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Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Just want to make sure I'm not here by myself.

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It is my distinct pleasure to introduce to you Barbara Wheeler. She is the director of Auburn Centers for the Study of Theological Education, which she founded in 1991 while serving as Auburn's president, a post that she held for 30 years. Ms. Wheeler writes, speaks on American religious life and theological education.

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She consults widely with seminaries, denominations, foundations, and congregations concerned about the future of religious leadership and religious institutions. She is an author of numerous articles and reports, And she is a member of the Presbyterian Church USA and an elder at, and I may get this wrong, Bethel Peniel Presbyterian Church in Granville, New York. She has served for the church at a national level and is a member of several task forces with respect to the PC USA.

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Ms. Wheeler is a graduate of Barnard College and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Hamilton College. It is with great pleasure and my distinct honor to introduce to you Barbara Wheeler. I have what might be described as a candid relationship with President Ward Law.

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This morning he said to me, Barbara, you're short. Speak from the pulpit. I am short.

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I'm going to put this down. Thank you, Ted. Thank you to the Alumni Association of Austin Seminary for inviting me to be part of this midwinter lecture series. Before this December,

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I thought that I had developed a complete immunity to Christmas. Not just the commercial appeals, but also the religious excesses. It's just too much for any one liturgical moment. The over-the-top decorations, the nonstop carols, the extra candlelit services.

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I'd even lost my appetite for what used to be the high point of the season for me. the festival of 9 lessons and carols from King's College, Cambridge, with its elegant harmonies and more or less Elizabethan English. So this year I was listening to the Christmas Eve broadcast of that service with about half an ear as I rolled out pie crust dough. Then I heard these words.

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First, let us pray for the needs of his whole world. for peace and goodwill over all the earth, for unity and brotherhood within the church he came to build. Much as the dry-eyed Presbyterian in me hates to admit it, I felt a catch in my throat. A true meaning of Christmas sprang into view.

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He came down to earth to build the church. Jesus was born not to provide a baby savior for each of us to cuddle separately, but rather to incorporate us, to seal us with him to each other as his body on the earth. He came so that in the church and by the church and through the church, we could act out his peace and his goodwill to all creatures. And what are we doing, we Christians, two millennia after his birth?

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We are fracturing our churches. We are breaking up his body into ever-finer pieces. Christian religion rarely makes the headlines these days, but when it does, the story almost always involves some new or further rupture. All branches of Christianity are affected.

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But it seemed especially poignant this Christmas Eve that a prayer for the unity of the church he came to build was offered in King's College Chapel, an icon of the Anglican churches that are, as we speak, tearing their worldwide communion apart. The thought brought tears to my eyes. I guess I'm not completely resistant to the strong emotions of Christmas. In his book, The Dignity of Difference, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminds us that religious conflict is not an isolated phenomenon.

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He describes A tragic irony. At the same time that globalization brings us closer to the one interdependent world of which idealists have long dreamed. It brings us face to face with people very different from us, whom in an earlier time we would never have met.

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So much difference creates fear of the unknown other and activates our age-old human tendency to protect ourselves by, these are sacks words, disliking the unlike. The result is a new tribalism. Nation-states, societies, and religions are all being divided and then subdivided again into tribes, groups that promise to confer a distinctive identity, a clear definition of who we are amid all this difference.

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Identity offers security. It binds together a group that will look out for its members' interests. But as Sacks points out, it also inevitably divides. The very process of creating an us involves creating a them, the people not like us.

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Sacks' argument in The Dignity of Difference is that religious differences, so often cited as the root cause of tribalism, are indeed that. At the same time, these differences are also essential ingredients of the only cure for tribalism, which he calls covenant. Sachs paints with a broad brush on a huge canvas to make his case that the great religious traditions are indispensable resources if the world is to restrain the evils and realize the potential of global capitalism. What I want to do in these lectures is to make the same argument in miniature, focusing on the differences that are splintering North American mainline Protestant denominations.

