By Todd D. Baucum
I have a profound respect (not an agreement or a liking) for liberals and revisionist like Bishop John Spong (ala Bishop Sponge)and the homoerotic Gene Robinson, titular head of the Episcopal diocese in New Hampshire. They follow in the infamous train of Bishop Spike and other radicals in the past. Why do I consider such men worthy of an honorable mention, when I as a traditional orthodox believer in the biblical Reformed Faith that is so much maligned and discounted by the aforementioned? For one, they have shown us a candor and certain honesty about their abandonment of the biblical doctrines of Traditional Christianity. They in fact make no bones about their ambition to strip the layers of superstition and ignorance that hinder their radical agenda to “move us out of the dark ages”. They fly their revisionist colors high with no apologies or attempt to hide undetected in the shadows of ecclesiastical ambiguity and the inflated hubris of their purple shirts.
As a Presbyterian without the office of Bishop speaking for me – we have not had the sort of men or leaders who are bold enough and forthright in their abandonment of the Faith in favor of a new religion based on the latest new ideas of progress. One reason for this is that the Episcopal Church has never had a strong presence of the puritan/evangelical tradition here in America (I learned this from my Anglican friends at Trinity School for Ministry – an evangelical, traditional school, -a bit of an anomaly in the Episcopal world in the U.S.) In contrast, Presbyterians have had a distinctively conservative, puritan/evangelical formation in North America. We were bound together by a common creed and spread along the colonies among Congregationalists and Reformed groups through the preaching of men like Jonathan Edwards, a Congregationalist and George Whitefield, an Anglican, who both preached a Calvinistic gospel set on fire with evangelical passion. This spiritual legacy has always loomed large on the social memory of American Presbyterians. Even among the more moderate or liberal “cradle Presbyterian” who grew away from the fold through liberal Enlightenment thought, there was no way to deny, he or she was born in a faith with deep roots in a strong biblical confession and fired with evangelical piety. At least their grandparents were brought up on the old Shorter Catechism. It is an undeniable history. Even in the old Presbyterian schools, now embracing the liberal views of the critical scholars, the portraits of the old Calvinist stalwarts still hang on the walls of the libraries and halls as an inescapable reminder of this past. Perhaps it haunts the conscience, but one would be mistaken to think that such historical legacy leaves anything other than the cash value of name association. History has its benefits for the tenured chair or the plush endowments of past benefactors of the old faithful. They live on borrowed capital.
Our Presbyterian liberals see the need to pay their respect to this social memory – they are not so ill mannered to tread on the graves of their fathers and mothers. They must give due respect to this confessional heritage, much like one wears a badge to show they belong as a member of the club, but one is totally free to believe as one likes. Because today the freedom of conscience is the value that trumps every other truth claim or authority - “Only God is Lord of the conscience” - an important sentiment among the Reformers to uphold the sacred obligation every soul has toward God’s true standard in the Bible. It has been morphed into a security blanket to hide every disagreement and departure one has with the confessional standards.
It therefore makes them less noticeable to the unsuspecting church member. They lie safe in the obscurity and ossifications of their revisionist language. It is why liberals among us most always speak with an evangelical accent. They know the history and the memory that still exists, ever so lightly perhaps these days as Presbyterians in the mainline church turn grey with their hoary heads. Where are the Presbyterian Spongs and the honest heretics among us? I surmise they are all around us, but don’t ask me to tell you who they are by the way they talk. Too many of them know the language of the Gospel, they just don’t believe in its content anymore. The vocabulary of the faith has been recast with a new and different lectionary of meaning. When Paul Tillich sought to restyle and revise orthodox Christianity he at least saw the need to revise not only the meaning along the lines German Idealism, but suggested new words and names. Reading his Systematic Theology, for example is like Alice in Wonderland, wondering about the meaning of words, when words are just made up at the whims of the speaker. His approach was never fully embraced because it lacked any acceptance among people in the pews who for whatever reason clung to the language of Zion and the familiar words of the Faith. Sadly, for many of them those words have no more meaning.
And so it stands that today a once great denomination has embraced a new theology and a new gospel. I bid my friends still in the PCUSA my sincere hope that those who hold to the old words and the old faith, which still brings life and renewal, will remain true and follow their Captain and great Head of the Church.
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