The Reformed Pastor

The leaders of the PCUSA have sent out a missive designed, above all, to minimize the inevitable fallout from the passage of Amendment 10-A that throws open to doorway to sexually active gays being ordained. The letter, which might have been entitled “Can’t We All Just Get Along and Keep Those Dollars Flowing?”, says:

The debate about ordination standards has been a Presbyterian family struggle for much of the last three decades. We have sought to find that place where every congregation and every member, deacon, elder, and minister of the Word and Sacrament can share their gifts in ministry while, at the same time, the integrity of every congregation, member, deacon, elder, and minister is respected.

This makes clear that the leadership was not disinterested in the outcome, not that anyone really had any doubts. Louisville was gung ho for this change, which is actually about the overthrow of biblical standards for ministry and sexual practice.

This decision begins with an unequivocal affirmation that ordained office will continue to be rooted in each deacon, elder, and minister’s “joyful submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life.”

Except that every presbytery is now free to define “the Lordship of Jesus Christ” in any way they want. If a presbytery thinks that a bisexual person living with both a man and a woman is a “faithful expression” of their “submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ,” it can do that. This is what happens when the standards for ordination are severed from the biblical standards for Christian leadership.

This action also has important effects on our life together as a church, namely:

• in keeping with our historic principles of church order, each session and presbytery will continue to determine the suitability of individuals seeking ordination within its bounds.
• persons in a same-gender relationship may be considered for ordination and/or installation as deacons, elders, and ministers of the Word and Sacrament within the PC(USA); and
• all other churchwide standards for ordination remain unchanged.

Reactions to this change will span a wide spectrum. Some will rejoice, while others will weep. Those who rejoice will see the change as an action, long in coming, that makes the PC(USA) an inclusive church that recognizes and receives the gifts for ministry of all those who feel called to ordained office. Those who weep will consider this change one that compromises biblical authority and acquiesces to present culture. The feelings on both sides run deep.

…that the Presbyterian Church (USA) officially tells God to go find another sandbox to play in. According to Minnesota Public Radio:

Presbyterian leaders in the Twin Cities face a historic vote Tuesday.

They’ll decide whether to remove a requirement that ministers and lay leaders be faithfully married heterosexuals or celibate singles. The move could open the ministry and leadership positions to gays and lesbians.

If Twin Cities church [sic--the writer means presbytery] leaders vote in favor of the change, it would be the final vote needed to ratify the change nationally.

More Light Presbyterians, one of the biggest proponents of the change in the Book of Order, is understandably thrilled:

The Rev. Michael Adee — the executive director of More Light Presbyterians, a group that’s been working since 1974 to make the church more inclusive — said dropping the fidelity in marriage, chastity in singleness requirement would return to the church’s original criteria for selecting its leaders: their faith and character.

“This helps the Presbyterian Church be a grown-up church,” Adee said. “That we trust people to work out their faith, their salvation and their intimate lives. And in a sense, the Presbyterian Church has the opportunity to trust God to be at work in calling people to ministry and for us to trust each other. And several pastors have said to me, we don’t like being the bedroom police.”

Yup, the PCUSA is now a grown-up church, and doesn’t need Father looking over its shoulder any more. It can now swagger into adulthood with the rest of our culture, and proudly proclaim to its heavenly Parent that it doesn’t need His supervision, His commandments, or His stuck-in-the-mud morality. It’s party time.

The PCUSA is going the way of the UCC and Episcopal Church before it (because their experiments in polymorphous perversity have worked out so well). Its 45 years of uninterrupted decline will now accelerate, and its leadership will no doubt wonder in the years to come why God isn’t blessing their journey into spiritual adultery adulthood.

