Both conservatives and liberals in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. are not satisfied with the denomination’s four-year report on maintaining unity despite differences in understanding homosexuality.

The two predominant affinity groups within the two-million-member denomination largely thanked the Theological Task Force that drafted the report on “Peace, Unity and Purity,” but rejected the task force’s conclusions on how to deal with the thorny sexuality issue that is dividing the Church.

The Presbyterian Coalition – a conservative group that works to uphold and maintain the church’s ban on active homosexual ministers and same-sex marriage blessings – condemned the report, calling it an “unconstitutional” attempt of making an “end run” around the denomination’s law.

During their annual gathering on Nov. 10 in Orlando, Fla., members of the Coalition heard presenters say the report “would permit behavior that would have scandalized Jesus.”

“[It is a] recycled amendment to the constitution that has been rejected by increasingly large margins three times in the last 10 years,” said the Rev. James Berkeley, interim director of Presbyterian Action – an agency of the Washington D.C.-based Institute on Religion and Democracy.

At issue for conservatives is one key recommendation: A proposed “authoritative interpretation” of denominational law that would allow candidates for ordination an option of declaring “scruples” – or conscientious objections – to constitutional standards, and still be ordained. This potentially means that an individual can pick-and-choose which standards they want to uphold and ignore the others, pending the presbytery ordaining the individual believes the same.

Meanwhile, liberals have a problem with another recommendation: a proposal that the current ordination standards will not be debated or changed during the upcoming 217th General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala., where the report will be up for adoption.

During a board meeting in Memphis early November, members of the (liberal) Covenant Network – a group that strives to change the church’s standards on sexuality – said the report provides a “neutral” stance on the debate but that more must be done to bring “justice.”

Barbara Wheeler, a member of the Covenant Board network and one of a dozen task-force members that drafted the report, said the proposals are “not large leaps, but they’re better than the all-or-nothing wars,” according to the Presbyterian News Service.

Wheeler, the president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York said that at least 10 more years are needed before the church is ready to lift its ban on ordaining gays and lesbians, but added that the recommendations would make the church safer for homosexuals.

Some members of the Covenant Network criticized the assessment, saying that waiting would make it increasingly morally acceptable to exclude gays and lesbians from ordination.

“Exclusion should never be morally acceptable,” said Jenny Stone, a Witherspoon Society board member. “We work, not for comfort, but for engagement.”

Meanwhile, the Rev. Jane Spahr, a well-known Presbyterian lesbian activist, agreed that the report is too slow in bringing “justice.”

“It’s time NOW for justice, because it’s the right thing to do; and there’s an urgency because there’s hundreds of us already serving,” said Spahr, according to PCnews.

Other Covenant members were more cautious in their approach, saying the report marks a “huge step forward” since it opens some doors and windows to individual gay and lesbian pastors.

The Rev. Tim-Hart Andersen, a member of the network’s board, said he hopes “every candidate for ordination or installation will declare a ‘scruple’ with G-6.0106b.”

These are exactly the reasons why conservatives also reject the report.

“A standard is no standard if it is not standard,” said Berkley. “Non-essential requirements are a mockery of language and morals.”

“Homosexuals would be ordained wherever there’s a majority,” Berkley said, “which would result in the ‘Balkanization’ of the PC(USA)…with myriad battles everywhere all the time…. God will not be thwarted. This is not about church politics. This is about life.”

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**Presbyterian Seminary Presidents Endorse Report on Homosexuality (Christian Post, 051102)

The presidents of the 12 seminaries related to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) issued a joint statement endorsing a report on maintaining unity, purity and peace within a denomination struggling over the thorny issue of homosexuality.

According to a press release by the PC(U.S.A) on Tuesday, the presidents of all 10 denominational seminaries plus two that are in covenant with the church said they hope the denomination’s governing bodies will receive “favorably” a recently released report by the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church (TTF).

“We deeply appreciate the time, creative work, and wisdom provided by the members of the Task Force, and we express to each and every one of them our heartfelt thanks for a job well done,” the statement read.

The TTF was created in 2001 to “lead the PC(USA) in spiritual discernment of our Christian identity in and for the 21st century.” It was instructed to specifically address issues of Biblical authority, Christology and ordination standards and power.

After nearly four years of debate, study and discussion, the 20-member Task Force drafted a preliminary report that affirmed the centrality of Christ and the Bible. The report also affirmed the current standards on ordination standards and power related to homosexual persons. The Presbyterian Church, like most mainline protestant denominations, neither recognizes nor allows the ordination of practicing gay ministers.

Presbyterians both liberal and conservative criticized the report’s recommendations on homosexuality, though for opposite reasons. Conservatives expressed fear that parts of the report would open doors to a possible local option, where local churches may decide to go against the standards but be freed from penalty. Liberals meanwhile said the report did not go far enough in protecting the rights of gay and lesbian Presbyterians.

The seminarians did not touch on those concerns, but instead focused on the report’s method of sustaining unity in diversity. [comments by Kwing Hung: same arguments in the Anglican Church,

“We consider the report of the Task Force a positive contribution toward a constructive and faithful future for this portion of the church universal,” the group said

According to Louis B. Weeks, president of Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va., this is the first time seminary presidents have spoken unanimously on an issue not directly related to theological education.

“But this is an extraordinary task, accomplished in an extraordinary way, at an extraordinary time,” Weeks said to the Presbyterian News Service.

One seminary president, Barbara Wheeler of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City — which is in covenant with the PC(USA) — is a TTF member.

In addition to Wheeler and Weeks, the presidents signing the statement were: Theodore J. Wardlaw of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary; Laura S. Mendenhall of Columbia Theological Seminary; David L. Wallace Sr. of Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary; Dean K. Thompson of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary; Cynthia M. Campbell of McCormick Theological Seminary; C. Samuel Calian of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; Iain R.Torrance of Princeton Theological Seminary; Philip W. Butin of San Francisco Theological Seminary; Jeffrey F. Bullock of the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary; and Sergio Ojeda-Carcamo of Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico, which, like Auburn, is in covenant with the PC(USA).

The following is the full text of the Nov. 1 statement addressed to “Officers and Members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)”:

We have read the report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church, and we together express our collective hope that the 217th General Assembly, the governing bodies, and individual members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will receive the report favorably.

We serve institutions charged with preparing and sustaining leaders for the future of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and we consider the report of the Task Force a positive contribution toward a constructive and faithful future for this portion of the church universal.

We deeply appreciate the time, creative work, and wisdom provided by the members of the Task Force, and we express to each and every one of them our heartfelt thanks for a job well done.

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**Presbyterians Release Recommendations on Homosexuality (Christian Post, 050826)

After nearly four years of theological debate and discussion, the task force assigned with finding the “Christian Identity” of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. released its recommendations on how to handle the thorny issue of homosexual ordinations.

Meeting in Chicago, the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church unveiled several recommendations, all centered on one central theme: “avoid division into separate denominations.”

According to Jerry Van Martyr, the director of the Presbyterian News Service, this hackneyed conclusion may disappoint Presbyterians who were “hoping for more definitive answers to some of the disputes afflicting the church.”

“They didn’t make any controversial recommendations, and they focused on creating the process for discernment, rather than discerning issues or solutions on their own,” said Van Martyr.

However, according to reformed leaders, the recommendations were indeed controversial and came close to granting local option on whether to ordain practicing homosexuals.

Current PC(USA) law prohibits the ordination of sexually active homosexuals through two provisions: the G-6.0106b standard that requires pastors to be faithful in marriage – defined as a union between a man and woman only – and to maintain chastity otherwise; and the G-6.0108 provision that determines if a pastor is in violation of an “essential” policy of the church.

One of the task force’s recommendations calls for an “authoritative interpretation” of the second provision to allow for more flexibility in applying the first standard on ordination.

The proposed interpretation “insures freedom of conscience in interpretation of scripture within certain bounds, requires ordaining/installing bodies to determine whether there is a ‘serious departure’ from standards … and makes an important distinction between ‘standards’ and ‘essentials.’”

Simply speaking, it would give local presbyteries the option of ordaining homosexual pastors who do not meet the chastity standard if the candidate seems fit to minister in every other way.

Task force members took pains to emphasize this Authoritative Interpretation is not the same as “local option,” which would give the local presbyteries authority to change standards of ordinations.

“No matter what a particular governing body does, I think first they have to keep the standards in place,” said Stacy Johnson, a faculty member of Princeton Theological Seminary and one of the 14-member Task Force. “Anyone who wants to claim this is local option has a hard point to prove.”

However, reformed leaders warned that the recommendation comes very close.

“This is not local option because ‘local option’ refers to the condition where local governing bodies would be able to set their own standards, and that’s not what this recommendation accomplishes,” explained Rev. Michael Walker, executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal. “But instead, while the standards would be set nationally, the way those standards could apply would be varied at the local level.

“I would call this ‘local licensing,’” he said. “This is really technical language because essentially they are creating a technical loophole for local governing bodies to choose not to abide by the national standards of the church.”

This debate over local option and homosexual ordination strikes the heart of the most controversial topic that is nearly splitting the denomination apart. The PC(USA), like most other historic mainline denominations, have factions of liberal and conservative members battling over the standards of ordination. Some liberal denominations, such as the United Church of Christ, have already legalized the ordination of sexually active homosexuals while others barely maintained the ban.

According to Rev. Walker, the task force’s recommendation would set the PC(USA) in the “wrong direction…the same direction as the UCC.”

In order to pass, the Authoritative Interpretation needs a majority vote at next year’s PC(USA) General Assembly.

Rev. Walker said he plans to rally opposition to the recommendation by teaching evangelicals what the Authoritative Interpretation is really saying.

“I hope this doesn’t pass,” said Walker. “Evangelicals in the church as well as the great moderates of the church should rise up in opposition to this recommendation because it does not reflect the will of the majority of Presbyterians.”

Meanwhile, in regards to the other works of the Theological Task Force, Walker said he is surprisingly pleased.

“Some of the things they said were surprisingly good,” said Rev Walker. “The good things include the fact that they made a very strong affirmation that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and life and the only way to salvation. They also made a strong statement about biblical authority that the Bible is the only way for the faith and life of the PC(USA).

But ultimately he said these positive statements will not hold if the Authoritative Interpretation passes.

“They affirmed the authority of Jesus and the calling of Christians to live holy and obedient lives, but at the same time sought diversity in practice and behavior.” explained Rev. Walker. “These seem very inconsistent to me.”

The final draft of the Theological Task Force recommendations will be released on Sept. 15. The preliminary drafts, the last of which were released yesterday, are already available online at: www.pcusa.org.

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Church defies Presbyterian order to ban gay preachers (970323)

NEW YORK (CNN) —The ordination of homosexuals has become a thorny issue in the U.S. Presbyterian Church.

Gay elders and deacons aren’t allowed, according to new church rules. But that hasn’t stopped a defiant Presbyterian minister in New York City from ordaining gay preachers. “We are not afraid to be a martyr for this cause,” said elder Andy Robinson.

The opposition comes shortly after passage of an amendment —ratified this summer —that requires all unmarried ministers, deacons and elders to be sexually celibate.

Question of intent

Though the measure would affect thousands of heterosexual church officers, some church leaders argue the real aim is to ban the ordination of gays.

For those who are gay or lesbian, or who have “children or brothers and sisters that are gay and lesbian —the message they’re receiving from the Presbyterian Church this week is that their loved ones are not welcome,” said the Rev. Jan Orr-Harter, an amendment opponent.

Yet many conservative Presbyterians believe that passage of the so-called Fidelity and Chastity Amendment will end more than two decades of division over homosexuality.

Describing the ordaining of gays as a “direct challenge of the scriptures,” the Rev. Jack Harderer, a supporter of the amendment, said, “It has boiled down to the real watershed issue: (do) we believe in the authority of the scripture or do we not?”

Indirect reference

The amendment’s text doesn’t specifically mention homosexuality; rather it addresses the issue indirectly. It reads: “Those called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture ...”

That means abiding by the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage of a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness. Those who fail to repent for adultery are subject to sanctions.

Parishioners views seem to range from indifference to outrage. Just about everyone agrees it will be difficult —perhaps impossible —to enforce the amendment. Eventually, many churches may adopt the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality.

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Congregation fights to keep gay minister (Globe and Mail, 980603)

The Presbyterian Church told the preacher to give up his lover or get out of the pulpit. His tiny church wants him to stay

ON a typical Sunday morning, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Lachine, Que., looks like any other. There’s a choir, a cross and a pulpit. Except for the occasional cough or shuffling of hymn-book pages, the congregants sit quietly in the oak pews listening to the sermon.

On closer examination, something is amiss. The man at the front of the church is not a minister at all but Darryl Macdonald, a gay man who was recently stripped of his licence to preach and ordered to get out of the pulpit by the Presbyterian Church of Canada because he refuses to give up his lover and remain celibate.

Mr. Macdonald, 34, also has had his approval for ordination revoked. He is defying that order and, some church insiders say, courting excommunication.

“That’s the only other form of discipline that’s available as far as Mr. Macdonald is concerned,” said a minister, a member of the Montreal Presbytery and one of Mr. Macdonald’s opponents who spoke on condition that he not be identified.

Despite being recently threatened with disciplinary action by an official of the presbytery —composed of ministers and elders of the churches in the area —the congregation at St. Andrew’s is defying the church by refusing to force Mr. Macdonald to leave. Saying they are incensed by their church’s action, they are fighting to keep him as their minister, ordained or not. Mr. Macdonald, who has been battling the church for three years, is threatening to launch a civil lawsuit.

St. Andrew’s has become, in church parlance, a renegade congregation.

The church leadership is refusing to comment until the recently released report of a special commission on the issue that ordered Mr. Macdonald’s removal from the pulpit is tabled at a meeting of the General Assembly this month.

Most of the ministers who either oppose or support Mr. Macdonald would speak only if they were not identified, saying the church has let it be known that they are not to discuss the issue in public.

A senior official of the church denied that a gag order was in place.

And he confirmed that Mr. Macdonald and his congregation could be thrown out of the church. However, the official said that excommunication has been rarely used. Although precise numbers were not readily available, he could recall this having occurred only once or twice in the church’s 123-year history in Canada.

Members of St. Andrew’s are not afraid to speak and are determined to have their say.

“They may well come down and excommunicate us,” said Keith Field, a church elder. “But they can’t stop us from being Christians, and we feel that our point of view is the Christian point of view.”

On Palm Sunday, the weekend before all the Easter services, the congregation was told by William Klempa, moderator of the Montreal Presbytery and one of Mr. Macdonald’s staunchest opponents, that church members were risking disciplinary action if they allowed Mr. Macdonald to remain in the pulpit. Mr. Klempa declined to be interviewed.

“He said we could have everything pulled,” said Greg Butt, a church elder. Although the members pay the bills, including the minister’s salary, the national church owns the building and all its assets.

“We’re angry, very angry,” Mr. Butt said about the small suburban congregation, with about 90 members, the majority of whom are seniors.

“What are they going to do?” an exasperated Mr. Butt asked during a telephone interview. “Close the doors to God?”

Herein lies the crux of the battle. Both Mr. Macdonald’s opponents and supporters view the outcome of the struggle as a litmus test for who is a better Christian and who is best serving the will of God.

That debate has divided the church. A group that calls itself A New Network Within the Presbyterian Church in Canada has formed to fight for full equality for gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the denomination.

“There are gays and lesbians in this church —the place couldn’t survive without them,” said Ken Craigie, an elder at Rosedale Presbyterian Church in Toronto and one of the co-founders of the network.

In a letter sent in April to potential supporters, the network says that three seminarians have already left the church “because they see no future for themselves in ministry as Presbyterians.”

Ministers in the church say that colleagues suspected of being gay have been called into meetings to discuss their sexual orientation.

“The witch hunt has begun,” Mr. Macdonald said. He and others say homosexuals are leading congregations or doing other jobs in the church.

“If you don’t come out, it’s okay,” said one minister. “It’s the people who feel they have to be honest who are getting themselves in trouble.”

When Mr. Macdonald was being interviewed by the church, he told them he was gay and in a relationship. He suggested that the congregation might want to reconsider its decision to hire him. They decided they still wanted him.

Mr. Macdonald doesn’t think his relationship has anything to do with the decisions now being made about his future.

“This is homophobia. It’s clear and simple,” he said during a telephone interview from his home. “If I hadn’t been in a relationship, we would be fighting another battle.”

Members of the congregation have only good things to say about Mr. Macdonald.

Mr. Butt describes him as “an excellent minister and a truly gifted speaker.”

Mr. Field says he is impressed by the compassion Mr. Macdonald shows members of the congregation.

“He also goes and sees the old folks [who live] in residences,” Mr. Field said in a telephone interview.

That’s why the congregation voted to keep Mr. Macdonald after the special commission, set up by last year’s General Assembly, presented its report to the presbytery in March. Mr. Field said the congregation’s other options included moving to the United Church of Canada, which does ordain gay people, or everyone leaving the church and going their own way.

Members of other congregations are quietly backing St. Andrew’s. A service of support, held at the church April 26, drew 300 people from other churches in Montreal. “And we get letters of support from churches across the country fairly regularly,” Mr. Field said.

Members of the presbytery initially supported Mr. Macdonald. But by the time the special commission delivered its report in March, the presbytery was so divided over the issue it asked the national church to appoint a mediator. Insiders say they are worried about more lengthy and exhausting appeals.

It was actually the presbytery that agreed in 1995 that Mr. Macdonald should be ordained. However, a small number of dissenting members immediately appealed the decision. This led to the appointment of a special committee by that year’s General Assembly.

That committee ruled that Mr. Macdonald should not be ordained unless he gave up his lover and remained celibate, a recommendation that was accepted by delegates at the church’s 1996 General Assembly meeting.

In April of 1997, the presbytery moved to revoke the licence that allowed him to preach. But Mr. Macdonald was allowed to continue working. Both decisions were appealed to the General Assembly in June of 1997. The assembly then set up the special commission to deal with them. Once the commission ruled, the presbytery removed Mr. Macdonald’s licence.

“Our job was to do what the commission told us to do,” said a Montreal minister who is a member of the presbytery. “If we had done otherwise, we would have been a renegade presbytery.” Disciplinary action could then have been taken against it.

Nothing is expected to happen until the General Assembly meets starting this Sunday and running until June 12. Mr. Macdonald knows what he wants to happen.

“They should let me be ordained along with all the other gays and lesbians in the church who are studying and who are good candidates for ministry,” he said. “[Sexuality] shouldn’t even enter the discussion.

“There are a lot of ministers who are heterosexual and they make terrible ministers. So if the church makes sex a criteria for ministry, we are sunk.”

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Reformed Congregation OKs Gay Leaders (Christianity Today, 021119)

Toronto church’s stance sharply at odds with denomination.

The First Christian Reformed Church in Toronto has opened church leadership to practicing homosexual members “living in committed relationships,” a move the denomination expressly prohibits. The church council announced the policy change in an October 10 letter.

“The decision of the council seems to go contrary to the Christian Reformed Church’s established position, and contrary to biblical teaching,” David Engelhard, CRC general secretary, told Christianity Today. The CRC has 279,000 members in the United States and Canada.

The 1973 North American Synod set forth the denomination’s policy: Those who are homosexual in orientation may be eligible for church offices, including pastor, elder, and deacon, but those who are actively homosexual are ineligible. The church reaffirmed the policy at the synod of 2002.

The representative body, or classis, of the Toronto area’s two dozen Christian Reformed churches will consider the matter in January. Engelhard said that other churches in the region are asking the classis to take action. Responses could range from a letter of admonition to the suspension or removal of First CRC officers.

Engelhard said “six to eight” dissenting members of the congregation are circulating a letter to other area churches expressing their consternation. The synod might also take action next year, Engelhard said.

In Toronto, First CRC pastor Nick Overduin said the vote “was not an act of rebellion against the Christian Reformed denomination.” Church leaders say that confession of Christ, not sexual orientation, is the key factor in whether a person can hold a church office.

In the letter to the classis, the council said the goal was to make First CRC “an inclusive congregation.” Church leaders said they want the church to retain its denominational ties, but they added, “We are actually not very interested in debating the subject any longer or delving into it on some repeated basis.”

The church’s decision worries Hendrik Bruinsma, pastor of Maranatha Christian Reformed Church in Woodbridge.

“Our deepest concern is that the very salvation of people is at stake, because people will be misled about the basics of a new life in Christ and the nature of sin, repentance, and salvation,” Bruinsma said.

Engelhard said the process dealing with First CRC could be lengthy. But he acknowledged that the denomination might decide to remove the congregation. “If you look at the end game, certainly that is a possibility.”

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Presbyterian panel probes gay decision (Washington Times, 021205)

A regional panel for the Presbyterian Church (USA) is reviewing a decision by Baltimore churches to not discipline an openly homosexual minister for violating a rule that unmarried clergy must be chaste.

The Baltimore Presbytery cleared the Rev. Donald Stroud of the charge, but protests have prompted the Synod of the Mid-Atlantic in Richmond to investigate the procedures of the local decision.

“We felt that a special review was in order, but not because we concluded they did anything wrong,” said the Rev. Barry Van Deventer, Synod executive.

“This is a review of the process, not a judicial review,” he said of the seven-member panel that began meeting Monday. “Whether or not it has national implications remains to be seen.”

He said the Synod panel will issue an opinion early next year.

Since 1996, when the General Assembly adopted the “fidelity and chastity” statute for clergy, the church’s conservative and liberal wings battled over keeping it.

Last year the General Assembly rescinded the church rule, but a majority of the nation’s 173 presbyteries voted to restore it earlier this year.

In the past year Presbyterian conservatives have filed charges against 20 clergy in 10 presbyteries for openly defying the “fidelity and chastity” rule, and the Stroud case in Baltimore is the first to bring this new round of disputes to the surface.

“There is nothing we did that we feel is in any way inappropriate,” said Charles P. Forbes, the stated clerk, or executive director, of the Baltimore Presbytery.

Though some people are unhappy with Mr. Stroud’s ministry, he said, “I’m not convinced it’s sufficient grounds for the synod to hold a special review.”

