When I first became a minister of the Church of Scotland, the issue of the ordination of women had for a long time been settled, at least as far as the law of the Kirk was concerned. Women were to face no barrier whatsoever regarding ordination to the eldership or to the ministry of word and sacrament. This had been agreed for a number of years.
At my very first General Assembly, the issue of what is permitted and what cannot be prohibited in the life of the church was being debated, and quite hotly, as I recall. The ordination of women was very much a permitted and encouraged matter, but the Assembly decided - I'm trying to remember the exact wording of it all, but can't quite remember - that it was also a matter which no one could lawfully prohibit. Ministers and Kirk Sessions could not deliberately and lawfully choose men only for the eldership.
I dissented from that decision and lined up with many others to sign the dissent paperwork at the 'play pen'. I dissented because it was my view that what is permitted in one generation was likely to become compulsory in the next, and a disciplinary matter in the following. Many congregations and ministers were doing great work for the kingdom, including the faithful preaching of God's word, but could not agree to the ordination of women to the eldership in its two forms - ruling and teaching - because they could find no permission for it in scripture. I did not at all like the thought of faithful, thoughtful ministers and Kirk Sessions becoming the subject of disciplinary proceedings, in time, over this issue.
There are still ministers and Kirk Sessions, as well as many other Kirk members, who affirm joyfully the equality of men and women in God's created order, who also want to say that the roles and ministries of men and women are often different, and that is the way God has ordained it to be.
Since then, and probably prior to that, many evangelicals have felt that the spaces they have occupied in the Kirk are getting narrower and narrower. Freedom of opinion and liberty of conscience is being eroded and removed. There is a strong and growing sense amongst them that the Kirk is moving theologically and ethically in its liberal direction, at such pace, that their own place within it is increasingly tenuous. They are being pushed and marginalised to a place to which grace and Christian love ought never to have pushed them.
No minority can be rejected or oppressed forever. The warning signs in the Kirk are there for any careful observer. The steam is positively pouring out of the kettle. Kirk evangelicals already feel unchurched. In the Kirk's rush to be 'inclusive' it is the evangelicals who are being excluded. They feel that the church in which they came to faith and in which they were matured in Christian discipleship has been hijacked. There is common agreement amongst them that a denomination founded on the scriptures of the old and new testaments, summing up its Christian understanding in the superb Westminster Confession of Faith, has now been the subject a spectacular ecclesiastical coup d'etat.
Evangelicals have already left the Kirk as a consequence. Some of them have taken the step of surrendering their membership of the Church of Scotland whilst remaining members of their local, parish churches, and more are threatening to do the same. Others have stopped giving financially to the central funds of the Kirk, though they continue to support their own congregations in all ways, including monetarily.
If evangelicals have not already left in one shape or form, then a good number have left within their hearts. I know of a number of evangelical ministers in this category. They are going through the motions of being Church of Scotland ministers, faithfully carrying out their local roles and responsibilities but inwardly having withdrawn in despair from the central structures of the Kirk and into a form of Presbyterian congregationalism. Mentally and emotionally, many evangelical ministers and church members have already left the Kirk. Plain and simple.
We are now engaged in a struggle not only for the Church of Scotland itself, but a struggle to maintain our own evangelical place within it. We have learned what the phrase 'broad church' means. It means a church in which almost anything is permitted and passed off as the will of God, sooner or later. It has meant the construction of a shelf-load of false gods alongside the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It means a temple of Dagon spirituality where the God of the Bible stands side by side with the images that have been idolatrously made of him. Evangelicals cannot live much longer with this. A change of some agreeable sort must soon come, or there will be few evangelicals left in the Kirk. Congregations will be damaged or absent, and finances, already in a critical state, will suffer yet further.
Is this what anyone truly wants? Is the marginalisation and eventual expulsion of so many of the Kirk's evangelicals a thing to be desired? Is the Kirk really far better off without us? Without evangelicals, is the Kirk a church worth belonging to? Without evangelical and orthodox Christian belief, is the Kirk a church at all?
These are the serious questions to be faced and answered, and outside the evangelical camp, I don't think anyone has much of a clue that tensions are so great and passions so aroused.
Whilst the Kirk sleeps, its evangelicals seem to be preparing to leave.
Soli Deo Gloria
"Without evangelical and orthodox Christian belief, is the Kirk a church at all?"
