PCUSA 2010 General Assembly, Blog

Going into the assembly, the rhetoric on the Middle East was fierce–actually, fiercer than the rhetoric on sexuality issues, where people have learned that a gentler approach usually finds a more receptive audience. Pro-Palestinian groups were railing agains Israel’s policies as “evil” and “sinful,” while groups on the other side warned that the PCUSA was about to launch a “war against Israel.” Compromise did not look likely.

But, as on the marriage issue, God surprised us. A group of commissioners on the Middle East Peacemaking Committee got together and tried to find middle ground. They talked with people on both sides of the issue and sought a way to address their concerns. Then they proposed a package of amendments that reconfigured the Middle East Study Committee (MESC) report in major ways.

Amazingly, leaders from both sides signed on to the compromise. A common statement of endorsement brought together the heads of the pro-Palestinian Israel/Palestine Mission Network and the more pro-Israel Presbyterians for Middle East Peace. The assembly’s Middle East Peacemaking Committee passed the amended MESC report unanimously. In the plenary session of the assembly, the report received an overwhelming 82 percent vote. This was truly extraordinary. Nobody on either side had anticipated such a result.

The final compromise does require some close analysis, which I will provide later on the IRD/Presbyterian Action website. Here are some highlights:

The commissioners’ amendments took significant steps to remedy the pro-Palestinian bias of the original MESC report and move the document toward balance. They inserted a strong “reaffirmation of Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation within secure and internationally recognized borders.”  They “commend[ed] for study” rather than endorsed the radical “Kairos Palestine” manifesto that rejected Israel’s identity as a Jewish state and called for international sanctions against it. Their endorsement was limited to the manifesto’s “emphases on hope for liberation, nonviolence, love of enemy, and reconciliation.”

Another amendment recognized that it is not just Israel, but also Egypt, that imposes a “blockade” on Gaza. It clarified that Israel and Egypt do have a right to prevent the entry of military materiel destined to fuel Hamas’s attacks on Israel. It requested only that the two countries allow “free commercial exchange” of civilian goods with Gaza.

The amendments downgraded to background “rationale” status Part One of the MESC. That is the part that applies some of the most offensive language to Israel, calling its policies “a sin against God and other fellow human beings” and comparing it to “a Nazi state,” the former Soviet Union, and apartheid South Africa. Commissioners also deleted the 78-page “Plea for Justice,” a tendentious  retelling of history with a strong slant against Israel. They mandated that this section be replaced with “a series of eight narratives of comparable length, four arising from the range of authentically Palestinian perspectives (including both Christian and Muslim), and four arising from the range of authentically Israeli perspectives.”

Follow-up to the MESC report was taken out of the hands of MESC members (who were stacked in a pro-Palestinian direction) and placed in the hands of a new Monitoring Group on the Middle East. MESC members could comprise no more than two of the seven members of the new Monitoring Group, which is supposed to reflect “an authentic balance representing the fullness of the spectrum of commitments within the PC(USA) toward the people and issues in the region.”

All of these changes are to the good. Nevertheless, we must be frank in acknowledging that no limited set of amendments could totally undo the systematic bias of a 172-page document. There are still problems with the final MESC report as adopted by the General Assembly.

The report levies a long list of demands against Israel. It makes very few demands on its Arab neighbors. The only request made of the Palestinian political authorities is that they “set aside their differences, to pursue an ideology of non-violence.”

The MESC report still urges “the withholding of U.S. government aid to the state of Israel as long as Israel persists in creating new West Bank settlements.” This had alerady been established General Assembly policy. Yet it remains troublesome that Israel is the only country in the entire region specifically targeted for the denial of U.S. aid. Surely there are other human rights violators against which U.S. leverage might be applied.

This last point hints at the biggest problem, in my view, with the report. Even though the 2008 General Assembly directed the MESC to “prepare a comprehensive study with recommendations, that is focused on Israel/Palestine within the complex context of the Middle East,” the MESC confessed that it had ignored that last phrase. “This report thus makes only limited observations and recommendations regarding the broader context, and devotes most summary here to the Israel-Palestine struggle,” the committee indicated.

