Equivocation

Who could not admire many aspects of Dr. Richard Mouw?  His address to a presbytery is found at http://www.fellowship-pcusa.org/. It was a string of name dropping, organization dropping <sic>, and just plain equivocation.  He calls for unity between those on each side of every moral and theological contest. While dark and light have no fellowship - shades of grey can always find a friend.

On interfaith relations, we learn that some of his friends are Jewish and that he stands squarely against those who after 9/11 assaulted a "little Muslim" boy. He did say we ought not to compare our best with their worst. Certainly, that is wise. On Liberalism, again, some of his best friends are liberals and they are, none of them,  as terribly bad as some of us think they are.(Try to unpack the unsupported assumptions in that declaration.)

His is a kind of Hegelian exercise of condemning the polarities and finding the golden mean. Put your head in a hot oven and your feet in the freezer and you'll be just the right temperature in your golden middle. He puts the notion of forbidding all homosexual behavior at one end; with the idea of permitting all homosexual behavior on the other. The golden mean looks something like a committed same-sex relationships – that might, one day convert to heterosexuality. Now he always creates an escape hatch some would call "plausible denial-ability." Any administer worth his salt knows how to do that.

Dr. Mouw tells one story of shooting pool with a stranger who discloses to him that he homosexual. Not only is he homosexual but he is also a pastor of a Mainline congregation. We learn that this man takes clandestine trips out of town to seek out anonymous sexual encounters. We then learn that Dr. Mouw courageously takes a hard and fast moral position on the question of sexual promiscuity. His caveat comes quickly.  He is equally opposed to heterosexually undiscriminating sexual behavior. He continues his biographical account of this former stranger who now reports to him regularly about his quest for romantic closure. The man leaves the ministry, and also his wicked ways and enters into a lifelong mutually endearing religiously bonded same-sex partnership. Now, we get the moral of the story. Apparently, this man is not far from the kingdom. It seems sin becomes less sinful as one more boldly practices it. For now, I suppose, at least they are honest about it.

Does this pragmatic approach rightly answer our moral, spiritual, and doctrinal impasse?  Well it may not be the final answer, but that is not for lack of trying. There is a certain type of evangelical, whose steeples tend to be tall; who always wants us to look at all sides of a question before choosing the middle ground between two opposites?

Do we stay or do we go? Our Renewal leaders say, “Both. We stay but we go.” We remain members of the PC(USA) but form a separate synod and, by squinting our eyes till they are nearly closed we pretend we really didn’t leave.