Another response to the “Deathly Ill” Letter from Rev. Margaret Aymer Oget

About your invitation… (an exegetical RSVP to the “Deathly Ill” summons)
Like many Presbyterians, I have considered writing a letter of response regarding the “Deathly Ill” letter. In many ways, this blog post is that letter.

However, before I respond directly to that letter, I thought it appropriate to apply some basic principles of exegesis to the churchwide invitation issued on February 2, 2011. Having no time to put together a full exegetical exposition, a shorter, more pithy reading will have to suffice.

My response will consist of a short word study, a consideration of honor and shame, an evaluation of the letter’s sacred texture, and finally, by means of an RSVP to the invitation, a careful consideration of one of the claims of the letter.

My allegiances have been and continue to be quite transparent: to live out my call to be Minister of Word and Sacrament within the Presbyterian Church (USA), teaching, preaching and doing ministry among and within the world that God so loves.

WORD STUDY

Since the letter is written in the maternal language of the majority of US-based Presbyterians, very little translation is needed. However, there are language matters worth noting.

Congregations: As is evident from the Wordle word cloud attached to this blog (click on it to see a bigger version of it), the central concern of the letter appears to be “congregations.” This is a structural, rather than a theological letter. God is mentioned three times; Christ twice (not including its inclusion in Christology); the Spirit of God, once; and Jesus is never named. By contrast, congregations are mentioned fully nine times in a letter of just over 1300 words.

Other often repeated words are PC(USA), new, and Fellowship, and, (less frequently), Reformed.

The word study hints at a focus on matters congregational, even above matters reformed and without reference to connection or connectionality. As the Wordle illustrates, the authors center their discussion on congregationalism, a structure akin to our Baptist and UCC kinfolk.

HONOR AND SHAME

As in the ancient world, so in today’s world honor and shame have tremendous impact on the way in which people order their lives. However, marks of honor and shame differ somewhat between these cultures.

For these signatories, honor is marked by the numbers of those who are gathering around this proposal and their commitment. The nature of the commitment seems to be to one another, to the proposal, or both. In addition, honor is marked by drastic intervention on the PC(USA) by the signatories.

They demonstrate their honor by envisioning a new future for like-minded congregations; changing course and radically transforming traditional denominations. Their future honor is to be marked by a clear, concise theological core based on classic biblical, Reformed/Evangelical traditions, and a pledge to live according to those beliefs, regardless of cultural pressures to conform ; nurturing leadership; the larger mission of the people of God around the world; healthy, missional congregations; and a pattern of fellowship.

They value a minimalist structure; session control of property; joint ventures within specialized ministries; and an atmosphere of support. They propose, as their honorable end, a fellowship; a new synod; and ultimately a new denomination or reconfiguration of PCUSA.

By contrast, the following appear to be marks of shame: unending controversy, dishonoring of one’s calling; leaving a poor legacy; steady decline; loss of financial strength in the governing bodies; rancorous, draining, internal disputes; the appearance of (but not the actuality) of schism; divisions around scripture, authority, Christology, the extent of salvation; creeping universalism; and separate worlds only held together by property and pension.

Honor in the ancient world is strikingly different from the honor of these signatories. In the ancient world, honor is marked by loyalty to one’s family. This is why Paul addresses his church gatherings as αδελφοι, sisters and brothers. It is only in the context of this religious kinship that Paul can admonish the Corinthians: “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you.’”

By contrast, these signatories mark honor by the proclamation of their right to schism given certain matters which they deem shameful, primarily numerical and financial decline and the propensity of Presbyterians to think, and thus to argue with one another.

US historians will recognize that the signatories’ description of honor parallels less the ancient world than the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the 150 year old articles of Confederation of the southern states of the US. These draw on modernist, European and Enlightenment ideals of individual sovereignty and the right of individuals to determine what it is they believe. In short, honor for these signatories is a profoundly American cultural phenomenon bearing little resemblance to biblical honor.