But consider what we miss when we ignore the regional context. We fail to note that the Palestinians are not the only people who are denied self-determination. Nor is the West Bank the only place where the Christian minority is endangered and shrinking. The Middle East is full of non-democratic governments and movements that oppress their own people, deny minority rights, and pose military threats to their neighbors. On the rise are Islamist movements that see no place for a Jewish state and little place for any Christian presence.

In this context, Israel stands out as an exception. For all its faults, it is a liberal democratic regime that provides a wide range of civil liberties to its citizens, including Israeli Arabs. The lack of self-determination for Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza is a problem that Israel acknowledges. Israel’s ultimate objective is to live at peace with its neighbors, not to destroy any of them. The enemies of Israel are also–by and large–enemies of the United States, the West, and the Christian minorities in the Middle East.

Surely this broader perspective ought to inform PCUSA policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Criticism of unjust Israeli policies is warranted. But there are many other injustices to criticize too.

Well, God surprised us last night–beyond what I was expecting. All the proposals to redefine marriage were turned away by a single procedural motion. At 10:30 p.m., Commissioner Ryan Balsan from New Brunswick Presbytery in New Jersey moved to answer all those items with the assembly’s action in approving the majority and minority reports from the Special Committee on Civil Union and Christian Marriage.

I wasn’t expecting Balsan’s motion to be successful. It had seemed clear to that point that the advocates of same-sex relations had the votes to enact their agenda. At the end of the afternoon they had pushed through (yet another) proposal to delete the “fidelity and chastity” clause from the PCUSA constitution. (We can, again, defeat this proposal in local presbytery votes on ratification.)They were gunning for marriage next, and they showed no signs of letting up.

Sitting at the back of the assembly hall, I had already written on my notepad, “[Balsan’s] Motion loses, __ to __.” I was just waiting to fill in the numbers. The only question in my mind was how bad the margin of defeat would be. But lo and behold, the numbers came up on the Jumbotron screen and Balsan’s motion had won–by the narrow margin of 348-324.

Suddenly all those overtures to change the constitutional definition of marriage from “man and woman” to “two persons,” as well as the overtures to issue an “authoritative interpretation” of the constitution allowing ministers to marry anyone who held a civil marriage license–they all disappeared. We had been expecting perhaps two hours of fierce debate late into the night, and probably eventual passage of those destructive overtures, and yet here was the committee moderator saying, “This concludes the report of Committee 12.” Everyone on all sides was stunned. Many of the same-sex advocates were crushed to see their high hopes so suddenly dashed. Many of the rest of us breathed a sigh of relief, as if to say, “We dodged a bullet.”

I don’t know exactly how it happened. I think God used the faithful testimony of numerous people who winsomely gave witness before the assembly to God’s good design for marriage and sexuality.  Just before the vote on “fidelity and chastity,” two commissioners gave powerful speeches in favor of keeping that biblical standard. One was Hector Reynoso, a young Hispanic pastor from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas who had been a candidate for vice moderator earlier in the week. Reynoso told his fellow commissioners, “A couple days ago I stood for vice moderator. This afternoon I’m here to stand for Jesus.” He spoke of his young daughters and how he could not give them any teaching other than the biblical teaching on God’s will for their sexuality.

Also speaking up for fidelity and chastity was James Lee, an African-American pastor also from Texas. Lee told of all the barriers (rooted in the denomination’s mostly elite white identity) that racial ethnic candidates like him had to get past in order to enter the Presbyterian ministry. He pleaded with the assembly not to lower the basic biblical moral standards that applied to all church officers. The final vote to delete fidelity and chastity was 53 to 46 percent–far closer than we would have guessed from earlier votes. People were beginning to have second thoughts.