Mr. Stroud, who was ordained in North Carolina, was welcomed to work in the Baltimore Presbytery in 1999 as leader of That All May Freely Service, which advocates for ordination of homosexuals.

The charge against him — “willful and deliberate violation of his ordination vows” — was made by Washington lawyer Paul Jensen, a member of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, Calif. Mr. Jensen has lodged complaints against 20 clergy in 10 presbyteries for defying the chastity rule.

“Baltimore is the most pressing case,” he told the Presbyterian News Service. “Someone needs to tell these people in Baltimore and elsewhere that they’ve got to follow the letter of the law.”

When Mr. Stroud publicly rejected the chastity rule in remarks to a Baltimore Presbytery meeting earlier this year, Mr. Jensen and others declared a “constitutional crisis” since clergy and presbyteries defied national church laws.

Another case involves the Rev. Katie Morrison of the Redwoods Presbytery in Northern California, a lesbian who was ordained as “field organizer” for a pro-homosexual caucus, the More Light Presbyterians.

During her ordination she declared she was “chaste,” but now argues that chastity is not the same as celibacy since Christian literature says chastity is a virtue in marriage, where sexual relations are allowed.

This kind of semantic battle also rocked the church over clergy presiding at ceremonies for same-sex unions. The highest church court said there is no prohibition on the ceremonies as long as they are not called “marriages.”

“This debate on the meaning of chastity may set a bigger precedent in the church than our process with Don Stroud,” Mr. Forbes said.

After Mr. Jensen and other Presbyterians said that under church legal rules, they were denied a voice in the Stroud hearings, the synod review was necessary, Mr. Van Deventer said.

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Presbyterian activist seeks funds cutoff (Washington Times, 040117)

A Presbyterian activist who may be stripped of his ministerial credentials this month for suggesting church conservatives withhold funds from denominational coffers will speak tomorrow at National Presbyterian Church in Northwest.

Parker T. Williamson, 63, the chief executive officer of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, a conservative lobby group that urges Presbyterians to withhold their contributions, is in hot water with a denomination he says has gone soft on homosexuality and abortion.

His group lobbied Presbyterians to withhold $400,000 in contributions last year, so officials in the Western North Carolina Presbytery have initiated a move against the man they say is responsible for the shortfall.

“I understand why they are trying to take away my credentials,” he said. “They’ve been hurt and a wounded animal will bite.”

Hearing of Mr. Williamson’s predicament, the men’s ministry at National Presbyterian invited him to speak to their 10 a.m. Sunday-school classes for adults.

“We’re studying the Book of Jude on contending for the faith,” said W.H.”Bo” Gilliam, who heads the ministry, “and no other person is contending for the faith like he is.”

Presbyterian ministers who propose funds be diverted from the denomination could be charged with violating their ordination vows. Officials with the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) say the amount withheld last year by conservatives is closer to $188,000, not $400,000.

However, the Rev. Susan Andrews of Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church in Bethesda and moderator of PCUSA, said Mr. Williamson’s credentials should not be lifted.

“I hope we can work together,” she said. “I have nothing against Parker. He is an honest and kind — well, an honest man and he speaks from his heart.”

As one of 173 presbyteries in the nation, the western North Carolina office gets to decide which ministries in its area are valid. On Dec. 9, a task force recommended Mr. Williamson, who lives in Lenore, N.C., be stripped of his ministerial credentials because the publication he edits, the Presbyterian Layman, is not a “valid ministry.”

The Presbyterian Layman, which reaches 450,000 readers in 1,300 congregations, is credited with listing which congregations employ homosexual clergy. The tone of the publication has been a thorn in the flesh for liberal Presbyterians for years.

“The issue that brought this to a head is the Layman’s decision to encourage congregations to withhold funds from the denomination,” said the Rev. Jeffrey Krehbiel, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of the Pilgrims near Dupont Circle. “A lot of people think this should have happened a long time ago.”

Those who edit the Layman, he added, “have been the bane of every moderator and denominational official during their entire existence. They clearly don’t represent a majority view and their reputation in the church is as being mean-spirited and nasty.”

But the lay committee defends its work, saying ordinary Presbyterians need to know what’s happening.

“The PCUSA constitution says no practicing gay or lesbian can be ordained, but there are many congregations that are openly defying that,” said Craig Kibler, director of publications for the committee. “It’s a constitutional crisis. The lay committee, similar to the American Anglican Council [a conservative Episcopal group], is upholding orthodox Christianity.”

The nation’s 2.5 million Presbyterians appear to be a mirror image of what’s happening among Episcopalians: homosexual clergy, conservatives withholding money and substantial membership losses since the 1960s

Mr. Williamson’s fate will be decided at a Jan. 31 meeting of the presbytery. He guesses that charges against him will, if brought into a church court, be thrown out for being too vague.

“They say it is ‘due to the character and conduct’ of the Presbyterian Layman, but they won’t say what that conduct is,” he said. “I have sensed this was coming for some time. There have been those who’ve wanted to muzzle me and take away my ministerial credentials for years.”

Not all think Mr. Williamson should be taken out of the ministry.

“I don’t think he should be denied credentials,” Mr. Krehbiel said. “We believe in a big tent.”

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Solving the Mainline Conundrum (Christian Post, 040614)

Last week, the Presbyterian Church (USA) announced the loss of 46,658 members in 2003 - much higher than the projected downturn and the highest percentage loss since it reunited in 1983.

The disheartening exodus reduced total membership to 2.4 million, shifting the PC(USA) five places down from its once-held position as the fourth largest denomination in the U.S.; at its peak in 1965, the church and its predecessors had 4.6 million members.

Sadly, this bitter pattern of decline has become a customary part of America’s strongest mainline denominations including the United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the Episcopal Church USA and the United Church of Christ.

Ecumenical in nature, these denominations are known for their justice-related works in the social and public square: they aid the poor, protect the environment, rally for minority rights and call for peace. However, internally, they struggle to find their stance on issues even the secular world finds controversial: homosexuality, abortion and the like. This disproportionately extensive involvement of socially conscious activities often obscures the identity of the denominations as the Christian characters that distinguish the groups from secular organizations become ambiguous.

According to the PC(USA) statistical release, most of the membership losses came not from congregants leaving to other churches, but rather, leaving Christianity entirely.

What can be said on this part?

Reaching out to the community is an integral part of Christian life, but it should never eclipse the scripture-based, evangelical focus of the church. It must first restore its Christian identity and seek renewal in the word of God before acting as a humanitarian agency. For what good would it be for a church to serve the community if it loses its own identity?

Next week, the officials and representatives of the PC(USA) congregations will meet for their annual conference where the future church policies, focuses, actions and themes are set. At this meeting, the PC(USA) could choose to continue on its long-running path of decline, which it followed for the past fifty years. Conversely, the meeting can become the first big step in regaining the true identity of the PC(USA) as an accurate mainline representative of Christianity in America.

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Presbyterian Preachiness: The Presbyterian Church betrays Christians (National Review Online, 040922)

What do the Presbyterian Church and the Syrian Baathist dictatorship have in common? They have both pledged themselves to cutting off ties with American firms doing business with Israel.

Syria started its economic warfare against Israel soon after the Jewish state gained independence. As a leading member of the Arab League, it implemented a boycott that extended to third-country firms having dealings with Israel. The effort has been run by the Central Boycott Office, headquartered in Damascus. Just last month, it moved to add Caterpillar, the large Peoria-based construction-equipment company, to its blacklist of firms trading with the enemy.

Recently, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to divest from American companies that do business with Israel. The action, taken at the church’s 216th General Assembly meeting in Richmond, is the first of its kind taken by an American denomination. Indeed, even colleges and universities, where anti-Israel campaigning is rampant, have rejected calls for divestment. As with Syria, Caterpillar is a particular object of Presbyterian ire.

The divestment action manifests a singular animosity towards Israel. The Presbyterians have not divested their funds from any of the cruel regimes of the world: not from China for its ethnic cleansing of Tibetans, and its repression of Muslems and Falun Gong; and not even from Sudan, currently engaged in the extermination of Africans in Darfur. But then again, Syria has not boycotted those states either.

One would expect the Presbyterian Church to use its economic clout with an eye to punishing the many regimes around the world that oppress their fellow Christians, and call attention to their plight. However, the church has not taken action against such nations as Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, or North Korea (whose government has reportedly murdered 300,000 Christians), where anti-Christian persecution has been detailed by Christian human-rights groups. Indeed, the Presbyterians have not even boycotted Lebanon, where Christians have been slaughtered by various Muslim groups. But then, neither has Syria, which controls Lebanon as a vassal state.

Since the creation of Israel, Christians have been able to worship there unmolested and unafraid. Israel does not afford Christians this treatment as a matter of sovereign grace or condescension, but rather because it shares the American values of religious freedom and pluralism. The Presbyterians have set themselves against the best and only friend and protector of Christianity in the Middle East.

They have done so to support a movement that has slaughtered Christians and defiled their holy places. Yasser Arafat, to whose aid the Presbyterians now come, massacred Christian civilians in Lebanon when his Fatah organization was based there. When Israel invaded to dislodge Arafat, it formed a 20-year alliance with the Christian minority. The Presbyterians’ action takes the side of those who have cynically defiled holy Christian sites. The Church of the Nativity has been turned into terrorist hide-out and Manger Square into a place where people are publicly executed without trial.

Moreover, the assembly’s action comes after the collapse of the intifada, and after Israel has declared its intent to withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a move not matched by any Palestinian concessions. The signal this sends to Israel is that its efforts will never be deemed satisfactory, unless it gives in to maximalist Palestinian demands, demands that the failed Camp David negotiations revealed to go far beyond Israel’s withdrawal from the territories.

The Presbyterians say the policy is prompted by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians — the same line Syria advances these days. Yet it can’t change the fact that the policy has the effect of economically strangling the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Interestingly, the Presbyterians have not seen fit to take sanctions against the Palestinians on account of the hundreds of Jews they have murdered.

One hopes that the vote of the assembly does not represent the sentiments of three million members of the church. One also prays that the companies targeted for divestment will be no more swayed by it than by Syria’s boycott.

— Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at George Mason University School of Law, in Arlington, Virginia, and an academic fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focused on terrorism.

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Presbyterians Debate Theology of Division (Christian Post, 050305)

The Presbyterian Church USA tackled the controversial issue on the divisiveness of the current day protestant church, during the denomination’s Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church (TTF) meeting in Dallas, last week. Although no conclusions were drawn at the March 2-4 meeting, the task force members seemed to agree that while unity is desirable, it is not a required condition to being a part of the body of Christ.

The meeting was a follow-up to the controversial statement the group issued last summer regarding individuals and congregations leaving the denomination.

“Christians cannot even entertain the notion of severing their ties with sisters and brothers in Christ without also placing themselves in severe jeopardy of being severed from Christ himself,” the TTF’s preliminary statement read. “Unity with one another is not an optional feature of life in Christ. It is a necessity: union with Christ means union with all other members of Christ’s body, including those with whom one would not ordinarily choose to associate”

Mark Achtemeier, of Dubuque Theological Seminary, led the follow-up conversation on the statement by asking if that means Presbyterians who separate from the denomination are also in “severe jeopardy of being severed from Christ.”

“Is it appropriate to equate the PC(USA) with the Body of Christ?” Achtemeier, one of the principal writers of the task force’s preliminary report asked.

In a five page response to the report, Achtemeier, Joe Coalter of Union Theological Seminary and Jack Haberer, a pastor in Houston, suggested that was not the case. They argued that the task force’s interim report was based on unity in a Biblical perspective for the body of Christ while the PC(USA) is more of an “arbitrary construct” within the larger body. Therefore, leaving one denomination to join another does not necessarily jeopardize the unity of the Body of Christ, the co-authors suggested.

“The task force’s claims about the implications of separating from the true church may be accurate and faithful,” Achtemeier said, “but that is not the issue at hand in current debates about the future of the PCUSA.”

The suggestion brought them to another question regarding the theological identity of a denomination. If one accepts the Westminster Confession’s concept of the “Invisible Church,” then the PC(USA) could be considered a “bureaucratic nonentity, theologically,” Achtemeier said, according to the Presbyterian Church News.

However, this would be a misinterpretation because the “invisible church” is not an abstraction but rather a community of real people.

“It is the boundaries of the church that are invisible,” the TTF paper stated, “not the church itself.”

“Claiming the abstract while breaking the visible fellowship is hypocrisy,” Achtemeier insisted, according to PCN “Our separated denominations fall short of God’s ultimate will for the church and Jesus’ prayer for unity.”

However, “divided churches don’t cease being the body of Christ; they’re just the broken and divided body of Christ.”

“So what about leaving one fragment of the divided church in order to seek more congenial company in another?” the paper asks. “Honesty compels us to affirm that there are clearly instances of this kind of action that any reasonable person would recognize as blameless.”

But North American Christians in particular are drawn to a consumer culture where they pick and choose the denomination of their liking and just as easily switch when they are dissatisfied.

We “are tempted to carry over the understandings and attitudes associated with our consumerist culture into the church’s life. ... American Christians are tempted to view themselves as religious ‘consumers’ seeking a denominational ‘product’ that suits them, and if they become dissatisfied with one brand, they switch to another one that is more to their liking,” noted Achtemeier. That kind of attitude “distorts the Biblical image that the church is God’s creation. The message of Pentecost is that God draws us all together in one church, and by hooking and unhooking we are denying that connection through the Holy Spirit and proclaiming a gospel of comparison shopping.”

The ultimate outcome of the TTF’s deliberations will not be known until the group’s final report is released in September.

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PC(USA) Theological Task Force Discloses Tentative Timeline (Christian Post, 050316)

The task force responsible for helping the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination find its “Christian identity in and for the 21st century”, disclosed the names and assignments of its members and scheduled an extra meeting to complete its work, following a recent closed-door session in Dallas.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church (TTF) began operating in 2001, after the denomination’s General Assembly charged it to “lead the PC(USA) in spiritual discernment of our Christian identity in and for the 21st century.”

Specifically, the TTF was asked to address the “issues of Christology, Biblical authority and interpretation, ordination standards and power.”

After more than three-years of operation, the TTF faces a Sept. 15, 2005 deadline to complete its final report so that it may be ready to be taken up by the 217th General Assembly in June 2006.

The TTF had planned to meet just one more time from July 18 to July 21 before releasing its final report, but “scheduled an extra meeting in Chicago in August…feeling the press of work needed to finish its final report,” according to Presbyterian News Service.

The extra meeting has been scheduled for August 24-25.

After their recent closed-door meeting in Dallas, one of the TTF members disclosed information regarding the progress of the report.

“We revisited our previous work and discussed possible conclusions,” the Rev. Gary Demarest, a TTF co-moderator, said during a March 4 telephone conference call with PNS at the end of the group’s recent meeting in Dallas.

According to Demarest, the TTF chose four writing teams to draft “test conclusions” for the report.

Three of the four teams will tackle the main issues at hand for the TTF: Theology, including Christology; Ordination, sexuality and “other controversial issues” and; Polity, process and decision-making.

The final team will review the other three reports and will frame conclusions and possible task force recommendations.

The draft sections of the report will be reviewed and edited at the July meeting, and the final approval is slated for the August meeting.

The following is the list of Taskforce members and their roles, as specified by the Presbyterian News Service:

Team 1, comprised of Scott Anderson, the Rev. Frances Taylor Gench, the Rev. William Stacy Johnson, the Rev. Jong Hyeong Lee, the Rev. Lonnie Oliver and Barbara Wheeler, will “review and summarize themes from the theological study sessions that task force members have conducted and the draft papers on theological issues they have produced,” according to the TTF release.

Team 2, which includes the Rev. Mike Loudon, the Rev. Sarah Sanderson-Doughty and the Rev. John Wilkinson, will “review and summarize themes from study sessions and papers on ordination, sexuality, and other controversial issues before the task force.”

The membership of team 3 will be the Rev. Mark Achtemeier, the Rev. Joe Coalter, the Rev. Vicky Curtiss and the Rev. John Wilkinson. They will “review and summarize study sessions and papers on polity, process, and decision-making.”

The Rev. Jack Haberer, the Rev. William Stacy Johnson and the Rev. Martha Sadongei will make up team 4, which will frame conclusions and possible task force recommendations after reviewing the draft sections produced by the other teams.

Barbara Everitt Bryant will edit the drafts into a single document.

In addition to the four writing teams, a communication/resource team will continue its work on behalf of the task force. Its members are Scott Anderson, Barbara Bryant, Mary Ellen Lawson, Joan Merritt and the Rev. Jose Luis Torres-Milan.

The TTF co-moderators, Demarest and Jenny Stoner, will coordinate the work of the writing teams. Gradye Parsons of the Office of the General Assembly will continue to resource the task force.

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Brunswick Theological Seminary President Takes Early Leave After Lesbian Marriage Controversy (Christian Post, 050404)

The president of an Reformed Church-affiliated Seminary left his position three months early partly because of his involvement with a gay wedding ceremony last year.

The Rev. Norman Kansfield, 64, officially ended his services to the Brunswick Theological seminary on March 28 — three months ahead of his scheduled leave.

Kansfield, was asked to leave in February after performing the wedding ceremony of his daughter and another woman in Massachusetts last June, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The board of Trustees voted on Jan. 28 not to renew Kansfield’s contract for the next academic year and in early March Kansfield was informed that he must leave the day after Easter.

“We decided that the president had put the seminary in an awkward position by performing that ceremony without giving us the benefit of offering sufficient counsel,” the Rev. Larry Williams Sr., a board member.

“It could have hurt the school if it divided people in our student body, if it divided our faculty, if it divided other people who support us,” Williams said.

But the early resignation was not a “firing”, according to comments made by a trustee member to the Ledger Online, and was unrelated to Kansfield’s role in the controversial ceremony.

The Reformed Church in America’s roots date to Dutch settlers who arrived in America 400 years ago. It is one of the more conservative denominations in the National Council of Churches.

Unlike its fellow Protestant churches - such as Episcopalians and Methodists - the church has not had high-profile controversies over homosexuality.

Kansfield, having said he has had close gay friends since high school and his early days as a minister in Queens, said he had not done anything to hurt his denomination.

“People presume I have been on a crusade,” he said. “In point of fact, I’m a conservative theologian. I would not do anything that goes against the church.”

But the denomination’s national office in Grand Rapids, Mich., said formal complaints have been filed against Kansfield, who expects to be brought up on charges in June at the church’s General Synod in Schenectady, N.Y.

Kansfield said a trial would be the highest-profile proceeding in the church since 1962, when a seminary professor questioned whether the first parts of Genesis should be taken literally.

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PC(USA) Head: Continued Membership Drop ‘a Wake-Up Call’ (Christian Post, 050622)

The decline of active membership in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) by 43,175 last year is “a wake-up call”

In a commentary released with the annual statistical report that revealed the 2004 membership drop, the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly, said the Church would only become a growing one “if we begin on our knees, praying for forgiveness for our timidity in evangelism and seeking God’s renewal so that we lose our image as God’s ‘frozen chosen’ and become instead joyful evangelists who actively share the good news of the gospel.”

Although the PC(USA) remains the ninth-largest denomination in the United States, the 2004 membership drop was the second-largest of the past decade and continued a trend dating to the mid-1960s, according to PC(USA) News.

At the time of Presbyterian reunion in 1983, the denomination had 4.2 million members.

The 2004 statistics reflect declines from last year in most categories: 45 fewer congregations (they now number 11,019); six fewer new churches (25); 2,400 fewer elders (99,000); 700 fewer deacons (67,400); and 1,600 fewer infant baptisms (33,600).

Professions of faith also declined, going from 65,600, to 60,000. Although the report found that more people transferred into the PC(USA) – 40,476 – than transferred out (30,319), it also noted that death claimed 36,034 members, and nearly 109,000 moved to churches “not in correspondence” with the PC(USA), or dropped out altogether.

The results were not all bad, PC(USA) News reported. While infant baptisms declined, adult baptisms increased by 285, to 10,459. Church-school attendance also increased, going up by 7,324 to almost 1.2 million. One-third of PC(USA) congregations reported membership increases, as did 26 of the denomination’s 173 presbyteries.

The number of ministers also increased, by 39 (to 21,287), and the number of candidates for ministry was up by 200 (to 1,085).

Meanwhile, Presbyterians’ contributions to the church increased by about $3.4 million, to $2,926,762,293.

Kirkpatrick also noted that the racial-ethnic portion of PC(USA) membership increased to 7.1 percent last year, suggesting that the denomination may reach its goal – established in 1996 – of 10 percent racial-ethnic membership by the end of 2005.

With the PC(USA) membership now standing at 2,362,136, Kirkpatrick outlined six “imperatives” needed to reverse the membership trend:

- Stronger evangelistic outreach at the congregational level;

- A concerted effort to reach inactive members;

- Stronger outreach to adults and families to increase the number of infant and adult baptisms;

- Appropriating and adapting evangelism programs and methods that have worked for others faith groups;

- Renewed outreach to racial-ethnic and immigrant communities; and

- More aggressive efforts to plant new churches.

[Kwing Hung: back to orthodox faith!]

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Critics Say Presbyterian Report not Helpful for Homosexuality Debate (Christian Post, 050725)

The Presbyterian Theological Task Force report took four years to draft, but did not remark on whether homosexuals should be ordained in the church.

After a four-year-long wait, the theological task force appointed to “discern the Christian identity in and for the twenty-first century” for the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. released its initial draft report. However, it made no mention of the church’s future, especially in regards to the most contentious issue threatening to split the denomination apart: homosexuality.

The report is the first fruit of the task force, which was created by the 2001 General Assembly to “lead the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in spiritual discernment of our Christian identity in and for the 21st century.” Specifically, the group was instructed to find ways for the church to address controversies in a non-confrontational manner.

On the topic of homosexual ordinations, the 20 members of the Theological Task Force committee agreed on some general beliefs: denying baptism or church members to gays and lesbians is a “grave error”; ordained members should live faithful lives; sexual behavior should not be taught as merely a personal matter; sexual orientation in itself should not be a barrier to ordination.

