Letters to the Editors
Cause for Alarm
To The Editors:
I would like to commend Michelle Chapin and Kristin Coffin Daum for
their articulate passion in opposing the General Church policy of having a
male-only clergy. (New Church Life, November-December, 2014) They show a
commendable desire to sound an alarm. I think they are seeing the organization
they love to be in self-destruct! But I plead with them and others of a similar
mind: please beware of your passion having the possible effect of blinding you!
The General Church, as an organization, will be healthy to the degree it
follows what the Word says. Now what does it say about the priesthood? All
concerned have probably read carefully the passages that have been presented
to show that the clergy is a masculine only use. (Start with Conjugial Love 125
and 163.) Yet some do not agree with this conclusion.
Similarly, there are those who have not accepted the implicit warning that
the Lord gives us about marrying someone who is baptized into a different
religion, or what He says about allowable divorce and remarriage, or what we
are told are domestic/female and forensic/male uses.
The fact that these and other doctrines are the subject of contention
is cause for alarm. Should the priesthood, therefore, be doing anything
differently? If the General Church does self-destruct, it will be the result of the
priesthood failing to uphold what the Word says. In that case it will have fallen
short in its charge from the Lord to feed His sheep.
But what if the priesthood, in doing its duty to uphold the Word, is
faced with passionate opposition from members of the laity? What if some
people simply don’t agree with what the priesthood sees to be clearly taught?
Despite the grief a priest feels over this upset in the Church, his duty is to keep
preaching the truth as he sees it!
The Rev. Christopher R. J. Smith
Kempton, Pennsylvania
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