Synod 2024 of the Christian Reformed Church begins meeting in person on June 14. Until then and while synod is in session, I hope to offer a few notes and observations about the synodical process. This synod could mark the beginning of the end for the CRC or, perhaps, the beginning of something new. I offer these comments in hope for the latter.  Clay

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“I testify about them that zeal for God they have but their zeal has not been properly instructed.” Romans 10:2

So said the Apostle Paul of his fellow religionists. I have just come off reading the agenda for Synod 2024 of the Christian Reformed Church—my denomination. It perhaps is bad manners to quote Paul here, but in those many pages of overtures and communications, there was much in the way of zeal and less in the way of careful thought. 

The Christian Reformed Church seems on the brink of coming apart, as are other denominations across the spectrum. The presenting issue is sex: what constitutes legitimate sex for Christians? The problem is that the church has traditionally given one answer to that question, and contemporary societies in the West now give another answer. The church has taught that the only sex between married partners of the opposite sex has divine sanction, but since 2001(the Netherlands), many nations (38 at present count) have legalized same sex marriage. Some churches have embraced this trend; others have resisted.

This is often framed in cultural terms: will the church go along with modern-day culture and approve of same sex marriage, or will it resist the culture, and remain true to its principles? So goes a common narrative in the church. But the situation is more complicated than that narrative would suggest. Western cultures, perhaps especially in the United States, are in the midst of a struggle between a longstanding progressive movement which embraces the shifts in sexual mores that have developed since at least the late fifties of the previous century (and perhaps earlier) and a reactionary movement that has gained strength in the past quarter century. The reactionary movement no less than the progressive movement is cultural. The reactionary movement no less than the progressive movement is a product of the present age. The choice facing the church is not whether to go along with the culture or resist the culture; the choice is which of these cultural movements to embrace.

This is the choice the Christian Reformed Church is making and has been making since 2016. The choice is often presented as between traditional and progressive churches, but this distorts what is happening. The church that progressives envision is much more like the Christian Reformed Church of years past than the church envisioned by those who present themselves as conservatives. These “conservatives” are not interested in conserving the culture of the CRC, but in altering it in fundamental ways.

In the end, it has become a power struggle, and in this power struggle, the clear winners so far are those who want to change the church, change it not by moving it leftward but by moving it rightward. In this effort, those leading the movement have harnessed old resentments toward what was once the CRC establishment: toward (some) denominational agencies, Calvin University, and churches in the older part of Grand Rapids. They have claimed the mantle of tradition, but it’s not tradition that’s being served; it’s power.

In these notes and observations about Synod 2024, it’s important to keep this in mind. To frame the conflict in the CRC as conservative versus liberal misses what is happening on the synod floor. A good place to begin that story is with the controversy over a peculiar CRC piece of church order arcana: the gravamen.

How the Topic of the Gravamen Came to Dominate the CRC

It was 2022. The CRC synod had just decided that its position against queer sex was confessional. Even though nothing queer is ever mentioned in the Reformed confessions, they accomplished this sleight of the synodical hand by, first, declaring that when the Heidelberg Catechism in Question and Answer 108 says that “God condemns all unchastity,” the catechism means to include “homosexual sex.” And then, having assigned this meaning to the catechism, they declared that this makes the condemning of queer sex an article of faith. To be Christian Reformed is to believe this: that sex between partners of the same gender is always sin. Unchaste. Argument over. 

This was important. In CRC polity one can differ with a synodical decision. Synodical decisions are, in the language of the church order, “settled and binding,” but “settled and binding” does not mean that one has to like it. You can, if you wish, write an overture to the next synod asking for the decision to be changed. Or you can write an article in The  Banner, the denominational magazine, saying why you believe the synod to have been misguided. Or you can just complain to your CRC friends about it. Regardless, you can talk about it, and CRC people do. “Did you hear what synod did now?”

Confessions, on the other hand, require a different kind of agreement. One “subscribes” to the confessions (I’ll come back to all this below) by signing a Covenant for Officebearers. The Covenant says with regard to the confessions that they are “historic Reformed expressions of the Christian faith, whose doctrines fully agree with the Word of God.” One is supposed to sign on to the confessions, as the supplement to the church order instructs, “without reservation [to] all the doctrines contained” in them. 

But now suddenly Synod 2022 had added a doctrine to the confessions that had not been there before, not explicitly, the doctrine that said that “homosexual sex” was unchaste and a violation of the seventh commandment. What about those synod delegates who moments before had been arguing strenuously that this was not the case, those who believed that homosexual sex in a properly instituted marriage was as chaste as heterosexual sex? Were they now suddenly on the wrong side of the confessions? And if so, should they be summarily dismissed from the synod? Should they be put under discipline? Twenty-six delegates had gone to the trouble of requesting that their negative votes be recorded in the synod minutes, thereby enshrining their opposition to what now was declared to be a confessional statement. What should they do? Resign? Walk out? Repent in dust and ashes?

