Pressures Mount, Fissures Multiply as Major Presbyterian Realignment Looms

UPCUSA tenses for crucial May general assembly.

A church historian has called denominational splits the “favorite sport” of Presbyterianism. If that is so, the May meeting of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) general assembly could determine whether the “sport” becomes even more popular or less so. It depends on how the United Presbyterians settle the serious issues facing them at the assembly.

At least 46 congregations have left the denomination since last spring and, in the aftermath of an official decision to accept a pastoral candidate considered by some conservatives to be weak on the deity of Christ, many more are threatening separation. Three reasons are consistently given when the disgruntled congregations (mostly evangelical) list their grievances:

• The UPCUSA decision to mandate ordination of women and require that women elders be elected in each church.

• The probable passage of a measure to insure the denomination’s right to the church property of a separating congregation.

• The decision of the permanent judicial commission (the denomination’s “supreme court”) not to overturn a presbytery’s acceptance of ministerial candidate Mansfield Kaseman, who, in presbyterial examination, declared Jesus is not God, “God is God.”

Evangelicals in the UPCUSA are divided on the Kaseman case; the majority agree that, at most, the permanent judicial commission’s decision was a disciplinary error. This sector is represented by Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns and the Presbyterian Lay Committee, two evangelical renewal groups within the denomination.

Richard Lovelace, a Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary professor and prominent member of Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns, has said the Kaseman testimony was too “ambiguous and ambivalent” to declare Kaseman unsound on Christ’s deity. He said the decision should not be interpreted as a change in the church’s doctrine.

Other evangelicals, who admit they are a minority, disagree. Former Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor John Gerstner served as counsel in the case against Kaseman and said the Kaseman decision “constitutes apostasy.” As far as Gerstner is concerned, “The UPCUSA doesn’t exist as a Christian church anymore.”

“It won’t do for the denomination to say it affirms the deity of Christ and then to legitimatize someone who doesn’t,” Gerstner said. But he is advising disappointed congregations to stay in the denomination until May, when the general assembly gathers.

To rectify the Kaseman decision, Gerstner believes the only thing the assembly can do is repudiate the decision and reaffirm Christ’s deity. “This is a dreadful thing and we want to give the church every conceivable possibility to repent,” he said.

Robert Stevenson, UPCUSA associate stated clerk, said such a view is a misunderstanding of the Kaseman decision. Instead, he said, the permanent judicial commission sought to reaffirm the right of the local presbytery to accept or reject ministerial candidates. In its written opinion, the commission noted some of Kaseman’s answers “may appear to be weak, or less than wholly adequate,” but declared it was loath to substitute its judgment for that of the lower body.

The opinion also restated and reapproved the denomination’s belief in the Trinity, Christ as God’s Son and second person of the Trinity, the Atonement, and the Bible as the Word of God. Just the same, “There are some churches which are rumbling,” Stevenson said. The UPCUSA officer who has been charged with monitoring church separations said no “rash of exits” followed the Kaseman ruling.

If anything is causing churches to bolt hastily, it is the property issue. Known as Overture A, this measure would close a constitutional loophole that allowed congregations to leave the denomination and take their property with them.

Overture A was approved by the general assembly last spring. Under United Presbyterian polity, it is now being considered by the 152 presbyteries in the denomination. If the majority approves the measure, it will take effect after this May’s assembly.

Though UPCUSA headquarters will not divulge the tally on Overture A, observers believe its passage is assured. By the count of Charles Ecker, an official of the Presbyterian lay committee, the vote is “lopsidedly in favor of it.”

Because some churches consider the ratification of Overture A imminent, they are not waiting to see what happens at the May assembly. Ecker said congregations are frightened. “The property measure is a threat to the local congregation,” he said. “It is a potential club that could be very dangerously abused.”

It would definitely be more difficult to exit if the property had to be left to the UPCUSA, he noted. One pastor whose church has already left spoke for his congregation: “We don’t buy the idea that the denomination owns what our fathers and mothers worked to build.”

Finally, the women’s issue has been aggravated by the outcome of Kaseman. To persons like Stewart Rankin, who was a complainant against Kaseman, the UPCUSA has contradicted itself and exposed a prejudice against conservatives.

