The Berkley Blog

Where's the General Assembly Stuff?

2008-07-03T17:26:00.001-07:00

During General Assembly, roughly June 19-29, I was blogging frequently on the Presbyterian Action blog, titled "PresbyActBlog (click here to go there).

I have signed my name on all the PresbyAct Blog postings I wrote. Other postings are by my colleague Alan Wisdom and my wife, Debbie Berkley.

I'm switching back to this blog now that General Assembly is over.

Two Tightly Controlled Elections

2008-06-08T01:26:00.000-07:00

The newspaper on Saturday carried another sad and shocking story from Zimbabwe. "President Robert Mugabe banned party rallies and detained his rival" the teaser read in the Seattle Times.

Okay, so why did my mind flash immediately to the coming Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly's election of a Stated Clerk?

The newspaper teaser sounded just all too familiar:

Someone in office and expecting to win gets challenged.
All challenger campaign rallies are banned. (In our case, the total campaigning ban for stated clerk is due to new standing rules first proposed by the office from which the candidate in power is running. The rules were then approved without consideration by General Assembly in a consent agenda. Strangely, these new rules happen to have sprung from a process first kicked off by allegations that supporters of the present Stated Clerk had attempted to manipulate the previous election.)
Although of course no rival is being physically detained, the challengers might as well be, for election regulations have lowered a cone of silence over them.
Somehow challengers must try to become known and elected anyway, even given the many imposed disadvantages.

Think maybe President Mugabe got hold of our new rules and picked up some tips on how to run an election from a position of incumbent power? We Presbyterians apparently have written the book!

Were it so, it wouldn't be the first gift the church has given Mugabe. He rose to power as a violent rebel commander, funded in part by World Council of Churches dollars earmarked for liberation causes. The PCUSA still funds the WCC to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars a year.

Remember when Mugabe's men shot down an airplane carrying missionary families and then murdered those who survived the crash? That didn't keep him from being the darling of WCC liberationists, however, and the honored host of a WCC assembly, once he had seized power.

Ah, your per capita dollars at work!

Why Not a Marriage of Four in California?

2008-06-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

In San Jose, the very city where General Assembly will be held in a couple of weeks, Tony, Kevin, Sandi, and Kaye have set themselves up as a group marriage. They believe in polyamory, and they practice it. Boy, do they ever practice it--Sandi with Kaye, Tony with Sandi, Tony with Kaye, Sandi with Kevin, Kaye with Kevin! So what's holding back Kevin and Tony as a duo--the prudes!

Given the miserable ruling of the California Supreme Court about same-sex marriage, one wonders why not groups of whatever size being recognized as marriages. Logically, what's to hinder it? The majority of the Supreme Court ruled that due to "the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians...." [emphasis added].

Tony, Sandi, Kaye, and Kevin are Californians. Presumably they, too, have a fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, which presumably is guaranteed as their basic civil right as Californians by the California Constitution.

But why just gay couples?

If straight people and presumably now gay people have such a right to marry whomever they choose, wouldn't bisexual and polyamorous people also have such a right? What's so sacrosanct about the number two, that marriage should be limited to such a small number, anyway, if we're making this up as we go along?

There is really no excuse for limiting marriage only to straight and gay people in pairs--if people have some constitutional right to form the family relationship of their choosing. These four chose four for their marriage. Who's to quibble? What's to hinder them from adding in Nathan, their foster son, if at least one of the four should happen to "fall in love" with him, too?

California appears to be the perfect place for the foursome to declare their "marriage," because civil order, morality, and common sense about marriage have already been sacrificed to the gods of gay activism.

Choices at General Assembly

In the very same San Jose of Kaye, Kevin, Tony, and Sandi, Presbyterians also will be asked to sacrifice to these same gods of gay activism. We're being asked to change the Christian definition of marriage from "between a woman and a man" to "between two people."

How passé! Logically, shouldn't the constitutional amendment ask for the definition of marriage to be "between any number of parties"?

As long as folks are seeking to change the definition of marriage--God's sacred provision--as a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman, why not make it such that anything goes? If one intends to ignore Scripture, several millennia of Judeo-Christian practice, and our Confessions, why not at least be logically consistent and go whole hog?

Why is approval sought only for gay marriage? The answer is clear: Because right now polyamory, incest, pedophilia, bestiality, and who knows what else don't have big, noisy, insistent, and politically powerful lobbies pushing for similar recognition. None of these other arrangements is any more or less sinful than homosexual practice. Homosexual practice and these other practices all equally transgress Christian morality and any biblical warrant.

Marrage is not four--ever! Or two whatever.

In San Jose, Presbyterians can do something truly countercultural and uncharacteristically brave. Presbyterians can make a clear decision to choose this day whom they will serve--not the gods of a licentious society falling further into immorality, but rather our Holy God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Commissioners can affirm that as for us and our denomination, we will serve the Lord!

Presbyterians can choose not to conform to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds to believe and act according to the mind and will of God. Quite simply, by disapproving the proposed Directory for Worship amendments, Presbyterian commissioners can steadfastly refuse to defile marriage by redefinition.

"Marriage should be honored by all," God commands us through the writer of Hebrews, "and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral" (Hebrews 13:4). In San Jose, General Assembly commissioners can keep that command, even when Sandi, Tony, Kaye, and Kevin have chosen to trash it.

Consistently Inconsistent

2008-05-29T23:08:00.000-07:00

Remember the phrase being tossed around two years ago at the time of the PUP report being considered by the last General Assembly, words about "according the presumption of wisdom"?

The phrase came from PUP recommendation 5.e: "All parties should endeavor to outdo one another in honoring one another’s decisions, according the presumption of wisdom to ordaining/installing bodies in examining candidates and to the General Assembly, with presbyteries’ approval, in setting standards."

In other words, in the sphere in which a governing body operates and for the decisions it is chartered to make, the other governing bodies were counseled to back off and consider that the first body knows what it is doing. It was basically a statement to observe boundaries and not go barging in to supposedly interfere.

Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick got on this band wagon. He seemed all for such gentlemanly reserve about ordination standards. In his Advisory Opinion #18, Kirkpatrick:

Counseled that "ordaining bodies should be given the 'benefit of the doubt' in making individual judgments...."
Joined the Assembly in urging the church "to exercise great restraint in utilizing that right [of administrative review], reserving its use to clear cases of abuse of authority...."
Reminded the church that "it is the duty of both individual Christians and Christian societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward each another (G-1.0305)."
Prayed that "all ordaining bodies will exercise restraint and Christian charity."

One would think that Kirkpatrick was all for being mellow and laissez faire about constitutional matters. You know, just live and let live; govern and let govern; slide and let slide.

But that was then and this is now. That was about Christian morality and ordination standards, something Kirkpatrick apparently has no stomach to uphold. Now the subjects are property and per capita, which, for some strange reason, seem to super-animate Kirkpatrick.

Take, for instance, the Louisville Papers, issued under Kirkpatrick's authority. These legal briefs about taking denominational control of church property have sparked vicious, grasping lawsuits and the most suspicious, ungracious, and selfish behavior by upper governing bodies. Their actions show that they are absolutely unwilling to honor the decisions of or accord the presumption of any wisdom to lower governing bodies.

Or take the issue of churches transferring to another Reformed denomination, which our Constitution allows (unlike the ordination of those refusing to abide by moral standards). Kirkpatrick seems fiercely unwilling to honor decisions to depart. He seems utterly opposed to according the presumption of wisdom to church sessions or even to gracious presbyteries. No, Kirkpatrick instead sends in the property lawyers and accuses the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of stealing whole flocks of sheep.

And there's the issue of per capita payments. Some congregations have determined that their fiduciary and stewardship responsibilities aren't met by paying for beliefs and activities of Kirkpatrick's office that do not accord with their faith. Some presbyteries have chosen neither to force per capita payments nor to curtail other ministries to pay for uncollected per capita funds.

Are such sessions and presbyteries presumed to be wise in their financial decisions? Is Kirkpatrick falling all over himself in his endeavoring to honor such decisions? Hardly! His office instead counsels judicial means to disapprove and punish such supposed wrongdoing by governing bodies such as Seattle Presbytery (see page 3 for the PJC decision).

