Time for the PCUSA to Divide
 
It's time to divide. We are ideologically incompatible yet presbyterian convention demands we congratulate ourselves for not splitting. Unity is championed at any cost. But isn't the argument for unity about 500 years late? If we really believed in unity, we would be one with the Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and yes, even the Baptists. Those who cry foul at talk of gracious separation are hypocrites unless they cry foul over the fact that we do not share communion with Baptists or Catholics. But we don't hear that. We do not believe in unity or else we would already have rejoined the ranks--at least within the broadest strokes of American protestantism. Our cries for unity lost credibility long ago, like a lifeboat at the bottom of the ocean crying "bail! bail!" It's time our best minds get to the hard work of gracious separation in earnest, turning a deaf ear to those who cry "divisive!" while steering the church most divisively into the ditch of leftist political interests. And let's be clear: it's not really about sex or politics, but the place and mission of the church in relationship to a changing host culture. One side wants to hold to scripture and neo-orthodox interpretations; the other wants the host culture to set the bar in most matters. Let us admit that the host culture has changed enough in the past 50 years to make separation necessary, helpful, and presently unavoidable. The Holy Spirit has grown the Church through institutional separations for 2000 years. We must acknowledge that our oneness--if there is oneness at all--is in Christ at His table, and that oneness is in no way compromised by a diversification of our institutional interests. The two new Presbyterian denominations will be unified with one another just as they are now with the PCA, the EPC, the Lutherans, Methodists, etc. Those who wish to continue crying for unity may do so across other aisles--to the liberal Episcopalians, to the liberal Lutherans, etc. Could this, in the big picture, be the Spirit's way of healing many of the historical separations that we inherited--all of them equally damnable (if any are damnable)? The cause of unity is not lost either way; there is much unifying that could be done. In the meantime, let us recognize the call to unity for what it is--a convenient slogan, a timely jingo, a pep-talk rallying cry--to soften the reformed/reforming conscience. It is an ideological sedative applied broadly to keep the PCUSA's largest and healthiest churches feeding the bloated and ineffectual bureaucracy that is its functional head. Like Siamese twins joined at the head, our mutual fulness of life may be better served by a precarious and risky operation of separation. Keeping us together may shorten both our lifespan and quality of mission. Better to think of it as a single-cell animal whose nucleus has already split. At such a point, division is only natural. It is time to divide and to render the naysayers--indeed, the entire sentiment of unity as expressed by an already-divided denomination--as utterly irrelevant, even as we pray for the ultimate unity of the table of Christ which only He can effect. Any other kind of unity is just so much Emperor's clothing--the palest idol of those who have forgotten the real thing.
Monday, September 18, 2006