PCUSA consultant says Jesus is not the only 'Way'
By John H. Adams
Kikanza Nuri Robins, a Presbyterian minister, describes herself as "Christian by birth, a Baha'i by reason, a Taoist in spirit, and a pastor in faith and vocation."
She has concluded, she says, that there are many paths to God and that there is no capital "T" in truth – not even Jesus' claim to be the Way, the Life and the Truth.
Robins was hired as a consultant by the Presbyterian Church (USA) to bring the denomination's staff in Louisville, Ky., up to speed on "Cultural Proficiency."
She was not an unknown. The PCUSA has posted on its Web site numerous promos commending her writing for Horizons Bible studies. It also posted a controversial speech she made to the Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women in Louisville in July in which she commended non-Christian faiths.
The 216th General Assembly (2004) set the table for her consultations. It approved a recommendation from the Advisory Committee on Racial Ethnic Concerns encouraging "all PCUSA corporate agencies to adopt for utilization and implementation the tools of Cultural Proficiency or some other comparable approach throughout PCUSA, including its boards, agencies, and institutions, as a means to develop and sustain healthy corporate church cultures for addressing the issues that arise in a diverse environment."
But the 2004 commissioners also amended that recommendation to include: "This utilization and implementation is to proceed in light of and according to the confessional and Biblical witness of the PCUSA." Some say Robins does not comply with that amendment.
In her Presbyterian Women's gathering speech speach titled "Challenges to Being an Inclusive Community," Robins said she was kicked out of a Sunday school class as a child because she asked tough questions and that she became attracted to Baha'ism because her boyfriend's father, a Baha'i, gave her some reading material. "So getting kicked out of Sunday school started me on my very eclectic spiritual path," she said. "From the time I was a small child, I had an intuitive understanding and ecstatic experiences of the Mystery we call God. That freed me from attachment to any particular dogma."
Voices of Orthodox Women (VOW), an evangelical watchdog group that monitors the work of Presbyterian Women, believes Robins goes far beyond the bounds of orthodox Christian faith. Viola Larson, a VOW writer, wrote a critique of "Challenges to Being an Inclusive Community."
"Not only did Robins insist that Christians should acknowledge the validity of other faiths, she also insisted Christians should acknowledge other paths as 'plausible and wise' and 'integrate' other faiths' 'learning and practice' into their own Christian practices," Larson wrote.
By identifying with the Baha'i religion, which originated in Iran, Larson said, "Robins longs for an anti-Christ. The Baha'i faith teaches that God is one but he reveals himself through many manifestations including Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad. The Baha'i tenets insist there are many more manifestations to come. Mike McMullen writes of their basic belief, "Baha'is' vision of global unity includes the claim that all of the world's major religions are only evolutionary stages in God's plan to educate and unify the whole planet – in effect, there is only one religion, but it is revealed by God in distinct historical stages. Each new manifestation fulfills earlier manifestations so that the Baha'i prophet Baha'u'llah fulfills 'the return of Christ for Christians.'"
In her response to the presentation by Robins and others at the Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women, Sylvia Dooling, VOW's president, said, "The historic faith of the Christian Church is not just one truth among many that can exist side-by-side with the false gospels presented at the Gathering. Jesus demands exclusivity in our lives, and our Presbyterian heritage demands that we take our constitutional standards seriously."
"Orthodox believers are convinced that there is such a thing as Truth – Truth with a capital T – Truth that stands over against us in judgment," Dooling added. "We also believe that Jesus is the incarnation of Truth, and that by his own declaration, his way is narrow. Remember, those aren't my words; they are Jesus' words."
PCUSA consultant says Jesus is not the only 'Way'
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