Editor’s response: Ted, I believe that Dr. Petter would agree with you in almost every respect.  While my report of her speaking was terribly brief in comparison to a lecture that went nearly an hour long at rapid speed, I tried to quote her carefully:  that some are “’leaving a place’ that has become ‘a place of bondage to you’ ” and that others are “ ‘no longer in a place where you want to be’ ” because it has become “ ‘a strange land due to alien theology’ ” but that “God is requiring you to learn to be God’s people right there.”  I’m sure she would be the first to acknowledge that the exodus and exile analogies certainly do break down when pushed to the level of all particularities – especially any suggestion that the PC(USA) is a modern equivalent to ancient Egypt or Babylon.  She was really speaking to the perception of those struggling with and/or severing from affiliation with the PC(USA), and it was clear that her analogies – incomplete as they were – did strike a chord with many of those present.
--Jack Haberer

Jack, your closing paragraph to this article is well put.  With all due respect, I think Dr. Petter presented a mis-guided exegesis with the Exodus/Exile analogy to the ECO/FOP crowd.  It's application upon the PCUSA and the pastors/congregations struggling with their identity with the PCUSA implies that the PCUSA is outside of the Christian community.  Any serious read of our constitution would inform one otherwise.  Honestly, those who leave should not view it as an "exodus" synonymous to the Moses exodus.  Egypt, as a nation, was not part of the covenant community.  Egypt was an oppressor with no value for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The exodus was a release from bondage by a pagan nation.  The exile image may possibly work only from the vantage point of the prophets.  The nation of Israel had lost its mooring upon the one true God and became enamored with the ways of the surrounding nations.  The judgment of God came upon the covenant community because they forgot about God.  The prophets stayed with the people to herald God's truth even as they were in exile; they didn't go off in frustration to establish or find "like minded" fellowships.  Even though the PCUSA at times entertains cultural influences over and above 2000 years of church history and witness, it is still part of the Christian community and bears witness to the grace of God.  We who are leading the people of God in this great denomination should keep our eyes upon the Great Ends of the Church with a direct focus of pursuing righteousness before the throne of God and not the throne of nations.

Ted Martin

We are working now on #3, holding a Community Forum on Gun Violence Prevention with elected officials, law enforcement officers, school officials and mental health professionals. The forum will be Thursday February 21.  Our intent is that the Church will be a leader in the public square, not silent, shaping a conversation that is deeply important to the community we share with our neighbors. We believe gun violence is a moral and spiritual concern about which the followers of Jesus can bear witness by engaging seriously in the effort to prevent the death of innocent people. We are co-hosting this with our Jewish partners who share similar convictions.

Roy Howard

Dr. Standish's so-called "Celtic" Christianity is to the Gospel what a Hollywood back-lot facade is to a house: an artfully designed confection of sticks and canvas that looks lovely from a distance, but has no depth, bears no weight and is liable to blow away in a strong wind.  It never really existed, and you certainly can't live in it.

The irony of Dr. Standish's attempt to rehabilitate Pelagius as a kinder, gentler (and let's be honest, more sexually permissive) alternative to a demi-Manichean Augustinian orthodoxy is that it only works if Pelagius was exactly what Augustine said: a denier of grace of God.  If poor Pelagius was misunderstood, and a basically orthodox victim of political intrigue, the argument falls apart.  As for poor Patrick and Francis, I suspect that they would be shocked to find themselves lashed at the ankle to Pelagius.

Dr. Standish is right about one thing here: there's a profound and irreconcilable conflict between Reformed Christianity (or for that matter, Orthodox Christianity, Lutheran Christianity, Roman Catholic Christianity, etc.) and the humanistic liberalism that he romantically labels "Celtic."  In order to make room for the one, you have to deny the other.  The PC(USA) seems to have made her choice, which is to deny her own Reformed confessional foundation.  It only amazes me that people still think a gussied up humanistic liberalism will prove an enduring replacement.

Andy Scott

If it were only that simple, Celtic vs. Augustinian theological constructs are pre-reformation,  had have been part of the presbyterian fabric since its inception in the Scottish Kirk.  The 7 major and countless minor schisms in the church since 1728 point to that dynamic tension that will not change, but has always abided. So why all the fuss now? The theological framework of the normative PCUSA as it exists now is an amalgamation of various streams, New Age, Native American, liberation, and pre-christian fertility anthropologies especially in feminist theological work.  Also the warping of the polity process to winner-take-all, high stakes dysfunction that continue to traumatize the church.

  I have posted that the current PCUSA is really two totally different religions in one denominational structure. And that is the source of the corporate angst. But all true, Celtic or Augustinian, very hard to reconcile when both lead to different conclusions.

