More Responses to the GAPJC Decisions

These come from the PCUSA Covenant Network as well as Lisa Larges and Paul Capetz, who have been seeing to be ordained and re-admitted to ordained status, respectively. I’ll take a look at these in order. First, the meat of the Covenant Network statement was this:

For decades, the church has been locked in a painful and polarizing struggle over issues of ordination. It is particularly disappointing that, having been offered a better way by the 217th General Assembly, the GAPJC now endangers the peace, unity, and purity of the church with this ruling. In inexplicably lifting up one sentence as outside the bounds of discernment, they appear to have disregarded the wisdom of that General Assembly and its clear intention as made explicit in the report of the Theological Task Force. We pledge to do everything we can to help set the church back on the path that the PJC decision has partially blocked.

As I have noted previously, it is those who advocate change in the mainline churches, and the PCUSA in particular, who are behind the “painful and polarizing struggle” regarding homosexuality. Without their single-minded determination to keep this issue front and center in the churches, the current unpleasantness either never would have occurred or would long since have disappeared. But if there is anything these folks have learned from 60s radicals, it is that the “long march through the institutions” can take decades, meaning they plan on never going away.

As for “endangering the peace, unity, and purity” of the church, having already addressed the first two I’ve got to ask: how do the GAPJC decisions endanger the purity of the church? I’m not sure my imagination is quite up to figuring that one out.

Lisa Larges was interview by the Alameda (CA) Times-Star:

“If you’re around the church long enough, you learn to expect things like this,” said Lisa Larges, an openly gay candidate from San Francisco. “My case will go forward.”

“The ruling tries to make a distinction between faith and practice, and I don’t think that makes any sense,” said Larges, minister coordinator for the San Francisco-based organization That All May Freely Serve.

“There is definitely a backlash” against gays and lesbians in the church, she said.

This response is a lot better than the tantrum that Capetz threw, but it still demonstrates a lack of understanding and a desire to demonize her opponents. The lack of understanding regards the distinction between faith and practice, which I dealt with here. The demonization comes from the word “backlash.” In fact, there is no backlash, a pejorative word that conjures up people demanding that an injustice be done out of nothing more than hatefully emotional pique. What there is, on the part of opponents of Capetz’ ordination, is a desire to abide by the rules of the denomination and the teaching of Scripture. That doesn’t require a backlash, just fidelity to the standards under which the church is supposed to operate.

But by far the most pathetic of these responses is that of seminary professor and world-class twister of the Reformed tradition, Paul Capetz:

I never would have requested to be restored if I hadn’t been completely convinced from a close reading of the PUP report that was adopted as AI by the GA in 2006 that this was a completely legal thing to do. Moreover, the Committee on Ministry and the presbytery would never have gone through such a lengthy and complicated process had not everyone believed that this was in accord with the polity. Furthermore, the COM and presbytery were so careful to do everything “decently and in order” so that no missteps were taken.

Yeah, all that work down the drain. What a bummer.

And now this? What does it mean? I can’t help but think that the members of the PUP taskforce must be feeling completely betrayed. And I can’t help but think that it’s just a matter of time before the presbytery’s decision in my case is overturned.

He’s got that right, unless he agrees to abide by the constitutional standards, which I’m not sure anyone would believe at this point, given how emphatic he’s been about ignoring them. As for betrayal, consider the betrayal of 2000 years of Christian preaching teaching, and tradition embodied in the act of the Twin Cities presbytery, and then we can really talk about betrayal.

I didn’t think it was possible for my estimate of the church to sink any lower than it already was. It’s been 30 years since the 1978 San Diego GA first adopted its “Definitive Guidance” after accepting the Task Force’s “minority report” and rejecting the “majority report.” And after 30 years nothing in this church has changed with respect to gay people. Unbelievable. I wish you could have been there at the presbytery meeting when I was answering questions and engaging in debate. Aside from the complete ignorance about the Reformed tradition evident on the part of those who wanted to maintain an absolute ban, there is a total unwillingness on their part even to acknowledge the human pain inflicted on people by their policies.