Then at the start of the evening session the assembly heard greetings from ecumenical advisory delegate Siarhei Hardun, an Orthodox priest from Belarus in a long black robe, with a lflowing gray beard and hair and an intense look in his eyes. These were not the usual perfunctory greetings. Hardun spoke about the beauty of the biblical teaching on marriage and asked why anyone would want to change that. He challenged the commissioners about whether they were going to hold to what the Church Universal had always taught or whether they were going to conform themselves to “pagan” tendencies in U.S. culture. It was a bracing moment. Conservatives were cheered by these unexpectedly bold words from an unlikely source. Progressives were silent, perhaps a bit shocked that Hardun as their guest had had the temerity to speak so frankly.

Then, presenting the minority report from the Special Committee on Civil Union and Christian Marriage, the Rev. Gary Ferbet from St. Louis gave another powerful speech. He read from the PCUSA liturgy for marriage, noted how familiar and precious those words were to him as a minister and to couples whose lives had been joined by those sacred words, and asked what kinds of revisions to the liturgy the church would have to make if it changed its definition of marriage. Would it have to drop the connection between marriage and the creation of humans as male and female? Would it have to omit the reference to “the birth of children” as one of the purposes of marriage? Would it have to alter the phrase about the “holy mystery” of man and woman becoming one flesh? Would the analogy of husband and wife to Christ and the church still work if marriage were just any two persons?

Others, too, gave good speeches–focusing not on the condemnation of homosexuality, but on God’s good gift of marriage and how we had to honor it. I’m fairly certain that none of these speakers expected to win the votes on marriage. Nevertheless, they got up and spoke the truth as they knew it. They figured they had nothing to lose and, in God’s marvelous providence, they didn’t lose. I think that witness had its effect. Perhaps some commissioners in the middle had second thoughts and said to themselves, “Maybe marriage really is something special. Maybe I’m not yet ready to change it. Maybe the church should take some more time to study and talk about this matter.”

The assembly’s action on the reports from the Special Committee on Civil Union and Christian marriage was to send out both the committee report and the minority report for study. It was a fair compromise, and it allowed the strong biblical witness of minority members Bill Teng, Tracie Stewart, and Lisa Van Riper to get out to the church alongside the mushier arguments of the committe majority exalting “mutual forbearance” and putting all views on a level.

That action then set the stage for the motion made by Balsan. He contended that if the assembly was serious about the study that it had just authorized, the last thing it ought to do would be to send out constitutional amendments or adopt an authoritative interpretation that would seem to prejudge the issue. At the very moment when we wanted Presbyterians to explore carefully the church’s understanding of marriage, we would be blowing up the church with a debate in every presbytery about this attempt to force through a new definition of marriage.

In the end, Balsan’s arguments carried the day. Praise God for unexpected blessings! Praise God for faithful people who gave a good witness even when they didn’t think it would make a difference. By God’s grace, it did make a difference.

If all or most of these measures pass, it will be catastrophic for the denomination. A lot of people I meet here are deeply discouraged–on the verge of tears–at the way in which the commissioners have so far seemed determined to ignore all the warning signs that they’re headed into dangerous territory of rebellion against God’s Word. Once when a supporter of traditional teachng read a Bible verse and said, “This is the Word of the Lord,” members of the committee remained silent, with gritted teeth and hardened faces, rather than say, “Thanks be to God.” That sent chills down my spine. I don’t think I could do that, even if I didn’t particularly like the verse.

In the midst of all this discouragement, I–like many of the commissioners–have thrown myself into work to try to do the most I can to give a good witness before this assembly. I (and many others) have been skipping meals, staying up late, trying to help commissioners prepare for debates in the plenary session. I’m helping them plan their speeches, think through parliamentary tactics, contact one another so that they are coordinated, and so forth. I’m sure that they are going to make a good case for biblical teaching. The only question is whether they will have the numbers to carry the day on some of these votes. So far they have not had the numbers.

As always, one has to plan for eventualities one would rather not face. So leaders in the Presbyterian Renewal Network have been thinking about what we would say publicly if “fidelity and chastity” and marriage went down today. We want to convey the gravity of the situation, but not leave people in despair. We want to say that there are good and constructive things they can do even in the midst of a grievous betrayal of the church. But I hope we don’t have to issue those worst-case statements. I hope we will be in a place where we can use one of the more positive statements we have also drafted.

