I’ve not signed many petitions in my life, but I just signed one. Presbyterians For Renewal would like you to consider it, too.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) needs many things these days, and depending on whom you ask, the needs you’ll hear listed may be quite different from those you would have chosen to highlight. However, there are some things we can all agree on, such as that honesty and integrity are critical to the life of the church. This is true especially in our own denomination today, where distrust of “the institution” and mutual distrust from one side of the church to the other seems to run rampant.

When an official arm of the church pursues a course that we are hard-pressed to call anything but dishonest, acting out of personal self-interest rather than acting in the interests of the whole ecclesial body it is called to serve, that office should be called back to honesty and integrity. Regardless of where you are on the political or theological spectrum, deep disappointment is the appropriate response to numerous recent actions of the Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). A petition endorsed by Presbyterians For Renewal seeks to remedy misstatements made by the Washington Office – statements that this office has refused to redress – concerning our church’s understanding of and public advocacy for marriage.

On one of the most controversial issues in the church, this office has chosen to follow the course of its own preference, rather than abide by the mandates given it by the General Assembly – i.e. the church. Such a course is not only divisive, but it is a sure way to affirm the suspicions of many in my generation (GenX) that long-standing institutions are often dishonest and hypocritical, and that pouring your time and energy into reforming them would be met with further dishonesty, abuse of office, and a lack of responsiveness to basic concerns about integrity and authenticity. We must bring in, rather than shut out those with such concerns. We must respond with honesty as a body of believers pursuing the truth with integrity. PFR and the rest of the church have every reason to expect the Washington Office to respond to this petition by redressing the misstatements and restoring honesty.

It is sometimes difficult to be totally honest, especially if fudging a bit here and there would be “better” – in pragmatic terms – for the cause you are fighting for. In other words, it is tempting to be dishonest when honesty is inefficient. Yet when individuals who are charged with speaking for the whole church engage in deceit (in this case deceiving the public about the church’s positions), not only is it a capitulation to an unchristian approach to politics, but within the church it can take a long time to restore trust and overcome the resultant acrimony. In this case, we should not be simply incensed. We should not be acrimonious. We should weigh in with wisdom, pursuing a course that is careful and honest, giving the church office in question the opportunity to respond in kind.

Such a course is precisely the one pursued by Alan Wisdom, the Director of Presbyterian Action, the organization which wrote the petition. Wisdom has been candid, patient, pursuing redress privately before publicly, and he has received insufficient responses from both the Washington Office and the leadership of the National Ministries Divison, under which that office operates. PFR believes the course Wisdom pursued is the right way to operate, and we are weighing in with Wisdom in an effort to restore honesty and integrity to the Washington Office. We encourage you to read the facts and consider this petition.

Harry Emerson Fosdick said it well:

“Granted the endless variations of moral customs, still the essential standards persist. As in a scientific laboratory, all else may change but the standards are unalterable— disinterested love of truth, fidelity to facts, accuracy in measurement, exactness of verification—so, in life as a whole, the towering ethical criteria remain unshaken. Falsehood is never better than truth, theft better than than honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.”

In short, PFR invites you to pursue this course of truth, honesty, loyalty, and courage, by giving this petition your careful consideration.