I long for ideological consistency and just plain fairness, which we'll probably never see in the last days of discontent under Kirkpatrick. It is indefensible to champion tolerance and laxness in one area of moral and constitutional law he must not particularly favor, while severely tightening the screws in another area of constitutional law by which his office stands to gain financially.

Consistency--that's what is needed. All the "accorded the presumption of wisdom" talk becomes mere blather when it is followed by aggressive litigation. Either sessions and presbyteries are inherently wise and should be left to do whatever they decide, or they are not and can be contested appropriately when they stray from approved practice.

Kirkpatrick can't have it both ways. So I won't buy any more high-sounding talk from him about "according the presumption of wisdom." Not if it will be applied only when it is expedient because there is something to gain.

Witherspoon Society Invites IRS Correction

2008-05-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

I hope the Witherspoon Society realizes that its latest Network News puts its nonprofit status in jeopardy. It could have the IRS breathing down its neck in short order and for good reason.

While a portion of a not-for-profit's work can be about lobbying for political issues, exactly zero of its efforts can be directed toward lobbying for any political candidates. Here is how an April 17 IRS statement reads: "By law, organizations exempt from tax under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3) may not 'participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.'”

The Douglas Ottati article on pages 30 and 31 crosses the line and puts Witherspoon Society directly in the position of promoting Democratic candidates for president and opposing Republicans. Any pretense of being neutral or not intervening in a political campaign has evaporated.

Ottati asks the readers, "Which Democratic candidate should we support?" He summarizes: "In short, after eight years of W. and his many accomplishments, both foreign and domestic, our chief electoral responsibility seems nicely summarized by a sticker I saw the other day on another friend’s car: 'Enough is enough. Vote Democratic.'"

There you have it--an exempt organization doing exactly what it cannot do: beating the drum for a political party in the election of president. It would be just as guilty if it had hyped the Republican candidate and denigrated the Democratic candidates. I hope the Witherspoon Society is prepared to answer to a no-nonsense Internal Revenue Service, which has pledged to "maintain a meaningful enforcement presence" concerning such violations of law.

But even beyond that legal jeopardy, why would any group whose interests are Christian make its main concern secular partisan politics? Are there too few possible acts of Christian witness or mercy available to maintain its interest? Or is the Witherspoon Society in truth just a Democratic Party action group at heart, with only the vestiges remaining of being a genuine Christian ministry whose work transcends the platform of any particular political party?

Heads, They Win; Tails, We Lose

2008-05-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

"Okay, let's flip on it," someone would say when I was a kid. "Heads, I win; tails, you lose." Obviously, if I get into that kind of an arrangement, I'm going to lose.

That's the way I'm beginning to feel about the system of Presbyterian Permanent Judicial Commissions: When those of us who are conservative or evangelical enter in, it seems that most often we're going to lose. But worse, it seems that when just plain common sense and obvious intent enter in, they come out losers, too.

Take two cases that hit Presbyweb Saturday.

Case #1: Sacramento Presbytery. In this case, the presbytery charitably voted not to appeal a secular court case that had allowed a congregation to retain its property while transferring into a sister denomination. In other words, the presbytery altruistically chose the welfare of the worshipping congregation over pure possessiveness on its part.

However, such good motives cannot go unpunished in an aggressively litigious atmosphere encouraged by our Stated Clerk's office. Three disgruntled pastors from a church on the losing side of the vote filed a "stay of enforcement" with the synod Permanent Judicial Commission. A stay of enforcement usually keeps something from happening--an ordination, a rebuke, a rule change, etc.--until after some dispute has been settled in the church courts.

Not this time.

This time, the "stay" is causing the tiny minority's desires to be carried out, against the will of the large majority. This "stay" plays out in an amazingly convoluted and unusual way in this case, actually causing an action rather than suspending action.

Since the "stay" is actually going to cause the exact action to occur that a strong majority of the presbytery voted not to do, there seems to be a need for the majority now to stay the "stay"!

Quite simply, the presbytery voted not to go to court to appeal, but yet the stay of enforcement forces the presbytery to appeal. In other words, according to the members of the synod PJC, to hold off on not appealing means that the presbytery must appeal. Thus, the presbytery officers were summarily ordered to file the appeal, and they did.

So much for the fundamental of Presbyterian polity that "a majority shall govern" (G-1.0400). Three people in Sacramento made the presbytery do the mean-spirited action it had voted not to do--and this is supposedly through a "stay" of action, which, during a time of legally sorting things out, ought to restrain action rather than force it!

Case #2: Twin Cities Presbytery. Here, a former pastor had surrendered his ordination because he would not support chastity as an unmarried gay man. He has now decided that the time is ripe still to refuse to abide by "chastity in singleness" but take his ordination back after all. His presbytery concurred, and some presbyters filed a remedial complaint.

The complaint seems justified. Our underlying policy on homosexual practice specifically names it as sin. It says that "all homosexual practice is incompatible with Christian faith and life" and that "God's will precludes the ordination of persons who do not repent of homosexual practice." And yet the presbytery has just handed back to this scofflaw his ordination.

Permanent Judicial Commission decisions have set the precedent about "fidelity and chastity" that "the church has decided to single out this particular manner of life standard and require churchwide conformity to it for all ordained church officers" (Bush, 218-10). The General Assembly PJC has decreed that "violations of behavioral standards are to be addressed through repentance and reconciliation, not by exception or exemption." And yet, the presbytery made an exception, because the guy had formerly been ordained and just wanted his papers back.

So, what does the synod PJC rule about the remedial case? It refuses to sustain the complaint. Why? Because, strictly speaking, previous precedential decisions were about getting ordained, not about restoring ordination, so apparently they don't apply. Also, the guy is not ministering within the PCUSA, but at an independent seminary, in a validated ministry.

Thus, in classic casuistic reasoning that can ignore the meat of the matter and forget its original purposes in order to concentrate on extraneous circumstances until a way is found around an obvious restraint, the synod PJC ignored Presbyterian convictions and policy and let the fellow go his merry way with his ordination restored.

Never mind that we officially call homosexual practice sin, that we forbid ordination of those not willing to practice fidelity or chastity, that sinful behavior is not to be winked at but repented of. Never mind that we would not ordain new folks with this guy's attitude and practice, and don't really need any more renegades running around who will not abide by our polity. No, never mind. A way was found to ignore the obvious and to approve the unapprovable.

Jesus said to people like this: "You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel" (Matt. 23:24).

The camel in this case is that homosexual practice is sin. Everything we do about the subject as a church, therefore, ought to flow from that starting point. And the flow ought not take us to the place of giving back an ordination rightfully renounced at an earlier point by a person who will not practice what our standards say he must.

We have a judicial system stuck in gnats and missing obvious camels. And for those of us who just want to uphold biblical morality or further congregational ministry apart from vindictiveness--well, it seems to end up heads, they win; tails, we lose.

Prayer? Yes! But Hold the Propaganda

2008-05-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

People are praying for General Assembly. That's absolutely wonderful. It's necessary. It's primary. More power to them. Count me in, too.

Moderator Joan Gray asks us to "pray that we will be open to the fullness of God’s will in our General Assembly." May it be so!

On the other hand, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick delivers a rather mixed message about Christian unity:

While Kirkpatrick has failed to champion and uphold historic Christian moral teaching, he yet brings attention to "the strong faith we share with Christians throughout the ages." Yes, that historic faith is outstanding, but why hasn't Kirkpatrick honored it with his own example? Why hasn't he vigorously sustained the sexual morality that has been part of that strong faith throughout the ages?
While Kirkpatrick writes, correctly, that "The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has long understood that it is only one part of the body of Christ, and that we seek to make visible the unity we share with other Christians," he has concurrently issued harsh and retributive legal briefs (here and here), seeking to label any group of Presbyterians not sufficiently attached to the PCUSA alone as not "the true church." Which is it? Is the PCUSA only one part of the body of Christ, or is it the only part that is "true"?
While Kirkpatrick invites us to find out more about an "effort to create closer connections between NCC member churches," he seems to limit the graciousness of ecumenicity only to the dance of the few dying dinosaurs within the National Council of Churches. At the same time, he has seemed to stoke the fires of distrust against our closest denominational siblings, such as the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Why limit the call "to engage in fellowship, prayer, and study with other Christians" to a small, increasingly irrelevant and secularized sliver of the body of Christ? Why leave out vital fellowship with Southern Baptists, Roman Catholics, Pentecostal, independent, and evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ?

