Presbyterians in Wyoming - Final Report

Mainline in the Heartland: Presbyterians in Wyoming

Richard R. Crocker

I am sitting in the basement of the Presbyterian Church in the tiny town of Burns, Wyoming (population 304) where all seven of the church elders have gathered around a table laden with simple refreshments to talk with me about their church. Good humor and genuine hospitality prevail as they take my measure – a visitor from “the East” who is making a tour of Presbyterian churches in the state. One of the elders, sitting next to me, laughs as he turns his head toward me and says, ”We had a Democrat here once, but we killed him.” I laugh with them, but I get the message.

I went Wyoming to study the American culture wars. I wanted to see at close hand how recent controversial decisions in one of America’s Mainline Protestant denominations, the Presbyterian Church (USA), were being received in the heartland.

I had spent much of the morning at the First Presbyterian Church of Cheyenne and much of the afternoon at the First Presbyterian Church of Burns. The Cheyenne Church is the epitome of establishment. It occupies a large beautiful stone edifice a block away from the Wyoming capitol, and adjoins the Wyoming Supreme Court. It has a gorgeous sanctuary, 500 members, and an extensive staff. It is one of the oldest churches in the capital, and one of the wealthiest. As was usual across the state, my welcome there was extremely warm. The pastor and elder with whom I met provided accounts of the rich history of the church. The theological tone is quite moderate. They have had a few disgruntled members over the years, some leaving because of personal issues, and some theological. A few have left for more liberal milieus, and a few have left for more conservative ones. The controversial decisions of the PCUSA are rarely discussed. The pastors have not yet had a request to perform a gay marriage. They will cross that bridge when they come to it. This is the church where people have a deeper commitment to civility than to being right. I felt very comfortable there.

The First Presbyterian Church of Burns is 30 miles east of Cheyenne in a very small, rural community. The streets are not paved. There is a regional high school there that draws students from a wide area. The church is in an attractive, well-maintained facility, with a new multi-media audio-visual system. It has a membership of 27 and an average attendance of about 20. The elders I spoke with were warm-hearted and welcoming, and we laughed at their good-natured jokes about liberals. This church is, they say, composed of like-minded people who are all "conservative Christians." They are deeply saddened about the secular direction of American culture and the accommodation of the PCUSA to that culture. They believe that the church should lead the nation/community toward righteousness, rather than accommodating to its worldliness. They are deeply opposed to church sanctioning of homosexual relationships, because it goes against what the Bible says "in black and white." One person fears that the Bibles sold in the future will omit certain passages and change certain words to make it more palatable to a degenerate culture. Similarly, they were deeply distressed about the PCUSA General Assembly's decision to divest from several companies that are deemed complicit with the destruction of Palestinian communities. They see the church as becoming anti-Semitic. The Bible says, they say, that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. They see America as now being cursed because of its supposed abandonment of Israel. Interestingly, one person said that, to be consistent, if we insist that Israel should return land to the Palestinians, then the US should give back all the land it took from the Indian nations. But these people, who could probably tell that I was not in agreement with their position, were personally very warm to me, and they insisted that, in any written report, I should make it plain that they love everyone.

These two churches represent the great conflict and divide, not only in Wyoming Presbyterianism, but in American Protestantism – indeed - in  American Christianity. They spring from very different ways of interpreting the Bible, and the opposing positions are held by good and earnest people. But their beliefs and opinions seem irreconcilable.