But they did not agree on the fundamental question about who should or should not serve as a pastor for the church.

“The Task Force was not asked to take a position on human sexuality or ordination and we have not attempted to do so,” the draft report stated.

However, at least one of the committee members said he believes the issue should have been addressed, especially because it links to the question about the church’s future.

The Rev. Jong Hyeong Lee, pastor of Hanmee Presbyterian Church in Itasca, Ill., said during the last day of the Task Force’s meeting last week that membership loss rates in the denomination has been staggering. Since 1982, the church last 25 percent of its members; the decline was from 3.2 million in 1992 to 2.4 million now.

“What has happened to our denomination?” asked Lee, according to the Presbyterian Layman. “We need to deal with that issue. It seems like the General Assembly gave us a mandate. We didn’t follow orders.”

Lee believes the membership problem links to both the ongoing discussion over ordaining practicing homosexuals and the possibility that the denomination would consider blessing same-sex unions.

“For the church to accept it, same-sex marriage, we have a problem,” Lee said. “But I think God has given us the means to transform the world.”

The debate over homosexuality was among the top reasons why the task force was created in the first place. But according to Jerry Van Martyr, communications director for the denomination, the task-force successfully did its job.

“The Task Force was created in response to a whole slew of theological disputes that have been creating increasing amounts of rancor,” explained Martyr. “The hope is that this report will give Presbyterians everywhere the tools to discuss controversial issues.”

Alan F. H. Wisdom, the interim president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy – an evangelical watchdog group based out of Washington, agrees that the task force gave some good lessons on communications.

“It was encouraging that the task force members of diverse views were able to have a civil conversation on that issue, and we must cultivate that,” said Wisdom, who attends a PC(USA)-affiliated church in Washington D.C. “Their example of disagreeing strongly but with respect is certainly helpful.”

However, Wisdom said, the content of the report will “not likely be so helpful, sadly.”

That’s because the members of the task force – many whom held opposing views on the issue - tried to find a consensus based on their own diverse opinions.

“By trying to seek consensus among the members of the task force, it seems to me that they defeated any possibility that they could get a clear vision of our Christian identity because there was no consensus there,” Wisdom explained.

Wisdom believes members in the task force were unwise in their approach because they did not attempt to persuade one another with the basis of Scripture.

“The essence of Christian moral discernment is that we must try to persuade one another on the basis of Scripture. If you believe someone is wrong, it is a betrayal not to persuade them,” he said. “Simply saying there is a range of possible interpretations on passages related to sexuality is an abdication of their responsibility.”

To Wisdom, the future of the denomination lies in framing the church “more appropriately in terms of what God expects” and by clarifying the church’s view on such controversial issues.

“I really would like every possible effort to keep the PC(USA) together, but only by honoring our constitution,” he said, referring to the denomination’s law prohibiting the ordination of active homosexuals. “Not by watering it down so much that Presbyterianism would stand for nothing in particular.”

The task force held their meeting at the American Airlines Training Center near the Dallas Ft. Worth airport, July 18-21.

The next meeting is slated for Chicago from Aug. 24-25. The final report will be released on Sept. 15, and task force members will travel throughout the church to seek reflections and interpretations on the report before presenting their findings the General Assembly next summer.

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Seminary President Fired After Performing Gay Daughter’s Wedding (Christian Post, 050711)

Last month, the leaders of the Reformed Church of America (RCA) suspended the denomination’s former seminary president who officiated at his lesbian daughter’s wedding.

The Rev. Norman Kansfield, 65, dismissed from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in January, was placed on trial and found guilty at the church’s annual meeting in Schenectady, N.Y. for “violating the Bible and the denomination’s teaching,” reported the Associated Press (AP).

“I think it’s a decision that will haunt RCA in years to come,” said Kansfield’s attorney, William Rupp of Hackensack, N.J., of the ruling by about two-thirds of the 240 delegates at the convention.

Kansfield performed the wedding last summer in Massachusetts, shortly after it became the first state to allow same-sex marriage. Kansfield, however, went ahead with the procedure without consulting the church leaders.

He had instead sent his seminary’s board a letter shortly before the wedding announcing his decision to officiate and saying he wasn’t seeking the board’s permission to do so.

“(Kansfield) seems to be saying that God accepts all persons regardless of their continued engagement in sinful behavior,” said the trial brief.

Kansfield, who was allowed along with his daughter to make statements at the trial, claimed he didn’t know at the time of the wedding the church had just adopted a resolution that defined marriage solely as “a union between a man and a woman.”

Calling the resolution “a most troubling and troubled document,” Kansfield said the church should think about marriage in its “broadest possible context to do the most good for society.”

“The church of Jesus Christ needs to be as inclusive as the arms of our Lord himself,” added the Midwestern native.

The latest of several cases, the Kansfield case follows other mainline Protestant denominations such as Episcopalians and Methodists in the debate over homosexuality and church practice.

Being a more conservative Protestant denomination, however, the controversy drew sharp divide within the denomination.

“I know Norm quite well, and I think his father’s love for his daughter overtook him,” said the Rev. Fred VanderMeer of Third Reformed Church of Hackensack. “There are times when you just have to say no. I believe marriage is only between a man and a woman. There’s no halfway. You either accept it or you reject it.”

Rev. Edward Suffern of Hope Reformed Church said there was no divergence of opinion in regard to the decision.

“They were universally supportive of [the discipline] and universally concerned about his actions,” Suffern said.

Some, however, expressed their support of Kansfield, finding the punishment severe.

“I think there was a concerted effort to punish, and I find that unfortunate and not worthy of the church,” said the Rev. Allan Janssen of the Community Church of Glen Rock.

According to AP, some supporters, including about 130 church clergy who signed a petition in support of Kansfield, even held a prayer vigil, wearing T-shirts saying “Room for All.”

Such actions led to the delegates’ approval of a call for a denomination-wide dialogue on homosexuality and hiring of a full-time facilitator to assist with the dialogue.

“Here it is 2005, and we haven’t really had a dialogue on how inclusive the Christian community should be,” said the Rev. Steve Giordano, a longtime Bergenfield pastor who moved last year to Long Island. “If you look at the example of Christ, he never excluded anyone. It was a dramatic and almost sacrificial effort by Norm that brought the message to the front burner.”

Meanwhile, Kansfield and his wife, Mary, were reportedly preparing to leave New Brunswick to a rural home in Pennsylvania last week.

Kansfield, whose daughter’s marriage marks the RCA’s first and only “legal” marriage, may seek a new trial next year, said North Jersey.

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Presbyterians Release Report on Core-Beliefs (Christian Post, 050721)

After four years of debate and discussion, a key Presbyterian task-force released its draft report on issues of Christology, Biblical authority and interpretation, ordination standards and power.

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A.’s Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church (TTF) released its long-awaited report for public view, during closed-door meeting on Tuesday.

The report is the first fruit of the task force, which was created by the 2001 General Assembly to “lead the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in spiritual discernment of out Christian identity in and for the 21st century.” Specifically, the group was instructed to find ways for the church to address contentious issues – such as homosexual ordinations and the understanding of Christianity - in a non-confrontational manner.

“The Task Force was created in response to a whole slew of theological disputes that have been creating increasing amounts of rancor,” explained Jerry Van Martyr, communications director for the denomination. “The hope is that this report will give Presbyterians everywhere the tools to discuss controversial issues.

This means the task-force merely puts the issues on a discussion table; it does not answer key questions about which view is right or wrong.

In the report that was released Tuesday, the 20-member TTF gave several guidelines on core Presbyterian beliefs. These “bedrock convictions” included the belief that: “God loves us,” “God saves us” and “God empowers us with a commission and calling.”

Because Christian identity “is centered in the love of the triune God” which “runs through the confessional tradition of the church,” the report urges the church “to continue to renew this core commitment of the faith,” they wrote.

That identity is rooted in God’s adoption of believers through grace; expressed in the proclamation of God’s word; sealed in Baptism; nurtured in the Lord’s Supper; and strengthened in discernment and service, the report says.

The group also reaffirmed church traditions.

The report states that the TTF “decided to approach Christology first from the standpoint of historical tradition.” That led the group to “affirmations that the church has made through its history about Jesus Christ, the one in whom we receive life and salvation.”

This common faith in Jesus Chris “gives us hope, indeed assurance, that we should hold on to each other and bear with each other as we grapple with the other difficult issues before the church,” the report states.

According to the Presbyterian News Service, the task force agreed that Jesus Christ is at the heart of scripture; that the focus should be on the plain text of the Bible, dependence on the interpretive guidance of the Holy Spirit and the doctrinal consensus of the church; that all interpretations should be in accordance with the two-fold commandment to love God and neighbor; that right interpretation requires earnest study using the best available resources; and that particular passages need to be interpreted in light of all the Bible.

“We have guidelines (for interpreting scripture),” said New York pastor John Wilkinson, “but a lot of people don’t know that we have them, or what they are.”

Despite setting up these general guidelines, the TTF did not address the scarring debate over homosexual ordination – an issue that nearly split the denomination apart in recent years.

The report, however, agreed on several points related to homosexual persons: It is a grave error to deny Baptism or church membership to gay and lesbian persons or to withhold pastoral care to them and their families; Those who aspire to ordination must lead faithful lives. Those who demonstrate licentious behavior should not be ordained; It is damaging and dangerous to teach that sexual behavior is a purely personal matter that is not relevant for Christian discipleship, leadership and community life; and sexual orientation is, in itself, no barrier to ordination. [Kwing Hung: no baptism and membership should be granted]

Ultimately the group concluded that the unity of the church is not based on the different views and stances each Presbyterian holds on certain issues. Rather, unity is based on the indivisibility of Christ.

The purity of the church is based on the belief that “truth, holiness and righteousness matter as pathways to discipleship, in both the life of the church as a body and the lives of its members,” they wrote. And the peace of the church is to be found in “the pursuit of truth … where differing voices are not only respectfully engaged, but also honored as full partners in our common pursuit of God’s will for the church.”

The report concludes: “The whole church at every level, including the General Assembly, would be well served by more regular use of communal efforts to discern the mind of Christ through the scriptures, nurturing communal attitudes and practices that allow us to live faithfully with difference while we seriously engage in the quest for common understanding.”

According to the 20-member group, the task force’s general goals are threefold: To deepen our understanding of our Christian and catholic identity and clarify key themes of the Reformed theological and constitutional heritage; to study and evaluate the sources of health and promise as well as the causes of dissension and unrest in the church; and to recommend ways for the church to move forward, furthering its peace, unity and purity.

The third part of their task - recommendations - were not released in the initial draft paper.

The task force held their meeting at the American Airlines Training Center near the Dallas Ft. Worth airport, July 18-21.

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United Approach to Gay Division Roots Back to Council of Jerusalem, Presbyterian Head Says (Christian Post, 051028)

[comments by Kwing Hung: using a false analogy, the Jerusalem Council was not about an essential part of faith like the authority of God’s Word.]

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s struggle to understand the place of homosexuality in the modern day church is similar to the divisions that arose over the role of circumcision in the first century church, the denomination’s head suggested in a letter sent out this week.

“This isn’t the first time the church has appointed a group to offer guidance as to how a divided church can find the way to the peace, unity, and purity our Lord intends for the body of Christ,” Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the PC(USA), wrote in reference to the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church.

Four years ago, the General Assembly of the PC(USA) chose 20 individuals with varying beliefs to address the thorny issue of homosexuality. After hundreds of hours of debate and discussion, the task force, which consisted of theologians, laymen and pastors, released its complete report.

The report specifically touched on “biblical authority and interpretation, Christology, ordination standards and power,” and ultimately urged the denomination to walk together as one church while acknowledging the differences in interpreting homosexuality.

Kirkpatrick, who initially applauded the task force members for their hard work, suggested in his most recent letter that the approach taken by the 20-member team “has its roots in the Council of Jerusalem.”

“There, a church was deeply divided over which practices were essential for the Christian life, and which should be left to freedom of conscience,” Kirkpatrick wrote in reference to the Council that addressed the role of circumcision in obtaining salvation. “Through study, prayer, and vigorous debate, they came to a common mind and heart about the things that make for the church’s peace, unity, and purity.”

At that end, Kirkpatrick urged all Presbyterians to view the current day task force as “a model” for discerning “the mind of Christ across … differences and divisions.”

“I hope our church will receive their report as well as the New Testament church received the voice of the Council of Jerusalem,” he said.

Conservatives in the PC(USA) have been critical of the report, which did not call for a change to the denomination’s policies against active homosexual ministers but opened the door to a “local option” that could possibly override such churchwide policies. Liberals meanwhile felt the paper did not go far enough in fully including homosexuals in the church.

While acknowledging the criticisms, Kirkpatrick said the task force teaches very important lessons for the denominations.

“Their most important recommendation, maybe, is that all of us replicate their experience over the year ahead,” Kirkpatrick wrote. “They propose that those with deep divisions in presbyteries and congregations come together in covenant community to pray, study Scripture, share deepest convictions with one another, and deal seriously with the task force’s report and recommendations.

“The process they recommend will not resolve all conflicts, but will do much to meld us together for the peace, unity, and purity of Christ’s church.”

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Tensions Rise as Presbyterian Church Ordains Gay Minister (Christian Post, 051115)

A Presbyterian congregation on Sunday ordained an open and practicing gay man despite a denominational ban on sexually active homosexual ministers.

Raymond Bagnuolo, who has repeatedly and publicly stated that he is a practicing homosexual and that he is not willing to submit to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s standards on sexuality, was ordained at the South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

According to the Associated Press, Bagnuolo said during his ordination ceremony that he believed in one God and the Creator and accepted the Scriptures, but that he is unwilling to abide by the church’s constitutional standards that call for its ordained leaders to practice fidelity in marriage or chastity if single.

“This is a happy and wonderful indication of what can happen when you don’t give up and when you wait and see what God has in store for you,” Bagnuolo was quoted as saying.

The ordination is likely to ignite more flames within the PC(USA) – a denomination already struggling over the divisive issue of gay clergy.

“This will just heighten the intensity of the debate. Whether it’s good or bad for the church depends on your point of view,” the Rev. Jerry Van Martyr, news director for the PC(USA) told AP.

The fidelity/chastity standard will be at the center of a national debate next year when the PC(USA) holds it biennial general assembly. At issue is a peace, purity and unity report that affirms the current standards on sexuality but gives room for individual presbyteries and churches to decide whether these standards are “essential” enough to uphold.

Conservatives who have already criticized the report also scorned Bagnuolo’s ordination an “outright defiance” of the church’s laws.

“It’s quite unambiguous that they are defying our constitution,” said Alan Wisdom, interim president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy and past director for the conservative Presbyterian Action. “Our problem is that the higher governing body has been slow and reluctant to compel these presbyteries and churches to comply.”

A complaint might be filed against the Hudson River Presbytery, which oversees South Presbyterian Church, for approving the ordination. Hudson River Presbytery is among a handful of the 173 PC(USA) presbyteries that stand in open defiance of the fidelity/chastity standard.

The debate over same-sex marriage will likely continue until the General Assembly makes a clear decision next June.

Bagnuolo will serve as pastor of the Palisades Presbyterian Church in Palisades, N.Y. – a 139-member congregation and one of more than 16 in the Presbytery of Hudson River whose sessions have declared that they will ignore the constitutional prohibition against ordaining practicing homosexuals.

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Titular Presbyterian Heads Endorse Theological Report Amid Criticisms (Christian Post, 051118)

Top Presbyterian figures from the 1980s to the present released a joint statement endorsing a report meant to maintain unity in a denomination that has been splintered over the issue of homosexuality.

“We believe the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church reflects the ‘best of Presbyterianism,’” the statement read.

Signers include 25 former moderators of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. General Assembly as well as the current Moderator, Rick Ufford Chase. The General Assembly is the highest legislative authority in the PC(U.S.A.), and moderators serve as the titular head and representative face of the Assembly throughout their tenure.

According to the Presbyterian News Service, which received the letter on Nov. 16, signers include “every living moderator” since the denomination formed in 1983 except the moderators of the 1986, 1993 and 1989 assemblies. Signers also include moderators of the PC(USA)’s predecessor denominations, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church in the United States.

The Theological Task Force that drafted the report on “Peace, Unity and Purity” was created by the 2001 General Assembly “to lead the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in spiritual discernment of our Christian identity in and for the 21st century.” While the task force was specifically asked to address issues of “Christology, Biblical authority and interpretation, ordination standards and power,” most debates surrounded the thorny issue of homosexual ministers.

Both conservatives and liberals have openly criticized the report, which was released in mid September. According to conservatives, the report’s recommendations would overturn the denomination’s current prohibition of sexually active gay individuals by giving room for individuals to choose which standards of ordination they want to keep. Liberals, meanwhile, criticized the report as not going far and fast enough for gay rights.

Despite such opposition from the poles, most Presbyterian leaders have supported the Task Force report as a model for maintaining unity in a diversity of opinions.

“With the task force, we believe it ‘offers the church ways to live together that may demonstrate to a violently divided world the peace, unity, and purity given through Jesus Christ,’” the moderators wrote.

The Task Force report will be up for adoption at next summer’s General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala.

The following is the full text of the moderators’ statement:

Each of us was extremely honored and privileged to be elected moderator of the General Assembly. During our tenure as moderator, we saw many signs of the “best of Presbyterianism,” but we also saw destructive conflict that was harmful to the mission of the church. We have prayed daily that God’s Spirit would lead our church to a new unity and commitment to Jesus Christ. We believe God is now answering that prayer.

We believe the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church reflects the “best of Presbyterianism.” The way this very diverse group of twenty people with convictions across the theological spectrum came together with mutual respect and unanimously produced this report is surely the work of the Holy Spirit. They have modeled for us the gift of unity that is given to us in Jesus Christ.

We believe their report also reflects the “best of Presbyterianism.” They strongly urge us to “stay together in one body.” They call us to follow their example and engage in “discernment groups” with diverse views that meet for worship, study, community building and theological reflection. They encourage us to study together the theological basis of their report in the prologue. And they invite us to reclaim the long established principles of Presbyterian polity: having denominational standards for ordination, yet allowing ordaining and installing governing bodies to apply them after rigorous examination of candidates, “deciding whether a candidate has departed from essentials of the Reformed faith and practice.”

We urge prayerful study and discussion of their report and its recommendations. With the task force, we believe it “offers the church ways to live together that may demonstrate to a violently divided world the peace, unity, and purity given through Jesus Christ.”

The signers are the Rev. Silas Kessler (1963, UPCUSA); the Rev. Robert C. Lamar (1974, UPCUSA); Thelma C. D. Adair (1976, UPCUSA); Jule C. Spach (1976, PCUS); the Rev. William P. Lytle (1978, UPCUSA); Sara Bernice Moseley (1978, PCUS); the Rev. Albert C. Winn (1979, PCUS); the Rev. Howard Rice (1979, UPCUSA); the Rev. John F. Anderson (1982-83, PCUS); the Rev. Harriet Nelson (1984); the Rev. Benjamin Weir (1986); Isabel Wood Rogers (1987); Price H. Gwynn, III (1990); the Rev. Herbert D. Valentine (1991); the Rev. John M. Fife (1992); the Rev. Robert W. Bohl (1994); Marj Carpenter (1995); the Rev. John M. Buchanan (1996); Patricia Brown (1997); the Rev. Douglas W. Oldenburg (1998); Freda A. Gardner (1999); the Rev. Syngman Rhee (2000); the Rev. Jack Rogers (2001); the Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel (2002); the Rev. Susan R. Andrews (2003); and Rick Ufford-Chase (2004).

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Presbytery Refuses to File Charges against Pastor Who Oversaw Same-Sex Ceremony (Christian Post, 060208)

An investigating committee within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has declined for the second time to file charges against a Texas pastor who participated in a mass same-sex blessing ceremony on “marriage equality day” two years ago.

According to the Presbyterian News Service, an investigating committee in Mission Presbytery refused to press formal charges last month, and cited confidentiality rules in declining to talk about its deliberations.

The decision, heavily criticized by conservatives in the church, comes amid a widening gap within mainline denominations over homosexuality.

The case involving the Rev. Jim Rigby, an Austin, Texas pastor, began on Apr. 23, 2004, when he oversaw a mass same-sex blessing ceremony on the University of Texas. That day, Rigby reportedly told the Daily Texan that he was not “staging this as a Las Vegas-style wedding chapel.”

“We’re talking about faithful relationships,” he said. “Marriage is not about sexuality or making babies.”

Presbyterian ministers are allowed to attend same-sex “ceremonies,” so long as the blessings are distinguished from same-sex “marriage.”

Robert Brown, a University of Texas student, and his pastor, the Rev. William Parr from Dallas, filed suit against Rigby on that distinction. Brown and Parr alleged that Rigby violated his ordination vows and the constitution of the PC(USA), which recognizes that marriage is limited to a union between a man and a woman only.

Following the complaints, a previous presbytery investigating committee took up the case, but dismissed the charges. Last month’s panel also declined to press formal charges.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Rigby challenged the panel to try him in court and reportedly told the committee: “If your conscience tells you that I am guilty and this is wrong, I’m asking you to kick me out of the church.”

Meanwhile, Paul Rolf Jensen, Parr and Brown’s attorney who works in suburban Washington, D.C., said the committee’s decision is “wholly contrary to scripture and polity.”

“[The panel members] done more to destroy the PC(USA) than they could possibly

imagine,” he said, according to the Presbyterian News Service. “This is indeed a sad day for all Presbyterians who hold dear the historic faith of our church.”

This month, divisions over homosexuality will once again come to the fore when the Rev. Jane Spahr, a longtime lesbian activist and the director of the gay rights organization “That All May Freely Serve,” goes on trial in northern California on charges similar to those of Rigby.

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‘Lesbian Evangelist’ Found Not Guilty in Presbyterian Court (Christian Post, 060304)

A “lesbian evangelist” who was the first minister in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. to be tried for performing weddings for same-sex couples was acquitted Friday of violating church policies on homosexuality.

In a 6-1 decision, a judicial commission of the Redwoods Presbytery found that the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr, 63, was “acting within her right of conscience in performing marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples.”