All day long, I’ve had running through my head Neil Young’s lament for roadie Bruce Berry, who died of a drug overdose in 1972. Like PCUSA, Berry probably didn’t mean to kill himself either, but he was just as dead:

Admittedly, that may well have happened a long time ago, but can we finally agree that the erstwhile emergent guru and Sojourners contributor has finally made a public declaration of heresy? He chose a really peculiar way to do so, too–a column in the “On Faith” section of the Washington Post addressed at the lunacy that is Harold Camping. McLaren wants to eliminate any and all possibility that anyone can know the time of the Second Coming, so he proceeds to throw out the baby with the dirty bath water:

The leader of the Sojourners community and go-to guy on the evangelical left has sinned. He has fallen from grace, ceased to be acceptably progressive, violated the First Commandment, and must be punished. He has crossed the god of Gay, and has been banished to the outer darkness. So says Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches, citing Jim Naughton of Episcopal Cafe and other guardians of religious left orthodoxy:

Over at Episcopal Cafe, Jim Naughton wonders whether the big tent rather broadly known as “progressive Christianity” has collapsed….”Lefties” like himself, Naughton writes in retrospect, were wrong to let Sojourners founder Jim Wallis become “the embodiment of the Progressive Christianity in the eyes of the Obama administration and the Washington media….

But now, Wallis as de facto leader is no longer “tenable,” Naughton contends. “The big tent collapsed this weekend, and it was Sojourners who yanked out the tent poles. Someone needs to alert official Washington that Jim Wallis and his minions no longer speak for us–if they ever did.”

So what was Wallis capital offense? Sojourners refused to run an ad on its web site:

It can be argued that Mother’s Day is the most popular secular holiday in our churches. Attendance increases, special music is featured, pastors pay particular attention to crafting messages that affirm the place of motherhood in keeping families and communities faithfully knit together. So it seemed fitting that Believe Out Loud, a trans-denominational effort to promote LGBT equality in mainline Protestant congregations, focused on Mother’s Day to launch its new campaign to invite one million believers to “sign up” for full LGBT equality in our churches and society-at-large.

A centerpiece of this effort is a new video with particular relevance to Mother’s Day. The video features that fateful, frightful walk down the church’s center aisle by a visiting family. How many of us can remember such a walk? This family unit, however, happens to include a young boy with two moms. After inhospitable stares and gestures from pew-sitters, the family is welcomed by the pastor. A familiar music track enhances the emotional impact. The video is a sweetly stated reminder that all should be welcomed in our churches. Its target audience is clergy and lay leaders who silently believe in LGBT equality but have yet to take steps to express this welcome publicly. Hence, the campaign calls on church leaders to “Believe Out Loud.”

To get the word out, Believe Out Loud organizers backed the launch of this viral video with a multi-layered, web-based advertising strategy that included a significant ad buy on the Sojourners website and email newsletters—home to one of the largest networks of progressive Christians in the United States.

So, you can imagine our dismay when Sojourners refused to run our ads. In a written statement, Sojourners said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to decline. Sojourners position is to avoid taking sides on this issue. In that care [sic], the decision to accept advertising may give the appearance of taking sides.”

That explanation on Sojourners‘ part may sound lame, but there’s reason behind it. Wallis and his chums have never taken a public position on gay rights because they happen to be split on it, with some taking a traditional evangelical position and others  going the full Episcopalian. In addition, Wallis has long held that issues such as gay rights and abortion are a distraction from Sojourners’ mission, which revolves around issues of peace and poverty. With most organizations, that would be completely acceptable–you don’t hear the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation sounding off about gay rights, either, nor do you hear the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice talk about the West Bank.

But for several years now, Wallis has been treated more or less as the main spokesman for the religious left (Posner snidely says that’s because he has a “knack for self-promotion”) by both the mainstream media and various power brokers in Washington. If he is going to maintain that exalted position, however, it means that he must take the Right Position on the Most Important Issue in the History of the World. As Posner writes:

As Presbyterian Pastor Katie Mulligan notes, though, writing in response to Sojourners’ rejection of the ad: “It is entirely possible to do good work in the world and at the same time contribute to the ongoing bigotry and oppression of queer folk.”

Poor Jim Wallis. I’ll bet he’s never been called a bigoted oppressor before. But the god of Gay is a jealous god, and his/her/its wrath is terrible.

(Via MCJ.)

