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Butler County church sparks a national movement
Wednesday, August 22, 2001 By Rick Nowlin, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
When the elders of Summit Presbyterian Church in Butler County voted in March to endorse a statement of "what we believe," they had no intention of starting a national movement, said the Rev. Paul Roberts.
But that's what happened.
Roberts, pastor of the 220-member congregation in Jefferson, is widely considered the father of the Confessing Church Movement, a loose confederation of conservative, evangelical congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA) that has taken a stand against what they believe is a compromise on Biblical essentials by top leaders in their denomination.
"It's been a shocker for everybody," Roberts said of the growth of the movement. "We were trying to be faithful to what we believe."
Summit's confessional statement, as well as those of other congregations that have followed suit, affirms Jesus Christ as the only way to God, the authority of the Bible in faith and practice, and the banning of "unrepentant sinners" from ordination as ruling elders, deacons and ministers.
The "confessing churches" -- the concept is patterned after a movement in Nazi Germany during which a handful of churches took a stand against Adolf Hitler -- are taking the stand in response to longstanding complaints that the denomination's national body, known as the General Assembly, has rejected basic tenets of the Christian faith.
Further inflaming passions was a June vote by the General Assembly to remove an amendment to the church's constitution, ratified in 1997, that barred from ordination "sexually immoral people" -- most notably, noncelibate homosexuals. A majority of presbyteries must approve the change.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) is the Pittsburgh region's largest Protestant church and the fifth-largest nationwide, behind the Southern Baptist Convention, the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the National Baptist Convention.
Besides the issue of gays in leadership of the Presbyterian Church, Roberts said, his elders decided about a year and a half ago they would no longer support the General Assembly financially because of its support for abortion rights and because of its ties to the National Council of Churches.
But Roberts said he wanted to avoid further rancor.
"Everything was always reactive and kind of half-angry to me," he said. "Everything was going wonderfully here, and I didn't want to bring that negativity in here. We were tired of being reactive -- why don't we say positively what we believe?"
So Roberts drafted a "confession" -- a statement of core beliefs -- and submitted it to the board of elders for revision, which passed it unanimously March 13. It was then submitted to the Beaver-Butler Presbytery, which is made up of ministers and elders and to which Summit belongs. By a vote of 46-42, the presbytery adopted it March 21. In June, however, the presbytery rescinded its vote so that it could rework the statement. It plans to vote on a revised version in November.
Summit invited other churches to adopt similar confessions of faith, and when the First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, Fla., the second-largest in the denomination, did so, "the media got a hold of it," Roberts said. "The Associated Press ran a story, WORD-FM [a local Christian radio station] was calling me." The Presbyterian Layman and the Presbyterian Forum, two independent conservative publications, have both endorsed the movement and spread the word.
In the five months since, the Layman reports that nearly 800 congregations across the United States representing more than 250,000 Presbyterians -- 10 percent of the 2.56 million member church -- have either adopted Summit's statement verbatim or written their own confessions using similar language. Other individual congregations around the country are discussing doing the same.
All of this has taken place without a budget, committee or hierarchy, which is fine with Summit.
"We were saying this was a grass-roots thing," said Roberts, who came to Summit six years ago from Friendship Community Church in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh.
Rather than being divisive, the declaration has actually energized his church, said Roberts, who grew up in Kent, Ohio, and graduated from Kent State University and Princeton Theological Seminary.
"It excites this congregation and thrilled me," he said. "I have some elders who would vote to leave tomorrow if it weren't for the Confessing Church Movement."
Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in McCandless, one of the first churches in the Pittsburgh Presbytery to sign up for the movement, wrote its own confession in April after its pastors talked with members of the Beaver-Butler Presbytery.
The Rev. Doug Pratt, Memorial Park's senior pastor, said his 1,600-member congregation didn't actually vote on it, but "the individual responses by e-mail and personal conversations with pastors were positive. We've also published our own statement in our church publication and on our Web site."
Pratt said 20 to 25 churches in the Pittsburgh Presbytery have joined the movement. "It's encouraging to see churches take a stand and publicly express their convictions," he said.
Pratt said the Pittsburgh Presbytery hasn't met in several months to discuss the movement, so he is not certain which direction it will go.
Not everyone, however, supports the movement.
While the Rev. Peter de Vries, pastor of Old Union Presbyterian Church in Adams, said he personally agreed with Summit's stand, he questioned the approach.
Noting that the Beaver-Butler Presbytery later rescinded its vote on the statement, de Vries said, the initial adoption took place "at the end of a long meeting -- everybody was tired and some people had left. People didn't have all the information."
Roberts agreed, saying that people ineligible to vote had voted in favor of the statement.
"Procedurally, we made lot of mistakes," Roberts acknowledged. "It should have been classified as a first reading."
For the statement to be officially adopted, the presbytery manual would need to be changed, he said. That requires two readings and then a vote, which is scheduled for the November presbytery meeting.
Tomorrow, Roberts and de Vries are participating in a special meeting at 7 p.m. at Cranberry Community Presbyterian Church to make some further revisions, to "make sure we have all our ducks in a row," Roberts said.
The presbytery would soon form a task force to address the policy implications of the movement, de Vries said. He also raised concerns about the wording of the statement, which he believes suggests ministers could not perform weddings between heterosexual people who are living together or who have had premarital sex.
"I think what they're wanting to do is good, but the way they're going about it is problematic," de Vries said. "They [did] it in a way that came across as self-righteous and condemning."
Dave Jackson, pastor of Hiland Presbyterian Church in Ross, considers the controversy a healthy development.
"I see it as a challenge to the Presbyterian Church," Jackson said. "I see [it as] calling everyone in the church to be able to articulate the place of Jesus Christ in their lives. Any kind of movement that calls for that has positive implications." Neither Jackson nor his church has endorsed the movement because, he said, "It needs to be open for discussion."
"Let's not lose sight that God is present in our disarray," Jackson said. "That's part of the risk we run if the church is sailing on the waters of life."
"I would welcome any conversation with anyone who agrees or disagrees," de Vries said, "so that we can determine what God is teaching us and where God is leading us. Even if an issue is settled in my mind and someone disagrees with me, I still want to treat that other person with respect. It doesn't mean that I'm a Christian and they're not. There's room in the body of Christ [for dissent]. That's why the conversations take a long time -- because we don't have a pope or a bishop."
Roberts, however, is certain of where he stands. "We can talk, but don't think you can change my mind on this issue. We're not going to argue anymore."
For his part, Pratt believes the Confessing Church Movement is necessary because of the current theological diversity of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
"Having the sign 'Presbyterian' doesn't mean anything anymore," Pratt said. "People want to know where a particular church stands. In a time of great confusion about beliefs, every church needs to make a clear stance on the issues of the day."
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