Recent CRC Study Committee Efforts on Same Sex Marriage and Same Sex Attraction
At Synod 2011 Classis Grand Rapids East overtured Synod to found a new study committee to take another look at the 1973 report on Homosexuality. While some in the church hoped this would open things up to new practice in the CRC on this subject many more feared it would cause more division and melee. What came out this was the launch of the Pastoral Guidance . Reflecting the mood of the majority of the CRC and the will of Synod this team was kept within the boundaries of the 73 report. Here was its mandate.
- Address questions on same-sex marriage, including but not limited to those in Overtures 12 and 13.
- Identify and guide the churches, members, and clergy regarding the ramifications of the legal, ethical, and spiritual issues that they face
- Identify resources and best practices that will facilitate ministry and directly communicate them to the churches
- Follow the shepherding model used by the synodical Faith Formation Committee (Minutes of Synod 2013, Article 69)
In the words of a friend the effort resulted in an elegant failure. The committee itself could not produce a unified report and so far judging from the overtures to Synod and other responses it has divided the church and the conversation more than unified it.
In response to this there are again new calls for yet another Synodical Study Committee. I am pessimistic that this path will produce the kind of fruit we want and need.
Weaknesses of the Synodical Study Committee Format for this Conflict
Part of the weakness of Synodical Study Committees is that in our polity each Synod is an independent thing. “Synod” does not really live throughout the year. This was attempted to be made up for by the old “Synodical Interim Committee” which was eventually replaced by the “Board of Trustees” in an attempt to allow “Synod” to govern the agencies it created during the 20th century. The conversation around that whole structural process is another interesting one but not really the subject of this posting.
Normally the members of a Synodical Study Committees are chosen by the officers of the particular Synod which mandated the committee. The officers of a particular Synod are chosen at that Synod (they have no time to prepare to officiate at that Synod) and most of their duties end with the adjournment of that Synod with the exception of helping the program committee for the subsequent Synod. Now this may be more than you want to know, but it impacts how Synodical Study Committees are constituted. Officers of Synod live the week of Synod in a kind of a management blender. They have to not only manage the Synod they are officiating at but if Synod asks for a new study committee the process is very dependent upon the judgment, impressions, biases and relational networks of the people in the room. It’s amazing that the process as worked as well as it has given these significant liabilities. What tends to happen is that these dynamics will then shape the potential outcomes of the Synodical Study Committees. The immediate rush after Synod decides to have a study committee is the political scrum of different factions to get “the right” people on that committee.
While the polite, idealistic notion, even mythology around a Synodical Study committee is that it is supposed to be composed of “the brightest and the best” of our denomination the gritty political truth is that they are often the product of a political process. The way to insure the message from “on high” is correct (in terms of outcome) is to make sure you get “the right” people on that team. You can hear this in the subtext of the new calls, now from the conservative side, for a new Study Committee to look at these questions all over again.
The Synodical Study Committee Process Failed the WICO Conversation
It is instructive to look back at how this worked, or didn’t during the long struggle over Women in Church Office (WICO) in the CRC. Multiple study committees were appointed often returning to Synod offering conflicting advice further politicizing the study committee process. To me it doesn’t make much sense to replay this now with respect to the same-sex marriage conversation and the far more broad and looming LGBTQ conversations speeding towards us.
- What resulted from that process was a political compromise that contributed to the URC split and an uneasy procedural process that multiplied and disseminated the battlegrounds into the classes and local churches.
- There remains today hurt on various levels.
- Women at synods and classes and local councils sometimes feel unwelcome because individuals or significant groups don’t believe they should be there.
- Leaders and churches who do not believe the Bible permits women to serve in office struggle with how and whether to participate in assemblies where women are seated.
- While many on both sides try to be gracious and polite hurt and resentment often boil beneath the surface.
- These resentments get shared and vented among allies apart from “the other side” resulting on ongoing factions and disunity.
- Both sides fear losing ground and maintain conflicted vigilance hoping to one day drive the other side from the field.
Is this what we call success? Is this what we call peace? Is this what we call unity?
If the CRC takes a similar approach to same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ issues the results can hardly expect to be better. Because this issue is seen in a narrative of progression with WICO the results will likely be MORE explosive, divisive and destructive. We need a better way forward.
Even an Adjusted Synodical Study Committee is NOT the Right Tool
For Synod 2013 the way out of this was to confine the Pastoral Guidance committee and to mandate the “Shepherding Model”, hoping to duplicate the felt success of the Faith Formation team. Now looking at Synod 2016 if these measures were supposed to reduce the polarized environment of this conversation they seem to have failed.