For Pentecost and leading up to General Assembly, Moderator Joan Gray calls us to prayer and to seeking God's will. Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, on the other hand, touts the National Council of Churches, which just happens to have its funding slightly imperiled at the coming General Assembly. I'll take the prayer, but for me, hold the not-so-subtle NCC propaganda.

It seems high time for a new Stated Clerk more attuned to the faith and life of the congregations within our denomination--someone to match within the Office of the General Assembly the fresh breezes of ministry blowing within the General Assembly Council. And someone less attuned to promoting and maintaining personally favored failing ecumenical institutions of a previous era.

High Priests of Secularity in the California Supreme Court

2008-05-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

The California Supreme Court has released a decision that in essence requires that same-sex unions be termed marriages, reversing the moral position taken by the people of California. See the whole decision here, and a useful and briefer segment here.

This is an amazing, if not too surprising, case of judicial activism, as a dissenting opinion by Justice Corrigan also holds. The court has decided that it knows better than the people of California what is good and right and desirable, and the court imposes its vision upon the people by fiat.

A couple of portions of the ruling stood out for me as disturbingly audacious:

These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish--with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life--an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage.

The court doesn't really believe that. What if the person has chosen his mother to whom to be married? Or a ten-year-old? Or his daughter or granddaughter? What if the person one chooses is already married to someone else but would willingly add another spouse?

What if many such individuals are chosen, rather than one? For that matter, on what grounds, using this logic, would just one spouse be deemed the proper number, if it is all about the fundamental opportunity and right to establish a family the way one chooses?

Must any and every coupling, no matter how exploitative or ridiculous, be "accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage"? Ridiculous!

Finally, retaining the designation of marriage exclusively for opposite sex couples and providing only a separate and distinct designation for same-sex couples may well have the effect of perpetuating a more general premise--now emphatically rejected by this state--that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects "second-class citizens" who may, under the law, be treated differently from, and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals or opposite-sex couples [emphasis added].

This statement is so full of judicial activism! The state has voted. The people determined quite soundly that marriage is between a man and a woman. Now four of seven justices emphatically reject for the whole state the very beliefs the state has embraced for itself!

This statement within the decision is also a religious statement. The judges have taken their belief, their value judgment--that gay sex is not morally wrong and is to be accorded every respect given to marital heterosexual sex--and imposed it wholesale on the state. The state supreme court justices have made a religious/moral determination on their own, distinctly different from the moral determination the state has made through its proper voting process, and they now impose that morality from on high upon a state that has said it doesn't so believe. That is tyranny!

Fellow Christians: Be prepared to live your lives as social outcasts from a society that calls your moral beliefs heterosexist discrimination and labels your morality the state-disapproved notions of hateful bigots.

For believing God's Word and for standing for the sexual purity that God has taught us, you will be one of those Neanderthals considered to be promoting something "emphatically rejected by the state." Well, not exactly rejected "by the state," but certainly by a majority of activist California Supreme Court justices speaking as if they were the state.

Blithely Giving Away Other People's Money

2008-04-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

Let’s say you want to redo your home’s landscaping. You get a loan for $10,000 on your equity, the bank gives you that $10,000 of its money, and you spend the bank’s money freely. But now you have loan payments on the bank’s money that you have received and spent. That’s no fun. In fact, it is cutting deeply into your spendable income each month. You really don’t want to pay back the loan.

That’s where I come in. I, as a supposedly caring, thoughtful third party, step in and feel your pain. Wow! It IS tough to make those loan payments! Then, in a grand way, I boldly declare that in a spirit of jubilee, your debt should just be forgiven. You should be able to walk away with someone else’s money, and that would be the fair and just—and most definitely CHRISTIAN—thing to do.

It’s easy for me to make the declaration. I didn’t loan you the landscaping money. It’s no skin off my nose if you never pay back your debt. But I can get on my soap box and play my violin for you—a very mournful tune about how onerous it is for you to return someone else’s money. I can really schmaltz it up and make the lender look like a real jerk for not just giving you its money outright. It’s great fun for me, redistributing other people’s money at no personal cost. And when all is said and done, I can feel so self-righteous for helping my neighbor stiff the lender.

Somehow, I think that scenario isn’t exactly what God intended for the whole jubilee arrangement. For one thing, I can choose for myself to be beneficent and generous, forgiving debts of people who have borrowed from me. I can give away my own assets whatever way I choose. But when it comes to me somehow trying to be beneficent with your assets—without your agreement and at no cost to me—then the concept has gone horribly awry.

Forced redistribution of wealth

This “give away someone else’s money” scenario is what comes to mind in the shallow and oversimplified advocacy of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington Office concerning forgiveness of debt to impoverished nations. Here’s how the recent “Witness in Washington” article reads, in part:

Today, the world’s most impoverished countries spend more than $100 million each day in debt payments to wealthy governments and financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF. In countries where the majority of the population lives on less than $1 per day, this money should be spent on clean water, basic health care, and education, not sent to the world’s wealthiest financial institutions.

Note the simplistic shading: The lending governments and institutions are not at all praised for reaching out with vital loans as strategic infusions of capital to raise the economic welfare of the most impoverished countries. These lending countries and institutions took their own money and put it in the hands of governments that needed it to improve their countries. It wasn’t an outright gift; it was a loan.

Such capital for the impoverished countries ought to have benefited the people and raised revenue that would have allowed for debt repayment. However, in many cases, the money was used by national leaders to line their own pockets, or squandered in unwise and often larcenous ways.

But who is subtly made to be the villains in this brief description? The lenders, described only as “wealthy governments” and “the world’s wealthiest financial institutions.” That these entities simply expect to receive their loaned money back, as agreed upon prior to the loan (and sometimes under new agreements even more beneficial to the borrower) is somehow deemed bad.

The Washington Office’s implied message is that these groups should just give away the money that the poor countries had borrowed and still owed in return. Presbyterians, it appears, are being called upon to shame prudent governments and international banks into subsidizing the corrupt and imprudent juntas of the world that have ripped off their own people and now hope to rip off the lending banks and governments.

I don’t think that’s as good an idea as the Washington Office makes it out to be. The forced redistribution of wealth is a much more socialist or communist idea than it is capitalist. Besides it being just flat out unjust to confiscate one group’s capital to give to another, it doesn’t work. Socialism is one of the best ways not to even out wealth equitably, but to eliminate it altogether. It rewards sloth and corruption, and it harshly penalizes initiative and risk-taking.

Let’s say I have a little money to lend. Maybe I’d like to help out with small loans to budding businesspeople in terribly poor countries. I can loan a widow $100 to buy a sewing machine, and then she can work, feed her family, educate her children, and slowly pay back the loan. She has pride because the loan allows her to make something of her life. Soon she is hiring other sewers and building her business, helping others as she does.

Let’s say I do that 100 times over with $10,000. The small interest and repayments I receive, allow me to continue doing the micro credit over and over again.

But what if there are parties like the Washington Office who cast aspersions on my even having that $10,000 to loan in micro credit? What if I must be a filthy exploiter to have accumulated that capital in the first place, and the best way to deal with creeps like me is to take away that money and give it to the poor? So I get some onerous tax slapped on me, and now my $10,000 is in the government’s hands, from which maybe $3,000 emerges eventually, given to some corrupt Third-World bureaucracy that basically misspends it. Not much help there.

Or what if, rather than lending my $10,000 to individuals seeking to raise themselves out of poverty, I just loan it to their government. Then some corrupt official uses it for a down payment on his second Mercedes, while his people starve. But then, to make things worse, some third party steps in and says it is horribly wrong for me to have money to lend and for the impoverished government to have to pay it back. What if that third party declares that the corrupt government’s debt to me is cancelled? I’m out my well-intentioned $10,000. The corrupt government official’s kid is driving a Mercedes and has a big grin on his face. And the poor seamstress has no way to work and feed her family.