The culture of repression connected to the gay rights movement has claimed another victim. This one is Peter Vidmar, a gold medal winning Olympic gymnast whose expression of an unapproved political opinion three years ago has cost him his job with the U.S. Olympic Committee. According to USA Today:

Olympic gold medalist Peter Vidmar, who last week was named chef de mission for the 2012 U.S. Olympic team, abruptly resigned Friday after a firestorm of negative attention in the media and inside the U.S. Olympic Committee due to his 2008 actions against gay marriage.

As first reported by Outsports.com, and then in the Chicago Tribune, Vidmar participated in two anti-gay marriage demonstrations and donated $2,000 for the successful 2008 Proposition 8 ballot initiative in California defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The proposition overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that permitted same-sex marriage.

“Olympic gold medalist joins Rancho Prop 8 demonstration,” said The Orange County Register on Oct. 30, 2008, in which it quoted Vidmar as saying, “It’s good for our society to have a traditional definition of marriage.”

Vidmar said his opposition to same-sex marriage comes from his religious beliefs as a Mormon.

“The Church wanted to take a stand on the issue, and they invited their members to take a stand,” he told the Tribune. “I chose to be involved.”

And that’s where he screwed up. He was apparently unaware that the expression of certain political opinions that have nothing to do with sports is nonetheless forbidden by the powers that be. The result was the usual hysteria:

In U.S. Olympic circles, there was concern that Vidmar wasn’t just expressing his personal opinions on a controversial issue, but that he had moved into an activist role on an issue involving civil rights.

Right. He took part in a couple of demonstrations and gave money to a political action committee. That, to Olympians, makes him an “activist,” and thus radioactive. Of course, last time I checked, giving money to a cause and taking part in public demonstrations is the “expression of…political opinions,” but then I don’t have the finely tuned activist radar that the Olympians have.

When the Tribune story broke, reaction was nearly immediate — and almost entirely negative — within the USOC. Aimee Mullins, the former president of the Women’s Sports Foundation and chef de mission for the 2012 U.S. Paralympic Games team, said she was “concerned and deeply saddened” about Vidmar’s past actions.

“The Olympic movement is about promoting equity for all,” she said.

When, exactly, did the “Olympic movement” endorse same sex marriage? In fact, when did the “Olympic movement” become officially and punitively political at all? (I know the Olympics have always been liable to use for political purposes–for instance, the tit-for-tat boycotts in 1980 and 1984–but generally the Olympians have resisted identification with specific political causes.)

“Peter is respected the world-over for his dedication and commitment to the Olympic movement and is rightly considered one of America’s great Olympic champions,” said USOC CEO Scott Blackmun. “I believe Peter would have served our athletes well, but given the nature of this issue, I certainly respect his decision to resign. As we look toward London 2012 and the selection of Peter’s replacement, we’ll do so with the sole intent of showcasing America’s best and brightest stars and the inspirational story that each member of our Olympic team has to share.”

Wel, that and being sure that no one is on the team who is so crass as to allow unauthorized opinions to leak out to the public.

Informed by the Tribune of Vidmar’s position on the issue, Blackmun originally issued a statement reaffirming his selection:

“Peter is a tireless advocate for sport in this country and someone who has inspired many with his successes in the world of sport. That is why we chose him as our chef for the London Games. We respect Peter’s right to religious freedom, and we understand and respect he fact that many Americans do not share his views.”

Oh, but that was before he learned that Vidmar had morphed into an activist–at that point any notion of religious freedom, or free speech were out the window. It didn’t help that the bully brigade chimed in:

A day earlier, a well-known gay U.S. Olympian, figure skater Johnny Weir, told the Tribune that it was “disgraceful” to have a person with Vidmar’s views and actions in a position that makes him the symbolic head of a U.S. Olympic team.

“It’s wrong,” Weir said. “I certainly wouldn’t want to be represented by someone who is anti-gay marriage. It isn’t just about marriage, it is being allowed equal rights as Americans. The fact this man who is very publicly against something that may be represented on the American team is disgraceful.”

So that’s that. Either you’re for same sex marriage, or you’re off the American Olympic team. Dissent from the ruling sexual orthodoxy is not allowed. Welcome to the Age of Tolerance.

