Category Archives: commentary

Loss Of Identity In The PC(USA)?

Yesterday Pittsburgh Presbytery hosted a Presbyterian Convocation on Our Freedom of Religion At Risk: A Presbyterian Crisis. I tried to structure my day so that I could hear as much of the webcast as possible. It was interesting at times but I’m not sure if it lived up to the title and a lot of the material I had heard before. I might make some more comments specifically on the Convocation in a future post.

But two of the speakers made comments that, combined with some other things I have read or heard recently, got me thinking about the loss of identity for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Has the PC(USA) drifted so that it is no longer, well… Presbyterian?

The first speaker at the Convocation, after the welcome and introduction, was Dr. Joseph Small, Director of the PC(USA) Office of Theology, Worship and Education Ministries. The announced title of his remarks was The Westminster Assembly, but he spent a significant part of his remarks talking about the basis of Presbyterian connectionalism being rooted in the biblical concept of koinonia, translated as communion or fellowship. He made the point that this koinonia between entities in the PC(USA) has severely deteriorated and said something like “it is almost entirely gone between presbyteries.” This struck a chord with me since back in October I had asked “Is The PCUSA Too Big?” with this issue in mind. It seemed to me that one of Dr. Small’s points was that our Presbyterian connectionalism has broken down to the point where we are almost congregational because of the loss of scripturally and Spirit-filled communion between groups in the denomination. He reminded us that the church is not a human endeavor but a community called together by God.

Two speakers later was Dr. Beau Weston on The Adopting Act of 1729, which he talked about in detail. The Adopting Act was necessary as a tool to settle differences between those presbyteries advocating subscription to the Westminster Standards and those desiring a less-enforced orthodoxy. He then jumped to the last 50 years and pointed out that with the Confession of 1967 the Presbyterian Church moved from adopting the Westminster Standards to agreeing to be guided by the new Book of Confessions. As he said yesterday, and has said elsewhere, including his book Leading from the Center, this was a turning point in the mainline Presbyterian church and the beginning of the loss of institutional identity. He makes the point as well in his recent document “Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.”

Central to the assault on authority in the Sixties was the overthrow of the confession of the church. When two northern Presbyterian bodies merged to produce the UPCUSA, a new confession was called for. The new confession, The Confession of 1967, was indeed produced. Instead of adopting the new confession as the constitutional standard of the church, though, the denomination took the revolutionary step of adopting a whole library of confessional documents. The Book of Confessions included the Westminster Standards, the Confession of ’67, and a slew of others. It was as if the country amended the U.S. Constitution, but, instead of incorporating new text into the venerable old document, adopted the entire constitutions of a dozen other countries, too.

In theory, the one constitutional confession was supplemented by many others. In practice, officers of the church were no longer expected to be bound by any confessional statement at all. Dropping the confession out of the binding part of the church’s constitution undermined authority in two ways. First, leaders no longer had any authoritative faith to develop or lead from; second, the body of the church no longer had a clear public standard to hold its putative leaders to. Instead of an establishment that kept one another humble by trying to live within the confession, the church was afflicted with a host of self-appointed prophets who expected the church to follow them, pay for their pet projects, and the like.

The consequence, he said yesterday, was that we stopped arguing over the confessions and started arguing over the Book of Order.

While Dr. Weston talked about this published theory of his, he mentioned a related item that I don’t recognize from his circulating work. He mentioned that he had done a survey of some members of the PC(USA) and asked which, if any, of the documents in the Book of Confessions should be there. Keeping in mind that the standard for adding a document to the Book is endorsement by 2/3 of the presbyteries, only the ancient creeds, Apostles and Nicene, even broke a simple majority. The Westminster Standards and Declaration of Barmen were next and the rest were further back.

Two thoughts crossed my mind. First, that this is a terrible indication of our theological identity and history. Second, if the confessions mean so little why is the PC(USA) embarking on the expense of time and money to consider the revision of one catechism and the inclusion of another confession.

I would also point out that the idea of the loss of identity with the diminution and abandonment of the Westminster Standards is not unique to Dr. Weston; this is a primary thesis of D. G. Hart and J. R. Muether in their book Seeking A Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism.

That is all I have to say about yesterday’s Convocation at this time, but two other items also crossed my path recently.