Please pray for us. Pray that God will surprise us–in a good way. He has done it before.

Yours in Christ,

Alan

Every measure that would advance the cause of equating same-sex relations with Christian marriage was adopted.by large margins. Constitutional amendments to change the Book of Order definition of marriage from “man and woman” to “two persons” passed on a 34-18 vote. An authoritative interpretation allowing ministers to marry anyone who holds a civil marriage license won  by a 38-16 vote. Overtures that would have affirmed the church’s biblical understanding of marriage was disapproved  by equal margins.

These last votes were a particularly harsh move. The committee was offered a kinder way of dismissing the pro-marriage overtures, by saying that they had been answered in the earlier action to approve the Special Committee report. This indirect way of effectively declining a proposal is what the assembly most often does, rather than sayng a flat “no.” But the Civil Union and Marriage committee wanted to say a flat “no.” It wanted to rebuke the presbyteries that had spoken up for the marriage of man and woman and tell them that the General Assembly rejected their convictions. This doesn’t sound like the respectful dialogue that the Special Committee was recommending. It doesn’t sound like putting the two views on a level. It sounds as if committee wanted to move very quickly to impose “marriage equality” as denominational orthodoxy.

The defenders of traditional marriage, although badly outnumbered on the committee, put up a valiant fight. They read from the Scriptures. They cited the confessions. They warned their colleagues of the firestorm they were setting upon the denomination. But the committee majority knew it had the votes and was determined to go forward. It showed no mercy to the faithful minority. A couple of the brave youth advisory delegates were in tears as the committee meeting ended. One expressed the fear that the denomination she loved was putting itself under the judgment of God by disregarding his Word so blatantly.

Yet we must not despair. God has the abiliy to vindicate his Word. Experience–very costly experience in many cases–will show its truth. The Holy Spirit can penetrate even the most hardened of hearts.

The debate on marriage at this assembly is far from over. When the Civil Union and Marriage report comes up in the plenary session, probably later on Thursday we are told, there will be many more voices prepared to speak up for the biblical understanding of the “one flesh” union of man and woman. Perhaps some of the commissioners who weren’t on the committee will think twice before messing with that ancient, God-ordained institution. We shall see.

In any case, Presbyterian Action will be helping commissioners prepare to do their best in that debate on Thursday. Please pray for us and for all at this assembly.

One side note: Gary Green, our Presbyterian Action chairman who has been following the Middle East issue, tells me that the committee dealing with that issue seems to have found a compromise. Much of the most extreme anti-Israel language has been taken out of the Middle East Study Committee report. We will have to find out the details of the compromise, as the committee was working late yesterday. But it sounds like good news. We can be thankful for the commissoners who worked so diligently to find ways to affirm the legitimate concerns of both Israelis and Palestinians.

The earlier vote on the minority report wasn’t much closer. The motion to substitute it for the committee report lost by 40-15. We just didn’t have the votes on the committee.

It wasn’t that the defenders of traditional marriage didn’t make the arguments. Bill Teng and Tracie Stewart did a masterful job in presenting the minority report. They focused the committee on key passages from the Scriptures and the confessions that the committee majority had ignored. They conveyed a sense of the universality and deep significance of marriage with slides drawn from history and various cultures. They emphasized the pastoral importance of delivering a clear message about God’s design for the right use of our sexuality, even as they also affirmed God’s mercy toward those who depart from that design and often incur suffering as a result.

Folks like Theology Matters editor Sue Cyre and New Jersey pastor Paul Leggett gave excellent testimony in the morning. Paul delivered a memorable phrase that struck home: “If Jesus was wrong about marriage, what else was he wrong about?”

The pro-marriage commissioners surprised me with their vigor in making the case. They were ready with motions, and they kept up their end of the debate even while outnumbered. Several who had earlier seemed quite reserved found their voice when the time came. A couple strong marriage advocates emerged who had been previously unknown to us. A Korean-American youth advisory delegate spoke quite knowledgeably from the Scriptures, closing with Jesus’ words, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Another youth delegate read from I Corinthians 6:9-11. Bless her courageous heart; she didn’t know it was politically incorrect to quote those powerful verses about how Jesus forgives and transforms even the vilest sinners.