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Mainline Protestants are not, of course, the only tribalistic religious groups around, but they are my people, and I imagine most of you in this audience would say the same. So they offer a good place for us to start. Today, I want to take a hard, confessional look at the destructively tribalistic tendencies within our denominations. Tomorrow, following Rabbi Sack's lead, I will try to make the case that our differences can play a major role in strengthening the church that Jesus Christ came to build.

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Groups. This is not the place for elaborate social theories, but it does seem that within the vast expanse of the human race, people need to cluster in groups that provide patterns of organization, shared beliefs that orient us to common goals, and cultures that undergird the patterns of daily life and give expression to our aspirations and values. Groups are necessary to sustain social life. They also can undermine that very function.

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A tribe, as the term is now being widely used, is a special kind of group. It's the undermining kind. It impresses on its members the superiority of its particular organization, beliefs, and cultural values. It places the well-being of the tribe over every other group and the welfare of its members over everyone who doesn't belong to it.

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The theological parties and affinity groups that have proliferated in mainline denominations in recent decades have characteristics of tribes. Lest those of you who belong to such groups get too agitated by that statement to listen further, Let me remind you, I'm going to look at those same groups tomorrow through a very different lens as sources of hope for the future. But all of us, on the left, on the right, and in the big mass in the center that calls itself not a group, have a lot to repent.

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Admitting our faults and offenses prepares us to receive the grace of repentance. So it's critical that first we confess our tribal sins together. The most destructive practices of tribes fall under the heading of idolatry. Tribes worship not a living God who transcends their particular needs and interests and links them to those of others, but little local gods

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which are, as Psalm 115 says, the work of human hands. Idols, the psalmist reminds us, are deities that because we make them, are artificial, are not alive. They have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see, they have have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell.

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They have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk. Those who make them are like them. So are all who trust in them. The psalmist's images give us one way to index the idolatrous practices of our organizations and informal affinity groups into which we've divided our churches

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and to which we are often more loyal than we are to the church as a whole. Let's look first at what we say and to whom, then at how we listen but don't hear, and last at how we interact with our fellow Christians. Here, using those headings, is my catalog of contemporary mainline Protestant idolatry. Speaking

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The people of God have a mandate to spread the word as widely as possible. To the ends of the earth and even beyond, says Psalm 22, to a people yet unborn. That's how urgently and persuasively we should be talking about the mighty acts of God, so that even future generations, when they come upon our words, will get the message. We contemporary mainline Protestants do a lousy job of broadcast.

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Instead, we, like other religious groups that Rabbi Sacks criticizes, more often narrowcast. That's his term. We talk to ourselves. We forego opportunities to engage the other side in searching conversation in favor of slogans that fire up our own tribe's troops.

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Let me make this case by example. This year in my denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA, the salient issue in the long-running debate about the moral status of same-sex relationships is marriage. A special committee on civil unions and Christian marriage was appointed. Its members were chosen for the diversity of their views.

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Not surprisingly, they could not agree on either the presenting issue, whether Presbyterian churches and ministers may participate in legally licensed same-sex marriage ceremonies if they choose to do so, nor could they agree on the basic question that underlies that. Are same-sex relationships always and everywhere wrong in the sight of God, as my denomination currently teaches? Last fall, the task force issued a preliminary report. Lots of history and description, but not yet any recommendations.

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They asked for comment and suggestions from persons and groups in the denomination. Here, if ever, was an opportunity for broadcast evangelism. The topic was a hot one, not only in the church, but also in the wider society. Lots of people were paying attention.

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Now would have been the time, for those of us who have strong convictions about the issues involved and who think that those convictions are rooted in the Christian gospel, now would have been the time to proclaim in the most compelling terms, to use our best arguments, our most persuasive rhetoric, to address the concerns of those who take a position different from our own. The research I've done on responses to the task force's invitation suggests that we did exactly the opposite. Presbyterians for Renewal, a conservative group that sometimes takes a more moderate tone than its allied conservative groups, stated its deep convictions in the matter,

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that only heterosexual marriage conforms to God's plan for humanity, and expressed its sorrow that the task force did not affirm that position. Then the PFR statement offered a suggestion. The committee should study the biblical, confessional, and theological grounds for the various positions held by the committee's members and the segments of the denomination those members represent. At first look, that seemed like a wonderful idea.

