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The Unity of this Denomination

Barry Ensign-George

What is it that makes us a distinct denomination?  What commitments, beliefs, and practices do we share that are wide and solid enough to provide ground on which we can all stand?

For anyone who's been following news of the PCUSA it will be clear that these are pressing questions today.  Now.  But I believe that we always face these questions, that those who went before us faced these questions again and again, that those who come after us will face these questions again and again.

There are times when we broadly share answers to these questions, times when consensus is broad and solid.  Never complete, but broad and solid.  And then there are times when we don't have broadly shared answers to these questions, when consensus is thin and unstable.  Times when consensus is thin and unstable require us to build new consensus, unless we surrender the search for consensus altogether.  Much about our common life suggests consensus is thin and unstable today.

Our PCUSA Constitution is built on the notion that we have broad consensus about the content of faith, and the structures of our life together flow from our shared beliefs.  That's why the Book of Confessions is part of our Constitution, the first and primary part, and can only be revised by a super-majority.  But already the adoption of an anthology of confessional documents as our confession of faith was a step away from the assumption that shared beliefs would provide the consensus that would ground the unity of this denomination.

For a time polity provided a sort of consensus about that which provides the key part of our unity.  Whatever our differing theological outlook and training, the rules would be shared by all and thus provide a single structure in which we would dwell.  Except that didn't work out very well in the end.  The endlessly expanding Book of Order is the result of that route to denominational unity, and the long work on the nFOG is testimony that many among us believe that route is a dead-end.

The closeness of our votes on contested issue bears eloquent witness to the narrowness of consensus in our life as a denomination.  Whether we end up approving nFOG, or disapproving and staying with what we've got, either way we face the challenge of building broad consensus.  

The basis of unity for our denomination must be Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is the basis of unity for all Christians.  Jesus Christ unites us with Christians in the Roman Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God, the Reformed Church in America, the Friends Meeting, members of non-denominational congregations, and all others - even (dare we acknowledge it?) those Presbyterian groups alongside us, like, say, the Presbyterian Church in America.  But Roman Catholics, members of the Assemblies, and the RCA, Friends, members of non-denominational congregations, and the PCA are not part of the PCUSA.  We live our unity with them in a different way than we live our unity within the PCUSA.  There is something more to us than our unity in Christ.  It is that something more which provides the consensus that gathers us together in this particular, distinctly PCUSA way of following Jesus Christ.

So, what do you believe is that "something more" for us?  Where do we have consensus that is broad and solid enough for all of us to stand on it together?  What shared commitments, beliefs, and practices will have a strong enough gravitational pull to keep us one denomination?  Building new consensus - that's good, challenging, rewarding work!

• Posted at 4:10 a.m.
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