Or, let's say that things like this happen and I still somehow have another $10,000 lying around. Do you think I will be favorably disposed toward lending it to impoverished people overseas? I mean, I’ve lent $10,000 before, and the government just canceled the debt, in effect giving away my money. Or I’ve seen my money sent off into corrupt hands and it never gets to the truly needy. I’ll not want either of those things to happen again, so I’ll probably not use that $10,000 again in the same ways.

Bad policy will have been terribly effective in halting the exact behavior that could have brought some benefit. And that bad policy is what our Washington Office appears to be advocating, without seriously wrestling with the knotty consequences of its advocacy.

Preliminary questions

If the Washington Office is going to blithely ask us to lobby our government to give away previously loaned money, it seems it should first answer some basic questions for us:

Whose money is being given away with loan forgiveness? Is it our collective money as a nation, or is it private or semi-private capital that is being made a gift rather than a loan?
If it is government money, what consequences will that have on further loan availability? Or what will the government not be able to do, because of the loss of money it would have recovered from its loans?
Where would the money come from to replace the forgiven repayments?
If it is private money, how can the government forgive someone else’s loans? Can it say, “Well, that party once owed you money according to a valid contract, but now we’re saying it doesn’t have to pay, and you’re stuck with uncollectable loans. Tough luck”?
Whose money is being given away if the World Bank forgives loans? Who takes the loss? Whose money is being given away if the International Monetary Fund forgives loans?
When the government arbitrarily determines that some loans don’t need to be repaid, what effect would that have on the availability of loan capital for future loans? Why would lenders make further loans if they could lose the whole amount by some governmental decree?
Won’t capital become unavailable to economies that desperately need an infusion of capital, and couldn’t that be disastrous for the impoverished countries?
Wouldn’t the precariousness of loans that could be suddenly declared uncollectable force up the interest rate incredibly on any such future loans? With high risk comes the expectation of high returns.

The Washington Office rationale is entirely incomplete. It seems to go like this: “Some countries and institutions are wealthy. That’s bad. Some countries are very poor. It’s our fault. Therefore, we should just give away to the poor countries money that we originally had loaned them. There’s something in the Bible about “jubilee,” and therefore the catchy name is good for convincing everyone that this should be a no-brainer to support. Quick, call your congressperson about this issue.”

I think we Presbyterians deserve more and better rationales than this. There are some very fine arguments for and against specific debt forgiveness. I would think that some situations would indicate debt forgiveness as the wisest and most humanitarian way forward. But I would also guess that in many situations, debt forgiveness would reward kleptomanic governments, hurt the economic future of the poorest of the poor, and cripple further efforts to extend investments and aid in that economic situation.

It insults Presbyterans to produce the overly simplistic argument that “Golly, there are poor people and wealthy countries, so let’s confiscate the wealth and give it to the poor countries!” The Washington Office ought to give us more meat in their rationales, and far fewer blithe directions that fail to evidence careful analysis and prudent thought.

Doesn't Faith Matter?

2008-03-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that the news story about Martha Clark, the new general counsel for the PC(USA), illustrates a concern many of us share: Is this denomination just one more corporation, no different in practice and vision than just any old secular business?

Let me interject that I don’t know Martha Clark and have no bone to pick concerning her promotion. She sounds legally qualified and competent, and the search appeared to be thorough. I wish her well.

However, in reporting about Clark’s promotion, the news story reads no differently than if it were talking about a promotion at secular Humana, just down the street in Louisville, where Clark once worked. What do we learn of Clark’s spiritual competence for church leadership? Nothing. Does she believe? Does it matter? What do we find out about her theology of the intersection of secular law and Christian practice? Nothing from this news report.

What does Clark bring to the job? Experience, we’re told. Does she bring faith or congruence with our church purposes? We don’t know. She may well be spiritually mature and a pillar of her church, but we wouldn’t know it from this report, nor would we know if such qualifications were even considered germane to the search. Maybe they weren’t. Linda Valentine didn’t mention anything about spiritual qualifications for Clark.

Is this just another job for Clark, or is it a calling by God to a Christian vocation, a significant leadership ministry in a self-consciously Christian organization? We don’t know. Apparently such information is not important for such a news story, or maybe not important for such a staffing decision. But I can’t help but think that it should be.

The previous general counsel, Erik Graninger, came under fire for his harsh, take-no-prisoners contribution to the “Louisville Papers,” the legal briefs that counsel extremely aggressive and contentious tactics for presbyteries to grab the property of transferring congregations. Thus, the attitude and tactics of the general counsel do have bearing in this ostensibly Christian organization. An attorney who sees her calling to be pastoral as well as legal would probably operate with a different set of practices than one who makes it her job only to fiercely contend for worldly goods and power for the corporation.

I hope we have a new denominational general counsel who prays about her decisions, who looks to the good of the Body of Christ and not only to the secular ambitions of an institution, who seeks to live by Christian guidance and principles as she practices law with excellence, and who sees herself in a role of Christian responsibility and leadership. I hope this isn’t just a nice promotion, like one might get at Humana or any other corporation.

I can hope, but I don’t know, because the news story gives us no clue about the spiritual side of this decision. That, to me, seems odd, for a church.

Two Minds on Abortion ... Rights

2008-03-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

My good friend and colleague Alan Wisdom and I agree in essence about abortion. We are, however, in friendly disagreement on the use of the phrase "abortion rights." Here are the two viewpoints in a point-counterpoint format. I'll start with my viewpoint and then give Alan the opportunity to bat cleanup.

Jim says: Abortion is a violent noun, not a handy adjective

I suggest that all who oppose abortion hereby swear off use of the phrase "abortion rights."

Abortion is a violent noun that stands in stark ugliness by itself. An abortion aborts—violently ends—a life that God intended to continue. Abortion is not an adjective, handy for political and rhetorical purposes to modify a so-called right that was created ex nihilo by the Supreme Court’s social engineering.

Using “abortion rights” in writings and speech implies that there is a right to abort a baby. Thus, it also implies that anyone opposing abortion is proposing taking away a fundamental right, such as freedom of speech or freedom of religion.

The widespread use of the phrase “abortion rights” by abortion friend and foe alike is one of the public-relations triumphs of the last century. The pro-abortion forces have cleverly gotten everyone to apparently concede that there is such a right, simply by making the phrase "abortion rights" the ubiquitous term used whenever people refer to the subject.

If you would do a word-association test with random people, my guess is that if you said "abortion," a large percentage of people would produce "rights" as the first word that comes to their mind. Abortion being a right becomes indelibly implanted in people's minds, simply by the repetitive use of the phrase "abortion rights."

I consider the PR coup akin to getting people to attach "dignity" to "incest," so that every time the subject of incest is brought up, people would talk about being for or against "incest dignity." Or how about "genocide privilege" rather than just genocide, so conscientious Christians would be working to revoke the "genocide privilege"?

Morally and biblically speaking, there is no right to abort—to kill—one’s children. For the past relatively few years, the Supreme Court has propagated such a made-up "right," but I find it impossible to concede that taking an innocent baby's life in the womb is a fundamental human right.

If the unfettered permission to abort one’s offspring is bogus, no "right" at all, then let's not buy into the language that automatically terms it a right and concedes a prime point to the pro-choice crowd merely by the framing of the language. Let's discuss abortion, rather than abortion rights. Let’s oppose abortion, not abortion rights. In measures before our church bodies, let’s work to end abortion, not abortion rights.

The naked term “abortion” is so much more appropriate than the now-ubiquitous “abortion rights.”

I have no desire to run around stripping rights from people. If I am said to be opposing "abortion rights," then the main thing is that I'm ostensibly opposing some right, and it's only secondary that the so-called right I'm opposing is the "right" to abort one's children. But I am serious about disallowing not legitimate rights, but rather abortion, which is not a right but a sinful tragedy.

So all you folks out there who also oppose abortion: Why not eliminate the bogus “rights” from “abortion rights” in your speaking and writing, and simply use the stark, ugly term “abortion” from now on? After all, there’s nothing right about abortion.

Alan says: Make them use the word abortion in their preferred phrase

I agree with my colleague Jim that we need to use the word “abortion” to remind people what’s at stake in this debate. But I believe that “abortion rights” is a useful phrase precisely because it contains that word “abortion”—the word that its proponents take great pains to avoid. (Remember how the “National Abortion Rights Action League” became “NARAL Pro-Choice America”?)