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Give each party the chance to make its best case, using all the resources of the faith to do so. But then, in the next sentence, the statement says this. Presbyterians for Renewal believes the revisionist position that would bless same-gender relationships can only be defended by ignoring or rejecting the clear teaching of the Bible and of our confessions.

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Let us focus on the dialogue on Scripture and the confessions so the denomination can plainly see which position is rooted in the authoritative sources of our faith and life. Rather than inviting those with other views into conversation, on the chance that they might have something to say, and PFR might have something to learn, PFR seems to be making its proposal for further searching of the resources of the faith only because it's certain to prove PFR correct without remainder. And the others, whom they label revisionists, either ignorant or willfully neglectful of Holy Scripture and Christian doctrine.

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Do the authors of the PFR statement really think this? I doubt it. Other parts of their statement reveal a moderate temper, especially their commitment to stay at the denominational table, despite the fact that the special committee hasn't adopted their view. I know some leaders of that organization.

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They're good people, they're not arrogant, and they're orthodox Reformed Christians who would readily subscribe to the section of the Westminster Confession that famously says that all synods or councils since the apostles' time, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred, and therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both. So why does PFR claim that their position must be the only rule of faith and practice? Because that's what groups do when they're in tribal mode. In order to stir up tribal spirit, they proclaim their own rightness and the worthlessness of other tribes, especially their opponents.

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It's great preparation for battle. But if the goal is persuasive proclamation of the truth to the other side and to the world beyond, statements like PFRs are counterproductive. Card-carrying Presbyterian liberals like me, having first been labeled with a name we didn't choose, revisionists, with its overtones of tinkering with the truth, and then told that our position can be held only by those who've decided to ditch scripture and the confessions, We're not likely to listen with interest and hope to the rest of what PFR has to say.

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PFR's statement isn't for me. It's not for those on the special committee who think like I do. It's intended to rev up PFR and its existing base. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my ranch, the Covenant Network,

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an organization I helped to found and on whose board I sit. The Covenant Network was drafting a statement of its own to send to the special committee. That statement, too, stakes out a position. Covenantal relationships between two persons of the same gender are a gift of God and a cause for celebration.

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In states where these relationships are licensed as marriages, Presbyterian ministers should be able to solemnize them, and Presbyterian churches should be free to host the ceremonies if they so choose. Covenant Network also signals its moderate posture. Acknowledging a diversity of views in the church that has somehow to be accommodated, it too urges the special committee to give a fuller response, especially to work out what it would mean for Presbyterians who disagree about the nature of marriage,

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to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other. So far, so good. Right in the middle of the argument, however, is a hidden tripwire. The reasoning proceeds like this.

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The statement calls on the special committee not just to acknowledge but to affirm unequivocally, those words are in bold type, that there is a place in the church for Christians in same-gender partnerships and their children. Such affirmation, the statement maintains, includes opportunities for gay couples to be married in a Presbyterian church in states where that's legal. Not to offer such affirmation, here is the tripwire, the zinger, not to offer such affirmation is a rejection of Christ himself and causes a scandal on the gospel.

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Do we leaders of Covenant Network really think that? I'll speak for myself. I do believe that the wholeness, the integrity of the gospel is at stake in our debates over sexuality. These are not

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Secondary matters. Our policies towards gay people are not, in my view, primarily a matter of justice or of rights. They're a matter of truth, who we tell people they are before God and what, therefore, the good news of the gospel is for them. As your former faculty member Stacey Johnson has written, the basic issue here is not sex.

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It's the shape of redemption for gay and lesbian persons. But are those who don't yet see that the sworn enemies of Jesus Christ? I don't think so.

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And I don't think my Covenant Network colleagues really think that. And in any case, just as I am unlikely to engage the Scriptures more faithfully after hearing from PFR that I can only hold my position by rejecting them, those who disagree with Covenant Network are not going to move any closer to our position after their position has been labeled Christ-rejecting and a blot on the gospel. We are narrow-casting. We are talking to ourselves most of the time.