Peter Gregory

I am proud to have benefited from the Bannerman years at PSCE and have tried to carry those benefits on to the congregations I have served!

Michael Williams

That's my folks!  What a lovely, well written article.  Thank you for honouring my mom and dad is such a nice way.  Even having grown up right there beside them, you tend to forget (not really, but for lack of better word)all that they have done and contributed and still mean to this community of faith.  It's a legacy indeed. 

Lee Ann Bannerman

Check out the Presbyterians for Earth Care Facebook page post. 

Fred Milligan

For the last 6 years, Presbyterians for Earth Care has supported several events for young adults, including several seminarians. This year's event is being held in Portland Oregon, June 1-8. This place-based learning program for young adults (ages ~20-30) will consider how people of faith in the Portland area are responding in creative ways to environmental challenges such as climate change, food inequality and urban sprawl. We will spend the week exploring the city by foot, bike and public transport as we visit farmer’s markets, ecumenical partnerships, co-housing communities, food cooperatives and farms. Along the way, we’ll meet with community organizers, city planners, church leaders and environmental activists to discuss how they are laying connectional roots to build a sustainable urban community. During the week, we will also take time to reflect on our individual eco-faith journeys while staying at Camp Menucha and hiking and recreating in the Columbia River Gorge and foothills of Mt. Hood in the Cascades. For more information, contact Rev. Rob Mark: revrobmark@gmail.com

Application Deadline: March 1, 2013 (Rolling admission)

Fred Milligan

I'm looking forward to seeing the letters from our Stated Clerk, The Washington Office, and the Peace and Justice advocates condemning this action and demanding release for these pastors.  . . .still waiting. 

Noel Anderson

Where here is a radical thought, Before going to the mattresses and enriching lawyers wide and far, sit down as Christian adults, discuss your issues and come to resolution in peace and harmony. I think I taught my 4 year old grandson always to and hug his baby sister, even when he does not like her and when she wants all his toys

Peter Gregory

And this just in,---   the Bible is not a children's book by design or intent.

  As a very divine and very human document the Bible is full of the stuff of life, sex, more sex, violence, more violence, poetry, love sonnets, apocalypse, letters, historical commentary,  and did I mention sex and violence. It is not "Thomas the Tank Engine"  with a chocolate cross at the end. At the end, Revelations 22 there is the eternal fire, Satan, and eternal damnation for those outside the faith. Not all dogs and puppies go to heave, Sorry to say.  

  It is the story of a people and their God, a rather messy and complicated story, and sometimes that history fails to meet or jive with the the ideological or political tone and tenor of the age. Unless one chooses to adopt the practice of  Thomas Jefferson at Monticello and his exact-knife cutting out those passages that offended his enlightened sensibilities,  then scripture falls or stands in toto. One does not get to redact or pick and choose what he or she chooses to read or affirm.  Nor put a blender to extract a child-safe version of the scriptures.  Religious progressives are not so much ashamed of the Bible or its content, they are very smart people and have read it as well as anybody else. They have read it and some passages scare them, they indeed have good reason to fear.

Peter Gregory

Thank you for your “Resurrection Generation” (Outlook February 4) which I found both instructive and forward looking. Being of the generation preceding your generation (I graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 1940) I have been troubled by the events which you described and for which you expressed some concern.  It is encouraging that you describe the later generation of Christians as more responsive to the Great Commission and to the new environment in which the church lives in this present world.

In the PCUS in which I grew up, the General Assembly decided in 1935 to take an interest in issues affecting people in all conditions of life.  So the ministry of my generation was accepting of dealing with issues of poverty, ignorance, health, hunger and other social issues.  Thank you for asking in your editorial for this generation to lead the church into the future as partners to promote justice, proclaim grace, and believe boldly.

Cordially yours

Samuel M. Houck

Austell, Georgia

........And in other late braking news, water has been found to be wet.

   American Protestant and secular progressives/liberals fall into the same trap with Rome as they do with their own denominations in crises. That if only they could get their policy on the right side of things, usually involving gays, women, and other regressive tendencies,  then everybody for disaffected  Irish Catholics from Dublin to adjust faculty from the local community college will one Sunday rise up and say "lets go to Mass".  Indeed true, we was a frail old man when elected in 2005 and remains so today, an academic with limited interest in charting a new course for the church, he was confounded by the sex abuse scandals as much as his immediate predecessor.  And all John Paul 2 did was help end communism in Europe, free millions, survive an assassin whom he later forgave, and will likely be canonized as a Saint in our life times.