Some in the room suggested exactly that. They wanted the dissenting delegates to be disciplined. (I was there as a reporter, sitting in the back at The Banner table.) And some, those who had voted against the synodical declaration, asked the question: what should we do? They were instructed that they should follow the procedures laid out in Article 5 of the CRC Church Order, which is where the gravamen comes in.

“Gravamen” is an odd word, even in ecclesiology. In the law, it means the pith of a complaint, of a lawsuit, say. It comes from Latin gravare, “to be weighty.” The gravamen is the weighty part of the complaint. In Reformed polity, it’s used somewhat differently. It’s a statement of disagreement with a confession. If one comes to disagree with a confession, one may file a gravamen with the appropriate ecclesiastical body.

For years in the CRC, it was a remedy almost never actually used. In 1975, Professor Harry Boer inquired of synod about the doctrine of reprobation. He wanted to know where this doctrine was taught in scripture. This led to a considerable amount of synodical kerfuffle, including for the first time in many years, a conversation about the gravamen. Nobody quite knew how to handle one. A committee was appointed (basically to talk Harry Boer out of it), and they ended up proposing to synod some clarifications about gravamina (the plural of gravamen).

They proposed and synod adopted a distinction between two kinds of gravamina. One they called a “confessional-revision gravamen.” Such a gravamen asked for a change in a confession. The other they called a “confessional-difficulty gravamen.” This kind of gravamen did not ask for a change in the confessions. It simply put the church on notice that someone serving or about to serve in a church office held reservations about one or another the doctrines taught in the confessions. The church body thus put on notice—a local council, say—could then decide if the issue with the confessions was weighty enough to disqualify the person with the gravamen from serving in church. Mostly in these cases, the council decided simply to live with the disparity.

So when Synod 2022 suddenly put a bunch of synodical delegates, people with whom they had to that point worshiped with, sat with, served on committees with, and eaten with on the wrong side of the confessions, the first instruction to them was to follow  the gravamen process. 

Pay attention to what synod did here. Actions speak louder than words, even at synods where words are everywhere. The synod did not rule that the delegates who had openly said that queer sex can also be chaste should repent or resign. They didn’t say to the delegates who registered their negative votes that they no longer were worthy of office in the church. They didn’t tell them that they should immediately resign and form a new denomination, say the Truer Than You Christian Reformed Church. In its actions, Synod 2022 didn’t treat the issue as confessional. They didn’t allow it to divide the synod. 

What the synod did do is give the dissenting delegates the instruction that they should avail themselves of the gravamen process. At the time, it struck me that this was a way of mitigating the effect of the decision that had just been made—a backing away from the full force of the decision. It was, in effect, as if to say, “It will be alright. As long as you don’t make a fuss about it publicly, no one is going to come after you. Just let your council know.”

But it was never going to be that simple. There was for example Calvin University, fully owned by the CRC. Professors at Calvin have their own form of the Covenant for Officebearers. How would this new synod ruling fit with Calvin’s commitment to academic freedom—the freedom to allow your research to take you wherever it goes? What new procedures would have to be worked out at Calvin? Or for the denominational board of trustees, the Council of Delegates: what would they have to sign on to? And so forth. And work these things out, they did, each institution using its own form of the gravamen process.

Suddenly there were gravamina everywhere. Or, at least, talk of gravamina everywhere. And mostly of the confessional-difficulty kind, people taking exception to the rulings of Synod 2022. The office of the General Secretary of the CRC sent out guidance for pastors and other office holders in the CRC, apprising them of the gravamen process. And that’s when all the shouting began. Those who were sure that queer sex was always sin, and not only sin, but a sin that put people on the wrong side of salvation, said, “This is not what we had in mind. A gravamen is not a way of taking exception to the confessions.”

To Synod 2023 they came with another avalanche of overtures and communications, determined to shut down the gravamen process. They almost succeeded. The majority of Synod Advisory Committee 8—a group of delegates to whom had been assigned matters related to human sexuality—proposed that confessional-difficulty gravamina were to be considered “temporary.” They were notice to a council or another church assembly that the person presenting the gravamen was struggling with a given doctrine. The expectation was that they would be counseled toward the denominational position. The Synod 2023 proposal gave a council receiving such a gravamen six months to resolve it before it would be popped up to the next level, the classis, and if the classis couldn’t resolve it, to the synod, where it would be decided once and for all. At that point the person bringing the gravamen would be required to assent to the doctrine in question or resign. Or, barring resignation, be disciplined.

