Which Creed Shall We Say?

A briefing paper on the “SOCIAL CREED FOR THE 21ST CENTURY”

The Issue:
Does the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have a consensus on tax and budget policies, minimum wage, social security, immigration, international trade negotiations, global warming, and defense spending? If so, are these political views derived from the Word of God in Scripture? Should they be formulated as a “creed” that all Presbyterians are encouraged to affirm?

The Business:
Item 09-09, from the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), offers “A Social Creed for the 21st Century” for General Assembly approval. It presents this National Council of Churches (NCC) document as “a concise consensus statement of existing [PCUSA] policy.”

Presbyterian Action Recommendation:
The General Assembly should not adopt this proposed “Social Creed.”Commissioners do not have the option of amending the creed, as the text belongs to the NCC. So, forced to an up or down vote, they should frankly say, “No, this is not a ‘concise consensus statement’ of our church’s authoritative teaching.” At most the Assembly could ask Presbyterians to study the document and see if there is any consensus.

Disputable Assertions:
The proposed Social Creed is littered with one-sided political assertions that could be challenged by an alternative Christian perspective. For example:

• Churches are urged to work not just for education and health care, but for “public education for all, and universal, affordable and accessible health care.” Private education and private healthcare—even when offered by the churches themselves—are apparently not satisfactory to the NCC. It instead seems to place its faith in “universal” systems that could be operated only by the government.
• The creed insists on “[e]mployment for all, at a family-sustaining living wage, with equal pay for comparable work.” Moreover, all workers are to enjoy “time and benefits to enable full family life.”  But here’s the rub: Who will guarantee “employment for all”? Who will determine what is a “living wage”? Who will decide how much time and benefits are required for “full family life”? The NCC would likely turn to government to settle all these questions.
• The creed seems unfriendly to private property and free enterprise. Its disparagement of “greed in economic life” comes out of a leftist lexicon that rejects the profit motive as inherently unjust. The demand for “[t]ax and budget policies that reduce disparities between rich and poor” rests upon an underlying quasi-socialist worldview. Forced redistribution of wealth (as opposed to giving the poor opportunities to grow their own wealth) can be justified only on one of two assumptions: Either all wealth ultimately belongs to the government, and government may distribute or redistribute the wealth as it sees fit; or rich people must have accumulated their wealth unjustly, and therefore the government is entitled to punish them with high taxes.
• The creed’s desire for “real limits on the power of private interests in politics” casts suspicion on those “private interests” (which, in their totality, include all citizens).An earlier draft of the creed, as well as the NCC’s record of advocacy, indicates that this phrase was meant to promote measures, such as campaign finance reform, that ration and regulate the speech in which private citizens and organized groups can engage.
• In endorsing “[e]quitable global trade and aid that protects local economies, cultures and livelihoods,” the NCC appears to be siding with the “fair trade” movement. That movement, with NCC support, has repeatedly rejected free trade agreements that might expand opportunities for individuals to change their local economies, cultures, and livelihoods.
• The creed’s foreign policy is as utopian as its domestic policy. It would commit the churches to “a culture of peace and freedom that embraces non-violence.” Peacemaking would be pursued “through multilateral diplomacy rather than unilateral force.” Nations would undertake “[n]uclear disarmament and redirection of military spending to more peaceful and productive uses.” Nowhere is there an acknowledgment that force, or the threat of force, may sometimes be necessary to preserve or restore peace and justice.
• The NCC document calls for “an end to the death penalty.”
• The creed demands “binding covenants to reduce global warming,” without addressing the possibility that such covenants, if enforced, might do grave damage to the global economy without significantly altering temperature trends.
• The creed seeks more liberal “immigration policies that protect family unity [and] safeguard workers’ rights,” without making any request for enforcement of laws controlling who crosses U.S. borders.

The creed makes no mention of causes usually identified with more conservative Christian viewpoints. There are no concerns expressed about burdensome taxes at home, rogue regimes abroad, moral relativism, the abortion of unborn children, and the erosion of marriage as a fundamental social institution. ACSWP’s proposal suggests that the National Association of Evangelicals and the Catholic Church might be persuaded to affirm the new creed. With the document’s total inattention to conservative concerns, this suggestion is simply laughable. To the extent that anyone pays attention to the creed, it will bring further division rather than greater unity among the churches.

Probing Questions:
On each of these political points, commissioners should ask: Does this Social Creed reflect a consensus among Presbyterians? How many of them have even studied this document to which they are supposed to respond, “I believe”? If this document is supposed to be the political equivalent of the PCUSA Brief Statement of Faith, where have we seen the kind of multi-year discussions all around the country that preceded the adoption of the Brief Statement?

Most importantly, if the creed is to be a super standard of PCUSA social policy, is it based—as all Reformed confessional statements are supposed to be based—upon the clear teachings of Scripture? Does the Bible really mandate that the government must fix wages, dominate education and healthcare, impose confiscatory taxes, ration carbon emissions, and reduce defense spending now?

We believe that the honest answer to these questions is no. And for that reason, the 2008 General Assembly should not give its imprimatur to a document that is falsely advertised as “a concise consensus statement” of Presbyterian beliefs.

Presbyterian Action advises disapproval of the “Social Creed.”