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Jack Haberer oral history interview, 2018.
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- speakerThis is Elizabeth Wittrig speaking with Jack Haberer on December 6th,
- speaker2018. Jack, would you like to go ahead and tell us when and where you were born?
- speakerI was born in Queens, New York,
- speakerFebruary 16, 1955.
- speakerAnd could you talk a little bit about your experiences growing up, what your family dynamics were like?
- speakerGreat. I was born into a Roman Catholic family.
- speakerMom was a 100 percent Irish. Dad a 100 percent German
- speakerand the twain met. But I was the third of four children
- speakerand when I was born they moved out of New York,
- speakerout of a tiny apartment, to a New Jersey suburb,
- speakerand lived in that house all my life
- speakerand my growing up years until I wed.
- speakerThird of four kids, the older of two boys.
- speakerAnd good ole Roman Catholic kids.
- speakerParochial education through second grade then switched over to public school - did all the CCD
- speakerand all the Catholic education that goes along
- speakerwith that. When I was a teenager I was a successful
- speakerathlete and a good student and a good musician.
- speakerSo which is actually exactly like my parents both of them were that way.
- speakerAnd so I was kind of a chip off the old block.
- speakerBut I was 15, 14 years old,
- speakerI got kind of turned off to religion
- speakerand even though I'd been confirmed at age 12 I was like
- speakerno I'm an atheist now. I just became a too smart for God kind of atheist.
- speakerAnd out of that,
- speakerwhile having some
- speakersuccess in those other areas, I
- speakerfound myself really stressed over some things
- speakerand friendships
- speakerand all those kind of things typical of early adolescent kids
- speakerand it was then that I was exposed to
- speakerChristianity in a very different brand
- speakerwith the beginnings of what was going to become known as the Jesus movement.
- speakerHadn't begun yet.
- speakerThere
- speakerwas a kind of beginning of Christian rock n roll. There wasn't a single Christian rock album out yet
- speakerbut I remember the first one and the second
- speakerand the third. I committed my life to Christ in
- speakerthe spring of my freshman year. April 20th,
- speakerApril 21st 1970.
- speakerAnd I took off like a rocket.
- speakerI couldn't keep my mouth shut and within six months I'd led a hundred other kids to Christ
- speakerand then within another six months I started a coffeehouse on Saturday nights
- speakerwith two friends. All of us just now just barely 16
- speakeror almost 16 and within weeks our attendance was somewhere between 200
- speakerto 250 kids every Saturday night.
- speakerWe had to pay the church. We were literally we were renting it for 35 dollars a week
- speakerfor that and we had double the attendance they had on Sundays
- speakerand the Jesus movement just exploded around us.
- speakerI became also a part of a singing duo Nick
- speakerand Jack. Nick had the talent
- speakerbut I was a bit more rooted than he was so.
- speakerSo we performed in that coffeehouse
- speakerand other places around those high school years were just
- speakeryou know explosive. It just was an explosion of
- speakerChristianity in what we thought of as rediscovering biblical
- speakerNew Testament Christianity that had been lost.
- speakerWe saw ourselves as the great saviors of the church that had lost
- speakerits way. And in our own humble,
- speakerhumble-proud ways or proudly humble ways.
- speakerAnd it was out of that that I sensed a real call to ministry
- speakerand headed off to Bible college to head that way.
- speakerSo then can you talk some about your experiences in Bible college?
- speakerIn Bible College. The most important ones.
- speakerI fell in love with the cutest girl on campus
- speakerand ultimately would marry her after graduation.
- speakerA year and a half at Elim Bible Institute in Lima New York,
- speakerabout 30 miles south of Rochester
- speakerand it was very old school Pentecostal
- speakerbut they had this whole wave of Jesus freaks coming in that was in those days.
- speakerAnd in fact our class was the largest class the school ever had.
- speakerEven to this day.
- speakerWe were just in a time of tremendous excitement you just threw yourself
- speakerentirely into Bible study
- speakerand into preparing for ministry as a pastor
- speakeror missionary and it really pushed for global missions.
- speakerWe were always getting altar calls so to speak in chapel services
- speakerabout going to Tanzania
- speakeror to Kenya or to somewhere else.
- speakerWhere is God calling you. God doesn't need you in America.
- speakerGod needs you somewhere else.
- speakerBut there was a whole lot of it that played on the whole of my Catholic guilt
- speakerreally well. I got stirred by guilt.
- speakerBut then again I also was inspired by the vision
- speakerand passion of really godly women
- speakerand men that were faculty
- speakerand classmates.
- speakerAfter about a year and a half I realized that academically it really wasn't a tough enough school so
- speakerI transferred to a nearby school, Roberts Wesleyan College,
- speakerwhere they would accept their credits for transfer
- speakerand I could earn a degree that was religion
- speakerand philosophy. And it was very much steeped in the Wesleyan
- speakertradition and I got pretty well convinced on Wesleyan theology.
- speakerIn fact would argue hardcore against those Presbyterians that believed in that stupid Calvinism.
- speakerAnd in fact even the morning of my wedding day I had a two hour argument
- speakerwith a stranger because I had to stay quiet, away from everybody else that was setting up for the wedding.
- speakerAnd we were on that same campus.
- speakerAnd so we just argued my Wesleyanism against his Calvinism.
- speakerI have no idea who it was. I've never talked with him again.
- speakerBut yeah I was pretty well steeped in all of that
- speakerbut it really did very much deepen my faith.
- speakerAnd the combination of those two schools equipped me
- speakerin a lot of great ways. The undergraduate studies truly liberal arts
- speakerChristian context of Liberal Arts.
- speakerDiscovering that all truth is God's truth wherever it may be found.
- speakerAnd that was over against that kind of anti-intellectual,
- speakervery openly anti-intellectual, mentality at the Bible College that the other college
- speakergave me. That part of saying no,
- speakerhead and heart are supposed to go hand in hand, not to mix metaphors,
- speakerbut rather than one against the other.
- speakerI came out of college
- speakerwith a very very clear call very much still to the kind of the charismatic
- speakerJesus movement kind of churches.
- speakerAnd even helped start a church in the year after graduating college.
- speakerAnd preaching often in there but while working at a Christian bookstore. Then newlyweds.
- speakerAnd three years into that someone approached
- speakerus and said you know have you ever thought of going to seminary? We'd be happy to help you do that.
- speakerAnd they sure enough ended up sponsoring us
- speakerand that little church we started also helped sponsor us.
- speakerWe went to Gordon-Conwell seminary up in Massachusetts.
- speakerMultidenominational. They said anybody from Anglican to Assemblies of God
- speakercould be qualified there, but the largest block were Presbyterian USA students.
- speakerAnd so I kind of came under their influence
- speakerand a lot of faculty were PC(USA) as well
- speakerand I was clearly, I had shifted by then clearly from
- speakerWesleyanism to Calvanism,
- speakeractually before going to seminary, but had enough of the background in all those
- speakerdifferent fields to be able to really get clear on what became
- speakera thoroughgoing reformed construct in my theology.
- speakerAnd after graduation was hired to a Presbyterian church staff.
- speakerIt was really a charismatic church that pretended to be Presbyterian
- speakerbut they were officially in a PC(USA) church membership
- speakerand put me on the path of
- speakerordination in a denomination I'd never worshipped in.
- speakerBut it clicked when I was preparing for ordination exams.
- speakerI was even reading the Book of Order. I had a religious experience.
- speakerI thought, where have these people been all my life?
- speakerThis is it. This is what works.
- speakerThis is what we're supposed to do.
- speakerAnd so I was ordained in 1984.
- speakerAnd got very very quickly involved at the Presbytery
- speakerlevel and eventually at the national level in PC(USA)
- speakerand became hard core.
- speakerYou know one of those first generation converts. They tend to be the most passionate.
- speakerWell I was a passionate Jesus freak in my teenage years.
- speakerI became a passionate Presbyterian in my 20s
- speakerand 30s and thereafter.
- speakerSo is that around the time when you kind of became involved in the denomination's fight over LGBTQ Presbyterians?
- speakerYes. What happened, and don't misquote me on
- speakerthis one, but in my first solo pastorate,
- speakerwhich I was installed in early part of 1984,
- speakerover ten years there about a half a dozen
- speakerlesbian or gay persons came out to me in a counseling type of relationship.
- speakerTotally unrelated to each other. I don't know why that happened per se.
- speakerThere's no reason except for the fact that I did do a lot of pastoral counseling in general.
- speakerIt was a major part of my ministry,
- speakermore so than typical pastors.
- speakerAnd part of it is because I was raised by a psychologist, my mom,
- speakerand so I had that kind of orientation in the way I was raised.
- speakerAnd I also did a lot of study in the field both undergrad
- speakerand master's level.
- speakerHalf a dozen individuals came out to me in a counseling relationship.
- speakerAnd I was dumbfounded.
- speakerI knew nothing about the lesbian gay experience.
- speakerIt was really a foreign world to me.
- speakerI was calling my mom and said how do I do this. How do I do this mom.
- speakerIt was hard to do that because I was always too smart to be thinking I needed mom's help
- speakerbut suddenly I totally needed her help.
- speakerAnd I basically followed my good training which was heavily
- speakerCarl Rogers non-directive counseling,
- speakerunconditional positive regard. "I hear you to be saying in all of this" reflective
- speakercounseling. And also somewhat influenced by
- speakergood old classical psychotherapy
- speakerand Freudian psychology
- speakerand that got them to talking about their early life experiences.
- speakerAnd in these six cases every one of them was
- speakera child, an adult survivor of child sex abuse.
- speakerAnd I never talked about their present sexuality,
- speakerbut I did get them to talk about those childhood
- speakerand adolescent experiences.
- speakerAnd by a combination of the reflective counseling
- speakerand a healing prayer kind of a guided imagery of let's see
- speakerif Jesus can take us back to those experiences
- speakerand see if he can rewrite the story.
- speakerTime and again. And actually in one case it wasn't a believer.
- speakerAnd so I was actually using almost more of a
- speakerplay acting role,
- speakerplay kind of counseling methodology where he was talking to an empty chair.
- speakerBut in either case helping them, inviting them to see if God
- speakercan take them back to those experiences in a different way
- speakerand see if the story comes out in some other point of interpretation.
- speakerMost of them felt one
- speakeror another. I am that way because I enjoyed it
- speakeror I am this way because it was so ugly.
- speakerAnd and in every case,
- speakerand this is really odd because you never hear this in every
- speakercase, they ultimately came to me at the end of it,
- speakermost were long term,
- speakerbut every one of them said the weirdest thing is happening I'm finding
- speakermyself attracted to the opposite sex.
- speakerAnd again it was never a project it was never an effort it wasn't you know
- speakerconversion therapy of that which was a term I hadn't even
- speakerheard yet. But in their cases
- speakerthey had this kind of change.
- speakerAnd so.
- speakerComing out of that the PC(USA)
- speakercreated a commissioned committee, a human sexuality committee,
- speakerI think it was 1988 or 89 that they did so.
- speakerAnd they were meeting to talk about how do we reconfigure
- speakerand understand our human sexuality issues
- speakeraround ordination and ministry and all of that.
- speakerAnd they also were doing open gatherings for people to come
- speakerand speak to them. And they had one in Orlando.
- speakerI was pastoring an hour east of there in Satellite Beach,
- speakerFlorida. And I made it
- speakerand they had two minute limits
- speakerbut I took in two minutes.
- speakerI came to speak with them. And said I did not pretend to be an expert.
- speakerI didn't say I know what I'm talking about.
- speakerBut this has been my experience as a pastor
- speakerand that when we look at the matters of human sexuality,
- speakerwhat I don't ever hear us talking about is really the power
- speakerof emotional healing from early life
- speakerexperiences in which one was the victim that created
- speakera level of sexual confusion,
- speakersexual identity confusion. I don't think I used that term yet because that wasn't in the vogue of conversation,
- speakerbut this is what's happened
- speakerand I'd like you to just keep this in mind as you move forward.
- speakerIt was obvious that most people in the room did not want to hear what I had to say.
- speakerBut one of the members grabbed me on the way out and said write that up.
- speakerI need a copy of that. And it was just a single page paper I
- speakerfilled for that amount of time I shared.
- speakerBut then the next General Assembly that was taking up that,
- speakerwhich would be in 1991, I shared
- speakerwith my church session about that
- speakerand I felt that I ought to go there
- speakerand I don't know what I can do, but I think I ought to be there
- speakerand maybe share my story.
- speakerAnd I know I've been very quiet about my story because I want
- speakerto protect the confidentiality of those involved. But anyway,
- speakerI did do that. They blessed me on that.
- speakerAnd at that point I began, at that General Assembly,
- speakerwhen that particular committee reported its work
- speakerand then it was defeated by like 95 percent
- speakeror 98 percent vote.
- speakerNevertheless in the middle of that I got to meet a lot of the major players,
- speakerparticularly Presbyterians for Renewal at the time, about
- speakerhow to help with what's going on in the larger church.
- speakerI do want to say, for clarity quickly: A) For me then,
- speakerand all through
- speakerthis whole story, I was never anti-gay.
- speakerIt was never a matter of hostility or fear
- speakeror homophobia, which is a fear more than hatred of,
- speakerbut I'm just not heavily a
- speakerjudgmental kind of person. It's never been about judgment.
- speakerMy real concern was are we doing the best we can
- speakerwith folks who are struggling with the misery of what has
- speakerbeen the common witness of gay
- speakerand lesbian people because if only because they feel like such outsiders
- speakerand mistreated and hated.
