A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. A. Donald MacLeod is senior pastor of Newton Presbyterian Church in Newton, MA, and former chair of The Renewal Fellowship.
The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America has been engaged during the last six months in a highly-publicized civil war unprecedented in its 205-year history. To describe the trench warfare going on to a Canadian constituency, the hand-to-hand combat, would be difficult. Events are fast-breaking. Each day brings new charges and fresh disclosures. No one, at this point in mid-May, knows exactly what will explode at the forthcoming General Assembly. But two people can usefully serve to represent the ferocity of the conflict.
The one is James Brown, appointed in 1991 to be the Executive Director of the General Assembly Council. Jim Brown came from a parish in suburban Los Angeles. Arriving in Louisville it was anticipated that he would be more sensitive to concerns from the pew. Ever since he came, as the chief administrative officer of the denomination, Jim has been at the centre of controversy.
The other protagonist is Clayton Bell, a soft-spoken southern gentleman who has served what was once the largest congregation in the denomination, Highland Park in Dallas. Clayton is the son of Nelson Bell, China missionary and past moderator of the Southern Presbyterian Church. He is brother-in-law to Billy Graham. Clayton fought a costly battle to keep Highland Park in the denomination three years ago. Two-thousand-plus members left to form a Presbyterian Church in America congregation. Clayton Bell is Mr. Southern Presbyterian personified.
On February 21 of this year Clayton Bell wrote Jim Brown. The week before General Assembly Council had travelled to Dallas, convened in suburban Irving, Clayton Bell’s own “backyard.” Council had called for an open hearing before their gathering and there Bell had pled with Council for an official expression of regret about the radical feminist ecumenical conference in Minneapolis three months earlier at which some of James Brown’s staff had been very visible. The conference was igniting a conflagration among Presbyterians across the country. Clayton wanted action.
To many that Council was an acute disappointment. The perception following the meeting was that Jim Brown had persuaded Council to respond in three ways. Bunker down. Protect the leader most under attack, Mary Ann Lundy. Hire a public relations consultant to do damage control. Clayton’s reaction was immediate, his opening sentence dramatic, uncharacteristic and unprecedented. “I am not sure that the church, in my lifetime, will ever recover from the inept and foolish leadership you have given as the Executive Director of the General Assembly Council.” In his view General Assembly Council had failed to respond adequately to the turmoil created by Re-Imagining. That letter spoke for many in the church, frustrated by years of conflict and the perception that the denominational bureaucracy was out of touch and out of control. Its call for Brown’s resignation was widely circulated and spoke for the frustration and anger felt by many.
The deep conflicts in our church focused around the Re-Imagining Conference threaten to drain the spiritual and mission energy of the Presbyterian Church.
If anything, three months later, emotions are even stronger as the Presbyterian Church (USA) heads towards its 206th General Assembly, to be held June 10-17 in Wichita, Kansas. At the end of April a revised 1994 denominational budget registered a two million dollar decline in revenues for the current year. All but $200,000 of this lost income could be attributed to the Re-Imagining Conference. “The deep conflicts in our church focused around the Re-Imagining Conference threaten to drain the spiritual and mission energy of the Presbyterian Church,” reports Clifton Kirkpatrick, Director of the Worldwide Ministries Division.
What has caused such a firestorm? What is the Re-Imagining Conference and how could it have caused such extensive and pervasive damage in a denomination once as strong as the (1983 reunited) Presbyterian Church in the United States of America? Are there lessons for Canada in the present confrontation? What are the long-term implications as all main-line churches respond to extreme feminist revisioning of Christian faith?
November 4-7, 1993, at the Minneapolis Convention Center, 2200 delegates from 49 states and 27 countries attended a conference called to “Re-Imagine God.” A part of the National Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Decade, the assembly was billed as a Second Reformation. “We’re taking things forward in a way Luther and Calvin couldn’t imagine”, stated Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, one of the guest speakers. “We are serious about reimagining all that has been passed on to us through two thousand years of Christian faith.”
The conference stated that the goddess Sophia was “the Spirit of Re-Imagining.” As liturgy director Sue Seid-Martin declared: “Sophia is the suppressed part of the biblical tradition, and clearly the female face of the human psyche.” The conference directed its prayers for each speaker to her: “Bless Sophia, dream the vision, share the wisdom dwelling deep within.” And to make sure that the point was understood by the conference fifty monitors were posted to ensure, as the conference newsletter stated, “Participation is intended for ALL in the gathering – rituals are not spectator events… We thank you all for your full, active, conscious participation. May Sophia continue to bless your pilgrimage.”