The newsletter of the United Methodists’ General Board of Church and Society is out today with, among other things, a column protesting the practice of shackling women prisoners in childbirth. Heather Rice, a blogger with the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good and Associate Director of Policy for the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, writes:

Forty states in America do not have a prohibition against shackling women prisoners during childbirth.

This is a shameful practice that strips away the dignity from the sacred moment of welcoming a new life into the world and increases danger to the health and well-being of both the child and mother. My own state, Virginia, is one of them.

In our Christian faith, the sanctity of human life is established in Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him.” In particular, the newborn child bears within himself the divine image, the image of the Christ child. Imagine Joseph frantically preparing a stable for pregnant Mary as the humble welcoming place for a new life. The human story behind Christ’s birth demonstrates that every mother and every child should experience a degree of dignity in the moment of birth….

In my own state, Virginia, legislation that would have prohibited the egregious practice of shackling women prisoners during childbirth was considered this year. I testified in support of the bill at the initial subcommittee hearing in my capacity as Associate Director of Policy at NRCAT. For me this was not just a professional issue, but as an evangelical, a deeply held personal one as well.

The bill passed unanimously in the subcommittee. Unfortunately, rather than choosing to protect the sacredness of birth and safeguarding infants, the full committee defeated the bill. The chairwoman did agree to write a letter to the Va. Dept. of Corrections recommending they look further into the issue.

I pray they do the right thing.

As evangelicals, we should not tolerate a situation that forces women to welcome their children into the world in chains.

Now, I happen to agree with her. I can’t conceive of any reason why, if a woman is properly guarded in the delivery room, there should be any reason for shackles. This sounds to me like one of those “we have to treat men and women equally” things that refuses to take the differences between the sexes seriously. But here’s the things that really gets me: look who it is that’s trumpeting this article.

The GBCS is a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights, and one of the most vociferous proponents of partial birth abortion. That being the case, the idea that the agency would reprint an article taking a public policy position based on the sanctity of life is the height of absurdity. “The human story behind Christ’s birth demonstrates that every mother and every child should experience a degree of dignity in the moment of birth,” but apparently not in the moment just before birth. Church and Society leaders are against shackling women during childbirth, but are perfectly happy for women to see doctors in order to have those same children ripped apart in the womb moments before childbirth would take place.

Mainline churches have largely become local versions of the Green Party at prayer. Leftie fads long ago captured the commanding heights of the established denominations. In fact, they did it through the seminaries. So, clergy moved left, members moved out, and mainline churches became mixtures of union halls, encounter groups and mausoleums.

–Jerry Bowyer, “The Seminary Bubble” in Forbes

Are you  ready, that is, for a good laugh? Some of Harold Camping’s deceived followers have hit the road to spread the message that The End Is Near. They were in the nation’s capitol yesterday. According to the Washington Post:

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Matthew 24:36)

The United Methodist Judicial Council has struck down a new policy passed in the New York Annual Conference that would have permitted clergy to marry those of the same sex. According to the United Methodist News Service:

A policy adopted but not yet implemented by United Methodists in New York and Connecticut that essentially would have allowed clergy to marry someone of the same sex has been declared “null, void and of no effect” by the denomination’s top court.

The United Methodist Judicial Council has ruled that the New York Annual (regional) Conference resolution and policy allowing clergy “to marry at their own discretion” is “neither valid nor constitutional.”

While an annual conference can adopt rules and regulations for its own governance, the council wrote in Decision 1185, the conference “may not legally negate, ignore or violate provisions of the Discipline with which they disagree even when the disagreement is based upon conscientious objections to those provisions.”

New York made a very interesting set of arguments in favor of its policy:

The rationale for the New York policy, adopted in 2010, is that same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut; that such unions performed legally elsewhere “are legally recognized by state agencies in New York”; and that the church’s Articles of Religion – doctrinal standards found in Paragraph 103 of the Book of Discipline – state that it is “lawful” for clergy “to marry at their own discretion.”

Contending that the Articles of Religion take precedence over other church laws outside the church’s constitution, the New York Conference declared that “we believe that any… provision (in the Discipline) denying marriage to some clergy is unconstitutional and contrary to the Articles of Religion…” In particular, Paragraph 103 would take precedence over Paragraph 2702, the conference said.

