Divided over doctrine

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Thursday, June 9th.

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Good morning. I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: homosexuality and the Christian Reformed Church of America.

Later this week nearly 200 delegates are gathering at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the CRC annual synod.

On the agenda is a closed session to consider a report affirming the church’s historic position on human sexuality. The CRC must also decide whether or not to take action against individual churches or leaders who teach contrary views.

Recent WORLD Journalism Institute graduate Zoe Schimke has our story.

ZOE SCHIMKE, REPORTER: The C-R-C expects to vote sometime next week on its Human Sexuality Report. If it passes, it would allow the church to maintain and enforce traditional doctrines of human sexuality, throughout the denomination.

The 175-page report covers three categories of sexual sin. But easily its most controversial component is its statement that homosexual practice of any kind is unbiblical and unacceptable in the CRC.

CHRISTOFFELS: The confession is clear. The Catechism is clear. It forbids all unchastity.

Lee Christoffels is a retired pastor and a denominational official in one of the CRC’s church courts.

CHRISTOFFELS: We want to be Orthodox, not because we think we're better than everybody else. But because we believe that's God's calling for us to be faithful to the confessions. For which we've signed up.

The report is a response to a perceived leftward drift in the CRC on questions of human sexuality. CRC progressives say it’s not loving to exclude same-sex-practicing congregants from church life.

One leading voice is Leonard VanderZee, a CRC theologian in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He argues that conservatives misunderstand condemnations of homosexuality spelled out in the book of Romans. This is from a recent online talk.

VANDERZEE: We are talking about people who love God, and who have a natural and persistent same sex orientation. If we are not talking about the same people that Paul is talking about, how can we apply the same condemnation that Paul applies?

CRC pastor Rev. Rich Braaksma argues in another online talk that the report is wrong in its interpretation of the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality.

BRAAKSMA: “The report says ‘Scripture is clear’ over 80 times! If it’s so clear, why do we disagree? Maybe Scripture isn’t, and never has been, interested in fixing this problem for us with easy authoritative answers from on high by pundits who say ‘it’s clear’ like a writ-large ‘God said it, I believe it, that settles it.’”

Two summers ago, a large congregation in the CRC ordained as a deacon a woman in a same-sex marriage. That despite the CRC’s official position that homosexual relations are “incompatible with obedience to the will of God as revealed in Scripture.”

Neland Avenue CRC in Grand Rapids says it's the only local CRC church body to ordain a person in a same-sex union. It takes the CRC’s official position as pastoral guidance it chooses not to heed. In a letter to members, Neland Avenue cited “years of careful, prayerful discernment” that led to its decision to ordain—not to discipline—the church member.

The conservative CRC official Christoffels says Neland Avenue is way out of line.

CHRISTOFFELS: We have a covenant for office bearers, in which the office bearers say ‘we agree with these teachings. And if we disagree, we promised to tell the church about it and properly ask for a revision.’ So if they believe Scripture teaches something else, then they're supposed to bring that out, which is exactly what Neland Avenue CRC did not do.

Kurt Monroe is pastor of First Christian Reformed Church in Sioux Center, Iowa. For him, this issue is about far more than just church technicalities.

MONROE: It's pitted as a justice versus truth thing, right? So the progressive side will say, you're not loving. And and I want to say, 'No, you cannot be loving if you don't tell humanity the truth about who we are as male and female.'

If the CRC adopts the Human Sexuality Report, that would give “confessional status” to the view that homosexuality is sinful. It would then have equal weight with the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechisms—and the church could take action against anyone who teaches or practices heterodox views.

Arguments against adopting the report say that it limits an individual church’s freedom of conscience—and that it might split the CRC. Monroe says he understands that.

MONROE: Oh, absolutely. The - it's always a call to unity. But to call it a unity is to what, what are we actually united in? Or what are we united for? And if we're not united in Christ, I think the call to unity has to be a union in Christ. But that means the content, yeah, you read through Paul's letters, there's an actual specific content, the doctrine. So yeah, we're unified but certainly at the expense of, of doctrine and the expense of sound doctrine.

Ron Rynders is a congregant in Monroe’s church who thinks the only way his local church can remain within the CRC is for the denomination to adopt the report—the HSR, as it’s known.

RYNDERS: You know, as a person in the pew. I very much think that if the human sexuality report gets rejected, it doesn't leave us an option.

Monroe and his conservative contemporaries hold that it is better to be divided by the gospel than united in error, and a test of the theory is coming in the next few days.

MONROE: And I think that there won't be very many people in the congregation that disagree. That we as a congregation cannot stay in home in a church that doesn't accept the HSR.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Zoe Schimke in Sioux Center, Iowa.

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