Sir, – The editorial comment that the actions taken against our minister and the Council of Christ Church Sandymount "cast the already damaged reputation of religion on this island in an even poorer light" could not be more apposite ("The Irish Times view on the churches and gay rights: the road to irrelevance", January 9th).
Yet the founding confessional statement of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) had the potential to guide our Church leaders in another direction altogether, if they had only heeded it.
Chapter 31 of the Westminster Confession includes the following:
“Since Apostolic times all synods and councils, whether general or local, may make mistakes, and many have. Consequently synods and councils are not to be made a final authority in questions of faith and living but are to be used as an aid to both.”
This points up the necessity of creating a church culture that opens and maintains a space for engagement, conversation and discernment as an act of public faith.
A “settled” faith is an anathema to the reformed tradition.
Real evil can be done, by individuals and systemically, under institutional cover, and the PCI is – among many other things – a human institution. When this happens, strong language and a public calling to account may be needed.
However, the public criticism of the institution that really matters in the end comes not from those who easily and without personal cost join in the chorus of outrage.
But rather from those whose aim is that the Presbyterian Church in Ireland lives up to its calling, rather than betraying it; and who are willing without rancour to bear something of both the public, and the more private and personal, cost of commitment to a church that is reformed but always in need of reformation.
After all, it is the gospel itself, with its breath-taking announcement of freedom, a freedom that is for others, and life-giving for all, which is the source of our courage. And that is a road, less followed perhaps, which never loses its relevance. – Yours, etc,
Prof RUTH WHELAN,
Dublin.