The signatories’ description of shame is divided into two categories: capitalist shame (decline of membership, finances, issues of property and pension) and shame based around broad theological divisions: biblical interpretation, authority, Christology and the extent of salvation.

The first of these categories of shame is deeply modernist. Since success is measured by size and wealth in capitalist North America, it stands to reason that shrinkage of both is seen as failure.
The second hearkens back to several historical periods of the church, but, for the purpose of this exegesis, the 19th century. Current debates around these issues continue to center around US modernist/pre-modernist, or exegetical/fundamentalist schisms. The leaning of these signatories is clearly on the latter historical side in each instance.

Honor and shame for these signatories, then, is defined primarily within the northern, US-based, European-American ideals of the 19th century and early 20th century. The letter, on its face, seems to be a call back (or forward) to modernist values of separation upon disagreement and radical individualism, and pre-modernist/fundamentalist elevations of all aspects of religion, regardless of changing cultural norms (e.g. slaves obey your masters).

SACRED TEXTURE
Sacred texture is an examination of the ways in which an author puts forward her ideas about the life of religion. It includes:

Deity: about which the authors are mostly silent. At the end of the letter, God is designated as the one who calls. Beyond that, all three persons of the Triune God are adjectival: God describing a kingdom and a people; Christ, describing family members at the beginning of the letter and a body; and the Holy Spirit; describing vitality. Notably, with one exception, the authors of this letter do not claim the Deity as the primary, sovereign actor.

Divine history: generally, the authors of this letter say nothing about divine history. This does not appear to be their concern, except as it comes to the nurture of church leaders. They offer no vision of a holy telos, no vision of what this coming kingdom might portend.

Human redemption is a point of contention, but the authors do not, in this letter, spell out their differences. (They may do so in the white paper, which I have not read). The letter does, three times, mention mission or its derivative “missional.” However the nature and telos of this mission remain undefined in this letter.

Human commitment The values to which these authors are committed are, in their own words, minimal structure, session control of property, joint ventures in mission and an atmosphere of support.

Religious community is marked by a fellowship of like-minded individuals rather than by the contention of Jesus’ first disciples or of the early church. These like-minded individuals pursue their mission not by taking the bare minimum, as Jesus commanded, but by taking their pensions and property with them. Human beings, further, are called to be committed to healthy, growing, missional congregations, the global missio Dei (although whether that includes the revelation of the Triune God to Christians of the global south in Accra and Belhar is not stated) and to undescribed “patterns of fellowship.”

Ethics in this community include eschewing current, PCUSA national and international structures of global missions, national ministries, education, women’s leadership, and youth ministry for individual structures which they will vet and approve. Their ethics also include nurturing leadership, although surely this is outside of the current structure of PCUSA seminaries.

Analysis of sacred texture: This letter is primarily an invitation to a new ecclesiology, an ecclesiology based on a gathering of like-minded individuals to do that which they understand to be the global missio Dei. Their theology, teleology and soteriology remain unstated. Therefore, it is unclear to what kind of theological like-mindedness the church is being summoned by this invitation.

What is clear is that their ecclesiology parallels exactly the cultural norms of 21st-century neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism and neo-liberal globalism which purports to bring the Western ideal to the rest of the world without first determining whether that ideal is in fact ideal for the rest of the world or asking what the rest of the world might consider to be ideal. In this matter, the authors are correct in asserting that their thirty-five years of fighting against various calls to ministry are beside the point.

HOW WE GOT TO THIS PLACE — AN RSVP

The brethren who wrote this letter to the church have, on February 7th, asked that we read their letter rather than to consider the signatories. This I have tried to do. Some will claim I have done so unfairly. This is entirely possible; I have never claimed to other than a subjective knowledge, baptized but still quite human.