Delegates were asked, at the first plenary session, “Who is your God? What does your God sound like, taste like, look like? Name God – tell each other at the table. Reimagine your God in name and image!” And at a final communal “blessing of milk and honey” two thousand women raised their glasses of coconut milk and honey as they repeated:
Our maker Sophia, we are women in your image; with the hot blood of our wombs we give form to new life. With nectar between our thighs we invite a lover, with our warm body fluids we remind the world of its pleasures and sensations. Sophia, creator God, let your milk and honey flow… We celebrate our bodiliness, our physicality, the sensations of pleasure, our oneness with earth and water.
In defending the conference, the program committee claimed that their invocation of Sophia was not goddess worship but rather the spirit of wisdom found in verses 22 to 31 of the eighth chapter of the Old Testament book of Proverbs.
Lesbianism was openly endorsed at the Conference. Melanie Morrison, co-convener of CLOUT (Christian Lesbians Out Together) called for “lesbian, bisexual and transsexual women” to come up on the platform. Applause was hard as over a hundred responded to the call. As Francis Wood, author of training and policy materials for the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Family Ministry and Human Sexuality stated, “We need to acknowledge the sacrality of sexual expression where the hallmark is mutuality… and not the… anatomically correct arrangement.” So-called lesbian “evangelist” and Presbyterian minister Jane Spahr told the conference that her theology is first of all informed by “making love with Coni.” She then challenged the church: “Sexuality and spirituality have to come together, and church, we’re going to teach you!” Referring to the distinction Presbyterians have made between those with homosexual preferences and those who actually practise a gay life-style (the so-called “practising homosexual” rubric) lesbian Methodist minister Judy Westerhof said that her partner is “not practising: She’s pretty good.”
But it was not just the sexual teaching of the conference that riled congregants across the country as they listened to tapes of the proceedings or read quotes from speeches. Virtually every major doctrine of orthodox Christianity came under attack. When asked about the Trinity keynote speaker Chinese feminist Kwok Pui-Lan stated she favoured her (Chinese) culture’s religion which has 722 gods and goddesses, but if the church would not accept 722 then three were better than one. She explained: “If you have one and only one we are even more oppressive.” Amid laughter and cheers Rev. Barbara K. Lundblad of Our Saviour’s Atonement Lutheran Church in New York City joked: “We did not last night name the name of Jesus. Nor have we done anything in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
The doctrine of the atonement itself was castigated for encouraging child abuse and family violence. Delores Williams of Union Theological Seminary, New York stated: “I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all. I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff… We just need to listen to the god within.” Referring to a woman on a crucifix displayed twenty years ago in Bloor St. United Church, Toronto, Canadian Lois M. Wilson, former moderator of the United Church of Canada and a past president of both the World and Canadian Councils, currently chancellor of Lakehead University, commented: “Christianity as practised in today’s world demonstrates more a nightmare than a vision. I think of the sculpture that was hung in a downtown Toronto church some years ago. The woman had outstretched hands in the form of a crucifix; she was naked, vulnerable and unprotected. That is, no fig leaf covering her genitals or her breasts. She was known as the crucified woman. There was shock and reaction, and so when the sculpture had initially been hung on Easter Sunday at the front of the church, by evening it had to be removed to the rear of the church. That action signaled to me that many in the religious community are unable to recognize the way in which women are being crucified daily in our communities.”
The speakers appeared to indicate little concern for even vestigial remnants of the Christian faith. As Mary Hunt, co-director of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, stated: “We shed all the excess baggage of patriarchy and assume the interwoven stance of a people doing justice or we will die trying. Whether it is Christian or not is frankly, darling, something about which I no longer give a pope.” Kwok Pui-Lan shared a similar distaste for the uniqueness of Christian faith. She affirmed categorically: “We cannot have one saviour. Just like the Big Mac… prepackaged and shipped all over the world. It won’t do. It’s imperialistic.”