Rankin recalls the Wynn Kenyon case of 1974. A ministerial candidate, Kenyon did not believe in women’s ordination. He was accepted by his presbytery, but the ordination was challenged and referred to the permanent judicial commission. In that instance, the commission considered the circumstances “extraordinary” and overturned the decision of the presbytery.

“But when a man denies the deity of Christ, doubts his sinlessness, and doesn’t believe in the bodily resurrection, to them that is not an ‘extraordinary’ case,” said Rankin. The minister said his Silver Spring, Maryland, congregation has had enough. “We’ve stayed in this as long as we possibly can.”

Meanwhile, others who are withdrawing are already pondering a new denomination. While those delegates were considering a denomination, UPCUSA was looking forward to its own general assembly. The denomination will meet May 19–28 concurrently with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Meeting in Houston, the churches will do their denominational business separately, but they will worship together and have some joint committees.

UPCUSA is hoping for a reunion with PCUS, the largest southern Presbyterian denomination, which split from what is now UPCUSA in 1837. PCUS has had separation problems of its own, with three churches currently threatening to leave.

Its withdrawal problem is not as severe as that of UPCUSA, said Flynn Long, associate stated clerk for the southern Presbyterians. He said PCUS’s crisis was in the early 1970s when several conservative churches exited and formed the Presbyterian Church in America.

On the plausibility of reunion with UPCUSA, Flynn is noncommittal. Right now, whether or not the reunion attempt will be successful represents a “pretty subjective judgment,” he said. However, according to Flynn, 14 PCUS presbyteries have already united with UPCUSA presbyteries. Those “joint presbyteries” constitute one-fourth of the 60 PCUS presbyteries.

The target date for total reunion is 1982. Even then, the issues of women officers and Christ’s deity may haunt UPCUSA. Observers say the more conservative PCUS is likely to balk at the required election of women elders and what some consider doctrinal lassitude.

United Presbyterians such as scholar Lovelace hope UPCUSA can solidify and invite reunion. He feels the “broad center” of the denomination is opening to “progressive” evangelicalism. “It is closing to the far left and people on the right who want to replay the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s,” Lovelace thinks. The question many evangelicals are raising is: How far can a church move before it ceases to be evangelical?

Turmoil’S Fallout Includes Birth Of New Denomination

To the alphabet soup of Presbyterian denominations (which already includes UPCUSA, PCUS, ARPC, PCA, OPC, RPCES, CPC, RPNA) one more may be added: EPC—the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The EPC was officially launched in a two-day convening convention last month, setting the dates of September 22 to 24 for its first general assembly.

Some 113 participants gathered in Saint Louis to consider the proposed Articles of Agreement, Book of Government, and Book of Worship of the EPC. After consideration of the documents, 43 ruling elders and ministers (representing 15 churches) signed a Covenant Book agreeing to lead their congregations into the fledgling denomination.

Organization of the EPC started in the fall of 1980 (CT, Oct. 10, 1980). Stung by developments in the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA), ministers from Missouri, Colorado, Michigan, Illinois, and Maryland met to consider the feasibility of a new denomination. The ministers, most of whose churches had already withdrawn from the UPCUSA, were concerned about the denomination’s apparent doctrinal laxness on the deity of Christ, the required election of women elders, and claim that local church property belonged to the denomination. Those concerns were repeated at the convening convention.

Calvin Gray, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Trenton, Michigan, and moderator of the EPC, noted that “freedom issues” had brought diverse churches together. EPC leaders say the new denomination will avoid cumbersome bureaucracy and allow differences of conscience in several areas.

That freedom of conscience has attracted some churches that, for one reason or another, would be uncomfortable in the already existing Presbyterian bodies. One participant, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, said his dispensational theology would be frowned on in other conservative Presbyterian groups. The EPC is open on that issue, as well as to questions of charismatic gifts and women’s ordination or election to church office. It also will not claim rights to congregational property.

Though leaders admitted the EPC was off to a modest start, there was talk of the denomination lasting hundreds of years—“if the Lord doesn’t return first.” Speakers also tended to emphasize that Lord’s deity. Hugh McClure, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina, said Jesus was God and declared, “It makes all the difference in the world who this Person is.” Bartlett Hess, senior pastor of Ward Presbyterian Church in Livonia, Michigan, said, “If we don’t have a Savior who’s fully God and fully man and died on the cross so that we poor, lost sinners might have salvation, we might as well shut up the church doors. It’s all a fraud.”