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And when we do send messages across the divide, we usually, as Jonathan Sacks observes, make ourselves and our views known to each other by grabbing the headlines. We create a stir, and then we rely on media pundits to broadcast our views loudly enough to get everyone's attention. I visited two websites of two other partisan Presbyterian groups recently. Now that the Presbyterian General Assembly meets every two years, the opportunities to act out our devotion to our causes in ways that interest reporters are fewer and farther between.

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So there's been a kind of quiet stretch in the Presbyterian wars. Not having any headline-worthy doings of their own to report, these two groups borrowed for their homepages from a noisier mainline denomination. More Light Presbyterians, on the left, featured on its homepage the election of a lesbian Episcopal bishop in Los Angeles. The Presbyterian Coalition, which organizes the efforts of several conservative groups, also focused on Episcopalians, also in Los Angeles, but they chose a story in which their side came out ahead.

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a court decision permitting a conservative congregation to leave the Episcopal Church and take its property to a different Anglican denomination. Do we really think that downloads from CNN are going to change the hearts and minds of people who visit our websites, which is what has to happen if we really want our position someday to be owned by the whole church? None of this not our fevered denunciations of the other side or our tiny sound bites on the national news, none of it has the slightest chance of actually communicating with anybody who's not already a part of our clan.

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We have mouths, big ones, but we do not speak, at least not to each other. While the left and right are declaiming, largely to themselves, what's happening in between among the majority of mainline Christians who don't identify with a party or affinity group. When it comes to the difficult issues that God has set before us, unfortunately, very little is happening in the middle. The idols of the center are in some ways the most inert of all.

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What one hears from the unaffiliated in denominational debates is mostly grumbling, murmuring. We're tired of fighting, irritated by the passion of the partisans, wish these issues would go away so that the church can get on with what is often called real mission. Usually these are offhand comments accompanied by sighs and yawns. though on occasion they're gathered into an editorial or op-ed piece that blasts the right and the left under some such title as a pox on both their houses.

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Such denunciations bounce off their targets. Liberal and conservative advocates who care so much about their causes that they're willing, at least in the heat of battle, to use language that condemns their opponents, that actually suggests that those who don't agree with them are infidels, not Christians at all, those advocates are not going to be swayed by the disapproval of non-aligned colleagues who call the goals for which they're fighting so ardently a distraction from the real business of the church. Centrists, like the rest of us,

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are using language that virtually guarantees that they will not be heard outside of their immediate circle. Not all intra-denominational speech, of course, is politically motivated. In denominational debates about contested issues, a number of people extend themselves to testify from the heart. telling stories as honestly as they can, and from time to time, somebody actually makes a strenuous effort to construct an argument using the terms that their opponents might understand.

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These efforts have less impact than they should because in our tribal groupings, this is the second category, we have idolatrous listening practices too. One of God's great gifts to the church is attentiveness, the capacity to hear God's voice in Scripture, in church teaching, and in the words of other persons. God has spoken once, it says in Psalm 62, this is my favorite line in all the Psalms, God has spoken once,

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Twice I have heard it. Our tribal subcultures undermine this heightened capacity to listen. They surround us with filters that make it much harder to hear the voice of God, especially from the mouths of strangers. The filters come in the form of stereotypes.

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I first became acutely aware of these stereotypes 25 years ago, when I began a three-year study of an evangelical seminary, a school that enrolled some of the most conservative students in my denomination, along with others. Students in that school would say without thinking, I was raised Presbyterian, but I became a Christian when I was 19. As I prepared to live in the women's dorm for several days each month, to attend classes and to hang out in the cafeteria in the student center, I steeled myself.

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I was sure I was going to hear a lot of liberal bashing. It would, I thought, take all of my ethnographic discipline, do listen and ask questions, don't speak and respond, to keep my cool. As it turned out, except for a very occasional salvo of the kind I quoted earlier, very little attention was paid to liberals. So little, in fact, that I was sort of hurt.