- speakerAre we are we doing the right thing by not considering
- speakerthe possibility that there's a freedom to possibly come out of that.
- speakerI had drawn a conclusion that,
- speakerhey six for six, this must be the answer to all these matters.
- speakerAnd in time, ironically Joe Nicolosi,
- speakerwho is the guy the father of transformative kind of counseling,
- speakerI talked with him just after he had a speaking engagement.
- speakerHe did it at a banquet at General Assembly
- speakerand I told him of my experience and I asked him is this typical.
- speakerHe said it's common but don't make a rule out of it.
- speakerI think it's about two thirds of lesbian women have been victimized
- speakerin their childhood. Probably one third of gay men have been victimized
- speakerbut that means the other half have not, he said so don't make a generalization out of that,
- speakerit doesn't make, or the statistics that we had at that time.
- speakerSo that kind of backed me away from being the answer man
- speakeror as if I knew it all or that my one solution explains it all.
- speakerAnd I also came to realize that ultimately it's not
- speakermy, when it comes to policies
- speakerand positions of the church, the issue is not whether my judgment whether
- speakermy theory is right
- speakeror frankly that I'm in a position to make that judgment at all.
- speakerWhat I can recognize is that when a person says this is all I've felt.
- speakerThis is all I've wanted. This is all I needed.
- speakerWhen I want that partner that's suitably matched to me
- speakerit always I'm always drawn into a person of the same gender.
- speakerI can believe that sincerity and genuine insight
- speakerand genuineness of that.
- speakerIf a person comes to me like those six did originally on their own
- speakerwith a problem and wanting help,
- speakerhey I'm ready for that.
- speakerBut ironically once I went public in this,
- speakerthose people stopped coming to me because they thought
- speakerand I mean I had a few that did say to me,
- speakerJack you know I would never come to you to talk about my sexuality because I know you're against us.
- speakerLike no I'm not. But I understand why you interpret me that way because I've been involved in a
- speakerdenominational policy. So actually after having those half a dozen there haven't been any real
- speakerkinds of counseling in nearly 30 years since then.
- speakerOr 25 years since then. So anyway so that's how I got into that process.
- speakerSo then mid-90s, can you talk about your role in the Presbyterian Coalition?
- speakerYes. What happened in the 1993 General Assembly,
- speakerI was actually commissioner of the Assembly,
- speakerand that was the year when there was a new move
- speakerto do a study on human sexuality
- speakerand membership and ordination.
- speakerThose were the three categories to be studied.
- speakerAt that assembly
- speakerand by the way at that point what had become tenuous
- speakerwas that the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission which had originally
- speakerhad said in 1978 in the northern church,
- speaker1979 in the southern U.S. church,
- speakerbasically that humans homosexual practice was incompatible
- speakerwith ordination.
- speakerThat kept being challenged in the courts in the church
- speakerand increasingly those votes within that General Assembly Commission were getting closer
- speakerand closer. And now you had this sexuality report that comes out
- speakerand then that was defeated. But they still kept bubbling up.
- speakerSo the 93 Assembly called for a three year study on human sexuality
- speakerand ordination
- speakerand membership and ordination.
- speakerAt that point, a group of people called the Genevans
- speakerand Presbyterians for Renewal. The evangelicals that were the Presbyterians for Renewal,
- speakerand the more less centrist Southern Presbytery executives
- speakerthat formed the Genevans.
- speakerThey came together. They'd been enemies. They'd been opponents in a lot of cases because the evangelicals
- speakerwere way too far to the right for these others,
- speakerbut somehow they said we need to get this thing done because this is just tearing us up.
- speakerThey formed together a pretty good group called the Presbyterian Coalition
- speakerfor the purpose of helping to facilitate the process
- speakerbut definitely with an eye toward after a three year study.
- speakerWe will say no this is not ok.
- speakerWe will reaffirm the 1978
- speakerand 79 policy.
- speakerThere were about 60
- speakeror 70 of them that met once over the next year.
- speakerI volunteered to one of them that I could write a paper
- speakerthat kind of makes the case why the folks on the left would want to ordain
- speakerand why the folks in the right want to oppose it
- speakerand kind of set them against each other
- speakerand show how the answers to the right are the more correct ones.
- speakerBut in a very methodical sort of way.
- speakerI wrote that
- speakerand
- speakerthat got circulated by the Coalition.
- speakerYears later it was republished by Theology Matters.
- speakerBut at this point, it got circulated by the Coalition and I got invited to go into the Coalition
- speakerand actually to pitch in for somebody else who couldn't be there.
- speakerAnd at that meeting the Coalition is two years into the three.
- speakerThe whole church was two years into the three year study.
- speakerAt that meeting,
- speakerthe person who had been leading it was very very informal.
- speakerThey weren't even incorporated.
- speakerBut they were a force
- speakerand there were very very influential leaders that made up this group.
- speakerAt that meeting with 60 or 70 there, it was moderated by John Hoffman
- speakerpastor of Newport Beach in California and Clayton
- speakerBell pastor of Highland Park in Dallas.
- speakerWe were meeting in Dallas. At the end of that meeting,
- speakerthe person that had been leading it said I can't do it anymore I'm too busy.
- speakerAnd so and so ought to do it. And she said no I'm too busy
- speakerand so and so, you ought to do it. No I'm too busy.
- speakerAnd they went about half a dozen of them. And then Doug Harper who was a pastor in Houston,
- speakerI was now at Clearlake Christian Church in Houston,
- speakerthis is 1990 or 96,
- speakerhe says well there is somebody here that I think could do the job for us.
- speakerActually I'm sorry, this is fall of 95. And
- speakeryou know most of you don't know him. His name is Jack Haberer.
- speakerHe can do it. And Dave McKechnie
- speakerand I are also in Houston we can help him do it.
- speakerAnd I just kind of shivered in my place.
- speakerThey basically, I was a nobody in the group,
- speakerand everybody all the eyes were on me
- speakerand they said will you do it, asked will you do it?
- speakerAnd I'm like yes.
- speakerI thought oh my gosh my wife's going to yell at me.
- speakerMy sessions going to kill me. And that said it's not even all of one mind on this issue.
- speakerThere are two members of the session that were outspokenly supporting
- speakergay lesbian matters and certainly ordination.
- speakerBut anyway. But I said yes I'll do it.
- speakerI went back and they said OK you're on.
- speakerWent back to my wife,
- speakerGod bless you. God is calling you to do this. You ought to do it.
- speakerWent to my session, shared it with them,
- speakerand one of those who is very outspoken,
- speakera brilliant scientist from the Johnson Space Center,
- speakersaid Jack you know I don't agree with your position
- speakerbut I do believe that God has got a call upon your life that you are our pastor
- speakerand if God's calling you to do this then you have my support.
- speakerAnd I shivered
- speakerwith oh my what am I doing.
- speakerSo this would, and right after that meeting of the Coalition,
- speakera meeting of the Permanent Judicial Commission came down
- speakerwith a ruling overturning a lower church action
- speakerbut basically by a vote of nine to seven saying we're reaffirming
- speakerthe position of the 1978 General Assembly
- speakerbut with seven on the negative side. By the way, we had decided in
- speakerthat meeting of the Coalition,
- speakerwe debated should we propose,
- speakeras we come to the end of this three year study, should we propose an overture to the Book of Order
- speakerthat would actually call for putting in the constitution directly a prohibition
- speakeron ordaining LGBT folks.
- speakerAnd the consensus was no.
- speakerWe don't need to muck up the Book of Order
- speakerwith something like that.
- speakerThe policy really shouldn't do that.
- speakerWe need to trust the process. And that's OK.
- speakerWell a month later this ruling comes down from the GA PGC.
- speakerIt's such a close vote and suddenly the phones
- speakerwere lighting up calling each other, we weren't using internet much yet,
- speakercalling one another "we need to do something, we need to do something,
- speakerwe need to write an overture for an amendment to the constitution." And so
- speakerthat was written largely by Barry Vanderventer in
- speakerone of the Presbyteries in South Carolina. He was the Presbytery exectuvie there and again a
- speakervery smart one at that.
- speakerThey put together a very well written proposal that wouldn't be singling
- speakerout gays and lesbians. It would just be about fidelity in marriage
- speakerand chastity in singleness and they hammered that out.
- speakerAnd that became the proposal. But now I was the guy in charge so suddenly
- speakerI was having to do strategy behind scenes.
- speakerI have no political science training at all
- speakeror experience.
- speakerBut I did intuitively figure some things out somehow
- speakerand had some good people that were mentors like Harry Hassel
- speakerwho was also at Highland Park in Dallas.
- speakerAnd particularly these Genevans who just were so savvy in terms of understanding church polity
- speakerand process. And so what all happened is that the next General Assembly Roberta
- speakerHestenes was appointed by Marge Carpenter to be the chair of the committee that dealt
- speakerwith those matters, that were going to take the reflections of those three years of study
- speakerand hammer them out. They put together
- speakerthat other overture that someone else in the community said we need
- speakerto have this thing about
- speakerall matters of whatever the confession calls sin shall prohibit
- speakerand all that which is really an odd thing
- speakerbut he insisted on it so that got written in there.
- speakerAnd after that it was approved by the assembly
- speakerand then the leadership of the Coalition said OK Jack you're in charge of our national
- speakerstrategy to get this thing ratified
- speakerand it kind of took over my life for the next year.
- speakerWhat were some of your campaign strategies to get it ratified?
- speakerFirst of all we went back to Betty Moore who had been the executive director
- speakerof Presbyterians for Renewal and had retired a couple of years before.
- speakerWe said, Betty we need you to come out of retirement.
- speakerWe need you to work the phones and the basic strategy was that Betty was
- speakergoing to make phone call after phone call after phone call to what we called the
- speakerfriendly pastors, the friendly churches, to raise funds
- speakerand especially to get out the vote.
- speakerHarry Hassel who was this chief strategist,
- speakershe was always kind of the point person for doing behind
- speakerthe scenes strategy, they were doing that at the same time.
- speakerIt fell to me to work on the visible
- speakernational strategy. And so I took it upon myself to,
- speakerwhile also making phone calls to raise money for the group,
- speakerbut to
- speakerwrite and develop basically articles to publish
- speakerand also ads to print.
- speakerAnd I know we spent about a thousand bucks per ad
- speakeror something like that for the Presbyterian Coalition. We did national mailings
- speakerand all that. So I was doing most of the print work.
- speakerAnd Betty doing the phone calls.
- speakerAnother group came along, Presbyterian Forum, headed
- speakerwith executive director Bob Davis
- speakerand Bob Dooling being the chair of the board who also very much in close cahoots
- speakerwith us. They were also doing working the phones independent of us
- speakerbut very much in tandem with us and also very all connected through the Presbyterian
- speakerCoalition with different pieces on managing those matters.
- speakerAnd so together we were accumulating all of this
- speakereffort to try to make the case.
- speakerAnd with the mind and savviness of Harry Hassal
- speakerand those Genevans, "you got to win the center,
- speakeryou got to win the center." You know as it is in U.S.
- speakerpolitics, you've got to win over the independents.
- speakerWe had to really put our thrust on our first emphasis
- speakerand efforts on those who could be winnable either
- speakerway.
- speakerAnd at first the votes were going heavily
- speakerin favor of proposals to,
- speakerovertures to, I'm sorry take it back.
- speakerWe had the proposal out on the floor of the church to put in
- speakerthis fidelity-chastity policy G-6.0106b.
- speakerThe numbers would go into the book.
- speakerAt first, the no votes were coming in very quickly
- speakerbut Harry was the perfect strategist.
- speakerHe knew exactly what presbyteries to expect what votes would be coming in all of that.
- speakerAnd so we worked and worked and worked to
- speakerget those wins and particularly on the border,
- speakeron the bubble presbyteries.
- speakerAnd gradually gradually gradually we got win after another
- speakerand one win after another. As we got to that,
- speakeras we were getting toward that point, and it looked like we might well be able to win,
- speakerI also took up another strategy which is that I had
- speakerfigured out or at least I kind of theorized one of the things about
- speakerPC(USA) is that we often got
- speakernational press that made us sound a whole lot more left wing
- speakerthan the overall churches.
- speakerAnd quite frankly I told you that I started this
- speakerwith a care and compassion for gays and lesbians.
- speakerI mean that's where this whole thing began
- speakerbut also morphed into, in an addition to that,
- speakerinto a love for this. I had already falling in love
- speakerwith this denomination which I had been a part for not very long,
- speakerbut about 10 years I guess or 12 over 13 years.
- speakerAnd I really wanted the church to stick together.
- speakerI could see that going the other way on this was going to blow the church apart.
- speakerI'd been through other church splits before even going to seminary.
- speakerAnd my first church out of seminary went through a big split while I was there.
- speakerI was the little guy on a big staff.
- speakerBut I knew that those kind of church fights
- speakerjust have no winners to them.
- speakerMore people get run off from the faith altogether than by
- speakeranything else that goes on in the church. And I wanted the church to stay together.
- speakerSo I wanted to try to find ways for us to get through this.
- speakerIn good ways. By the way I will say that when we are in the middle of all
- speakerthose debates a few people would ask me Jack do you really like this
- speakeroverture. Do you really like this amendment? And I said no,
- speakerI think it's poorly written. It doesn't fit in the Constitution.
- speakerIt really doesn't. But if it's defeated we'll be
- speakerworse off.
- speakerWe will actually end up losing the authority of the 1978
- speakerand the court will say see it was rejected so therefore at next court
- speakermeeting it would definitely tilt the other way.
