Church Order Article 28a
Article 28 a. These assemblies shall transact ecclesiastical matters only, and shall deal with them in an ecclesiastical manner.
Skye Jethani on the Phil Vischer podcast quipped about the political “sacraments” for the right and the left in the US: abortion rights and gun rights. Thinking of them as “sacraments” I think is enlightening. Depending on how you view it they could go either way. Both sides clinging to guns and abortion in different way. both “tools” fundamentally employed as instruments for “life giving” or “life taking”. Both images tightly entwined as sacraments of freedom, autonomy and power.
Abortions aren’t done in church. Guns aren’t manufactured or sold in church. Both sides want to employ the church in their agenda to right a political, civil ship.
Doug VG has done us a service in his unstinting demand to recognize Article 28a. Other articles that get attention get blessed with lots of “supplements” bearing witness to Synodical attention. Famous articles like 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 17 and 23. Doug will makes sure that 28 get some love. 🙂
It’s hard not to see that the Christian life should inform our beliefs and behaviors when it comes to abortion and gun control. The Bible doesn’t say much about either directly, but we get God knitting us together in the womb and some pretty cutting words from Jesus about swords.
Church leaders might listen to Emily Dickinson
 Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind —
I can’t hear this and think about how Jesus entered into the very violent culture war and how that impacted his teaching.
One of Tim Keller’s big themes is idolatry. We can spot our inordinate loves often by inordinate anger. Anger, as the therapist tells us is neither good nor bad, but it like all of our emotions informs and communicates something of what is below. It illuminates our attachments.
The Christian church is beset by massive interpretive pluralism when it comes to theology, but this is equally true when it comes to our political application of our Christian beliefs. I often smile at the hubris of politics as it imagines it can save the world, but religion we can’t know. Do we lack sufficient pluralism in politics to realize this? Again, read the Christian debates prior to the Civil war are enlightening.
We would rightly embrace the idea that what is of utmost value, our commitment to our God requires our highest passions, yet the form of these passions need not be facile. The same Jesus wept mightily in the garden, cried in the anguish of abandonment on the cross, but had a face like flint to journey to Jerusalem, and was silent and resolute before Pilate and the Sanhedrin.
We surely want the church to inform and shape the moral and political lives of its members but what Article 28a asserts is that it must tell all the Truth but tell it slant. There are times, places, media and spaces for members to engage each other over politics but around the sacramental table they must be one. Article 28 tries to hedge the church from the urgency of the now so that the much longer story will not be lost in our passions of the moment.
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Leadingchurch.com 
Yes, the church tells it slant–and different churches have very different slants! There is no Church with a capital “C” that gets it all right, and that suggests every church (if not church members) should be very humble about what they try to tell slant. This, of course, is one of the insights that goes with sphere sovereignty.