ReplyDeleteI think that's the HUGE question and, as we seem to move towards a Kirk devoid of orthodox Christian belief, it's the one that breaks my heart the most.
I always come back to Daniel's prayer:
"Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”(Daniel 9:17-19 ESV)
Only by God's mercy can the Kirk be saved.
"In the Kirk's rush to be 'inclusive' it is the evangelicals who are being excluded."
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the problem is that inclusiveness has gone from being a practical goal to being an ideological principle. When inclusiveness is a practical goal, the aim is to include as many people as reasonably possible, and not to exclude anyone unnecessarily. This, it seems to me, was the pattern of the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
However, when inclusiveness becomes an ideological principle, then it must, of necessity, exclude those who seem to reject inclusiveness. In a church where inclusiveness becomes a tenet of orthodoxy, then obviously there is no room for those who are perceived as being opposed to it. Logically (though paradoxically) they must be excluded.
If my analysis is correct, something good has basically been turned into an idol. And that is often the fate of good things.
Your last three posts, by the way, are moving, and (IMHO) very good. You are in my prayers. May you be greatly encouraged in your ministry, and may there be many faithful people who will stand with you and be with you in dark times and places.
Strange to say I was encouraged to read your posting about the Kirk sleeping because it helped me to realise that there are many ministers who feel as troubled as I do. Really there is no such thing as a broad church. There is an orthodox church with tares in it or there is a heterodox church with wheat in it. Since 2009 the church of Scotland has been moving from one to the other. If the 2011 Assembly confirms that we are heterodox the position of
ReplyDeletetraditional ministers and members will be untenable. I personally believe that our communion services will be invalidated and are already seriously compromised. Intuitively I think many are aware that something is horribly wrong. Years of progressive, egalitarian ideology at Assembly after Assembly have finally given way to moral collapse and open apostacy. At the very time when the church of Scotland should be fighting against secularism for the sake of the nation it is surrendering to it. This is deeply worrying. What we are feeling is also what is happening in other denominations too. They are being ripped apart. We see that it is not possible for orthodoxy and heterodoxy to coexist.
Tony Foreman
Louis, your memory is at fault. What the issue was at the 1992 I think it was General Assembly was whether it was lawful for a Kirk Session to resolve at the beginning of a discussion about increasing the number of elders to resolve that no women could be considered.
ReplyDeleteThe Principal Clerk had ruled that it was not lawful.
Quite clearly such a resolution is contrary to the law of the Kirk that women should be ordained on the same terms as men.
You know that this was the position of the Kirk when you got ordained. Most of the 103 odd people who dissented with you were old hands and perhaps were ordained before the law was changed.
You however were ordained into a Church where there were ordained women. How dare you seek to take the moral high ground. It is you who are being faithless of your ordination vows. You knew what you ware coming into, and if you didn't like it you shouldn't. It is as if you had become a Roman priest and then were whinging about celibacy.
How dare you claim to speak for the Evangelicals. Your claiming to be an Evangelical is as objectionable as the Romans claiming to be the only Catholics.
It is you who are unorthodox. I am an evangelical who wants to see what the Word of God really says, and be faithful to that.
Don't try the Westminster Documents. Remember the MacLeod Campbell case where MacLeod Campbell was in error in terms of the Confession but his Nature of the Atonement was a landmark of thought about what Christ really did for us - Louis have you ever read the Nature of the Atonement? Have you ever even held it in your hand?
Sorry, it is probably you who are the hetrodox, certainly in the Kirk, Why do you assume that your hetrodoxical views have some strange legitimacy
Dear Anonymous, I am afraid that I won't respond or reply to anonymous comment-posters unless there is obvious reason for anonymity in their comment. That seems not to be the case in your instance. You accuse and challenge me without having the courage to say who or where you are, and I find that to be lacking in Christian grace and kindness. It is akin to an ambush. If you return to this blog, please be more open and you will find that I respond in kind. Bless you.
ReplyDeleteThat seems a bit of a bizarre attitude to take towards anonymity, to be honest. Who they are is irrelevant to the validity of their point and to suggest otherwise is argumentum ad hominem. If the claims are false, refute the claims, don't just dismiss the person making them.
ReplyDeleteI've explained the rules. Please abide by them and we will have a full and honest exchange of views, otherwise it would be better if you don't visit this site.
ReplyDelete