- speakerAnd that there was no way as I could see it as a churchmen,
- speakernot just a conservative, but a churchmen,
- speakerthat we had the tools in the larger church to know how to deal
- speakerwith that and that we would just really pull apart.
- speakerAnd I desperately did not want to see that happen.
- speakerI was also working trying to figure out how can I help us get the good
- speakerpress.
- speakerI decided what I've got to do,
- speakerwe've got to do, is send out a press release. I'm sure what happens is that those folks
- speakerin Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns
- speakerand the More Light Presbyterians, they were both separate organizations still,
- speakerthey know they've got a pipeline to the press.
- speakerI've got to build a pipeline to the press. And so I hunted down Associated Press,
- speakerUSA Today, CNN,
- speakerNew York Times.
- speakerI basically accumulated about 20
- speakeror 30 fax numbers of all of those press
- speakeroutlets that were critical to the U.S. understanding.
- speakerAnd I got them down and I developed a press release that explained exactly what had happened.
- speakerAnd since the national headquarters was only publishing the results as
- speakerthey had been officially sent in which would mean they'd arrive like two
- speakeror three weeks late, but we were getting them by the hour when they were being voted.
- speakerWe knew exactly when we were going to cross that line.
- speakerSo I had all those press releases ready to go.
- speakerEveryone directed and I did my very best to make it sound as objective
- speakeras a news reporter would want it to be.
- speakerI asked someone,
- speakerClayton Bell, if I could make him their spokesperson for us.
- speakerHe says I don't talk to the press. That's your job Jack.
- speakerSo I gave my name and phone number to contact for further conversation.
- speakerAnd I also gave Scott Anderson's phone number as the spokesperson for the other side
- speakerwho I knew would, as a gay man,
- speakerhad total passion and commitment to it, but also is reasonable
- speakerand responsible and would make a case for that.
- speakerSo that I was facilitating the work of the press to do their work.
- speakerAnd sure enough when that went through we had one of those old manual fax machines.
- speakerI spent three hours with my secretary
- speakerand administrative assistant just feeding these faxes in one by one,
- speakerpage by page. It took forever.
- speakerBut the phone started ringing and I got interviewed
- speakerwith most all of them. I had a lengthy interview
- speakerwith TIME magazine,
- speakeractually three interviews with TIME. And then Scott
- speakerand I both had our pictures in that issue of TIME magazine when they
- speakersent photographers to both of us. Same thing with the New York Times for me.
- speakerAnd there and U.P.S. wire was all around the country
- speakerand a lot of others. I was on O'Reilly. I'd never heard of O'Reilly yet
- speakerbut I was on O'Reilly Factor.
- speakerAnd I actually was called by Peter Jennings people to
- speakerdo World News Tonight.
- speakerBut I was overwhelmed. I said just leave me alone.
- speakerI did do CNN Headline News as well as an interview.
- speakerThat was a brief interview that was broadcast.
- speakerI should add one other point that also during that year because I was in that role
- speakerpresbyteries started calling
- speakerand said we need to have a debate would you be willing to come
- speakerand be on the Pro G-6.0106b side.
- speakerWe'll get someone from the other side. And so I did probably about 20
- speakeror 25 debates that year.
- speakerScared to death in every case
- speakerand almost every case people that I had heard of
- speakerand were formidable. I also had no debate experience
- speakeror training. I was totally out of my element there.
- speakerBut in every one of those cases the debates went well.
- speakerThey were done fairly and my opponent was
- speakerso gracious and so respectful. And at some point some people were asking me hostile
- speakerquestions and being hostile toward me.
- speakerStuart, in particular, would say wait a minute I want to answer that.
- speakerYou're not being fair to Jack. This is what Jack is saying
- speakerand you need to understand that. You know we might disagree on the big picture.
- speakerBut on this point Jack's right now
- speakerand I would agree with that...I was like, Oh my goodness this is this is not the monster I thought I was dealing
- speakerwith. That was an eye opening experience time
- speakerand time again throughout that process for me.
- speakerBut anyway so, at the end of it all said
- speakerand done that was adopted.
- speakerThen the following general assembly right after that which was in Syracuse
- speakerthey called for changing fidelity-chastity to fidelity-integrity.
- speakerLaird Stuart of all people was the chair of that committee of that assembly
- speakerand that was sent out. I was pastoring a formidable Church
- speakerin Houston at a time and trying to do a good job.
- speakerIt's only my second year there as I'm doing this.
- speakerAnd so I said OK I'm done. I'm done. And then they came back
- speakerand said no we've got this battle and we need another year from you.
- speakerAnd same thing with Betty.
- speakerSo we put in another year and successfully defeated that one by an even larger margin than the
- speakerfirst time around. That became the end of my time
- speakerwith the Coalition leadership per se
- speakerbut anyway that's kind of how that all played out.
- speakerShort question, long answer.
- speakerYeah.
- speakerYou mentioned your relationship with Laird Stuart, can you talk more about your relationship with him and other members of More Light Presbyterians, the Covenant
- speakerNetwork...
- speakerYeah. One thing that was developing in those three years
- speakeror sorry in those couple of years of my Coalition leadership
- speakerwas I wasn't
- speakerfamiliar with the term opposition research.
- speakerBut when I was asked to be the leader of the Coalition I picked up the phone
- speakerand called Cliff Kirkpatrick at general assembly
- speakerand introduced myself to him. I said you know I'm a nobody.
- speakerI know you've never heard of me but I've been asked to moderate the Presbyterian Coalition.
- speakerI just thought I should introduce myself to you so that I can be in touch
- speakerwith you in any way that might be of help or value.
- speakerI called Robert Bullock the editor of the Presbyterian Outlook and made that same kind of conversation.
- speakerAnd I also contacted some of the leaders of More Light Presbyterians
- speakerand PLGC and said you know I'm your opponent.
- speakerI'm working on the other side of the table from you
- speakerand the other side of the aisle. But I certainly want to
- speakerknow you by name and know that you know me by name.
- speakerYou're welcome to contact me if you've ever got a question,
- speakeran argument, an issue that we ought to talk about. Or if we're being unfair
- speakeror dishonest. You know we need to be open
- speakerwith each other. I want to be open with you
- speakerand not just be at arm's length.
- speakerAnd of course that would build all the more with all those debates because now I was face to face
- speakeror side by side with these folks
- speakerand those grew.
- speakerRight after the fidelity-integrity amendment was defeated,
- speakerJohn, um,
- speakerPastor of the Wayne Presbyterian church in
- speakereastern Pennsylvania - it's going to come to me - He called Cliff Kirkpatrick
- speakerand said we need to do something different.
- speakerWe need to get leaders of both sides of this issue together
- speakerand see if we can settle the waters somehow.
- speakerIt's been adopted.
- speakerFidelity-integrity's been defeated.
- speakerBut we don't need to have another amendment battle this next year.
- speakerAnd so Cliff called me asked me if I wanted to come.
- speakerAsked if Byrd Haskins would come, the leader of the Coalition
- speakerand the one who chaired the committee that gave us the fidelity-chastity.
- speakerThen invited John Buchanan leader of Covenant Network and.
- speakerLaird Stuart who chaired the committee that produced fidelity-integrity.
- speakerThe four of us to be with John
- speakerand Cliff. And I said we really need someone
- speakerother than yourself Cliff that's really a policy expert.
- speakerCould I get a policy expert there too?
- speakerAnd he said Yeah I think you're right.
- speakerHe said who you think. I said Barry Venter.
- speakerAnd even though he was the guy who came up with the wording of fidelity chastity he had a good objective
- speakermind. He could see the bigger polity now.
- speakerHe says well I know Bary well you're right. He's a great policy person.
- speakerLet me suggest that back to the others.
- speakerAnd they all agreed it was actually going to be seven of us that we get together.
- speakerRoberta offered to host it at the home of one of her members out in
- speakerSolana Beach California in San Diego County.
- speakerAnd so we got together for basically a 24 hour gathering
- speakerin which time we had enough formal conversation to really
- speakerlike each other.
- speakerI mean really connect. By the way Barry had to cancel at the last minute because
- speakerof weather and flights and travel
- speakerand all that. So it ended up being just six of us
- speakerand the six of us got together. And right off the bat
- speakerRoberta said you know speaking of Robert Bullock in Presbyterian Outlook,
- speakerhe has asked me to write an article
- speakerand editorial about all of this.
- speakerAnd I'm calling it Time Out.
- speakerI only have it on hand scratch
- speakerbut I'll read it to you.
- speakerGive you an idea of what I'm thinking.
- speakerAnd she basically said we've been fighting fighting fighting.
- speakerLet's take a time out. Like it's like sending the children into the corner
- speakeror saying you need a time out from fighting.
- speakerThe church needs a time out and that gained some traction
- speakerwith all of us.
- speakerAnd gradually John Buchanan said we need to think more theologically.
- speakerHow about we use the word Sabbath like oh yeah.
- speakerWell how about sabbatical. OK let's see a sabbatical
- speakerand one idea,
- speakerthrowing out another and another
- speakerand by the end of those 24 hours we'd come up
- speakerwith let's have a Call to Sabbatical.
- speakerWe were saying three years.
- speakerWe've had a three year study, now let's have a three year sabbatical.
- speakerThen I think it was,
- speakerI don't know which one maybe was John Buchanan himself,
- speakeralso said I'm not sure we ought to put a date on it because then you're
- speakergetting that you're going have a war at that point.
- speakerIf we say we have extended time
- speakerand let's see what can bubble up more informally
- speakeror you know support spontaneously among us maybe we come up
- speakerwith something better. By the way,
- speakerwhen people ask me about is this a good amendment,
- speakerI didn't just say if we don't approve it it's going to be chaos.
- speakerI also said there's got to be another way
- speakerbut we haven't come up with it yet.
- speakerThere is another way out there. I don't think this will last more than ten years tops.
- speakerWe'll find a better way.
- speakerBut we haven't gotten there yet. I think just the overall conversation in the church,
- speakerand I don't have any either, I mean I confess I don't have a better way to come up
- speakerwith something. I guess you could delete that last sentence
- speakerbut still that wouldn't answer it all.
- speakerBut anyway so I said we will all agree we need more time to find a better
- speakerway forward and to have better more, untructured conversation so that we can
- speakergrow together. We ended up,
- speakerafter a week of consulting back
- speakerand forth behind scenes, we ended up publishing the Call to Sabbatical.
- speakerA one page appeal to the church.
- speakerIt was appealing to folks that have wanted the policy to change to open the doors.
- speakerJohn and Laird basically saying to our people please let's let that go for a
- speakerwhile. Let's stop writing legislation let's stop having this pitched wars
- speakeragainst one another. On our side,
- speakerRoberta and I said basically to those of us who've been on the winning side.
- speakerLet us be gracious in our victory.
- speakerLet's. Yes the policy is a policy it needs to gets enforced.
- speakerBut let's not be punitive.
- speakerLet's not be pointing flashlights in people's back bedroom windows.
- speakerLet's not be triumphal
- speakeror purging the enemy and all of that kind of thing as sometimes happens after wars.
- speakerWhat bubbled up in my mind was the Marshall Plan.
- speakerYou know after we won the war we helped.
- speakerWorld War II, we helped the opponents rebuild their
- speakerdignity, regain a sense of normalcy
- speakerand actually recognize us to be friends not enemies.
- speakerAnd so we published that.
- speakerAnd suddenly the Layman went crazy on us.
- speakerI mean they just absolutely attacked that part.
- speakerWilliamson was angry as a cat
- speakeron a Hot Tin Roof and particularly singled me out.
- speakerHe said Roberta and I were the guilty conservatives that were too nice to the left.
- speakerDidn't go after her probably because she was kind of mother superior of the conservatives
- speakerand he'd be taking down a person who was an icon.
- speakerI was anything but an icon.
- speakerAnd as a white male I was an easy target.
- speakerYounger white male easy target.
- speakerSo he really took me on as a great traitor to the cause
- speakerand that the only way he can win a victory is you've got to vanquish the enemy.
- speakerYou've got to drive them all out of office.
- speakerWe've got to be essentially shut out of Louisville.
- speakerWe've got to get all those liberals out of there.
- speakerOut of all the positions of power in the denomination.
- speakerWell I was basically lifting up Marshall Plan as the way forward.
- speakerThat frankly
- speakerbonded our relationship across the aisle
- speakerwith our fellows around this Call to Sabbatical
- speakerand we had already begun doing some conversational behind the scenes
- speakermeetings.
- speakerYou know half a dozen evangelical conservatives,
- speakerhalf a dozen progressive
- speakerliberals were getting together
- speakerand talking about our theological issues.
- speakerOften Theology and Worship was helping facilitate that.
- speakerJoe Small and Sheldon Sorg put a lot
- speakerand a lot of work into that, gave great great leadership to that.
- speakerAnd so those relationships began to build.
- speakerAnd what was a defining one was that Laird called me
- speakerprobably three or four months after that General Assembly and said Jack, we need to do a pulpit exchange.
- speakerI'll have you out. And you preach my pulpit.
- speakerAnd you have me out and preach in your pulpit.
- speakerI wanted to die. I thought this is going to be awful.
- speakerI can't do this. He's going to blow my church up.
- speakerThis is not going to go well at all.
- speakerBut I couldn't say that
- speakerand I couldn't come up with some other excuse to say no don't
- speakerlet's don't do this to me
- speakerand said, OK Laird, that's a great idea.
- speakerYeah sure we ought to do that. I was choking on my words
- speakerbut I just couldn't. He was just too nice
- speakerand was just too nice.
- speakerAnd so I thought well why not.
