Listen to this sermon (25 min.)

Deuteronomy 4: 1-8 and Mark 7: 1-2, 5-13

Mark 7:9: "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of god in order to keep your tradition."

	Photo: Jim Tiefenthal
	Rev. David Bos at DUPC

The hero of this sermon is a document - the Auburn Affirmation - written mainly by a native of this city, conceived at a meeting of 33 ministers and one ruling elder in Syracuse and published in Auburn, New York shortly after the 1923 General Assembly. The Auburn Affirmation rallied the progressive forces of the Presbyterian Church to take back control of the church from a group of fundamentalists who had forced a doctrinal standard, alien to Reformed and Presbyterian principles, upon the ministers and officers of the church. The Auburn Affirmation reclaimed the Presbyterian Church for the unadorned Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am going to say that very soon, now, we will need another Auburn Affirmation.

Every so often the church has to be reclaimed for the principles and the person, Jesus Christ, on which it was founded. Because there is a strong animus to conserve in almost every expression of religion, in each generation there are those who find it convenient and tempting to try to use the devotion of Christ and the institutions of the church to advance a reactionary political and religious agenda.. These persons are really not interested in exposing their agenda to the light of the unadorned Gospel of Christ and the basic charter of their faith any more than they are interested in hearing the commentary of scientists and other intellectuals. They want it assumed that their reactionary version of the faith is true so that they can get on with their political agenda. They see the coherence of reactionary religion with reactionary politics as evidence of the truth of each. 

Experience has proven that it is useless to attempt to argue, make peace or moderate this unholy alliance. They will simply ignore or not admit anything that will question or interfere with their agenda. That Jesus understood this reality and tendency among the religionists of his day is revealed by his words in this text: "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition" . Can you imagine a better description of a closed mind? - to knowingly reject even a commandment of God in order to hold on to some thing or practice or theory or prejudice or idea or system? If their mind is that closed , what could or who could possibly persuade them otherwise; and to what ends might they not go to keep their reactionary hopes alive? Elsewhere, Jesus instructs the disciples, when they encounter a certain kind of rejection, not to persist but to "shake the dust off their feet" and leave that place.

In the past few years, we have some wonderful examples of unpersuadable, closed minds in our own Presbyterian Church. For example, it has been shown, beyond the shadow of a doubt that the one phrase in all of our Book of Confessions that condemns homosexuality is a purposely mistranslated line of the original document. Under the influence of fundamentalists, our church has refused to retranslate that phrase. Of course, those fundamentalists keep referring to the Book of Confessions as if it represented a blanket condemnation of homosexuality though they know the truth of the matter. But you see, its not a question of what is the truth. That's irrelevant. They want the Book of Confessions to condemn homosexuality. Therefore they will continue to, untruthfully, portray it that way for the sake of their ecclesiastical and political agenda. They will even reject a commandment of God in order to maintain their homophobia. In the words of Jesus: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines. You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."

One more glaring example: our fundamentalists assume in every public and private forum that the scriptures condemn homosexuality as such. They just ignore the testimony of the overwhelming majority of the biblical scholars on the faculties of our Presbyterian seminaries. In fact I do not believe that of all the biblical faculty members of all our seminaries, there is one that would unambiguously support the view that the Bible condemns homosexuality. But, of course, the fundamentalists listen to other voices - even voices that have no real scholarly apprehension of what the Bible actually says; because those other voices tell them what they want to hear; and give them the fuel they need to pursue their reactionary agenda.

I said that the attempt of reactionary forces to use faith in God as a means to advance their agenda appears in every generation. The last attempted takeover before the one that we are at this moment trying to turn back occurred in the 1920's . Then, as now, all the denominations, including our own, faced well-funded reactionary forces that appeared within their ranks and that attempted to change the basic character of the denomination. Then, as now, there was an attempt made to purge the church of those individuals - especially those in positions of leadership - who did not conform to a narrow and unfounded view of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ and a member of the Christian church.

In that day, the method was one of thought control. Every Presbyterian was expected to be able to prove their orthodoxy by giving evidence that they believed in five so-called essential tenets of faith; those who wished to be ordained or to obtain a staff position in the offices of the General Assembly might be asked to subscribe to the five essentials as a condition for their ordination or their employment. The ostensible agenda of the fundamentalists was to install the five essentials as a kind of addition to the simple profession of faith in Christ which was all that was required for generations. But we can be sure that the larger agenda for them and for the wealthy men that supported them went far beyond these five essentials. The five essentials were only a means to gain control of the denomination. So by promulgating them at the level of the General Assembly without asking for concurrence by the presbyteries and their congregation, they were asserting a new and centralized authority for the General Assembly through which they could try to control the entire church as well as to use the church to pursue their reactionary agenda. And they almost succeeded.

For 12 long years they controlled the General Assemblies of the denomination, issuing statement after statement lifting up the 5 essential tenets of belief, bringing suit against ministers and presbyteries who publicly opposed one or more of the essentials, and generally making the church completely irrelevant to the intellectual life of the United States.

But then, along came the Auburn Affirmation which saved the church from the pit of reactionary thinking. But before describing the Auburn Affirmation and the reclaiming of the Presbyterian church for Jesus Christ, I want to tell you about another reactionary attempt to take over the churches which was taking a place at about the same time and a little bit later in Germany.

Now in Germany, in line with the spirit of the times, that was also an attempt at thought control. This was an attempt to capture the churches for the racist ideology of the National Socialist Party - the party of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. This movement, called the German Christians, had the backing of some prominent members of the German intelligentsia including some theology professors.