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Most of the polemical energy was directed at other evangelicals. So why did the words and actions of the other side, of people who were formally defined as not Christian, or even servants of the Antichrist, why do they deserve so little notice? Because anything they, we liberals, said or did had been dismissed, explained away in advance by the application of a stereotype.

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In general, conservative Christians think that liberals are morally flawed. We've heard the truth, but we lack the fortitude to live by it. Our arguments are a defensive screen, elaborate justifications for our decisions to go with the cultural flow, to indulge ourselves rather than please God. Because liberals have dispensed with divine truth, nothing we say deserves to be taken seriously.

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Over on the left wing, we don't really listen to the other side either. we discount everything we hear from conservatives using an offsetting stereotype. Liberals believe that conservative Christians are psychologically flawed. Conservatives have heard the truth, but something happened back in their early development.

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Toilet training. There was some big deficit, some traumatic event that left them unable to accept the truth as it is, complex, nuanced, and sometimes, for long stretches, elusive. What conservatives say and do is shaped by their fear of anything that can't be immediately pinned down and authoritatively settled, so the stereotype goes. Because they prefer certainty to the truth,

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In all its ambiguities, nothing they say deserves to be taken seriously. The middle has stereotypes, too. When those not involved in movements and affinity groups talk about those who are, they wonder aloud about motivation. Why do the activists spend so much time seeking publicity?

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Might they have an outsized need to be in the spotlight, at the microphone, in front of the camera? Are they driven by their own ego needs, more than by commitment to principles and ideals? The suspicion that advocates on the right and left are seeking celebrity as much as truth and justice enables those in the uncommitted middle to stop their ears to the speeches and demonstrations on both sides. All of us, then,

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in our denominational tribes have found effective ways not to hear what the members of other tribes are saying. So we speak in ways that are likely to get a response only from our own kind, and just in case someone does try to contact us from across the gulf that separates our denominational cliques, we listen in ways that almost assure they won't get a fair hearing. Then there's the rest of our life together in the church. This is the third and last category of idolatry.

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what we do with our hands and feet and noses. Human community is forged not just by words, but also by tastes, smells, images, music, gestures, patterns of movement. One of the privileges of belonging to the body of Christ is getting to know other people as full-bodied persons. The church at its best eats together, sings in unison and harmony,

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offers a whole sensual tapestry of light and color and costume, choreography, aroma. You remember what the church of your childhood smelled like? I do. What makes churches different from, and potentially better than, all the other groups in which we have these experiences, at least in theory, is the fact that the other members were chosen not by natural selection,

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like our families, or by us, like our clubs, but by God. God has brought together those who love him, not only to glorify God, but also to love each other and to serve the world for which Christ died. In the church, we've been given by God a deep, many-sided bond to people. a covenant with those from whom we might otherwise be alienated by class, race, ethnic background, and theological opinion.

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In our little denominational, sub-denominational tribes, we betray an appalling lack of gratitude for this gift. Instead of claiming the barrier-breaking power that we have in Christ, we coagulate with those who think and act as we do. Over time, our clusters of the like-minded build strong tribal cultures that make us more so. More like the others in the tribes, less like those in other groups in the church.

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In recent decades, sociologists have told us that liberal and conservative Christians in the same denomination read different authors, listen to different radio stations, admire different leaders, adopt different patterns of worship with different music, and speak in different religious dialects. If the sociologists were doing their studies now, I'm sure they would find very different downloads on liberal and conservative iPods. different tweets on our smartphones, and I'd be willing to bet that the Facebook friend networks of liberals and conservatives barely overlap at all. The big center of mainline churches doesn't get as much scholarly attention as the left and right, but there are some studies of congregations that show that those that appear to be garden variety, what a witty columnist once called MacChurch,

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which is a place where they neither handle snakes nor pray for the Sandinistas. Research shows that these apparently placid churches that shun the ideologies of right and left nevertheless have their own strong norms and cultural taboos and friendship networks. One of their notable features is a culture of enforced restraint. Middling mainline Christianity is known for keeping things under wraps.