As reports of the conference surfaced and spread during November and early December, there was initial disbelief that so open, aggressive and extreme a feminist position could have had so large and enthusiastic an audience. Two retired Methodist women wrote Good News (the United Methodist Church’s equivalent to Channels) complaining about coverage of the conference by the evangelical press. “We found the conference to be stimulating and thought-provoking”, they wrote, “as well as worshipful. It did offer a corrective to the false image of God often portrayed in far too many of our churches, as only male, very hierarchical, and very exclusive. Jesus said nothing in his recorded words about homosexuality.”
In response to a Leadership Alert, sent in late November to over half a million Presbyterians by the Presbyterian Lay Committee, James Brown stated to all clergy in the denomination: It “is my conviction that [the 400 Presbyterians out of the 2200 who attended the conference] went as people of faith, seeking challenge and insight and an ever deeper grounding in the living God… My hope is that we will not be overly distracted by the Minneapolis event so that we can get on with the full array of challenges and opportunities God has placed before us.” Subsequent events would dash any such hope.
James Brown’s contention was that Re-Imagining was not a Presbyterian Church (USA) conference but an ecumenical event. Unfortunately for his protestations, from the very start of planning for the conference, personnel from Louisville had been intimately involved in initiating, leading, coordinating and planning the event. Foremost among them was Mary Ann Lundy. Several of the speakers, such as Kwok Pui-Lan and Chung Hyun Kyung, were well-known to the national Presbyterian leadership. And Professor Johanna Bos of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, one of the speakers, had been a resource person and advocate at the 1993 Orlando Assembly for the full admission of self-professed, active homosexuals to the ordained ministry of word and sacrament. That Assembly had agreed (as readers of the Fall issue of Channels will be aware) to a three-year study of the issue, while at the same time reaffirming the “definitive guidance” of the 1978 Assembly that, for ordained church leaders, sexual intercourse be limited to those in a heterosexual marriage.
As always, money became the issue. $66,000 of funds from the 1987 Bicentennial Fund had been used to send international delegates to Minneapolis. Expenses of the twenty-four PCUSA staff members present had been paid from denominational funds. Sensing their powerlessness to change Louisville, angry that they had not been heard, frustrated at the refusal of the denominational bureaucracy to take reactions to Re-Imagining seriously, 269 Sessions (as of May 1) have withheld funds from General Assembly in protest.
The effect on already-shrinking denominational coffers has been catastrophic. Originally a decline of $7 million dollars from 1993 to 1994 in the national budget was forecast. This has had to be sharply increased. The most conservative recent estimates are a further 2.4 million dollar loss directly related to protests over Re-Imagining. Others suggest a more accurate figure of $8 million or $10 million dollars in lost revenue. Imponderables include the large number of elderly Presbyterians who, shocked by the innovations of the conference, have changed wills or altered trust arrangements.
The General Assembly Council, which governs the denomination between assemblies, had been scheduled to meet in Irving, Texas, the middle of February. Many sessions drafted statements of concern and sent them on to Council. Eight thousand individual letters of protest were mailed. Representatives, such as Clayton Bell, appeared at the preliminary open session in hopes that there would be a strong response. It was hoped that, at the least, there would be a letter of apology, perhaps – though this would be unprecedented – one of withdrawal and censure. However, that was not to be. Shortly before going to Irving, James Brown sat down with nine representatives of the six renewal agencies of the PCUSA and said bluntly that there would be no retraction. To the surprise of everyone he gave the perception he intended basically to stonewall about Re-Imagining. He appeared unaware of the depth of anger and pain that had been caused. Those present were dumbfounded: his close – some say mentored – relationship with Mary Ann Lundy was seen as taking precedence over concerns of the wider church. Last year Mary Ann’s nomination to a top position in the structurally reorganized and downsized church had been opposed by 42% of Council. However, he had gone ahead and insisted on her appointment in spite of fears that her presence in such a sensitive position, with her known connection with many extreme feminist positions, would prove divisive.
The February 14-16 meetings of the General Assembly Council in Irving, Texas, received a recommendation from its Executive which was rejected by a 31-32 vote. That response of the Executive to Re-Imagining had been fairly bland, but called for a personal review of Mary Ann Lundy and mandated a study of staff accountability. After extensive lobbying, threats of court action, and declarations that the General Assembly Council did not have the right to call its staff to account, a very neutral statement was approved, reaffirming certain basic theological commitment but refusing to criticize the conference, those participating, or staff involvement. A public relations firm was hired to undo any public relations damage, and salvos were fired at both The Presbyterian Layman and Presbyterians for Renewal for creating the problem with Re-Imagining in the first place. “If you don’t like the message shoot the messenger,” seemed to be the gist of the Council’s response. “If the Layman hadn’t started this, no one would have known or cared,” was the comment one heard frequently.
