The Spirit of the Assembly

The Presbyterian Church (USA), my church, just passed two resolutions in favor of marriage equality. I am very glad we did. I believe it was the right thing to do. What I am worried about is the way some people are saying that the Spirit was uniquely present at this year’s General Assembly, as if driving or blessing or simply rejoicing in the event. I was there for part of it, and there was a certain electricity in the place, and a certain feeling of deep satisfaction and solidarity. But let’s state what should be obvious: much of the feeling experienced there was the feeling of being in a room where a group of people who have been committed to a cause for a long time were finally getting their way. It was the feeling we sometimes experience of being in a room with people who agree with us about things we think are important. That feeling was not in itself a special visitation from on high, and to attribute it to that would be obnoxious, and theologically stupid.

Those are harsh words, I know. They come from a particular history. I grew up a Southern Baptist during the conservative takeover of that denomination, and I remember reading similar testimonies from the perspective of the victors of those national gatherings. I’m in the unusual position of having been sympathetic to each of these movements in the church as they unfolded: I grew up rooting for conservatives in the Southern Baptist world, and now I root for progressives in the PC(USA). What can I say? I like to win. But of course I cannot affirm that the Spirit was or is uniquely behind both movements, contradictory as they are. Nor can I affirm that the Spirit has been driving the movement I now support. Southern Baptist conservatives cloaked themselves in the Spirit as they marched to power in the eighties, but they were the ones doing the marching and gaining the power. It was subterfuge and intellectual laziness that compelled them to short-circuit substantive argument with rhetoric about the presence of the Spirit, and my worry is the same kind of avoidant rhetoric is arising within my current tribe today. We human beings, we progressive Presbyterians in particular, have made these changes to our polity, and we find it satisfying to have done it. Good! Let’s celebrate our accomplishment, and thank God who gives power to both sides to maneuver and persuade. It’s pleasant, and awe-inspiring, to be a part of this exchange of human powers, especially when we come out on top.

Of course we want more than that—we want legitimation, even divine sanction. But to succumb to this desire would be, I believe, a failure of nerve. It would be a refusal to accept responsibility for what we have done, to embrace the fact that we have engaged successfully in good old fashioned church politics, making good use of changing public opinion and denominational demographics to fashion a new reality in the church. It would be as if we don’t want to acknowledge that what we are doing and have done is political, a deeply human, open-ended and uncertain struggle. It would be as if we don’t want to recognize what we are doing, the power we are wielding.

But perhaps I am setting up an infelicitous zero-sum game. Perhaps invocations of the Spirit are being made more in the manner of Kathryn Tanner, who argues that there is no competition between divine and human activity: each can be fully in play without prejudice to the other. Following this line perhaps further than Tanner herself would, we could say that the Spirit has been present in the assembly in, with, and under the attitudes and actions of the political body gathered at Cobo Center in Detroit—that is to say, in, with, and under the arguments, amendments, questions, points of order, the maneuvering and persuading and forcing. The Spirit would not be a force of unity, then, guaranteeing a “good” outcome in which all differences are reconciled and overcome. Rather, it would be a spirit of contention and turmoil, unending and always unfinished.

I have to admit that this would be more to my liking. It would be a way to dismiss and dissolve the subterfuge and the cloaking of interests that often happens when people talk about the Spirit’s presence. It would be a way of acknowledging that the Spirit’s power and presence is anything but a guarantee of anything, anything but an end to a debate, anything but a failure of nerve. If the Spirit was present at this year’s assembly (which is actually not yet over as I am writing), it was there in the way it is always there—empowering a bottomless multiplicity of perspectives and agencies, breaking apart rather than melding together, dissolving human aims and ambitions rather than consolidating them. Here’s my main point: the Spirit’s presence would only be power expressed in difference, and not purpose expressed in unity. So, in the end, following this line, we can’t attribute the outcome of a General Assembly or anything else to the Spirit, because the Spirit doesn’t accomplish anything. We do. This, as always, is our doing, for better or for worse—and, as always, these actions will likely be both for better and for worse, though I’m happy to take the risk and the ambiguity. And then we cast those accomplishments on the restless waters of the future over which the Spirit continues to hover, and see what may happen next.