What’s more, the proposal from Committee 8 to the Synod 2023 said that even that much time was too much for people whose difficulty is with the ruling of Synod 2022 on the confessional status of its position on human sexuality. They were to agree that “unchastity” in the Heidelberg Catechism included queer sex by the end of 2023 or resign or be subject to discipline.

This proposal made its way to the floor of synod on the last day of Synod 2023, and there it stalled. Flights home for the delegates were scheduled. The synod had a hard deadline. They didn’t have enough time to finish the debate, and so Synod 2023 did what no synod had done before: they left some of their business for the next synod. In a bit more than week, when Synod 2024 convenes in person (they have already had online meetings), the question of gravamina will come up again.

Since Synod 2023, new overtures and communications have been sent to synod. The original reports from Synod 2023 Committee 8 have been repackaged in the agenda as Communications 1-3. The 2023 overtures and communications relevant to the question of the status of gravamina have also been included in the agenda along with now others addressed specifically to Synod 2024.

Those who want to clamp down on the gravamen process argue that gravamina have never been considered exceptions to the confession. In fact, “exception” as in statements like “gravamina are not a way to take exception to the confessions” appears 149 times in the Synod 2024 material related to the question. (I counted.) But of course this is not true. For years CRC councils have included people who differed from the confessions on a variety of matters, often baptism or eschatology, and the council has decided that the person in question can serve nevertheless. This informal process—the exception was rarely if ever called a “gravamen”—has served the church well. It has promoted honesty and healthy discussion. It tends to reinforce the position of the church, not undermine it.

But those pushing to clamp down hard on gravamina are not interested in the church as it has been. They want a very different kind of church. Theirs is a church that draws sharp lines. Theirs is a church of the righteous, their kind of righteousness. They are zealous. As the apostle says in the passage I quoted above, give them that. But wisdom? Christlikeness? Well, Synod 2024 will have to be the judge of that.

What Subscription Really Means

All this has to do with the nature of church unity. River Park Church of Calgary, Alberta, filed an overture to Synod 2023 asking the synod to slow down in its decision making to listen to the churches scattered about the denomination. Their overture was not acted on by Synod 2023 and so has been deferred for action to Synod 2024. As part of the overture, River Park included an elegant little appendix on the nature of denominational unity.

In their appendix, the River Park council distinguished two things. First, the position members of the CRC take on the issue of same-sex marriage. Some members hold to what they call a “traditional” view; others to an “affirming” view. But this is not the only issue. CRC people also disagree on “how much that disagreement matters.” Some believe that “there is no room for any open disagreement on the topic of homosexual sex.” Others believe that there should be room for “respectful disagreement” on this issue. They add that in the CRC “currently flourishing” churches “have both ‘traditional’ and ‘affirming’ officebearers and members in [the] same community.” In these churches, people have decided that the unity of the congregation is primary.

My own experience confirms this observation. The congregations I have served include people on all sides of these and other issues. This does not mean they take these matters lightly. They may hold their positions firmly, believing that the people on the other side of the issue are quite wrong about what they think, but they also love the people with whom they differ. They have spent years together in the same church community, and they have decided that they would like to live together as long as they can—as long as no one forces them to decide the issues in the congregation. These churches are working their way through a difficult cultural landscape with grace and truth.

But it’s precisely these kind of church communities that the last couple of synods have seemed intent on blowing up. If synod decides to force the issue on the churches, its these churches that will be damaged. By forcing them to choose one way on the question of human sexuality, they will not be allowed to choose what they have chosen: to live together across differences.

What’s being imposed by synod is a way of thinking about subscription. What does it mean to subscribe to the confessions? What are you agreeing to? Those who are pushing the idea that their interpretation of Q&A 108 of the Heidelberg Catechism is confessional believe that subscription means that one agrees with everything that the confessions say and now, in addition, what Synod 2022 has said. It’s often emphasized by such people that one signs “without reservation.” This is a faith in ideas. See here, it says, these ideas are right, and those are wrong. If you join us, you have to agree that our ideas are right, and those other ideas are wrong. But where is that in scripture?

Better, I think, and wiser to consider subscription as a process of owning a people, covenanting with them, owning their history, their commitments, their community, their procedures, their practices,and, yes, their ideas. When one signs the Covenant for Officebearers, one says, this is my people. I will honor them, argue with them, worship with them, and own what they own. And if they say to me, Clay, you are quite wrong about that, I will take them seriously and honor what they say. And if I say to them, you have misunderstood the tradition in this regard, they will listen to me and honor me and perhaps, on occasion, agree with me. 

As I once wrote, this view of community was once put to me by Henry Stob, one of the best thinkers the CRC has ever known. Henry said to me, “Clay, what they want to know is whether you are for them or against them.” I’m still for them. I hope you are too.

Clay