Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 11:17:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Darrell128@aol.com Subject: NR 97065: OPC General Assembly Breaks Longstanding CRC Fraternal Relationship NR #1997-065: Orthodox Presbyterian General Assembly Breaks Longstanding Christian Reformed Fraternal Relationship The Christian Reformed Church lost its oldest and what was once its closest sister church relationship in North America on June 10 when the Orthodox Presbyterian Church voted to break fraternal relations with the CRC over the issue of the ordination of women. Meeting at Geneva College in the Pittsburgh suburb of Beaver Falls, the 22,000-member Orthodox Presbyterian Church took nearly a dozen hours over a period of two days to decide whether to break its 60-year-long relationship with the CRC. While the OPC has cited a number of reasons for concern in recent years, the formal motion adopted cited only the CRC's 1995 decision to allow the ordination of women to the offices of minister, elder, and evangelist. Responding to CRC concerns, the General Assembly passed a motion without audible dissent noting that last year's decision "was carefully worded to avoid saying that the CRCNA is not a true church of Jesus Christ" and that "no OPC General Assembly has ever made such a judgment." That didn't mean this year's decision to cut ties rather than continuing the suspension was easy, however. "You don't cut ties with people that you've had for sixty years without some pain and without being sorrowful," said Rev. John Galbraith, appointed by the OPC General Assembly to bring the final fraternal address to next week's CRC synod expressing the OPC's reasons for severing ties. "At our first General Assembly, they were the only ones to greet us and to express their affection for us." After voting to break ties with the CRC, the General Assembly established "corresponding relations" with the largest group of churches seceding from the CRC, the United Reformed Churches, and voted to express "thankfulness to God for their love for the truth of God and the purity of the church of Jesus Christ, welcome them to the family of Reformed churches, and pray for the blessing of God on their ministry." NR #1997-065: For Immediate Release Orthodox Presbyterian General Assembly Breaks Christian Reformed Fraternal Relationship * Vote ends 60-year tie that was once CRC's closest North American relationship by Darrell Todd Maurina, Press Officer United Reformed News Service BEAVER FALLS, PA (June 10, 1997) -- The Christian Reformed Church lost its oldest and what was once its closest sister church relationship in North America on June 10 when the Orthodox Presbyterian Church voted to break fraternal relations with the CRC over the issue of the ordination of women. Meeting at Geneva College in the Pittsburgh suburb of Beaver Falls, the 22,000-member Orthodox Presbyterian Church took nearly a dozen hours over a period of two days to decide whether to break its 60-year-long relationship with the 285,000-member CRC. While the OPC has cited a number of reasons for concern in recent years, the formal motion adopted cited only the CRC's 1995 decision to allow the ordination of women to the offices of minister, elder, and evangelist. The OPC cited similar grounds last year for suspending its fraternal relationship with the CRC. That didn't mean this year's decision to cut ties rather than continuing the suspension was easy, however. "You don't cut ties with people that you've had for sixty years without some pain and without being sorrowful," said Rev. John Galbraith, appointed by the OPC General Assembly to bring the final fraternal address to next week's CRC synod expressing the OPC's reasons for severing ties. "At our first General Assembly, they were the only ones to greet us and to express their affection for us." Nevertheless, Galbraith said the closeness had waned in recent years as the CRC had moved toward the ordination of women and as its position on other issues began to be called into question. "I think that those of the younger generation in both the OPC and the CRC don't really understand the history so it's not as difficult for them to cut ties," said Galbraith, who was ordained by the OPC only a year after it was organized in 1936 as a secession from the Presbyterian Church (USA). According to Galbraith, the CRC had been most helpful to the OPC in urging it toward greater commitment to Reformed theology, introducing it to the Christian day school movement, and in helping fund and staff Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. After voting to break ties with the CRC, the General Assembly established "corresponding relations" with the largest group of churches seceding from the CRC, the United Reformed Churches, and voted to express "thankfulness to God for their love for the truth of God and the purity of the church of Jesus Christ, welcome them to the family of Reformed churches, and pray for the blessing of God on their