Sunday, July 10, 2005
From The Outside Looking In
Sometimes that vantage gives one good insight, but in this case I sense that Al Mohler is using it with a bit of an "I told you so."
However, Mohler with his Baptist mindset misses the real point of the PLC document - mobilization. The Lay Committee did not issue that as analysis, but as a call to action for those average congregations. Much as conservatives in the secular world are usually too busy living to engage in politics, so with the average good Christian Presbyterian. Al would serve the Body of Christ and his Presbyterian brethren much better, by joining the call instead of analyzing it as condemnation.
I have hope for the PCUSA -- we have to vote before things change and we have sent back these challenges repeatedly. If we deny people the opportuinity to bring them forward, we forsake our principles, but they have not won yet.
"The Presbyterian Church (USA) is at a crossroads," declares a recently-released document from a group of concerned Presbyterians. The Presbyterian Lay Committee [PLC] is a venerable group of conservative Presbyterians who have been working for a Reformation within their denomination for many years. Even so, the PCUSA has been moving steadily leftward, and is set to debate the issue of human sexuality yet again.The PCUSA, in which I am ordained as both a Deacon and an Elder, is democratic to its core. The PLC's point, that Mohler reports, is that "dialogue" has replaced debate and inclusiveness has replaced the search for truth is an accurate point, but the characterization of a steady march to the left is not. That characterization ignores the huge rift that exists between the PCUSA higher ajudicatories and the average congregation. To be sure, there are some very left leaning congregations, but most of it is in the Synods and the General Assembly, and some Presbyterys.
However, Mohler with his Baptist mindset misses the real point of the PLC document - mobilization. The Lay Committee did not issue that as analysis, but as a call to action for those average congregations. Much as conservatives in the secular world are usually too busy living to engage in politics, so with the average good Christian Presbyterian. Al would serve the Body of Christ and his Presbyterian brethren much better, by joining the call instead of analyzing it as condemnation.
I have hope for the PCUSA -- we have to vote before things change and we have sent back these challenges repeatedly. If we deny people the opportuinity to bring them forward, we forsake our principles, but they have not won yet.