I chose to visit and study PCUSA congregations because I am a minister in that denomination, and because I feel partially responsible for some of the decisions it has made. As a Commissioner from the Presbytery of Northern New England to the General Assembly of the PCUSA held in June 2014 in Detroit, I voted on many difficult issues – not only on the redefinition of marriage, but also on the very controversial decision to divest church funds from certain companies that the Israeli government has relied upon to maintain its occupation of Palestinian lands, and also on the resolution to advocate greater restriction on gun availability. All of these decisions, we were told, would result in individuals and congregations leaving the denomination – a prediction that has proven accurate. Recent statistics from the Pew Research Institute confirm the fact that almost all American Christian churches are losing members, but the loss among Mainline Protestant churches over the last seven years – from 18.1 percent to 14.7 percent of the population – and losses in the PCUSA are among  the largest. In the last five years for which data are available, the PCUSA has lost 15% of its membership - (from 2,077,138 to 1,760,300) and 6% of it congregations (from 10,657 to 10,038).  At its height, in 1965, the denomination had 4.25 million members. Other smaller and more conservative denominations (The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, The Presbyterian Church in America, and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, in particular) have absorbed some of these congregations and individual members.

What is perhaps surprising is that the Presbytery of Wyoming has lost only two congregations, reducing the number from 30 to 28. The membership, however, has fallen greatly in the last five years – from 4535 to 3418 – a loss of almost 25%. While the controversies have not ended, and while other congregations yet may secede, it is notable that Wyoming Presbytery has maintained the majority of its members and churches.

With a population of just over a half million, scattered over an area as big as all New England, Wyoming is the least densely populated state in the nation, with the exception of Alaska. The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) is represented there by 28 congregations. Despite its small numbers, both of Wyoming’s (Republican) US Senators are active Presbyterians. Wyoming is known for its political conservatism, having, in recent years, always elected Republican national senators and representatives, and in 2012, having given a larger percentage of its votes to the Republican presidential candidate than any state except Utah. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is probably the state’s best known politician.  But, at the same time, the conservatism of Wyoming is distinct from that of some other western states. Rather than harboring active militia groups, the state is known for its “live and let live” libertarian traditions. It was the first state in the nation to acknowledge women’s right to vote, and it elected some of the nation’s first female public officials. These facts made Wyoming a valuable place to explore how the congregations of an increasingly liberal Protestant denomination were expressing their Christian faith.

The Presbyterians in Burns, like many others I met in Wyoming, felt that the church had abandoned it both its history and its roots. While this attitude was not shared by all the Presbyterians I met in Wyoming, it was a common theme.

The desire to uphold tradition is understandable. The Presbyterian tradition has been spiritually and culturally important in American history. Drawing mainly during colonial  days from Scots, northern English, and Scots-Irish  immigrants, Presbyterians spread from Long Island and New Jersey to South Carolina, and, later, from Western Pennsylvania along the Appalachian mountains to northern Georgia. Embodying a strongly Calvinistic theology which had asserted itself during the English civil wars, Presbyterians were enthusiastic proponents of American independence. John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister and president of Princeton, was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.  Unlike the Episcopal Church, where prayers for the British king were part of the prescribed liturgy, Presbyterians and some of their Calvinistic Congregationalists cousins in New England were fiercely independent. As Presbyterian missionaries such as Marcus and Narcissa Whitman often accompanied and even led the  westward expansion along the Oregon trail,  they brought along not only the sense of fierce independence that made them eager revolutionaries,  but also the fractiousness that has plagued them ever since. Whether the issue was psalm-singing versus hymn-singing, using instruments in worship, the propriety of evangelistic preaching, the issues surrounding slavery and the civil war, the rise of fundamentalism, or the proper role of women in worship, Presbyterians have debated passionately the proper interpretation of the Bible, often resulting in each side often forming its own denomination. Reunions have taken place – the most notable being the reunion of the Northern and Southern Presbyterians in 1983. But contentiousness has never disappeared. Indeed, contentiousness and, some would say, stubbornness, have been hallmarks of Presbyterians, along with an intense loyalty to their interpretations of the Bible, an insistence on  properly educated ministers, and the desire to influence social policy in a way that is seen as godly. These factors have been both the strength and the weakness of the Presbyterian tradition. While Presbyterians have never dominated any state, they have been present in all of them, and, in Wyoming, they established themselves in many towns – sometimes as the only Protestant, non-Mormon church.

