An Ironic Covenant
Alan Wisdom
January 28, 2010
Read lead article:
One Committee, Two Reports - PCUSA Marriage Committee Proclaims Unity Amidst Disagreement
Additional side article on the PCUSA Marriage Committee:
In Rejected Motions, the Makings of a Minority Report
The first recommendation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Union and Christian Marriage, after the transmittal of the committee report itself, is to offer as a gift to the entire denomination a covenant that the committee had fashioned to guide its work. The committee commends its covenant as “a guide by which we broken and hurting people, seeking to be faithful, might come together to discuss issues about which we disagree.”
Indeed, in the context of an underwhelming set of recommendations [link to main article] that seemed to excite none of the committee members, the covenant was the one aspect of their report that elicited the majority’s enthusiasm. At the end of the committee’s January 22-25 meeting in Louisville, in discussing how to promote the report, Elder Tony De La Rosa of Los Angeles advised his fellow committee members: “I would lead with the covenant.” Others appeared to be of the same mind.
The covenant commits committee members (and, possibly, all Presbyterians):
- “to honor the truth that Christ has called and God works through each member;
- “to listen to one another with openness and respect;
- “to support and pray for each other and for one another’s ministries;
- “to earnestly seek and carefully listen to each person’s discernment of God’s will found in Scripture;
- “to struggle together with perseverance to find God’s will for us even when the way is difficult;
- “to love one another even when we disagree, and to commit ourselves to the reconciliation of any broken relationships we have with one another;
- “to honor who we are as Presbyterians by respecting the fallible discernment of the body, bearing in mind that individual conscience, held captive to the word of God, cannot be thus bound.”
Committee members made a serious effort to live out the covenant in their deliberations together. This observer heard committee members repeatedly pray for one another, speak respectfully of one another, persevere in civil engagement through long hours disputing over almost every page of their report, extend gestures of affection toward one another, and apologize to one another when they had said something that might be hurtful. These Christ-like attitudes regularly crossed the lines between what eventually became the majority and the minority on the committee.
It is harder to say how openly the committee members listened to one another, as no minds appeared to be changed through the course of their debates. Undoubtedly, committee members sought God’s will individually. But when they came together, they did not spend much time searching the Scriptures for God’s will regarding marriage. They alluded to having different interpretations of the Bible, but almost never actually brought those interpretations out into the open and tested them against the Scriptures.
Indeed, the committee majority voted against having its report quote directly from major passages on marriage such as Genesis 1-2 and Matthew 19:1-2/Mark 10:1-12. They left it to readers to look up the passages and try to figure out the meaning and application.
None of the committee members disagreed about any of the points of the covenant except the last. That last point, however, provoked considerable discussion both at the September meeting and this January meeting. It is unclear what is meant by “respecting the fallible discernment of the body.” In the case of Christian marriage, for example, does that phrase mean that ministers are required to abide by the Book of Order definition of the institution as “a covenant through which a man and a woman are called to live out together before God their lives of discipleship” (W-4.9001)? The committee report, with its vague language about “mutual forbearance” and resources “consonant with” the PCUSA constitution, leaves that question unsettled.
More problematic still is the covenant’s claim that “individual conscience, held captive to the word of God, cannot be thus bound.” At the September meeting, several committee members pointed out that there is a sense in which the consciences of church officers are indeed bound. The Book of Order states: “It is to be recognized, however, that in becoming a candidate or officer of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) one chooses to exercise freedom of conscience within certain bounds. His or her conscience is captive to the Word of God as interpreted in the standards of the church so long as he or she continues to hold or seek office in that body.” (G-6.0108) All church officers vow to be “instructed and led by those confessions as [they] lead the people of God.” They also pledge to “be governed by our church’s polity” and “abide by its discipline” (W-4.4003).
This covenant is ironic in at least three ways. First is its title, “Those Whom God Has Joined Together, Let No One Separate.” That phrase, first spoken by Jesus, was not originally about “listen[ing] to one another with openness and respect” or “struggl[ing] together with perseverance to find God’s will” or any of the other points of the covenant. The phrase, from Matthew 19:6/Mark 10:9, was about marriage.
Yet the committee’s report never quotes or discusses the phrase in relation to marriage. Instead it uses the passage exclusively in reference to Christian unity—a worthy topic, but not the topic that Jesus was addressing in Matthew 19/Mark 10. The Rev. William Teng of Alexandria, Va., complained several times about this misuse of the Scripture; however, his colleagues on the committee forged ahead with their favored title.
The second irony is that the committee that promised to seek God’s will together was not able to agree on God’s will regarding marriage and same-sex couples. The committee that vowed not to be separated was in fact divided between a majority and a minority offering contrasting recommendations to the General Assembly. Nevertheless, both majority and minority members affirmed that their covenant remained intact. “Our process that we have used does not dictate uniformity,” explained committee moderator Jim Szeyller of Charlotte, N.C. “It allows for disagreement…. In the presence of a minority report, our unity has not been broken. We are still around the table.”
The final irony is that the covenant was not a product requested by the 2008 General Assembly in its mandate to the committee. The assembly’s primary request was that the committee answer the question about “the place of covenanted same-gender partnerships in the Christian community.” But the committee was unable to answer that question. It response was: “The members of the PC(USA) cannot agree.”
So, for the centerpiece of its report, the committee turned aside to an assignment it had not been given: devising ““a guide by which we broken and hurting people, seeking to be faithful, might come together to discuss issues about which we disagree.”
That, as it happens, was a large part of the assignment given to an earlier PCUSA special committee: the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church that reported to the 2006 General Assembly. After four years of study, the Theological Task Force produced detailed “Resources for Constructive Engagement” with difficult issues in the church. Those resources do not appear to have resolved, or even eased, the conflicts in the PCUSA. It is not clear why today’s Special Committee on Civil Union and Christian Marriage expects its covenant to have greater success.