Calm In The Storm

I just came back from attending my first General Assembly. It is sort of a cross between a political convention and a session of Congress. Commissioners are called together every year from all over the country to do the business of the church, and their decisions are expected to embody the collected wisdom and united voice of the whole Church. Their charge is not simply to reflect the will of the people, however, but as the Book of Order says, to seek earnestly together, with prayer and discernment, to find and represent the will of Christ.

So unexpected things can happen at a General Assembly. And every interest group imaginable comes to make sure its point of view is heard and to lobby for its position to prevail. The exhibit hall is enormous. There are booths advertising everything from the Presbyterian Publishing Co. to the Boy Scouts. You can buy Rain Forest Crunch (chocolate covered or plain) in the SRRV booth (they’re working for economic justice for indigenous peoples) and get a back rub in the Health and Wholeness group (they’re lobbying Congress for enhancements to health care legislation). I got a free coffee mug for filling out a survey at the PresbyNet booth (anyone wanna be on line with about a zillion other Presbyterians?).

And everybody has brochures. And position papers. And breakfasts and lunches and dinners. Different groups tend to congregate together, and support one another’s issues. The goddess worshipers (also known as the “Voices of Sophia”) hang around with the homosexual activists (there are several groups in that category) and the more conservative subgroups have banded together under the general label “Renewal Groups.” Up until a couple of years ago, however, when denominational approval of the ordination of active homosexuals began to look like a very real possibility, most of the Renewal Groups left the organization I was working for pretty much alone. You see, I went to General Assembly to represent a pariah group. I was with Presbyterians Pro-Life.

We weren’t asking for much. First, we wanted the denomination to say out loud and in public that partial-birth abortion (which I will not describe to you because there are children in the congregation) is morally wrong. Second, we wanted our governing bodies’ actions to reflect the denomination’s stated abortion policy - that is, to reflect moral reservations about abortion in our education materials and the other publications prepared and distributed by the PCUSA, and for the medical insurance program to stop funding those abortions which our policy already says are immoral (that is, for gender selection or fetal tissue transplants).

I testified in front of the Social Justice Committee in favor of declaring partial-birth abortion morally unacceptable, and remained throughout the rest of the hearings, and I was really shocked by the open hostility displayed by our opponents. It was so bad that the moderator had to rebuke them three times for making spiteful comments about Presbyterians Pro-Life. And mind you, this was even though he was on their side himself! It was very discouraging. But the final vote in the committee was even more disheartening. Not even the U.S. Congress can justify this appalling procedure; Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan - who is pretty pro-abortion generally - has said that it borders on infanticide. And our statement wouldn’t have any legal force; women would still be free to do anything their conscience permits! But the committee, all members in good standing of the church of Jesus Christ, who bought us out of bondage to sin with his blood, voted - 36 to 7 - against declaring partial birth abortion morally unacceptable.

There were about 30 of us on the team this year; I was one of half a dozen or so brand new members. Some of our members have been working against abortion for 20 years or more. And of us all, it was the newer folk who were the most disheartened by what had happened. This was nothing new to the others. Terry Schlossberg, our Executive Director, has tried for years to work with Presbyterian Women’s Ministries so that we could work together on things that all of us should be able to agree on, like adoption, or post-abortion counseling. But they haven’t even been willing to speak to her. We have also asked to be included in the network of ministries sponsored by the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Assotiation. The amount of courage and perseverance it takes to keep showing up and speaking up, especially in the face of the intense personal opposition we experience, is really remarkable.

And yet we are not the most hated subgroup at General Assembly. That privilege has been transferred to a new group, called One By One, which began its ministry three years ago in Rochester, NY, offering counsel and healing to the sexually conflicted: victims of sexual abuse, prostitution, and rape; sexual addicts, and homosexuals who are unhappy with their life. These are the new pariahs. The hostility against them at the hearings was even worse than what PPL got. And yet, led by their own experience of God’s grace in their lives, these people were willing to put their own vulnerability on display, to have even their Christianity mocked and vilified, in order to offer hope and healing to the last group of outcasts in our society: those who know they are sinners.