The Easily-Forgotten Lessons of History

I posted the following text as an online comment to an article on the Presbyterian Outlook website. The editor chose to run it in the July 11, 2011 print edition as a letter to the editor.

(PHOTO: Distinguished Presbyterian William Jennings Bryan: U.S. Senator and frequent Presidential candidate, Moderator of the General Assembly and guest prosecutor at the Scopes Trial, where he promoted a fundamentalist, anti-evolution interpretation of scripture)

I'm dismayed to think that Frank Frieberg's assessment of the reason why some are considering leaving the denomination could be accurate: "What bothers them the most is the departure from viewing scripture as authoritative and instead viewing scripture as merely guidelines."

I hear this a lot. It sounds very satisfying to say, I'm sure. But it's not based on fact.

If it WERE as simple as that, then why are these people still in the PC(USA) after any one of a number of serious, careful reinterpretations of scripture that took place in the 20th Century:
- ordination of women as deacons, elders and ministers;
- toleration of remarriage after divorce; and
- acceptance of miscegenation, or interracial marriage?

(PHOTO: Margaret Towner, ordained in 1956 as the first constitutionally-approved woman minister in the UPCUSA or the PCUS)

At the beginning of the 20th Century, any one of these practices would have horrified most Presbyterians. They would have seen ample biblical reasons for proscribing them.

At the dawn of the 21st Century, few considered them to be any big deal.



(PHOTO: Richard and Mildred Loving, legally married in Washington, D.C. in 1958, but arrested after they moved to Virginia, where miscegenation, or inter-racial marriage, was still considered a crime. The U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1967 landmark case of Loving v. Virginia, unanimously ruled the Virginia state law unconstitutional.)

What happened in the meantime? Did the church cease "viewing scripture as authoritative and instead [start] viewing scripture as merely guidelines"?

No. The church prayed and agonized over the texts. Presbyterians engaged in protracted, strenuous debates, using all the the scholarly gifts and persuasive powers God had given them. Decorum was preserved, for the most part (we ARE Presbyterians, after all), but there were awkward periods of years when believers in the same city or even the same congregation feared they had little in common, and little to say, to one another.

In the end, the Holy Spirit had its way with the church. Presbyterians eventually came to believe God was doing a new thing in their midst. Change came - at first by only the barest majority, but eventually by much larger margins.

Change has never happened any other way, since the Day of Pentecost. Together we struggle to discern God's will in the scriptures. It's a slow, messy, agonizing process that takes a generation or more. Each time there's a major change, some Presbyterians split from the main body, seeking a more holy community, but inevitably most end up deeply disappointed. The wisest among them return, eventually - faithful to Christ's prayer "that they all be one." Many more, in time, give thanks that they didn't heed the call to schism when they were sorely tempted to do so.

I'd love to hear one of these aggrieved parties make a convincing argument why this historical change in biblical interpretation is different from any of the others that have preceded it. So far, I haven't heard any argument that has convinced me.

The argument that this change has been foisted on the church by unbiblical people, who care more for what society thinks than what the scriptures say, is as old as the hills. It has been trotted out, in turn, for each of the 20th Century changes mentioned above. The charge was false then, and it is false now.

Having said that, I can also say I understand how it happens. Change is hard. Very hard. I can sympathize with those who fear they no longer recognize the church of their youth.

This is a tender and vulnerable time for the Body of Christ. The faithful way to live through it is to try extra hard to think well of those on the opposite end of the theological spectrum from ourselves - not to demonize them as either libertine or prejudiced.

We can get through this, folks, if we just take a deep breath, try listening more than speaking, and practice the fine Christian art of mutual forbearance.

That's what's worked for us in the past. It will work for us again, if we but continue to trust Jesus Christ, the one head of the church, to be our guide.

Doomsday? Not Likely

This item is a bit far afield from what I usually post here, but with the thought that it may be of general interest, I'm sending it along.

The other day, Christine Scheller, a reporter from Jersey Shore Patch, an online local news site, asked me to comment on the current news story about Family Radio owner Harold Camping's prediction that Jesus Christ will return this Saturday. Here's what I sent to her, some of which she excerpts in her article:

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When Jesus’ own disciples ask him to slip them some insider information on when he will return, his first response is to sternly warn them about false prophets who traffic in just that sort of hot tip: “Beware that no one leads you astray” (Matthew 24:4). Rather astoundingly to our ears, Jesus goes on to admit that not even he is privy to that information (“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” - v. 36).

In light of Jesus’ firm and unequivocal instruction to lay off the end-times prognosticating, it continues to amaze me how many Christian leaders down through the centuries cave in to the temptation to do precisely that.

Harold Camping is but one in a long line of hopeful aspirants to the position of person-who-knows-more-than-Jesus-and-the-angels. He’s a civil engineer and religious-broadcasting entrepreneur who’s lacking any formal theological training. In recent years, Mr. Camping has distanced himself from any denominational affiliation, which means he’s also shed all accountability to any religious authority larger than himself, who might restrain his wild imaginings.

A self-taught Bible “expert,” Mr. Camping specializes in the obscure interpretative method known as numerology – a field without standards or discipline, that sets aside the main message of the scriptures to concentrate on otherwise-insignificant peripheral details, such as numbers. It’s rather like throwing away the popsicle to chew on the stick. Did God inspire ancient authors of scripture to embed within their message a nearly-invisible trail of numerical breadcrumbs, for the sole purpose of warning people yet unborn – and who wouldn’t be born for thousands of years – that Jesus is coming soon? What sort of God would do that, anyway: burying the good news of salvation, instead of proclaiming it (as Jesus himself instructs his disciples to do)?

We’ve seen false prophets like Mr. Camping before. Christian history is rife with sad stories of magnetic but narcissistic personalities, who gather a crowd of hopeful believers around themselves to await the Lord’s coming. It always ends badly. When the sun rises not only on the appointed day, but on the following day as well, their followers shrink away in embarrassment. Mr. Camping can deploy some additional marketing assets that would have been the envy of his predecessors in the questionable trade of end-time prediction: a chain of radio stations and plenty of cash to rent billboards. How else could he continue to command headlines, when this is in fact not the first, but the second time he has attempted such a stunt (he last predicted Christ would return in September, 1994)?

Could Mr. Camping be right in seeing the 21st of May as the day of Jesus Christ’s return? Of course he could. Jesus says no one knows the day or the hour. If I claimed to know otherwise, I’d be just as guilty of narcissism as he.

I prefer to take my stand with Martin Luther. When asked by a student what he would do, were he to learn the world was going to end the next day, the great Reformer and Bible scholar is said to have replied with a smile: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

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The PCUS General Assembly (the Southern Presbyterian church that reunited with us Yankees to form the PCUSA in 1983) adopted a study paper on eschatology (the doctrine of the last things) in 1978. It's a great resource, for anyone who'd like to delve deeper into this subject.

This statement, one of 12 "Theses" on eschatology included on the paper, pretty well sums up the Presbyterian take on attempts to predict the date of Christ's return:

"Following the Westminster Standards, we insist that God holds the time of the Consummation unknown in order to preserve in us a sense of immediacy and urgent watchfulness, and we refuse to tame that hope into a set of speculative predictions."

So, let's not "tame our hope." I like that turn of phrase.