   Rome, the Catholic church is fallible, sinful, far from perfect, only because people are fallible, sinful, fall from perfect. Its many flaws granted, in one day the Roman Catholic church feeds more hungry, cloths more naked, aids more  poor than the ECA, ECLA, PCUSA, UM do in one year, 10 years. May God grant Benedict his rest, and his successor grace to lead his many, many flock about the globe.

Peter Gregory

Organized religion is no different from any other institution, political or private. As the private sector, and individuals have de-leveraged from the recent financial events, so too the public and religious institutions do the same. Seminaries moving, merging,  churches closing, consolidating, pension plans in flux, the deconstruction of old orders, old structures, way of relating. New paradigms, new ways or relating, are all the process of where we are going.  The NCC, much like WCC is an institution that speaks to a day and age that no longer exists. People, denominational structures change.  The older main-line progressive american protestant denominations are not on a path to extinction as some may posit, but again in a time of restructure.  Whatever that future is will be one more cost efficient and effective and a much, much smaller footprint, baggage, to manage.

  DC may indeed be the right move, but in the day and age of the global net and transnational communities do religious progressives need to support another lobbying organization, one that has lost its way decades ago. We will see.

Peter Gregory

The medical school model is an interesting concept. But I keep thinking of how the church is involved in some of the most Holy and Poignant moments of life.  Having a class come to services--fine.  Letting a class sit in on my loved one's funeral or my daughter's wedding---no way.
Training pastors at a church that is huge, with incredible resources and as a new start church has a different DNA than the church that most students will wind up serving--that is plain cruel.
As an Alum, I'm severely disappointed in the way it was handled.

Robin Roderick

One of the first things I did when I became pastor of this church was scrap the curriculum in use for middle schoolers (grade 6-8) and replace it with the Westminster Shorter Catechism and other Bible knowledge content. I do not know how much "fun" this may have been. But at the end of their senior year we have produced a Christian with critical thinking skills and discernment skills able to relate faith to the larger questions of life.

  So much of the current CE material in use is so much pop-theraputic, relational self-help psychology aimed to building one's self-esteem, as opposed to making believers able to defend their faith and more importantly why they believe what they believe. At the end of the day i think that will stand the test of time, better than the play nice with neighbors and keep your hands to yourself stuff that passes today for Christian education. 

Peter Gregory

So Jack do ya think anybody will listen?
Too many of the folks you refer to in that first line still refuse to accept the responsibility and continue to take it out on the "Resurrection Generation" trying to chase us off with their ideological purity and legalistic tools (on both sides of the isle!)
For the sake of the combined potential of the resurrection generation that wants to lead us, that is desperately tapping our social networks to pull the rag-tag fleet back together. We are launching into partnered mission, promoting justice, proclaiming grace, believing boldly, and loving openly but that aforementioned "older generation" isn't bothering to notice.

Chris Johnson

Basically, a good post. My question is, "Are there guns in the Kingdom of God?" My answer would be no. And since I believe that we are to live as if the Kingdom is present, that would be no guns, except maybe for hunting, and self-defense. I suspect that Jesus waffled on the self-defense thing, sometimes saying no and other times saying yes. But he knew what I learned opposing Viet Nam: If you are a follower of Jesus, the answer is most probably pacifism, as it was in the first 200 years of "the way."

Dennis Maher

Rev Hobson in essence captures the dynamic tension that has existed in Christianity since its inception. Is the faith in essence pacifistic  to its core. Rejecting not only conflict, but the instruments of such in human life or does it take more nuanced approach. Quakers, Shakers, Old Order Amish, and more recently New Age, the progressive religious left has seemed to take a more absolutist of not utopian approach to the matter of pacifism and the employment or use of weapons. As much as a ML King is celebrated to his use of non-violnece, so many times is he lumped with a Mandela of South Africa as agents of change who employed the same methodologies. Forgetting   the ANC was indeed an armed terrorist organization that used the whole arsenal of tools to achieve its ends.

   In the whole WWJD discussion I am sure if AK-47s and Glock-9s existed in the 1st century, Jesus would have treated them the same as he did the Roman  sword. But Jesus was no fool, he existed in close contact with the Zealots who engaged in a low level terror war with the Romans in his own time.  And likely had many as his camp followers in his public ministry. Scripture records no long diatribe from Christ on his opinion of the moral rightness of their cause or methods employed. Roman centurions were welcomed into the faith and active in early faith community.  Again, all is not as clean or as neat as we would all hope on the matter.  As a PCUSA minister who owns 5 weapons,  is a member of the NRA, hunts and shoots in various places,  who has taken a son and grandson to the field during white tail season, Jesus walks with us there, as I am sure He walks with the pacifist who protests against gun violence.

Peter Gregory