The first comes from Michael McCarty over at his blog Around the Scuttlebutt. I am sure some of you are following his series serving as a case study in church leadership titled “The Adventures of Graying Presbyterian Church.” Yesterday’s installment was called “To recall from whence we came.” He compares the church with the U.S. Marine Corps and how every marine learns the history and traditions of the corps. He then says of the church:

In the same way, when elders have a basic understanding of the history
of the Church in general and the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition in
particular, they are better able to perform the really important duties
of their office.

The real irony here is that the expansion of the Book of Confessions was to allow for greater understanding and recognition of our tradition. I guess the problem is that we agree to be guided by it, and then set it on the shelf.

Finally, the other day a friend made the profound comment that churches that have a strong sense of identity with the PC(USA) are ones with older, well established facilities. Likewise, churches interested in leaving the PC(USA) with their property are more likely churches that have newer facilities. The idea is that the newer buildings are viewed as “we built this church, we should be able to keep it” as opposed to older facilities where the attitude is “our predecessors built this church and we are the beneficiaries of their faithfulness.” Again, do we have a long-term denominational identity or a short-term local identity?

This got me thinking and so I did a quick, semi-scientific study over lunch today. I took the last, that is the most recent, 20 churches on the Layman’s list of departing churches and tried to figure out the age of their facilities. For the sake of this survey I divided the “new” from the “established” at 50 years old. Many of the churches had their church histories on their web site making it easy to find out the age of the buildings. For a few I had to depend on the pictures on their web site. In a few other cases I could get a good idea from the Google satellite (actually aerial) image or the street view. And in two cases I could not be certain enough to make a call.

Of those 20 churches, 12 had new sanctuaries or worship spaces built or acquired in the last 50 years. One more was 52 years old. There were five that, as far as I could tell, worshiped in buildings substantially unchanged in outline in the last 52 years. At least in this quick survey the concept holds.

I do need to acknowledge the caveats here. The first is that I am painting with a very broad brush using easily attained data. The second, is that I have not even touched the negative evidence, the congregations with new buildings that are not even considering leaving. Or to put it another way, I don’t have a control group. And finally, I realize that it is probably easier and safer to say that churches with older buildings have more denominational identity and loyalty than to say that churches with newer buildings have less identity and loyalty. Anyway, it was a thought provoking comment that appears to have some evidence supporting it.

And in closing… Speaking of denominational loyalty, you probably saw the news this week that protestants these days have more loyalty to their toothpaste than their denomination. Yes, from USA Today, it turns out that 16% of protestants have single brand denominational loyalty, but 22% have one brand of toothpaste. The good news is that 67% of protestants have some denominational preference. Comment in the blogosphere is rampant but I’ll point to the Rev. Mark D. Roberts who is turning his comments into a series on this. And for the record — while I may be a dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterian, my family has attended the church God calls us to. And one time, when God called us to another denomination’s New Church Development, I think some of the denominational hierarchy were glad to see this Presbyterian move on after questioning the episcopacy too many times. But that is a story for another time…

Recordings For Children With A Twist

I suspect that some of you have used musical settings for scripture memory for either yourself or your children. Well, thanks to a discussion begun by sjonee at PuritanBoard I have been made aware of songs for learning about the Westminster Confession.

The PuritanBoard discussion begins with a pointer to Songs For Saplings and their Questions With Answers series. From listening to the samples and reading the lyrics these all appear to be songs in the context of catechism-like questions with Westminster-like answers. While there are close echos of the Westminster Confession, and Larger and Shorter Catechisms here, it does not appear to be a literal musical setting of them. But it takes a question, like “Who is God?” (note that Westminster asks “What is God?”) and answers with something like the Westminster Confession, in this case:

God is the only living and true God. He’s
the all-glorious, almighty, all-knowing
Sovereign Creator and Lord of the whole universe.
God
is perfect and holy, infinite, eternal and unchanging.

The Westminster Confession section says:

There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty; most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withalh most just and terrible in his judgments; hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

Probably a reasonable summation of the section for children ages 3-5. There are three CD’s on the market so far, each for a slightly older age range.

But the PuritanBoard discussion brought out a couple of other similar recordings. One is the Baptist Catechism Set To Music. There is also a four volume set of the Westminster Shorter Catechism Songs. And you can find some on YouTube as well: Here is YouTube – Singing – Shorter Catechism Q1.