The commission ruled that despite the section in the denomination’s constitution that reserves marriage as a union between a man and a woman, “it is a definition, not a direction,” and that Spahr had committed no offense against the church when she “married” two lesbian couples in 2004 and 2005.

Spahr, a longtime gay activist, could have faced sanctions ranging from a rebuke to removal from her ministry. In 1992, she was prohibited from serving as a co-pastor of a church in Rochester, N.Y., because of her lesbianism.

During the tribunal, Spahr admitted to officiating at two lesbian weddings and testified Thursday that she also performed hundreds of same-sex ceremonies throughout her 30-year career. She said she calls those ceremonies “marriages” if that is the term the couples prefer. None of those “weddings” are legally recognized.

Sara Taylor, one of Spahr’s defense lawyers, said the ruling is groundbreaking.

“I would definitely call this a historic decision,” said Taylor said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “A mainline denomination like the Presbyterian Church said for the first time that an acting minister has the right to perform same-sex marriages.”

However, Stephen Taber, the attorney representing the Redwoods Presbytery, said the commission’s decision is “poorly reasoned and not well decided” because it would put the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. on a slippery slope where mere conscience determines the right and wrong conducts for ministers.

“You have a situation where any minister anywhere can claim, ‘My conscience tells me I can sleep with 16-year-old girl outside my marriage vows,’ and who’s to question his conscience?” Taber asked.

The minority opinion stated that it was logical for ministers to be disciplined for going against the church’s position on marriage, even if the constitution doesn’t spell it out. The PC(USA)’s constitution prohibits active gay ministers from serving and defines marriages as a union between man and woman only.

Spahr came out as a lesbian in 1978 and has called herself a “lesbian evangelist” for over a decade. She is the director of “That All May Freely Serve,” a group that lobbies against the church’s constitutional policies on homosexual ministers.

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Presbyterian Minister Admits Same-Sex Weddings (Christian Post, 060303)

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — A Presbyterian minister accused of marrying two lesbian couples in violation of the faith’s position on same-sex unions admitted Thursday that she officiated at the weddings, but said she was following both her conscience and the couples’ wishes.

The Rev. Jane Spahr of San Rafael has been charged with official misconduct for conducting the ceremonies in 2004 and 2005 and violating her church’s constitution.

As the first witness in her trial before a church judicial commission, Spahr testified that while she knew the Presbyterian Church (USA) reserves marriage for a man and a woman, she purposely used the language the couples wanted when she presided over the nuptials.

“I don’t care what your sexual orientation is, what’s most important to me is what you call it,” she said. “They said ‘marriage’ and I was honored to do their ‘marriage,’ so they would not be seen as second-class in any way.”

Spahr, 63, a lesbian and longtime activist, directs a group lobbying for greater inclusion of gay Presbyterians in the church. If found guilty by the Presbytery of the Redwoods, the church’s regional governing body, she could face anything from a rebuke to being forced to leave the ministry after more than 30 years, according to one of her lawyers, Timothy Cahn.

In opening statements, Stephen Taber, a San Francisco lawyer representing the church, cautioned the seven-member tribunal not to get caught up in emotional arguments about gay rights.

“The burden on this commission is not to decide whether same-sex marriage is or is not appropriate for the Presbyterian Church USA or whether it should be forbidden,” Taber said. “The only question here is whether Reverend Spahr committed certain acts, and whether those acts are in violation of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church.”

But defense attorney Sara Taylor countered by saying that ignoring the larger moral issues would be passing up an opportunity to correct a wrong no less grievous than the church’s previous ban on allowing women to serve as ministers.

“Whether or not these marriages are good is an issue,” Taylor said. “It is too simplistic to take something this church has wrestled with for 30 years and say it doesn’t matter.”

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is among several Protestant denominations embroiled in a bitter debate between liberals and conservatives over what role gays should have in their churches. Under a ruling by the national church’s highest court in 2000, Presbyterian churches may bless same-sex unions as long as they do not equate the relationships with marriage.

Spahr is one of a half-dozen Presbyterian ministers across the nation facing disciplinary action for marrying same-sex couples.

The presbytery is responsible for investigating misconduct charges leveled against its member clergy. At issue is whether Spahr violated the part of the church constitution defining marriage as “a covenant through which a man and a woman are called to live out together before God their lives in discipleship.”

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Top Presbyterian Council Cuts $9 Million from Budget (Christian Post, 060316)

[KH: a natural trend for accepting immorality in the church]

The top operational body of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. announced on Tuesday its plans to sharply reduce its annual budget to account for the falling rate of administrative giving throughout the church.

“This is clearly part of a longer trend in the church and probably most churches,” John Detterick, the Executive Director of the General Assembly Council, told the Presbyterian News Service yesterday. “Presbyterians are funding mission differently — they are giving to their churches in larger amounts, but are more directly involved both in activity and funding.”

According to the 2007-2008 fiscal plan, the denomination will be reducing its budget by $2.94 million. The church has already reduced its 2006 budget by $3 million, leaving the total figure of budgetary cuts from 2006-2008 at over $9 million. The General Assembly Council must vote on the proposed budget at its April 26-29 meeting, and staff cuts resulting from the budget reductions will likely be announced by May 1.

The decision came after several years of declining giving by Presbyterian churches and presbyteries to the General Assembly Council. Receipts in 2005 were $13.9 million — $2.1 million less than the projected $16 million budget. The 2006 budget, also of $16 million, has been revised to $13.3 million to account for the deficit.

According to the Presbyterian News Service, unrestricted giving from congregations and presbyteries are expected to decline further – to $12.9 million in 2007 and $12.7 million in 2008. The new mission work plan acts as the denomination’s attempt to restructure it according to the expected loss.

“None of us can see the future,” Detterick said, “but I firmly believe that what’s being put in place — the Mission Work Plan, a restructured GAC and annual meetings between the GAC and synod and presbytery executives (a new component of the GAC’s restructuring) — all will have some payoff and will help bridge the gap between the national and local church. We’ll see the results, whatever they are, in the next four years.”

In addition to the financial figures, the 2007-2008 Mission Work Plan provides a general guideline clarifying the main role of the General Assembly Council. Under the new guidelines, the GAC staff members will work largely to meet the “most crucial and obtainable objectives” of the organization.

“The real challenge for us is to work through these painful changes in ways that will help us prepare to support mission work in the future,” he said. “There is a role for the GAC, but it will be smaller, less resource-producing and more networking, less programmatic and more enabling of the presbyteries and congregations.”

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Presbyterians Consider Triune ‘Mother, Child, and Womb’ (Christian Post, 060321)

[KH: the fall continues]

Presbyterians this June will be asked to ratify a new report on Trinitarian theology that describes the cornerstone doctrine in various metaphorical terms, including a controversial description of the triune God as “Mother, Child and Womb.”

“[The report] aims to assist the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in reclaiming the doctrine of Trinity in theology, worship and life,” the introduction to the 40-page report, “God’s Love Overflowing,” states.

The report, which has been underway since 2000, includes theological and liturgical sessions that are meant for use in study sessions on the doctrine.

“The doctrine is widely neglected or poorly understood in many of our congregations,” the statement reads. “The members of our work group are convinced that the doctrine of trinity is crucial to our faith, worship, and service.”

Describing the Trinity has often proved contentious in mainline denominations, with some adhering to the classical Biblical description of the Triune Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and others adopting more liberal terms such as the Triune “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.”

From the onset, the report acknowledges such differences over “new ways of speaking of the Trinity,” but goes on to say that no name, no metaphor, no set of words or phrases – however thoughtful, poetic or profound – will ever be able to say everything that could be said about the mystery of God’s love made known to us above all in Jesus Christ and sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”

In what is likely the report’s most controversial segment, the panel explores the “female imagery of the Triune God” – a suggestion that is sure to draw fire from conservative Christians.

“The overflowing love of God finds expression in the biblical depiction of God as compassionate mother (Isa 49:15; 66:13), beloved child (Mt 3:17), and life-giving womb (Isa 46:3),” the report states. “The divine wisdom (hochmah in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek) is portrayed in the Bible as a woman who preaches in the streets, gives instruction, advocates justice, builds houses, and acts as a gracious hostess (Prov 1,8,9).”

In other descriptions the report uses other biblical terms to name the Triune God.

“We may use words that speaks of the inner relations of the Godhead – Lover, Beloved, Love, and those that speak of the loving activity of the Three among us – Creator, Savior, Sanctifier, Rock, Redeemer, Friend, King of Glory, Prince of Peace, Spirit of Love.”

The report includes six recommendations for the denomination to approve during its 217th General Assembly in June, including a call for the document to be published and be made available for further study.

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Presbyterian Church HQ Announces Job Cuts (Christian Post, 060502)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) said Monday that 75 employees at its headquarters will lose their jobs as $9.15 million in budget cuts have forced the denomination to reorganize its mission program.

In addition, nine unfilled jobs at headquarters were being eliminated, along with 55 overseas mission positions — 40 of which were being lost either through retirements or end of assignments, the church said.

Slightly more than 500 headquarters employees were notified Monday whether their jobs were cut, retained or revised as part of the restructuring within the 2.3-million member church.

“This was a very grim morning,” said John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council, which oversees most of the denomination’s offices and approved the budget cuts.

The cutbacks reached into top management and reflected changing attitudes among rank-and-file Presbyterians about mission programs, Detterick said.

“We are really in a major transition,” Detterick told reporters during a news conference at church headquarters.

It was the third round of job cuts in four years at church headquarters.

Most of the latest job cuts took effect Monday, but a few executive positions won’t be eliminated until Oct. 1. The job cuts at headquarters and overseas would account for $5.2 million of the overall budget cuts, church officials said.

The 2007-08 budget approved by the council still requires approval by the denomination’s General Assembly at its June meeting in Birmingham, Ala.

Church moderator Rick Ufford-Chase acknowledged “these are not easy times.”

“We ask for your prayers, particularly for our staff who have given so much of themselves and who will now be looking for new ways to serve God and to support themselves and their families,” he said in a statement.

Detterick said the cuts at headquarters reflect a change in giving by Presbyterians. Donations have been up, but the amount sent to the denomination for missions has dropped as more money has be devoted to local ministries.

“Presbyterians today do not want to write a check and send that money off for somebody else to make a decision on where it goes or how the mission is done,” Detterick said. “Presbyterians more and more want to be involved.”

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Second PC Presbytery Adopts Essential Ordination Tenets (Christian Post, 060516)

The Presbytery of Santa Barbara adopted a list of essential tenets and Biblical doctrines for use in the preparation and examination of new pastors, becoming only the second Presbytery in the PC(USA) to espouse auxiliary guidelines of ensuring that candidates for ministry adhere to the Reformed tradition.

The Presbytery’s “Essential Tenants: Common Biblical Doctrines and Reformed Distinctives” document does not oppose or reject current standards for ordinations in the national denomination.

To be ordained in the PC(USA), each candidate is required to answer affirmatively to the questions: “Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?”

However, the Santa Barbara Presbytery’s guideline is meant to reinforce those “essential tenets of Reformed faith” in light of recent challenges to the traditional interpretation of Biblical text.

In 2003, the Presbytery of San Diego first approved a list of essentials and Reformed distinctives, facing criticism from more liberal Presbyteries that said such a list would violate other parts of the denominational constitution allowing ordained persons to be “continually guided” by the confessions “without being forced to subscribe to any precisely worded articles of faith.”

Such freedoms to interpret Biblical texts and tenets have led to the current debate surrounding homosexuality in the denomination. Gay rights advocates say ministers can be homosexual as long as they believe they are “led” by the confessions, even if they may be violating “non-essential” laws prohibiting ministers from partaking in sexual activity outside of a man-woman marriage.

According to a May 15 report by the Presbytery Layman, a conservative watchdog group within the PC(USA), the Santa Barbara resolution would help ensure that the candidates to the Presbytery are in the Reformed tradition.

The new document is meant as a “tool for instructing congregations in the foundational truths” a “reference for training prospective church officers as they prepare to take vows and enter office,” and a guideline to communicate the “theological expectations concerning what Reformed ministers must sincerely believe and proclaim.”

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Presbyterians Discuss Task Force Report on Sexuality (Christian Post, 060518)

Hours of talk between the largest reformed group within the PC(USA) and the church’s official Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity revealed enduring differences of opinion over homosexuality in the denomination.

The May 10 meeting between members of the Presbyterian Coalition and the Theological Task Force produced no new insight to the thorny issue that has threatened the unity of the church body. Instead, it reinforced the core differences that had caused evangelical leaders to criticize the task force’s report on homosexuality since it was released last year.

According to the Presbyterian News Service, the daylong gathering in Chicago was “arguably the most in-depth opportunity” the task force had allowed for people to ask questions about the intent and impact of their report.

“We are proposing an experiment,” said Mark Achtemeier, one of twenty TTF members. Achtemeier explained that the task force was never meant to bring a solution to the decades-long battle over homosexuality. Instead, he said, the task force’s goal was to find ways for the church to move together in unity, despite having a large minority disagreeing with the denomination’s current policy on gay ordinations and marriage ceremonies.

The PC(USA), like most mainline churches, has been embroiled in a fierce battle over scriptural authority and homosexuality.

Last year, the Theological Task Force released a years-long report that recommended the PC(USA) keep its current standards prohibiting the ordination of gay individuals. However, the task force also gave a window for some pastors to violate the standards as long as the minister keeps to other “essentials” of faith.

One question asked during the Chicago meeting surrounded how these “essentials” should be determined.

Jerry Andrews, the Coalition’s co-moderator, suggested that the church as a whole should determine the standards in regards to the ordination of gay and lesbians.

However, Milton “Joe” Coalter, library director at Union Theological Seminary, said if such decisions of enforcement are made, the church do so in other areas of “sins” as well. He gave the example of some pastors neglecting to observe the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest despite biblical mandates. [KH: unacceptable argument]

He asked people to “recognize the heterogeneity” of beliefs already in the denomination, not just on gay ordinations but other issues as well.

The task force’s report will be further discussed and may be approved by the denomination at the upcoming biennial meeting in Birmingham, Ala.

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Abortion to be an Issue at Annual Presbyterian Meeting (Christian Post, 060531)

Debates over abortion will likely ensue at the upcoming Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) general Assembly in June.

According to the Presbyterian News Service, three overtures challenging the current denominational policy on abortion is headed for the June 15-22 Assembly in Birmingham, Ala., and may make the church decidedly more pro-life.

Current policy is pro-choice, though the church opposes abortion as a means of birth control and gender selection and says that partial-birth abortion is a “matter of grave moral concern.” The policy also holds that abortion should be the choice of last resort in problem pregnancies, and affirms adoption as a preferable alternative in cases of unwanted children.

The church body did not always take the progressive stance on the issue, and it wasn’t until 1983 – ten years after the landmark Roe v. Wade legalized abortion – that the denomination passed a policy supporting a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy with virtually no reservations.

This year’s overtures do not seek to overturn the 1983 policy. Instead, it seeks restrictions that would limit the process to only some specific situations.

A proposed change from the Redstone Presbytery, for example, asks the Assembly to “affirm that the lives of viable unborn babies – those well-developed enough to survive outside of the womb if delivered – ought to be preserved and cared for and not aborted.”

The overture goes on to say that “In cases where problems of life or health of the mother arise in a pregnancy, the church supports efforts to protect the life and health of both the mother and the baby. When late term pregnancies must be terminated, we urge decisions intended to deliver the baby alive.”

A separate overture from the Mississippi Presbytery opposes abortion except to save the life of the mother or in cases of incest or rape “where there is a finding by a competent, licensed physician that carrying the unborn child to term would, more likely than not, result in serious, long-lasting and debilitating mental and emotional distress of the mother,” according to PNS.

The Beaver-Butler Presbytery meanwhile submitted an unusual overture advising the General Assembly to “cease funding of any group that supports or advocates either for or against abortion,” leaving Presbyterians to make those decisions locally.

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Renewal Movements Stir Within Mainline Churches (Christian Post, 060609)

Renewal groups within the Presbyterian Church USA are joining forces to create a new inter-church fellowship focused on reviving what they call an “aging, dying, visionless denomination.”

“The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is in a deep crisis,” an invitation email to congregations stated. “We have turned our eyes inward, and we are an aging, dying, visionless denomination. We have lost the central focus of the New Testament church: its missional calling. While our own culture has become a mission field, we continue to devote all our efforts to maintaining the institution that we once were.”

The group, created in mid-May, is called the Presbyterian Global Fellowship and has been in the making for several months. While the fellowship’s structure is still being formulated, its goal is set on connecting Presbyterian congregations in pursuing mission work through targeting giving.

The fellowship is also intended to bring a sharper identity to renewal congregations that wish to identify with the historic PC(USA), but not with the denomination’s confusion over theological issues like human sexuality.

“As a fellowship we recognize the need in the midst of our current North American culture to be particularly vigilant to maintain our witness to heterosexual marriage as God’s design for human sexual expression,” the email stated.

A similar movement has already taken hold in other mainline denominations like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church USA. In both cases, churches have come together as a “church-within-church,” where member congregations would criticize some denomination-wide theologies and stances while keeping denominational identities intact.

Members of the Presbyterian Global Fellowship will also “remain within the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.”

“This is not an effort to start a new denomination or to write a new constitution. We are convinced the church cannot restructure its way to health,” the email stated, in reference to the church’s wide-scale restructuring efforts that laid off dozens of staffers.

Organizers of the group are expected to hold informal meetings at the upcoming PC(USA) biennial meeting in Birmingham, Ala., next week. The first official meeting will be held at the Peachtree Church on Aug. 17-19, 2006.

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Joan Gray Replaces Pro-Gay Presbyterian Leader (Christian Post, 060617)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - The nation’s largest Presbyterian group, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), opened its national meeting Thursday by electing a Georgia minister to lead the 2.3 million-member denomination.

The Rev. Joan S. Gray will serve as the titular leader and spokeswoman for the church, which will grapple with issues including homosexuality and Mideast peace during the eight-day General Assembly.

In addressing the question of whether to ordain gays, Gray said she was torn between her desire to respect all people and the fact she “can’t get my mind” around the idea that homosexuality is part of God’s plan.

Gray said she has no specific plan for healing rifts within the church, but said members must “recapture our spiritual energy.”

“I really believe God will lead us,” said Gray, who was elected on the third ballot.

The church, like other mainline U.S. denominations, is trying to reverse years of membership declines. It announced last month that 75 employees would lose their jobs because of more than $9 million in budget cuts.

Gray replaces Rick Ufford-Chase, who supports including gays in the ministry, one of several contentious issues on the meeting agenda.

Convention attendees will consider how the denomination should handle churches that want to ordain openly gay ministers. A task force proposal could result in some congregations ordaining non-celibate homosexuals.

Attendees also will reconsider a 2004 decision to begin divesting from companies that do business with Israel. Supporters of the move claimed multinational corporations wrongly profited from the construction of the security barrier in and around Palestinian territory.

The denomination, based in Louisville, Ky., is the largest of several U.S. Presbyterian groups, including the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America, which pulled out in the 1970s. It has almost 11,000 congregations.

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Presbyterian Church to Receive $150 Million Donation (Christian Post, 060617)

DENVER (AP) – A Colorado elder with the Presbyterian Church (USA) announced this week that he will donate $150 million to the church.

Stanley W. Anderson, who heads a technology and consulting company, stunned church officials with his announcement Thursday at the church’s 217th General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala. The donation is the largest in the history of the 2.4 million-member Protestant denomination, said John Detterick, executive director of the church’s General Assembly Council.

“In the midst of otherwise gloomy financial news, this was cause for great celebration,” church spokesman Jerry Van Marter said. “The impact could be huge.”

Anderson said his donation was prompted by the denomination’s membership loss, The Birmingham News reported in a story Saturday.

“I share with you that I am tired of seeing the annual report of our denomination that shows a net loss of membership, the decrease in mission giving and a struggle to balance the books,” he said Thursday at the assembly.

The money will bankroll an array of programs over the next six years, including new churches, the development of racial and ethnic congregations, and supporting seminary programs for pastors, Van Marter said.

“This will have a galvanizing effect on the church,” Detterick said. “As our denomination faces a variety of contentious issues, here’s somebody who stands up and says, ‘I believe in the future of the church.”‘

Anderson is an elder at Central Presbyterian Church in Denver. He is a quiet, devoted family man, said his pastor, the Rev. Martin Jacobsen.

According to news accounts, Anderson is chairman and chief executive of E-Smart Services Inc., a Denver-based company specializing in commercial credit cards.

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Presbyterians Consider Gender-Inclusive Language (Christian Post, 060619)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Delegates of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are to tackle whether to adopt gender-inclusive language for worship of the divine Trinity along with the traditional “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

A study panel said the classical language for the Trinity shouldn’t be diminished, but advocated “fresh ways to speak of the mystery of the triune God” to “expand the church’s vocabulary of praise and wonder.”

One reason is that language limited to the Father and Son “has been used to support the idea that God is male and that men are superior to women,” the panel said.

Conservatives object that the church should stick close to the way God is named in the Bible.

Among the feminist-inspired, gender-inclusive options:

• “Mother, Child and Womb”

• “Lover, Beloved, Love”

• “Creator, Savior, Sanctifier”

• “Rock, Redeemer, Friend”

• “King of Glory, Prince of Peace, Spirit of Love.”

Two professors at the Presbyterians’ Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Andrew Purves and Charles Partee, said there is potential danger that “we not only lose the ground for our language for God, we in fact lose the Trinity. We lose God.”

“We do not need a diluted, metaphorical Trinity; rather, we need our confidence in the Christian doctrine of God to be restored,” they said.

Other critics noted that Jesus’ most famous prayer begins by addressing “Our Father.”

On Tuesday the assembly takes up another dispute that has the potential to ultimately split the denomination: a bill to give local congregations and regional “presbyteries” some leeway in deciding whether to ordain clergy and lay officers living in gay relationships.

Ten conservative Presbyterian groups have warned jointly that approval of what they call “local option” would “promote schism by permitting the disregard of clear standards of Scripture.”