Presbyterian Christians are notable not only for their Calvinistic doctrines, but also for their form of government. Unlike the congregational tradition, where each congregation is autonomous, or the episcopal traditions, where authority is invested solely or partially in bishops, Presbyterians are a connectional church governed by Elders (from the Greek: presbuteros). Each congregation elects ruling elders, who, along with the pastors – who are called teaching elders - constitute the church session, or ruling body. Presbyteries consist of all the teaching elders, as well as at least one ruling elder from each congregation, in a given area. Presbyteries have authority over particular congregations. Larger representatives bodies, the synod, and, ultimately, the General Assembly, have authority over Presbyteries. The Confessions of Faith and the Book of Order – which together constitute the church’s constitution - govern all bodies of the church, and these documents can be amended only by actions of the General Assembly that are confirmed by a majority, or in important decisions, a supermajority of the presbyteries. It is a rather awkward and time-consuming form of government, but there are those who love it.

After years of contentious debate, discussions about sexuality and other issues came to a point of decision in the 2014 General Assembly. By a vote of 429 to 179, marriage was redefined, and this decision was then affirmed by a vote in the presbyteries, 121 voting in favor and 48 opposed. It is not surprising that dissident congregations and individuals would assert their disagreement, and that some would secede from the denomination. Some presbyteries have lost half of their congregations.

It was in this context that, with funding provided through a pastoral study grant from the Louisville Institute, I went to Wyoming, with the intention of visiting all its Presbyterian churches, talking with pastors and elders and church members, to discover how they were interpreting their Christian faith and their denominational allegiance amid the conflicts that are both cultural and ecclesiastical. I spent six weeks visiting Presbyterian churches in Wyoming’s cities, towns, and villages. Three of the 28 congregations are union or federated or cooperative parishes, which maintain joint affiliation with either the United Methodist Church or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. One of the congregations is Korean. Having asked permission of the Presbytery Council to visit, and having contacted the churches ahead of time, I was warmly welcomed almost everywhere.

During my six-week visit to Wyoming, where I met with 26 of the 28 churches (two pastors declined to meet with me), I noticed things that, while obvious and familiar to its citizens, struck me as notable and significant. The first was the economic climate. Wyoming, the cowboy state, is more accurately the mining state. Coal, oil, and gas – along with the railroads that transport their products – dominate the state. Ranches and cattle are plentiful, and the tourist industry is very important, but the mining interests provide the lion’s share of employment in the state and pay most of its taxes. The result is that any federal measures imposing stricter standards on carbon emissions are met with almost universal fear and resistance, and President Obama is widely distained as waging “a war on coal.” Having been through many boom and bust times, Wyomingites are acquainted with the fragility of prosperity, and they are understandably skeptical of any measures that threaten it. This factor, along with others, produces a strong sense of distinctiveness in Wyoming, and a distrust of federal initiatives. This distrust of centralized authority extends not only to civil government, but also to any centralized ecclesial government. One irony about this fact is that almost half the land in Wyoming is owned by the federal government, and much of the mining occurs on land that is leased from the government. Wyoming is a wealthy state with many poor people. The discrepancy between rich and poor is notable, simply by looking at the disparate housing patterns. The Wind River Indian Reservation, the only reservation in the state and the home to both Shoshone and Arapaho tribes, is one of the poorest in the nation.

                                                                                                                              

Same gender marriage, I discovered, is less controversial in the state than federal emission standards. While surveys indicate that a slowly shrinking majority of its citizens oppose gay marriage, there is also a pervasive sense of not wanting to interfere with the personal and private rights of other citizens or church members. Thus it was significant that the 2014 General Assembly’s redefinition of marriage, when considered by the Presbytery of Wyoming, was rejected by only one vote (21-20). More controversial were the decisions of the General Assembly (which did not affect the Constitution of the church, and therefore did not require ratification by the presbyteries) to  divest church funds in  Motorola, Hewlitt-Packard,  and Caterpillar – companies that were identified  as undergirding Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Opposition to the General Assembly’s resolutions supporting greater gun control were uniformly opposed. Indeed, the acceptance of guns as ubiquitous in Wyoming seems unquestioned. Licenses are not required to own or carry guns. As the resident of a state where opinions about gun control are more varied, I was surprised by the many signs on the doors of stores and restaurants saying “Your guns are welcome here.” One sign in a restaurant, while amusing, was also emphatic. It read “Due to the price of ammunition, you will not be given a warning shot.” While churches are free to prohibit weapons, pastors told me that they assumed that many members of their congregations would be armed during worship.