And now for something completely different…

A while back I ran across a CD of lulliby music for children drawn from the classical tradition. Preformed by Eric and Susan Davis it includes some well known and contemporary music and is all instrumental. But what caught my attention was the title:

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

It seems innocent enough, and there is nothing really wrong with it, but I had to wonder what the target audiance would think if they were aware of the source of the line. As I am sure many of you are aware it comes from an 18th century children’s prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
Should I die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

As I said, I have no problem with the prayer and I know many new parents who would probably be fine with it. But I suspect that some a modern parents would not be as comfortable because it is a prayer or because of the content. It is not like our modern society to worry about dying in our sleep, to say nothing of the fact that many modern parents are not religious enough to even consider praying for the Lord’s protection.

Or maybe this is just my unusual mind overinterpreting modern culture. Maybe no one would really care.

Community In Football

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I guess there is some football game on Sunday. American football that is. Our small group Bible study is getting together and some of us will watch it. People seem to think that it is something big, but it is nothing compared to what the rest of the world calls football. Just wait until 2010 in South Africa. But I digress…

So once again the United States comes to a halt on a Sunday to watch a sporting event. I reflected on this last year and yesterday a discussion started on the Puritan Board about doing this on a Sunday. It does of course revolve around not just issues of the fourth commandment but the second as well. I found it interesting how that crowd was about evenly split, it seemed to me, between watching and not watching. A while back Ethics Daily had an opinion piece on “Has Sports Become A Religion In America?” (See above about the sport the world is passionate about if you think Americans are the only ones.) On NPR yesterday there was an interview with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Bob Dvorchak where he said that their football team was more important than religion and how it unites the Pittsburgh diaspora that resulted from the shutdown of the steel mills.

Well, to keep things in perspective I have seen three positive stories about football and community in the last few weeks that I would like to share with you. Only one is explicitly Christian or covenant community, but the others could be as well.

Lions vs. Tornadoes high school football game
(H/T A Reforming Mom) In his Life of Reilly column for ESPN Rick Reilly had a great story a few weeks back about a Texas high school football game between the Lions of Grapevine Faith Christian School and the Tornadoes of Gainesville State School. It is important to understand that the Tornadoes play no home games, have no cheerleaders, and really no spectators cheering for them at games. Gainesville State School is a maximum security youth facility. So Grapevine Faith specifically scheduled a game with them and then shared their crowd with them as well. Half of Grapevine’s cheerleaders and supporters were on Gainesville’s side of the field cheering them on as if they were their own team. In an e-mail to the fans the Grapevine coach wrote: “Here’s the message I want you to send: You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.” And they sent that message. The article quotes one of the Gainesville players in the huddle of both teams at the end of the game as praying “Lord, I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say thank
You, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world
that cared about us.” And the Gainesville coach told the Grapevine coach “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.”

Update: Just after posting this and double-checking the links I notice that Rick Reilly has posted an Epilogue to this story today. It turns out that word got around about this, like really around, and the NFL commissioner brought the Grapevine coach to Tampa for the game on Sunday. You have to admire the quote from the coach: “I hate it that this thing that we did is so rare. Everybody views it as such a big deal. Shouldn’t that be the normal?”

Tony Dungy keeping community together
(H/T my friend and fellow soccer ref Jim over at APC Blog) With Tony Dungy’s retirement from coaching ESPN ran an article about his character, and yes about community. It was about the 1997 season when he was coaching at Tampa Bay and after the team had a great start to the season his kicker started missing and costing them a couple of games. While the fans and press were up in arms to replace the kicker, what Dungy knew was that the kicker’s mother was dying of cancer. Dungy stuck with him through the bad games and once called him into his office and simply told him “You’re a Buccaneer. You’re part of our family. You’re our kicker.” That unconditional acceptance was what Michael Husted needed and his kicking returned to form the next game and Tampa Bay made the playoffs.

The touchdown belongs to the whole team
A couple of weeks ago, before the conference championship games, I heard an interesting radio commentary by Diana Nyad about Arizona receiver Larry Fitzgerald. Her observation was that when he scored a touchdown, it was not about celebrating by himself in the end zone in front of the fans, but going back to the other ten players on the field who helped make the touchdown possible and celebrating with them. Again a community ethic and she says that Fitzgerald says his mother wouldn’t want it any other way.