A separate floor committee voted 30-28 to keep on the books the national church law mandating that lay officers and clergy restrict sexual activity to heterosexual marriage.

Presbyterians have debated sexual morals since a 1970 assembly agreed by a tiny majority that “adultery, prostitution, fornication and/or the practice of homosexuality is sin.”

In a 1997 referendum, 57 percent of regional presbyteries approved the existing ban as church law. Two bids to overturn it were defeated by 67 percent, then 73 percent of presbyteries.

Conservatives say the Tuesday proposal is an illicit bid to rewrite legal policy and circumvent presbytery voting. Liberal caucuses have also complained because the plan leaves what they regard as injustice in church law.

This month, the denomination reported a net loss of 48,474 members since last year, the 40th annual decline in a row, leaving 2.3 million active members.

Finances got a boost with Thursday’s announcement that businessman Stanley W. Anderson, a Denver Presbyterian, contributed $150 million to aid struggling congregations and start new ones.

***

Presbyterians ‘Receive’ Gender-Inclusive Policy (Christian Post, 060619)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) delegates stopped short Monday of approving gender-inclusive language for worship of the divine Trinity, along with the traditional “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

The assembly decided to merely “receive” a policy paper on the subject rather than approve it. That means church officials can propose experimental liturgies with alternative phrasings for the Trinity, but congregations won’t be required to use them.

The assembly narrowly defeated a conservative bid to refer the paper back for further study.

A panel that worked on the issue since 2000 said the classical language for the Trinity should continue to be used, but that Presbyterians also should seek “fresh ways to speak of the mystery of the triune God” to “expand the church’s vocabulary of praise and wonder.”

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Presbyterians Consider Triune ‘Mother, Child, and Womb’ (Christian Post, 060321)

The report, which has been underway since 2000, includes theological and liturgical sessions that are meant for use in study sessions on the doctrine.

In what is likely the report’s most controversial segment, the panel explores the “female imagery of the Triune God” – a suggestion that is sure to draw fire from conservative Christians.

In other descriptions the report uses other biblical terms to name the Triune God.

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Presbyterians to Vote on Gay Clergy Bill (Christian Post, 060619)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), severely split over homosexuality, would maintain its ban on gay clergy but allow some leeway in enforcing it under a proposal headed to a national assembly vote on Tuesday.

A key committee, which divided 30-28, proposed keeping on the books a church law mandating that lay officeholders as well as all clergy restrict sexual activity to heterosexual marriage.

But another bill would give local congregations and regional “presbyteries” leeway on whether to require that rule in all cases.

A committee minority plans to propose an alternate to that proposal. Ten conservative Presbyterian groups have warned jointly that approval of what they call “local option” would “promote schism by permitting the disregard of clear standards of Scripture.”

Facing seemingly endless acrimony on gays and other issues, a special task force spent four years pondering how the denomination could remain united. Its report to this assembly included the compromise plan to keep the sexual law intact but allow local flexibility in applying it.

Liberal caucuses protest that this will leave injustice in place. Conservatives call it an illicit means for the national assembly to rewrite church law.

During a three-hour debate Sunday, many committee members pleaded to send the flexibility idea out to regional presbyteries for fuller discussion. They were voted down.

The 534 delegates hold plenary sessions to discuss legislation from Monday morning through midday Thursday.

Another bill that could prompt intense debate would encourage gender-neutral worship language for the divine Trinity — for instance “Mother, Child and Womb” — alongside the traditional “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

The delegates also will consider a proposal to soften the 2004 assembly’s decision to selectively pull Presbyterian investments from corporations involved with Israel.

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Presbyterians OK Leeway for Ordaining Homosexuals (Christian Post, 060620)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national assembly voted Tuesday to create some leeway for gay clergy and lay officers to serve local congregations, despite a denominational ban on partnered gay ministers.

A measure approved 298-221 by a Presbyterian national assembly keeps in place a church law that says clergy and lay elders and deacons must limit sexual relations to man-woman marriage. But the new legislation says local congregations and regional presbyteries can exercise some flexibility when choosing clergy and lay officers of local congregations if sexual orientation or other issues arise.

The decision concluded a hard-fought struggle lasting years between liberals and conservatives in the 2.3-million-member denomination. Ten conservative caucuses allied to fight any change, and conservatives lost two last-ditch efforts to kill or delay the measure.

The Presbyterian establishment, including all seminary presidents and many officials, promoted the flexibility plan, which was devised by a special task force. The idea is to grant modest change to liberals but mollify conservatives by keeping the sexual law on the books.

It’s unclear whether that will work.

“We have been painfully aware that in some ways our greatest challenge was not preparing for this assembly but preparing for what happens after this assembly,” the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, chief executive at denominational headquarters, told delegates after the votes.

The Rev. Blair Monie of Dallas, who chaired the committee dealing with the issue, said that “this is not an ‘anything goes’ proposal. In fact, it will make the examination of officers more rigorous.”

But a series of conservative delegates disputed that.

“When the constitution is set aside and something mandatory is reduced to something optional, it destroys the constitution,” said Robert Gagnon, a New Testament professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of a book opposing gay relationships.

Gagnon said the denomination had reached “a transition point” that broke from Jesus’ teaching in favor of man-woman monogamy.

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Church mulls ‘phrasing’ change for Holy Trinity (Washington Times, 060620)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — At some Presbyterian churches the Holy Trinity — “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” — will be out. “Mother, Child and Womb” is in.

Delegates to the national assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted yesterday to “receive” a policy paper on sex-inclusive language for the Trinity, a step short of approving it. Church officials are enabled to propose “experimental liturgies” with “alternative phrasings” for the Trinity, but congregations won’t be required to use them.

Besides “Mother, Child and Womb” and “Rock, Redeemer, Friend,” options include:

• “Lover, Beloved, Love”

• “Creator, Savior, Sanctifier”

• “King of Glory, Prince of Peace, Spirit of Love”

“This does not alter the church’s theological position, but provides an educational resource to enhance the spiritual life of our membership,” legislative committee chairman Nancy Olthoff, an Iowa laywoman, said during yesterday’s debate on the changes.

The assembly narrowly defeated a conservative bid to send the paper back for further study, which would have killed it.

A panel that worked on the issue since 2000 said the classical language for the Trinity still should be used, but Presbyterians should seek “fresh ways to speak of the mystery of the triune God” to “expand the church’s vocabulary of praise and wonder.”

The language used for hundreds of years to describe the Father and Son “has been used to support the idea that God is male and that men are superior to women,” the panel said.

Conservatives responded that the church should stick close to the way that God is referred to in the Bible and noted that the Lord’s Prayer, which Christ instructed his followers to say, was addressed to “Our Father.”

The delegates sang a revised version of the familiar Doxology, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” that avoids male nouns and pronouns for God.

Youth delegate Dorothy Hill, a student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, protested that the paper proposing changing the language of the Trinity “suggests viewpoints that seem to be in tension with what our church has always held to be true about our Trinitarian God.”

Miss Hill reminded delegates that the Ten Commandments say “the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His name.”

The Rev. Deborah Funke of Montana warned that the paper would be “theologically confusing and divisive” at a time when the denomination of 2.3 million members faces other troublesome issues.

The assembly votes today on a proposal to give local congregations and regional “presbyteries” leeway on ordaining clergy and lay officers living in homosexual relationships. Ten conservative Presbyterian groups have warned jointly that approval of what they call “local option” would “promote schism by permitting the disregard of clear standards of Scripture.”

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Presbyterians OK Leeway for Ordaining Homosexuals (Christian Post, 060621)

It’s unclear whether that will work.

But a series of conservative delegates disputed that.

Gagnon said the denomination had reached “a transition point” that broke from Jesus’ teaching in favor of man-woman monogamy.

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Presbyterians Shift Investment Plan (Christian Post, 060625)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national assembly has softened its 2-year-old policy on disinvesting in companies that do business with Israel and has shifted more strongly against late-term abortions.

The new Mideast policy, approved Wednesday, says that regarding both Israel and Palestinian territory, church assets should “be invested in only peaceful pursuits.”

The 2004 assembly had vexed grass roots Presbyterians and Jewish groups by authorizing “phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel” because of its policies toward Palestinians.

David Bernstein of the American Jewish Committee’s Washington office, who is observing the assembly, said the new wording “subjects Israel to the same process as every other country in the world. That’s what we wanted. Singling out Israel is not the way to approach peace in the Middle East.”

Delegates approved 381 to 117 the shift in abortion policy, declaring that “viable unborn babies — those well-developed enough to survive outside the womb if delivered — ought to be preserved and cared for and not aborted.”

An amendment to add “based on the choice of the mother” was defeated.

The denomination’s women’s committee said the statement would “undo” years of effort on the issue.

On the Mideast, Presbyterians haven’t yet pulled any investments but talked with five corporations involved in Israel: Caterpillar, Citigroup Inc., Industries Inc., Motorola and United Technologies Corp.

Conservatives sponsored an off-floor talk by lay Presbyterian James Woolsey, a CIA director under President Clinton. He said the 2004 action put his church “clearly on the side of theocratic, totalitarian, anti-Semitic, genocidal beliefs, and nothing less.”

The statement, approved 483-28, also urges an end to terror against both Israelis and Palestinians. It says a sovereign state has the right to protect its borders but the present location of Israel’s security wall “illegally encroaches into the Palestinian territory.”

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Presbyterians Plan for Future after Granting Gay Leeway (Christian Post, 060707)

The Episcopal Church’s split over homosexuality is getting worldwide attention, but a denomination of roughly equal numbers and stature in the United States – the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) – is similarly torn up by the issue.

And as with the Episcopalians, compromises have left both liberal and conservative activists unsatisfied.

The Presbyterian conflict entered a new phase when a June assembly in Birmingham, Ala., approved a two-sided unity plan. For the conservatives, a church law remains in place that requires clergy and lay officers to limit sex to man-woman marriage – in keeping with biblical teaching as it’s been traditionally understood.

But liberals were granted new leeway for local congregations and regional presbyteries to sidestep that sexual law with particular nominees. So an openly gay minister or lay elder could take office if local Presbyterians hold the liberal position that the Bible is chiefly concerned with love and inclusiveness.

Now, both sides are spending the summer in strategy meetings, where plotting next steps is the order of the day.

The Rev. Michael Walker, executive director of the conservative Presbyterians for Renewal, said Monday that the “decision to allow something as central as sexual morality to be a matter for local determination” gutted Presbyterian principles. Still, he urged fellow conservatives not to quit the denomination for now.

Walker spoke in North Carolina at Montreat Conference Center to 1,000 conservatives during the first of four conferences by groups that oppose the Birmingham plan.

The day that flock departed Montreat, about 260 Presbyterians arrived for a radically different “Celebrating Common Ground” rally, where supporters of the unity plan included presidents of nine seminaries and 16 moderators (titular heads of the denomination who are elected for limited terms).

One speaker, Barbara Wheeler of New York’s Auburn Theological Seminary, thinks the Birmingham plan provides helpful “space for the exercise of conscience” and will “wrest control of the church’s agenda from a small number of groups that have a vested interest in keeping the church in combat mode.”

Nonetheless, future conflicts seem unavoidable.

By Wheeler’s estimate, two-thirds of active churchgoers still believe gay sex is sinful while a majority of clergy now disagree. Moreover, activists on both sides are unwilling to relent.

Complete repeal of the gay clergy ban remains the long-term goal of groups like the Covenant Network of Presbyterians. “We don’t know how long the change will take, but it is coming,” said the Rev. Kim Clayton Richter of Georgia’s Columbia Theological Seminary. “And we feel the actions of this assembly are modest steps forward.”

Repeal requires approval from a majority of regional presbyteries and on the last attempt in 2002, 73 percent voted conservative. The Birmingham plan was the only way to bring flexibility on the issue.

Meanwhile, activists from 14 conservative groups jointly served notice in a statement that “we cannot accept, support or tolerate” the Birmingham plan. Overturning it is now a central task, says Presbyterian Coalition’s Executive Director Terry Schlossberg.

“There is a sovereign Lord, and we cannot say any trend is inevitable,” she said.

In the wake of the Birmingham assembly, church tribunals will likely get a run of complaints against gay pastors – cases that will test the compromise.

Robert Gagnon of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, author of the conservative magnum opus “The Bible and Homosexual Practice,” thinks that “whether the denomination will stay together now depends in large measure” on whether the denomination’s highest court eventually upholds the sexual law.

Despite all the tumult, there are reasons for the 2.3 million-member church to stay intact, even if it can’t agree on such a seemingly basic issue. Schism would waste both time and vast sums of money in property lawsuits.

A simpler option operates in the more loosely knit Southern Baptist Convention, where some 1,800 congregations that oppose the conservative leadership simply ignore SBC meetings and send no money. Instead they attend Cooperative Baptist Fellowship meetings and obtain denomination-type services from the fellowship and other agencies. Such Internet-driven alliances among soul mates are growing in many denominations.

Walker told his Montreat audience that after Birmingham, nobody really agrees what Presbyterianism is any longer, which “encourages greater local control, and admits the weakness of our national identity.” Other conservatives have indicated they’re now focused on ways for congregations to exist largely apart from the denomination.

Though few congregations may officially leave in the short run, there’s more danger of walkouts by individuals frustrated with the direction of the church: After decades of steady decline, denominational officials prudently projected a membership loss of 66,000 in 2007 and 85,000 in 2008.

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Presbyterian Megachurch Becomes Largest to Leave Denomination over Gay Policy (Christian Post, 060831)

Members of a Presbyterian megachurch in Tulsa, Okla., have decided overwhelmingly to withdraw from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), agencies reported this week, making it the largest congregation to do so.

Just over one-thousand members of Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian Church turned out and voted 967-to-36 to affirm a vote by church elders to leave, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

The group then voted to request affiliation with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) – a smaller denomination with less than 200 churches and about 70,000 members. The members also affirmed the Revs Thomas W. Gray and Roger Wayne Hardy as co-pastors of the 2,700-member church.

The decision to change affiliations comes after the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) adopted a policy that some pastors say will allow gay pastors in the church.

On his personal web log, Gray explained the reason for separating from the PCUSA. “We at the Kirk are holding to what Scripture clearly teaches,” he said, according to the Presbyterian News Service. “The PCUSA has left this critical foundation. We, therefore, no longer recognize the authority of the PCUSA over any congregation that chooses to hold to the traditional authority of Scripture, as once held by the PCUSA.”

Kirk of the Hills is one of a handful of PC(USA) congregations that have voted to withdraw from the denomination since this year’s 217th General Assembly adopted an authoritative interpretation of the church’s Constitution that grants ordaining bodies greater leeway in determining individual candidates’ fitness for ordination. And at 2,700 members, it is by far the largest, the Presbyterian News Service noted.

“While not all congregations like us have made this move, many are preparing for it,” Gray wrote on his web log. “For those who stay with the denomination, it is a tacit, yet conscious, affirmation of the denomination’s departure from Truth.”

AP noted, however, that there are reasons for the 2.3 million-member church to stay intact, despite all the tumult. Schism would waste both time and vast sums of money in property lawsuits.

Still, after decades of steady decline, denominational officials prudently projected a membership loss of 66,000 in 2007 and 85,000 in 2008.

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Presbyterian Minister Charged for Presiding Over Gay ‘Marriage’ (Christian Post, 060914)

PITTSBURGH (AP) - A Presbyterian minister has been charged with breaking church law for performing a “marriage” between two women.

Janet Edwards of the Community of Reconciliation Church in Pittsburgh was charged Tuesday with presiding at the June 2005 wedding in violation of church standards that marriage should be reserved to one man and one woman. Ministers are only allowed to bless same-sex unions.

“For me, Scripture teaches that the message of marriage is the covenant — the love and commitment between the partners” and not their gender, Edwards said.

In March, a longtime Presbyterian minister in California, the Rev. Jane Spahr of San Rafael, was the first in the denomination to be tried for officiating at same-sex marriages.

She was acquitted by a church tribunal, but the Presbytery of the Redwoods, which has jurisdiction over the case, has appealed, according to Jerry Van Marter, a national church spokesman.

Like other mainline Protestant denominations, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has been struggling to resolve differences over whether the Bible condemns gay relationships.

Presbyterians who support same-gender unions say the Bible’s social justice teachings on inclusiveness should prevail over what they see as an outdated view of homosexuality.

In June, a Presbyterian national assembly adopted what was meant to be a compromise plan regarding gay ordination. It limits sex to men and woman who are married, but grants new leeway for local congregations to sidestep that church law and allow openly gay ministers to take office. Church tribunals are expected to get a run of complaints that will test the compromise.

“I want to participate in the working out of this disagreement over the place of gays and lesbians in the church,” said Edwards, who has served as a minister for 28 years.

Edwards oversaw the “marriage” of Nancy McConn, 66, a retired computer software developer from Dallas, W.Va., and her partner, Brenda Cole, 52, a clinical psychologist. Two fellow clergy who saw the marriage announcement in a newspaper made the complaint, Edwards said.

If found guilty, Edwards faces penalties that range from a rebuke to removal from ministry. No trial date has been set.

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‘False flag’ theologians: September 11 and conspiracy theories (townhall.com, 060918)

By Chuck Colson

If he knew, John Knox, the great Scottish cleric, would be turning over in his grave.

A publishing company bearing his name has just released a book that links a September 11 conspiracy theory with claims that Jesus was a political activist intent on overthrowing the Roman Empire. It’s a warning of what can happen when Christians drift away from Christian beliefs.

The book is titled Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action. It is published by Westminster John Knox Press, the publishing arm of the Presbyterian Church-USA. The author is liberal theologian David Griffin.

Griffin claims the Bush administration orchestrated the attacks, bringing down the Twin Towers with controlled demolitions. It was, Griffin claims, part of a “false flag” operation to provoke war in the Middle East and expand the American global empire.

Griffin views the United States as a “demonic” power, responsible for starving millions of people every year. His solution: one-world government in order to “bring the kingdom of God to earth,” as he told Heather Wilhelm in the Wall Street Journal. We should do this, he says, in imitation of Jesus, the original political activist who tried to overthrow the Roman Empire.

Of course, as Wilhelm dryly observes, that would make the testimony of Jesus that “my kingdom is not of this world” the original “false flag” operation.

While Griffin’s publisher incredibly claims the book “advances religious scholarship” and “inspires faithful living,” rank-and-file Presbyterians know better: They have called Griffin everything from “irresponsible” to “a total wing nut.” And as a reviewer on Amazon.com sarcastically wrote, “Actually, the 9/11 attacks were planned and coordinated by Martians, in conjunction with survivors from Atlantis.”

Griffin, of course, is far from alone in pushing September 11 conspiracy theories. What makes his theory so disturbing is the fact that he drags a twisted view Jesus into his fantasies — and that the Presbyterian Church publishers would aid and abet him. One of the fundamental truths of the Christian faith is that Jesus did not come to lead an overthrow of earthly powers, but to announce the kingdom and to prepare people for it.

In his classic 1923 book, Christianity and Liberalism, the great Presbyterian scholar and Princeton Professor Jay Gresham Machen reminds us that people who deny the fundamentals of the Christian faith are not just liberal Christians; they belong to another religion entirely. When it comes to liberalism, Machen wrote, Christianity “is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief,” rooted in naturalism. Despite its use of Christian terminology, “liberalism not only is a different religion from Christianity but belongs in a totally different class of religions.”

If I ever saw evidence of this writ large, it is the willingness of Presbyterian publishers to publish such a heretical book.

The Bible warns us that false prophets and teachers will always be among us, introducing destructive heresies and maligning the way of the truth. We need to be on guard against them — and willing to speak out against those who attempt to lead Christ’s flock astray. Bible-believing Presbyterians, take note and clean house.

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Presbyterian Mission Initiative Faces Early Shutdown (Christian Post, 060927)

A crucial $40 million mission initiative of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) faces an early shutdown in the wake of unprecedented membership declines and reduced funds.

The Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts & Hands is a five-year campaign that was launched in 2002 to renew the church for mission. Mission for the PC(USA) is a Scriptural commandment, but the mission campaign may only operate until February 2007. The campaign, originally planned to end at the end of next year, has raised almost $26 million of the $40 million set by the 2002 General Assembly.

“Pledges are being kept, but donors are choosing to designate their money rather than give it unrestricted, which is where our operating funds come from,” said campaign director Jan Opdyke, according to the Presbyterian News Service.

“They’re telling us, ‘We love the church, but we won’t give unrestricted,’” she said.

Opdyke explained that trust is an issue as the denomination is in conflict over homosexuality and undergoing a major restructuring of its mission program.

A recent vote from a Presbyterian megachurch in Tulsa, Okla., led to its withdrawal from the denomination and requested affiliation with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). The move came after the General Assembly of the PC(USA) adopted a policy that some pastors say will allow gay pastors in the church.

At the same time, the denomination is implementing a new Mission Work Plan with a large number of staff laid off and new positions designated. The mission budget has also been reduced for the next few years and some have called this a “missionary sending crisis.” The General Assembly mission budget fully funded the first two and a half years of the campaign’s expenses. The financial support was halved in 2005, and for 2006 and 2007 the campaign was designed to be self-supporting.

An overwhelming 97 percent of Presbyterians at the 214th General Assembly had voted in favor of a Joining Hearts & Hands campaign in 2002, mandating the church to take additional measures domestically and overseas to help reverse the declining trends and renew the PC(USA).

Membership losses hit a record low in 2005 with a 2.05 percent decrease. More than 28,000 members were lost by transferring to other churches and more than 108,000 people dropped out of the church altogether or moved to churches not in correspondence with the PC(USA). Baptisms also declined by more than 4,000. Membership decline has been steady since 1967.

The denomination recognized both a loss in membership and a failure to start and maintain new church developments.

The mission campaign was launched to support new church development and increase international mission presence.

Executive committee member Thomas Gillespie told Opdyke that “given the atmosphere in the church these days, I’m amazed you’ve been able to do what you’ve done.” Gillespie urged the committee to “do whatever we have to keep this campaign going” and that “losing it now would be devastating.”

Although contributions have been unexpectedly come in designated, Opdyke expressed having no fear that they won’t raise the money for the campaign.