Hunting, of course, is a major recreational and economic activity in Wyoming, and, in addition to signs saying “Hunters and guns are welcome here”, there are prayers in worship for hunters, and the sight of men and women in camouflage, carrying rifle cases during hunting season is absolutely normal. Any governmental (whether civil or ecclesial) actions to restrict gun ownership and access are seen as an infringement on a very sacred right.

In the climate that I have described, one might well ask why – and how – the PCUSA maintains any Wyoming constituency at all. Why are the congregations loyal to a denomination that takes stands with which they may passionately disagree?

First, one must acknowledge that there has been conflict. Two congregations, the historic First Presbyterian Church of Casper and the small rural congregation in Yoder, have withdrawn from the denomination. There has been considerable conflict in several other congregations, leading to the departure of many members. In fact, every single congregation I visited, with the exception of one, reported that they had lost members as a result of the General Assembly decisions. Two other congregations, in Lingle and Torrington, remain in the denomination after votes to secede failed to reach the two-thirds majority required.  There may still be other congregations that withdraw.

Yet most have stayed. Why? The answers to this question of continued unity emerged from my conversations with pastors and elders, and they are relatively simple.

The primary answer springs from a deeply conservative kind of loyalty. In congregations of all sizes, I heard appreciation for a Presbyterian heritage that is anchored in the work of fabled missionaries like Marcus Whitman and Sheldon Jackson. There is a sense of connection to the past, and an appreciation of it, that makes many people reluctant to abandon their long-established affiliation. “This church,” one member in Greybull told me, “has endured through many controversies; it will endure through this one if we just hang on.”

In addition to loyalty, there is also, ironically, a sense of independence. Many ruling and teaching elders told me: “What the national church does doesn’t affect us. We are who we are. And we will stay that way. These decisions have no effect on us.” Because of the resolutions on gun control and divestment, some members have elected to withhold their annual per capita contribution (tax) from the national church. Many also see the marriage decision as one that, because it simply gives ministers and sessions the permission to conduct same sex marriage ceremonies but does not require that they do so, has no impact on them. They are confident that their pastor, and their session, will not approve such marriages. The Korean pastor in Cheyenne showed me a statement by the National Council of Korean Presbyterian Churches (there are 400 of them) saying that they unanimously agreed not to perform same sex weddings. “Other than this,” he said, “we are Presbyterian.” The session of the church in Gillette adopted a policy that same gender weddings could not be conducted in their church building. Another pastor in a rural church told me “I would not conduct a same-gender marriage, and I doubt that any pastor in the presbytery would.” He was wrong.

Highlands Presbyterian Church, the smaller of two Presbyterian churches in Cheyenne, has welcomed and embraced the possibility of gay marriage – and has in fact already celebrated the marriage of two of its long-time members. Ironically, its long time part-time interim pastor, Roger McDaniel, widely known throughout the state for his Democratic politics and liberal views that he advocates in a weekly newspaper column, is a minister in the Disciples of Christ Church, rather than the Presbyterian. Gay marriage is a reality, not only in Wyoming, but in a Presbyterian church in Wyoming. And, since several pastors told me that they have openly gay members, I expect that the issue will arise in other congregations as well.

Thirdly, what protects these congregations from division at the moment is an almost universally determined commitment “not to talk about it.” As I was told almost everywhere, ”We just don’t talk about it.” Sometimes there was an explanation: “We would rather not know if we disagree with someone. We are a small group, and it is more important just to get along, so we don’t talk about things that we might disagree about.” Such a strategy may lead to the belief that there is a consensus when in fact there is not. But it allows cohesion.