ministry." "Corresponding relations" is a new category created this year by the OPC as an "entry-level" intended to lead to full ecclesiastical fellowship at a later date. The OPC emphasized that the decision didn't mean the CRC was a false church. Responding to CRC concerns, the General Assembly passed a motion without audible dissent noting that last year's decision "was carefully worded to avoid saying that the CRCNA is not a true church of Jesus Christ" and that "no OPC General Assembly has ever made such a judgment." The final action of the General Assembly was the strongest of three possibilities that had been proposed. The OPC's Ecumenicity and Interchurch Relations Committee had originally considered establishing a lower level of relationship known as "restricted contact." An advisory committee recommendation advised a somewhat less serious step of extending the suspension of fraternal ties to the year 2001 and making a final decision at that time. Numerous delegates argued that anything short of strong action could be misinterpreted by the CRC. "If the Christian Reformed Church is going to understand what we are doing, namely, severing our relationship with them, they need to understand we are doing it because they are in contradiction to a clear command of the Bible," said Rev. Tom Tyson, editor of the OPC denominational magazine New Horizons. "There might be hope that even at this late date somebody in the CRC might realize that the emperor has no clothes, and something is terribly wrong." Advocates of less strong steps emphasized that they were in no way agreeing with the ordination of women. "Virtually all of us here believe the implementation of women in office was the gravest mistake, but for us to go from all to nothing with no plan for a lesser relationship is not wise," said Rev. Bernard Stonehouse, missionary-at-large for the OPC's Presbytery of Philadelphia. "I am no longer committed to the domino theory; we have at least two examples in modern times of churches that have seen the decline and then stopped," continued Stonehouse, referring to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, both of which moved significantly toward liberal theology before returning to a conservative position. Other delegates, however, warned that women's ordination was only a symptom of more serious underlying problems in the CRC. "This is not just an issue of women in office," said Rev. Jeff Taylor. "It would be naive for us to think the issue is women in office; the issue is also the authority of Scripture, homosexuality, and creation and evolution." Taylor noted that strong steps taken with regard to the CRC might not drive the denomination away but actually restore it. "It is not the end in the church when there is excommunication," said Taylor of New Hope Presbyterian Church in Cummings, Georgia. "It would be wonderful if we could in the future with tears in our eyes welcome them back to fraternal relations because they have repented." General Assembly moderator Rev. John Mahaffy relinquished the gavel to speak in defense of maintaining suspended relations with the CRC rather than moving to full termination. Mahaffy, who has monitored the CRC for a number of years, fully agreed that there were serious problems -- citing the "CRC-Voices" E-Mail discussion list as one particularly egregious example of a "black hole" in the CRC. "There are things on there that make my hair stand on end," said Mahaffy. "My understanding of the Word and what I hear coming from the CRC are very far apart." Nevertheless, said Mahaffy, caution is required. "What if our cutting off fraternal relations with the CRC tips the balance in the way the CRC goes?" asked Mahaffy. "We must be patient and speak the truth to our brothers in love." A number of delegates cautioned that whatever was done to the CRC should not be perceived as excommunication, noting that the CRC-OPC relationship was that of sister churches rather than of elders to an erring member over whom they had authority. "We haven't said anything like they are not a true church, this doesn't do that, this simply says they are not a church of like faith and practice," said Rev. Alan Strange of Providence OPC in Glassboro, NJ. "This isn't discipline, they are our peers, and we are saying we can't walk with them any more." Rev. John Galbraith, who served as president of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod for twelve years and was one of the OPC men who had close contact with the Dutch Reformed world, took the floor to argue for a motion he wished had never been necessary. "I am sure there is no one in this room who more than I, and many of you much less than I, would like to retain relations with the Christian Reformed Church; I have been connected with the CRC through the OPC longer than many of you have been alive," said Galbraith. Nevertheless, Galbraith said clear action on the part of the OPC was necessary because the CRC was attempting to do "damage control" in the church