LOUISVILLE—Eight years ago, General Assembly commissioned an “update and reissue” of a 1981 paper by the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. on “the nature and value of human life.” Now, one begins to wonder if the paper itself will ever get a life.
No paper at all would be just fine with some Presbyterians, who have been a little on edge over what the paper might say about life issues, such as abortion or euthanasia, or maybe cloning or fetal stem cells. But the paper has not been intended to establish policy—especially not radical new policy. Rather, it is to serve as a study document to get people thinking ethically.
The updated and reissued paper was due to be submitted to General Assembly for consideration in 2002, but it never made it out of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP). It was still hung up in committee in 2004 and again in 2006. Now, in 2008, history seems to be repeating itself.
Meeting in Louisville on January 26, ACSWP spent more than half the morning in a spirited debate about how to do ethics and what to do with a completed draft finally placed before the committee. Ordinarily, such a draft would be tweaked, approved, and sent on to General Assembly in June, but not this time.
ACSWP, a group that typically enjoys ideological agreement, got temporarily in a knot. The tack taken by the writing team was attacked by a debating team—but all with an even temper and utmost respect. It was quite a display, as a nearly irresistible force met an almost immovable object.
The Mudge Report
On one side was the paper’s main assembler, the Rev. Dr. Lewis Mudge, Robert Leighton Stuart Professor of Theology, Emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California. In his corner on the writing team was the Rev. Dr. Ron Kernaghan, Director of Presbyterian Studies and Assistant Professor of Presbyterian Ministries and Pastoral Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Mudge did much of the presenting. He also most graciously absorbed and recorded suggestions and critiques, and gently but determinedly pushed back at times. Kernaghan practiced active listening and offered commentary.
Mudge had structured the paper around the general need for a unified ethical process centered on acting responsibly in light of God’s blessing. Since ACSWP embargoes drafts discussed in its meetings, I won’t include direct quotations here, but generally Mudge was seeking an ethical grounding in Scripture and the Reformed tradition, while engaging contemporary debates and dilemmas. His was not a deontological argument—I’ll tell you the rule, and you follow it—and it was not particularly conservative, due to its subjective nature and resemblance to situation ethics. It leaned heavily on determining and doing the responsible thing and seeking always to be a blessing.
Feeling Suspicious
Lining up as “troubled” by the document were, in the primary position, the Rev. Dr. Gloria Albrecht, Associate Professor of Religion and Ethics at the University of Detroit Mercy in Detroit, Michigan, and the Rev. Dr. Marsha Fowler, Professor of Ethics and Spirituality at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California, who was a spirited tag-team member. As Albrecht put it, they were bothered because the paper lacked “a hermeneutic of suspicion.”
What is that? A hermeneutic of suspicion is a mindset that presumably takes biblical authority seriously yet challenges just about every previous Bible interpretation by white men of privilege who didn’t listen to alternative voices of the dispossessed. Thus, even the assumption that one can be a blessing evidences the unjust cultural residue of power and patriarchy. Thinking that one can actually be responsible involves human pride, and the Christian norms of servanthood, selflessness, and sacrifice actually disadvantage women and the poor. In other words, the hermeneutic of suspicion pretty well clobbered what was to be considered ethically good and desirable in the draft.
Albrecht argued a strong although at times troubling case. “When we approach Scripture, we need to realize that the narrative voice is not always representing God,” she contended. To find out what is really going on, “[w]e need to look at what is happening to whom by whom” and then draw our conclusions.
She had more to say: “What we ‘know’ can in fact be wrong; it can in fact be oppressive to others. But we cannot realize that unless we can be suspicious with ourselves and place ourselves in the hands of others who see life differently.”
“That which I regard as a blessing is not in fact a blessing in the eyes of another,” agreed Fowler. Fowler also took on Mudge’s “problem” of fragmentation in how Christians do ethics. “I don’t see the necessity for a single methodological approach to moral issues to be used by all Presbyterians for all issues,” she argued. “I don’t think that works.” She liked the idea of inviting “a diversity of voices” in to hammer out issues.
Both Mudge’s paper and Albrecht’s troubles about it were admirably stated, whether one ultimately agreed with them or not. And the rather academic theological discussion was undertaken with great generosity and respect on all sides.
It was quite impressive, actually, but it led to a standoff—liberal versus more liberal. Albrecht’s hermeneutic of suspicion questioned Mudge’s expression of the good, while Mudge claimed that Albrecht lacked a “hermeneutic of retrieval” of the authority of Scripture.
What Now, Then?
That left ACSWP with a written draft without sufficient committee confidence and support to send on to General Assembly. The stand-off was complicated by the fact that the paper already would have been six years late at General Assembly in June. So how much patience might the assembly have for another two-year delay? Even as it stood, the draft was intended to be only a provisional study paper, with feedback and further work going into a final response at the 2010 General Assembly. This baby was getting long overdue!
Probably ACSWP Coordinator Chris Iosso assayed the situation best, although he said it in jest: “The assembly may not be hungering and thirsting for this paper.” In all likelihood, if ACSWP just kind of quietly forgot the whole matter, maybe a handful of people would even notice.
However a General Assembly referral needs to be honored. Thus, ACSWP eventually decided to make an explanation of their process and conundrum part of their routine report to General Assembly on the committee’s overall work. They will explain the situation, hope for grace, and then aim for 2010. This means that a paper on the value of human life will not be on the docket of the 2008 General Assembly. Not from ACSWP.
That means that anyone seeking theological counsel on life issues will need to look elsewhere for the moment—perhaps to the 1981 paper as yet neither updated nor reissued. But it also means that anyone worried that General Assembly in 2008 would come out with a shocking new report that praises human cloning or lauds fetal stem cell research can breathe a sigh of relief. It is not going to happen in 2008, and given the shape and substance of the 2008 draft in limbo, it will not likely happen in the paper conditionally to be presented to General Assembly in 2010, perhaps for a 2012 final disposition.
For now, ACSWP has decided—rightly so, I believe—to punt.
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