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…