garden out back, an Appalachian community that banded together to buy and transport healthy food, a group on the South Side of Chicago that planted a garden and sponsored a farmers’ market, and a cooperative established among food cart operators in downtown Chicago.

White praised the Oakland Avenue Community Garden in Detroit as a bright spot amidst an “urban disaster area.” She recounted that the community garden had been approached by Whole Foods Market about the possibility of becoming a supplier for the chain. But Oakland Avenue leaders “realized they weren’t ready yet, so they said, ‘No, not right now.’”

The SDOP director briefly noted a SDOP-backed group that persuaded a major grocery chain to open a store in an under-served area of southwest Seattle. It seemed likely, although she did not remark on the fact, that this single outpost of corporate America probably delivered a larger volume of affordable food to poor consumers than all the community gardens combined.

PCUSA Workshop, Study Point toward Higher Taxes

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Christian Iosso, Presbyterian Church (USA), taxes

By Alan F.H. Wisdom (@afhwisdom)

“The issue of the time is how much [economic] inequality is tolerable.” So declared the Rev. Christian Iosso, Coordinator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), at the conclusion of a workshop on “Raising Taxes and Raising Crops.” The workshop, part of the April 5 “Food Justice” conference, was also billed as a report from an ACSWP team commissioned by the 2012 PCUSA General Assembly to study the U.S. tax system.

Iosso’s take on the issue was that, at minimum, current levels of inequality were intolerable. “We’re all experiencing, like the frog in the hot pot, this crazy imbalance of where the money is going in society,” he asserted. “The culture of greed has gone too far.”

The ACSWP coordinator was grim about the state of the U.S. economy and society. “We see the young who have no clear career paths open anymore,” he said. “In a society where there’s no hope of economic mobility for many people, then there becomes a lot of corruption, a lot of cheating.”

In the face of such economic and moral crises, the solution favored throughout the workshop was to raise taxes on the rich. To make this argument, Iosso introduced Dr. Edith Rasell, an economist who holds the position of Minister for Economic Justice in the United Church of Christ (UCC). Rasell, who is also a member of the PCUSA team studying tax policy, asked and answered the question, “Why is progressivity [higher tax rates on higher incomes] better?”

Rasell remarked that “we all owe to society” for the “social capital”—infrastructure, knowledge, patterns of cooperative action—that has been built up over the generations. Those who “have a lot of money” have benefited more and therefore “can afford to pay more.” Her assumption was that government was the main source of this social capital, and paying taxes to the government was the main way to settle the debt that “we all owe to society.” The UCC economist saw government as entitled not only to extract a proportionate share of everyone’s income, but also to impose higher tax rates on the wealthy to redistribute their income to others.

“The federal income tax, despite all its flaws, is the most progressive tax we have,” Rasell stressed, “and never let it be done away with.” Iosso suggested that the income tax could be made still more progressive by going after funds that the wealthy had stashed in overseas accounts. “What if the tax haven stuff reveals that the [top] one percent really do have a spectacular amount that they’re tapped into?” he asked. “Then taxing them more adequately really does yield a surprising amount.”

Rasell handed out and shared snippets from a paper she had written for the UCC on “The Tax System: A Matter of Faith, Fairness, and Flourishing Communities.” In the paper she locates the “theological and biblical foundations” of modern fiscal policy in various scriptural admonitions addressed to the early Church: the Great Commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39); Jesus’ warning that all will be judged by how they treat the stranger in need (Matt. 25:31-46); and Paul’s appeal to the Corinthian Christians to send relief to their impoverished brethren in Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8:1-15).

“We are called to generosity and we need not fear scarcity,” Rasell states in the paper. She sees this theological principle embodied in today’s welfare state: “In a modern society caring and sharing occur in many ways including, very importantly, through a system of progressive taxation that pays for a social safety net, the universal provision of public services, and opportunities for all.” In the UCC official’s view, apparently, paying taxes counts as “generosity” and government entitlement programs are the fulfillment of the command to love one’s neighbor. She refuses to acknowledge any “scarcity” that might limit the scope of taxes that the government collects or benefits that it dispenses.

Rasell looks to the state to solve almost all social problems: “In a nation of 310 million people and a world of over six billion, only government—of, for, and by the people—has the potential to raise sufficient resources and put in place the structures and institutions that can fill our unmet needs and provide for the common good.” Since the needs are great, she insists: “More revenue is needed; taxes must be raised.”

