The Constancy of Jesus’ Faithfulness above the Brokenness of Our Generations

A Review of Horizons: Generations
January/February 2007  

by
Viola Larson

The first article, “Better Together,” an excerpt from, Better Together: Restoring the American Community, by Robert D. Putnam and Lewis M. Feldstein with Don Cohen is very interesting. It highlights a particular problem for the United States, what the authors see as a lack of “social capital.” This means that people in America are failing to interact on a social level. It seems that most Americans prefer to be alone and no longer support social institutions such as church, school or community clubs. Even the intimate neighborhood associations are missing from peoples lives.

The authors write, “Once-familiar social activities—picnicking, playing cards with friends, even hanging out at the neighborhood bar—are fast becoming relics of a bygone era.” They explain how this has created a generation of Americans who fail in so many ways, including failure to trust others, to give to charity or to participate in political life.

 The authors insist that “Every institution, [the church is included], must make building social capital a principal goal or core value. To go further one reads, “Looking through a social capital lens, for example, we see front porches not as an architectural frill, but as an effective strategy for building strong, safe, friendly neighborhoods.”(Italics mine.) The authors of “Better Together,” in the end plead for institutions which will suit, “our times,” and honor “our values: diversity, tolerance, inclusiveness, equality, fairness, compassion, hope and public spiritedness.” (7) (Italics and bold mine.)

There are two problems with this article and they are a clue to what is wrong with the slant of the whole issue. The first problem: although the authors are writing about people and their need to interact with other people, they are using sociological and economic jargon which is dehumanizing. Well yes, front porches are nice, they offer a place to sit and wave at your neighbors or chat with them as they pass by. (Some of us even have little raised flower beds with a lamppost where the neighborhood kids like to sit and visit when they are finished roller skating.) But describing front porches as an “effective strategy” is part of the problem.

The other and far more serious problem is including the church among those democratic institutions which must strategize to “build social capital” by mirroring the times and values of American society. All of those values named by the authors are admirable ideals but as societies change so do their values.

In fact, in a changing society words such as diversity, tolerance and inclusiveness can be redefined. The book Animal Farm comes to mind. In it a group of totalitarian pigs redefine the word equality with the statement, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The truth is we are losing our humanity and will not gain it back without turning back to the one who took on himself our humanity, redeeming it on the cross. Only in union with Jesus Christ can the Church develop its relationship with society.

Here one is reminded of Karl Barth’s retort to the German Christian’s suggestion that the Church leaders of Germany must do all they could to bring the German people back into the Church in order to help fulfill the government’s vision of racial superiority. Barth wrote, “The Church has not ‘to do anything’ so that the German people ‘may find again the way into the church,’ but so that within the Church the people may find the Commandment and promise of the free and pure Word of God.” Continuing he writes:

It is not the Church’s function to help the German people to recognize and fulfill any one ‘vocation’ different from the ‘calling’ from and to Christ.  The German people receives its vocation from Christ to Christ through the Word of God to be preached according to the Scriptures. The Church’s task is the preaching of the Word.1

There are in this issue some good and practical articles about generations and how they help one another, such as Carol Gruber’s “Living In-Between: Caring for those who cared for you,” and “Mission in our Midst,” by David Gill. But all of the good and practical help is surrounded by articles and recommendations which redefine the Christian faith.

The redefining comes slowly and then escalates. For instance, “Coming Full Circle” is by Susan Baller-Shepard who, besides being a Presbyterian Pastor, is one of the founding members of The Spirituality Book Club.2 She also is an Ambassador to and has been a speaker at the World Spirit Forum: 3 WSF’s explanation of who they are includes the statement: “In many ways the WSF World Spirit Forum is part of an emerging evolutionary revolution of consciousness.”  

Baller-Shepard’s article focuses on the author’s ancestors and is an enjoyable read including her poem. Yet, one begins by thinking she will, within her generation, uphold biblical faith since she writes of the commandments of God and quotes (Deu.6:2), “So that your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life.”

Yet Baller-Shepard surprises with the statement, “I want to believe that she [her ancestor] lives within me, that her genes run in me to keep the wolves in my life at bay.” (13) Baller-Shepard, although speaking of God and his commandments seems to be redefining what it means to pass on the faith of our fathers and mothers. Her article is seemingly about passing on faithfulness in the sense of being faithful to the kinds of strengths our ancestors possess, rather than passing on the biblical faith in the one Triune God.

Baller-Shepard’s question about having done justice to the faith of her ancestors is hanging in the air. One is not sure. However the following article and recommendations are truly unfaithful.

Sylvia Thorson-Smith author of “Presbyterians and Gender Justice: The Church and Advocacy for Women,” redefines the meaning of Christian women’s advocacy. Added to what has always been worthy of Christian concerns, the poor and oppressed, the un-evangelized, victims of war and natural disasters, are such agendas as uplifting radical feminism, abortion on demand and the ordination of practicing homosexuals. This is also an incomplete history.

