An Illustration

The ad in Saturday's Kansas City Star in opposition to the actions of the PC (USA)'s General Assembly decision to maintain ordination standards and reaffirm the responsibility of local bodies to ordain their own has one decisevely telling element: a quotation of Judges 21:25, "In those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did was was right in their own eyes."

Renewal groups within the denomination have produced this illustration as a kind of talking point for conservatives. NPH thinks it points up precisely the difference between the victimized alarmist conservatives and the rest of the church. The reference is of course to a collection of individuals in pre-regal Israel all doing their own thing. The implication is that the PC (USA) is now akin to a mere collection of individuals who have sanction to do what is right in their own eyes.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the GA's actions further bound members of the PC (USA) to one another and to a set of standards for ordination. More loosely, the assembly's actions asserted the binding character of the "essentials" of Reformed faith and polity upon those who would be ordained as officers.

Opponents of this action have a deeply flawed view of the situation and their role in it. They claim the objective, morally privileged, position of Biblical adherents relentlessly set upon by a relatavistic mass of faithless liberals out to assert their political agenda. It's a view of matters that makes the facts almost impossible to discern.