- speakerAnd sure enough he had me out.
- speakerMy wife went out with me my Barbie and we spent a weekend there
- speakerwith him and his wife and I preached his services
- speakerand talked about how much we need one another
- speakerand a month later he and his wife flew out to be
- speakerwith us.
- speakerAnd he actually was more pointed about the need of being more inclusive of gays
- speakerand lesbians. And I was like no, Laird, you're going to kill me because like my church wasn't
- speakersolidly conservative but the solid majority was.
- speakerBut it went well. It went really really well
- speakerand wonderfully well and from there more
- speakerand more conversations in all different kinds of lights
- speakerbut especially with these theological gatherings maybe three
- speakeror four times a year for typically three
- speakeror four days
- speakeror maybe two or three days. But doing a lot of
- speakergroundbreaking conversation in relationships
- speakerthat helped form really really good friendships.
- speakerAnd frankly it ending up leading to the writing
- speakerof my book God Views because what happened even back in those early times of debate
- speakerwe'd have these debates in the present meeting
- speakerand then we'd always either be put up in the same hotel suite
- speakeror end up in the room where they have the libations
- speakerand ended up drinking some wine or beer together at the bar
- speakeror at a table and then telling our life stories.
- speakerYou know telling, so tell me about your church
- speakerand what are you really all about.
- speakerBecause they usually are pastors.
- speakerAnd I started to ask what became a stock question: What's
- speakerGod up to in your church
- speakerand what's God up to in the bigger church.
- speakerAnd their answers consistently
- speakerthey never mentioned anything about gays and lesbians even if they were gay
- speakerand lesbian. They didn't say anything about classic
- speakerconservatism versus classic liberalism.
- speakerIt wasn't that they weren't argumentative.
- speakerThey were. Whole different kind of take about
- speakerBible study or whole take about growing
- speakerspirituality or kind of take about caring for the hungry
- speakerand the poor or standing up for justice
- speakeror building or bringing the church back together in unity instead of tearing itself apart.
- speakerI started cataloging.
- speakerI started just downright taking notes and trying to track it because this
- speakerwas... Going back to my seminary,
- speakerGordon-Conwel Seminary.
- speakerThere were two kinds of Christians. Our kind and their kind. And our kind are the ones that believe
- speakerin inerrancy of the text scriptures. It's God's word always to be believed
- speakerand followed and taught and never to be compromised.
- speakerAnd those other people don't share that.
- speakerAnd therefore everything that we claim to be true of
- speakerthe faith is up for debate not only issues of sexuality
- speakerand marriage but on issues of abortion
- speakerand life or death
- speakerbut issues of the Virgin Birth of Christ issues of the
- speakerresurrection of Christ the ritual of salvation that frankly everything
- speakeris up for debate and therefore none of it is secure.
- speakerYou've got to be in our camp to be secure
- speakerand not the other camp. Basically that's the enemy.
- speakerAnd in that simplistic black
- speakerand white, excuse me us and them, my side their side,
- speakerred and blue mentality, that's how my construct
- speakerwas. And I came into a denomination I knew to be more left than right.
- speakerBut I was a part of this movement of renewal
- speakerand awakening on the right that's going to help win the day
- speakerand become you know the dominant force as we see the future.
- speakerAnd now those simple categories began to crumble.
- speakerIt wasn't my friends
- speakerand my enemies but became my allies
- speakerand my opponents which is less radical
- speakerbut it then became my frenemies
- speakerand my allies who make me crazy because they're so hateful toward
- speakeranybody that's even nice to the other side.
- speakerAnd I was being criticized openly just because I talked to the left
- speakerand Parker Williamson said point blank you do not talk to them.
- speakerYou cannot talk to them because if you talk to them then you begin to negotiate
- speakerwith them and negotiate with them and you compromise
- speakerwith them and compromise is not of God. That's a direct quote of Parker yelling at me in a meeting
- speakerof leaders of renewal organizations.
- speakerThat was exactly what he said. You cannot even speak
- speakerwith them. You cannot sit down with them.
- speakerThey are the enemy. You must not work
- speakerwith them. Anyway that all of that began to come apart.
- speakerAnd now I was in this clumsy
- speakerplace of still being on the evangelical-conservative side of the issue
- speakerof LGBT participation in leadership,
- speakerfidelity-chastity, but also having a loving relationship
- speakerand really respecting those
- speakerand recognizing the sincerity and genuineness
- speakerand theological basis of their arguments.
- speakerThat while I thought my theology was better,
- speakerI didn't think theirs was defective
- speakeror wrong. That it was an understandable
- speakeroutgrowth of some good theological reasoning
- speakerand that in fact what God is up to is bigger than these issues.
- speakerThese issues certainly fit in and particularly under the category of justice
- speakerand under the category of biblical theology
- speakerand rightly get debated in those. But that's part of a bigger picture of what God is doing.
- speakerThat led to the writing of an article
- speakerthat was asked for by Mark Ostermeier
- speakerand Andrew Purvis who Geneva Press asked to write a book about an anthology
- speakerof articles about the life of evangelicals in the PC(USA).
- speakerWell a couple other folks are doing the same thing for the life on the left,
- speakeragain that right left categorization,
- speakerand they asked me to do an article on an evangelical perspective of unity in diversity
- speakerin the church. And I said there's no such thing as an evangelical perspective on unity
- speakerand diversity because evangelicals don't believe in that. They said yeah,
- speakerbut you do.
- speakerAnd then we want you to write about it. We know you're about the only one that talks about that stuff
- speakerbut we want you to do it.
- speakerWe need to get that article in that paper.
- speakerAnd so I talked about these different mindsets
- speakerand I had cataloged five of them that I dubbed
- speakertheo-ideological impulses.
- speakerI said they're impulses because when I've asked someone,
- speaker"What's God up to?" their answers are immediate.
- speakerThey don't have to think about it. They knew. They immediately rolled right into it.
- speakerIt was ideological. They had passion to it.
- speakerThey had it. It was a thing that could say woke them up in the morning
- speakerand the thing they thought about when they went to bed at night.
- speakerBut it was also the theological ideology.
- speakerIt was about it had God at the core
- speakerand there was no doubt in every one of them that it was about God.
- speakerIt wasn't about some secular idea of of
- speakerof social justice. It was a God-driven kind of thing through ideological impulses.
- speakerAnd I wrote about the ideological impulses in this paper
- speakerand even had a gathering of pastors or my presbytery that the presbytery exec agreed to host on my
- speakerbehalf to test it with them first.
- speakerBut it got it was in that order in that anthology
- speakerand ultimately I can get to that later.
- speakerBut it got formed into calling it God Views because theo-idelogical impulses is a
- speakertotally forgettable expression.
- speakerGod Views has a little bit more catch to it. But anyway so these
- speakergenuine friendships really developed out of all of this.
- speakerWhen when when a fun anecdote
- speakerand couple of years into this.
- speakerWhy after we've done this thing about with the Call to Sabbatical,
- speakerI was at the beginning of another general assembly,
- speakera pre-assembly event. A great theological scholar was lecturing
- speakerand room was packed, probably six
- speakeror eight hundred people in the room. I walked in late
- speakerand got a spot right in the back of the room.
- speakerAbout ten minutes later John and Sue Buchanan walked in.
- speakerJohn and his wife.
- speakerAnd you remember he and Bob Bhole were the head of the Covenant Network
- speakerwhen I was the head of the Coalition.
- speakerWell they come and sit next to me.
- speakerThe only empty chairs are right next to me.
- speakerI turn and said can I get you a glass of water?
- speakerIt was over nearby. They said Oh sure. So grab them glasses of water,
- speakerhand them over, and we sat through the lecture.
- speakerThen we chatted a bit at the end. And I saw John the next day.
- speakerHe says Jack you're not going to believe this. I said what.
- speakerHe says you know when we met yesterday
- speakerand you gave us a glass of water
- speakerand all of that we chatted. And I said yeah.
- speakerHe says after you walked away Sue turned to me
- speakerand said Who was that nice guy?
- speakerWho was that nice guy? Who is that?
- speakerHe said he said I told her that's no nice guy.
- speakerThat's the czar of the Coalition.
- speakerI said you got that one right John.
- speakerI was part of the Coalition. I am the enemy.
- speakerThat's the case. A picture of the friendship that we had was developing.
- speakerThere was a there was a friend just a downright laughing
- speakerhumorous level of friendship that had grown
- speakerand real mutual respect that carried us into the whole nother next range
- speakerof the life of this unfolding story.
- speakerThat's great. So then did your perspective shift on LGBTQ ordination and membership?
- speakerNot
- speakeryet. Not yet.
- speakerWhat happened.
- speakerShortly after, when I was writing God Views,
- speakerironically after it was Tom Long who was the
- speakereditor of Geneva Press within the overall umbrella
- speakerof Presbyterian Publishing Corporation he was he had left Princeton Seminary
- speakerand had taught, he was ultimately going to go to Kendler seminary
- speakerand teach there. But he was in a few years break in the middle.
- speakerAnd I called him
- speakerand said to chat about this article
- speakerI had written. I just asked him.
- speakerSo what do you think of that article. He said Jack it was a really good article I really really liked your piece.
- speakerIt's very very substantial stuff and I said what would you think if I could develop that into a book.
- speakerHe says I'm all about that. I'm really interested in that he said.
- speakerAre you going to call it these ideological impulses.
- speakerNo I said No no no no no. I said I've got another word.
- speakerHow about God views.
- speakerHe said God views. I said yeah, put them together one word
- speakerbut capitalize both G and V
- speakerand make a word out of that. And he says now that could work.
- speakerAnd I said Well I think I want to expand.
- speakerI'd like to develop. I'm due to take a sabbatical coming up this next summer,
- speakernot a long one, but what I'm thinking is I'd like to get to working on this.
- speakerHe says well, this is in the middle of spring, he says why don't you put
- speakertogether a proposal
- speakerand I'll go to the board with that.
- speakerSo I actually wrote the proposal, 30 page proposal,
- speakerwhile I was on sabbatical.
- speakerMy son got married in the middle of that so it wasn't all sabbaticalizing, but I spent three
- speakerweeks in Israel Palestine
- speakerand partly to see there.
- speakerWell back it up. When I had conversation,
- speakerand I did have some conversation with European Christians
- speakerand leaders from other countries,
- speakerthey'd always say what are you doing arguing about sex.
- speakerWhy should a church be pulling apart about sex?
- speakerAnd like well you all have your own battles too.
- speakerWell I go over to Israel Palestine
- speakerand I had contacts there with whom I could stay.
- speakerAnd I'm like well you've got messianic Christians
- speakerand you got Palestinian Christians
- speakerand they won't speak to each other. They have they have they they have no contact
- speakerwith one another. They see each other as the enemy.
- speakerAnd the big battle there is the land. Who holds the land.
- speakerWho gets to live here. And we in America would think that's crazy.
- speakerWhy are you dividing the whole body of Christ over land issues.
- speakerAnd so I want to get inside their experience
- speakerand see if the getting inside their experience
- speakerand how they address that and see us can help shed some light on our experience
- speakerback here.
- speakerIronically. But as I got there.
- speakerOn the first day, first full day, our bus tour - itwas a
- speakerbus tour for 10 days and then 20 more days that I had by myself -
- speakerbut
- speakerin that first day on the other hand our first stop was
- speakerin Caesarea.
- speakerRoman city built in name to honor
- speakerCaesar. But up the coast from Tel Aviv
- speakerand Netanya,
- speakerthe beach city outside of Tel Aviv.
- speakerAnd it was also the place where Peter
- speakershared the gospel with Cornelius
- speakerand Cornelius who was a Roman soldier
- speakerand his whole cohort basically became believers.
- speakerAnd they had
- speakera Holy Spirit experience, apparently spoke in tongues, and Peter's asked himself people asking
- speakerthemselves what Peter can do. And he baptized these pagans,
- speakerthese Greeks. They haven't been circumcised.
- speakerAnd Peter said hey if the Spirit's been given to them,
- speakerwho I am to deny them the waters of baptism and he baptized them.
- speakerAnd suddenly this movement within Judaism breaks
- speakerout of the confines of Judaism.
- speakerWell the next stop on the day was up to Mount Carmel to go
- speakerup the top of the mountain.
- speakerAnd I had written down an exit thesis paper on Elijah's battle competition
- speakerwith the prophets of Baal.
- speakerI knew that story inside and out. I'd studied the the
- speakerhistory of Baal worship and you know
- speakersome of their own literature. And so we get out of
- speakerthe bus and I'm walking around this place
- speakerand taking it all in and it's just amazing,
- speakerwonderful, fascinating
- speakerand I come out to the. We go around a Catholic monastery there
- speakerup to the terrace to look out
- speakerand the tour guide pointed off to the east he said you know that over there
- speakeris Megiddo where Armageddon is,
- speakerwe'll get to that in our next stop. To the south you can see the mountains that
- speakerare running up to Jerusalem. And no I said up to Jerusalem.
- speakerIt's south and you Americans think that means down,
- speakerbut here everything goes up to Jerusalem because that's the pinnacle of
- speakerJudaism.
- speakerSo it doesn't matter what direction, it's always up to Judaism. He says then he says then you see the plain leading to
- speakerthe waters. Beautiful, glistening waters of the Mediterranean.
- speakerThe morning sun was bright on it. He said you can see that can you see those smokestacks
- speakerin that mist on this on the shore.
- speakerYes well thats Caesarea, where we just were.
- speakerAnd suddenly I shook.
- speakerI thought Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
- speakerOh my God this is where I've been living for the last three years.