L. Edward Davis, executive pastor in Hess’s church and clerk of the EPC, said the denomination does not consider itself in competition with other Presbyterians. The EPC, he said, will be “Reformed in doctrine, Presbyterian in polity, and evangelical in spirit.” Davis is optimistic: he expects the EPC to have up to 50 congregations by next year. That, he notes, compares well with many conservative Presbyterian denominations. “We just want to haul up the flag and let people know a fellowship of this nature really exists,” he said.

Guards Patrol Maryland Church Rent By Controversy

Lockouts, armed guards, threats to “knock the door down”—all these would seem to belong more in a western movie than a church feud. But those elements are part of the bitter fight of a local church belonging to the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) in Towson, Maryland, and they represent the larger struggle being waged on many fronts in the denomination.

Babcock Memorial Presbyterian Church, say various members, has been in ferment since 1974 when the issue of women pastors and elders first shook the UPCUSA. The ferment came to a head in late March, however, when Babcock’s session (church board) decided that the church should leave the denomination—and the presbytery disagreed.

Ruling elders Bruce Bums and James Pfeiffer said the session determined it would leave the UPCUSA in an orderly, peaceful fashion. By the session’s reading of Presbyterian governmental rules, that meant a meeting for congregational vote on the matter needed to be announced twice.

The first announcement was made smoothly; the second was to be made on Sunday, March 23. But before the March 23 worship service, presbytery officials met and took three actions: they removed Babcock’s pastors, Robert Louthan and Howard Hill, from that pulpit; they deposed the church’s session; and finally, they replaced the former session with a new one.

The deposed session, said ruling elder Bums, attempted to make the second announcement at the March 23 service, but its members were blocked from the pulpit by the newly appointed session. “The congregation was furious,” Bums said. “Some people were in tears.” The new session also announced that a scheduled Monday night meeting—which had been called by the old session for the express purpose of voting on secession—was canceled.

Reinforcing its announcement, the new session hired and posted armed guards at Babcock on Sunday evening. On Monday morning, members of the church were told to leave the premises. Richard Werely, chairman of a presbytery commission appointed to oversee the Babcock case, said the guards became necessary when church members began carrying typewriters and stationery out of the building.

Werely said dissidents in the congregation realized the building belonged to the presbytery and were taking materials in order to set up shop in another location. Mark Werner, Baltimore attorney hired to represent members wanting to leave the UPCUSA, said no church property was being carried out of the building. He claimed the choir director had returned to the building to get sheet music that belonged to him, but was prevented from taking it by the guards. A woman, he said, also went to the nursery to remove some personal belongings. She also was stopped.

By Monday afternoon, the new session had engaged a locksmith to change the locks on the building, since, said Werely, about 100 members had keys to the old locks. The group wishing to secede was therefore especially infuriated when it managed to gather on Monday evening.

Elder Bums said the meeting was held despite attempts of the new session to cancel it, and even to frighten members away from it. A vote was cast: 228 voted in favor of leaving the denomination, 6 against departing.

Both sides disagreed on the actual numbers involved. Those for and those against leaving both claim a majority of the congregation sympathizes with their viewpoint. Babcock was estimated by the now-deposed session to have 430 active members. Burns said a vote taken in early March disclosed 320 in favor of departing. He claims 184 of about 200 church teachers and officers were in favor of leaving, and that 13 of 15 ruling elders (on the now-deposed session) wanted to go.

Werely begins with an entirely different set of numbers. He said a 1980 report showed 684 on the roll, with 484 (not 430) active. He also said 311 (not 320) voted to leave in early March. He contends the members who did not show up for the embattled Monday night meeting agreed with the new session that that meeting was illegitimate, and thus did not show up to cast a vote. “[The vote of] 228 to 500 does not come up to 50 percent of the congregation,” Werely said. “More than 50 percent wish to remain United Presbyterian.”

A further complicating matter is the legal ownership of the church property, valued at $2 million. On March 14, the now-deposed session sensed the coming storm and, under the advice of attorney Werner, gave its property to Merritt Boulevard Presbyterian Church in Baltimore.

