Faithful Disagreement: Wrestling with Scripture in the Midst of Church Conflict

By Frances Taylor Gench

Conflict is all too common in the church today. But as Frances Taylor Gench reminds us in this book, conflict over scriptural interpretation has been with the church since its earliest days. Gench reflects on those early experiences of conflict, presenting substantive studies of biblical texts showing that discord (such as Romans 14-15; Matthew 14; Jeremiah 28; 1 Corinthians 12-14; John 13-17) and drawing lessons from each about how it informs current conflicts in the church. In the process, she provides a constructive resource to help Christians wrestle with Scripture in the midst of their disagreements. This innovative book can be used by individuals and in groups. Numerous study questions conclude each chapter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Apr 2, 2009
• ISBN: 9781611644142

Frances Taylor Gench

Frances Taylor Gench is the Herbert Worth and Annie H. Jackson Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. She is the author of Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels, Encounters with Jesus: Studies in the Gospel of John, and Faithful Disagreement: Wrestling with Scripture in the Midst of Church Conflict.

Book preview

Faithful Disagreement

Faithful Disagreement

Wrestling with Scripture in the Midst of Church Conflict

FRANCES TAYLOR GENCH

© 2009 Frances Taylor Gench

First edition

Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18—10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202–1396. Or contact us online at www.wjkbooks.com.

Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission.

Chapter 7, Farewell Conversations, is herein reprinted from chapter 10 of Frances Taylor Gench, Encounters with Jesus: Studies in the Gospel of John (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) and is used with permission of the publisher.

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by Jennifer K. Cox

Cover art courtesy of La Fleur Studio, © Images.com/Corbis

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gench, Frances Taylor, 1956–

Faithful disagreement: wrestling with Scripture in the midst of church conflict / Frances Taylor Gench.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

Includes indexes.

ISBN 978-0-664-23338-9 (alk. paper)

1. Church controversies—Biblical teaching. 2. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.

I. Title.

BV652.9.G46 2009 250—dc22

2008039361

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Westminster John Knox Press advocates the responsible use of our natural resources. The text paper of this book is made from at least 30% postconsumer waste.

With Gratitude

Mark Achtemeier

Scott D. Anderson

Barbara Everitt Bryant

Milton J Coalter

Victoria G. Curtiss

Gary W. Demarest

Jack Haberer

William Stacy Johnson

Mary Ellen Lawson

Jong Hyeong Lee

John B. (Mike) Loudon

Joan Kelley Merritt

Lonnie J. Oliver

Martha D. Sadongei

Sarah Grace Sanderson-Doughty

Jean S. (Jenny) Stoner

José Luis Torres-Milán

Barbara G. Wheeler

John Wilkinson

Gradye Parsons

Bobbie Montgomery

Sharon Youngs

Contents

Introduction

1. Arguing about Scripture: Johannine Epistles and Dirty Laundry

(1 John 2:18–25; 1 John 4; 2 John)

2. Stepping Out of the Boat in the Midst of a Storm

(Matthew 14:22–33)

3. Living with Disagreements

(Romans 14:1–15:13)

4. Testing the Spirits I

(Jeremiah 28)

5. Testing the Spirits II

(1 Corinthians 12–14)

6. Conflict over Qualifications for Church Leadership

(1 Timothy 3:1–16 and 5:17–25)

7. Farewell Conversations

(John 13–17)

Notes

Scripture and Ancient Source Index

Subject Index

Introduction

Church conflicts are always family feuds, for believers—like it or not—are bound to each other by baptism as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. And family feuds beget a peculiar pain and intensity. My hope for this book is that it might foster conversation in the midst of church conflict—conversation with both the Bible and fellow Christians with whom we disagree. While it grows out of my own engagement with ecclesial conflict in a particular denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Presbyterians are hardly the only Christians absorbed in family feuds at present. Thus I hope the studies presented here can be a resource for reflection in other conflicted churches as well. Conflict is a perennial reality in the life of the Christian community, and whatever its focus or setting (congregational or denominational), the Bible can help us live more faithfully with our disagreements and more fully into the peace, unity, and purity that is God’s gift to us in Jesus Christ.

But there is a catch: this requires that we read it. The Bible, to be sure, features prominently in most ecclesial family feuds, given our reverence for it. All parties to a church conflict typically invoke it to justify their own positions. Indeed, many of us are quite accomplished at arguing about the Bible. But ironically, as theologian John Burgess tellingly observes, Presbyterians are better at asserting the authority of Scripture than at actually opening the Bible—and I suspect the same holds true for more than a few Lutherans, Methodists, and Episcopalians (not to mention others). As Burgess notes, The church’s appeal to biblical authority is more often rhetorical than real. Our arguments about Scripture frequently expose just how little we really know the Bible itself. We appeal to a select handful of passages to justify our positions but lack the capacity to order Scripture as a whole. We say that the Bible matters but spend remarkably little time actually reading it.¹ What is needed? Burgess insists that the church desperately needs to recover practical disciplines of reading Scripture as a Word of God. We do not simply need a better method of interpretation; we need a piety, a different set of dispositions and attitudes toward Scripture. We need a reverent confidence that these words set forth a Word of God for us. … We cannot simply wait for the church to get its act together; we must begin now to rediscover the power of Scripture to remold us as a community of faith.²

The point I wish to underscore is that we need not only to read the Bible, but to do so in the company of others—especially in the company of those with whom we disagree. What if we were to stop shaking it at each other, actually open it, and read it together? The challenge would be learning to listen—to both the Bible and each other. Learning to listen to the Bible is an ongoing challenge throughout our lives, for as Karl Barth once warned, the Bible does not always answer our questions, but sometimes calls our questions into question.³ But listening to the Bible in the midst of church conflict presents its own difficulties. Raymond E. Brown wisely put his finger on the problem when he said, I contend that in a divided Christianity, instead of reading the Bible to assure ourselves that we are right, we would do better to read it to discover where we have not been listening.⁴ For this we need the company of others, especially our adversaries; but learning to listen to them—even sitting down with them!—is every bit as difficult, given our tendency to deny that those we disagree with have anything to teach us.

