Looking to Christ, Looking Forward

Alan Wisdom
December 10, 2009

I bring you Advent greetings from our Presbyterian Action/IRD office in Washington, DC. Amidst all the uncertainties in the world and the church, we look to Christ, who alone is our help and salvation. The church belongs to Christ, and he alone can make the church into the pure and spotless bride she is called to be.

We are conscious of our human weakness. Earlier this year, I had moments when I wasn’t so certain about our future at IRD and Presbyterian Action. But God has been gracious in sustaining us. Through generous friends like you, he has given us the resources to carry on our work of church reform.

We speak up, within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and other denominations, for a Christian witness that holds firmly to biblical truth while holding more lightly to our political opinions about other matters. We challenge our church (and others) to stand up for the marriage of man and woman, because Jesus told us that’s how God intended it to be “from the beginning of creation” (Mark 10:6). On the other hand, we challenge our church when it endorses the House Democratic health care bill, because Scripture doesn’t give us instructions about “the public option” or “health insurance exchanges” or how to pay for all these provisions.

A church that claims the Bible as its standard of faith and practice needs to get its priorities in line with that standard. And a church that says it is governed by officers elected by the people needs to consider its accountability to those people in the pews. I think most Presbyterians would want their church to affirm God’s good gift of marriage between a man and a woman. Most of them, too, would recognize the diversity of Christian views about health care and advise the denomination to speak more cautiously on that issue.

We are so grateful to you and all our friends who support us in this work. We regard your support as a sacred trust. As we face a momentous year in 2010, with a crucial General Assembly in July, we intend to do everything to honor that trust.

I have been doing a lot of work lately regarding the marriage issue in our own Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). We expect it to be one of the biggest debates at the Minneapolis General Assembly next July 3-10. There are probably going to be overtures to reduce the denomination’s definition of marriage to just any “two persons.” And it looks as if a divided Special Committee on Civil Unions and Christian Marriage may offer a confused message implying that the PCUSA has no clear teaching on the matter.

But, as you know, we do have abundant, clear teaching in our Book of Confessions on God’s design in bringing man and woman together in marriage. All church officers are supposed to be guided by that teaching. Presbyterian Action, with your help, needs to be prepared to fight every step of the way to see that our confessional teaching on marriage is expressed and reaffirmed.

I’m making my travel arrangements to watch the Special Committee meeting in Louisville January 22-25. This is the meeting at which the committee will decide its final recommendations to the General Assembly. I will be there to let you know what those recommendations are and what they mean for the church. It is friends like you who enable me to go to these meetings.

Beyond that, I’m already setting plans for the assembly in Minneapolis. I’m pleased to announce that Presbyterian Action will be hosting an event at which Dr. Edith Humphrey of Pittsburgh Seminary will speak on “Marriage: A Treasure Worth Keeping.” We are also making arrangements to send a copy of my IRD paper on “Is Marriage Worth Defending?” to every General Assembly commissioner. Your support can make this work possible.

Of course, the IRD speaks up for marriage more broadly too. I recently wrote about the same-sex marriage bill in the District of Columbia that would force Christian groups and individuals to recognize homosexual relationships in various ways (giving benefits to same-sex partners, placing adoptive children with same-sex couples, etc). My article in The Weekly Standard, entitled “This Isn’t Tolerance,” can be found here.

The local Catholic archdiocese has borne the brunt of the DC same-sex marriage controversy; however, all of us are threatened when the government starts telling Christians that we can’t follow our consciences. (The same thing is occurring as some in Congress are trying to make taxpayers fund abortions, directly or indirectly, through the new health care proposals.) We need to stand together for our common religious freedom. That is the theme of the Manhattan Declaration, which was co-authored by IRD board member Robert George and signed by IRD President Mark Tooley and several other board members. You are invited to add your signature through the IRD website.

Speaking of the health care debate, I just saw that our PCUSA Washington Office signed onto a December 4 letter supporting the availability of abortion through the “public option” and the “health insurance exchanges” subsidized with taxpayer dollars. The letter labeled abortion as “critical health care coverage [for] women” and argued that denying abortion coverage would be “a betrayal of the public good.” The letter was organized by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), to which our PCUSA Washington Office belongs. The RCRC president recently declared at a rally: “You not only have a constitutional right for abortion, but you have a God-given right.”

This inflammatory lobbying on a sensitive issue on which Presbyterians are deeply divided goes on top of the Washington Office’s earlier endorsement of the Democratic health care proposals as a whole. I challenged that earlier endorsement, and I am working on an article challenging this latest outrageous PCUSA incursion into the health care debate.

I hope you agree that Presbyterian Action and IRD’s voices are needed at a time like this. Someone needs to remind the church of what the Bible and the confessions teach us about marriage. And someone needs to remind the church of what the Scriptures do not teach about health care reform.

Presbyterian Action is able to make this witness because friends like you support us with their prayers and financial contributions. If you have not already done so, would you be able to help us before the end of the year? 2010 is shaping up as a crucial year, and we look forward to having many partners like you on board with us for the coming battles.