It’s Time for a Formula of Disagreement

I posted this over at my more denomination-specific blog. I don’t think it’s gone live yet, so I thought I would put it here as well.

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For over ten years now the RCA, through the historic and misguiged Formula of Agreement, has been in “full communion” with the ELCA, the PC(USA), and the UCC. There have been enough unbiblical goings-on in any of these denominations to sound the alarm, but the recent action by the ELCA is the latest and possibly the most egregious. Meeting last week in Minneapolis, the Lutherans voted to allow non-celibate homosexual clergy and the blessing of same-sex relationships in the church. The RCA, through the Formula of Agreement, is in “full communion” with the ELCA. Should we be?

According to the Agreement, the term “full communion” is understood to specifically mean that the four churches, among other things, “recognize each other as churches in which the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered according to the Word of God.” No doubt, some of you reading this blog think homosexuality is good, or permissible, or something less than sinful. But most of us in the RCA think same-sex behavior, along with plenty of other sins, is prohbited in the Bible. Where does this leave us in relationship to the ELCA (and the other two denominations for that matter)?

What do we do when a denomination perverts the grace of our God into sensuality (Jude 4)–and not just a few renegade churches here and there, but the whole denomination in its official decision making capacity? Is the gospel rightly preached in the ELCA when their “gospel” officially affirms sinful behavior that the Bible says will keep one out of the kingdom of heaven (1 Cor. 6:9-10)? For those of us who hold to the Church’s millennia long teaching on sexuality, how can we continue to recognize as a true church a body that does not “engage in the pure preaching of the gospel”, does not “subject itself to the yoke of Christ” and allows into the offices of the church those who are not “fleeing from sin and pursuing righteousness” (Belgic Confession Article 29)? Homosexuality is, as J.I. Packer has argued, a heretical issue because it denies a central tenent of the gospel–repentance.

The RCA broke ties with the white church in South Afria over apartheid. It’s time the RCA profers a similar forumla of disagreement and breaks from full communion with erring, not to mention dying, denomations like the ELCA. The gospel is once again at stake.