Rasell’s paper proposes to levy heavier taxes on capital gains, carried interest, estates of the deceased, and corporate profits. She backs a new tax on financial transactions and wants to recapture revenue now lost through tax deductions and credits. Nowhere does Rasell suggest any moves to lighten the burden of taxation. She never addresses the possibility that taxes might at some point become excessive, strangling economic initiative. The prophet Samuel warned the Israelites against a king who would “take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and courtiers” (1 Sam. 8:15). But in Rasell’s thinking there seems to be no upper limit to the share of wealth that the government can claim for itself.

If this is the direction in which the PCUSA tax policy study is pointed, it appeared to enjoy the enthusiastic support of the Presbyterian activists attending the April 5 workshop. When Rasell polled the roughly 20 audience members about whether they regarded their taxes as too high, too low, or about right, almost all responded that their taxes were too low and should be raised. The UCC official expressed surprise at this response, noting that other church audiences might have taken a different view on taxes.

Presbyterians, Homosexuality, and Book of Confessions

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Book of Confessions, Heidelberg C, Heidelberg Catechism, More Light Presbyterians, Presbyterian Church (USA)

 

Jeff Gissing | @jeffgissing | jeffgissing.com

In 2008 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) was overtured to make several changes to the Heidelberg Catechism, one of our confessional standards.

Most controversial of these was the request to redact any negative reference to homosexuality from the catechism. The rationale espoused at General Assembly—where the overture was approved and a special study committee formed—was that of historical accuracy. The drafters of the original catechism, we were told, made no mention of homosexuality and any reference to it had been introduced by way of the homophobic machinations of subsequent English translators. Certainly, it was inferred, making this change had little or nothing to do with removing a confessional barrier to the “full inclusion” of GLBTQ in the church. Instead, it has everything to do with the historical integrity of the church’s confessions.

This claim rings hollow as can be demonstrated by the document “Frequently Asked Questions About Correcting the Heidelberg Catechism in the Book of Confessions,” produced by advocacy group More Light Presbyterians and viewable here.

The document makes two claims that are inconsistent with one another: that historical accuracy is the chief reason for the amendment and that the Heidelberg Catechism is simply the preserved remains of 16^th century Christian belief. If the latter is the true then the case for amending it fails since the catechism has no binding role in the life of the church today.

The debate centers on the version of the catechism found in the Book of Confessions with its inclusion of the words “homosexual perversion.”

Q/A 87. “Can those who do not turn to God from their ungrateful, impenitent life be saved?”

Certainly not! The Scripture says, ‘Surely you know that the unjust will never come into possession of the kingdom of God. Make no mistake: no fornicator or idolater, none who are guilty either of adultery or of homosexual perversion, no thieves or grabbers or drunkards or slanderers or swindlers, will possess the kingdom of God.’ – Book of Confessions, 4.087

Other versions of the catechism translate the German literally, for example:

By no means; for the Scripture declares that no unchaste person, idolater, adulterer, [ ] thief, covetous man, drunkard, slanderer, robber, or any such like, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

The second version clearly omits (as marked by the brackets) any reference to homosexual practice. Yet the writers of the catechism envisioned their task as one of arranging the Scriptures as answers to questions so that young children and new Christians could learn the content of their faith.

It seems then that the Question/Answer 87 are referring to the words of Paul to the Corinthians (cf. Ephesians 5:1-20):

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, ESV)

The reality is that the addition of the term neither changes nor alters the meaning of the question and answer (Q/A 87, 4.087) since it is consistent with the Scripture reference on which the question/answer is based. The only plausible reason for editing the document is a thinly veiled attempt to countermand the voice of the General Assembly that adopted the Catechism as part of our Book of Confessions.

What is laughable is the incredulity demonstrated by More Light Presbyterians in the face of the charge that the term “homosexual perversion” was omitted in the original because the document was to be used in catechizing children and such references were deemed to be inappropriate a plausible explanation.

To this they respond—in effect—how dare you impose “our current beliefs about childhood” onto the writers of the catechism! To do so, they claim, would be to “disrespect the choices the actual writers made.” Simply pick up the Presbyterian Hymnal and you will discover a “monument to disrespecting the choices of the actual writers.” Hymns are restructured and materially changed to remove references unpalatable to our contemporary sensibilities, but it is only problematic to do this when such an alteration undermines or materially alters the intent of the writer. This is not the case with the catechism found in the Book of Confessions.

In a moment a phalanx of progressive Presbyterians has morphed into a gaggle of fundamentalists unwilling to believe that the “original” can be anything other than sacrosanct, “Who are we to second-guess the wisdom and intentions of those German divines?” Apparently this is truer for a confession—at least in this instance—than it is for the Bible.