“Abortion rights” captures exactly what is at issue. Is abortion a right or is it not? Jim and I believe it is not a right. Therefore we are against “abortion rights.” Those on the other side believe that killing your unborn child is a constitutional right. Therefore they favor “abortion rights.” And they admit it when they agree to use that phrase to describe their position.

It is so important to have an agreed terminology that is honest and accurate, because we are talking about an act that makes even hardened consciences flinch a bit. That’s why those on the other side of the debate prefer to call themselves “pro-choice”—a phrase that obscures the issue by failing to specify the “choice” that confronts us. It’s also why they don’t want mothers and fathers dealing with problem pregnancies to look at ultra-sound images of their babies. As we all know from personal experience, guilty consciences strive mightily to avoid a straightforward consideration of the evil that they have done or plan to do.

The challenge for “pro-life” people is to find ways to prick the consciences of our fellow citizens, trusting that the God who gave them those consciences will do the convicting and convincing by his Holy Spirit. We must know that we cannot argue them into repentance by the force of our strong rhetoric. The purpose of our words must therefore be more modest and subtle: to cause our fellow citizens to examine their own consciences, to look into the mirror at what they are doing and advocating.

Many of the best efforts of the pro-life movement—the silent vigils outside abortion clinics, the billboards offering help in finding alternatives to abortion, the films with ultra-sound imagery, the legislation banning partial-birth abortion—have had this effect of pricking consciences. And recent polls suggest that some minds and hearts have been changing, especially among the young.

In this regard, however, the public shouting matches between “pro-life” and “pro-choice” people are not always helpful. The two sides often talk past one another rather than to one another. There is no common language that centers the discussion on a common concern. Neither side accepts the other’s self-designation. “Pro-choicers” would never agree that we are truly “pro-life.” (If we disagree with the liberal agenda on any issue ranging from the death penalty to welfare reform to Iraq, the “pro-life” label is dismissed with a sneer.) Nor would we grant that they merit the name “pro-choice.”

Even greater offense is taken at each side’s descriptions of the other. We don’t like being called “anti-choice,” when we have expended so much effort in offering better choices to those facing problem pregnancies. Likewise, the “pro-choicers” resent being called “pro-abortion.” Most of them deny that they believe abortion is a good thing to be encouraged. At least some of them are credible in making that denial. (Those who favor taxpayer subsidies for abortions, or forcing health care plans to cover abortions, or forcing health care providers to refer patients for abortions, or forcing pharmacists to dispense abortifacient drugs, are not credible in their denials. These folks are promoting abortions, and they can properly be called “pro-abortion.”)

The result is that each side perceives the other’s rhetoric as a hash of unjust accusations. They do not give a moment’s consideration to the accusations. Instead they reject them instantly and respond with a quick barrage of counter-accusations. This is not a debate that’s going anywhere. And, most seriously, it’s not a debate that’s likely to prick many consciences.

This is the point at which the phrase “abortion rights” can play a helpful role. The proponents of those “rights” accept the phrase as an accurate description of their position. The mainstream media—overwhelmingly favorable to that cause—also accept that phrase. And I am willing to accept it, as long as I am free to use other similar phrases (“those who exalt killing unborn children as a constitutional right”) that amplify the meaning.

This phrase gives us a framework for a debate that has at least a chance of engaging the real issue and thereby troubling some consciences. Any phrase that might induce the “pro-choicers” to acknowledge the reality of the “choice” that they are championing is a step in the right direction. Of course, they will probably prefer to say “abortion RIGHTS.” But we can emphasize that it’s ABORTION that they want to make a right.

The fact that they would turn something so manifestly evil—something that, in the most honest “pro-choice” arguments, is merely defended as a “necessary evil”—into a sacred right on a par with free speech and habeas corpus, shows how far they have twisted their consciences. Facing this fact may help a few of those consciences snap back in the right direction.

Of course, our argument against abortion rights is part of a larger necessary argument against the excesses of rights talk. Western societies have gone way too far in defining any desired good as an inalienable “right.” So we may need to raise an eyebrow and add a quizzical inflection to our voices as we say “abortion rights”—in the same way that we must cast doubt upon “gay rights,” “ordination rights,” “left-handed transvestite rights to use whichever bathroom they want,” and the like.

It also should be noted that talking about “abortion rights” can be a kind of jujitsu move, where we let the other side choose a label and then pin the new label on them, demonstrating that it still refers to the same ugly reality that the old label did. I think this is why the left keeps shifting its politically correct terminology so frequently—all the old “liberals” now want to be called “progressives”—because it can’t handle the underlying realities. So we just need to keep after them and remind them that “you can run but you can’t hide” from your conscience.

Et vous?
There you have it. So what do you think? Add your comments, and be sure to sign your full name, city, and state at the end.

Berkley's Theorem

2008-03-04T17:00:00.000-08:00

When I was a young pastor, I came up with Berkley’s Theorem: “It’s a foul idea when the turkeys agree with you.”

I mostly kept it to myself. I didn't go running around calling people turkeys. But by the theorem, I meant that some people have their thinking completely lopsided, such as not wanting such an emphasis on God in worship, or on the Bible in preaching. Operating from outside Christian faith and devotion, they just don’t know what is good and acceptable and perfect.

When you run into people like that, you really don't want them agreeing with you. If they agreed with you and thought you were just ducky, there would be something terribly wrong with what you are doing! So their opposition is a good sign. You must be doing something right.

In a similar manner, it seems to me that John Shuck is giving me a high form of praise when he so sourly thinks he’s slamming me. I don’t want to be someone doing what he could commend. It would be all wrong.

If you look carefully at his recent blog posting in response to mine, the very things he thinks are terrible indictments against me are stands I’m proud to take: I'm opposed to homosexual practice, I'm against abortion, I don't think a Presbyterian missionary ought to lie her way through an interview, and so on. He thinks that in quoting me, it becomes self-evident what a dastardly person I must be; I think the quotations for the most part represent well the standards I try to uphold.

Shuck reads like someone noting that a particular leader is compassionate, honest, caring, and truthful—and isn’t that just awful! However, when I interpret John Shuck in the same way as I would Screwtape, everything makes sense again.

When you read The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, you have to keep remembering that everything Screwtape considers horrible is excellent, and everything he thinks is wonderful is horrendous. God is "the Enemy" to Screwtape. Sin is delicious, and righteousness is to be avoided at all costs.

When I keep a Screwtape orientation in my mind when I read Shuck, everything does make sense again. His "indictments" of me, I consider high praise.

Where are the moderates?

2008-02-29T23:22:00.000-08:00

You know how people keep wondering where the moderate Muslims are? If Islam is such a religion of peace, the thought goes, then where are the voices of Islam to speak up and censure the crazies who blow up children in marketplaces in the name of their faith? Every once in a while, one does hear some super-brave Muslim speak out to condemn the Muslim fanatics who would kill you for even wondering out loud if Islam is a violent religion.

Okay, along the same vein, where are the moderate liberals, the moderate progressives? Where are the reasonable voices from within the progressive camp to speak out when some of their own become crazies who definitely cross the line and give a bad name to fellow progressives?

Take John Shuck, for example. Shuck pastors First Presbyterian Church in Elizabethton, Tennessee, a church he describes as progressive. On his own (with far too much time on his hands), he writes a profane, juvenile blog, appropriately named “Shuck and Jive.” He considers it “part of my outreach and teaching ministry.” Whatever.

On February 20, Shuck’s humor consisted of posting condescending photos of rednecks, with mocking captions about renewal leaders, myself included. What a card that Shuck is! Hoo-eee! Deep teaching in this ministry.

But once one gets into the comment section, Shuck turns from immature and tasteless to just plain mean and profane. Speaking of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, he writes (and please excuse the language):

You right-wing bastards won't even allow a freaking scruple. Now it is war again. I tell you, if there was a proposal now that would remove G-6.0106b and the 1993 AI and allow congregations to leave with the denomination's property free of charge, I would be for it just to get rid of you SOBs. I feel no affection for you and your Taliban theology. You are destroying our denomination. I despise you today.