In the larger First Presbyterian Church in Cheyenne, where the pastor had told me congregational opinions on such issues spanned the spectrum, a long-time elder said that he had told a friend about attending a same-gender wedding. His friend, another long-time member, was offended and disbelieving. “How could you do that?” was the question. But the elder told me, “I just said that we just disagreed on this matter. And we haven’t spoken about it again.”

As Kathleen Norris acknowledges in her book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, which is a discussion of spiritual life in the plains of South Dakota, small communities survive by not talking about controversy – by papering over disagreement, or refusing to acknowledge its existence. This is one of the reasons that PCUSA congregations, and probably many other communities, continue to cohere. There is a cost to such a conspiracy of silence; issues that might productively be discussed are not discussed. But the pain of disagreement is avoided.

The study and interpretation of the Bible has been at the heart of the Protestant Christian tradition, both its agreements and controversies. As one pastor of a congregation in a small town told me, speaking about how the other members of town’s ministerial alliance viewed her, “It’s hard, because some of them refuse to recognize me as a pastor, because I am a woman.” I heard this comment from several female pastors. Often they are the only female pastors in the town. Many conservative denominations understand that the Bible as prohibits female pastors. This was once an issue in the Presbyterian tradition as well, but it was settled in the 1960s, when church congregations that understood the Bible to prohibit female pastors withdrew, forming the Presbyterian Church in America. Now, this same pastor told me, the Presbyterian decision on gay marriage has led other ministerial colleagues in her town to assert “The Presbyterians don’t believe the Bible.” This is a difficult accusation to counter if one is speaking to someone whose method of Biblical interpretation (hermeneutic) is simple and absolute. It is hard to explain that another equally sincere and well-informed understanding of the Bible can lead to embracing the possibility of same sex marriage. It is especially hard if pastors promote, as absolute, a naïve reading of scripture.

Like many other mainline Protestant churches, the PCUSA in Wyoming is trying to move forward, albeit slowly and deliberately, against strong cultural headwinds. In such a storm, there is a tendency to huddle together for protection. That is certainly one strategy for survival. Another strategy, such as the one adopted by the Highlands Church, is to raise a progressive flag and say “This is who we are.” In a city such as Cheyenne, where there is a sufficient population, there are people who will be attracted to such a stand -  perhaps a small number, but still a viable group. In small and dwindling towns, with very small and dwindling congregations, such diversity of opinion is less likely to be supported.

Several PCUSA congregations in Wyoming, however, are apparently thriving. The Shepherd of the Hills in Casper, First Presbyterian Church in Sheridan, the Federated Community Church of Thermopolis, First Presbyterian Church in Laramie, the Presbyterian Church of Jackson Hole, – while in no sense megachurches - are nonetheless apparently healthy and are more than holding their own. Why? These churches are traditional in a different sense. In urban or suburban settings, with exceptionally able pastors, they have been able to establish and sustain traditional programs, particularly youth programs that attract families. As is the case throughout the nation, people increasingly attend churches based on factors other than denomination. Churches that have a youth program (even though most report that their youth groups have diminished) are likely to be more attractive to families. Denominational identity and social stances tend to matter less than the perceived vitality of the congregation. But while that strategy may work in population centers, it is less successful in small towns and villages where aging congregations have no young people at all. Yet, even those small churches, for the moment, at least, endure. One of the questions I routinely asked interviewees is, “What words would you use to describe your congregation?” One pastor of a very small congregation (about twelve attendees) in a very small town choose the word “happy.” ”Happy?”, I asked. “In what sense?” “Happy just to be here at all,’ he said. At that church, after Sunday worship, the twelve of us gathered around a table and all ate peach cobbler. We were happy.

Other smaller churches, which describe themselves as “community centered”, are also relatively vital. Almost all of these churches are extensively involved in community ministries such as food pantries, stuffing backpacks with food for school children, many of whom depend on a subsidized lunch program, to take home over the weekend, staffing thrift stores, etc.  Because the groups have ministries that extend beyond themselves, their role in their community is appreciated, and their influence in community is larger than their membership. As one pastor told me, “My people would rather do than talk.”

