In
Recommendation 5, The Theological Task Force creates a communications
disconnect when it discards the ordinary usage of a common word and
redefines the word altogether. That word is “standard.”
Up until the time
of the PUP Report, the word “standard” meant something
like “mandate” or “requirement.” A standard
must be obeyed; adherence is required, compliance mandated. Recommendation
5 in the report, however, seeks to change that usage to mean “aspiration.”
According to the report, a standard is not necessarily a requirement
that must be kept; one should simply aspire to keep it—somewhat
in the same manner that one aspires to “perfection.” (Or
to shoot par on the golf course.)
Enormous miscommunication
arises when those who mean mandate or requirement
(as in “not optional”) reason that the Task Force has
made the “standards” subject to nullification through
the process of determining what is essential or actually required.
Task Force members
even insist that standards are “binding.” They mean that
Recommendation 5 requires ordaining governing bodies (presbyteries
and sessions) to consider and acknowledge the standards (such as,
they point out in their rationale, G-6.0106b). Acknowledgement is
not optional; the “standards do not change” under their
proposal. The “standards” may not be ignored. Yet, having
acknowledged the “standards” as the aspirations of the
church, the presbytery or session (under Recommendation 5) would have
the power to determine which particular “standard” or
“standards” are or are not mandated or required. So, we
would have a new usage – a “non-required standard”
or a non-essential standard.
Thus, some standards
would be required and others not required. But both would still be
called “standards.” And no standards could be made “essential”
or required throughout the whole church by action of the General Assembly
or even by the Constitution itself.
The communications
disconnect occurs when well-meaning folks use the word “standard”
in a sentence like, “Recommendation 5 allows for some ‘standards’
to become optional.” Or “standards may be ignored under
Recommendation 5.”
Task Force members
quickly assert, “No, standards are ‘still in place;’
they are not optional.”
Our Book of
Order is written with the ordinary, original use of “standards”
in mind; they are the “shalls,” and the Book of Order
defines the “shalls” as “mandatory.” The General
Assembly would introduce incalculable confusion into our fellowship
with the adoption of Recommendation 5’s bewildering newspeak.
But why introduce confusion in the first place? Shouldn’t an
Authoritative Interpretation actually clarify something?
Therefore, Recommendation 5 does not deserve to be approved as proposed.
In the meantime,
if we all used the words “requirement” or “mandate”
as a substitute for “standard,” we could speak in a way
that would communicate with Task Force Members, General Assembly and
the Stated Clerk’s office while Recommendation 5 is being considered
without introducing the muddle inherent in this new usage.
And by the way,
how do we know what the church considers to be requirements, mandates,
and essentials—the concept historically known as “standards”?
The Preface of the Book of Order makes that clear:
“Whenever the word ‘shall’ is used, it means a ‘practice
that is mandated.’”