I ask myself, “Could I have done more to support the minority report?” Of course, I can always think of something I could have done–an article that I meant to write earlier, a webinar that never got off the ground. But in the end it wouldn’t have made a difference in this committee. We just didn’t have the votes.

The majority, I am convinced, did not want to hear the biblical and confessional witness on marriage. In one revealing early test vote, they deleted a sentence noting that the PCUSA confessions consistently define marriage as between a man and a woman. They knew it was true. The minority report put all the confessional citations in front of them. But they just didn’t want to acknowledge that truth. They wanted to pretend that the church’s teaching on marriage was undefined and subject to any number of icreative reinterpretations.

All of this has me grieving and discouraged, I’ll admit. But we can’t afford to sulk. Tomorrow we have to fight off the overtures that would change the definition of marriage directly by constitutional amendment or authoritative interpretation. I will be giving testimony against the latter group of overtures, which are particucularly dangerous because they could open the floodgates to same-sex marriage by a simple majority vote of a single General Assembly. The special committee report would be a step in the wrong direction, but this would be a precipitous slide down the slippery slope.

Moreover, tomorrow we will have to start organizing people for the debate on marriage in the plenary session of the assembly later this week. Our resounding loss in the commitee will make it hard to reverse the result in the full assembly. But we must do our best to present the biblical teaching in the most winsome way that we know how.

So, again, please pray for me and all those who are fighting this battle here in Minneapolis. May we learn not to take these defeats so personally. May we let the battle belong to the Lord.

I spent a lot of time setting up and manning the Presbyterian Action booth in the exhibit hall. It was a pleasure to meet some people with whom I had previously corresponded by email or spoken over the phone. Several of them thanked me for my writings on marriage and the Middle East. It is particularly gratifying to encounter real people with real faces who have benefited from my work. That’s why I do it.

I continue to write on marriage. My latest product is a side-by-side comparison of key quotes from the majority and minority reports. I hope that this comparison will enable commissioners to focus on the major differences between the minority, which upholds the church’s confessional teaching, and the majority, which puts all views of marriage on a level. When the comparison is posted, it will be on our Presbyterian Action GA 2010 web page at http://www.theird.org/Page.aspx?pid=1473.

Most committees had their first organizational meeting this afternoon. I was in the Civil Union and Christian Marriage Committee. Committee members, like the Special Committee before them, tried to craft a “covenant” to guide their work. This covenant, which the committee later read together in a responsive liturgy of commitment (with candles burning on a table in the middle of the room), was composed of brainstorming ideas that were thrown out and written down without any critical discussion. Phrases like “Be hospitable,” “Listen with an open heart,” “We will cast no stones,” “We will use no body language or tone that condemns,” “Hear all voices,” “Unity in diversity,” “Practice mutual forbearance,” and “Trust the process.”

These are all the kinds of sentiments that make me want to say, “Yes, but ….” For example, “Yes, we should listen with an open heart, but an open heart doesn’t mean suspending our belief in the clear teachings of God’s Word.” I’m all for being hospitable and patient and such, but I’ve seen this kind of “let’s all love one another” approach used too often to stifle the kind of frank debate that opens up the real issues. Commissioners are made to feel that they are breaking their sacred covenant if they say that someone else’s position doesn’t square with the Bible or common sense. Commissioners hear plenty of voices, but they are left unable to distinguish God’s voice, the voice of truth, from all the other voices that are clamoring for attention.

Tomorrow (Monday) is the big day for oral testimony before committees. There are long lists of people signed up to speak on the Middle East and marriage. I will put in my two cents about how the proposed Middle East report pulls its punches against every political actor except Israel. Then on Tuesday I will speak against the overtures that would “interpret” the PCUSA constitution as allowing any same-sex marriage recognized by the state to be celebrated as a “Christian marriage.”

Please pray that my few words will express something unique that the commissioners need to hear. Thanks to all of those whose support has enabled me to be here and give this testimony.