The studies in this book grew out of a profoundly challenging learning experience in the art of listening in which I was engaged over the course of five years (2001–2006), and a few words about that experience are needed, as it is referenced at several points in the chapters that follow. In 2001 the 213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) decided that our deeply conflicted denomination needed a theological task force to wrestle with the issues uniting and dividing us as Presbyterians, praying that with the help of the Holy Spirit we might lead the church in discernment of our Christian identity and of ways that our church might move forward, furthering its peace, unity, and purity. Three of its moderators—Jack Rogers (2001), Syngman Rhee (2000), and Freda Gardner (1999)—were directed to appoint members. So in their infinite wisdom, these three former moderators collared twenty Presbyterians as different from one another as they could possibly be—twenty Presbyterians who under ordinary circumstances never would have dreamed of hanging out together! So much of the diversity within the PC(USA) was reflected on our task force that when he first met with us, Stated Clerk Cliff Kirkpatrick told us that his office had received no complaints about the makeup of the task force, but had been asked repeatedly, "How will they ever get along? Most of us were wondering the same thing when we first got together. I for one was not at all sure that I wanted to be drafted. But friends and comrades in the pitched battles in which we found ourselves engaged exhorted me to take it on, to get in there and speak the truth. So I put on the whole armor of God and flew to Dallas ready to knock heads and speak the truth." This was going to be my opportunity to set some very misguided Presbyterians straight.

Over the course of our five years together, we task force members received a great deal of mail, representing the entire spectrum of opinion in our church—much of it exhorting us to speak the truth—a lot of that exhortation accompanied by biblical quotation and commentary and threats of hell and eternal damnation. Indeed, one of the most important things I learned from the whole experience was that we have all been so busy speaking the truth to each other that nobody has been listening! We aren’t actually having a conversation! We’ve all got truth by the short hairs, everyone else is in denial, and we have to set them straight. I came to recognize an important form that denial often takes in my own life, perhaps in yours as well: the denial that people I disagree with have anything to teach me.

It was a hard lesson to learn, but one for which I am grateful and for which I have twenty diverse Presbyterians, to whom this book is dedicated, to thank—people with whom, as it turned out, I had more in common than I had imagined. Every one of us entered our journey together with trepidation, not at all sure it would be a joyful part of our service to the church. But it turned out to be the most powerful experience of the Holy Spirit I had ever had, as a genuine sense of community formed among this very diverse group. An important part of our work was learning how to lower the decibel level—to speak our truths with love and respect, but also to listen to each other, to engage in genuine conversation, to really try to hear and understand another point of view.

The Bible had much to teach us about that and was indispensable to our engagement. Indeed, daily Bible study together whenever we met played no small role in the genuine sense of community that emerged among us and in our recognition of each other as fellow disciples of Jesus Christ. It was also an essential resource for our discernment on matters uniting and dividing our denomination. Every one of us experienced anew its power to shape and transform us as a community of faith. This book has emerged out of that experience and seeks to facilitate it for others.

The studies in the chapters that follow feature several of the biblical texts that we engaged as a group, but this book is not the work of the PC(USA)’s Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church, and members of it should not be held responsible for the views articulated here, which are my own. (The collaborative document representing our consensus at the end of our journey is titled A Season of Discernment: The Final Report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church to the 217th General Assembly (2006) and can be found at http://www.pcusa.org/peaceunitypurity.) However, I am indebted to my task force colleagues for much that I learned about these texts in conversation with them. I am also indebted to many other Presbyterians throughout the denomination and in classrooms at Union-PSCE with whom I have engaged in reflection around these texts in recent years.

Seven Bible studies follow. Chapter 1 considers the practice of arguing about Scripture in connection with the Johannine epistles (1, 2, 3 John), which reflect the traumatic aftermath of a ferocious family quarrel about interpretation of Scripture. Both dangers and insights attested in these letters can inform our own practice of arguing about Scripture in our time and place. Chapter 2 examines the story of Jesus’ and Peter’s walking on the water (Matt. 14:22–33), which conveys significant affirmations about the identity of Jesus to and for the church, especially as it faces storms and attendant fears that conflict will undo us. Chapter 3 examines the apostle Paul’s closing exhortation to the church at Rome (Rom. 14:1–15:13), where argumentative discourse is threatening the unity and stability of the church. Paul presents a fascinating discussion about living with disagreements, insisting that some things that appear to divide Christians deeply in terms of their practice are, in fact, things indifferent that are not essential for faith or salvation. Such differences do not need to be resolved. However, in some cases essentials are perceived to be at stake and differences must be adjudicated. And what are we to do when believers disagree about the Spirit’s leading—when we find ourselves in conflict over our discernment of the will and work of God? Both the Old Testament and New Testament wrestle with the question of discernment, or testing of spirits, and chapters 4 and 5 consider classic accounts of this wrestling, one from each testament (Jer. 28 and 1 Cor. 12–14). As ordination standards are the focus of conflict in many mainline denominations, chapter 6 considers a snapshot from the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim. 3 and 5) of the early church’s wrestling with qualifications and standards for church leadership.