(The one and only pro football game I watched much of this year was the championship game Arizona won and I did get to see Fitzgerald make a couple of great plays and score touchdowns. True to Diana Nyad’s commentary he did not put on a show in the end zone. But he did linger there with arms raised for a few seconds and then, true to form, the TV cut away before I ever saw him jog back to his team mates to celebrate with them. Maybe I’ll see more on Sunday.)

What Is A Presbyterian? — Part 2

What Is A Presbyterian? — Part 1

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What is a Presbyterian?

Pop quiz, multiple choice, chose the best answer, you have five minutes:

1. As a Presbyterian I believe that my, and my church’s primary responsibility is to:

Glorify God and enjoy Him forever
Proclaim the gospel for the salvation of human kind
Provide shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship for the children of God
Provide for the maintenance of divine worship
Preserve the truth
Promote social righteousness
Exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the World
Maintain an ecclesiastical government of teaching and ruling elders governing jointly in community

OK, time’s up. Pencils down.

Yes, I am being a bit facetious here, but in reflecting more on Carol Howard Merritt’s great post about young evangelicals, especially the first point she made (“Well, they obviously don’t know what it means to be Presbyterian.”), I think I realized why it touched a nerve with me. Over the years I have come to realize, or at least quantify, that what people think a Presbyterian is depends on how much emphasis they put on each of the eight possible answers above. I think that in most cases people are not even aware they prioritize these things. But I have found that as I talk with someone about their Presbyterian viewpoint, it does not take long before I can identify one or two of these categories that is more important to them and that they associate with “being Presbyterian.”

So from what I have seen, in many cases where we fail to understand, or at least we disagree with, our Presbyterian sisters and brothers it is because one person or group places a higher value on one category, say #1 or #2, and the other side can not understand why they don’t appear to value another priority, maybe #6 or #8. And these can be applied to specific circumstances: For example, when we talk about doing mission do we think of doing #2 as a first priority and #6 while we are there, or doing #3, #6, or #7 as a primary mission figuring #2 will happen in the process.

Now, for the diversity of Presbyterians reading this who might not get all the references, #1 is of course from the Westminster Standards, specifically the first question of the Shorter Catechism. Numbers 2-7 are “The Six Great Ends of the Church” found in the PC(USA) Book of Order at G-1.02 with a footnote that they date from the very early 1900’s and were incorporated in the Presbyterian Constitution in 1910. And #8 is the only unique point of Presbyterian polity in the list and can be found in some similar form in most Presbyterian Constitutions, such as 4-3 in the PCA Book of Church Order, 1.4(5) in the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, or G-4.0301b in the PC(USA) Book of Order. (More on #8 next week in Part 2)

You may or may not think there is one right answer, or at least best answer, on this list. You may think there are some clearly wrong answers among the possible choices. All the Presbyterian branches I have studied recognize the Westminster Standards as a confessional standard, although they may place differing values on it from subscription to “one among many.” And as I said, I regularly see something like #8 in Presbyterian constitutions. At this point the PC(USA) may be the only branch to incorporate the Great Ends of the Church. (Please let me know if another branch uses it.)

Back in 1997 the 209th General Assembly kicked off a two-year celebration of the Great Ends of the Church, although I’m not sure how much happened after GA adjourned. At the GA one of the questions the Moderator candidates responded to in writing was something like “which is the most important of the Great Ends.” It was interesting reading the responses as the candidates seemed to fall all over themselves to say that the Great Ends were all important and then some of the responses would single out one of them as a little bit more important. That was my introduction to specifying and observing the diversity of Presbyterian though and viewpoint using the Great Ends.

So I encourage you to think about this yourself. First, how do each of these points, or maybe other I don’t list, shape your view of what it means to “be Presbyterian.” And secondly, how do you project this upon others when you try to decide if they know the meaning of “being Presbyterian.”

In Part 2, I’ll rant about words having meanings, particularly the word “Presbyterian.”

Young Evangelicals And The Presbyterian Church

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I suspect that many of you, like me, are regular readers of the blog Tribal Church by Carol Howard Merritt. (If you are not, I highly recommend it if you want an honest look at where the church is among young adults today.) And if you have not carefully read today’s entry I encourage you to have a look.

Carol uses the change in the presidential administration as a vehicle to touch on two important themes — one in the general religious landscape and one in the PC(USA).