The document unambiguously states that the reference to “homosexual perversion” should be removed because it “is the only reference to homosexuality in the whole Book of Confessions.” The implication is, of course, that once this single barrier in the Book of Confessions is removed then, given our General Assembly’s inability to come to any consensus on the teaching of Scripture on sexuality, we can progress further in our path to affirming GLBTQ Christians and even redefining marriage.

This reasoning is only hinted at and cloaked, instead, with the language of accuracy: “as Presbyterians, we pride ourselves on our history, and placing a faithful English translation of the original into our Book of Confessions is the best way to honor our tradition and the wisdom of our forebears.” I find it incredible to imagine Zacharius Ursinus turning in his grave because someone added “homosexual perversion”—a biblical reference—to his catechism.

The More Light document also shows that our understanding of the role of confessions in the life of the church is dysfunctional. In a poignant example of our inability to conceive of confessions as useful as anything other than relics of prior expressions of the faith, I cite the debacle and ensuing controversy from the 220^th General Assembly (2012) on the issue of marriage. The question—in brief—is whether a motion to General Assembly can be ruled “out or order” on the basis of its violating the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA)?

A delegate asked this with respect to marriage. He cited the fact that at least three confessions—part of the constitution of the church—define marriage as between a man and a woman. The question was referred to the Advisory Committee on the Constitution whose representative effectively stated that the confessions of the church cannot function as part of the constitution of the church—at least with respect to issues raised by conservatives—because they represent “broad theological perspectives,” and “span a thousand years” and some of them “are in disagreement.”

What he failed to acknowledge is that none of them disagree on the definition of marriage. In a single ruling, the entire Book of Confessions officially became optional to the life of the church.[1] This prompted the Moderator to issue a clarifying statement that fails to clarify much of anything.[2] This dysfunctional view is consistent with that espoused by More Light in their Heidelberg document.

The claim that the Heidelberg’s original version is sacrosanct is incompatible with a subsequent line of argumentation pursued in the FAQ document. If, as the authors state, “The Book of Confessions was created to preserve the wisdom of our ancestors” we must ask a subsequent question: what bearing has that wisdom on the life of the church today?

The document answers this question by telling us that in adopting the Heidelberg Catechism the United Presbyterian Church was not expressing its theological belief. Instead, it was mummifying the beliefs of former generation of reformed Christians so that today’s Presbyterians will be able to access—and presumably disregard—the “wisdom of our ancestors”?

Emphatically, the authors state, “The Confession of 1967 is the statement of faith of that generation [who adopted the Heidelberg], and it is helpful to recall that it does bring up sexual relations in section 9.47 without mentioning homosexuality.” The argument from silence is less than persuasive at the best of times and here it places the reader in the unenviable position of attempting to enter the mind of the drafters of the Confession and of setting the Confession in opposition to Scripture.

What More Light Presbyterians are telling us is that when the writers of the Heidelberg did not include “homosexual perversion” in their citation it was decisive and sacrosanct, yet when the General Assembly adopted a version of the catechism—with the full knowledge that it contained this phrase—their decision was ill-informed and open to alteration. This seems inconsistent at best, and special pleading at worst. They are also suggesting that the drafters of the Confession of 1967 were endorsing homosexuality since they failed to affirmative mention it as an example of “sexual confusion.” This seems implausible.

In short, there is no compelling reason to edit or alter the Heidelberg Catechism as found in our current Book of Confessions. The version there differs from the original German, but in a way that is consistent with that original version. The effort to change it is part of a broader strategy aimed at removing every systemic or structural barrier to both affirming homosexuality and to endorsing same sex marriage. The attempt to do this is a tacit acknowledgment by progressives that, despite arguments to the contrary, The Book of Confessions has some bearing on the life of the church today. If it didn’t the outcry to alter the catechism would not exist.

The problem arises in figuring out precisely what that role is. Perhaps it’s easier to say what they are not. The several creeds, confessions, and catechisms found in our Book of Confessions are not museum pieces, remnants of the beliefs of a bygone age that have little or no bearing on the church today. That this view has become so prevalent in the Presbyterian Church (USA) goes a long way to explaining our current state as a theologically impoverished church, which looks to political processes to answer theological questions. Until we can amend this aspect of our shared life, there’s precious little hope of any meaningful change.

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[1] For more analysis see Viola Larson, “The Book of Confessions: A controversy with the Moderator, the Stated Clerk, and Paul Hooker of the PC(USA).” Available online: http://naminghisgrace.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-book-of-confessions-controversy.html

[2] http://www.pcusa.org/resource/nature-confessions-reformed-tradition-pcusa/