“We could do more campaigns in partnership with presbyteries if we had the staff. We know that when we partner with presbyteries money flows and it’s shared throughout the church. There’s no lack of money and people who want to give it. What we lack is the means to reach them.

“This campaign should be bigger - people in the pews believe and want to give,” Opdyke said. “We should be asking for more, not less.”

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Presbyterians See Positive Amid Homosexuality Debates (Christian Post, 061018)

While the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) had left members dissatisfied when it granted more leeway for homosexual ordination, a recent survey revealed ordination standards as one of the lower priorities in the church.

A survey released Monday by the Presbyterian News Service found that commissioners and advisory delegates who comprised the 217th General Assembly ranked ordination standards as fifth most important. Despite debates over homosexuality, overall, 78 percent of them expressed satisfaction with the Assembly and said their sense of Presbyterian “family” was deepened by it.

Ranked first was worship and preaching with 38 percent of the people saying it is most important – a rating that Gradye Parsons, director of operations of the office of the General Assembly, said is consistent with previous assemblies.

Commissioners and advisory delegates rated assembly committee work as second. That was followed by fellowship with Presbyterians from around the country and then the assembly plenary sessions, which were all rated as more important above Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church (PUP)/ordination standards.

The 217th General Assembly had adopted an “authoritative interpretation” of the church’s Constitution this year, granting local congregations and regional church bodies more leeway on the ordination of individual candidates – a move that some say opens the door to the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals.

The controversial report of the Theological Task Force on PUP calls for unity and finding ways for the church to stay together amid disagreements.

Other survey results showed most of the Presbyterians surveyed supported the use of “Les” - the electronic business system that puts all of the assembly documents and the tracking of them online. Of the respondents, 86 percent of Youth Advisory Delegates were more satisfied with “Les” than commissioners and other advisory delegates and observers.

The surveys were conducted through calls involving 44 leaders from around the church early October and were done to lift up the positive aspects of the PC(USA), which just celebrated the 300th anniversary of the first presbytery meeting in America. More will be conducted until the end of the year.

“You’ve created a great opportunity to dialogue with people in the trenches,” said James Babcock, member of the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly, according to the Presbyterian News Service.

“We hope the end result is that we have as much volume on positive things as we have on the negative,” added Sharon Youngs, communications coordinator of the Office of the General Assembly.

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Gay Row Hurts Presbyterian Church Finances (Christian Post 061019)

Louisville, Ky. (AP) - The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) says its regional bodies are sending less money than expected to national headquarters, partly out of protest over the direction of the denomination.

The Presbyterian financial officer said last week that the national church will receive about US$400,000 less than anticipated for 2005, according to Presbyterian News Service.

The national church had expected to receive about $13.2 million for the year.

The denomination, like other mainline Protestant groups, has been struggling for years to reconcile members who disagree over the Bible and gay relationships, among other issues.

This past June, a Presbyterian national assembly voted to give local congregations and regional bodies some leeway to install gay clergy and lay officers with same-sex partners.

Ten of the 173 regional bodies, or presbyteries, said that some of their churches are withholding the money in protest.

Another 25 presbyteries said they had to underpay because individual churches had sent them less.

Two presbyteries are experiencing severe financial troubles, the church said.

Clifton Kirkpatrick, a top church official, said the national church would adjust by limiting expenditures. The denomination has had a series of layoffs in recent years.

“We’re basically on target with income and expenditures and we should have a balanced budget by the end of the year,” Kirkpatrick said.

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Gay ‘Marriage’ Presider Invites ‘the World’ to Her Court Trial (Christian Post, 061107)

PITTSBURGH (AP) - A Presbyterian minister charged with breaking church law for performing a lesbian “marriage” has sent out invitations to her church trial next week.

The invitations from the Rev. Janet Edwards state that she is delighted to have “an opportunity to engage in the absolutely essential discussion that has to go on in the Presbyterian Church over the place of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people among us.”

The invitation ends: “Janet wants the world to come. Feel free to invite anyone.”

“Wow. It’s a real show trial isn’t it?” Jerry Van Marter, news director for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for Monday’s edition.

Edwards, 56, a parish associate at the Community of Reconciliation Church in Pittsburgh and a minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was charged in September with presiding at the June 2005 wedding in violation of the church’s position on marriage.

Her trial is scheduled for Nov. 15 at The Priory, a small hotel on the city’s North Side. Edwards’ invitation advises out-of-town guests about a reserved block of hotel rooms and a shuttle to the trial. It also invites them to a worship celebration and lunch at the Pittsburgh Golf Club.

The denomination’s high court has said that clergy in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may bless same-sex couples as long as the ceremony doesn’t resemble a marriage liturgy.

Edwards has been clear that she presided over a marriage. She has argued there is no ban on same-sex marriage ceremonies because the ruling states clergy “should not” conduct them, which she believes does not constitute a prohibition.

Trials are usually open to the public and, like civil trials, include testimony and cross-examination. Judges deliberate and rulings typically are issued within days. Either side can appeal to the regional and then national levels.

Edwards said she will plead not guilty. If she is convicted, penalties could range from a reprimand to removal from ministry.

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Unhappy Presbyterians Urge, Legitimize Separation (Christian Post, 061109)

Conservatives: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Not ‘The True Church’

Constitutional Presbyterians and other opponents of gay ordination discussed when it is proper to leave a denomination at a weekend gathering in Greenville, S.C. Some already believe that departure is necessary from the PC(USA) and have denounced it as not being a “true church.”

“Here in your hearing I publicly want to say that I denounce those leaders of our denomination who dare to suggest that the PC(USA) is the true church,” said the Rev. J. Howard Edington, pastor of the Providence Presbyterians Church on Hilton Head Island, S.C., according to the Presbyterian News Service. “Rubbish!”

A “true church,” as James C. Goodloe IV, pastor of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Va., described it, is “tied to the Word of God.”

“When the Christian faith is abandoned, there is no Christian church ... Surely the repudiation of the plain content of the scriptures, and therefore the rejection of the authority of Scripture ... constitutes nothing less than the rejection of the foundation of the Christian faith and therefore the rejection of the Christian faith itself, and therefore indeed the very rejection of the Lordship of Jesus Christ,” he added.

Some 215 persons at the Greenville meeting expressed unhappiness over the 217th General Assembly’s adoption of an “authoritative interpretation” of the church’s constitution. Such an interpretation, many fear, would grant ordaining bodies greater leeway in determining individual candidates’ fitness for ordination and would thus open the way for the ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians.

Goodloe said the General Assembly “fallaciously misinterpreted” the constitution of the church.

Insisting that the PC(USA) no longer meets the “pure, true, uncorrupted, unrepudiated” qualifiers that Calvin used to define the church, Goodloe pointed out, “When that happens, departure is not only allowed, but we must think, mandatory, precisely in order to continue to be the church.”

“Surely such an action would form the basis for legitimate separation,” Goodloe maintained. “We may have to wait for the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission to determine whether the authoritative misinterpretation constitutes such an action, but that is our concern.”

A handful of PC(USA) congregations, including a large megachurch in Tulsa, Okla., have withdrawn from the denomination since the General Assembly’s approval vote.

Goodloe went on to insist that the separation would, however, not be “schismatic.”

“It would be instead acknowledgement a body that used to be a part of the church of Jesus Christ was by its own actions is no longer so.”

Edington indicated more harsh consequences of the PC(USA)’s recent action.

“If that [authoritative interpretation] prevails, then mark my words, the PC(USA) branch of the body of Christ will cease to exist, and that will happen sooner, not later,” he stated.

Still, Edington was optimistic to preserve the Presbyterian Church.

“Yet I am here to say to you that all of the powerful, faithful witness of the Presbyterian Church seen so clearly throughout history is worth preserving,” he said. “And I believe that even if our denominational structure collapses into dust and ashes as I fear it shall, then I believe that out of the ashes there will rise a whole new form of the Presbyterian witness set and targeted for the 21st century.”

[KH: well said]

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Charges Dismissed Against Pa. Gay ‘Marriage’ Presider (Christian Post, 061116)

[KH: clear road to downfall.]

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Charges were dismissed Wednesday against a Presbyterian minister accused of breaking church law by performing a marriage ceremony for two women after church officials determined the charges were filed too late.

The Permanent Judicial Commission of the Pittsburgh Presbytery voted 8-0 to dismiss the charges against Janet Edwards because they were filed several days after a filing deadline. Edwards, a parish associate at the Community of Reconciliation Church in Pittsburgh, had been accused of violating the church’s position on marriage by presiding at the June 2005 wedding.

The constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) reserves marriage for a man and a woman, although ministers may bless other types of “holy unions.”

“This dismissal constitutes neither a vindication of the accused nor any finding with respect to the subject,” according to a statement from the commission read by Kears Pollock, the group’s vice moderator.

The Presbyterian Church, like other mainline denominations, has been struggling to stay unified despite differences over whether the traditional biblical view condemning gay relationships should stand.

Presbyterians who support same-gender unions say the Bible’s social justice teachings on inclusiveness should prevail over what they see as an outdated view of homosexuality.

Edwards presided over the marriage of Nancy McConn, a retired computer software developer from Dallas, W.Va., and Brenda Cole, a clinical psychologist.

Edwards said she was relieved not to have to face a church trial, but hopes this is not the end of the dialogue on gay unions.

“I want to participate in the discussion that must go on within our church about the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people,” Edwards said.

About 200 people showed up at a rented hall for what was to be the start the church trial, most of them supporters who received invitations from Edwards to attend.

Robert Brown, who was on the church’s prosecuting committee, said his group was looking into whether charges can be refiled.

In March, a longtime Presbyterian minister was acquitted of the same charge. A regional judicial commission of the church ruled that the Rev. Jane Spahr, of San Rafael, Calif., acted within her rights as an ordained minister when she married two lesbian couples in 2004 and 2005. The ruling has been appealed.

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Yet Another Minister is “Let Off the Hook” for Blessing Same-Sex Unions (Mohler, 061116)

Another mainline Protestant minister has defied church law, blessed a same-sex union, and yet escaped discipline. In this case the denomination is the Presbyterian Church USA and the minister is identified as “a direct descendant of legendary Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards.”

From PCUSANEWS:

A Pittsburgh minister was let off the hook for officiating at the wedding of two women after a church panel determined Wednesday (Nov. 15) that a complaint lodged against her for conducting the nuptials was filed four days too late.

The Rev. Janet Edwards, 56, came under scrutiny from Pittsburgh Presbytery in Aug. 2005 after she married Brenda Cole, 52, and Nancy McConn, 65, who live near Wheeling, WV. McConn is a lifelong Presbyterian and longtime member of Dallas Presbyterian Church in Dallas, WV. Cole was raised Methodist but now is a practicing Buddhist. Edwards acknowledged that she married the women in a Pittsburgh-area ceremony on June 25, 2005.

But the Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) of Pittsburgh Presbytery voted 8-0 to dismiss the charges — saying the statute of limitations had expired — after deliberating for more than an hour at its meeting in a Pittsburgh hotel Nov. 15.

The church court insisted that its decision was based entirely on procedural grounds. Nevertheless, those advocating the normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage were quick to claim the decision as a victory.

Here is how Janet Edwards framed her argument:

“I am very pleased with the decision because it’s a small step toward the fulfillment of our church’s highest purpose: to show the love and justice of Jesus Christ,” Edwards said upon hearing the decision. “As Jesus said before he died on the cross, ‘When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to me.’ I look forward to the day when my church fully embraces all those who come to share in God’s love.”

This is how her attorney interpreted the decision:

“I am pleased with the decision because it creates yet another precedent in which a minister of the Presbyterian Church has not been sanctioned for officiating at the marriage ceremony of a same-sex couple,” he said.

He is exactly right. Yet another pastor has defied church law and doctrine and yet has escaped discipline. The pattern is now clear, and every precedent counts. You don’t have to be a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards to know that.

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Tenn. Megachurch Votes to Leave PCUSA (Christian Post, 070130)

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) - Members of Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church unhappy with the Presbyterian Church (USA) allowing alternative names for the Trinity and other theological differences voted to leave the denomination and join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

The 2,000-member church voted 1,172-10 Sunday for the split from the denomination, which has its General Assembly offices in Louisville, Ky. The church voted by a similar margin to join the Evangelical Presbyterian denomination.

Spokesmen for the Presbytery of East Tennessee said it could be months before the dismissal is approved.

Church elders called for the vote because of a stricter view of the Bible than the Presbyterian Church (USA) on Jesus, the infallibility of Scripture and a peace, unity and purity clause.

“This varied interpretation frequently has placed us at odds with General Assembly actions, priorities and program directives,” they said in a statement printed in the program Sunday.

Elder Diane Mizell said a key in choosing the Evangelical Presbyterian Church was that women can be ministers, session members and deacons.

With the vote, the future of the church’s campus still must be decided. The property could revert to the Presbyterian Church (USA), according to Stephen N. Brenz, executive presbyter of the Presbytery of East Tennessee. But he said the congregation could be dismissed with the property.

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PCUSA to Discuss Future Identity Amid Declining Membership (Christian Post, 070205)

Amid a continuing exodus of congregations from the national church body, the future identity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is a key focus at an upcoming meeting.

“Communion and Conversation: Beginning a Dialogue on the Future of Middle Governing Bodies” will bring representatives from PC(USA)’s local bodies – synods and presbyteries – to discuss changes in the form of government as the denomination struggles with declining membership.

The middle governing bodies, synods and presbyteries, have mainly felt the effect of churches departing with members and financial support decreasing.

“All of our presbyteries own up to experiencing the crunch of having fewer resources to do a more complex ministry than in previous times,” the Rev. Gary Torrens, coordinator of governing body relations in the Office of the General Assembly and the GAC, said in his paper “Is There A Presbytery Crunch?” according to the Presbyterian News Service.

The Presbytery of East Tennessee recently saw congregants at a megachurch vote to leave the denomination and join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church voted 1,172-10 for the split last week over theological differences, including the infallibility of Scripture.

The vote comes after the 2006 General Assembly passed a resolution approving an “authoritative interpretation” of the church’s Constitution, giving greater leeway to candidates for ordination, including homosexuals.

It could be months before the Tennessee’s church vote to leave is approved, the spokesman for the area presbytery said.

Next week’s meeting on the shape and function of presbyteries and synods will be the first such conversation happening on a church-wide level. Representatives from every region of the church are registered to attend.

“Communion and Conversation” opens Feb. 14 in Albuquerque, N.

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Tenn. Megachurch Votes to Leave PCUSA (Christian Post, 070129)

Spokesmen for the Presbytery of East Tennessee said it could be months before the dismissal is approved.

Church elders called for the vote because of a stricter view of the Bible than the Presbyterian Church (USA) on Jesus, the infallibility of Scripture and a peace, unity and purity clause.

“This varied interpretation frequently has placed us at odds with General Assembly actions, priorities and program directives,” they said in a statement printed in the program Sunday.

Elder Diane Mizell said a key in choosing the Evangelical Presbyterian Church was that women can be ministers, session members and deacons.

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Breakaway Megach urch Seeks Ruling in Dispute with Presbyterian Church (Christian Post, 070206)

TULSA, Okla. (AP) - A Presbyterian church that has voted to leave the national Presbyterian Church has asked a Tulsa County judge to rule on its lawsuit over ownership of its church building.

The Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian Church is suing the national Presbyterian Church and the Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery to retain ownership of its more than 100,000-square-foot building on nearly 10 acres of prime real estate.

The battle erupted in August when the Kirk leadership and then the congregation voted overwhelmingly to leave the Presbyterian Church over concerns that the denomination was drifting from its biblical base and was softening its opposition to gay clergy.

Both the church and the denomination claim ownership of the Kirk property.

Attorney John O’Conner, representing the Tulsa church, said it has filed a motion for summary judgment, asking the judge to rule on the case without the delay or expense of a trial. A summary judgment is filed when the essential facts of the case are not disputed, he said.

The Kirk is one of the largest and most prominent churches to leave the Presbyterian Church over biblical issues.

The Rev. Tom Gray, co-pastor of the Kirk, said things are “going wonderfully” at the church since it left the denomination.

“We’re having one of our best years financially, and attendance is way up.” He said 1,000 people were in church on a recent snowy Sunday.

Gray, who resigned as a Presbyterian minister when the church left the denomination, has said the church corporation holds the title to the property, paid for it, and is legally and morally entitled to it.

The Presbytery’s position is that according to the denomination’s constitution, all property of Presbyterian churches is held in trust for the denomination, and that when the leadership and congregation voted to leave the denomination, they no longer were entitled to the property.

Craig Hoster, attorney for the Presbytery, said the Presbytery will look at the motion and file a response.

In addition to the civil proceeding, the case also is before a Presbyterian ecclesiastical body.

Attorney Doug Dodd is head of the Administrative Commission, a group of pastors and lay people appointed by the Presbytery to handle the Kirk withdrawal.

Dodd said the commission has been asked to look into a variety of matters, including seeking reconciliation between the church and the denomination, and pastoral care for those who want to stay in the denomination.

Ownership of the property is low on the list of the commission’s priorities, he said.

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Presbyterian Church May Be First in Miss. to Leave Denomination (Christian Post, 070207)

CORINTH, Miss. (AP) - First Presbyterian Church in Corinth is taking first steps to separate from the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA).

In June, a majority of the local congregation took issue with decisions made at the annual Presbyterian Church (USA) meeting that they believe show a disregard for biblical authority.

In July, seven families left the church and started a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America, a conservative evangelical denomination still in the Presbyterian stream.

Since then, many members in that Presbyterian Church (USA) church have wrestled with staying in a denomination they think has shifted in substantial ways.

First Presbyterian is not alone in its decision, especially in the South where more conservative members have disagreed with the more liberal denominational leadership.

Some other Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations in Mississippi are reportedly considering severing denominational ties.

Similar discord has arisen in the Episcopal Church and, currently to a lesser extent, the United Methodist and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. No Mississippi congregations in those denominations have sought to sever their national ties, however.

On Nov. 28, the Corinth church’s 17-member session, or body of elders, recommended to start the process of disconnecting with the PCUSA.

Doctor Greg Goodwiller _ head of the Presbytery of St. Andrew, the North Mississippi regional governing authority for the denomination _ says the Presbyterian Church (USA) does not want the Corinth church to leave. He says talks are continuing.

First Presbyterian has 470 members.

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Dissident Presbyterians Propose ‘Radical Change’ (Christian Post, 070214)

Orthodox Presbyterians have proposed a “radical change” to how Presbyterians handle church government. Ditching the hierarchical model widely used by mainline denominations, dissident Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) members recently voted on a new model for the postmodern era.

“As we move out of a modernist era into a postmodern era, the modernist structure – bureaucratic, centralized authority, hierarchical top-down leadership – doesn’t work anymore,” the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver, senior pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, told The Christian Post.

Weaver attended a winter convocation over the weekend where the New Wineskins Association of Churches (NWAC) and other Presbyterians discontent with the PC(USA) unanimously voted to pass a proposal that offered congregations two options: to continue to remain within the PC(USA) and be a faithful witness there; or to realign with another Presbyterian body. More specifically, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) invited congregations to create a non-geographic presbytery named after New Wineskins under the EPC.

The New Wineskins Presbytery would run under a newly designed constitution based on a grassroots polity, Weaver described. The new polity recognizes the local congregation as the primary decision-making group. And it sends resources to the congregation rather than drain away from, he added.

“It’s almost a total flipping of the pyramid, if you will,” explained Weaver, who also serves as co-moderator of the NWAC. “It’s much more of an adaptive model for the 21st century than the model that got us through the 1920s to the 1950s.”

No other denomination has adopted such a polity, according to Weaver.

Meanwhile, the continuing decline in membership and financial support have led up to the PC(USA)’s first church-wide meeting on the future of its current government structure. The meeting, opening Wednesday, will focus on middle governing bodies - presbyteries and synods. Weaver, however, believes the meeting is “too little, too late.”

“Most churches don’t even know what a synod is,” he pointed out. “I don’t think there’s anybody out there who thinks synods should continue, except for maybe people who work for synods.”

Eliminating synods, however, would take years in a large structure like the PC(USA) - the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States. “Big ships turn slowly,” Weaver commented.

“So even that change is one that will take years and will have virtually little or no effect. Meanwhile, the denomination will continue to hemorrhage 40- to 80,000 members a year. I’d say it’s a symbolic gesture that it’s too little, too late.”

The “hemorrhaging” began in the summer of 2001, Weaver pointed out. The PC(USA) General Assembly would not affirm that Jesus Christ is the only way to God.

“The catalyst all along has not been homosexuality and homosexual ordination,” explained Weaver. “The issue all along has been who is Jesus and what the Church believes and what the Bible is – the real bedrock foundational issues of the faith.”

While churches have already decided or are in the process of deciding to exit the denomination, Weaver did not call it “leaving” the national body. Rather, it is “realignment.”

“We believe the PC(USA) has left us,” he highlighted. “We haven’t changed anything. The denomination has changed. It’s just a matter of realignment.”

And Presbyterians are not alone in their discontent with national denominations. Many are leaving mainline churches and many are upset, as Weaver noted.

The radical model that Orthodox Presbyterians are proposing, however, may be the “first architectural proactive solution to the problem.”

“We’re not just leaving to go to another denomination,” he noted. “We’re actually realigning to help join with other brothers and sisters in Christ who want to form a whole new type of missional and evangelical Presbyterianism.”

Individual Presbyterian congregations were encouraged to vote to remain in the PC(USA) or to realign by NWAC’s next convocation in October.

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Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) Tries to Prevent Exodus (Christian Post, 070221)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - The threat of churches departing from the Louisville-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has become so serious that leaders have issued a letter asking them to stay.

At least eight churches have left since last summer’s General Assembly, which opened the door to possible ordinations of homosexuals and voted to receive, though not endorse, a report that recommends feminine and other unconventional language for the divine Trinity.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the clerk of the denomination who wrote the letter to other congregations, said the level of dissatisfaction with the church is disconcerting.

