The whole thing is quasi-virtual now, a process that begin as a pandemic era adaptation and has continued. The event itself is also less than half the size it was a decade ago, perhaps because we as a denomination are less than half the size we were a decade ago.
That does not prevent us from making motions and declarations of significance, however. At this assembly, we're calling for the Constitution of the United States of America to be amended. We're calling for an end to gun violence. We're calling for an end to solitary confinement. We're condemning Christian Zionism. There are many bold statements. We're being prophetic, after all.
But not a soul is listening. Outside media once did, but now? Now we are too small to matter, and our conflicts, such as they exist, are mostly inside baseball. Our policy proclamations have no more impact than me pacing around in my kitchen and ranting to myself about the latest step towards the collapse of the republic.
The challenge, I think, is that we have reimagined the word "representation."
That was, as it happens, one of the few things that we've been arguing about this cycle. As we work to be more inclusive, we've come to understand representation as meaning the centering of marginalized voices and persons. To translate that into Common: representation means favoring or prioritizing queer, black, female, and indigenous perspectives and persons.
As we've talked about removing bias and anti-queer bigotry from our ordination process, this became a point of contention. The challenge, as laid out in an amendment to our Book of Order, is a rather simple one. We want queer folk to no longer experience bias. And we want "principles of representation" to govern our call discernment process. But what does that mean now?
What are Presbyterian "principles of representation?" We Presbyterians were, back in the Enlightenment and at our Reformed roots, at the vanguard of republicanism and democracy. We understood that a representative system of church governance...meaning, leadership is freely and fairly chosen and representative of the people...was a blessing. The voice, conscience and freedom of those on the margins was respected, but not given precedence. What mattered was being representative.
If "principles of representation" are understood as meaning "prioritizing the centering of marginalized voices," then that understanding has been radically and fundamentally changed. ""Representation," like "ally," means a very different thing in NewSpeak than it does in Common.
On some levels, I get this. Call, after all, has not a damn thing to do with gender, sexual orientation, or race. God works through whomever God calls. God is no respecter of our socially mediated personhoods, and for too long, we've allowed ancient categorical bigotries to fence our tables and those we consider worthy to lead.
Just because you happen to inhabit a particular set of Venn Diagram circles of privilege means nothing.
White? Male? Comfortably Bourgeois? God couldn't care less, and when for generations that was the only way Presbyterians looked and spoke, that was a problem. Thing is, that principle doesn't stop at categories of privilege.
Queer? Female? BIPOC? In and of themselves, those categories also don't mean a thing to the Creator of the Universe.
Privilege means nothing. But neither does marginalization. Within the Biblical narrative, the God of Amos is the God of Isaiah, eh? Rural proletarian/agrarian and urban power elite could both feel that fire in their bones, could both call for justice and grace with the same divine authority. No Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no man or woman, as dear ol' Uncle Paul put it.
Justice means eliminating human favoring of one human category over the other. Just that reality is liberation, a setting right, a word of good news and jubilee.
Posts