- speakerOn Caesarea where we evangelicals proudly stand for the truth
- speakerof God and will not compromise.
- speakerAnd with those progressives that are standing in the city
- speakerof Caesarea with the doors wide open.
- speakerAnd suddenly I realize we're in this citadel of truth
- speakerand there in the port city of inclusiveness
- speakerand that's where the Gospel is found is with both at the same place,
- speakertime.
- speakerAnd I shook. I was just stunned.
- speakerAnd I wept
- speakerand I just wept there because this is my church.
- speakerThis is the PC(USA) and we're supposed to be both.
- speakerWe're supposed to be the church that proclaims that truth.
- speakerThe Church of the world. The Church of the Bible. The Church of the books.
- speakerAnd also that the church the arm of church that welcomes the sinner.
- speakerThat doesn't pretend we're not sinners. That we are.
- speakerEverybody is welcome here and I'm tearing up right now saying this.
- speakerIt's such an overwhelming moment.
- speakerIt became the first chapter of my book to use as a matter of fact as a way to introduce
- speakerthe whole story.
- speakerI unfolded in that book GodViews what I saw as five different
- speakerways people understand not God per se
- speakerbut God's mission. What is God's mission in the world?
- speakerWhat are we supposed to be doing in God's image in the world?
- speakerWhat is that mission supposed to look like and be?
- speakerAnd on the one hand it's to be proclaiming the truth.
- speakerAnd I dubbed that the confessionalist GodView. Getting the truth
- speakerand preserving the truth as we say in the great ends of the church.
- speakerBut the second group is all about spirituality
- speakerand prayer and worship.
- speakerI call it the devotionalist GodView.
- speakerAnd the third one is the Ecclesiastes GodView about building the church
- speakerand being the church and strengthening the church.
- speakerAnd I also realized ultimately that this kind of different versions of it there's all those that are all about the local church.
- speakerIt's all about the connection of church or the denomination.
- speakerThis is about the ecumenical church which is the church all around the world.
- speakerBut this is still about the church.
- speakerAnd the fourth one became that those two are so concerned about the ministries
- speakerof caring and mercy to the to the needy the homeless
- speakerand the marginalized.
- speakerAnd I called that the altruist GodView.
- speakerWell actually I called it the beneficent one.
- speakerBut then when I talk to Barbara Wheeler she says that's not the best word you need altruist.
- speakerI said OK Barbara. Yes mother,
- speakerI'll do that. I'll take it.
- speakerShe also became a very very good friend and all of these battles
- speakerand debates.
- speakerAnd yes I went with altruist under her suggestion
- speakerand then the one about standing up for justice the church having a prophetic
- speakervoice and having the courage to our convictions
- speakerand fighting against injustice and evils
- speakerand principalities and powers. And I call that the activist GodView.
- speakerAnd what became the thesis was that all of those
- speakerare extant in the church.
- speakerAll of those are biblically based.
- speakerAll of them have historic heroes in scripture
- speakerand in the history of the church. All of them have favorite hymns.
- speakerEveryone is an important voice.
- speakerBut everyone also has a dark side.
- speakerEvery one of them can go backwards
- speakeror go wrong left on its own. Confessionalists can be pharisaical,
- speakerjudgmental. The devotionalists can be all spiritually minded to have
- speakerit in mind that there are no earthly good. The Ecclesiastes can be just purely pragmatic
- speakerand frankly exclusive. Oh we don't need those kind of people because that's going to mess up our churches
- speakerpeace and quiet. The altruist can be so much about the good works that the spiritual
- speakerand theological core can get kind of lost
- speakeror just kind of too much presumed and too little talked about
- speakeror too little proclaimed. The activist sometimes just go crazy
- speakerand that can get worked about so many issues
- speakeror issues that are not really grounded in the biblical construct
- speakerand become too selective about what issues they'll stand for
- speakerand then disregard others anyway.
- speakerEvery one of them has their dark sides
- speakeror their underbelly. But if we can get them all together
- speakerand yes it's not always a it's not usually a pretty thing when they get those five voices around a table
- speakerbut when they can get together and really wrestle
- speakerand struggle and be really constructive engagement
- speakerwe all can learn from each other. Learn,
- speakerhelp recognize our own oversights
- speakeror our dark sides or missed judgments
- speakerand help each other become more faithful.
- speakerWith regard to all of these matters and
- speakerand also recognize that our own healthy congregations do best if we have
- speakerall those kinds of voices are on the table.
- speakerNot that anyone has specifically just one out of five
- speakerbut most of us are one or two or three
- speakerand most of us have one that bugs us that just that we've got to stop.
- speakerCan't let that go on here.
- speakerAnd so we have all those weightage on the table.
- speakerWe can be more faithful in our local congregation
- speakerand our denominational work in our ecumenical work
- speakerand more true to the mission of God in Christ in the world anyway.
- speakerSo that became my books are my three books the one that's been the
- speakerbig seller because it was actually bought by some presbyteries for all their pastors.
- speakerAnd it was also pushed by Cliff Kirkpatrick.
- speakerI left out the part that when I came back with a proposal I sent that into Tom Long.
- speakerTwo weeks later he called he says the board met.
- speakerThey want your book. You have three months to write it.
- speakerI said you're an idiot.
- speakerHey Tom I just got back from a sabbatical.
- speakerI spent the whole sabbatical just putting the proposal together.
- speakerNow you're giving me three months to write the book. He says Oh Jack you can do it.
- speakerHe said yeah do it Jack, just do it.
- speakerI said, at least give me until January.
- speakerHe said, you're not going to get any writing done in December.
- speakerLet's get on this before advent. Don't.
- speakerDon't think about it. Get it to me by Thanksgiving. And I said, Tom you're an idiot.
- speakerBut I am too, so what the heck. I'll do it.
- speakerAnd he said and he said if you do then we will publish it in three months.
- speakerI said I've never heard of that. I said it's supposed to a year to write
- speakerand a year to publish. He says we'll do three and three.
- speakerYou write it in three. We'll do it three. Because Cliff Kirkpatrick wants it in time before the next General Assembly.
- speakerHe wants everybody to read it before we come to this assembly.
- speakerI said well I got to give in to Cliff Kirkpatrick.
- speakerI love the guy. He's the ultimate ecumenically Ecclesiastes.
- speakerBut yes I'll do it.
- speakerAnd what I did is I preached through it. And every Sunday I'd preach,
- speakerevery Monday I'd write a chapter. That was my day off anyway.
- speakerMy wife had a regular full time day job
- speakerand so I would just block myself in my study all day
- speakerand I would write and if I wasn't done, then when she got home she'd bring my dinner in my room
- speakerand I'd just keep writing until I was done.
- speakerI'd stay up to midnight or past if I had to but I'd get a chapter every Monday
- speakerand actually had it done two weeks in advance, two weeks ahead of a deadline.
- speakerI actually said to the two great scholars Stacy Johnson the theologian
- speakerand Jim Singleton a historian, I said,
- speakerPlease read this to find all of my mistakes.
- speakerGet it, you know clean up the mess. I'm sure there's mistakes in that.
- speakerAnd they offered, they had some good things to offer
- speakerbut not a lot actually to my surprise.
- speakerBut anyway. Yeah so that got out there
- speakerand was published then and then at that next General Assembly there was an overture
- speakerfrom John Calvin Presbytery calling for
- speakera theological task force to be formed to
- speakerpursue the matters of the peace
- speakerand purity of the church.
- speakerAnd they were modeling it after something that had been done in the 1920s.
- speakerBack when we were divided so much over the fundamentalist modernist controversy,
- speakerGeneral Assembly called for a task force.
- speakerIt was that it was Peace, Unity, Purity and Progress of the church.
- speakerWe had taken that out of the ordination exams.
- speakerI kid that Presbyterians gave up on progress a long time ago.
- speakerThat was 1952. We said no more progress,
- speakerwe'll just stay where we are. But Peace, Unity, Purity and so that General Assembly
- speakeradopted a proposal for that.
- speakerAnd then you know you asked the question "when did I
- speakershift." We came together in the fall
- speakerand I got to say that I had a kind of private argument
- speakerwith the leaders because I thought the original committee as constituted was not balanced.
- speakerAnd I kind of dug in my heels and said I won't be a part of this.
- speakerYou've got to do something more and so they ended up adding some other members to the committee
- speakerand to have a more truly balanced committee
- speakerand we did. When we were convened
- speakerand that fall,
- speakerand that was the fall of 2001,
- speakerbecause the book had come out in March of 2001.
- speakerAnd that began
- speakerbut it was basically five years of conversation. Again in five years I still
- speakerhadn't changed my position in terms of my conviction.
- speakerThat God wants to heal and give freedom from a homosexual
- speakeror a gay, lesbian orientation.
- speakerNot out of condemnation, not out of guilt, not out of shame,
- speakerbut that there can be a way out.
- speakerBut also I had also come to say that I recognize the integrity
- speakerand honesty and truthfulness of those who are saying that doesn't work for me.
- speakerAnd anyway in the process of that task force
- speakerwork the question wasn't how can we change the policy
- speakerand ordination of gays and lesbians or on marriage for that matter.
- speakerThe question was how can we live together.
- speakerHow can we be one church together.
- speakerAnd I clearly had become a denominational ecclesiastic.
- speakerAll of those,
- speakerof those five categories that had become,
- speakerhad been emerging along
- speakerwith a confessionalist and devotionalist.
- speakerMy inclinations had were really strong in that direction
- speakerand the 20 of us that were meeting together over those years
- speakerwe really were wrestling with how can we do theology well.
- speakerHow can we be the church together. How can we embrace one another.
- speakerHow can we give space to one another.
- speakerAnd I did come to the place by in those five
- speakeryears of saying yes I have my convictions
- speakerabout gay lesbian patterns of
- speakerlifestyle that says that's not the best plan
- speakerbut I can make room for those who think
- speakerotherwise and that.
- speakerI felt that the policy should remain as it is.
- speakerFidelity marriage between a man and woman and chastity in singleness,
- speakerbut that there is room to make exceptions.
- speakerAnd what was actually brought before the committee early on by
- speakersome of the policy wonks in the group, I'm not one of those,
- speakergoing harkening back to the early 1800s.
- speakerThe idea of allowing scrupling.
- speakerBack then it was over what the Westminster Catechism,
- speakerWestminster Confession said about the following having
- speakerthe civil magistrates have authority over the decisions of a session
- speakerand that the whole one person spoke for the General Assembly.
- speakerI can't agree with that. I want to declare a scruple
- speakerand next thing the whole, everybody in the assembly did except for one
- speakerwho just wasn't it was undecided the time. And that they hadn't had a process,
- speakera pattern that would allow a person to declare
- speakera kind of a scruple without having to change the whole constitution all over it
- speakerand rewrite the constitution just because that one person says that the
- speakerrule stays in place but exceptions are allowed.
- speakerAnd that was put in practice
- speakerand actually continued in practice until about the 1970s.
- speakerAnd what emerged in our work was that we needed
- speakerto make room for
- speakerthose who cannot abide by the Fidelity chastity rule
- speakeror other rules for that matter. We used to allow this until
- speakerwith the Women's Ordination issue being so central to the battles of the Church of the
- speaker1960s and 70s.
- speakerAnd that when one individual in Presbytery of
- speakerPittsburgh being ordained said I'd like to declare a scruple in this matter.
- speakerI want to be a pastor and as a pastor I stand for all the things of the church
- speakerbut this one policy that says not only do we allow women to be ordained
- speakerbut all those being ordained need to be in a position of willingness to participate in the ordination
- speakerof women to be pastors, a minister's word
- speakerand sacrament, or elders or deacons. I cannot in conscience do that.
- speakerGood conscience. I'd like to ask the forbearance of
- speakerthe Presbytery to allow me to be ordained in spite of my disagreement on that
- speakerpoint. The presbytery voted to approve that
- speakerbut a couple members of the presbytery filed a charge against the presbytery for not following the Constitution.
- speakerThat ended up in theGeneral Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission
- speakerand they said scruple on that matter is not allowed.
- speakerThat's too much of an essential of the faith
- speakerand one that cannot be allowed. And scruple kind of went out of practice.
- speakerIt wasn't ever eliminated from the rules
- speakeror the history or precedents,
- speakerbut it was just kind of set aside because in that case
- speakerno way. Hell no.
- speakerAnd what these folks
- speakerwith good historic historic historian
- speakerand policy minds were saying is we need to bring that back
- speakerand that there's room for that. And I bought that.
- speakerI came to accept, came to believe that that's that that's a place we can
- speakergo.
- speakerI would also say that I had all along for some
- speakertwenty years by now, thirty years percolating on
- speakerthe notion that biblical teaching on ethics that often
- speakerwe conservatives would speak of as absolutes are not absolute.
- speakerThey're not even that they're not even absolutes in scripture no less
- speakerand how how it's applied
- speakerand that the they are standards.
- speakerThey are the way things are generally to be done.
- speakerAnd the book of Proverbs expound on things that are always about in general
- speakerhow this is, how things function, but not absolutely that always a rule to be followed.
- speakerThat ultimately
- speakerI wrote well when you got into debates about marriage
- speakerafter all this, it all bubbled up into writing my other book,
- speakerand I think it probably...hold off. That's another story.
- speakerWe'll wait till we get to it.
- speakerBut I was really wrestling that notion
- speakerand this really went back to the 1980s when I first helped a family have to address the question of
- speakerthe mother who is 90 percent brain dead.
- speakerIs it OK to disconnect the life support?
