What Kind of Pitchfork Assembly?
By James Kessler, June 20, 2022. Originally published at Morse & Karl, June 20, 2022.
We’ve been told the 49th General Assembly is a “pitchfork” assembly. A time to separate the wheat from the chaff, or maybe a chance to compel agreement on what matters most, by the point of the tines. Unexpectedly, though, in the middle of the winnowing talk, there may be a chance to instead see our unity re-appear in this denomination. And with it, like our closing hymn tells us every year, the presence of the Lord will be upon us, like the oil on Aaron’s beard, like the dew on his mountain of covenantal love. If we are willing to hold our pitchforks differently, we can begin to put this denomination back together again, by supporting Overture 29 and the proposed amended Overtures 2021-40 and 2021-41.
Overture 29 reaffirms our constitutional standards regarding the ethics of ordinands and last year’s overtures 40 and 41 (brought back to this year’s GA) provide witness protections in cases of abuse while moving the PCA toward an uncompromising standard of anti-abuse.
During a solar eclipse there is an area created by the moon which lies outside its shadow. This area is not complete light, nor is it complete darkness. Writing for a 7-2 majority in Griswold v. Connecticut, Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas applied this concept to constitutional law, believing that certain explicit rights could articulate, or light, the penumbra of implied rights. It was the theory that truths lie in a shadowland we can illuminate by pursuing that which is explicitly true. Both of these overtures can light the unarticulated unity that exists for us in a time of disintegration.
Overture 2021-40/41, as amended (link), reflects the work of a united, confessionally-minded and expert Ad-Interim Committee on Abuse. Their work is producing something unique: a reformation born not in the distress of controversy but of proactive concern. The committee has delivered to us a well-considered and expert opinion on how we might do what so many other denominations and institutions fail to do: take action to win justice for the abused and protect the vulnerable not as a matter of public relations but of love for Jesus and His Church. These overtures would protect potentially traumatized witnesses and minors from unnecessary strain in cross-examination, providing a way for the truly weak or vulnerable to be strong in pursuit of justice.
The PCA can begin to ensure that victims have voices, and victimizers have boundaries. R.C. Sproul said that by studying or meditating on the law of God, we “attend the school of righteousness.” These overtures are of that curriculum; things like this are how we delight in that law (Ps.1). This is the penumbra: rather than a move of self-preservation, these changes alight a common commitment to the Scriptures, the reformed faith, and the great commission which is grounded in love for Christ, and love for Christ’s loves. What other cause of the weak might we take up together in solidarity with Christ?
Overture 29 is the result of a year of debates which have raged at every level of our corner of the Church, to even the most local courts, and outside our courts — in our living rooms, narthexes, social media platforms. Votes at the Presbytery level have helped us to refine this overture into something that maintains our already clear witness to the goodness of God’s ethic of human sexuality, and to the calling of ministers to pursue it in union with a long-suffering, empowering, Christ who prays for us. This overture grew out of an AIC committee’s work which we have already commended, and has produced significant agreement from many corners of our denomination. A couple years of intense sorting and revising has presented us an opportunity for a resounding and united statement. To get there we will have to resist amending it into a weapon of division this week.
But if we are able to preserve the integrity of this overture, we may finally be free to see each other’s heavy sacrifice in upholding a Christian sexual ethic while we lose congregants, officers, even churches to more affirming destinations. That grief is real, and up to this moment we have been unable to look to one another for strength, because we have looked to one another as opponents. In doing so, we may also finally share in common the struggles of our Christ-honoring same-sex-attracted brothers in sisters in our churches who find themselves weary both of the fight against their friends outside the Church who believe them to be self-hating and their friends inside the Church who believe them to be self-indulgent. The penumbra is that this common cause can light the way to a common commitment to holiness which indeed progresses, one which not only speaks to our sexual ethics, but our civic ones; our ethic of holy, non-violent living, in post-Christendom Christianity.
Maybe it is a Pitchfork Assembly. The pitchfork, though, isn’t only for winnowing; it is also for gathering, for bundling, for harvesting. In the midst of a particularly divisive season in the Presbyterian Church in America, this 49th Assembly may have an opportunity to turn the pitchforks away from one another and toward the harvest. Two overtures offer this hope for unity and a renewal of our common cause.