world. "The General Secretary of the Christian Reformed Church, who we would compare to our stated clerk, came to our General Assembly for the first time in history and I understand is now at the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly," said Galbraith. "They came here to control damage; understandably, they do not want to be held up before the world as a church which has gone off the deep end and with which other churches feel led to break relations." "Suspension says to them and the church worldwide, you go ahead and you do what you jolly-well want, because we don't mind," said Galbraith. "They have established that women are going to be ministers and ruling elders in the Christian Reformed Church, and if you think they are going to defrock those women, you go and think again." Elder William Kiester of Calvary OPC in Harrisville, Penn., summed up the feelings of a number of delegates with a story that brought laughs to an otherwise tense session. "This motion [for continued suspension] puts us in the place of a man I knew many years ago in the Civilian Conservation Corps; he would come in drunk late at night, draw a line across the barracks floor, and dare anyone to cross it," said Kiester. "One night someone crossed it, and he backed up and drew another line." After the General Assembly defeated the proposal to continue suspension of relations for another four years, it quickly moved to a question of whether to send a detailed position statement on women in office to the CRC or a briefer summary of Scriptural evidence. In the end, the General Assembly send the matter back to committee and adopted a compromise proposal to break ties with the CRC and send a longer position statement of why the OPC opposes the ordination of women. That wasn't the end of the CRC discussion, however. The CRC board of trustees sent a communication to the OPC General Assembly pertaining to the secession of the Doon (IA) CRC under the pastorate of OPC minister Rev. Tim Perkins, a member of the Presbytery of the Dakotas on loan to the Doon CRC. The communication, signed by CRC General Secretary Dr. David Engelhard and board of trustees president Rev. Art Schoonveld, stated that it was submitted "on behalf of the synod of the Christian Reformed Church in North America" and strongly objected to the OPC's Presbytery of the Dakotas defense of Perkins in a letter to the CRC's Classis Iakota, which had sent a letter of protest to the presbytery. "Little did the classis think it had permitted a wolf to graze among the flock. He seemed so like the sheep he had come to serve," wrote the board of trustees. "Mr. Perkins' act of stealing the flock was unconscionable, and the Presbytery's justification of it was unexpected. Lying in pursuit of the truth is never justifiable. Misrepresenting the positions of the CRC has become common place among those seceding from the CRC. It is unfitting, however, for an OPC minister and presbytery to use those misrepresentations as justification for promoting and permitting the secession of a congregation from a sister church." The CRC board of trustees also protested the comments of the past moderator of the Presbytery of the Dakotas, Rev. Archibald Alexander Allison, who told United Reformed News Service that "the Christian Reformed Church is no longer part of the true church and that is why we are cutting off our relationship with them." "If the position articulated by Mr. Allison is the position of the OPC, please inform us forthwith," wrote the board. "If it is not the position of the OPC, then we request that you hold the individuals and the presbytery accountable for their actions and statements and that you discipline them accordingly." The letter set off an extended debate on the floor of the assembly, largely due to procedural questions and differences between Christian Reformed and Orthodox Presbyterian views of the authority of major assemblies, and questions about whether the CRC board of trustees has the right to act on behalf of synod apart from synodical action or action by Classis Iakota to which Doon CRC formerly belonged. "I'm convinced that the Iakota Classis is not happy with this because this letter has been sent only by two officials in Grand Rapids, and there has been no interest on the part of classis in pursuing this further," said Rev. G.I. Williamson, a retired OPC minister living in Iowa. "If the synod has not authorized these two men, they are going to be behind the eight ball, and perhaps that's where they should be," said Rev. Stuart Jones of First OPC in Baltimore. Other OPC delegates urged that the OPC not attempt to interpret CRC polity and instead simply respond to the letter as written. In the end, the General Assembly -- which according to OPC rules has no authority to initiate disciplinary action against ministers or presbyteries -- voted not to publish the CRC communication in the General Assembly minutes on the grounds that charges of personal offense and sin needed to be first taken