- speakerAnd at that point there was, no it wasn't in the conversation anywhere,
- speakerexcept they was the Karen Quinlan case.
- speakerA woman, a young woman, lying in state for years in a vegetative
- speakerstate and being fought in the state up to the Supreme Court about what could be
- speakerdone. Could the family discontinue life support for the medical people?
- speakerAnd it was a big deal about a battle
- speakerbut the term medical ethics was not in American conversation.
- speakerAnd the questions of life and death decisions that are now the case of baby babies
- speakerbasically 80 percent of all deaths in hospitals.
- speakerSomeone has to decide for the medical field to say changed so radically
- speakerwith all of the incredible technologies
- speakerand medical skill of this last generation.
- speakerI was already wrestling with the notion that God said be fruitful,
- speakermultiply, replenish your office. Said subdue it
- speakerand that there are examples in scripture of the subduing
- speakeralong with the many examples that say choose like I said before your life that you choose life.
- speakerThere's a both and when it's the majority position one is the minority one
- speakeris the general principle to follow.
- speakerBut the room for exceptions are what I ultimately called
- speakerapproximations and adaptations.
- speakerI was already wrestling with that kind of thinking.
- speakerI wasn't talking about it anywhere nowhere.
- speakerPeople were not hearing me talk about this because I knew that I'd be in trouble all across
- speakerthe board. Every ideology would have an argument
- speakerwith me. But.
- speakerBut as I was in that Theological Task Force I was holding that in mind as well.
- speakerAnd so to come up with the notion of scrupling seemed like the right way
- speakerto go forward and
- speakerthat's where we ended up coming out
- speakerand up with the unanimous approval of that
- speakerand going to the General Assembly. And 60 percent of our report was
- speakeradopted pretty much unanimously. The more theological part.
- speakerThe other 40 percent more 60-40 roughly vote.
- speakerHopefully you have the more exact numbers
- speakerbut at the end it became the policy of the church.
- speakerAnd so I continue to live to all of that
- speakerwith with all those folks in mind.
- speakerAnd again building on those friendships ironically for the most of the folks on
- speakerPUP. It was an eye opening experience to be
- speakerwith people from across the aisle.
- speakerTo be
- speakerwith all of those other people who are reasonable.
- speakerI already had so much of that in these dialogue groups before that there was no surprise
- speakerme at all. It was just like, See. Yeah you weren't as bad as you think I think
- speakeryou are.
- speakerAnd we're not as bad as you thought we are.
- speakerBut I do, you would discover that because I had already been across that bridge before
- speakerand a few of those other folks like Deborah Wheeler had had that same experience.
- speakerBut many of them had not.
- speakerBut it just reinforced what I knew to be true
- speakerand reinforced the thesis of GodViews.
- speakerWe never talked about GodViews ironically in the process of the work,
- speakerbut I wasn't, didn't have a need to make that an issue.
- speakerBut the outcome of our work was very much,
- speakerit was a very very important next phase of my own growth
- speakerand and the church's growth of course.
- speakerUnfortunately the folks on the right saw that as the ultimate betrayal.
- speakerThe old, you know, the ultimate
- speakerfailure of the church.
- speakerAnd I was I was I was very much branded "the infidel" by Parker Williams
- speakerand "that there was the traitor that sold the conservative movement
- speakerto its death."
- speakerAnd that in fact that the future
- speakerof evangelicalism quote unquote "the future of evangelicalism has come to an end because Jack
- speakerHaber betrayed us." And this was before a crowd of 600
- speakeror so conservatives that were the Confessing Church movement
- speakerthat ultimately moved into becoming,
- speakerforming ECO.
- speakerYou know, no sorry, back up. Correction.
- speakerNot ECO. They became, they joined as a group,
- speakerleft, got their churches to join an evangelical Presbyterian church
- speakerand continued in there as group called and they now call themselves the New Wineskins.
- speakerAnd went in there as the New Wineskins
- speakerand ultimately assimilated into EPC.
- speakerBut. But yes that was an address Parker gave
- speakerand address that ended with a standing ovation.
- speakerI didn't stand. But needless to say
- speakerbut the and I was sitting third row from him right in the front because I was there as
- speakereditor magazine taking photographs.
- speakerBut the yeah that was a defining moment.
- speakerBut you know so it was.
- speakerBut I it didn't. It did not deter me in the least.
- speakerSo then what was your involvement in the ordination debate moving forward after the
- speakertask force?
- speakerIn the ordination debate. Now
- speakerwith that approval of the scrupling model everything
- speakerchanged for me because on the day that the Theological Task Force finished
- speakerits work on a morning in Chicago,
- speakeryes was Chicago,
- speakerI had an appointment that same afternoon. Everyone else headed to the airport
- speakerbut I had another night to spend overnight to fly back the next day to meet
- speakerwith the board of directors of Presbyterian Outlook to interview to become their
- speakernew editor.
- speakerThat quickly the wheels turned.
- speakerI was elected to become their new editor which was crazy because
- speakerthe Presbyterian Outlook was always the voice of the liberal Southern church not the liberal
- speakerbranch of the Southern church.
- speakerAnd this was the first they'd ever gone out that
- speakerI was the guy with a vast
- speakerand established conservative reputation
- speakerand and being branded the great traitor hadn't gotten
- speakerout yet. That was a year down the road.
- speakerI got a lot of criticism right away but then that was still this is the very day it was a part of proofs of
- speakerthat didn't have a chance to happen. But I asked them.
- speakerI said, have you all lost your mind.
- speakerAnd one of them said in my final interview
- speakerwith the whole board said, Jack the Presbyterian Outlook
- speakerhas always been the voice of justice against injustice.
- speakerIt's been the voice. It's been a progressive voice to challenge the church.
- speakerWe challenged the church into reunion,
- speakerpressed for union for many years.
- speakerWe pressed for women's ordination for many years.
- speakerWe pressed for a lot of things when they're out of style
- speakerand they became in style.
- speakerHe said, the gentleman continued, said today the greatest issue
- speakerin the Presbyterian church isn't our ideology.
- speakerIt's our unity and our capacity to be able to be the church together
- speakerhas been tried and tested beyond anything we've ever seen.
- speakerWe need an editor who can be the voice for unity.
- speakerWho can bring us together.
- speakerAnd you are that voice. And I said OK I'll do this.
- speakerAnd so I became the editor.
- speakerBut what that did is that put me in a really bad situation because
- speakerthe editors don't make the news, they report the news.
- speakerAnd you know I got,
- speakerI also had no training in journalism.
- speakerOK so all I had was English Comp 101
- speakerand I got a B minus in it.
- speakerThe I had a job on my hands.
- speakerBut journalism 101 is there are some ethics in journalism
- speakerand you can't you can't be crossing the line.
- speakerBeing an advocate for a major policy issue when you are going to be the primary
- speakerreporter for reporting about that issue.
- speakerWell we negotiated. All of us on the Theological Task Force were asked to do a lot of speaking
- speakerall around the country. And I already had probably 10 events
- speakeron my calendar and they said you've got to cancel them
- speakerand I said no I can't cancel. No I can't.
- speakerI said I will make the, I will make a publishing
- speakereditorial early on that says this is what I've done on the Theological Task Force
- speakerand this year, while it is being
- speakerdebated, before it comes up before the assembly for action I will never report on it.
- speakerI will see to it that Leslie Scanton on national reporter will be the one who does.
- speakerAnd I'll see through the other articles written by other people
- speakerbut I will not report on it. I will take these 10 speaking
- speakerengagements. I've agreed to do. I will not take any others.
- speakerI will I will turn down every other one.
- speakerAnd I will also have some caveats explaining my complicated role when I do so.
- speakerThey said OK we'll agree to that.
- speakerSo I took a much lower key role in all of this.
- speakerNow right off the bat after
- speakerthat interview but before I had the position,
- speakerI already called upon my colleagues in Presbyterians for Renewal
- speakerand the Presbyterian Coalition.
- speakerI was still on the board of Presbyterians for Renewal. No I had been the president.
- speakerI think I just rotated off of presidency.
- speakerBut in each case I asked for a conference call to explain
- speakerthe work of the task force
- speakerand to try to convince them that I have not lost my mind.
- speakerI have not sold us out. This is not going to produce a wholesales
- speakerswarm of ordaining LGBT persons.
- speakerI'm not sure that anybody is going to be ordained under these.
- speakerUnder this policy because it still can be a challenge up to the GA PJC
- speakerand the GA PJC hasn't stopped.
- speakerThey still have the women's ordination rate rejection scruples
- speakerand they were on their books and they may not allow it.
- speakerAnd ultimately they did come out with a position that said we're not going to allow it on this basis that
- speakeryou know I said do not...Anyway, I tried to win them over.
- speakerI won like one or two of them over individually.
- speakerBut overall both the boards said that I made a mistake.
- speakerPFR was gracious and the Coalition
- speakerand some of them were, but others were not.
- speakerAnd the Layman just decimated me.
- speakerBut the the Outlook board had had me
- speakerdoing my work. So I was I started work that was the interview
- speakerwas in September I believe were the end of August.
- speakerI started my work first of January
- speakerand after saying I do my farewells of my congregation
- speakerand that would be in 1st of January 2006.
- speakerAnd.
- speakerWent right to work on doing the magazine
- speakerand doing some speaking engagements. But but again the only those that were needful
- speakerand the.
- speakerAnd so then.
- speakerBut there were, at that point we went through the assembly,
- speakeras I've already referenced, and it was approved by the Assembly.
- speakerAnd then there were a couple of overtures to follow to try to make changes
- speakerand to put more into the Constitution than was there
- speakerand also to still try to get rid of the language of fidelity
- speakerand chastity because in their defense those who were on the other side of the aisle
- speakeron this matter scrupling still sounds like,
- speakerwell you know we'll let you be ordained,
- speakerbut only because you're extra nice.
- speakerYou know we'll make an exception to the rule for you.
- speakerBut the rule stays in place. And it sounds way condescending,
- speakerway insulting, way dismissive.
- speakerAnd I knew
- speakereven there that may not, this is probably not forever because it still
- speakerit clearly implies a second class status for a gay
- speakeror lesbian person to be ordained.
- speakerAt that point in the life of church the folks on the Covenant Network side of things that
- speakerwere the more moderate advocates as over against the more passionate advocates are that were now the More Light Presbyterians
- speakerand other organizations
- speakerrelated to them, That All May Freely Serve, and the Stoles group.
- speakerAnyway, that we were there worked.
- speakerAnd when it came to other.
- speakerAnd so over the next couple of years whatever initiatives came forward to try to change the Book of Order
- speakerwere rejected.
- speakerEventually and
- speakerfrankly the the language that
- speakerCovenant Network kept coming up and kept coming forward
- speakerwith just and others within just didn't
- speakerwork either.
- speakerAnd as far as good polity goes,
- speakerthe argument wasn't strong theologically. And it
- speakerwasn't. But it wasn't getting in the air in a way that would would work.
- speakerBut finally they came up with a very, a really really well,
- speakerbrilliantly written alternative to G-6.0106b that
- speakerhad that they could pass muster.
- speakerAnd at that point
- speakerI only addressed it once in that editorial.
- speakerLeslie Scantan was covering it thoroughly
- speakerand I was getting great writers to write on both sides.
- speakerRobert Bullock set a great example of that. And by the way he did that often because that original friendship.
- speakerHe'd have me write often as a voice from the more conservative side.
- speakerBut now it's getting the best voices I could find from different sides of these positions
- speakerand even nuancing you know the really strong passionate
- speakerand more moderate you know three or four different people to write on the same subject to be able to help foster the conversation.
- speakerAnd basically and my my basic argument was this deserves consideration.
- speakerI didn't say support it. I didn't say vote for.
- speakerI didn't say reject it. I said this deserves to be looked at
- speakerand considered. And
- speakerthen I truly stayed out of that debate.
- speakerAnd in the years past I had done a lot of behind the scenes
- speakerconversation between the different lobby groups
- speakerand say you know my folks don't like this about that proposal
- speakerbut they would like that about it. And well my folks like this about that.
- speakerAnd I tried to do some kind of behind the scenes backroom discussions to try to do that.
- speakerThis time I wasn't doing that. I was only being an editor
- speakerand I was letting those powers that be.
- speakerAnd that new overture did get approved
- speakerand General Assembly sent out as an amendment
- speakerand was approved by by the presbyteries.
- speakerAnd by then
- speakerwe'd had the New Wineskins exodus had taken place
- speakerand other exoduses took place.
- speakerBut not in as much of a wholesale
- speakerway as before I was retired.
- speakerHow about we take a break?
- speakerSounds great.
- speakerSo one of the next issues was marriage.
- speakerWhat was your perspective on that?
- speakerIronically all along I was never as dogmatic in my
- speakeropposition to gay marriage as to the ordination of gays
- speakerand lesbians. Now I'm not sure if there's a good reason for that except that the presenting issue
- speakerfor decades ever since the 1970s was who can be ordained.
- speakerAnd also in those early years people don't largely
- speakerthink about this or remember this
- speakerbut the gay movement wasn't calling for marriage until after the turn of the century.
- speakerIt was, not that the turn of the century is a magical time,
- speakerbut from
- speakerthe years of just being totally outcast to trying to find
- speakera just a decent place of human rights in the most minimal way
- speakerhuman rights, the gay movement in our country,
- speakerLGBT movement,
- speakerwas really about decency
- speakerand that landed in Presbyterian World as a matter of ordination.
- speakerIn part because we've always had our biggest fights about ordination.
