Wagglebee, your call on whether you want to PING the moral absolutes and abortion lists.
Suggested ping to massmike for Mass Resistance if they'd be interested in this due to the Scott Brown connection.
This discussion over on Presbyterian Blues (the blog of an Orthodox Presbyterian elder in Des Moines, Iowa, who is a lawyer) has gone in some very bad directions. Apparently these OPC, PCA, and URC members, some of whom are elders, actually believe it's perfectly okay to be, like U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, a pro-choice politician in the United States Senate and a member in good standing of a Reformed church.
Frankly, I have more patience with Sen. Scott Brown, who is a member of a rather nontraditional congregation in the Christian Reformed Church, than I have with OPC and PCA elders advocating such views. Scott Brown used to be a member of the United Church of Christ, he's now in a Christian Reformed congregation which isn't sound in its teaching, and he may honestly not understand the issues.
Conservative elders in the OPC and PCA have no excuse.
I am as strictly Reformed in my soteriology as someone can get, and yes, I do affirm Q&A 80 of the Heidelberg Catechism, but on this point I have to commend the Roman Catholics. You've done what apparently we in the Reformed world still need to do, namely, saying that public pro-choice advocacy of the idea that mothers should be able to choose to murder their babies is unacceptable when that advocacy is done by politicians who have the power to vote against such murders.
There are prior examples of Calvinist churches making political issues a term of communion. They're rare, but they happened prior to World War II with the Gereformeerde Kerken banning church members from belonging to the Dutch Nazi Party and with some Presbyterian denominations such as the Covenanters over slave ownership. I believe mass murder of babies is a sufficiently extraordinary case that it meets the very high requirements for the church to take a stand on civil issues (cf. Westminster Confession, Chapter 23).
Read the whole thread if you can, but if you can't, then read these parts. FYI, “Richard” is a PCA elder and “ZRim” is Steve Zrimec, a former student at Calvin Theological Seminary who is now a member of the United Reformed Churches in North America. “Mikelmann” is in the OPC. They're advocates of what is sometimes called “Two Kingdoms” theology.
Steve Zrimec blogs along with a number of other OPC, URC and PCA people, including URC member Rick Bierling Jr. and OPC minister Rev. Todd Bordow, at this website: http://confessionalouthouse.wordpress.com/authors/
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darrelltoddmaurina on October 13, 2012 at 1:54 PM
This is getting interesting.
While I may be a pragmatist about some things, toleration of open public sin is not among them.
My example was not hypothetical. I wanted to first see how you would answer without adding a name, but let’s add the name.
U.S. Senator Scott Brown is a member of New England Chapel in Franklin, Mass., a congregation of the Christian Reformed Church.
As a matter of pragmatic politics, I should be a supporter of Sen. Brown. The reality is that he’s probably about the best that can be asked for out of Massachusetts. If I lived in that state I’d probably gag and pull the lever for him since any realistic alternative will be far worse.
In the ecclesiastical world, however, Brown’s support for homosexual civil unions, vote to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on homosexuals in the military, and declaration that he won’t use abortion as a test for nominees for Supreme Court positions make him unacceptable. In politics sometimes we have to make hard choices between lesser evils; in the church, we have to follow absolute principles regardless of the consequences.
The result of tolerating people like Sen. Brown in church membership is that we get things like this written by National Review in its flattering profile of the senator soon after his election: “This new Calvinism is a development of the post-Great Awakening era, a religion that’s not afraid of sentimentality — yet it remains recognizably Calvinism, in its stress on the Bible and on the sovereignty of God.”
Brown’s views are bad enough, but how about this comment from his church’s website: “I have found a home, a family, friends, and most importantly, begun the journey to a REAL relationship with God. It is not one based on guilt or fear, but rather love, hope, and mercy.”
Apparently Brown’s church has not heard that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 9:10, Ps. 111:10). Obviously it’s not the end of wisdom, but conviction of sin is central to the Christian experience. Total depravity isn’t the only point of Calvinism, but it is the first point.
A church that tolerates views such as those expressed by Brown and posted on its website is not recognizably Calvinist at all. It’s not realistic to ask the Christian Reformed Church to discipline Sen. Brown or his consistory — after all, the church has two women elders and that makes it pretty much untouchable — but I hope the OPC or PCA would discipline someone who held or tolerated views such as those of Sen. Brown.