“There’s no question that the vast majority of Presbyterian churches are going to stay in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” Kirkpatrick said, “(but) I think any exodus is too many.”

Leaders of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, based in Livonia, Mich., are working with a group of conservatives within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), the New Wineskins Association of Churches, to develop a strategy for churches looking to make a move.

The departing churches are few compared to the more than 11,000 in the denomination, but they include some large and historic congregations. Several plan to join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which is preparing for as many as 100 such applications. None are in the Louisville area.

The Evangelical Presbyterian Church, formed in 1981, has received individual congregations in the past, but this would be a larger, more systematic effort to receive new churches. The new presbytery would need approval from the Evangelical Presbyterian Church’s own General Assembly.

Paul Heidebrecht, moderator of the Evangelical group, said his church has a “sense of camaraderie” with dissenting members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A).

“We’ve deliberately not recruited or approached anyone on our own,” Heidebrecht said. “We’re in many ways on the same page. We’re trying to prepare for the possibility of many more churches approaching us in the next couple of years.”

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‘Disheartening’ PCUSA State Indicates Need for Leadership Change, Reformers Say (Christian Post, 070314)

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) head the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick may consider a fourth term as stated clerk. Some, however, are asking him to decline nomination as the denomination remains on a downward slump in membership.

“The disheartening state of our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) indicates the need for leadership change in the position of Stated Clerk of the General Assembly,” stated the Presbyterian Action Steering Committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

Membership in the PC(USA) is currently at nearly 3.1 million. It is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States and ranks ninth among all American and Canadian church groups, according to the latest edition of the National Council of Churches’ Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches.

The denomination, however, has suffered continual membership losses, including its largest drop of 2.05 percent in 2005. Reported losses accelerated in the early 1970s, according to Jack Marcum, associate for PC(USA)’s Research Services office, and since 1975 has been between 1 and 2 percent.

Part of the losses has occurred in persons and congregations leaving the denomination.

The latest exodus came last week when Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian Church in Tulsa, Okla., was declared to be in schism with the PC(USA). Kirk of the Hills was the second largest congregation in the Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery.

Months of efforts to reconcile between the presbytery and the congregation failed as congregants at the 2,600-member Tulsa church voted to “disaffiliate” with the PC(USA) on Aug. 30 and join the smaller Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC).

“We at the Kirk are holding to what Scripture clearly teaches,” Thomas W. Gray, lead pastor of Kirk of the Hills, explained on his blog. “The PC(USA) has left this critical foundation. We, therefore, no longer recognize the authority of the PC(USA) over any congregation that chooses to hold to the traditional authority of Scripture, as once held by the PC(USA).”

Other dissident Presbyterians are considering “realigning” with a non-geographic presbytery that may be created under the EPC. The new presbytery would be named after an association of churches discontent with the PC(USA) - New Wineskins. Votes for possible realignment are expected beginning October.

The increasing exodus comes after the 2001 General Assembly would not affirm that Jesus Christ is the only way to God, according to the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver, senior pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, and last summer’s 217th General Assembly, which had granted greater leeway for the ordination of homosexuals.

Amid the continual small but significant exodus, as Kirkpatrick describes it, the call for change in the denomination was voiced in 2004 when three candidates for stated clerk of the PC(USA) said the denomination is not looking healthy. Still, Kirkpatrick, described as an experienced and popular figure within the church, was elected on the first ballot to a third four-year term in 2004.

The current stated clerk remains optimistic of the future of the PC(USA). In recent weeks, he said the denomination “is in a potential tipping point of renewed growth and vitality,” adding that he sees willingness in the body to “build together the PC(USA) of the future that God intends.”

As the denomination looks to new candidates for 2008, however, IRD’s Presbyterian Action Steering Committee has called for new leadership.

“We look forward to new leadership stepping in to help direct our denomination toward theological clarity, spiritual vitality, Spirit-led growth, and effective ministry.”

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Pastor Refiles Complaint Against Lesbian ‘Marriage’ Presider (Christian Post, 070304)

PITTSBURGH - A Presbyterian minister has refiled a complaint against a Pittsburgh cleric who married a lesbian couple, a church charge stemming from the original complaint having been dismissed last year on a technicality.

The Rev. James Yearsley, 55, pastored a church in the Pittsburgh suburb of Penn Hills when he filed his original complaint in 2005 against the Rev. Janet Edwards. Yearsley, now a pastor of Village Presbyterian Church in Tampa, Fla., said he has been joined by 14 pastors and elders in the new complaint.

“We are a church with a clear constitution and the process works,” Yearsley told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We need to allow it the opportunity to work.”

Edwards, 56, a parish associate at the Community of Reconciliation in Pittsburgh, had been scheduled for a church trial in November and faced discipline ranging from a rebuke to removal from ministry. But the church’s Permanent Judicial Commission found that a church investigative committee filed formal charges resulting from Yearsley’s original complaint four days too late.

Both complaints allege that Edwards defied her vows and broke the laws of the Presbyterian Church (USA), which bans same-sex marriages and does not permit pastors to perform them.

Edwards, a longtime activist for gay church members, said she does not believe she violated church laws or the vows she took at ordination when she married two West Virginia women in June 2005.

“Of course it is difficult to be called a heretic or apostate by a fellow Presbyterian and another Christian,” Edwards said, responding to Yearsley’s new complaint.

“But I really learned from the first round and I want to focus my soul on reconciling prayer,” Edwards said. “I’m hoping that I can talk with people who disagree with me and that we can find our way to reconciliation.”

The 34,000-member Pittsburgh Presbytery must appoint a new committee of clerics and elders to investigate the new complaint. If the committee again decides to file charges against Edwards in a church court, a new church trial will be scheduled.

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How Presbyterians are Adapting in the New Era (Christian Post, 070424)

A breakaway Presbyterian group has been asking themselves for the last six years what it means to follow Christ faithfully into the 21st century.

The New Wineskins Association of Churches has a growing number of Presbyterians discontent with the liberal direction of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). As membership within the largest Presbyterian group in the nation continues to decline, the NWAC is looking to create a new type of missional and evangelical Presbyterianism.

Commonly held theology is crucial to the foundation for following in faith, noted NWAC co-moderator the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver.

Out of nine Presbyterian denominations in the United States, only the PCUSA has a “trust clause” in its constitution, according to Weaver.

“It is my observation that much of the ‘dialogue’ that has taken place over the past few months has exposed how deeply a culture of distrust pervades the PCUSA,” said Weaver, according to NWAC. “In fact, the issue that has caused this aspect of our culture to become so visible is the debate over a ‘trust clause’ in the PCUSA constitution. It is a tragic irony that a ‘trust clause’ exists because of clear lack of trust within our denomination.”

In the PCUSA’s Book of Order, a property trust clause states that all property held by or for a particular church or higher governing bodies of the denomination is “held in trust nevertheless for the use and benefit of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).”

Dissension within the PCUSA heightened when the General Assembly would not affirm the singularity of Jesus Christ for salvation and also recently granted greater leeway for the ordination of homosexuals. Some discontent congregations have already begun to leave the denomination and more are considering departure, including those who joined an NWAC convocation in February.

Weaver noted that “an agreed upon theology creates a culture of trust” and theology is part of the foundation for following Christ faithfully.

Following Christ faithfully into the next millennium also relates to a paradigm shift in polity, Weaver listed.

“The question is simple: ‘Does our polity help or hinder the advance of the Great Ends of the Church?’” the co-moderator posed.

The NWAC proposed to create a new model for a presbytery that may run under the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The new polity recognizes the local congregation as the primary decision-making group.

Meanwhile, the PCUSA is currently making a significant move to reshape the polity of its denomination – a move that Weaver says is largely “under the radar screen.” An appointed task force drafted a revision of PCUSA’s Form of Government (FOG) that would allow more flexibility for the presbyteries (middle governing bodies) and congregations. The draft will be sent out to presbyteries and congregations for feedback in September and considered by the General Assembly next summer.

“For probably a decade, there have been suggestions that our Form of Government has become a regulatory manual rather than a guidebook for missions,” said Mark Pammen, director of Constitutional Services for the General Assembly.

The PCUSA will also be making changes to its Book of Order to adapt to the postmodern era while preserving traditional principles. The current book arose nearly 25 years ago out of a more corporate understanding but in the postmodern era, that same corporate mentality does not exist anymore, Pammen commented.

Overall, Presbyterians have their focus on the Great Commission and are making the necessary changes to advance their mission.

Amid the changes, however, NWAC’s Weaver clarifies that without the solid foundation of theology, polity will never serve the mission of the Church. “It is a commonly held theology that shapes and fuels us; polity only serves to organize the mission.”

“Evangelicals - due to the culture of distrust - in the PCUSA spend more time, energy and money on the things we are against - including each other - than in genuine constructive dialogue,” stated Weaver. “It is in this context that a vision has been articulated and a path offered for those who, for the purpose of the Great Commission, desire to connect with others in a biblically faithful, relevant expression of an evangelical and missional Presbyterian Church.”

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Conservative Presbyterians Recruiting Like-Minded Churches (Christian Post, 070502)

As more discontent Presbyterians consider joining a conservative network and possibly separating from the Presbyterian Church (USA), the dissident group is offering clarity on what it means to join.

The New Wineskins Association of Churches (NWAC) currently has nearly 200 Presbyterian churches that disagree with the theological direction of the PC(USA). And the network may see growth in the coming months as congregations consider a new proposal that provides discontent Presbyterians a way forward.

But what does it mean to be a member of the NWAC?

“[I]n a fundamental sense, the New Wineskins effort is an effort to live out a biblically-based missional and Reformed witness right now,” states an explanation from the conservative group. “We will not allow the present institutional malaise and theological confusion of the present denomination to hold us back in seeking to go about the work of our ministries to which Christ has called us.”

Presbyterian churches began to depart from the PC(USA) in 2001 when the General Assembly would not affirm Jesus Christ as the only way to God, as NWAC co-moderator Dan Weaver had explained. Controversy within the denomination heightened in 2006 when the General Assembly granted greater leeway to churches for homosexual ordination. Such actions have been viewed as a departure from Presbyterian tradition

The NWAC is within the PC(USA) and congregations in the conservative group are still affiliated with the large Presbyterian denomination. However, some dissident Presbyterians may soon separate or “realign” and form a separate non-geographic presbytery under the smaller Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC).

But the purpose of the New Wineskins is not to get evangelical congregations to the leave the PC(USA), the network explained. In addition to the realignment option, the NWAC has also put forward in a proposal February the option to continue to remain within the denomination and be a faithful witness there.

“A congregation may decide to realign with another Reformed body or it may decide to stay and work for reform within the PC(USA). Whatever choice the congregation makes, they will still be a member of the New Wineskins Association and they will have full representation and voting privileges in our delegated meetings,” the NWAC stated.

And for those who decide to stay within the PC(USA), they will not be “second-class citizens” in the New Wineskins network.

Denominational affiliation is not relevant to the status or representation of any congregation that is a part of the NWAC, as all member congregations have equal voice and voting privileges, according to the conservative group.

Many Presbyterian congregations are expected to vote to remain in the PC(USA) or realign with the New Wineskins presbytery under the EPC by October, when the NWAC plans to hold its next convocation.

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Presbyterian Church Extends Ban on Gay Ministry (Christian Post, 070515)

[KH: at last some good news!]

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) has extended its ban on non-celibate gays and lesbians in the ministry.

The Permanent Judicial Commission of the church’s General Assembly, the highest court of the Louisville-based denomination, ruled last week in a Texas case that gays and lesbians cannot seek to become candidates for the ministry.

The Texas case involved a woman who was accepted in 2005 as a candidate for ministry — a formal step toward ordination — by the Mission Presbytery, a local governing body in Texas.

The presbytery approved her candidacy, even though its moderator told members the candidate was a lesbian living in a committed, same-sex relationship.

Presbyterian church law allows for the ordination of only those who are in a faithful, heterosexual marriage or who are single and living in chastity.

The woman withdrew her candidacy, but the ruling clarified the church’s law on the issue, the commission said.

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Pittsburgh’s Largest Presbyterian Church Votes to Split (Christian Post, 070604)

An overwhelming majority of members at the largest church in the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Pittsburgh presbytery voted Sunday to split from the denomination and affiliate with a smaller Presbyterian group.

Over 1,200 people attend Memorial Park Church’s Sunday worship service, and of 1,051 members who voted, 958 favored a request to seek dismissal from the PC(USA) over the denomination’s departure from traditional doctrines concerning the Holy Trinity and the authority of the Bible.

Dr. D. Dean Weaver, senior pastor of Memorial Park Church in Allison Park, Pa., said the members affirmed that it is time to “realign ourselves with other Presbyterians in our country and around the world who believe the same things we do and have the same passion for evangelism and for missions.”

Considering the unanimous vote, a formal request was made asking the Pittsburgh Presbytery to dismiss the church from the PC(USA) in order to join the conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC).

“We are saddened that Memorial Park members and leaders have elected to separate from the Presbyterian Church,” James Mead, Pastor to Pittsburgh Presbytery, said in a statement. “However, we believe that wrestling with such painful issues is part of God’s redemptive plan for the world. It is our prayer that as we move forward, our Christian love for each other will shine forth into our community as a witness to the risen Lord.”

For the 93 members who did not vote in favor of the split, Mead said the presbytery and the session will work together to provide pastoral care. Meanwhile, negotiations for church property ownership may begin this week.

Sunday’s vote closely follows East Tennessee Presbytery’s decision last Tuesday to approve the dismissal of Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church along with its property to EPC.

Also the largest in its local presbytery, the 1,800-member church in Signal Mountain, Tenn., had voted 1,082-10 in January to request dismissal. Considering such an overwhelming majority vote to leave, an appointed administrative review committee said the church is not in schism and thus “with deep regret and sorrow” dismissed the church “with all its property, real or personal, without condition.”

Like many of the dissident churches, Signal Mountain Church experienced growing dissatisfaction with the PC(USA) - the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States with 2.4 million members - over the past two decades, citing differences with the denomination over the recognition of the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ and scriptural authority.

Despite the split, the administrative committee further allowed the church to retain the name “Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church.” The church is currently in the process of being received into the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Similarly, members at Memorial Park also reaffirmed their Presbyterian roots.

“At Memorial Park, we will always be Presbyterian. We are a conservative, evangelical, missions-oriented Presbyterian Church,” said Jay Roy, a ruling elder and former president of the Pittsburgh Federal Home Loan Bank, in a statement. “Our motto is ‘preaching the unchanging Word to an ever-changing world.’ Without apology, we believe that the Bible is God’s infallible Word. We are unashamed when we proclaim that Jesus Christ is the only Way, Truth and Life.”

The latest vote and dismissal comes weeks ahead of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church’s 27th General Assembly, scheduled for June 20-23. The conservative body had invited congregations from the New Wineskins Association of Churches – a network of Presbyterians discontent with the PC(USA) – to create a non-geographic presbytery under the EPC where churches can realign. The EPC is comprised of some 180 churches representing 75,000 members in the United States.

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Women Still Bound in Church, Notes Female Seminarian (Christian Post, 070605)

A female seminarian plans to make others like her more aware of the “disconnect” between female-friendly seminaries and the church at large.

Kathy Wolf is a second-year Master of Divinity student at Columbia Theological Seminary, an educational institution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). She’s currently working on a self-designed ministry project to help provide a “critical gender lens” throughout a female student’s educational process.

“There is a gap for women who are in seminary and in the midst of the ordination process,” said Wolf, according to the Presbyterian News Service.

While acknowledging that seminaries are encouraging and nurturing places for women, the Rev. Bridgett A. Green, associate for Racial Ethnic Young Women Together, noted the reality when leaving a seminary.

“[W]hen you leave that environment you are more isolated,” she said, according to PNS. “And even though in the church we honor and value justice and equality, in our human frailty we don’t often succeed.”

Memorial Park Church in Allison Park, Pa., just voted on Sunday to leave the PCUSA over its departure from scriptural authority and join the conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Nancy Lee Cochran, spokesperson for Memorial, said the congregation chose EPC over other Presbyterian groups such as the Presbyterian Church in America because of its heavy emphasis on mission and strict adherence to the Bible. Also, with women serving at all levels of leadership in the church, Cochran noted that the congregation could not have considered a denomination that does not respect that. EPC allows women for ordination while PCA does not. Still, only two women serve as pastors in the EPC, one of whom plans to retire soon, according to Christianity Today magazine.

Women’s role in the PCUSA, on the other hand, has advanced over the past century and the 2.4 million-member denomination just celebrated the 50th anniversary of women as ministers of Word and Sacrament last year.

Still, amid advances, 23-year-old Wolf recognizes the reality for women in the larger church. It’s harder for women to become head pastors and they receive lower pay, she noted. Moreover, “women are more geographically bound, which, could make their call process a lot more difficult.”

“I think a lot of women are not acknowledging this coming into ministry, especially women of my generation,” the seminarian said, as reported by PNS.

The tool Wolf plans to complete by fall is meant to “increase awareness and help women prepare themselves to be as aware and as successful as possible in their first call in any work in the church.”

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PC(USA) Rebuts Dissident Presbyterians on Controversial Issues (Christian Post, 070617)

Leading officials from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) say a report by a conservative group of Presbyterians “mischaracterizes” the denomination’s positions on controversial matters.

The PC(USA)’s stated clerk, the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, and its General Assembly Council executive director, Linda Valentine, addressed a letter to leaders within the denomination clarifying the church’s stance on biblical authority, the singular saving Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the Trinity among other issues. The letter, dated June 12, and an attached document deals with a February strategy report released by the New Wineskins Association of Churches (NWAC) – a network of dissident Presbyterians in the PC(USA).

“The New Wineskins Association of Churches has circulated material that mischaracterizes central convictions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s faith and life,” the letter stated.

By the request of a number of presbytery executives and stated clerks – middle governing bodies – the Office of Theology and Worship developed a document titled “The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ Her Lord” to clearly state the church’s position on issues that have caused division and a small exodus of congregations.

Around debate that the General Assembly in 2001 did not clearly affirm that Jesus Christ is the “singular saving Lord” as understood through Scripture, the newly released document by the PC(USA) argues that the denomination has not abandoned a faithful confession of Jesus as Lord. During the 2001 decision, the PC(USA) did not use the “recent, novel expression” of the “singular saving Lordship” of Christ but instead used language of The Book of Confessions when it adopted the statement “the unique authority of Jesus Christ as Lord.”

The document further pointed to the 2002 decision by the General Assembly to affirm the Saving Lordship of Jesus Christ “in unmistakable declarations.”

While current public attention focuses on the controversy over the ordination of practicing homosexuals within the denomination, the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver, co-moderator of the NWAC and whose Memorial Park Church in Pittsburgh recently voted to split, had said the catalyst for the exodus of churches has not all along been homosexuality.

“The issue all along has been who is Jesus and what the Church believes and what the Bible is – the real bedrock foundational issues of faith,” he said after the NWAC winter convocation in February.

Addressing the argument that the PC(USA) has lost biblical authority, the new document by the denomination states that the current constitutional text “demonstrates full confidence in the authority of scripture.” Recent confessionals state: “The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God written. The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the witness without parallel.”

Still, a major and public controversial issue that has wracked most mainline denominations is the ordination of active homosexuals.

More conservative Presbyterian congregations began splitting with the PC(USA) after the General Assembly in 2006 granted some leeway to churches for homosexual ordination. An “authoritative interpretation” of the ordination standard was adopted allowing local and regional governing bodies to have the option to decide that the ordination standard is “not essential.”

The new PC(USA) document argues that the constitutional standard “requiring ‘fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman’ or ‘chastity in singleness’ remains in place.”

Still, dissident Presbyterians state: “Denominational liberals – and some in the ‘evangelical’ camp who place a high priority on institutional preservation – claim that ‘nothing has changed’” with the 2006 decision. “But deep in their hearts, increasing numbers of Presbyterians know that something very significant has occurred,” states NWAC’s “A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven” strategy report.

The General Assembly of the PC(USA) “eviscerated its Constitution,” according to NWAC.

Another major controversy surrounds “The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing” report which recommends feminine and other unconventional language for the Trinity. The General Assembly last year “received” the report, but the new clarification offered by the Office of Theology and Worship stresses “receive” is “the weakest action short of rejection” and that the General Assembly did not “adopt” the report. And the other Trinitarian images suggested by the report are not to be used as substitutes for “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” but are intended for “modest use.”

The PC(USA)’s latest document states that the questions about faith and mission of the church that the NWAC has raised “must be dealt with seriously” and that “the whole church” cannot be held responsible for every departure from its standards voiced by individual leaders in the denomination.

This past year, six congregations were dismissed to other denominations and baptisms and churches have continued to decline in number in recent years. The total PC(USA) membership is now at 2.3 million.

The NWAC approved a proposal in February offering dissident congregations the option of continuing to remain within the PC(USA) and be a faithful witness there or to “realign” with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

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Conservative Presbyterians: PC(USA) Not Walking the Talk (Christian Post, 070626)

Responding to a recent document released by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that attempted to clarify the denomination’s stance on debated issues, conservative Presbyterian leaders say the arguments are irrelevant.

“We think there is an unfortunate but clear distinction between what is on paper and what is the working theology of the denomination,” said the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver, senior pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh and co-moderator of the New Wineskins Association of Churches – a network of dissident Presbyterians.

PC(USA)’s stated clerk, the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, and General Assembly Council executive director, Linda Valentine, addressed a letter to leaders within the denomination earlier this month to rebut a strategy report by the conservative New Wineskins Association of Churches (NWAC) that “mischaracterizes” the denomination’s positions on such matters as the singular saving Lordship of Jesus Christ, scriptural authority, and homosexual ordination.

The document, titled “The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ Her Lord,” cites the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order to argue that the PC(USA) affirms the saving Lordship of Jesus Christ, demonstrates full confidence in the authority of Scripture, and still upholds the constitutional standard requiring fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness for ordination, among other issues.

“The written standards of the denomination are precisely correct, but they are largely ignored,” stated the Rev. Michael Neubert of the Presbytery of Southeastern Illinois, according to Presbyweb, a daily news source for Presbyterians. “And so, quoting the standard is pointless.”

