You are here
Interview of William P. Lytle by Lois Boyd and R.D. Brackenridge, side 4.
Primary tabs
Download
- speakerWith a line at Lois's question, as a
- speakerhistorian I've studied many different General Assembly records. You look back and you look
- speakerover the minutes. You look at the issues and they've got a big space to, let's say the
- speakerPrinceton trial. So you assume the church thought only about the Princeton trial all year is important. Y
- speakerour General Assembly, I think, most people will remember
- speakerthat as the homosexual Assembly. If you were trying to say, I think, what what
- speakerwas it about this year, that you think, really really would
- speakercharacterize the assembly in the year, as you see it. Would you be able to put
- speakerany words on that? I know. I know we've talked about lot of specific things
- speakerbut is there anything that you really think that that Assembly showed about
- speakerthe church? Or where you think church is?
- speakerI suppose I would. I would say that it was. Again,
- speakerthe church's desire was shown to
- speakerbe about its business of mission. That
- speakerprobably was the real highlight. Probably one of the
- speakerreasons that I would like it is not the reason I liked it was because I was a missionary. Because
- speakerI represent a certain stream within the
- speakerlife and history of the Presbyterian Church, that speaks of the church's outreach. For
- speakera time, the church has been involved in its
- speakerown internal meshing. The question of ordination
- speakeritself was one which involved a good deal
- speakerof real, intense struggling
- speakeragainst internal relations. I
- speakerthink that the year itself is a year that
- speakerexpressed the church's desire ,not necessarily to forget that
- speakerbut, to go beyond it in again its expression
- speakerand desire to be reaching out. In it's
- speakerreaching out again,
- speakerit sees that you get hurt. And, you take risks. And, the whole
- speakerAfrica situation is one of the illustrations of that. A lot of
- speakerthe questions of how we reach out in our own country still are yet to be done,
- speakerto be finally decided upon. But the issue, or
- speakerthe program itself that reflects what I'm talking about is the Major Mission Fund, which again
- speakergot major emphasis this last year. This was the year that
- speakerhundred and nineteen presbyteries were involved in the Major Mission Fund. And
- speakerthat, itself was one of the real characteristics of the year,
- speakerI feel that. There was a lot of emphasis across the church on what are we about? What do we do
- speakerin the way of mission, both at home and abroad?
- speakerHopefully I'd say 10 years from now, people would look back and
- speakersee this year as a year when indeed the church began again to
- speakerset its focus in that direction.
- speakerWe haven't begun to around that. I was thinking of this what you're saying in
- speakerterms of the general context of what some of the writers are calling this new evangelicalism that
- speakerseems to be
- speakerpermeating, not just the Presbyterian Church, but. More or less what
- speakeryou're describing is a sense of concern about the social issues and everything, but still realizing there is something
- speakerbeyond this, and
- speakerrecalling the church to something that for a while has been outdated. We have seen that we have been outdated. T
- speakerhat's right.
- speakerWe are an evangelical church. I guess if there's one thing that impresses a
- speakerperson who travels around the churches, that the Presbyterians are evangelical lot. At the roots,
- speakerthat's who we are.
- speakerAnd in a sense I was asked early on, you know, about this business about being
- speakerconservative, evangelical, or something like that. And, I made that response, "Well, I'm both."
- speakerI hate to give up terms anyway. Anybody I don't like to use terminology that
- speakerI. My own background is a conservative background.
- speakerAnd if you're talking about theology, I'm. I'm a conservative when it comes to theology. And so does. The Presbyterian Church is. O
- speakerur seminaries are. They're. We are. We're conservative.
- speakerWe are evangelical. We are. We are a we are a church
- speakerthat believes in the centrality of Jesus
- speakerChrist in life with us.
- speakerAnd at the same time it is that the very thing that in the history of the church has driven us
- speakerbeyond the walls of the church out into the world where we believe Christ is Lord.
- speakerSo as far as I'm concerned, the closer we can get to our conservative evangelical roots,
- speakerthe more liberal, the more concerned, the more socially active, we will be.
- speakerAnd so that that's part of what I meant when I said that
- speakerthe whole issue of the homosexual question has been one that has,
- speakerin retrospect, served to advance
- speakerthe church because of its really forcing us back to some roots that
- speakerare going to force us out. So I would like to think that that's what
- speakerhas been happening over this past year and it's going to be continuing to happen in the church in
- speakeryears to come.
- speakerMaybe we ought to stop for the day. I hate to because we still have many things to. This is so much time to do this.
- speakerI know that we are going to listen to this. And, maybe there will be some other things. Well that's really been a.