Presbytery official Werely said such a move was illegal—that any transfer of property had to have prior approval of the congregation and the presbytery. The antidenomination forces claim Presbyterian rules will not allow the leasing of property as transfer. They believed they found a loophole by giving away, not selling or leasing, the property.

Furthermore, Werely claims Merritt Boulevard Presbyterian Church is not a legitimate church. He said the church was incorporated by attorney Werner only to serve as a sort of holding church for refugee UPCUSA congregations. Werner admits he established the Merritt Church in April of 1980, together with his law partner and their wives. He denies it was constituted simply to serve as a legal loophole, and said the church has 12 members and regular Sunday night meetings, with about 60 to 75 people usually present.

Werely also contends the Merritt church ironically had ruling women elders. This would have been embarrassing in that the Babcock church would have deeded its property to a church with women elders (the wives of Werner and his fellow attorney). The Babcock congregation had wanted to leave, Werely said, because it was required to have women elders.

Attorney Werner said the women were on the session of the church but were never ruling elders: “They were never ordained, we never acknowledged them as elders.” Rather, he said, they served more as trustees to get the church started. Now, said Werely, a new session has been elected.

One Babcock member who is against leaving the UPCUSA, George Hatfield, said a majority of the congregation is agreed on one thing. “We are convinced there is considerable evil and heresy in the Presbyterian Church,” he stated. “We divide at what the proper action should be.”

Members like Hatfield, who has been a member 30 years and is a ruling elder, cite Matthew 13 and believe “the sorting of the tares should be left to the Master of the harvest.” He quotes D. L. Moody, who said heresy should simply be allowed to melt in the “warm glow of the full intensity of truth expressed in love.”

Hatfield believes 300 to 500 members favor staying in the denomination. Like parties on both sides, he laments the hostility of the situation. “A part of the bride of Christ is seeking a divorce,” he said, calling that “dreadful.” But Hatfield said “both sides have offended.”

Those wanting to leave the UPCUSA attempted to repossess the Babcock property on March 27. Attorney Werner presented the gift deed to police officials and requested the building be opened up. The police refused, however, deciding to leave the property in presbytery hands.

This decision was a “disappointment” to Werner, who argued the presbytery “has no way of showing it has any legal claim to the property” and that it has taken the law into its own hands by occupying the church.

Earlier this month Werner was gathering legal documents in order to seek a temporary injunction that would allow the church to regain the property. He anticipated the sticky problem would ultimately be resolved in civil court: “Unfortunately that is the direction we’re heading.” Werner criticizes the presbytery for using “raw power,” and wonders how that relates to Christian principles. While the presbytery would certainly give another story, he summarizes the problem by saying, “We have bent over backwards to accommodate the presbytery, and all they do is step on our hands.”

RODNEY CLAPP

Personalia

Quentin D. Nelson has been named vice-president for academic affairs and dean of North Park College of Chicago. He has been a professor of education and chairman of the social science division. Nelson spent 14 years in Africa as a missionary of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America, with which North Park is affiliated.

Atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair has gone into hiding during her hours away from work because she said she was tired of busloads of hymn-singing youngsters appearing on her front lawn to serenade her. Besides the singing, local Baptists kept showing up trying to convert her, and her mailbox has been flooded with “Praying Hands” post cards. Although she still shows up for work each day at her American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas, she said she is living under an assumed name in her new residence.

Thomas L. Phillips, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Raytheon Company, has been named national chairman of the forty-first annual National Bible Week, a nondenominational event set for November 22 to 29. Phillips is a member of the Trinitarian Congregational Church in Wayland, Massachusetts.

S. Bruce Narramore has been named dean of the new School of Psychology at Biola College, starting in September. At that time the school’s graduate and undergraduate psychology programs will merge, along with the Rosemead Graduate School of Professional Psychology.

Gregg O. Lehman was elected president of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. At 33, he is the youngest president in the school’s history. Lehman, who has been vice-president of business affairs and executive vice-president at Taylor, will succeed Milo Rediger, effective July 1.

North American Scene

A group of Texas Methodists has launched a national weekly religious newspaper, called the National Christian Reporter. Spurgeon Dunnam III, editor of the Texas Methodist/United Methodist Reporter, from which the new newspaper sprung, said it will take a theological position somewhere between Christian Century and CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The Metropolitan Community Church, a denomination for homosexuals, has applied for membership in the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. Both organizations had urged the church to join, said Adam DeBaugh of the church’s Department of Ecumenical Relations. It is expected that the church will have no difficulty being accepted into the two organizations.