Louisville expressed astonishment that such discussions about feminist theology should take anyone by surprise. After all, they argued, Wisdom’s Feast: Sophia in Study Celebration, authored by two United Methodist ministers and a Roman Catholic, had been published in 1988 to wide acclaim. There one could read the very same liturgies and services of worship to Sophia used at Re-Imagining. Anyone familiar with contemporary trends in theological education – and specifically those of us in the Boston area who are close to the so-called “Cambridge (Massachusetts) scene” would hardly be surprised at goddess worship or other positions taken by radical feminists. What was all the fuss about?
The conference became a lightning rod, disclosing two kinds of theological naivete among laypeople. Well-meaning but blinkered congregants, desirous of always thinking the best of those in leadership in their denominations, assumed that this kind of teaching was limited to a few extremists and had no direct impact on them. Others – less innocent – were astonished at the rage felt because to them the theology taught at Re-Imagining could not be faulted: it helped women “feel good” about themselves. “Men need to silence this kind of thing in order to be in control,” stated Patricia Rumer, general director of Church Women United. Rev. Jeanne Audrey Powers, a consultant and an interreligious affairs officer for the United Methodist Church admitted in a recent (May 14) article of the New York Times: “In all honesty, the reaction [to Re-Imagining] took us by surprise. That was really naive.”
Publicity about Re-Imagining and its impact has been picked up by the media, and publicity about the conference has further polarized debate in the Presbyterian Church (USA). The denomination is just concluding the first year of a three-year study of the ordination of gays and lesbians to ministry. Fifty-one overtures directly related to Re-Imagining have been made to the 206th General Assembly. With few substantive issues coming before the national body, unexpected coalitions among delegates may result. However, veteran Assembly watchers anticipate a concerted effort will be made to silence all overtures in the time-honoured Presbyterian manner by referring them to an independent task-force. The Methodist House of Bishops has just done this.
A further protest initiative comes from Savannah Presbytery. Their overture calls for reaffirmation of the denial of ordination to practising homosexuals. Affirmed by other Presbyteries, the overture will probably be postponed to 1996 when the three-year study of the matter concludes. 1996 is increasingly being seen in apocalyptic terms by both sides of the debate.
At this point, James Andrews, veteran of many Assembly battles and Stated Clerk of the denomination since Reunion in 1983, previously silent, has entered the debate. Attempting to achieve middle ground he describes attacks by Christians on other Christians as “unconscionable.” “We need to solve the problem rather than win a victory,” he continues. And then with considerable insight he analyses reaction: “The meeting itself is not the cause of our problems. It is just the spark which ignited it. The problem is thirty years of unfulfilled expectations… and the disappointment and anger have reached the level of rage.” An African believer during a recent trip set him thinking. The real source of the problems the Presbyterian Church (USA) is encountering, he was told, appears to be an “inability to share an understanding of what it means to be a Christian.” Andrews concludes: “Unless his church learns to deal with it there is very little point worrying about the future of the denomination.”
Mention of thirty years takes us to the earlier debate about the Confession of 1967 and the turmoil that the former Northern, pre-Reunion, United Presbyterian Church (USA) went through during the 1960s. Lefferts Loetscher spoke in 1954 of The Broadening Church. Re-Imagining is forcing the denomination to look once again at its much prized, even vaunted, inclusiveness. How far will the rubber band go before it snaps? Since 1965 the denomination has plummeted from four-and-a-half million members to 2.7 million. An aging church, it faces at best an uncertain future. The main-line appears well side-lined.
Some look back beyond even this present century back 125 years ago to find the historical context of present divisions. Old School and New School Presbyterians, when they came together in 1870, failed to address issues raised by the original 1837 schism. That schism had started in Upper New York State, now the base of operations for lesbian “evangelist” Jane Spahr. To over-simplify, one could say the split had to do with “feelings” versus objective revelation. Today we are being asked to “share the pain” felt by our gay and lesbian sisters and brothers and ignore biblical teaching. Those unaware of history are compelled to relearn its lessons, often the hard way.