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The vivid religious emotions displayed in evangelical settings, the energetic activist commitments that liberals are expected to voice, and the people who represent those different ways of being the church are out of bounds in the middle. Worst of it, the very worst of it, is that we start to believe that the way things are is the way they are meant to be. That is the most tragic consequence of idolatry.

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We mistake our false gods, the ones we made, for the real one. Rejecting the God-given diversity of the church, reverting to our own kind of people and ways of praying, that is idolatry. It's replacing God's choices with our own. And it leads us into the most serious kind of error.

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I have been to dozens of gatherings of my own organization, the Covenant Network, over the years. I've attended a few meetings of Presbyterians for Renewal and other so-called affinity groups. At all of them, all of them, I've experienced stirring worship and eloquent speeches, for which I'm grateful. But it chills me to hear people say, as several always do at these meetings, This, meaning the Covenant Network, or PFR, is my real church.

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This is my religious home. No. Homogeneous cells like these groups can build up the church. I will say more about that tomorrow, as well as pull it apart in the ways I've been describing.

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But even at their very best, a... community groups are less truly the church than the messy, conflict-riddled denominations they seek to reform, and those denominations are less truly the church than the worldwide Church of Jesus Christ that gives them their identity. Jesus Christ suffered and died. to fuse us into his body, to define the church as the place where I am least challenged and most comfortable.

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I've thought a lot about using this word, and I've decided to go ahead. It's heresy. The tragic end result of giving in to the temptation to hide out in our separate enclaves is a church that quenches the spirit. I'm going to close this penitential talk with a story, sad but true, that brings this point home.

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A few years ago, I got into an extended debate with a colleague, the president of a seminary of a mainline Protestant denomination, not my own, but one whose answer to the question we were discussing, which was whether same-sex relationships are always sinful, was the same as the Presbyterian churches. Yes, they're always sinful. No, they are never the will of God.

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If the conversation, discussion, debate had been refereed, I think I would have been judged to be winning. My arguments about Scripture and the doctrine of God seemed to be finding their mark. Just at the point that I thought my colleague might say that my position had merit, he stopped the conversation. Barbara, he said, if I were to come to agree with you, I'd have to resign as president of the seminary.

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There might be one school in my denomination where someone could hold opinions like yours and be a seminary president, but it's not the one I lead. Most of the people who have been my closest friends in the church all my life would never speak to me again. My wife is always supportive, but I've told her that we have to hold the line on this issue. It would be very difficult for her if I changed.

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And the people in my denomination who think like you do, even if I did change my mind on this one issue, they would not take me in. My theology is conservative. I'm an evangelical. I pray in public.

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I talk a lot about Jesus. So Barbara, he said, just what do you want me to do? That question haunts me. What if it wasn't just my powers of persuasion, but also the Holy Spirit that was causing him to think again about his position?

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And to use my imagination, following Roger's prompting, what if something similar happened to me? What if, for instance, someone or something were to prompt me to reexamine my stance on abortion? surely not an issue in which it's possible for a sensible person to hold one's view without any questions. The majority of my allies would be appalled.

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They'd no longer take me into their confidence. I would not be invited to be part of the leadership of organizations on the religious left. But even if I were to change my mind on that one issue, I doubt the conservatives would want my theology. My style of piety and the buttoned-up centrists would not be happy with my intense commitments to a variety of causes.

00:42:22.160 - 00:43:03.920

We've created a church in which those who diverge from one significant plank in the platform of their theological party are ostracized, are stranded with no place to go, shunned with nobody to take them in. This is where our idolatrous practices of preaching to our own choirs, judging before listening, and hanging out with our allies and pals instead of the wonderfully strange company that God has assembled. That's where these things have landed us. Tomorrow, after we've all spent the evening repenting,

00:43:04.600 - 00:43:32.160

Whatever part we've paid in slicing the church up into tribes, I'm not going to make you feel any better this morning. Tomorrow, though, I will turn the tables. However fractured, the church is still the church, and we will look at the ways in which the groups and segments that divide it can also play, must also play, a central part in building it up. Thank you.