Andover Newton Conference

Old-Line Churches Rally To Evangelism Banner Again

“This was a watershed, for Andover Newton at least, but probably for many churches as well.” That is how John Douhan, associate executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts, summed up the four-day conference, “The Church Reaches Out; Evangelism in the 80s,” held in March at Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS) near Boston.

“I left there three feet off the ground,” said Gordon MacDonald, pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts. From all indications, he was not alone. There were 600 registered conferees, but attendance swelled to nearly 2,400 for worship services with Charles Adams of Detroit and Oregon’s Sen. Mark Hatfield.

Sponsored by the United Church of Christ and the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., along with their state agencies and ANTS, the conference was held at area churches and on the campus. The focus of the program was congregation-level evangelism. What emerged was articulation of a new wholeness in witness for mainstream churches.

“A great new spirit is abroad in the church today. We rejoice in the gospel, and we affirm the evangelistic task in our day,” said conference director George Peck in his opening remarks. The spirit identified by Peck, ANTS dean and conference organizer, brought liberal and evangelical thinkers together in a major reexamination of the role of social concern, proclamation, and the lordship of Christ in the church.

Although the conference had been in the making for two years, the size of the turnout, especially by liberal pastors and lay leaders, was seen as a reflection of the new concern for evangelism among mainstream denominations.

Some perceived Peck negative explanations. “The reason why you have so many mainline church members talking about evangelism is the same reason the American Civil Liberties Union has been gaining so many members since Reagan’s election,” commented R. Alan Johnson, secretary for evangelism for the United Church Board of Homeland Ministries. “They have been shell-shocked by the success of the fundamentalists and they are wondering what they can do.”

Whether Johnson’s explanation is valid or not, positive results were evident. People with widely differing theological viewpoints became excited about learning from one another. “There was an air of mutual respect and affirmation. There was honesty and openness,” summarized MacDonald. “I have to say I’m extremely excited.”

The addresses and Bible study sessions were dominated by affirmation of the deity and lordship of Christ, and of co-equality in evangelism of proclamation and of the quest for a just and merciful community of faith. Traditional formulations and pronouncements, from both liberal and evangelical perspectives, were noticeably absent.

Each speaker, rather, began with an appraisal of a sphere of practice in church or society in America. The problems and failures identified drew each presentation back to examination of what role the affirmation of the deity of Christ and of the two dimensions of evangelism could have in restoring the health of the church and society.

Gabriel Fackre, Abbot professor of Christian theology at Andover Newton, and a United Church of Christ clergyman, stressed the content of evangelism in his address. He surveyed both the current state of evangelistic excitement and the gamut of Christian theologies in the church worldwide: elemental and propositional (fundamentalist and evangelical), relational, liberation, process, existential, secular, and others.

Fackre observed that Christians today have two things in common with the church at the end of the apostolic age—“on the one hand, a major mobilization for mission, and, on the other hand, a lack of clarity about the content of the gospel.” He then explored the creeds developed by the early church fathers to cope with their problems, and applied them to the church today.

“The Evangel is the Good News,” Fackre concluded. “He brings forgiveness for our sins, but more; he liberates from oppression, but more; he brings hope to the sick and suffering, but more; he brings knowledge and light to our night, but more; he conquers our last enemy, death … [It] is nothing less than to say He is Lord and Savior …

“Faithful evangelism requires a mind thoughtfully stretched as well as a heart strangely warmed. [For] … the fulness of the gospel is matched by the fulness of Christ himself. Particular perspectives on who he is and what he does must grow up into the fulness of Christ.”

The other speakers, Orlando Costas, dean Peck, Senator Hatfield, and ANTS president Gordon Torgersen echoed similar themes.

Elizabeth Achtemeier, professor of homiletics and biblical interpretation at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia and Bible teacher for the conference, emphasized the point in her final Bible study, saying, “This is a life-and-death matter. Jesus makes all the difference in the world. That is what we have forgotten. That is what the conference is all about.” She was greeted with standing applause.

JOHN RODMAN

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