When Thorson-Smith makes such remarks as “The 1990s were traumatic and disruptive years for women’s groups.” or “The denomination was about to be tested on just how much latitude would be allowed for women’s prophetic authority.” she is writing about other faithful women in the PCUSA. Although she does not name them, does not agree with them and sees them as problematic to her agenda she is writing about them between the lines. She is writing about other women who advocated against the use of unbiblical theology, the promotion of sexual anarchy and the insistence of abortion on demand. She is writing about those women who in the 1990s stood against a continual onslaught of unbiblical and dehumanizing demands by the Presbyterian women leadership.4 

Sylvia Dooling, President of Voices of Orthodox Women, in an expose about Thorson-Smith’s article, points out that the author, “comes to her ‘recounting of the history of advocacy for women’ with a particular bias.”5 That is, that the organization, Voices of Sophia of which Thorson-Smith is a founding member, was formed out of and after the disastrous ReImagining Conference in 1993.6  Thorson-Smith refers to that conference and refers to it as a time of “women’s prophetic authority.” (16)

At that conference an idolatrous divinity figure, Sophia, was worshiped in place of the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Hilda Kuester, the woman who wrote the Milk and Honey Ritual, used at the conference, later wrote:

Creating rituals for the conference and then participating had a profound impact on me. One dramatic result of my experience is that I am beginning to hold a feminine image as my primary image of God. This was largely the result of discovering, as I wrote, all the richness in a fully developed, gender specific image of God as Sophia. . . . Seeing what flowed from my pen when Sophia was invoked, described, and praised created an inner shift. Unconsciously and spontaneously, my thoughts and language moved away from a neuter divinity to a feminine God with whom I connect in a very deep, primitive, and natural way.7

The women at the Conference also experienced several speakers ranting at the bloodied cross of Jesus Christ. In her article Thorson-Smith’s explanation of the Re-Imagining conference is disingenuous and this despite reliable and available primary sources. She writes, “The 2,200 women and men who attended shared the richness of women’s liturgical, theological and creative capacities. However, reports about ReImagining—the Sophia (God’s Wisdom) language, milk and honey rituals, critiques of atonement theology and the affirmation of lesbians—were deeply disturbing to many Presbyterian, who were surprised by these developments in Christian feminism.” (Italics mine.)

The truth is that while there are many areas that Presbyterian Women, Women’s Ministries and the Advocacy Committee for Women’s Concerns can biblically advocate for, need to advocate for, Thorson-Smith, along with these organizations, are still pushing an unbiblical agenda.

In fact, Thorson-Smith states that in the 80s “women were on the leading edge” in producing feminist theology. She writes that, “General Assembly, synod and presbytery advocacy groups sponsored numerous gatherings that included diverse theological presentations and creative liturgies.” (15) This is where the totalitarian ideology of the pigs of Animal Farm shows up. The words diverse and creative are redefined by all of these Presbyterian women’s ministries to mean an exclusive kind of theology. That is, diverse means all kinds of women’s theological understanding except those understandings which include high opinions of Scripture; creative, means all kinds of liturgical rites by women except those liturgies that speak of Father and Son.

Just as there is no book by a woman author who could be considered truly Reformed and evangelical in their view of Scripture in the  bibliography of women theologians on the Women’s Ministries site; usually recommended book lists in Horizons contain no Reformed author with a high view of Scripture. This issue of Horizons is not different. The Bible study resource, “The Diary of Hagar, the Wanderer: A Narrative Re-telling of Genesis 16; 21: 1-10,”written by Vanessa Hawkins, is innocuous; yet, nearly all of the recommended books at the end are heretical.

Some of these books, if I may use an oxymoron, are mildly radical. Just Wives? Stories of Power and Survival in the Old Testament and Today by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, simply retells stories from a women’s point of view. Still, she suggests that since the Wisdom figure of Proverbs is identified as Christ in the New Testament and the community of Proverbs is seen as male, it is possible to imagine the Church as the husband of Christ. This interpretation is meant to counteract the metaphor of Israel as the wife of God in Hosea.

On the other hand, Helpmates, Harlots, Heroes: Women’s Stories in the Hebrew Bible by Alice Ogden Bellis, is a compilation of radical feminist interpretation while Delores S. Williams’ Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, among other things denies the atoning death of Christ on the cross. The most grievous book is Gender, Power and Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story by Danna Nolan Fewell and David M. Gunn.

The authors attempt to destroy God, the ultimate subject of Scriptures. They write in their introduction, “The notion that the figure God in the biblical text is actually God who is worshiped by Jewish and Christian believers seems to us to be, ironically, a form of idolatry such as biblical voices constantly warned against.”8  In the chapter on Genesis, slipping into radical gnosticism, the authors suggest that God is unsure whether he is plural or singular.

They write, “Thus despite the appearance of a world ordered and sustained by exclusive and fixed definitions; God’s own blurred and slipping world might in fact be as inherently indeterminable as the identity that creates it.”9 Any foundation linked to the faith of older generations is swept away by these authors and by those Horizons Editors who would suggest such a book. The pragmatism of Presbyterian Women’s leadership may include care for the bodies of an older generation but they seemingly do not care for the whole person, that is, body and soul.

In the midst of their continuing effort to change Scripture, reinterpret biblical teaching, yes, and even redefine the Lord God of the Church, Presbyterian Women must face the steadfast faithfulness of Jesus Christ. They are unfaithful, he is faithful still.The author of the book of Hebrews writes, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Heb 13:8) In that sameness of care, compassion and redeeming love, Jesus Christ reaches out to all generations, from the pages of Scripture, from the throne of his Father, with the urging of the Holy Spirit, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10: 27-30 NAS)