I think the Synodical Study Committee process as currently imagined is not the right tool for this conversation. For this reason I have been writing about what I call a “Confessional Conversation”
Those with which I’ve been in conversation, on CRC-Voices, on the CRC Pastor’s Facebook Group, in the Returning Church forum on Facebook, in the Leadingchurch.com comments section and on Twitter have been asking for more particulars.
- What does a “Confessional Conversation” look like?
- How would we go about having a confessional conversation?
- Could we write a new confession?
- Does it make sense to write new confessions when we ignore the ones we already have?
- Can we do this when we already have a weakened sense of authority?
I don’t know. I’m making this stuff up as I go alone. I think I’ve now got some ideas that I’m going to share in a a subsequent post that I’m working on so stay tuned.
This is Something that Will Arise from Community and Conversation
We all need to feel our way forward through this together.
So please contribute. Post responses to this on various forums. Share this conversation with others who are interested and concerned. Talk with one another.
Don’t silo your conversation. Talk with your friends and rivals in this conflict. Listen and learn. Write your diatribes and share your screeds but don’t just preach to the choir.
The focus should be confessional.
- “This I believe”.
- “These are the filters through which I understand the Bible”
- “these are the contours of my theology”
Make explicit your presuppositions so we can look at them together.
My next post on this subject will be what a Confessional Conversation could look like and how we might pursuit it.
Leadingchurch.com 
I like your analysis of how we handled the WICO question. We didn’t answer the larger questions of how far progressivism goes for the church today. As I’ve wrestled with the question for years, some more clear thinking on topics like the time conditioned quality of Scripture, or how the culture of the Bible times should and should not influence today’s application etc. would have helped me out tremendously. The greater the question, the more likely it is that a local option will not work. My hope is that with the LGBT questions, we may have a chance as a denomination to go back and do our homework. We might find an impasse and total organizational unity may not be an option. Then again, we may find a way to keep the whole family together after all. But if we do, it has to be an honest unity wherein all are convinced that staying together is the best way to grow closer to Christ.
Thanks Jeff. With WICO we rushed to a political compromise that created a path for WICO. We did not adequately, nor I suspect could we have then, really engaged in the deeper issues. The poverty of that solution should have been apparent in the way the URC split happened and it continues to be an irritant and a cause for division even in places where women are serving freely and openly. I see the pain both with my women friends who are ordained and don’t feel welcome and the pain with my complementarian friends who don’t feel welcome or respected either. We have winners and losers while the wounds continue to fester. Can we do better? Should we try to do better? I want to do better.
So Paul, how do you envision this new “Confessional Conversation” happening? And, like with WICO how do you see any better results if this “CC” emanates out of local councils. Isn’t that what all the overtures really are? How would this “CC” be any different? I know you’ve written on this but is seems way to pie in the sky optimistic an idea knowing the deeply divided theological nature of our denomination. Why would you expect a good or better result than what happened with the 95 Synodically introduced Church Order supplement?
That’s what I’m working on next. I’ve got a family and a day job too so sometimes things get bumped. 🙂
I was curious about the same thing… how does a confessional conversation solve this?
Ugh. Hopefully I’ll find time this week. “solve” is too strong a word probably. We’re hopefully feeling our way in a dark room. We’ll need to back off of “solutions” and look more for “improvements” probably, short of a miracle at least.
Hi Paul,
One of the unspoken (all too often) barriers to productive conversation in this matter is the distractingly narrow focus on LG to the (temporary) exclusion of BTQIAA…etc. As the church tags along seeking earnestly to ape the society around, it becomes quite evident that once LG has been normalized, the other letters follow. This is in fact the end game, both in the culture and in the church (see Gritter, Wendy or All One Body if in doubt). If we are to be honest and realistic about the questions facing the church, we can’t ignore this fact. The question(s) run much deeper than sexuality and really get to the heart of identity and who defines or sets that identity. The culture around us is in the full throes of a complete throwing-off of the shackles of any (bliblical or otherwise) sexual and gender norms, except the norming norm: autonomy of self. Can we claim autonomy while also claiming an identity in Christ? What does rebellion against God and his created order look like if it doesn’t look like the claims of absolute autonomy, self-identity, and self-realization that we see ruling the cultural conversation today? Until we can agree on the parameters of what is at stake and the parameters of biblical authority, I think there is little hope for anything other than protracted disagreement, whether by competing overtures (which often have confessional qualities) or by competing confessions.
Paul,
That said, I agree with your analysis and critique of Synodical study committees.