More From More Light

Not content with their initial reaction to the PCUSA General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission’s decisions of last week, the Board of Directors of More Light Presbyterians has put out a “poetic statement” entitled “It’s About Time!” It’s called “poetic,” apparently, because it has more line breaks than the typical press release, rather than because it is actually poetry. So though I won’t overwork the return key, here it is:

It’s about time for all disciples of Jesus Christ to take a stand for those who are still denied full participation in our church–lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sisters and brothers, whom God loves and calls to faith and ministry.

It’s about time to end the task forces, studies, judicial cases, interpretations, and other abuses that continue the unconscionable discriminatory policies of our church.

Got that? Task forces, studies, and interpretations are “abuses,” despite the fact that such things have been almost exclusively the work of liberals pushing an agenda of acceptance of homosexual behavior. Why are they now abuses? Apparently because they didn’t deliver what MLP and its allies wanted, which was complete approval of gay sexual activity, when they wanted it, which was immediately. Evidently MLP has decided that its previous tactics amounted to self-flagellation, and is now unwilling to accept anything short of the “Episcopalianizing” of the PCUSA.

It’s about time to lay aside our fears: Fear of the unknown–fear of schism, fear of those who are different. “God is love…there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” 1 John, 4:16, 18

Here’s a news flash for MLP: evangelicals aren’t “afraid” of gays. They don’t approve of their sexual activities. It’s not the same thing. As for laying aside the fear of schism, that means all that talk about everyone being at the table is on the way out. MLP, at least, sounds like it is no longer interested in whether evangelicals stay in the PCUSA, and probably would just as soon that they get out as soon as possible.

It’s about time to do the right thing, to delete G-6.0106b which has created so much strife in our beloved church. It’s about time to trust in God’s wildly inclusive love, and remove the boundaries we have set around God’s free, unmerited grace. It’s about time to make our church a welcoming community, where everyone has an equal place at God’s table.

It’s about time!

Welcoming and equal, that is, for everyone except those who insist on holding to the faith once delivered to the saints.

Lab Rats

That’s what Oxford University apparently thinks religious believers are–animals to be tested to find out what role belief in God plays in our evolutionary development. According to the Times of London:

It used to be the ultimate million-dollar question: why do people believe in God? But inflation has swollen the price to £1.9 million. This is the sum being handed to Oxford University researchers to explore a topic that has puzzled philosophers and scientists for centuries. The researchers will not be troubling themselves with the matter of whether or not God exists, merely whether belief in God maybe gave Man a Darwinian evolutionary advantage; or whether it is a result of Man’s sociable nature.

This magnificently demonstrates the Achilles heel of modern scientism, based as it is on philosophical materialism: the assumption is made at the outset of the study that belief in God must have a naturalistic explanation. The possibility that human beings believe in God because He actually exists is ruled out a priori. The effect is that the study will, of necessity, be unscientific, because it will declare one possible answer to the question out of bounds, not after application of the scientific method, but as a result of a philosophical (dare we say theological?) presupposition.

Lord knows, they won’t be the first to have tried. In The Descent of Man Darwin noted how “a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal”. That kind of phenomenon prompts evolutionary biologists to seek a genetic explanation, and to ask whether such a genetic change might have boosted Man’s chances of survival. Or maybe the architecture of the human brain evolved, making a belief in God a sort of neurological accident. But if so, who is to say that the only reason our brains evolved in a way to enable such a belief in God to be possible isn’t because God made them evolve that way?

Or perhaps God didn’t make them evolve that way, but revealed Himself in a such a way that those with whom He was speaking would know that it was the Creator of the universe with whom they were conversing.

It has become fashionable for science and religion to snarl at one another. They need not. Many scientists are religious. Universities sprouted in Europe to fertilise religious learning first planted in monasteries. Early scientists sought to explain God’s role in the Universe, not to deny it.

Will the researchers find that people believe in God because science cannot explain, say, Mozart or Matisse or Cole Porter? Or can it? Will they finally be able to solve Nietzsche’s riddle: “Is Man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of Man’s?”

Neither, actually. Nietzsche didn’t think much of either God or man, so apparently the notion that neither is a blunder never occurred to him.

(Via T19.)

PCUSA To Decide Whether to Overrule GAPJC

According to Classical Presbyterian, the PCUSA’s John Knox Presbytery has passed an overture hastily put together to overturn the Permanent Judicial Commission’s decisions of last week. Written by Dr. Mark Achtemeier (member of the task force that wrote the Authoritative Interpretation that was the subject of last week’s rulings), it states as follows:

On Ensuring Proper Application of Ordination Standards under G-6.0108.

John Knox Presbytery overtures the 218th General Assembly (2008) to adopt the following Authoritative Interpretation of Section G-6.0108 of the Book of Order:

“The requirements of G-6.0108 apply equally to all ordination standards of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). G-6.0108 requires examining bodies to give prayerful and careful consideration, on an individual, case-by-case basis, to any departure in matters of belief or practice that a candidate may declare during examination. However, the examining body is not required to accept a departure from standards, and cannot excuse a candidate’s inability to perform the constitutional functions unique to his or her office (such as administration of the sacraments).”

Translation: remember how evangelicals said that the AI was going to allow any presbytery to ordain sexually active homosexuals? Well, that’s exactly what we wanted to allow, until the PJC came in and mucked things up. So now it’s time to officially tell evangelicals they were correct in their original suspicion, and bid them a fond farewell as they head out the door.

There’s a lot of verbiage in the rationale that you can find at Toby’s site, but the last part is the one that especially grabbed me:

The Effect of this Overture. Freedom of conscience means nothing unless it is respected on issues as to which faithful Presbyterians disagree. In Bush, the GAPJC rendered conscience irrelevant precisely where it matters most – where there is genuine disagreement that threatens the unity of the church. This overture would not repeal the standard set forth in the second sentence of G-6.0106b, but would restore it to its proper status as one among many standards – to be faithfully applied in case-by-case assessments of fitness. In doing so, it would restore theological integrity to the way our standards are applied; return us to the sound Presbyterian tradition that has prevented and healed schisms over past centuries; respect the efforts of the 217th General Assembly to end thirty years of polarized debate on intractable differences; and enable the church to refocus its energies on outreach and mission, to the glory of God and the service of Jesus Christ in the world.

Two comments: 1) The issue isn’t freedom of conscience, it is freedom of action. This rationale continues to peddle the line that it is impossible to distinguish between belief and action, and suggest that if a given action isn’t allowed while a given belief is, that the result is hypocrisy. Once again, see Paul’s argument with regard to meat sacrificed to idols to get a biblical rationale for why it is sometimes necessary to restrain one’s actions regardless of one’s beliefs. 2) The only way that passage of this overture will “end thirty years of polarized debate” is by telling those who believe in biblical ethics that it’s time to go. When matters such as sexual conduct on the part of the clergy may be determined by majority vote (for instance, in San Francisco and Twin Cities presbyteries, which are only the first of many that will so act), then there is no longer are place for those who believe that biblical ethics are mandatory for the church, rather than democratically determined.

(Hat tip: Toby Brown.)