Please note that liberals in the denomination have spent the better part of the last century slowly eviscerating the Articles of Religion, to the point where the document is widely held to be nothing more than historical curiosity that can be ignored at will (that’s certainly the only way to explain some of the bizarre stuff being taught in UM seminaries these days). But when they think (incorrectly, as it turns out) that they can use the Articles to get what they want, they go all creedal. The hypocrisy really is stunning, if unsurprising.

The other two arguments seem to be saying (as liberals in the mainline have been saying since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ignored precedent, tradition, history, biology, and everything else that would get in its way in legalizing same sex marriage back in 2003) that state law should take precedence over church law in governing the denomination. Needless to say, they didn’t get far with that.

During the oral hearing in October, J. Ann Craig and Nehemiah Luckett — New York lay members who identified themselves as gay — argued that Article XXI of Paragraph 103, declares marriage is “a moral structure available to all.”

Which it is–any man is free to marry any woman, and vice versa.

At the April oral hearing in Detroit, Kevin Nelson, a New York lay member who identified himself as “a straight person who supports full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons,” argued that when John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote the Articles of Religion, he did not define marriage as heterosexual.

That’s true. The Articles don’t specifically prohibit two men from marrying, nor do they prohibit men from marrying manatees, statues of Elvis, infants, or their favorite mango. I would have thought, given the 18th century time frame and all, that we could simply assume that, but apparently not. By the way, are you wondering what Article XXI actually says?

Article XXI—Of the Marriage of Ministers

The ministers of Christ are not commanded by God’s law either to vow the estate of single life, or to abstain from marriage; therefore it is lawful for them, as for all other Christians, to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve best to godliness.

Right. So it was aimed at the Roman Catholic prohibition on ministers’ marrying. Context can be such a pain in the neck, can’t it?

Both Craig and Nelson noted that Wesley was well aware that issues of class, race and status could be used by society as an attempt to block marriage. “Although John Wesley may not have considered marriage for same-gender couples in Article XXI, the discretion of clergy to marry whom they choose can be understood on the face of it as a challenge to arbitrary social categories and prejudices,” Craig said at the October hearing.

Except that there’s nothing arbitrary about the restriction of marriage to heterosexual couples. It’s that pesky Bible thing, doncha know.

Nelson declared that allowing other parts of the Discipline to supersede Article XXI is “anti-Wesleyan” and ignores the ministry of Jesus to the marginalized, “a marginalization that in today’s world and in the case of gay and lesbian persons is all too often perpetuated by the very Christian churches that have been charged by God with opposing it.”

Noting that “there is no acceptable place between humiliation and respect,” Nelson asked council members to “take a controversial but clearly proscribed stand” to uphold the church’s constitution and affirm the New York Conference policy.

As a constitutional argument, this amounted to a plea for the Judicial Council to do what the supreme courts of several states have done, and simply impose its own policy preferences (assuming they differ from the current ones) for that of the membership of the denomination. Fortunately, the Council’s membership is made up of people who don’t consider themselves sources of new revelation, so the request was rejected.

The good thing about this is that it appears to shut off any judicial avenue for liberals in the United Methodist Church to impose their transformation of theology and ethics on the church as a whole. Instead, they will have to go the route of trying to change the Book of Discipline at General Conference, the world-wide meeting of the church that has seen evangelical Methodists from Africa and other areas of the Global South wield growing influence because their churches are growing while the American church shrinks. The standards still need to be enforced, of course, but at least the standards themselves aren’t going anywhere any time soon.

UPDATE: Joseph Slife at Methodist Thinker has an excellent set-up piece on the case. Check it out.

My hope is that from this success in the foreign policy arena two days ago, that [President Obama] will be emboldened to take once again to the Congress legislation – not just to increase a renewable energy standard – but climate change legislation that this country and the world need.

–Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, at a Climate Leadership Gala hosted by the Earth Day Network in Washington on Tuesday; I’m told that under the influence of certain controlled substances people will see links between completely unconnected things that normal folks can’t see, but I don’t know what Richardson’s excuse is

( Via JammieWearingFool.)