It is a perilous time in the church when separation is being openly discussed as the only solution to the church’s continuing crises.
1837 has another attraction: it is being seen as a model for denominational regrouping. As then, whole Presbyteries – Donegal and Memphis specifically – have protested, and today’s variety takes the form of withholding their per capita from Assembly. Shenango Presbytery has issued a strident declaration against homosexual ordination.
Judicatories could be split across the country as study of the homosexual issue reaches its climax in 1996. Recent expressions of opinion in Monday Morning, a weekly Presbyterian ministers’ magazine, suggests both “sides” are asking for an amicable and fair divorce so that each can get on with those specific priorities important to them. Property matters would be determined locally, congregations attaching themselves to a judicatory sympathetic to their position. The billion dollars of denominational endowments would then be up for grabs.
It is a perilous time in the church when separation is being openly discussed as the only solution to the church’s continuing crises. One group presently observing the danger of division and addressing issues head on is a new configuration called “The Coalition.” Formed out of Orlando in response to the perception it vacillated about the homosexual issue. An interconnected group is the self-styled “Genevans.” Not previously aligned with any group, this informal alliance is anxious to recover middle ground for the majority of centrist Presbyterians. Its leaders are individuals such as the Executive Presbyter of Sheppards and Lapsley Presbytery in central Alabama, Rev. William Giles. Meeting in Atlanta April 28-29 the Genevans are perceived as having the only clear strategy as the denomination heads into what could be a fractious General Assembly in Wichita. A nine-point declaration commits the Genevans “to disseminate light rather than generate heat when examining the significant issues before the church” and “to be a calm presence in the midst of chaos and division.”
Where are the grass-roots in all of this? To find out, I attended in mid-May a meeting of evangelical Presbyterian ministers from across the country in Kansas City. The pervasive feeling of these parish clergy was that of being wounded in the house of their presumed friends. Historically, there has been a strong network of churches in the denomination committed to the evangelical and Reformed faith. Almost uniformly the dozen or so “tall steeple church (membership 3,000 – 10,000) are biblically-based. Evangelicals have tried to be loyal to the denomination as far as conscience would allow. William Giles summarized the anguish of many as he wrote Louisville: “… the bulk of our Presbyterians feel ignored and deceived. They are angry….” The plaintive question asked by many clergy I spoke to at Kansas City was nowhere better articulated than by Dr. Giles: “How do I interpret to my constituents that our leaders are not listening to them and have either a death wish for our church, or are so inept as to keep shooting themselves (and us) in the foot?”
What lessons does Re-Imagining have for Canadians, Canadian Presbyterians and particularly evangelical Canadian Presbyterians? Can you afford the luxury of saying: “Canadians are not extremists. It can’t happen here.” Be warned! Again to quote Bill Giles: “I find myself harboring feelings about our national staff which I never thought possible. But then, I also find a number of our key staff are advocating positions, and trying to move us in directions, I never thought possible.”
Homosexuality is now being described as the issue facing churches – and seminaries – in the nineties. Debates about human sexuality are not new. They are no longer the exclusive preoccupation of theological and political extremists. Rev. Eunice Poething, director of the Congregational Ministries Division of the Presbyterian Church (USA), “We have a teachable moment. The conflict over differing interpretations as to what went on at the Re-Imagining Conference has shocked us into theological discourse.” One’s prayer is that both in Canada and the United States that theological discourse will be informed by an understanding of, and adherence to, the historic truths of orthodox Christianity. And with that commitment hopefully evangelicals will show deep sensitivity to, and unpatronizing compassion for, their homosexual brothers and sisters. No one sin is worse than any other.
What is highlighted by the debate is the need for biblical and theological discernment and discrimination among those in the pew. What has happened to our knowledgeable laity? What have the last two generations been taught from the pulpit? What has been going on in our seminaries? Canadians, and particularly Canadian Presbyterians, would be well-advised to initiate that discourse, and provide biblical and theological teaching that reflects historic and catholic Christian doctrine, before a shock like the Re-Imagining Conference takes place and the debate becomes polarized and personalized.
If the Presbyterian Church (USA) is made to face the consequences of its theological drift then perhaps Re-Imagining will have proved to be a gift to the church after all. Not only for ourselves, but for all other Reformed and reforming churches as well. Ultimately we are in this together. Nothing less than the survival of historic and orthodox Christianity is at stake.