I laughed out loud when I read this. “Complete ignorance about the Reformed tradition”–this coming from a man who had the audacity to cite John Calvin when making his case for the overthrow of the teaching of Scripture and the universal teaching of the church, who has the bizarre notion that Martin Luther’s rejection of clerical celibacy was analogous for acceptance of homosexual behavior, who thinks that the “fidelity in marriage, celibacy in singleness” standard is the same thing as Catholic mandatory priestly celibacy vows, and who thinks that obedience to biblical standards of sexual behavior is a form of works righteousness! Really, this guy needs to be on the Christian comedy circuit, not in the seminary classroom. All right, scratch the first half of that sentence.

As to the “human pain,” I’m sorry if I don’t cringe with guilt. No one has a right to be ordained, nor does one have a right to have one’s sexual proclivities approved of by the church. Capetz is free to do what he wants to in his personal life, but if there is pain involved, it is self-inflicted, the pain of a person who has convinced himself that for the church to not give him what he wants is unfair and unjust ipso facto.

The other day I thought to myself, “Behind all this there is a real lovelessness toward people – these guys do not love human beings as human beings.” I wouldn’t be surprised if some kind of psychoanalytic explanation would account for what is going on: a deep discomfort with their own sexuality and I am the projected image of their fears and anxieties. Or a Nietzschean resentment toward all persons who dare to live life out of their strengths and passions. Something utterly bizarre and evil is at work here.

We love you, too, Paul. Go, repent and sin no more. Then we’ll talk.

(Hat tip: GA Junkie, whom I also thank for his kind words in his last post.)

Chess: Good For Kids

I have been playing chess since I was six years old, and I love the game. I’ve played in big tournaments and little tournaments, I once won a United States Championship in my rating class, I’ve directed tournaments and run chess clubs and high school leagues. I believe in chess, not just as a game, but as a force for good in society. That’s why I’d like to try to help out a friend and some kids at the same time, all in the name of chess.

One of the ways that the Royal Game has been a social good in recent years has been through scholastic chess. In cities across the country, dedicated individuals have used chess as a way of reaching children from tough situations, kids from broken homes and entrenched poverty kids who have to deal street gangs and the temptation of drugs, who have little chance to succeed in life unless something changes. In a commencement address at Texas Tech University in 2007, four-time Women’s World Champion Susan Polgar summarized what chess has to teach our children:

Through chess I learned some of the most important lessons in life: concentration, focus, perseverance, logical thinking, creative thinking, time management, planning and many more. In chess every move is a new decision. Every move has consequences and we have to be responsible for them. In chess we set short and long-term plans. However, there is an opponent in chess and they want to stop our plans. There are constant changes in the situation, in the position on the chess board and we have to adjust to them.

In other words, lots of things that lots of children never learn how to do.

So, about my friend and his project: his name of Michael Southerland, and he’s the Webmaster for Planet Chess, as well as a former big shot with the Internet Chess Club. One of his projects recently has been to design a Planet Chess subsidiary site for Chess for Kids in Sonoma County, California. It’s one of probably hundreds of such efforts throughout the country, and like most of them it’s chronically short of the stuff that’s needed to really do it right: boards and sets, clocks, score sheets, demonstration boards for teaching. At the Chess for Kids site, they tell the reader how he or she can contribute to the work they are doing (not with direct funds, but by purchasing equipment for them at www.wholesalechess.com). It’s not expensive, and it can do some children a world of good. So if you love children, love chess, or love both, give them a hand.

Irreverent Babble and Contradictions

It was recently announced that five Anglican primates–from Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and the Southern Cone (Argentina and Paraguay)–are going to boycott the Lambeth Conference later this year. Their reasons have to do primarily with the continuing refusal of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada to back down from their blessing of gay sex, as well as the larger issue of the authority of Scripture, or its seeming lack of authority. This morning, the ECUSA’s Presiding Bishop responded to that boycott, and I found myself comparing and contrasting her statement  and some of the New Testament passages that talk about dealing with those who depart from the teaching of the faith:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

–Galatians 1:6-9

For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

–2 John 7-11

O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.

–1 Timothy 6:20-21

“The gathering will be diminished by their absence, and I imagine that they themselves will miss a gift they might have otherwise received. None of us is called to ‘feel at home’ except in the full and immediate presence of God. It is our searching, especially with those we find most ‘other,’ that is likely to lead us into the fuller experience of the body of Christ. Fear of the other is an invitation to seek the face of God, not a threat to be avoided.”

–Bishop Katharine Jefforts-Schori

Any questions?