Controversy in the PC(USA) erupted when the 2001 General Assembly did not affirm the “singular” saving Lordship of Jesus Christ and instead adopted the language “the unique authority of Jesus Christ as Lord.” Although the recently released document points to a 2002 General Assembly decision that affirmed the saving Lordship of Jesus Christ “in unmistakable declarations,” Weaver points out that the document leaves out the rest of the 2001 adopted statement that stirred debate in the denomination.

The rest of the statement reads: “Although we do not know the limits of God’s grace and pray for the salvation of those who may never come to know Christ, for us the assurance of salvation is found only in confessing Christ and trusting Him alone.”

Although salvation through Jesus Christ is true for the Presbyterians, they can’t say that it’s true for everybody, Weaver summed up.

While the main concern of congregations discontent with the PC(USA) is who the denomination believes Christ is, other concerns include gay ordination.

A 2006 General Assembly decision adopted an “authoritative interpretation” of the ordination standard that allows some leeway to churches for homosexual ordination. The new PC(USA) document, which was developed by the Office of Theology and Worship, states that the constitutional standard “requiring ‘fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman’ or ‘chastity in singleness’ remains in place.”

However, William Beau Weston, associate professor of sociology at Centre College in Danvill, Ky., says there are practicing homosexuals in ordained ministry now.

“Can practicing homosexuals now be ordained in the PC(USA)?” posed Weston in The Presbyterian Outlook. “The short answer is ‘No.’ The more complicated answer is ‘Maybe.’”

The “authoritative interpretation” allows local and regional governing bodies to have the option to decide that the ordination standard is “not essential.”

Is it true the PC(USA) on paper believes in the Book of Confessions? Yes, Weaver answered. But functionally, some do not believe the denomination is consistent with the written theology, he added.

“Many people are waking up to realizing that the PC(USA) may not believe what it says it believes,” said Weaver, noting a growing anxiety about what the denomination really believes.

Kirkpatrick and Valentine stated that the document is simply being made available for those who seek to “interpret accurately the positions of our church.” Weaver, however, believes the latest document may be an attempt to stop the “bleeding” of churches out of the denomination.

The document was released a week ahead of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church’s (EPC) General Assembly which last week created a new non-geographic transitional presbytery for New Wineskins churches seeking membership along with transitional presbyteries for congregations wanting to join EPC’s already established geographic presbyteries. The New Wineskins presbytery launches publicly with its first official presbytery meeting in October. Weaver clarified that the New Wineskins is not yet fully integrated into the EPC but they are intentionally moving toward it.

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Presbyterian Pastor Back in Court Over Same-Sex Ceremonies (Christian Post, 070817)

A longtime Presbyterian pastor who was acquitted of charges that she violated the church’s ban on performing same-sex ceremonies will be back in church court on Friday.

The Rev. Jane Adams Spahr, a lesbian activist who claimed to have performed hundreds of same-sex “marriages,” faces an appeal by Redwoods Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in California.

Spahr was acquitted on Mar. 2, 2006, when the Redwoods Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) determined that Spahr had acted within her right of conscience as an ordained minister when she married two lesbian couples in 2004 and 2005. The acquittal was made on the basis that the PC(USA) views same-sex “marriages” as “improper” but not necessarily “forbidden.”

Conservative Presbyterians immediately criticized the decision and predicted a quick appeal.

“We view its’ (PJC’s) action as schismatic and a threat to the very fabric of our constitutional connection,” said a statement by the Presbyterian Forum.

The PC(USA) allows pastors to oversee same-sex ceremonies as long as they are not equated to heterosexual marriages. The PC(USA) Book of Order defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

Spahr is hopeful her acquittal would be upheld, according to the Presbyterian News Service.

“I’m hopeful that the same kind of consideration that was done by the presbytery judicial commission will be done with the same kind of careful process which is [the Presbyterian] way,” said Spahr, who is set to retire from ministry at the end of this month, according to PNS.

Spahr’s attorney, Sara Taylor, said her client would appeal any punishment which ranges from a reprimand to removal from ministry, despite her upcoming retirement.

The appeal will be heard by the PJC of the Synod of the Pacific and will likely be taken up to the denomination’s highest court, the General Assembly PJC.

The Rev. Robert Conover, stated clerk of Redwoods Presbytery, said any decision by the court would disappoint some people considering the issue of same-sex “marriages” has remained a divisive issue in the PC(USA).

“My sense is that our presbytery more or less reflects the denomination as a whole in that we’re relatively evenly divided in our perspective,” said Conover, according to PNS. “A significant portion of the presbytery is very supportive of Janie and her actions and a significant portion of the presbytery is not. So regardless of how the case is ruled on, at whatever level, there will be those who are disappointed.”

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PC(USA) Head to Leave Office (Christian Post, 070917)

The head of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has announced his intention not to seek another term – a move that at least one conservative group sees as a first step to changing the “disheartening state” of the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly of the PC(USA), steps down at the end of his third term next year as membership continues to dwindle amid other challenges the 2.3 million-member church body is facing.

“This has been the best job I have ever had and a wonderful way to live out my call to ministry,” he said in a written statement. But “the time has now come for me to conclude my service as Stated Clerk at the end of my third term.”

Kirkpatrick has served as the top official of the PC(USA) since 1996. While shrinking membership began decades before his leadership, he has been a frequent target of conservative critics in the church over the continual decline. The largest drop was reported in 2005 with a loss of 2.05 percent.

Conservatives have also criticized the increasingly liberal direction of the denomination, including the issue of homosexual ordination and scriptural authority. Several large and historic congregations have cut ties with the PC(USA) in recent years and joined the smaller and more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

“The last decade under his leadership has been a difficult and disappointing time for Kirkpatrick, and indeed for Presbyterians as a whole,” commented James D. Berkley, director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD)’s Presbyterian Action committee, in a released statement. “We have witnessed large decreases in membership, painful divides over beliefs and practices, and agonizing staff and program cuts, including curtailing the number of missionaries sent into the world.”

Berkley says by stepping down, Kirkpatrick is “allowing other able leaders to step up to guide this denomination once again into greater biblical fidelity and increased effectiveness as a Christian body.”

“It also gives Kirkpatrick, as the present Stated Clerk, the ability to ensure a level playing field for the June 2008 election,” he added, “since all nominees will be able to engage the issues without battling the rather intimidating influence of an incumbent as a fellow candidate.”

The conservative leader commended Kirkpatrick for “his characteristic graciousness in displaying the courage to step aside to allow new leadership to emerge” and also thanked him for his “untiring service.”

“I appreciate Clifton Kirkpatrick’s Christian faith, enthusiastic ministry, and kindhearted humility, and I look forward to a more fulfilling future, both for him and for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” he concluded.

As stated clerk for over a decade, Kirkpatrick has been responsible for ecumenical and constitutional functions at the General Assembly, the highest governing body of the PC(USA).

Kirkpatrick described his work as stated clerk a great blessing, but noted the “fair share of stresses and strains” that accompanied the work.

“It has been a tremendous privilege to give voice to the witness of our church to the gospel and to justice and peace in the world, to be a leader in the ecumenical movement, to guide the church (even in our contentions) toward unity in diversity, to uphold our Constitution, and to pioneer in new ways to express old truth as we seek to discern the mind of Christ and develop a polity and a church for the 21st century,” he said in his statement.

On future matters, Kirkpatrick mentioned that he is eager to have more quality time with his family and to devote himself more fully to his presidency at the World Alliance of Reformed Churches – the global fellowship of 75 million Reformed Christians in 214 churches in 107 countries.

The Stated Clerk Nominating Committee, which was elected at the General Assembly last summer, has already begun searching for a nominee to succeed Kirkpatrick, who is only the second elected stated clerk since 1984. The next stated clerk will be elected at the 2008 General Assembly in San Jose.

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Presbyterians Reject Support for Gay Ordination (Christian Post, 070919)

Members of a regional body in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have rejected a proposal supporting gay ordination.

Maumee Valley Presbytery, the PC(USA) body of northwestern Ohio and southeastern Michigan, voted 61-56 on Tuesday against the proposal and held off a vote on a more specific ban against the ordination of gays and lesbians until November.

“We lost,” said the Rev. Michelle Stecker, the only openly gay ordained minister in the regional body, according to The Toledo Blade.

Stecker was ordained in 1989 and realized she was a lesbian two years later, she said during the debate on the resolution, as reported by the local newspaper. In her 18 years of ministry, she said she served five congregations and people came to faith at all five of them.

With Presbyterians divided on the issue of homosexuality, Stecker said, “It’s time to take a stand on this issue.”

Despite losing the vote, Stecker noted that the votes are “always close.”

“We will move forward, and justice will prevail,” she stated, according to the Blade.

The motion had been proposed by First Presbyterian Church in Bowling Green. First Presbyterian’s delegate, Marcy St John, said barring homosexuals from leadership roles is “denying equality in our church to somewhere between 6 million and 30 million persons ... simply because God created them differently,” according to the local Blade.

Much of the opposition to the proposal was directed toward the wording as well as the timing of the vote, considering that Massachusetts is the only state where same-sex “marriage” is legal.

If the proposal was approved, it would have gone to the meeting of the General Assembly – the denomination’s highest governing body – in June 2008.

Paulding Presbyterian Church proposed earlier during Tuesday’s presbytery meeting a motion that more specifically bars gay ordination. With Paulding considering withdrawal from the regional PC(USA) body, however, debate on the proposal was delayed.

A small but growing number of conservative congregations within the PC(USA) – the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination – has cut ties with the denomination and more are threatening to leave. Conservative Presbyterians are discontent with the liberal direction of the PC(USA), particularly over issues of homosexual ordination and the singular saving Lordship of Jesus Christ.

The PC(USA)’s current constitutional standard requires “fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman” or “chastity in singleness.” However, the 2006 General Assembly adopted an “authoritative interpretation” of the ordination standard that allows some leeway to churches for homosexual ordination.

Earlier this year, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church created a New Wineskins Transitional Presbytery along with transitional presbyteries to house an increasing number of dissident Presbyterians seeking membership in the smaller and more conservative denomination.

EPC was formed in 1981 after its members felt increasingly alienated by liberalism in the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the “northern” branch of Presbyterianism, which merged with the Southern and border-state Presbyterian Church in the U.S. in 1983 to form the present Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

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Theologian Claims Bible Does Not Condemn Gays (Christian Post, 071006)

A Presbyterian theologian is visiting several churches this fall refuting the common Christian interpretation of the Bible that Jesus and Scripture opposes homosexuality.

Jack Rogers, professor of Theology Emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary, is trying to get a positive word out in the Christian churches about the gay and lesbian community and thinks churches should be leading the charge for their equal rights.

“I’m trying to help people understand that the Bible rightly interpreted, which I would think is through the lens of Jesus’ redemptive life and ministry ... does not condemn Christian people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered,” said Rogers, according to The Lawrence Journal-World.

He makes that argument in the book Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church. The former Fuller Theological Seminary professor and former moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) launched his fall book tour last week and is currently making stops at churches and ministries to speak on the controversial topic.

Rogers says those who argue that the Bible condemns gays and lesbians are taking biblical literalism too far and feels there is excessively negative words in the religious community, according to the Journal-World.

His fall tour comes as Daniel Karslake’s documentary “For the Bible Tells Me So” was set to release in Manhattan on Friday. The film supports homosexuals and presents the religious right as misusing the Bible to condemn gay people.

Amid increasing efforts by some to equate the condemnation of sin with the condemnation of sinners, conservative critics have expressed regret over what they say is a misapplication of Scripture.

“Scripture is God’s Word written,” communications coordinator Jenny Noyes of the conservative Anglican Communion Network has said. “Man’s sinful mis-application of Scripture does not negate the authority or truth of it today.”

The Anglican Communion Network along with the worldwide Anglican Communion holds that homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture. Most mainline denominations stand on similar positions but have been wracked with division as homosexuality has become one of the most hotly debated issues in the Church today.

Craig Detweiler, director of Reel Spirituality, a think-tank for pastors and filmmakers at Fuller Theological Seminary said Karslake’s documentary “represents one side (pro-homosexual) of an ongoing argument, and the filmmakers seemed very interested in evoking a reaction.”

“I think film at its best starts conversations, but this conversation will continue for quite some time,” he said, according to The Canadian Press.

Since his book release in 2006, Rogers has given some 60 presentations on the debated topic and a third of his audiences have been gay and lesbian people wanting to hear that God loves them, he said.

While more evangelical Christians have come to recognize the need to preach love to homosexuals, they say they are trying to meet that need – but without compromising the truth.

“Often Christians think that to love a homosexual is a compromise of their Christianity, that somehow their love would be misconstrued as condoning homosexuality,” according to Christine Sneeringer, director of Worthy Creations, an Exodus International ministry – one of the nation’s largest organizations dealing with homosexuality.

But Christians are called to love their neighbor, she said, and a Christian’s message must balance love and truth – the truth being that homosexuality is a sin.

Ex-gay Tim Wilkins, a Baptist, also teaches congregations across the country that the Church has a responsibility to proclaim that homosexuality is a sin. At the same time, however, he tells them they have a responsibility to share the redemptive message of Christ.

“Homosexuality is a sin and freedom from same-sex attractions is available through Jesus Christ,” he says.

Rogers, who acknowledges in his book that he has not specialized in the issue as a biblical scholar, says he did not always support homosexuality. It wasn’t until his pastor charged him in 1993 to be a part of a study at the church on the issue and after months of studying the Bible on matter of homosexuality that Rogers had a change of heart. And now he’s sharing that change of his understanding with other Christians.

Rogers’ next lecture and book signing is scheduled for Oct. 9 at Grace Covenant Church in Overland Park, Kan.

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Dissidents Open Talks on New Evangelical Presbyterianism (Christian Post, 071029)

Presbyterians discontent with the liberal direction of their national denomination opened discussions on Sunday about a new approach to being the Church of Jesus Christ.

The New Wineskins Association of Churches (NWAC), a network of some 200 Presbyterian churches unhappy with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is holding its fourth convocation in Fair Oaks, Calif., to determine the next steps toward remaining faithful Presbyterians.

Several congregations have already voted this year to disaffiliate with the PC(USA) – the largest Presbyterian denomination in the country – and more are expected to leave in the coming years.

Conflict began in 2001 when the PC(USA) would not affirm the singular saving Lordship of Jesus Christ. Further controversy was stirred when the denomination adopted a resolution in 2006 that gave some leeway to churches for homosexual ordination.

Although the PC(USA) still upholds the constitutional standard requiring fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness for ordination, one conservative believes the denomination isn’t walking the talk.

“The written standards of the denomination are precisely correct, but they are largely ignored,” the Rev. Michael Neubert of the Presbytery of Southeastern Illinois has stated.

About 30 of the nearly 11,000 PC(USA) congregations have voted to leave the denomination since 2006. In June, the smaller and more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church voted to create the New Wineskins Transitional Presbytery to accept the increasing number of departing congregations seeking membership.

The non-geographic presbytery, scheduled to be inaugurated during this week’s NWAC convocation, is to run under a newly designed constitution based on a grassroots polity that recognizes the local congregation as the primary decision-making group, according to the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver, co-moderator of the NWAC and senior pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. His congregation – the largest Presbyterian church in the Pittsburgh presbytery – voted in June to split from the PC(USA).

It is time to “realign ourselves with other Presbyterians in our country and around the world who believe the same things we do and have the same passion for evangelism and for missions,” said Weaver at the time of the split.

NWAC congregations have been offered the option of either “realigning” with the newly created presbytery or continuing to remain within the PC(USA) and being a faithful witness there, according to a proposal passed earlier this year during the network’s winter convocation.

“We’re not just leaving to go to another denomination,” Weaver has noted. “We’re actually realigning to help join with other brothers and sisters in Christ who want to form a whole new type of missional and evangelical Presbyterianism.”

The New Wineskins Convocation opened on Reformation Sunday, which commemorates the history of the Reformed tradition, and will conclude Oct. 30.

“The New Wineskins convocation will provide us with a unique opportunity to not only consider what it means to be missional but to ‘worshipfully work’ toward the reformation of our Lord’s Church!” expressed an NWAC statement.

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Breakaway Presbyterians Seek Forgiveness (Christian Post, 071118)

[KH: compare this with the reaction of the Episcopal leaders.]

Breakaway Presbyterians have asked for forgiveness from fellow believers who have not voted to split from the national church for distancing themselves during a period of “realignment.”

Congregations that disaffiliated from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) over the denomination’s liberal direction on Scripture and theology recently realigned with the newly inaugurated New Wineskins-Evangelical Presbyterian Church Presbytery. Amid preparation to exit the PC(USA) and property issues, the breakaway groups acknowledged possible neglect toward congregations that have decided to remain in the denomination.

“First, those of us in the New Wineskins who have left the PC(USA) want to ask your forgiveness if we have been short with you, less than encouraging in our conversations, or down right neglectful of your needs and feelings. It has been a busy time for us,” stated Randy Jenkins, moderator of the New Wineskins EPC Presbytery, in a letter addressed to members of the New Wineskins Association of Churches, a network of Presbyterian churches discontent with the PC(USA).

The network claims nearly 200 Presbyterian churches, representing about 100,000 Presbyterians. Only 46 churches in the network have voted to leave the PC(USA) so far. Others have decided to remain in the PC(USA) while committing to reform the denomination and still others have not yet voted.

Speaking for those who have focused their energies on cutting ties, Jenkins highlighted the distance that might have been felt in recent years with churches that were not splitting.

“We probably haven’t been as encouraging to you, our friends who have not yet left, or who are committed to staying, as we should have been,” he said. “We mean no disrespect, it’s just that our course was set and now we must take a moment and realize that others are just as, or sometimes more, faithful than we were; and that faithfulness may be lived out in staying in the PC(USA) and being a prophetic witness.”

Although the process of leaving the PC(USA) was “draining” and took an emotional toll on breakaway congregations, Jenkins said it was worth it.

At the end of the process, “we were taken aback by the fact that everybody else was not out here with us,” he noted.

“Doesn’t everybody see the necessity of this? Don’t all members find ministry frustrated by their ties to the PC(USA)? The process of leaving did tend to make us somewhat ‘self-focused,’” Jenkins acknowledged. “We seek your forgiveness.

“We ask that you give us some time to ‘get our heads back in the game’ and get back on track with the ministry the Lord has called us to,” he wrote to New Wineskins members.

Jenkins reminded New Wineskins members that the network is not about leaving the PC(USA). Rather, it’s about the “new thing” and “new way of doing ministry” based on a solid biblical and Reformed foundation.

The New Wineskins Association of Churches was formed in 2001 after the General Assembly of the PC(USA) would not affirm the singular saving Lordship of Jesus Christ. Conservative Presbyterians began discussing what a church in the 21st century and faithful to Christ would look like as they tried to rediscover their Reformed and Presbyterian roots. Further controversy was stirred in the PC(USA) when the denomination adopted a resolution in 2006 that gave some leeway to churches for homosexual ordination.

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Lesbian Moves Forward in Ordination Amid Debate (Christian Post, 080120)

An openly lesbian minister’s bid to join the clergy may be the first national test of a controversial policy adopted by the Presbyterian Church (USA).

After being denied ordination twice over the past couple of decades because of a ban on ordaining openly gay persons, Lisa Larges made some headway this past week when she gained support from a regional body of the PC(USA).

The San Francisco Presbytery voted Tuesday 167-151 to support Larges’ application for ministry. The vote came after a long debate and despite warnings that the action violated the church’s constitution and would be appealed.

According to its constitution, the PC(USA) requires “fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman” or “chastity in singleness” for its clergy.

But Larges’ third bid comes after the Presbyterian national assembly adopted an “authoritative interpretation” of the ordination standard in 2006 – a decision that opponents say allows some leeway to churches for homosexual ordination.

Larges’ latest attempt is thought to be the first test of the 2006 policy, said Jerry Van Marter, news director for the PC(USA).

“I’m in shock,” Larges, 44, said of the support she’s receiving, according to The Los Angeles Times. “I still feel stunned, honestly, and deeply grateful both to the folks who supported me and to the presbytery for stepping up.”

Larges must pass an oral examination, known as the “trials of ordination,” by the presbytery before she can be ordained. The test can come as early as April.

But many are hoping to halt the process.

The Rev. Mary Naegeli, who opposed the Larges’ ordination on Tuesday, said they are taking “immediate steps” to stop the ordination process. “This really is the defining case for the Presbyterian church on this question.”

Larges told the LA Times that she couldn’t pursue ministry and stay in the closet after graduating from San Francisco Theological Seminary. She applied for candidacy in the Twin Cities presbytery but was turned down in 1992. She was again rejected for ordination in 2004 by the committee that oversaw candidates for ordination for the San Francisco Presbytery. But the committee let her continue as a candidate.

When the General Assembly approved the policy change in 2006, she decided to try for a third time.

In a “statement of departure,” Larges has written that she cannot abide by the church’s requirement that she be married to a man or be celibate in order to become a minister.

While Larges has been commended for her giftedness in the ministry and her dedication to her cause, many are opposed to her joining the clergy.

“Lisa has publicly and without ambiguity stated that she will not comply with a requirement for ordination,” Naegeli said. “The problem is not the fact that she disagrees with a feature of the church constitution, but that she won’t abide by it. And that’s a very important distinction.”

Also weighing in on the controversy, James D. Berkley, Director of Institute on Religion and Democracy’s Presbyterian Action Committee, commented, “A requirement should be required. A standard ought to be standard across the denomination. San Francisco Presbytery has capitulated to the spirit of the age, ignoring the clear and consistent witness of the Bible, our Presbyterian creeds and constitution, and repeated, overwhelming decisions by the church here, abroad, and across the ages.”

Following the 2006 General Assembly decision, several Presbyterian churches have taken steps to withdraw from the national church. The churches have opposed the liberal direction the denomination is going on homosexuality as well as other issues, including the singular lordship of Jesus Christ.

The gay ordination issue is expected to be taken up again at PC(USA)’s biennial General Assembly in June.

The PC(USA) is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the country with 2.3 million members.

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