My observations in Wyoming confirm undeniable and obvious facts: mainline Protestant denominations, and especially the PCUSA, face challenges, both external and internal. They are not all dead or dying, but many are wounded, casualties of the deep political, cultural, and theological fragmentation in our nation, and in the world.

The major question to be asked is: What is at stake here? Why do these observations about Presbyterians in Wyoming matter? For Christians, what is at stake is not simply the demise of any particular denomination or religious perspective; the issue is what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in our time and place.  This is the question being asked, either explicitly or implicitly, by all of these congregations in Wyoming, and by the Christian church at large. The continuing discussion, or conflict, in answering this question is part of the conversation that constitutes the Christian tradition. For non-Christians, the issue at stake is a less theological and more cultural one: what role does religious conflict play in the survival of a cohesive multicultural democracy?

The answers to these questions matter, and the fact that thoughtful and caring people have different and sometimes incompatible perspectives, concerns us all. We are all interested in the outcome of this conversation, even if we are neither Wyomingites or Presbyterians.

My observations lead me to believe that, no matter what denomination, the de facto church polity in America is congregational.  Most congregations (even at times Roman Catholic parishes) feel that they are, or should be, autonomous, making their own decisions and answering to no “federal” authority.  Community trumps denomination. Even congregations that have a core of denominationally loyal members report that most members have little sense of denominational identity.

Pastoral leadership is key to providing a healthy and constructive context for conversation in congregations, and, perhaps, in the larger community as well. Congregations almost always follow their pastors. The two churches in Wyoming that left the PCUSA left at leaast in part because  od their pastoral leadership. Congregations, even conservative ones, have remained because their pastor provides a model of the ability to tolerate and interpret ambiguity. Most Presbyterian and other mainline pastors have been taught to interpret the Bible with the use of literary and historical tools that are commonplace in the academy but sometimes foreign to many church-goers. These pastors are trained to appreciate ambiguity. For many congregations, however, and for and some pastors, their de facto theology appears to be a kind of “latent fundamentalism”, which rests upon readings of the Bible that eschew ambiguity. Congregations depend upon their pastors to help them understand the Bible and to help them address the central questions of the meaning of Christian discipleship. Many pastors, however, are either reluctant or ill-equipped to pose questions that challenge beliefs of their church members that may have been formed with a more absolutist hermeneutic.  Providing competent, caring, effective pastoral leadership is always a challenge; it requires, like the practice of medicine, skill, intuition, and experience.  

Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than in the failure of almost all churches to maintain the allegiance of their youth. The Pew Research Institute data document the massive alienation from any religious that characterizes American youth (ages 18-30). Many have never been exposed to a religious tradition; others have simply opted out. One can only conclude from these facts that the church as a whole has been largely unsuccessful in engaging its own young people, much  less others, in addressing the intersection of faith and culture. To meet these challenges, pastors who have been trained both in the polity of their denomination and in the contemporary academic methods of Biblical interpretation must strive for a clearer and more compelling simplicity.  Congregations rarely want to hear academic lectures. But failure to make them aware of developments in Biblical understanding constitutes a kind of pastoral malpractice. Pastors must be able to assert, simply and convincingly, the deep convictions that emerge from their tradition as it interacts with the inescapable cultural questions that confront all of us – but particularly our youth.  While one must expect that different answers and perspectives may emerge in the discussion, as they have throughout Christian history, and unanimity in a fractured church is unlikely, it is even more certain that the questions cannot be avoided and that thoughtful people will not be long satisfied with simplistic answers. Often, it appears, the church’s proclamation is either not clear and therefore is misunderstood, or is understood but is not compelling. The future, not only of the PCUSA, but of the church as a whole, depends upon a spiritual renewal that is formed, not by either nostalgia or the simplistic certainties of fundamentalism or secularism, but upon engaging in strenuous and honest conversations that take seriously the essential and complex tasks of rightly dividing the word of truth.