A note on Richard Hooker's Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1: The odium of institutions -- Chapter 2: "Over the institutional church"? -- Chapter 3: Dominion, distortion, and domination -- Chapter 4: Institutions -- Chapter 5: The Power of Symbols —the Symbols of Power -- Chapter 6: Clericalism -- Chapter 7: Moses, management, bishops, budgets, and busyness -- Chapter 8: Searching out the Church in the shadows of shame -- An afterword -- Bibliography.
Beginning with the organizational difficulties that faced the post-resurrection communities of Jesus' followers and concluding nearly six centuries later as many regional representatives of the universal church came increasingly under the influence of Roman bishops, Church, Book, and Bishop is the story of leadership-- its successes and frustrations. It is a book about the managerial elites largely responsible for overcoming the theological, political, and social obstacles to organization. Through a series of scenes drawn from clerical life, Peter Iver Kaufman identifies and illustrates these executive strategies for conflict management and consensus-building. Whereas many accounts of this period emphasize nonconformity and conflict, Kaufman studies the distribution and exercise of authority that made if possible to articulate the conformists' positions effectively and to achieve an appreciable measure of institutional coherence. This story is told in a way that will appeal not only to scholars of the early church and their students but also to generalists interested in the development of Latin Christianity. It will be especially useful as a supplement to courses on the history of Western civilization and on the history of Christian traditions. ; https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1280/thumbnail.jpg
Joyce Borgman de Velder listened intently. The General Synod of the Reformed Church in America had convened in Holland, Michigan. On Wednesday morning, June 13, 1979 a debate began which would decide whether she could be ordained to the office of minister of the Word. De Velder's request to her classis for ordination the previous June had led to a year long controversy in the church. The major issue was whether the Book of Church Order permits or does not permit the ordination of women. The problem centered around the meaning of the word "persons" as it is used in the Book of Church Order. The Book of Church Order defines ministers of the Word as "those persons who have been inducted into that office by ordination in accordance with the Word of God and the order established by the church." Most Reformed Church members had always interpreted "persons," in that context, to mean only men. Consequently to ordain a woman without an amendment to the Book of Church Order was illegal and a violation of the authority of the government of the church. Many advocated the ordination of women as ministers of the Word, but to ordain women before the Book of Church Order was amended was unacceptable to them. However, there were those who were convinced that "persons" should be interpreted to include women and men and that an amendment to the Book of Church Order was not necessary.
In order to present an accurate picture of that portion of Lutheran Church History to which this study is devoted, we must have some foundation from which to work common to all of the Lutheran bodies which come into consideration. The only fundamental of that kind we have been able to discover is the statement of the Lutheran position on church polity which is contained in the Lutheran Symbols. However, even this is hardly satisfactory. That is the case partly because the Lutheran Symbols were not held in high regard by some of the Lutheran groups in America; partly because other factors, such as the customs of their European antecedents, political and ecclesiastical conditions in America, experiences and developments during their early organizational life, etc., etc., play an important part in shaping the policies of most bodies concerned.
The Reformed Church in America has been known by a bewildering variety of names during its long history. When first established on American soil by Dutch settlers in 1628, it was commonly called the Hervormde Kerk, or Reformed Church, after the mother church in Holland. With the fall of New Netherland to England in 1664, it became popular to refer to American religious groups by their ethnic origins, such as the English Church, the Scottish Church, the Dutch Church, and so forth. Following ecclesiastical independence from the Hervormde Kerk in 1772 and the outbreak of the American Revolution a few years later, the Dutch Church was known by several new names. Another dimension was added to the confusion in 1819 when General Synod became incorporated by act of the New York state legislature under the title: The General Synod of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. Although the denomination was henceforth officially known as the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, inconsistencies in names continued to be displayed for many years in both the minutes of General Synod and in the constitutions of the denomination. Despite the variety of names being used, it was only the word Dutch that caused considerable concern. From 1840, when General Synod first began debating the question of a name change, until 1867, when the controversial term was finally dropped by ecclesiastical action, arguments and counter-arguments were hurled back and forth. The views expressed were frequently bitter and seriously disturbed the peace and harmony of the church.
Gaede skillfully weaves together the stories of many congregations and how they faced and dealt with the issue of homosexuality. A helpful resource for assisting congregations that seek to engage in dialogue about one of the most difficult faith issues today, the book does not take a theological stand, but rather draws on the experiences of others who have struggled with how to address this issue from a position of respect for all views.
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[v. 1.] Letter to Dorp = Epistola ad Dorpium ; Apology against the Dialogue of Latomus = Apologia contra Latomi dialogum ; The defence of the Declamation on marriage = Apologia pro declamatione matrimonii ; Acts of the University of Louvain against Luther = Acta Academiae Lovaniensis contra Lutherum ; Brief notes of Erasmus for the cause of Luther = Axiomata Erasmi pro causa Lutheri ; Minute composed for the peace of the Church = Consilium pro christianae religionis tranquillitate ; Manifest lies = Manifesta mendacia / edited by J.K. Soward -- [v. 2.] Biblical passages discussed in Erasmus' Response to the annotations of Edward Lee ; An apologia in response to the two invectives of Edward Lee = Apologia qua respondet duabus invectivis Lei ; A response to the annotations of Edward Lee = Responsio ad annotationes Eduardi Lei / edited by Jane E. Phillips ; translated by Erika Rummel ; annotated by István Bejczy, Jane E. Phillips, and Erika Rummel.
In the Reformed Church in America, a denomination that embraces a fair amount of theological diversity and that values fellowship over doctrinal conformity, the fate of theological pronouncements by its General Synod is often ambiguous at best. Provocative and polarizing statements are unlikely to survive the centripetal force of General Synod's consensus-based politics. Any lingering doubt as to the community-building quality of a paper is likely to be resolved by synod's voting "to recommend the paper … to the congregations of the Reformed Church in America for study"—a recommendation that avoids outright rejection but falls well short of putting denominational weight behind the document. (Such reticence, of course, does not always prevent the document's partisans from citing it a few years down the road as the Reformed Church's "official" position.) This determination to "govern from the center" has its pastoral and institutional benefits. Attempts by study committees in sister denominations to seize the prophet's mantle by forwarding radical proposals to ecclesiastical assemblies have not always had happy results. For instance, the 1991 report to the PCUSA on "Presbyterians and Human Sexuality" may have so raised the temperature surrounding the issue as to set back the possibility of productive discussion by a decade or more. Although rejected resoundingly by the General Assembly (by a vote of 534 to 31 ), the report was widely distributed within the denomination and came to serve as a "sign of contradiction"—for some, as a goal of liberated and inclusive sexuality, for many others as a warning of the consequences of pitting contemporary cultural trends against the Scripture-based moral tradition of Christianity
