The last few years have witnessed the tragic redefining of a once great institution. The Presbyterian Church of the USA, which exists to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to all of his children, has been fundamentally corrupted in its visions and aims. Shoved in the back seat is Christ and the whole of his teachings, replaced in the driver’s seat by an increasingly secular worldview that the PCUSA seems intent on pursuing at full speed.
More frustrating still, this effort to keep apace of the progressive culture is happening at the expense of tens of thousands of members each year. In the face of this, we are told that “we are not dying, we are reforming.” What exactly we are trying to become, though, is thoroughly ambiguous at best.
It’s worth considering what exactly this “reformation” looks like. In recent years, we have witnessed, for example, the church adopt same-sex marriage. There is, of course, no biblical basis for this course of action, quite the contrary in fact. Yes, we love and respect the dignity of each of God’s children, but we also accept that God created man and woman, separate, distinct and purposeful.
At the most recent conference of our denomination, we were offered a Muslim prayer, referring to Jesus Christ as merely a prophet alongside Muhammad. Yes, we love and respect the dignity of the Muslim community as children of God, but ought we invite a person to reject our savior at a conference allegedly intended to decide how best to spread his teachings?
On abortion, we are told by PCUSA only that the decision is “deeply personal,” and should be made based on “Scripture.” Naturally, though, the statement offers no guidance as to any particular piece of Scripture that a person ought to reference. To do so would risk lending support to the inherent value of each human life. In fairness, however, it should be noted that PCUSA at least disapproves of partial-birth abortion. How bold.
In the face of these travesties, it should come as no surprise that our Christian brothers and sisters are vacating the denomination in droves. As other Presbyterian denominations grow, we are facing unprecedented declines. In fact, last year’s decline was more than twice as high as those of a decade ago in percentage terms. Still, we are told to press onward in the name of “reform.”
Reform, though, connotes fixing things that are broken but leaving the good intact. When Martin Luther drafted the 95 Theses, it was in response to critical failures of the Catholic Church, not to any problems with the word of God. The reforms of the PCUSA, however, seem increasingly to be centered on “fixing” things at the core of Christian theology.
We are told, for example, to focus our efforts on attracting new congregants from immigrant communities to compensate for our shrinking numbers. Surely we should spread the word of God to all his children and invite them into our congregations. But we, as a denomination, are increasingly thinking in terms of this group or that group, rather than uniting purely as a single community — that of believers in Christ. Rather than spreading the unadulterated truth of God and his word, we are masking our message in the cloying rhetoric of progressive politics. More and more, we are behaving like political strategists poring over polling data to find groups that can salvage a sinking campaign. We are not called to be political consultants for Christ; we are called to be his messengers. Furthermore, the steady and continued decline in numbers is illustrative of the fact that immigrant communities are just as conscious of the PCUSA’s profound failures as a Christian church as we are.
We are also told incessantly that we must trust the youth to lead us, but who will bring the youth if the elders are gone? Is it not the elders who must teach and lead the youth? We are, in essence, calling on the students to lead the professors in the hope that the students will bring their friends. The question that never seems to be asked, though, is what happens afterward. Assume, for a moment, that the youth do come in droves (an outcome I sincerely doubt) at the expense of many of our established congregants. A church deprived of decades of wisdom and driven by the progressive youth PCUSA is seeking out will undoubtedly be steered entirely by the winds of culture.
This gets to the heart of our crisis. Christians should not be directed by the whims of a secular culture. The cultural platitude of the day is fleeting and feeble, but the word of God is eternal and invincible. We cannot be loyal to God and loyal to the culture; we must choose one or the other. As Christians we are called to serve God above all else, regardless of political or societal pressures.
The systemic crisis of the PCUSA looms over our very small but venerable church east of Pittsburgh, The Presbyterian Church of Plum Creek. After years of frustration with the direction of the PCUSA and considerable biblical study, discussion and prayer, our church entered into the discernment process to ultimately decide if at this point it was best for our church to remain with the PCUSA or to affiliate with another Reformed Presbyterian denomination. Unlike more affluent churches that have reaffiliated using financial resources to obtain the help of legal counsel, we entered the discernment process unaware of the strict and often shifting guidelines of the Pittsburgh Presbytery.
The heavy hand of this central authority has emboldened this congregation to act on faith and follow their conscience. I think we have seen enough in these past months to know what direction we must choose. Often, the right path is the most difficult. The choice before us has become clear: compromise the word of God or acquiesce to authority. I trust that we, like the founders of our church, will choose to reject unorthodox dictates and instead follow the word of God and vote for a new way forward for our congregation.
Holly Lott has been a member of The Presbyterian Church of Plum Creek since 1983. She lives in Plum.
First Published: September 9, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