The first point Carol mentions is that your typical young “evangelical” probably does not fit the stereotype from a few years ago. While “social evangelicals” have been around for a while, with organizations such as Evangelicals for Social Action, Carol says that today:

Well, there is a new passion for social justice, for living out the
words of Jesus. And I cannot help but notice the Joshua Generation—the
young Evangelicals who cannot swear allegiance to Christian Right, who
are finding their own way.

and

There are a swarm of young Evangelicals who are wandering right now.
Twenty-six percent of young Evangelicals support same-sex marriage.
They no longer have a spiritual home in the congregations of their
youth.

There is a group that is between the traditional descriptions of the evangelicals and the progressives. She asks “Can these young evangelicals call the PC(USA) their home?” That is my paraphrase of her question. What Carol says is:

Often, when I’m around denominational types, things are said that
make our denominations inhospitable for people who grew up Evangelical.
I guess I should just spell it out. Because I love my church, I need
to let you know that if we want to reach out to a new generation, we
will need to learn to accept Evangelicals or ex-Evangelicals. You may
not agree with me, you may not have had the same experience, but still,
personally people communicate to me regularly, “You’re not one of us,
and you never will be.”

Carol points out three places where the younger generation is challenged

“Well, they obviously don’t know what it means to be Presbyterian.”
“Christianity has not been a force in our society since the sixties.”
“Evangelicals are dumb.”

Check out the article for her discussion of each of these.

On the one hand, questions and comments like these are nothing new — American Presbyterians have been debating, and dividing, over what it means to be Presbyterian from pretty much the beginning. On the other hand, times have changed. Mainline denominations are now sidelined and American Christians are losing denominational identity and loyalty. What does that mean for the institution of the PC(USA)? Clearly these young evangelicals are having trouble seeing themselves in it. For established conservative churches withholding per capita they are having trouble seeing themselves in it as well. How big a tent can we be, or to put it another way, can we be all things to all people? How we, not as an institution but as a community, answer these questions will decide what the PC(USA) will look like in the future.

Insight From A Word Substitution Game — This Is A Bit Weird

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“Things have taken a turn for the surreal“
from Saving Private Ryan

I was skimming an article from today’s LA Times and it suddenly dawned on me that with a bit of word substitution an interesting analogy could be developed. It may just be the workings of my strange mind. Or maybe there is real insight here. So, from a story by Catherine Saillant in the January 13, 2009 edition of the LA Times, “California Fire Chiefs Debate Stay-And-Defend Program.” The original article begins:

Fire chiefs in tinder-dry Southern California, faced with lean budgets
while more people squeeze into the region, are starting to rethink
long-standing policies on ordering mass evacuations in a wildfire,
debating whether it may be wiser in some situations to let residents
stay and defend their homes.

(As you might imagine this is a very real issue in SoCal these days.)

So what if we now create a “derivative work” with the substitution of a few words in some select sentences it now might apply to the PC(USA). Substituted and edited phrases and sections will be [in brackets].

[Congregational leaders] in tinder-dry [ PC(USA) ], faced with (pick your favorite problem), are starting to rethink
long-standing policies on ordering mass evacuations […],
debating whether it may be wiser in some situations to let [members]
stay and defend their [churches].

“We don’t have enough resources to put a [lawyer (?), polity wonk (?), tall-steeple pastor(?)] at every [church] in
harm’s way,” said [Pastor Brown]. “We figure, if
people are going to stay, maybe they can become part of the solution.”

[sections deleted]

[Pastor Brown] and [Elder Smith] are working to produce
instructional materials — including a video that explains the Leave
Early or Stay and Defend tactic — to educate the [laity] and [elders] statewide.

It will be up to individual [churches] to decide if they want to
adopt stay-and-defend, [Pastor Brown] said. [remainder of paragraph deleted]

[Leaders] who haven’t yet bought into the concept say they are
waiting for more information, including research showing whether it
saves lives. [remainder of paragraph deleted]

[Pastor Brown] acknowledges that building consensus for the program will be
difficult and could take several years. But he hopes that eventually
the entire [denomination] will follow stay-and-defend guidelines.

“This is a paradigm shift,” he said. “We can’t do it overnight.”

[large section deleted for space, but I hope you get the idea]

But not everyone is convinced it will work.

[Elders] have voiced safety concerns, saying not all [church members] are physically or mentally strong enough to endure the rigors
and trauma of a wildfire. A message that gives [church members] a choice on
whether to stay or evacuate could be confusing, resulting in
last-minute exoduses that clog streets, say representatives for [elders].

