Unity and mainline churches

For twenty-five years, I have been meeting annually with renewal leaders from the mainline denominations in the United States. In 1996, we gave this fellowship a name-the Association for Church Renewal. Participants include leaders from renewal ministries in all of the mainline denominations in North America, including the United Church of Canada.

What this group has discovered is that all of the mainline/oldline churches have been struggling for more than two decades with identical problems: membership loss, decay of Scriptural authority, doctrinal defection, pro-homosexual activism, and the embracing of trendy, new theologies. None of them report any real sense of unity in their denominations.

To the contrary, several of the mainlines are struggling to hold together, being pushed to the brink of division by pro-homosexual activists.

For example, the Episcopal Church USA has a new evangelical network which came into existence in January of 2004-The Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes. The new network represents thousands of laity and clergy within ECUSA who refuse to accept the consecration as bishop last November of V. Gene Robinson, a self-acknowledged homosexual priest. Within just one week of its founding, the Network had been recognized by 14 Anglican archbishops who represent a majority of the 70-million, world-wide Anglican Communion. In addition, a number of archbishops have broken Communion with the ECUSA.

More recently, the four-million member Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) served notice to the Presbyterian Church USA that it will not continue fellowship with any regional presbytery or church that supports homosexuality. So, the unwillingness of PCUSA leaders to enforce their own constitutional prohibition against the ordination of practicing homosexuals has begun to have global consequences.

The Presbyterian Church of East Africa ordered one of its presbyteries to discontinue immediately its partnership with the National Capital Presbytery in Washington, D.C. National Capital is one of the presbyteries that is supportive of homosexual ordination.

The East Africa Presbyterian body receives about $300,000 a year from PCUSA churches, so its courageous action could mean a loss of funds. However, PCEA general secretary Samuel Muriguh said, "The idea of lesbianism or gay-ism.is unbiblical. We have our integrity to uphold. It is better to go without the money."

Renewal leaders in the 5.2-million Evangelical Lutheran Church in America report the possibility of division in 2005 when a task force studying homosexuality and same-sex unions makes its report to that denomination's major legislative body.

And finally, of course, delegates at the 2004 United Methodist General Conference in Pittsburgh hurriedly passed a resolution on the final day of conference affirming a unity that everyone knows is non-existent.

The common thread found in all of the revisionists, who would suddenly-after two millennia of Christian teaching-bring to the church a radical new understanding of sexuality, marriage, and family, is that the Scriptures are no longer authoritative or relevant when discussing human sexuality. They hold that the Scriptures must be trumped by new learning and new understanding.

Writing in his chapter in Staying the Course (Abingdon, 2003), Dr. William J. Abraham writes: "The enduring strength of drawing on Scripture in the Christian church is that it is essentially an appeal to special revelation." By appeal to reason and experience, says Abraham, we only know partially who we are, what our nature is, and how we are supposed to live. He goes on to say, "Reason and experience, though important and even indispensable, are insufficient and inadequate. We depend substantially and nontrivially on divine revelation" (p. 24).

Here is where we get to the heart of the differences that are dividing the mainline churches today. Is the church dealing with an authoritative divine revelation that is normative for its life and work today? Or are there new normative sources to guide and inform the church, which are coming to us from sources other than Scripture? Does God reveal his will to us through human experience and cultural change, or through Scripture as divine revelation?

Richard John Neuhaus answers these questions well. "Christianity is not based upon experience, reason, or our inherited wisdom, but upon God's self-disclosure in history. Christian thinking, whether about God, about Christ, about moral life, or culture must always begin with what has been made known."

Churches will not experience unity if the divine revelation of Scripture is set aside for a more contemporary norm for its teaching and preaching.



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