05141
March 11, 2005

Houston conference will bring theological opposites together

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE — The  Presbyterian Coalition, known for its right-of-center perspective, is erasing political, theological and cultural dividing lines this month by calling “the whole church” together for a spiritual overhaul.

     The conservative affinity group is sponsoring a March 17-19 conference at Grace Presbyterian Church in Houston, TX, titled “Repent & Believe: A Call to Prayer and Repentance.”

     The Lenten-season event will bring together the left and right wings of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and leaders from some of the denomination’s racial-ethnic caucuses as “members of the same church” to confess their sins and prayerfully seek God’s forgiveness. 

     “This is about individually and corporately being before God in prayer,” said the Rev. Jerry Andrews, an Illinois pastor who helped plan the conference as moderator of the Coalition. “Repentance is a lifelong word. This event is to help us do it now and do it well.”

     The participants will include coalition members and leaders, along with many Presbyterians with whom they often disagree — including the liberal-minded Covenant Network, the Coalition’s theological polar opposite.

     “The whole church is more than just the right and the left,” Andrews said. “The whole church is the racial-ethnic leadership and people who don’t fit into any of those categories, right and the left and racial-ethnic.”

     The event will include Communion, worship, fasting, guest preachers and a plenary meeting, but mostly spiritual exercises “featuring a form of church prayer often used by John Calvin in Geneva,” according to Andrews. A series of reflections on the Ten Commandments also will be featured.

     Members of the Covenant Network are helping to plan the conference, along with leaders from the National Black Presbyterian Caucus, the National Hispanic/Latino Presbyterian Caucus and the National Korean Presbyterian Council. 

     “This (event), we thought, needed to serve the whole church in order for it to serve anybody,” Andrews said. “For this to happen, there needed to be visible leadership from a wider range of folks then just us evangelicals. And in order for that to happen, folks more widely ranging needed to be on the planning committee from the very beginning.”

     Diverse participation is instrumental to understanding scripture, one planning committee member said.

     “We talk about even those of us with classic WASP-ish backgrounds and our differences in Biblical interpretation and theological understanding,” said the Rev. Paul A. Leggett, a New Jersey pastor and former Coalition board member. “We’ll find out when we talk to Hispanics or to African-Americans or whoever else, because they are bringing a different cultural perspective to it.”

     The main preachers for the event will be the Rev. Craig Barnes, a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and pastor of Pittsburgh’s Shadyside Presbyterian Church, and the Rev. Cynthia Campbell, the president of McCormick Seminary in Chicago.

     Also preaching will be the Rev. Curtis Jones, a managing partner of CURESolutions, a Georgia-based consulting company specializing in church and community development. Jones is a former executive director of the National Black Presbyterian Caucus, and has served churches in Dallas, TX, and Baltimore, MD.

     Andrews said he’s also expecting high-ranking PC(USA) dignitaries including the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly, and GA Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase.  

     “I think this is a wonderful opportunity to actually do what we’ve talked about doing in the Presbyterian Church for many years,” said Campbell, a member of the conference planning team and of the Covenant Network’s executive committee. “Which is for people who hold varieties of points of view on a variety of subjects to come together and to worship, to study and reflect. To hopefully experience some of what being church together means, which is to worship together and to sit together around scriptures and listen, share our reflections.”

     The broad-based conference is an effort to communicate across the seeming gulf between the two theological poles of the PC (USA) concerning Biblical interpretation and issues of salvation, ethics, leadership and sanctification, among others.

     The divide has been evident in the proliferation of such organizations as the Covenant Network on the liberal side and the Presbyterian Coalition on the conservative side.

     These differences make holding such an event a no-brainer, said the Rev. John Buchanan, a Chicago pastor and founding member of the Covenant Network.

     “Yes, I think it is a very good idea, in fact a great idea,” said Buchanan, also a conference planning team member and former PC(USA) General Assembly moderator. “Anything that anyone does in our denomination at this point that asks people to gather around issues that unite and talk about those and spend some time just being together, is in my mind a very, very helpful thing.”

     Despite growing awareness of the impasse throughout the church, organizers say the conference is not intended to bridge the ideology gap, but to be “a work by the whole church for the whole church.”