Still there is one phrase from the letter with which I must take direct issue: “How we got to this place is less important than how we move forward.” (para 3.) Please consider my response to this phrase my RSVP to the churchwide invitation. For indeed, my brothers, how we got to this place may well be the crux of the matter.

We got to this place, as a denomination, by praying to the Triune God and thinking as two or three gathered together about the authority of scripture, Christology, and the extent of salvation.

We got to this place, as a denomination, by ordaining groups that, until fairly recent history, were considered ineligible for ordained ministry: groups of color, women, the divorced, and members of the church under the age of 21.

We got to this place, as a denomination by suffering the creation of fellowships (like the Layman) in opposition to the Confession of 1967 and silently enduring the refusal of churches to live into their financial obligations to the whole denomination.

We got to this place because, in 1978, we declared that seminaries of the Presbyterian Church (USA), should be safe places of non-discrimination for all people.

We got to this place by acting on our belief that the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper are not ours to control but are the property of the God whose grace abounds beyond our human understanding.

We got to this place by following the Christ who was belittled by the religious leaders of his day for his breaking of biblical commands (notably the fourth commandment and laws regarding eating abomination); and by following the Spirit that did not even require of Cornelius the mark of the covenant (circumcision) before it fell on him, bringing him into the church.

Most recently, we got to this place by affirming as a General Assembly the anti-racist, Reformed confession written in Belhar, South Africa that affirmed: God has entrusted the church with reconciliation, therefore,

“any teaching which attempts to legitimate such forced separation by appeal to the gospel, and is not prepared to venture on the road of obedience and reconciliation, but rather, out of prejudice, fear, selfishness and unbelief, denies in advance the reconciling power of the gospel, must be considered ideology and false doctrine.”

This year marks the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the US Civil War, a war which caused the great schism in the Presbyterian Church.

My brothers, I fear, sadly, that issues of property and like-mindedness, difference in biblical interpretation and authority and an unwillingness to be part of a larger body that fundamentally challenged their adherence to slaveocracy were exactly the reasons that the fellowships of congregations in the south created new seminaries, new synods and ultimately a new denomination.

Indeed, my brothers, my exegesis suggests that “how we got to this place,” and thus where we go from here, is precisely the point at issue.

My brothers, you invite the church into an adventure that is not at all new, but historically very familiar. It is an adventure marked by the European cultural norms of individual self-government, the right of property, a modernist take on liberty, a neo-colonialist model of mission, and a pre-modern understanding of biblical texts. This adventure has as its intent to grow the church in and for the twenty-first century, with neither consideration nor validation of how we got to this place.

I admit I am not thus tempted, and must respectfully decline.

Instead, with God’s help, I will remain in the Presbyterian Church, USA, and with my denomination I will follow the Christ whose followers dwindled from 5000 to zero over the course of three years, yet who calls us still to follow; who has been demonstrated a capable healer of the deathly ill and has revealed himself to be the resurrection and the life.

With God’s help, I will remain in this denomination, following the Spirit who fell on eunuch and centurion, and immigrant peoples in and from every language group of the Roman-conquered world, regardless of biblical adherence to seminal commands such as sabbath, kashrut and circumcision.

With God’s help, I will remain in this denomination and follow the God who promises that, at the time of the coming kingdom, lion and lamb will lie down together, who calls for justice to roll down like waters, and yet desires mercy and not a sacrifice.

With God’s help, I will remain in this denomination, living out my call with energy, intelligence, imagination and love, as I seek to do ministry with and among the contentious, shrinking, justice-seeking, mercy-doing, humbly-walking, peacemaking sisters and brothers of the Presbyterian Church (USA), who although we are dying yet, see, we live.

Even with God’s help, I will be imperfect in my discipleship. Yet will I follow, relying on Jesus, my high priest, to make intercession for me; asking the Spirit of God to give me speech; and confessing with this denomination, and with the church in every age–in life, in death and in life after death, we belong to God.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Rev. Margaret Aymer Oget, Ph. D.
Minister of Word and Sacrament