[large sections deleted]

“It’s not a solution in every [church],” [Pastor Jones] said. “And where it is
done, there has to be a lot of local support and education before it
can be done.”

[sections deleted]

“It’s not a simple thing,” [Pastor Garcia] said. “It takes a certain personality.”

It sort of works, but I’m probably just being silly here and I really don’t want to advocate an “us versus them” adversarial model. After all, the objective is for all of us to be in partnership together for the Gospel, not debating flee of fight. But acknowledging that there is a discussion in organizations like the New Wineskins Association of Churches about whether to remain or realign, this simple (and somewhat silly) exercise did strike me with the thought that for churches that chose to stay education and resolve are necessary if their objective is to reform the PC(USA) from within.

PC(USA) Presbyteries Considering Ecumenical Statements

Looking Ahead To Monday

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It’s Saturday, but Monday’s coming…

The holidays are over, I’m still trying to keep Christmas in my heart and soul while recovering from New Years and the distraction of medical issues in my family over the break. I will need time to reflect on how “real life” intrudes into the divine. It seems like I should be seeing it the other way around since God takes the initiative. And my wife commented to me today that this is the first day she has really seen me since her father was hospitalized. (The situation is better, he is home, but the issues are not over and it will be a long road ahead for everyone.)

So, with the end of the holidays will come Monday and a return back to work. And with the return back from Christmas break we anticipate some news.

First, and scheduled, is the decision on the Episcopal Church Cases from the California Supreme Court. Notice was posted on Friday that the decision would be handed down at 10:00 AM PST on Monday. I have discussed this case before (see the tail end of this post) because even though this decision is specifically about Episcopal churches, it will set the “lay of the land” for all the hierarchical churches in California, including the Presbyterians. In light of that several Presbyterian entities submitted amicus briefs. The case was argued back in early October (my observations on the oral arguments) so now being close to 90 days the decision was expected this week. With the imminent decision the Anglican Curmudgeon has started a detailed series of posts on the cases and he promises to finish up with his prediction of the outcome. The first article is very good background piece, and the rest should be just as good. Even after almost 90 days I am sticking with my impressions from the oral arguments: I’m not sure if Neutral Principles or Principle of Government will specifically prevail but I’m still leaning towards Government. However, based on the tone of the jurists in October, I’ll stick my neck out that the hierarchical church will prevail in this one. (And from some of the arguments I could see the denomination prevailing even if a majority favors Neutral Principles.) I’ll post a brief summary as soon as I can find time in my work day to review the decision.

Second, and hinted at, is the appointments to the Special Committees, Study Groups, and Task Forces created by the last General Assembly of the PC(USA). In his Moderator Monday from December 15, GA Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow gave an update on the appointment process and said he hopes to have it finished up “by the end of the year.” With the realities of the Christmas season I am not surprised that the announcement has not been made yet, but based on that goal I anticipate seeing announcements this coming week, maybe as early as Monday. And Bruce’s comment that “not everyone is going to be happy with all the choices made” and for people to “trust the Spirit” has raised my curiosity about their composition. Again, we await developments, maybe this week.

So my Christmas break is over. As I promised myself before the holidays I did some blogging but did not get consumed in any major analysis pieces. However, I’ve got a couple outlined and with breaking developments, and a slightly lightened work load with no teaching this quarter, I anticipate a resumption of my obsession with The Politics of Presbyterianism. So Happy (Gregorian) New Year (as opposed to the liturgical one was a month ago) and hang on for the ride.

Looking Ahead: What Are The Options?

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To close out the year, and look ahead to the next, here is a great look at the options available in our controversies…

Dave Walker, in a way that only he can with pen and paper, has graphically and concisely set out the options in our controversies. You can find his current post on the Church Times blog which has a link to the full cartoon from last May. The current post and the look back are occasioned by a new report on how to resolve that particular controversy.

One of the things I find when writing this blog is that our Presbyterian controversies are variations on a theme. In many cases the arguments and logic follow very similar lines, you just fill in a different point of contention depending on the Presbyterian branch you are referring to. While Dave is addressing a controversy in the Church of England that is not particularly Presbyterian, women bishops, the three options he illustrates still fit our debates. And while Dave doesn’t present any specifically new options, it is fascinating to me how universal the basic framework of our possible solutions are.

So enjoy Dave’s work. Dave, thanks for your contributions.

And to all, a Happy New Year.