- speakerWomen's ordination. Before that it was no minorities
- speakeror ordination and that tends to be where we divide
- speakerand define ourselves as our kind of cardinal
- speakerthing about theology. But also cardinal thing of polity
- speakerand they get married at a point like that.
- speakerIn the 1990s while
- speakerI remember the first time there was a gay kiss on TV.
- speakerAnd even back when I was in those debates,
- speakerI was like I've never seen you never see gays in TV shows
- speakeror TV movies or movies.
- speakerAnd it seemed really odd to be so far behind
- speakerwhen there is heterosexual immorality that was so public in
- speakerso many ways.
- speakerBut not that anyway. So it was it was late coming.
- speakerThat was a latecomer to the debate.
- speakerBut also because by theological construct I
- speakerhad more of an issue with ordination.
- speakerBut I also realized that there was
- speakerobviously a shift to allow LGBT marriage
- speakerand to prove marriage would be really really problematic.
- speakerAnd for me it was more on the ecclesial side than the confessional side.
- speakerThat for so many people everything hangs on
- speakerfamily values family values. Family values became the code word
- speakerfor conservative Christianity.
- speakerA way to talk about conservative Christianity without sounding so religious.
- speakerSo it was only about family values thanks to Jerry Falwell
- speakerand Pat Robertson and others others that followed along.
- speakerAnd that was a battle that was fraught
- speakerwith trouble.
- speakerBut it was it was the battle that had to happen.
- speakerAnd I would also say
- speakerand did say back in the 90s and in the early 2000s that it's ironic
- speakerwe are dealing with the secondary issue.
- speakerThe righ, the primary issue is what what to do
- speakerwith gay and lesbians that fall in love together.
- speakerHow can they be together in a way?
- speakerAnd that's and that's an issue of all of life not just in
- speakerour churches.
- speakerAnd so anyway so things began
- speakerto bubble up after Theological Task Force
- speakerdid its work.
- speakerAnd the scrupling was allowed with ordination.
- speakerAnd then the rewriting of the Book of Order for
- speakerG-6.0106b. Course the numbers are different within newfound form of government,
- speakerbut the language there that replaced it that was settling
- speakerinto a place of OK ness
- speakerand it didn't produce a flood of LGBT folks taking
- speakerover the churches as conservatives so terribly feared.
- speakerBut it did open the doors
- speakerand rightly so. Thanks be to God.
- speakerBut then the turntable did change.
- speakerWe've got to talk about marriage. You've got to make marriage possible.
- speakerAnd.
- speakerBack in the middle of of the days when I was just done
- speakerwith the Presbyterian Coalition, the 2000 General Assembly which was the summer
- speakerwhen I was over in Israel-Palestine writing
- speakerand doing my research for GodViews, I missed it.
- speakerThat's the only General Assembly I missed in the whole stretch of years.
- speakerThere bubbled up a commission.
- speakerA resolution declaring
- speakerprohibiting same-sex unions.
- speakerThat had been something that had been going on in churches
- speakerand had not been contested because a) it didn't pretend to
- speakerhave the sacramental function which you don't have for marriage
- speakeranyway but to not have called for a standard.
- speakerYou have all those trappings hat go
- speakerwith legal marriage.
- speakerAnd so it was going on and we conservatives were not making a big deal out of it
- speakerbut some wanted to. At that General Assembly a commissioner's
- speakerresolution went forward to prohibit any same-sex unions.
- speakerAnd I remember I was checking my e-mail internet by then every day
- speakerand seen that. And said, how stupid. It's going to backfire.
- speakerWe just barely got through the other votes.
- speakerThis is going to produce a backlash.
- speakerIt'll backlash either way. If the Conservatives win they'll be a real backlash against it.
- speakerIf we lose that will be seen as the foot in the door
- speakeror that the camel's nose into that tent that's going to take that whole tent down.
- speakerIt's going to backfire.
- speakerWell sure enough it did. And I came back,
- speakerI told my friends, you guys what were you thinking.
- speakerThat was a really dumb idea. Oh it's not going it's not going to go well.
- speakerAnd it didn't for conservatives.
- speakerIt was definitively rejected by the presbyteries many
- speakerof whom were known conservative presbyteries
- speakerbut said this this is this is we don't write policy like this.
- speakerIt's bad policy. Anyway, rejected that. Now a few years down the road.
- speakerIt was like but we've got to go past same-sex unions.
- speakerAnd was the outcry.
- speakerThe Covenant Network put forward
- speakera model overture to that effect.
- speakerThat effectively,
- speakerit essentially said,
- speakerif the state's laws allow it, the church should allow it
- speakerand if state laws do not, they should not.
- speakerI wrote a blistering editorial against it
- speakerand it wasn't on the question of marriage itself.
- speakerIt was on the question of how do you perform a theology of marriage
- speakerand to say that we're going to let the state tell how our theology goes I'm like
- speakerno way. That's not the answer.
- speakerWe
- speakercan't do that.
- speakerAnd about six months after that it was rejected by
- speakerthe General Assembly.
- speakerSo that next fall, after that assembly,
- speakerthe Covenant Network hired Brian Ellison to be their new director
- speakerwith whom I had worked side by side in General Assembly years.
- speakerThere were a few years where I was not doing any kind of those advocate roles
- speakeror a part of the Coalition and actually worked behind the scenes in the tracking department
- speakerhelping people write overtures. And that's simply because Jerry Andrews,
- speakerwho was heading up the Coalition,
- speakerkept wrestling with Cliff Kirkpatrick that the department
- speakerfeels too conservative whenever evangelicals want to write a commissions resolution
- speakerthey get a hard time. You need to have somebody in there. Someone to do that. And Cliff said
- speakerI'm not going to get rid of the people who are there. But if you want to give me someone else that you'd like to have in there I'll do
- speakerthat. And Jerry said well how about Jack Haberer. I said I'll do that.
- speakerSo I got to do that and be the conservative nice guy there for
- speakerthose folks.
- speakerAnd it turned out that I realized that the others were not just hassling them.
- speakerThey hassled everybody. It was just
- speakeryou do your homework well or we're not going to let you do this.
- speakerThey were equal opportunity annoyers.
- speakerAnd we had lots of fun. But Brian was in that group
- speakerbut I didn't know he was gay.
- speakerI said, Brian I didn't know you were gay.
- speakerAnd he said, well yeah I've been keeping it under wraps.
- speakerBut yes I am.
- speakerAnyway so the next Covenant Network conference,
- speakerwhich was just kind of his coming out party for his role,
- speakerand I took him aside at one point I said,
- speakerSo what's your strategy going in next year.
- speakerObviously you are going to go after marriage more. And he said yeah.
- speakerI said you can't use the same dumb strategy you used last year.
- speakerHe says you mean the strategy that you wrote a scathing editorial about.
- speakerI said yup that one.
- speakerI said I got another editorial on the ready if you're going to do it again.
- speakerHe said you made some enemies over that one. I said I know I did.
- speakerI pissed some people off, but you know you deserved it. It was a dumb overture. I
- speakersaid are you going to do it again. He said yeah that's our strategy.
- speakerI said you can do so much better than that Brian. He said we can? I said yeah you can.
- speakerHe said you really mean that? You have a strategy that we could use?I said yeah.
- speakerHe said are you going to tell me? I said no.
- speakerI said I'm not going to tell you today. I said yes there's another way to do this.
- speakerBut we need to spend some time to talk about it. And I said as a matter of fact,
- speakerat the end of the month I've got a conference to go to
- speakerChicago.
- speakerYou live in Kansas City. I live in Houston.
- speakerOff the top of my head saying how about I take an extra day,
- speakerstop in Kansas City, spend the night.
- speakerYou put me up overnight and we spend a day together
- speakerand talk about it.
- speakerHe says you got that one.
- speakerYou got that one. So that's exactly what we did.
- speakerAnd we spent a few hours talking together.
- speakerThen we went to lunch
- speakerand Tom R. the pastor
- speakerjoined us for lunch and incorporated his thoughts into it although we did talk a lot at
- speakerthat point. But I basically walked him through
- speakera way I had thought of. Cause I said what I've realized
- speakerwhen, at least in my heart,
- speakerwhen the marriage issue began to bubble up Brian.
- speakerI thought oh no the church is going to blow up over this unless we find a better way forward.
- speakerWe've got to find a better way forward.
- speakerAnd I said frankly Brian. God kicked me in the butt
- speakerbecause. Because I have a book
- speakerand another book in my head on Christian ethics
- speakerthat I've been thinking about ever since the 1980s when I was wrestling
- speakerwith the question of discontinuing life support for a person
- speakerand I was I was a card carrying pro-lifer in a church that was mostly
- speakera card carrying pro-lifers with exceptions.
- speakerBut the but I realized that there can be exceptions to the rule on things.
- speakerAnd I think there's another way forward.
- speakerAnd as this has been bubbling up and I've been struggling
- speakerwith it, wondering how as the editor of the Outlook can I be of help in this,
- speakerand I heard God whispering in my ear so to speak.
- speakerGet off your butt and write the book.
- speakerMan up and write the book because when I when I originally had this idea,
- speakerand I did share it with a few people.
- speakerAnd I did agree to do a one page paper on the matter of
- speakerabortion and life and death issues.
- speakerI agreed with persuasion by
- speakerand out of my church to put pen to paper. But I wouldn't put my name on it
- speakerand I let the session read it and they discussed it
- speakerand that. And only after they voted that we're going to
- speakerdo some stuff according to that did someone say well who wrote it?
- speakerAnd that one elder said OK Jack.
- speakerAnd I said yes I wrote it. But I will never touch this.
- speakerI'm never going to. You will burn these copies.
- speakerThey will never be seen in public until I retire because if they
- speakerget published while I'm still in ministry I'll lose my job.
- speakerI'll get everybody pissed off from the left
- speakerand the right. They'll all be angry with me because it sounds like a big compromise anyway.
- speakerGod said Get off your butt and write the book and left it in my head for over 20 years.
- speakerAnd so so but but before getting into the writing I sat down
- speakerwith Brian. We got together and I basically walked through,
- speakerI said Brian the question that's been on my mind is if I could allow myself
- speakeras a member of Theological Task Force in Peace,
- speakerUnity, and Purity, to make room for scrupling,
- speakerand did so because the reason the real genius
- speakerof the reasoning was not that we were inventing something,
- speakerbut we are dusting off something that had just been gathering dust for 30
- speakeryears because for lack of attention.
- speakerIs there something we can be dusting off
- speakerand saying this is really what we've been about we've just forgot about it.
- speakerAnd I said thinking about that,
- speakerif I can find that same line of reasoning, can I get to a conclusion allowing marriage.
- speakerAnd bingo it hit that when it comes to being married
- speakerministers always have a judgment call they're allowed to make which
- speakeris is this couple ready for this.
- speakerDo they have good intentions for this?
- speakerDo they understand this?
- speakerAre they mature enough to be able to do this?
- speakerOr am I committing to God to consecrate in heaven
- speakera union that's a fraud here on Earth.
- speakerWe have that discretion as pastors
- speakerwith heterosexual couples.
- speakerWhat if we could say that discretion goes to homosexual
- speakercouples as well.
- speakerAnd he said ohh.
- speakerI was like yeah that was my thought.
- speakerOh and I said there's another way to do this.
- speakerThat like fidelity-chastity remaining in the Book of Order
- speakerbut the scruples are allowed.
- speakerWhat if we say the model is marriage between a man
- speakerand woman, but scruples are allowed.
- speakerAnd we do it on the basis of that's the way we've been doing it forever anyway
- speakerand we're just extending the range of where the judgment
- speakercalls can be made. And by the way I said also.
- speakerIt's not just about maturity
- speakerand all that. It's also divorce and the marriage.
- speakerThere was a time when divorcees could never remarry
- speakerand at least no ministers that were divorced could ever remarry
- speakerand be ordained anymore.
- speakerAnd then it was well divorcees if they were innocent of that,
- speakerthe other spouse that was unfaithful, and they were the innocent party so they can be married.
- speakerBut when we had all these kinds of ways we kept adjusting the rules as the
- speakerworld was changing around us and we did.
- speakerAnd and very very few of us,
- speakerI married couples that when I was in seminary I never would have married.
- speakerBecause I've seen how it's worked
- speakerand I've seen the legitimacy of their marriages work themselves out.
- speakerTo me this is the next logical step in that progress.
- speakerSo it's not a process. So it's not just that these are normal in your abnormal
- speakerbut we'll allow your abnormal because you're nice and sincere.
- speakerBut most marriages are abnormal.
- speakerIn the old days unless you're a virgin
- speakerI'm not doing your wedding. There was a time when it was that strict.
- speakerAnd by the way we conservatives love to talk about the model of marriage.
- speakerThe biblical model of marriage, a biblical model of marriage,
- speakeris not a boy and a girl or a man or woman.
- speakerThe biblical model of marriage is a male that is a virgin that's never had
- speakera lustful thought and a female that's a virgin that's never had a lustful thought
- speakerwho come together in a spiritual consecration
- speakerand then they have their first lustful thought in bed that night
- speakerand voila they are now they've now consummated marriage.
- speakerThat's the biblical model. OK none of us are the biblical model.
- speakerSo let's get get recognized that all marriages are an approximation
- speakerat best or an adaptation is as well.
- speakerBy the time I've been using those words for the what would become the thesis of my
- speakerbook It's Complicated. Anyway.
- speakerSo we hammered out language on how that might
- speakerlook like as an overture to make an
- speakerauthoritative interpretation of the Constitution. Not a change in language in the constitution on marriage
- speakerbut have an authoritative interpretation.