Later, in a comment to Viola Larson, one of the most decent and gracious persons I have ever met, he wrote: “As for the lovely Viola, no, I don't hate you phony, hypocritical, pious, ignorant bastards. You just tick me off, some days more than others.”

Okay, all the thoughtful, caring, sensitive progressives out there who crave dialogue and value diversity, and who are so concerned about alleged angry conservatives, who is going to stand up and say that John Shuck is a disgrace and embarrassment to fellow progressive Christians? Or do you think it is perfectly okay for him to treat church leadership and fellow Christians this way?

And I’m sure Shuck's presbytery has a Committee on Ministry. Is this behavior well within the standards of clergy conduct and demeanor expected by the presbytery of its spiritual leaders? Does anyone care enough about him and about the church to step in and provide some necessary correction? Does the presbytery have any behavior boundaries? Does it have some guts?

I understand that our denomination espouses a big-tent philosophy. But the big tent is not meant to contain a profane circus.

On Pastoral Sensitivity and Property

2008-02-17T14:51:00.000-08:00

Pretend that you are on the presbytery’s Committee on Preparation for Ministry, and in examining a candidate for ministry, you ask this candidate a situational question: “You get word that someone has attempted suicide and is now in the hospital. You rush off to visit him. Tell us what you might say and do in that visit?”

“The first thing I’d do is remonstrate with the man freely,” the candidate replies. “Then I’d ask what in the world caused him to do such a sinful thing and I’d rebuke him and tell him to beg God for forgiveness. Then I’d lead him in a prayer of confession and tell him to buck up and show that he had really repented. Finally, I’d leave him to medical care.”

Would such practice commend the candidate for pastoral ministry? Should such a candidate be ordained into ministry in a Reformed church?

Be careful in how you reply, because you could bar John Calvin from the ministry. Such a response was Calvin’s way of dealing with an attempted suicide.

Calvin said it
I am visiting Geneva to attend a meeting of the World Council of Churches Central Committee, and on a free afternoon, I decided to visit the International Museum of the Reformation. There, one of the exhibits provided an English translation of Calvin’s testimony in what must have been the equivalent of a police investigation, or perhaps a coroner’s inquest. Let me reproduce it in full:

I, the undersigned, hereby declare before Lord Pierre d’Orsiere, appointed by the Lieutenant of Geneva, that this is my true statement, made today, January 23rd, 1545. Yesterday between eight and nine, Pierre Vachat came to me in tears and told me of a deplorable event that had occurred at his home, namely, that his brother had asked his maidservant for a knife and plunged it into his stomach. He asked me to go to him. I immediately set off, and on the way met our colleague Monsieur Mattieu de Gestons. When I reached the high chamber where Jean Vachat was lying, I remonstrated with him freely. I then asked him what had driven him to thus wound himself. He told me that he was in great suffering. I showed him in several ways how the Devil had seduced him and led him astray. After rebuking him, I asked him whether he repented for offending God and succumbing to such a temptation. He answered in the affirmative. He repeated this twice. I asked him whether he begged God for forgiveness and whether he had faith, and believed that He would be merciful. He answered in the affirmative. Then we prayed as the situation required, recognizing and confessing the error of his action. I exhorted him again with my words to be patient and seek consolation in the grace of God. Just then, Master Claude, the barber, arrived. I asked Vachat to allow himself to be treated, and thereby show that he repented of his act and entrusted himself to God. By his attitude and words, I saw that he was calm and lucid. When this was done, I left with our brother Monsieur de Genestons. I swear that all this is true. John Calvin

Before Reformed pastors became psychologists and group-hug enablers, we were first concerned about the state of one’s soul. That was certainly clear in Calvin’s practice.

One good deed deserves another
I thought of one other thing while I was in the museum (fascinating, by the way), located where the cathedral cloisters had once stood. It was in those cloisters in 1536 that the Reformation was voted. When that Roman Catholic (the only “denomination” at the time) cathedral’s pastors and congregation voted to became Protestant, they left their previous denomination with property.

That property, a historic cathedral on prime real estate, has been part of this new denomination for nearly 500 years. This afternoon, in an ecumenical service commemorating the 60th anniversary of the World Council of Churches, at least three Roman Catholic bishops (or perhaps they were archbishops or even cardinals) were in attendance in that cathedral to demonstrate their ecumenical support.

Quite noticeably, they were smiling and didn’t ask for the property back. Perhaps they had never heard of the Louisville Papers.

Posthaste or Post Hoc?

2008-02-06T22:52:00.000-08:00

I find the following time line about yesterday's blog entry interesting:

Friday: Reading about a horrendous instance of a suicide bombing in Baghdad, I wonder if Cliff Kirkpatrick will ever fulfill the responsibility given him by General Assembly "to take every opportunity" to condemn such crimes against humanity. So I write him, somewhat late in my West Coast day, which is quite late in his day.

Saturday: By midday, I have a response back from Kirkpatrick's right-hand man, Vernon Broyles, with a public letter in response, purportedly written by Kirkpatrick--from Kenya, nonetheless! Wow! Instant response! It is the weekend, however, and of course it won't be posted on the PCUSA web site until at least Monday.

Monday: No posting appears. Broyles is out and Kirkpatrick is traveling home, I later find out.

Tuesday: I write Broyles to ask about the letter. Broyles replies quickly, attaching a revised letter, which also included the latest Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel. The problem is, the letter has factual errors and other problems, and I point them out to Broyles. But without change, that single letter gets posted on the web by the end of the day. I write a blog posting that night, saying that the statement misses the point by being addressed to the governments of the victims rather than to parties responsible for the bombings or for stopping them.

Wednesday: My blog is picked up in the morning by Presbyweb, making it most public. Kirkpatrick writes a second letter and posts it in the same posting as the previous letter, giving it a new introduction and predating it with Tuesday's date. This second letter is addressed to the President of the Palestinian National Authority, asking him to do what he can to stop the suicide bombings. It's a great letter, finally doing what ought to have been done all along.

Okay, so what am I to make of this? I request a statement, and it is produced within 24 hours. I argue that the statement/letter ought to have addressed the perpetrators or others responsible. Within hours, such a second letter appears mysteriously on the web, where previously there had been only one letter.

One possibility is that the reason and sensibility of my requests produced results posthaste. Woo-hoo!

But there is another logical possibility: My requests merely preceded the two letters from Kirkpatrick, but did not cause them (the old post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy).

Well anyway, a guy can at least hope that he has helped cause one tiny little outbreak of fairness and good sense for a moment. At the end of the day (literally), Clifton Kirkpatrick had done something good and right--and required by the General Assembly. That's what's best.

Thank you for that second letter, Cliff and Vernon! And may I evermore be presented with opportunities to hand out kudos! I'd like that.

Jim Berkley
Bellevue, WA

Suicide Bombings: Too Little, Too Lite

2008-02-05T23:55:00.000-08:00

On February 5, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick published a “statement of concern about recent suicide bombings.” While it might seem like a decent gesture, the statement unfortunately falls short in any number of ways, such as:

Concern: For a “statement of concern,” the statement offers no sympathy. It provides the heat of anger without the warmth of compassion. It describes the various bombings and declares them horrific, egregious, terrible, and unconscionable, but it says not a word of concern for the innocent victims carefully counted but barely considered. No one is consoled—Iraqi, Israeli, Sri Lankan. The statement offers no condolences. The statement reads as strangely cold and perfunctory.
Clarity: The statement bends over backwards to leave ambiguous who might actually be doing the bombing. It uses a passive construction: “bombs apparently were attached to two women.” It doesn’t say that “Islamic terrorists attached bombs to two women.” The statement talks about bombings without condemning bombers. In the Israel suicide bombing, Kirkpatrick did finger a Palestinian Fatah faction. But it felt like a way to take the heat off of the Hamas government of Gaza, which also claimed responsibility and celebrated in the streets at the news of the Israeli death and injuries.
Target: For whom was the statement written? The introduction on the PCUSA web site says Kirkpatrick “sent the following statement to the United States Secretary of State and the prime ministers of Iraq, Sri Lanka, and Israel.” One would think, then, that with political leaders of many religions as the audience, the statement would be tailored for them. It is not. The language sounds attuned to fellow Christians’ ears, concluding with, “Let us all increase our prayers to God that even in the midst of our brokenness, the Holy Spirit will make a way for peace and security for all of God’s children.” Nice thoughts for Christians, but I wonder what Islamic, Jewish, and Buddhist prime ministers will make of the work of the Holy Spirit? Kirkpatrick spent most of his words describing the bombings that the leaders would have known all too well on their own. Odd, if they were the intended audience. One gets the feeling that Kirkpatrick is really speaking to fellow Christians, who are supposed to overhear this mangled political message.
Action: Only in the middle of the second-to-last paragraph does Kirkpatrick finally get down to calling for action. There have been horrific bombings. There are hundreds of innocent victims dead and dying. Suicide bombers have committed crimes against humanity. So who does Kirkpatrick address to take action? Is it Islamic terrorists in Iraq, killing their fellow Muslims? Is it Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka? Is it Palestinian terrorist groups indiscriminately targeting Jews simply because they are Jews? Is it the fanatic Hamas government of Gaza or the terrorist element of Fatah in other Palestinian territories? No. Kirkpatrick directs his remarks to the victims’ governments. He appeals to the government leaders “to quickly find paths to reconciliation.” That’s it. “You’ve been hit by violence,” he seems to be saying. “I’m not going to comfort you. But I will give you some advice: Reconcile right now with those who attacked you!” To the vile perpetrators of random death and mayhem, Kirkpatrick apparently has nothing to say.
Honesty: Kirkpatrick’s statement dated February 5 claims he learned of the Baghdad and Sri Lanka bombings “upon returning home.” That is not the case. On Friday, February 1, I e-mailed Kirkpatrick about the Baghdad bombings, in which terrorists used Down syndrome women to bomb civilians in two pet markets. I asked if finally he might condemn the suicide bombings, since General Assembly in 2006 had required him “to take every opportunity” to do so—and he has failed on that score.

By noon the next day, Saturday, February 2, Vernon Broyles, Kirkpatrick’s Volunteer for Public Witness, had replied that he “was able to get through to [Kirkpatrick] to inform him of the details of terrible killings in Baghdad and Sri Lanka, and he has responded with the attached message.” I was impressed with the speed of Kirkpatrick’s composing a reply while on the road in Kenya in a difficult situation. However, this exchange shows that Kirkpatrick did not learn of the bombings as late as “upon returning home”; he knew about them and even wrote a response while in Kenya, at least according to Broyles’s account to me.

On Tuesday, February 5, Broyles took the blame for writing the “upon returning home” phrase, when I queried him about its truthfulness. “That is simply my error,” he confessed. The phrase had ended up in the wrong place. At the same time, Broyles revealed that he “helped Cliff in the drafting of the statement” and that it was he who had “worked on a revision, in response to the Israel bombing.”

So apparently Broyles is producing the statements that Kirkpatrick eventually signs and distributes. This time, Broyles gave Kirkpatrick a statement containing a minor untruth that Kirkpatrick either didn’t see or didn’t correct. The statement subsequently came out uncorrected later on February 5 on the PCUSA web site.

No way to do social witness
This is not how to do social witness right! This is, in truth, embarrassing.

Vernon Broyles is apparently doing some of Kirkpatrick’s writing for him, and Kirkpatrick is either too preoccupied or too unconcerned to properly correct the copy Broyles brings for his signature. In addition, it looks like the narrative in the statement may have been embroidered to fit the rhetoric. Either Kirkpatrick knew of the bombings while in Kenya but allowed Broyles to write that he only learned about them later, or Kirkpatrick didn’t know about the bombings until he returned, and Broyles was feeding me a phony account of Kirkpatrick’s participation in writing the February 2 draft of the statement while in Kenya.

But worse, the statement is an embarrassment to Presbyterians. It evidences no sympathy for the victims. It studiously avoids laying blame on actual terrorist parties by simply denouncing actorless atrocities. And it inexplicably directs the victims’ governments to speedily reconcile with parties unnamed, unaccountable, and violently unwilling. Oh, and U.S. government leaders are counseled “to use all the means at their disposal to support those who are working for peace,” whatever that vague banality is supposed to mean.

What is keeping the Stated Clerk from simply fulfilling his responsibility “to take every opportunity to publicly and officially condemn suicide bombings and terrorism and to help empower victims of such attacks to be able to bring those who plan and inspire suicide bombings to the bar of international justice”? Why not “call for international judicial prosecution of all those aiding and abetting these crimes,” again as General Assembly stipulated? Why doesn’t Kirkpatrick staunchly “affirm the culpability of individuals and groups that assist in carrying out suicide bombings and terrorism” and hold accountable “civil or military authorities who fail to exercise adequate powers of control over perpetrators and fail to take appropriate measures”?

Let me hazard a guess: Taking such clearly mandated steps would necessarily involve holding some Palestinians accountable for their lawless and violent behaviors. It would run counter to the continued vilification of Israel and its existence as the root of all evil in the Middle East. My guess is that Clifton Kirkpatrick (or maybe I should say Vernon Broyles) has no desire to be forced to fulfill a clear mandate by General Assembly to publicly condemn suicide bombings, because the bombings most regularly are done by Islamic terrorists, and whatever they do is to be understood and excused, rather than condemned. Thus, Kirkpatrick’s response to the General Assembly order has been tepid to missing.

It all fits together
This too-little, too-lite statement is but the latest evidence of a fundamental unwillingness to be fair in treating Palestine and Israel evenhandedly. One sees it elsewhere in letters from a mission volunteer at a liberation theology outfit in Jerusalem, the one-sidedness of the Israel-Palestine Mission Network, and a frightfully prejudiced statement from the National Middle Eastern Presbyterian Caucus. Presbyterians ought to be appalled at such bias-filled acts continually being pushed forward in their name. This is but the tip of the iceberg of bias, a harsh parochialism supposedly banished by General Assembly resolution in 2006, but allowed instead by denominational leaders to flourish unchecked.

Those who think such bias is unfair can let Clifton Kirkpatrick know their concerns. He can be reached at ckirkpat@ctr.pcusa.org. (Who knows, you may even get a reply from Vernon Broyles!) Letters to Presbyweb (hcornelder@presbyweb.com) or The Layman Online (laymanletters@layman.org) also garner national attention on the web.

It is high time for the will of General Assembly to override the ideological lock that staff and associated entities have on Presbyterian social witness concerning the Middle East. Presbyterians as a whole are far more fair and level-headed than those who dominate social-witness leadership. It is time to be heard. Perhaps this can be a start.

Now What Will We Hear?

2008-01-17T18:12:00.000-08:00

After the fuzzy new Authoritative Interpretation of G-6.0108b of the constitution stumbled out of General Assembly in 2006, many voices—some of whom are supposed to know such things—have rushed to proclaim with full assurance: “The Authoritative Interpretation has changed nothing!”

Some of the rest of us were not so sure, having read and vigorously opposed the troublesome language of the stealth constitutional amendment put across as an Authoritative Interpretation (AI). We knew how the AI read. We had read and heard what the Peace, Unity, and Purity (PUP) Task Force intended and had written in the rationale section of the report.

It wasn’t lost on us that those seeking gay ordination favored the PUP report, and those opposed to ordaining the serially unrepentant opposed the report. There was obviously a reason for such stands. We noticed which side broke out the champagne the night of the PUP approval at General Assembly, and which camp was in tears or outraged.

Even the idea that a task force would labor for years and produce a grand plan to be celebrated for accomplishing precisely nothing seemed rather unbelievable to many of us. I, for one, would have been delighted to have been retained to produce absolutely nothing that changes precisely nothing--and then to have been paid what the task force cost. But I don’t think what the task force did was without major negative change.

Obviously many, many people felt that something had changed with the approval of the PUP Authoritative Interpretation. And since that time, Scott Anderson has decided that the way is now clear for him—a partnered gay man—to be ordained again. He was on the PUP Task Force, and this is his conclusion.

Paul Capetz of Twin Cities Presbytery, who prior to the PUP AI had surrendered his ordination out of honesty about his refusal to abide by “fidelity and chastity,” now wants his ordination back, because he thinks the PUP AI definitely changed things.