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Zrim on October 13, 2012 at 3:57 PM
DTM, so it’s open public sin to disagree with you politically? But I am willing to follow absolute biblical principles regardless of the consequences and draw the line at doctrine and life.
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Richard on October 13, 2012 at 5:30 PM
DTM, umm, no, as a ruling elder in the PCA, I would have no authority to discipline any member of my church who held or tolerated the views of Sen Scott Borwn. Sorry, his views do not constitute open public sin according to our Book of Church Order. Jeepers.
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MY RESPONSE:
darrelltoddmaurina on October 13, 2012 at 7:17 PM
ZRim and Richard, this is getting more and more interesting.
Your answers are not at all what I expected. I thought I'd hear you saying some version of “don't blame us for what a liberal CRC with women elders does — we would never tolerate someone like Sen. Brown in our church.”
Apparently I need to get out more. I thought the answer was obvious and did not at all expect what you're responding.
I think I'm now beginning to understand why a Westminster-West professor can say he can see a case for homosexual civil unions, or why Misty Irons writes and speaks the way she does.
Right now I feel like the reporter for Nederlands Dagblad who asked a Calvin Seminary professor, during the Rev. Jim Lucas uproar, shortly after he “came out” as a homosexual, whether the Calvin College faculty knew he was a homosexual when the seminary board of trustees recommended him for ordination. (Remember that unlike Presbyterianism where the decisions on candidacy and ordination are made by the presbyteries, in the Christian Reformed Church, the seminary faculty and board of trustees are primarily responsible for deciding who is allowed to become a candidate for the ministry; synod almost always rubber-stamps the seminary decision.)
The Nederlands Dagblad reporter was amazed to find out that the faculty had known Lucas was homosexual and that the professors had informed the board without giving the name of the student involved, with the result that the seminary board, with no involvement whatsoever of the Christian Reformed synod, had taken it upon itself years earlier to decide it's okay to be a homosexual minister in the Christian Reformed Church as long as the minister didn't actually have same-gender sexual relations.
Frankly, I never thought to ask that question, and the seminary professor's answer blew the homosexual issue wide open in the CRC. Regardless of whether the seminary board's position was right or wrong, the effect was that the seminary faculty and board had made a massively important decision without ever involving the synod.
ZRim, I realize you do not speak for the URCNA, Mikelmann does not speak for the OPC, and Richard does not speak for the PCA. None of you have the same level of authority that seminary professor had.
However, I am amazed to be seeing these answers.
I guess I'd better ask some more questions — were the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland correct in barring membership in the Dutch Nazi Party? Were the Covenanters right to bar slaveowners from church membership?
I certainly am not supporting slavery or Nazis, but I think a much better case can be made for being a Southern Presbyterian slaveowner treating his slaves decently despite them being stolen property, than for being pro-choice on baby killing.
Even the Dutch Nazis didn't yet know or understand what was going on in the death camps. Very conservative ministers including the main minister of the Gereformeerde Gemeenten (Netherlands Reformed Congregations) made a terrible bargain with the devil and cooperated with the Dutch Nazis out of a wrongheaded belief that they were supporting Christian values against Communism. The Dutch Nazis were wrong, but at least they weren't openly saying in the Netherlands that it was okay to kill Jews. Most Dutch Jews had no idea what was waiting for them in the death camps and thought they were going to be put in work camps.
I believe the Covenanters were well within their rights to bar slaveholders from church membership. I believe the Gereformeerde Gemeenten were definitely right to bar Dutch Nazis from church membership.
If we believe what we say about abortion being killing of defenseless babies, abortion really is on the same level as killing Jews. It logically follows that anyone who is publicly advocating a pro-choice position on baby murder is worthy of church discipline.
I thought until now that was something pretty much all conservative Calvinists agreed upon.
Apparently not.
Typo alert: the reference to “Calvin College” faculty above should be “Calvin Seminary.” It’s the seminary faculty, not the college faculty, who make recommendations on declaring people candidates for the Christian Reformed ministry and made the recommendation on Jim Lucas’ candidacy. Considering that I graduated from the college and attended the seminary, I certainly know that.