up with the proper individuals or judicatory before being published more widely. However, the Assembly did make clear that it had never judged the CRC to be a false church. The past moderator of presbytery also issued a signed letter retracting his statement that "we believe the Christian Reformed Church is no longer part of the true church and that is why we are cutting off our relationship with them." CRC Interchurch Relations Committee president Rev. Edward Van Baak said the vote was not unexpected. "I am disappointed in the decision they made, but I'm not surprised," said Van Baak, noting that the interchurch committees of both denominations had conducted extensive meetings on the subject of biblical interpretation with specific reference to women's ordination. "Given their position I'm not surprised they came to this conclusion," said Van Baak. "I'm disappointed because I've seen many areas there has been good work, and hopefully that would continue." The two denominations have conducted a number of joint missions works, including the Reformed Church in Japan where Van Baak served twenty years before becoming a CRC missions executive. Cross-References to Related Articles: #1995-070: Christian Reformed Classes Permitted to Declare Church Order Ban on Women's Ordination "Inoperative"; Synod Decision Given Immediate Effect without Two-Year Ratification Process #1996-070: Christian Reformed Synod Intensifies Restrictions on Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland #1996-071: Orthodox Presbyterian Fraternal Delegate Announces Suspension of Ties With Christian Reformed Church #1996-076: CRC Synod Rejects 25 Overtures and Communications Calling for End to Classical Option on Ordination of Women #1996-104: New Denomination Born: Most Christian Reformed Seceders Organize as "United Reformed Churches of North America" #1996-121B: Conservative Interchurch Council Will Study Discipline of Christian Reformed Church for Women's Ordination #1997-064: Orthodox Presbyterian General Assembly to Consider Cutting Longstanding Christian Reformed Ties Contact List: TO REACH DELEGATES DURING THE OPC GENERAL ASSEMBLY, June 4-11, 1997: c/o Geneva College, Skye Lounge General Assembly Front Desk: (412) 847-6584 TO REACH DELEGATES AFTER THE OPC GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Rev. Archibald Alexander Allison, Outgoing Moderator, Presbytery of the Dakotas 317 E. Swallow Rd., Ft. Collins, CO 80525 H: (303) 282-8011 Rev. Donald Duff, Stated Clerk, Orthodox Presbyterian Church 614 Roberts Ave., Glenside PA 19038-3711 O: (215) 956-0123 * H: (215) 887-4901 * FAX: (215) 957-6286 Dr. David Engelhard, General Secretary, Christian Reformed Church in North America 2850 Kalamazoo Ave. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49560 O: (616) 246-0744 * H: (616) 243-2418 * FAX: (616) 246-0834 * E-Mail: engelhad@crcna.org Rev. John P. Galbraith, Fraternal Delegate, Orthodox Presbyterian Church Rte 32, Box 204, Owl's Head, ME 04854 H: (207) 594-7772 Rev. Stuart Jones, Pastor, First Orthodox Presbyterian Church 3455 Erdman Ave., Baltimore, MD 21213 O: (410) 675-4477 * H: (410) 483-2788 Rev. Jerome Julien, Stated Clerk, United Reformed Churches in North America 3646 - 193rd Pl., Lansing, IL 60438 H/O: (708) 418-5321 * FAX: (708) 418-5591 Elder William Kiester, Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church c/o Calvary OPC, 443 N. Main St., PO Box 59, 16038 O: (412) 735-4523 Rev. John Mahaffy, Moderator, 1997 General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church 1709 N. College, Newburg, OR 97132-9110 H/O/FAX: (503) 538-4652 Rev. Timothy Perkins, Doon Christian Reformed Church (Independent) 511 Rice St., Box 127, Doon IA 51235 O: (712) 726-3314 * H: (712) 726-3160 Rev. Jack Peterson, Chairman, OPC Interchurch Relations Committee 1315 White Rock Drive, San Antonio, TX 78245 O: (210) 690-6360 * H: (210) 675-9097 Art Schoonveld, President, Christian Reformed Church Board of Trustees 3350 Rocky Point Ct., Grandville, MI 49418 O: (616) 534-3114 * H: (616) 538-7886 Rev. Bernard Stonehouse, Missionary at Large, Presbytery of Philadelphia 2450 Norwood Ave., Roslyn, PA 19001 O: (215) 576-5474 Rev. Alan Strange, Pastor, Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church 103 Deptford Rd., Glassboro, NJ 08028 O: (609) 863-6625 * H: (609) 881-8611 * FAX: (609) 663-6721 Rev. Jeff Taylor, Pastor, New Hope Presbyterian Church 1550 Adair Blvd., Cumming, GA 30130-7809 H: (770) 889-4468 * O: (770) 889-5582 Rev. Tom Tyson, Editor, New Horizons 908 Fernhill Rd., Glenside, PA 19038 O: (215) 956-0123 * H: (215) 886-8315 * FAX: (215) 957-6286 Rev. Edward Van Baak, President, CRC Interchurch Relations Committee 1518 Cambridge SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506-3946 H: (616) 243-0796 Rev. G.I. Williamson 119 Normal College Ave., Sheldon, IA 51201 H: (712) 324-3467 * F: (712) 324-3178 ---------------------------------------------------------- file: /pub/resources/text/reformed/archive97: nr97-065.txt .