But the biggest indicator and the first case to definitely challenge and possibly clarify the ordination situation following the 2006 General Assembly is the recent decision of San Francisco Presbytery to approve Lisa Larges for ordination, after over twenty years of not allowing her to proceed because of her lesbian sexual practice. Obviously San Francisco Presbytery thinks something drastically changed with the approval of the PUP AI.

So, voices of “No change,” speak again!

Okay, it seems time for all those who so confidently assured us that nothing has changed to speak up again, telling Lisa Larges and San Francisco Presbytery to cut it out! The time is now. Talk was easy in 2006, because the subject was hypothetical; now it is actual.

Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick wrote in an Advisory Opinion that it is clear that “that there are national standards for ordination, which are binding upon all ordaining bodies.” He also made it clear that “an individual may declare a scruple concerning the appropriateness of a mandatory provision. But a governing body cannot excuse a mandatory provision, for it lacks the power to set aside a provision of the Constitution. However, a candidate may still be ordained or installed so long as she/he is still willing to comply with the mandatory provisions” (emphasis added).

Okay, San Francisco Presbytery has flat out discarded as inessential a binding standard (a term that ought to be considered redundant in its clarity). Lisa Larges declared a scruple and is entirely unwilling to comply with the mandatory provision. Such unwillingness was excused. Yes, a mandatory, binding, required standard was set aside by the presbytery. Will our Stated Clerk now contest this anarchic state of affairs?

Ed Koster, Stated Clerk of Detroit Presbytery and a frequent polity pundit, wrote about the 2006 General Assembly that “some of the press have been reporting that it has approved the ordination of non-celibate homosexual persons at the discretion of local ordaining bodies. The press have it wrong, and in fact the Authoritative Interpretation approved by the General Assembly has probably made it less likely that such ordinations will be allowed” (emphasis added). Okay, given the fact that San Francisco held off for twenty-some years and just now feels entitled to ordain Larges on the basis of the AI, what will Koster say now?

The PCUSA Director of Constitutional Services, Mark Tammen, got snippy with me a while back because I persisted in saying that the AI could pave the way for ordinations such as the one being contemplated for Larges. As I remember the conversation, this chief lawyer on Kirkpatrick’s staff made it clear that those like me plying such allegations ought to cease such careless speculation that was so patently wrong and inflammatory. “Nothing has changed!” he snorted, as if it were completely self-evident. Well, I wonder what counsel Tammen will offer at this juncture. Will he labor relentlessly to counter San Francisco’s impermissible errors that make his overconfident pronouncement untrue?

Clark Cowden is a highly respected presbytery executive and expert on the Presbyterian Church. He also has a deeply evangelical faith. Following General Assembly in 2006, he argued that both the meaning and the intent of G-6.0106b (“fidelity and chastity”) stand, as does the Authoritative Interpretation of 1996 that carries forward the guidance of the landmark 1978 statement on homosexuality: “… these continue to be mandatory requirements that all elders, deacons, and pastors must agree to live by. The approval of the amended PUP report does not change any of this, and does not give governing bodies ‘wiggle room’ to allow disobedience of the requirements” (emphasis added). The time is ripe for Cowden to reiterate his arguments, as it appears that San Francisco Presbytery hasn’t bought any of them.

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over

This San Francisco case with Lisa Larges is bound to go into an extended appeal process. Here is an open-and-shut case. Larges openly and squarely fails to meet the standard of G-6.0106b. San Francisco has said that that doesn’t matter; she ought to be ordained anyway. Nobody is disputing those facts.

The question now for the Permanent Judicial Commission is if San Francisco Presbytery is right that it can ordain Larges anyway because of the 2006 Authoritative Interpretation. Or does our Constitution and especially the new Authoritative Interpretation give the presbytery no such right to “excuse a mandatory provision,” as Kirkpatrick put it?

As we observe the legal wrangling and wait for a ruling that sets a needed precedent, may we not forget that our larger theological and polity questions are being determined in the midst of a human drama being worked out in the life of Lisa Larges. As much as I believe that what she is attempting is not of God, as much as I oppose the wider relentless pressure to distort and discard Christian sexual morality, as much as I lament the costs in relationships and crippled church witness that such disputes incur, I need to remember that Lisa is beloved by God. I need to keep her temporal and eternal welfare deeply in mind. It is so sad when wounded individuals end up being tossed around the vortex of a theological cyclone.

But remembering Lisa’s deepest needs, I know all the more that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) must do what is right, rather than what is either popular or expedient. All the more, we must uphold the only standards worth valuing—those given to us in Scripture by God, those well represented in our constitutional ordination standards. Everyone ultimately benefits when that happens.

Someone Is Missing More Than Yoga Classes

2008-01-12T13:28:00.000-08:00

Does anyone train, supervise, direct, and, if necessary, correct our volunteer missionaries on assignment in Presbyterian mission? I ask, because there is an obvious need in Jerusalem.

Presbyterian volunteer missionary Shannon O'Donnell is assigned, oddly enough, to a radically politicized and highly controversial liberation theology outfit in Jerusalem. (I say "oddly enough" since liberation theology has been widely repudiated after its excesses in Latin America and is hardly the stuff of Reformed theology.) She appears to be a sincere and idealistic person, but her biased assumptions and questionable behaviors do not represent what the overwhelming majority of Presbyterians would want to support with their mission dollars.

Her January 8 letter, dutifully publicized on the PCUSA web site, provides ample examples of her crying need for supervision, for someone wise and experienced to provide more direction and loving mentoring, as she grows in her ability to exercise sound judgment. The letter is filled with embarrassing and contradictory statements, such as:

"At first I was going to lie my way through the gym application process...." In O'Donnell's favor, she eventually didn't lie to get what she wanted, but only because she sensed that the truth might work this time. However, it does give one pause that in her ethics (or lack thereof), lying would be a potential and even primary choice about how to handle a matter. Apparently O'Donnell operates with the understanding that one can lie, if it achieves a desired end. Such a failing in basic ethics hardly recommends her as a Christian leader! Is no one supervising her and teaching better practices? Will someone do so now that the problem has surfaced?
O'Donnell did write a thoughtful and interesting analogy about Nazi Germany, telling of an alley protesters would use in order to avoid saluting Nazism. Turning introspective, she wrote: "How many hearts gave in to injustice to save their own lives? Which path would I chose?" Well, I could guess. Anyone who would consider lying in order to avoid a few questions to get into a dance class couldn't be expected to risk life and limb for the truth. We learn most about the heart by the small habits of life, not the vain grandstanding.
"I don’t know what Bush’s visit will accomplish, but I do know for certain that ... I will not be going to my yoga class at the YMCA...." How petty, self-centered, and inane! A head of state is knocking himself out to broker a just peace, and O'Donnell laments that she'll have to miss yoga because it gets too inconvenient. Perhaps a mentor could suggest that it's not all about her.
Within inches of each other, she wrote two very contradictory statements: (1) "I didn’t expect to feel accepted at such a place on the west side of town" (displaying gross prejudice against the inhabitants of Jewish Jerusalem), and (2) "I have also found that it is equally important not to judge others." Yet, she had prejudged others, and, from what she has written previously, she does it regularly. A little consistency between what she supposedly champions and what she actually does would be nice.
"We are to love people, even when it hurts," she writes. I see her working to live that out as she loves the Palestinians. That's good. But, in a way, given the propaganda in which she is steeped, that's not very revolutionary. She's just flowing with the stream of her political persuasions. How much more sacrificial and "hurting" it would be for O'Donnell to demonstrate genuine love for George W. Bush, for her own country, and, particularly in Israel, for the Jewish people and the government of Israel. For her, to love those entities would "hurt," I would imagine. I don't think she's seen that. She appears to be too busy being oh-so-politically proper in following her liberation theology dogma, with a broad streak of naivete and smugness showing through.

I am sure Shannon O'Donnell is a delightful person to know. She has given a good portion of her life to doing something she thinks is good and right. That's why it is all the more tragic that she appears to have no one wise and caring to help nudge her misguided and nascent energy in a more appropriate direction. Letter after letter displays her shortcomings.

Who should be watching Shannon O'Donnell's back? Who cares about her enough to gently, lovingly disciple her, rather than allowing her to flounder?