- speakerAnd then a few weeks later they had their board meeting.
- speakerHe took that to them as his proposal.
- speakerBeen in conversation with somebody else. But it's just between us.
- speakerHere's what you're doing. And all through that day,
- speakernow technologically using texting,
- speakerhe's texting me all through the day. Says Jack.
- speakerThis is what they want to suggest, this word for that.
- speakerOh yes good idea. No that's not a good idea.
- speakerI don't know that you can do that. If you take that then you've got it.
- speakerNo I can't support that anyway anyway.
- speakerYeah I knew you'd say that. OK.
- speakerSo we will keep that in anyway. So all through the day.
- speakerAnd then later on he told me that at the end they said OK so who helped you
- speakerwith this. He said well you can't say because he's in trouble because he's the editor of the Presbyterian Outlook
- speakerbut yeah it's Jack Haberer that came up
- speakerwith this idea and then we formulated this together.
- speakerSo that went to the Assembly
- speakerand it was approved. Which meant that day the next day
- speakerit was allowed for people to be married under the under those terms
- speakerthat the ministers have that discretion.
- speakerNow that assembly,
- speakernot to my liking, also there was another overture to change the language of that part of the Book of
- speakerOrder which then was also approved by them
- speakerand sent out for approval in the congregations.
- speakerSo it was. It was. And so that wasn't my language.
- speakerIt was good language overall if you can change the language of what's in the Book of Order,
- speakerBook of Worship, it was a good alternative so I wouldn't want to feel the need
- speakerto change it. But that
- speakeralso was sent out so that it was available right away
- speakerbecause as an authoritative interpretation it was allowed
- speakerbut then with the ratification in the presbyteries which was successful,
- speakerthat went through as well
- speakerand now became the rule of the law. The law of the land for the church.
- speakerAnd which. And by the way in my original
- speakerauthoratative interpretation I also said that the discretion on who can be married is up
- speakerto the minister. The discretion and what goes on in the church facilities is up to the session.
- speakerSo either or could say no
- speakerbut the minister could do it offsite,
- speakercould have a destination wedding so to speak. Or the session could say yes we can do it,
- speakerbut the Minister won't isn't willing so we can have a guest minister
- speakeror we can have another you know something else to do the wedding.
- speakerDiscretion is allowed in both cases because that is true to our polity
- speakeranyway.
- speakerBut then the overall change was made to the Book
- speakerof Order.
- speakerBacking up on all of that.
- speakerWell that's basically that's how we got there. And I want to get to the story of the new
- speakerECO and how that came out of there. But if you want to ask anymore about all of that? Did we cover it? Okay then.
- speakerAs the marriage overture was being debated
- speakerthere was a whole lot of rumblings. There were a whole lot of rumblings going on even
- speakerwith the view that the authoratative interpretation itself did not create a big
- speakerblowout. And the good news is I was able to report it,
- speakeralthough even when I wrote an editorial about that
- speakerI didn't endorse it. Said this deserves some consideration
- speakerand left it up to the commissioners to do that without my advocacy.
- speakerBut I never owned up publicly even till now to say that that's
- speakerhow that all came about with Brian and myself
- speakerwith Tom R. present and the Covenant Network board.
- speakerAs the overture was being, or now the amendment,
- speakerwas being debated in the presbyteries you have evangelical leaders who
- speakerdid not go with the New Wineskins because they could not imagine being a part of evangelical Presbyterian Church because evangelical Presbyterian Church allows women's
- speakerordination but it's an exception to the rule. And at that point
- speakerI think there was only like one woman chaplain somewhere
- speakerand another an associate pastor. That was it in the whole denomination.
- speakerAnd a lot of evangelicals were not going
- speakerto do that.
- speakerThey just, we're not going to.
- speakerWe don't want to. We don't want any ambiguity about our commitment
- speakerand complete agreement on women being ordained in all offices of the church.
- speakerThere's a lot of buzzing going on. I think it was in January of that year when the debates
- speakerand the votes are going on and that end of the voting goes heavily January through March.
- speakerThey began to see the handwriting on the wall.
- speakerSeven of them got together saying we're going to lose
- speakerthis. And we're going to lose our churches. This is going to blow up.
- speakerWe need to do something. We need to find some way forward.
- speakerAnd. And they put out what was known as the white paper.
- speakerAnd they also called themselves the seven dwarfs.
- speakerIn part as a confession that they were idiots to do this as seven white
- speakerguys doing this.
- speakerI remember I was friends, good friends
- speakerwith most of them
- speakerbut especially Jim Singleton.
- speakerAnd when that came out
- speakerJim and I, I was
- speakertrying to call him and missed him.
- speakerHe finally called me back a couple days later which happened to be Easter Sunday afternoon.
- speakerSo we're about to sit down
- speakerand have Easter dinner. He said Jack this probably isn't a good time to call.
- speakerI said no we need to talk.
- speakerHe says yeah we're a bunch of idiots aren't we.
- speakerYeah you really are idiots. That was really stupid.
- speakerAnd you know the good thing is that they weren't calling for any denomination
- speakerbut they were calling for evangelicals to come together
- speakerand look at what we're going to do together and how do we do it.
- speakerAnd I said Jim there's a better way to do this.
- speakerI realize you guys are really concerned about being
- speakerassociated with a nomination that does the wrong thing.
- speakerAnd the guilt by association is a major target for everybody.
- speakerBut it's also that. But it's.
- speakerBut in the end we can't win that argument
- speakerbut we're callous Jim.
- speakerWe are guilty by association and the folly of of
- speakerof a Baptist ecclesiology where we were the wholly pure
- speakerand all of that. Or even the classic Wesleyan,
- speakerit just doesn't work for us.
- speakerI said but I know you are also fearful about you losing your members.
- speakerAnd you and we both know that that means a lot of rich people walk out the door when
- speakermarriages are going on.
- speakerAnd then he says yeah hate to admit it, but yeah there's a lot of rich people
- speakerthat read the Layman that are going to go.
- speakerAnd so we're kind of shaken. And I said well here's what you need to do.
- speakerThe Roman Catholic Church has orders within the Catholic Church that
- speakereach have their own way of doing things yet they're still under the overall structure
- speakerof the papacy in the Vatican.
- speakerIt's time for evangelicals who have had organizations one after another of one kind
- speakeror another to really have a collective order.
- speakerAn order of evangelicalism that says we're going to follow the constitution
- speakeras it exists as a book and polity and in the Book of Order.
- speakerBut we're also going to hold some covenants together,
- speakercommitments that we hold. And yes Jesus Christ is the only assimilation.
- speakerYes the Bible is the authoritative word of God.
- speakerYes we're committed to biblical morality in these particular categories.
- speakerThose are the three things that the confessing church did
- speakerand they were appropriate to say them.
- speakerThey just read too far in terms of splitting out of here.
- speakerBut you guys could do this without splitting
- speakerand define yourself as an order within the church.
- speakerHe loved the idea I gave him. And I said by the way there's one other point that's needed there
- speakerand that is that you also have a legal hammer.
- speakerBecause the other thing is that everyone fears that
- speakerthey're going to get the same treatment as women's ordination which is that unless you're
- speakerwilling to ordain LGBT folks you won't get a church,
- speakeryou won't be able to get ordained. And all of that.
- speakerWhat
- speakerthey need to know is someone's got their back.
- speakerAnd what you need to have is a committee of lawyers who will work for
- speakerfree, who are on the ready to walk into the office of the presbytery executive
- speakerand say let's talk about so and so.
- speakerJane Doe. Pastor Jane Doe or John Doe that you're
- speakerin the midst of trying to blackball.
- speakerOr this church First Presbyterian
- speakeror Trinity Presbyterian wherever it is that you're trying to force it.
- speakerAnd you're not going to do that because if you are it could cost you a lot of legal fees.
- speakerLet's get this thing settled and get this done.
- speakerAnd I said you need to have the right arm of strength so you're
- speakernot just a bunch of wimpy guys and gals,
- speakerwell guys because it was a bunch of white guys,
- speakerbut not just saying what you believe
- speakerbut actually having some strength of support for one another.
- speakerHe said we are having each other's back.
- speakerParticularly those who are in hostile presbyteries will like that idea.
- speakerLove that idea.
- speakerWell he went back and proposed it and they were really percolating on that.
- speakerIn fact they even came out with the second paper that said we're not going to create a new denomination.
- speakerWe're going to function within the denomination as a company of loyal
- speakeropposition.
- speakerBut we are going to stay. They had incredible backlash from
- speakerlots of evangelicals that said unless you lead us out,
- speakerwe're going on our own. Which means we
- speakerwill disintegrate as a movement. But you either lead us
- speakeror we're going otherwise.
- speakerSo then they came out with Plan A, Plan B.
- speakerAnd ironically they took the word order for the group that was leaving.
- speakerThey didn't want to call themselves a new denomination.
- speakerThey didn't want to call themselves a church. But they knew they had to get incorporated.
- speakerAnd to get incorporated as a religious organization you have to call it
- speakera church or denomination
- speakeror an order. And so they said OK we'll use the word order for the new denomination.
- speakerSo we call it Evanglical Covenant Order of Presbyterians.
- speakerAnd then we'll have this other group.
- speakerWe'll call it The Fellowship
- speakeror the social community. And those are the ones that did what I
- speakersaid they should do. Be an order within the PC(USA).
- speakerThey followed that model for plan B.
- speakerBut they called it a community. Plan A became Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
- speakerBut kept the ECO because that's how they first rolled it out.
- speakerAnd you know that the reason that they don't know why they don't call themselves Evangelical Covenant Order is because the
- speakerEvangelical Covenant Church as a denomination contacted them
- speakerand said you guys can't take our name.
- speakerCreate a new denominations that's virtually the same name.
- speakerDon't do that. That's not fair. That's not right. You've got to you've got your own identity.
- speakerWe've got our own. We're friends.
- speakerWe love Jesus but you can't take our name.
- speakerSo they flip flopped the words but they liked ECO as their abbreviation.
- speakerSo they stuck with ECO but it's actually Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
- speakerSo they moved forward to try to function very much having an annual
- speakergathering together as one. But then the ECO siders said no we really aren't
- speakerfeeling the same.
- speakerAgain back to my old issue with division in the church.
- speakerIt just tends to kind of feed on itself.
- speakerAnd so they end up becoming two different entities.
- speakerBut.
- speakerSo that's where they went.
- speakerAnd I kept urging people.
- speakerI took a lot of speaking gigs through all those years again.
- speakerWell I'm now at the Presbyterian Outlook speaking out just on
- speakerunity issues and using GodViews
- speakerand talking about why staying in the PC(USA) is the
- speakerideal place for evangelicals to stay. You know you're part of a larger body.
- speakerAnd you learn from those other folks.
- speakerAnd you also can influence those other folks. Anyway a lot of those kind of arguments that
- speakerdon't need to be rehashed at this point.
- speakerThe rest is you know where we are right now.Wwhere we have government order
- speakeror ECO as a separate denomination.
- speakerPC(USA) sadly diminished in numbers significantly because so many went
- speakerover there. And the Fellowship community that's
- speakertrying to have its own identity
- speakerwith some kind of disciplines. Interestingly their disciplines were
- speakerlargely formed by Jim Singleton who now isn't ECO
- speakerbut at the time was giving voice to this because he had done a doctoral research
- speakeron evangelical evangelism in the southern PC(USA)
- speakerand all kinds of study about how they had these commitments
- speakerand relationships and mutual accountability exercised in the 1920s.
- speakerAnd he kind of brought that to the present.
- speakerSo this is where we need to model our relationships as a movement within this denomination.
- speakerAnd so they're doing their best to do that.
- speakerJerry Andrews has given great leadership to that.
- speakerHe's he's really kind of put in the face again as he was the face for the Coalition
- speakerfor so many years. He's been largely the face for the Fellowship community
- speakerand in articulating that strong theological mind that he has working
- speakerin tandem with the strong mind of Jim Singleton
- speakerand formulating that for a model for all of them to work
- speakerand live out this community experience evangelicals who
- speakerare intrinsically engaged in the life PC(USA).
- speakerNot running away. Not disliking
- speakerbut trying to be faithful in a larger body while also feeling some particular connection
- speakerto that. I've never affiliated with the Fellowship community.
- speakerI'm in a church where by the way when I,
- speakerby the time I personally came to First Presbyterian Church of Allentown in
- speakerthe fall of 2016, this is a church that
- speakerthe day that the overture was adopted by General Assembly to allow
- speakerscrupling that next week the pastor at that church
- speakerdid its first gay marriage.
- speakerAnd so that church as a church has been on the cutting edge of
- speakerordination. First church to ordain a woman in the denomination sixty plus
- speakeryears ago. And then the first then to do a wedding.
- speakerA same-sex wedding.
- speakerAnd they asked me are you ready? Are you ready to do same-sex marriages?
- speakerYes I am.
- speakerThere'll be some mental adjustments to go about, but they'll all be internal because I haven't
- speakercrossed that bridge yet.
- speakerBut I am feeling right that it's right
- speakerfor me to council a same-sex couple.
- speakerA gay couple, a straight couple to prepare their hearts
- speakerand their lives for marriage. And assuming that it goes well
- speakerand that they're on target.
- speakerAnd all those kinds of covenants and promises.
- speakerI'm ready to be the one that would consecrate that
- speakerand say Lord make that do miraculously in heaven what
- speakerwe're hoping for here. That the two become one
- speakerand so goes from here.
- speakerI think that might be a good place to stop. What do you think?
- speakerI think that works for me.