The German Christians also had their essentials that they wanted to add on to the simple profession of faith in Jesus Christ: that purity of religion was historically related to the purity of race; that the Christian owes absolute obedience to the state in all matters that pertain to the state (You would be surprised at how many theology professors subscribed to that one.); that the standards by which the church is ordered and governed may be altered by the state according to prevailing ideological and political convictions; that the fulfillment of the mission of the church might be accomplished by the mission of a totalitarian state. Now these points make the American fundamentalist five essentials look quite benign, don't they? But the same principle is involved - whether it concerns the American fundamentalists or the German Christians. At this point, if time permitted, I would speak about the second verse of the fourth chapter of Deuteronomy which was read to you: "You must neither add anything to what I command you, not take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Holy One your God with which I am charging you." But they wanted to add something to the simple profession of Jesus Christ in order to create an elite and indoctrinated leadership, to control the church from above, and to guide it into reactionary directions .

You know there was a opposition movement to the German Christians called The Confessing Church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, about whom I preached several months ago, was one of its founders. The Barmen Declaration, like the Auburn Affirmation was drawn up to rally the people against the German Christians. The trouble was: the Barmen Declaration, unlike the Auburn Affirmation, came too late. By 1933 and 34 the main essentials of the German Christians had gained acceptance among a preponderance of both Protestants and Catholics in Germany. The unspeakable atrocities of the Nazi regime were already visible and predictable to anyone whose eyes were open.

The Confessing Church, and we thank God for it, could only become a resisting minority among Christians of Germany. It did not have the effect, as did the Auburn Affirmation, of reclaiming the church for the unadorned Gospel of Jesus Christ. Alas! The German Church was pretty much lost to the German Christians and became part of the problem rather than part of the solution. We may be grateful that the Auburn Affirmation, which was a rallying cry for a much wider circle than the Presbyterian Church, stemmed the tide of reaction in the churches before the forces of religious and political reaction could join forces in the United States as they did in Germany.

Just a few more words about the Auburn Affirmation. It was mostly written by Robert Hastings Nichols, a native of Rochester and a Professor of Church History at Auburn Theological Seminary which then was located in Auburn, New York. He got some crucial help from Henry Sloan Coffin of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. The immediate occasion for the meeting which produced the Affirmation was the action of the 1923 General Assembly that required the Presbytery of New York City to administer a doctrinal examination to the preacher at First Presbyterian Church there, Harry Emerson Fosdick. Fosdick had expressed doubts about all five of the fundamentalists' essentials; and he directly confronted the fundamentalists in a blockbuster of a sermon called, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" If Fosdick were not able to pass the exam on the five points, the Presbytery was to sever the relation between him and First Church. Within weeks after that General Assembly an emergency meeting was called in Syracuse.

The arguments of the Auburn Affirmation are amazingly pertinent to our situation today as once again the forces of reaction have gained control of the denomination to the extent that they have convinced several General Assemblies to adopt policies on ordination that we believe, (in the words of Barbara Wheeler - current President of Auburn Seminary) "are wrong: not only misguided, but unfaithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and therefore theologically false and damaging to the mission of God in the contemporary world."

In the first place, the Affirmation argues that the Presbyterian Church must safeguard the liberty of thought and teaching of its ministers. The vows that they take at their ordination should be regarded as sufficient. The Confession of Faith itself does not require assent to the very words of the Confession and American Presbyterianism provided for dissent by individuals from portions of the confession. Our church has been careful not to enjoin uniformity of belief. When it adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith, it stated that "There are truths and forms, with respect to which people of good characters and principles may differ. And in all these they think it their duty, both of private Christians and Societies, to exercise mutual forbearance towards each other".

Secondly, the Affirmation argues against the fundamentalist position on the authority of the Bible. It says the supreme guide in the interpretation of Scriptures is not, as it is with Roman Catholics, ecclesiastical Authority, but the Spirit of God, speaking to the Christian believer. There is no assertion in the Scriptures that their writers were kept from error. The Confession of Faith does not make this assertion and it is not to be found in any of the great Reformation confessions. In general the affirmationists, as they called themselves, argued that the Holy Spirit continues to speak through the scriptures to each new generation, shedding new light upon our human condition, contemporizing the eternal truths of scripture to fit the age in they are read.

Finally, the Affirmation argued against any attempt to elevate five doctrinal statements, or any such statements, to the position of tests for ordination or for good standing in the church. It argues against any attempt to commit our church to certain theories concerning the inspiration of the Bible and other matters as if they were the "only theories allowed by Scripture and our standards as facts and doctrines of our religion".

Taken together all of these arguments are a declaration that no General Assembly, or any other governing body of the church, may appropriately try to legislate uniformity of belief or practice within its bounds beyond the basic evangelical commitment to the unadorned Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the second to last paragraph of the Affirmation, we read these words: "We do not desire liberty to go beyond the teachings of evangelical Christianity. But we maintain that it is our constitutional right and our Christian duty within these limits to exercise liberty of thought and teaching, that we may more effectively preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World."

It is time for another Affirmation such as this. It is time to reclaim our church from those who would hold it captive to a certain ecclesiastical and political agenda. It is time to rescue the church from those who would impose an unseemly uniformity upon it. It is time to restore the liberty that is our rightful legacy of the Reformation. It is time to let the Holy Spirit speak through the scriptures and through other means as well. One of those means might be a convocation to be held in Auburn, NY following shortly upon the General Assembly of 2001. I herewith propose and call for such a convocation. May we not delay. May we joyfully affirm these dearly held convictions, that the people of God in the Presbyterian Church might be edified, encouraged and given hope. And to God alone be the glory. Amen 

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